Tag Archives: Judgement and Justice

The Challenge to Become

Dallin H. Oaks taught,

“The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts–what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts–what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions…The Master’s reward in the Final Judgment will not be based on how long we have labored in the vineyard. We do not obtain our heavenly reward by punching a time clock. What is essential is that our labors in the workplace of the Lord have caused us to become something. For some of us this requires a longer time than for others. What is important in the end is what we have become by our labors.”

(Dallin H. Oaks, CR, Oct. 2000, p. 41, 44)

Waiting, A Trial of Life

Ezra Taft Benson taught,

“One of the trials of life is that we do not usually receive immediately the full blessing for righteousness or the full cursing for wickedness. That it will come is certain, but often times there is a waiting period that occurs, as was the case with Job and Joseph. In the meantime the wicked think they are getting away with something. The Book of Mormon teaches that the wicked “have joy in their works for a season, but by and by the end cometh, and they are hewn down and cast into the fire, from whence there is no return.”

(President Benson, CR, April 1988, p. 5)

On Mortality

Neal A. Maxwell, while serving as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve, taught,

“One day we will understand fully how complete our commitment was in our first estate in accepting the very conditions of challenge in our second estate about which we sometimes complain in this school of stress. Our collective and personal premortal promises will then be laid clearly before us.

Further, when we are finally judged in terms of our performance in this second estate, we will see that God, indeed, is perfect in his justice and mercy. We will also see that when we fail here it will not have been because we were truly tempted above that which we were able to bear. There was always an escape hatch had we looked for it! We will also see that our lives have been fully and fairly measured. In retrospect, we will even see that our most trying years here will often have been our best years, producing large tree rings on our soul, Gethsemanes of growth! Mortality is moistened by much opportunity if our roots of resolve can but take it in.”

From Speeches.byu.edu

Neal A. Maxwell was an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this fireside address was given at Brigham Young University on 4 January 1976.