Joseph F. Smith had questions about the following passages from Peter’s first epistle:
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
1 Peter 3:18-20
For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
1 Peter 4:6
The vision he saw as he pondered this passage is recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 138.
The prophet Alma similarly pondered and prayed to better understand what happens when we die. God revealed to him that our spirits will be in one of two states: a state of happiness, rest, and peace called paradise, or “a state of awful, fearful looking for the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them.” Alma described these states as unchanging: “Thus they remain in this state, as well as the righteous in paradise, until the time of their resurrection” (Alma 40:12-14).
But as Joseph F. Smith pondered Peter’s words, he learned something new about the people in these states. The righteous may be resting in one sense—free from the worries and sorrow that accompany sin— but they are not dormant. The Savior has organized them and called them to “continue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:57).
And the wicked may be filled with sorrow and dread, anticipating an adverse outcome at the Final Judgment, but that outcome is not a foregone conclusion: “The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:58).
They can still change. They can still accept the gospel and receive the healing power of Jesus Christ. That is true whether they are learning about the gospel for the first time or whether they have previously rejected it:
Thus was the gospel preached to those who had died in their sins, without a knowledge of the truth, or in transgression, having rejected the prophets.
Doctrine and Covenants 138:32
What a comforting doctrine! ‘m grateful to know that deliverance is available to people in agony—in this life and the next—whether that suffering comes from their own choices or from circumstances beyond their control. It’s a powerful manifestation of the foundational truth that Joseph F. Smith was pondering even before opening his scriptures:
The great and wonderful love made manifest by the Father and the Son in the coming of the Redeemer into the world;
That through his atonement, and by obedience to the principles of the gospel, mankind might be saved.
Doctrine and Covenants 138:3-4
Today, I will remember God’s perfect love for His children. I will be grateful that He gives us repeated opportunities to learn, to change, and to grow, so that we can experience eternal happiness, peace, and rest.
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