Doctrine and Covenants 40

(October 6, 2015)

                Ok, so I have to admit to a little doctrinal conceit that I have carried around with me.  I have often thought to myself that, if ever we lived in a Celestial fashion for any given time, that the Lord would end our lives at a point where we were worthy for Exaltation rather than allowing us to live longer and screw up our opportunity to return to live with Him.  After all, said I, if we were worthy at one point it would be loving to take our lives at that point rather than allowing us to continue to live only to have us make a huge mistake that puts our salvation in jeopardy.

                You might be thinking that you have never heard anything supporting this position from the scriptures – and you would be right.  Sometimes we just get ideas in our heads that say a great deal about us and about the way we think the world ought to work, but much less about the way that it actually does work.  This was one of the times when I allow that to happen to me.

                In reality, we have the example of James Covel to directly contradict my belief.  James Covel lived in such a way that he was right before God.  Presumably, had he died the day he was baptized, he would have been on track for Exaltation (though, of course, how could we know for certain).  Instead, however, he continued on in life and reached the point where fear of the world and his cares caused him to leave the faith and (again presumably, though we cannot say for certain) lose his Exaltation.

                It is important to remember this because it is important to remember that we are likewise holding on tightly to the Iron Rod because to lose grip on it threatens our Eternal destiny.  We cannot idly let go and still hope for things to ‘work out’ based upon where we were in the past.