Saturday, March 7, 2020

2 Nephi 9:10-13


10 O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our 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.
11 And because of the way of deliverance of our God, the Holy One of Israel, this death, of which I have spoken, which is the temporal, shall deliver up its dead; which death is the grave.
12 And this death of which I have spoken, which is the spiritual death, shall deliver up its dead; which spiritual death is hell; wherefore, death and hell must deliver up their dead, and hell must deliver up its captive spirits, and the grave must deliver up its captive bodies, and the bodies and the spirits of men will be restored one to the other; and it is by the power of the resurrection of the Holy One of Israel.
13 O how great the plan of our God! For on the other hand, the 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.

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.

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