Repentance in the Spirit World

Amulek declared to the Zoramites, “I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed. Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this” (Alma 34:33-34).  Alma had similarly spoke of the need to use this life to repent: “nevertheless there was a space granted unto man in which he might repent; therefore this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God; a time to prepare for that endless state which has been spoken of by us, which is after the resurrection of the dead” (Alma 12:24).  Samuel the Lamanite spoke to the Nephites in language that also emphasized the need to repent now in this life.  He warned that one day this would be the case for the people, “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; yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity” (Helaman 13:38).  These and other verses in the Book of Mormon emphasize that this life, not the next is the time for us to repent and come unto the Lord. 

               These passages, in particular Amulek’s statement about the night of darkness that comes when we don’t prepare properly in this life, all seem to suggest that this life, not the next, is the one designated for our repentance.    And yet, there are other scriptures that seem to suggest that there are opportunities to repent in the next life, even for those who were wicked in this life.  In President Joseph F. Smith’s vision he described how “the gospel preached to those who had died in their sins, without a knowledge of the truth, or in transgression, having rejected the prophets.”  In other words, the gospel in the spirit wondure in the next life.  rld is not just taken to those who never heard it in mortality, but also to those who had rejected it.  This surely would suggest that there is some kind of opportunity to repent for them.  At the end of the revelation he also said this, “The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God.  And after they have paid the penalty of their transgressions, and are washed clean, shall receive a reward according to their works, for they are heirs of salvation” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:32, 59).  This again seems to suggest that even the wicked can repent in the Spirit World and ultimately be heirs of salvation. 

I believe that this statement from President Lee helps us to understand both President Smith’s vision and Amulek’s words: “To those who die in their wicked state, not having repented, the scriptures say the devil shall seal them as his own (see Alma 34:35), which means that until they have paid the uttermost farthing for what they have done, they shall not be redeemed from his grasp. When they shall have been subjected to the buffetings of Satan sufficient to have satisfied justice, then they shall be brought forth out of the grasp of Satan and shall be assigned to that place in our Father’s celestial, terrestrial, or telestial world merited by their life here upon this earth.”  If we do not repent in mortality when we have the opportunity to and we know that we should, there is some kind of punishment that we must endure, and that appears to be what Amulek was promising the people.  But it doesn’t mean that there is no hope for those people—the gospel will still be preached to them and it may be that they can repent to some extent.  The Prophet Joseph suggested this possibility when describing the terrestrial kingdom: “Who received not the testimony of Jesus in the flesh, but afterwards received it” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:74).  This implies that some will reject the testimony of Jesus in this life but then receive it in the next, which surely will be through the missionary labors of the Spirit World.  Gratefully the Lord is the judge, and we need not concern ourselves with trying to understand when someone has had all of the chances they are going to get to repent.  We need only to repent ourselves and invite others—whether on this side of the veil or the other—to turn from their sins to the Lord.