Jacob continues to teach about the plan of salvation.
Jacob praises the goodness of God. Through the plan of salvation, the day will
come that we will be delivered from the death.
We will “escape from the grasp of
this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death
of the body and also the death of the spirit” (2 Nephi 9:10).
Jacob is teaching about the spiritual death. The spiritual death “is hell” (2 Nephi 9:12). Death
and hell will be forced to the deliver “its
captive spirits, and the grave must deliver up its captive bodies” (2 Nephi
9:12). Our body and spirit will be
reunited through the power of the resurrection, which was made possible through
Christ’s resurrection.
In his vision, President Joseph F. Smith saw spirits:
…
assembled awaiting the advent of the Son of God into the spirit world, to
declare their redemption from the bands of death.
Their
sleeping dust was to be restored unto its perfect frame, bone to his bone, and
the sinews and the flesh upon them, the spirit and the body to be united never
again to be divided, that they might receive a fulness of joy.
While
this vast multitude waited and conversed, rejoicing in the hour of their deliverance
from the chains of death, the Son of God appeared, declaring liberty to the captives
who had been faithful;
D&C 138:16-18
Hugh Nibley writes:
So now we have them both, body and
spirit, brought together, another at-one-ment, "restored one to the
other" (2 Nephi 9:12). And how,
pray, is this all done? Not by a syllogism or an argument or an allegory or
even a ceremony; "it is by the power of the resurrection of the Holy One
of Israel" (2 Nephi 9:12). Another outburst from Jacob: "O how great
[is] the plan of our God!" (2 Nephi 9:13).[1]
“[T]he paradise of God
must deliver up the spirits of the righteous, and the grave deliver up the body
of the righteous; and the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and
all men become incorruptible, and immortal, and they are living souls, having a
perfect knowledge like unto us in the flesh, save it be that our knowledge
shall be perfect” (2 Nephi 9:13).
When Amulek confronted Zeezrom, he told him that our body
and spirit will be brought together and will be “in its perfect form.” When
we stand before God, we will be able to recall all of our guilt. (Alma 11:43).
Alma2 taught his son, Corianton, that our soul we
be restored to our body. “[E]very and every limb and joint shall be
restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all
things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame” (Alma 40:23).
He continued, explaining to Corianton:
And
it is requisite with the justice of God that men should be judged according to
their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of
their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored
unto that which is good.
And
if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil. Therefore, all things shall be restored to
their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality,
corruption to incorruption—raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom
of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on
one hand, the other on the other—
The
one raised to happiness according to his desires of happiness, or good
according to his desires of good; and the other to evil according to his
desires of evil; for as he has desired to do evil all the day long even so
shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh.
Alma 41:3-5
[1] The
Meaning of the Atonement, Hugh Nibley, Provo, Utah: Maxwell
Institute, accessed August 30, 2013.
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