Labor While It Is Called Today

I wrote yesterday of how the Lord offers us many opportunities to repent and come unto Him—He will indeed give us second chances to hear and hearken to His word when we have sinned and failed to follow His law.  But, as the brother of Jared was told when he repented, “Thou shalt not sin any more, for ye shall remember that my Spirit will not always strive with man”—his chances at repentance are not unlimited.  This is what the Lord told Noah before the flood: “And the Lord said unto Noah: My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for he shall know that all flesh shall die; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years; and if men do not repent, I will send in the floods upon them” (Moses 8:17).  Here the Lord gave a specific timeline—the people had 120 years to repent or they would be destroyed.  Nephi saw something similar when he had a vision of the destruction of his people.  Once they became wicked and did “yield unto the devil and choose works of darkness rather than light,” they days would be numbered: “For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man then cometh speedy destruction, and this grieveth my soul” (2 Nephi 26:10-11).  The Lord certainly wants to help us repent and gives us numerous opportunities to do so, but we cannot procrastinate indefinitely. 

               Other scriptures confirm that there is an urgency for us to repent, for sometime we will no longer be able to.  Mormon wrote of a day, perhaps in the next life for us, when “the Lord shall say—Because of thine iniquities thou shalt be cut off from my presence—he will cause that it shall be so. And wo unto him to whom he shall say this, for it shall be unto him that will do iniquity, and he cannot be saved; therefore, for this cause, that men might be saved, hath repentance been declared” (Helaman 12:21-22).  Samuel the Lamanite warned the Nephites in his day that if they did not repent then at some point they might learn this: “But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure” (Helaman 13:38).  Moroni recorded these words of warning about the people collectively in the promised land: “And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity” (Ether 2:9).  Eventually, if we continue becoming more and more wicked until we are “ripened in iniquity,” like the Nephites and Jaredites we will as a nation be swept off the land.  Amulek warned the Zoramites about their individual need to not put off repentance, “For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his” (Alma 34:35).  If we continually reject the Lord in this life, procrastinating our repentance even though we know we should change, we may not have the capacity to do so in the next life.      

               President Kimball spoke along these lines when he discussed those who had had the opportunity to be sealed in the temple in this life but had failed to do so.  After telling the story of a couple who were raised in the church but were married civilly instead of in the temple, and who died shortly after their marriage, he commented, “Yes, the family can go to the temple a year later. Yes, they can do the ordinance work for them. And the records will show it. But the question is, Will the young deceased couple accept the ordinances when they were of such little consequence to them while they lived? And more important than all else, do you think that God is going to be mocked? He is the God of the living, not of the dead. And they were dead, both physically and also, it would seem, spiritually. He has identified this ordinance as one to be done in mortality while you have your body and your spirit together.”  God, of course, is the only one who can judge and tell how many opportunities we will have to repent and come unto the Savior.  But for each of us individually, the Lord’s counsel is simple: “Wherefore, if ye believe me, ye will labor while it is called today” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:25).  Tomorrow may be too late.