A couple of notes on the Hereafter

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.”

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me — not in her. And, just at the moment when someone says, “There, she is gone,”
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

And that is dying . . .

In a telephone conversation roughly two weeks ago, a retired academic friend of mine who is not exactly the stereotypical sentimental Latter-day Saint — if anything, I might have categorized him as a cynic but certainly as a skeptic — told me of a vision that he had experienced some years back in one of the Church’s temples.  He says that he saw a deceased relative for whom he was officiating, and that he was given to understand that that relative had accepted the ordinance that had just been performed on his behalf.  With regard to another relative whose work had also just been done, however, he received no such assurance.  Instead, he felt that that person had not accepted the ordinance performed vicariously for him — but also understood that, while that individual wasn’t ready to accept the ordinance, he might yet be prepared, at some point, to do so.

This was very striking to me.  Not only because of the identity of the person relating the experience to me, but also on account of its content.  My friend and I agree that there will be opportunity, in the spirit world, for growth and for a change of heart.  I’ve described myself here, on several occasions, as a quasi-universalist.  I do not, unfortunately, believe that absolutely everyone will be saved.  But I believe that the offer of salvation and exaltation will have been genuinely extended to everyone and that the offer is entirely genuine.  (As is sometimes said, when and if we make it to the celestial kingdom, we should not be startled and stare if we encounter someone whose presence there surprises us.  Others there  may be just as surprised to see us as we are to see them.)

C. S. Lewis once stated it as his opinion that, in the end, the dividing line as pertains to the Final Judgment will be between those who say to the Lord “Thy will be done” and those to whom the Lord sadly says “Thy will be done.”)  I suspect that that may well be true.  I doubt, though I could obviously be wrong — I am not the Lord — that God will not deny his blessings to those who genuinely desire them and who are willing to make the changes required to receive them.

But there will apparently be a small number of souls who will angrily (and stupidly) shake their fists at the Almighty and defiantly, proudly, refuse to accept what they are offered at His hand.