As my Christmas podcast, I suggest that Christmas be a celebration of the whole Plan of Salvation, including, of course, the role of Jesus Christ. Christmas is a time to appreciate the miracle that the Plan of Salvation works at all. Simply put, humans blunder and the consequences of those blunders occur throughout history. Besides human error, we have “Murphy’s Law” which states that “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong”. The earth life part of the Plan of Salvation is extremely complex, involving millions of people who make mistakes and centuries of time for them to make those blunders. At this time of year, I am grateful for the efforts of those who have brought the Plan of Salvation to pass, and especially for Jesus Christ, who took on the role of our Savior.
S1E12 - The Plan of Salvation, Jesus Christ and Murphy’s Law – A Christmas Message
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures Season 1, Episode 12, or “The Plan of Salvation, Jesus Christ, and Murphy’s Law – A Christmas Message”
Hello again. This is your host Scott Frazer and welcome to another episode of Science and Scriptures.
Christmas is this week and I wanted to leave you with a Christmas message. Last week, I complained that Christmas changes our image of Jesus Christ as an adult. For two months, we see the image of the baby Jesus, we sing of the baby Jesus, and we teach our children about the baby Jesus. To justify our excessive celebration of what is only a birthday, I suggested that we should consider Christmas a celebration of the whole Plan of Salvation, including, of course, the role of Jesus Christ in that Plan.
So to approach a celebration of the Plan of Salvation, let’s step back in time. When we lived in the Pre-existence, we got to a point where we needed to move to earth life to continue our eternal progression. The details of that move had to be worked out and two plans were presented. One plan was presented by Satan and the other by Jesus. We don’t know the details of the two plans, but we do have the premise on which they were built, found in the Moses chapter 4. And I quote,
“And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.
But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.” (Moses 4:1-2)
I can only imagine Satan put together an impressive political campaign. Because, in reality, Satan’s plan had some strong points. First, his plan was simple, which is always an advantage over more complex plans. The Law of Justice demanded that to return to our Heavenly Home we could not sin while on Earth. Satan’s plan included the provision that we would simply not be allowed to sin. The law of Justice would be satisfied, and we would all return to live with our Heavenly Father. Satan’s plan would be a guaranteed success, as there would be no choices in the plan. There would be nowhere for the plan to break down. In the end, Satan’s plan gained the support of a significant number of our pre-existent brethren.
Jesus’s plan was more complicated. It, too, had to satisfy the Law of Justice. But at the same time, Jesus incorporated Free Agency. To do that, Christ’s plan had to allow sin to occur, because many people would use their agency to make poor choices. Then, to allow sinners to return to Heavenly Father, the second of the eternal laws – the Law of Mercy – had to be included in the Plan. The Law of Mercy would allow our sins to be forgiven if a perfect being (without sins of His own) would suffer in our place.
Free agency is complex and presents many variables that cannot be controlled. Free agency required that we call prophets, missionaries, and teachers to instruct the people of right and wrong. Even after all that work, it was recognized that many people would still choose to ignore good counsel and would be lost.
Can you see how confusing that proposal is compared to Satan’s simple “never-break-the-Law-of-Justice” plan? To use our free will and make our choice, I can only imagine that we were probably all taught the strengths and weaknesses of each plan. Like any political debate, I imagine that Satan recognized the weak links of Jesus’s plan and attacked them during his campaign for his own plan.
Do you ever wonder about your thoughts during that contentious time? In the Preexistence, Jesus Christ was not yet the “the Savior”. He was simply our older brother. How well did we know Jesus? We probably knew He was the Firstborn, and a favored son of Heavenly Father. But did we know Him well enough to entrust our entire future to Him? On the other hand, how well did we know Lucifer? We know he was the Son of the Morning and “in authority in the presence of God”. When he fell, we know the heavens wept over him. Apparently, Satan was somewhat well-liked in the Preexistence.
To choose the right plan, let’s do an honest assessment, as if we were in a corporate boardroom considering plans to move ahead with a gigantic proposal that would make or break the company. In a well thought out corporate plan, you never want the whole plan to depend on the success of one man doing a series of tasks exactly the right way. There are just too many chances for failure and no contingencies for that failure. But the Plan of Salvation required that one person – Jesus Christ – had to live a perfect life, and the voluntarily suffer through the Atonement and crucifixion. It does not appear that the Plan of Salvation had a contingency plan. Jesus Christ had to do everything right.
In the end, as James Talmage explained in his book Jesus The Christ,
“Satan’s plan of compulsion, whereby all would be safely conducted through the career of mortality, bereft of freedom to act and agency to choose… was rejected; and the humble offer of Jesus the Firstborn – to assume mortality and live among men as their Exemplar and teacher, observing the sanctity of man’s agency but teaching men to use aright that divine heritage – was accepted. The decision brought war, which resulted in the vanquishment of Satan and his angels… “ (page 9)
Now, to be clear, it was Heavenly Father who made the final decision on which plan to accept for Earth Life. We read in Abraham 3.
“And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first.
And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and, at that day, many followed after him.:
However, YOU made the decision to accept the plan to come to Earth to live out your mortal existence. That was your decision. You chose to go to an earth that threatens you with things like COVID-19, other diseases, and dangers. You chose to be allowed to make poor decisions, for which you must bear consequences. Lastly, you chose to trust the Savior WITH YOUR ENTIRE ETERNITY. If the Plan of Salvation did not work out, for all of mankind or for you individually, you could never return to live with your Heavenly Father. Your eternal progression would be terminated. You would live in a telestial-like world forever.
Just before his Atonement, Jesus prayed “Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:” Obviously He was reluctant to go through the Atonement. What if Jesus had walked away? The whole plan would have fallen apart. Of course, the Savior carried out His responsibility. In fact, His next words after His request were, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done”. He suffered the Atonement and the indignities and pains of the arrest, trials, and crucifixion.
This fact seems like a most important realization around Christmas time. Next time you consider the Savior and his role in your life, remember that, in the pre-existence, you bet your whole eternity on him.
Christmas is also a time to appreciate the Miracle that the Plan of Salvation Works At All.
The Plan could have broken at down at other times as well. Occasionally, things go wrong in the Gospel plan. For example, the Old Testament prophet Jonah walked away from a mission calling to Nineveh and the Lord had to intervene. After the death of Jesus Christ, Peter went back to fishing instead of taking over leadership of the church. The Savior had to hunt him down and tell him to get back to the ministry.
Simply put, humans blunder and the consequences of those blunders can make history. The 1912 sinking of the passenger ship Titanic, made famous by the 1997 movie, occurred because of a human error. Four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City, the Titanic approached an area known to have icebergs. Captain Edward J. Smith altered the ship’s course to head farther south, but he maintained the ship’s speed of 22 knots. Another ship sent a warning of an ice field in the path of the Titanic, but it was never relayed to the bridge. Lastly, the crow’s nest’s binoculars were missing, slowing the identification of the iceberg until it was too late to avoid collision.
Are there human blunders in the history of the church? Of course there are. I am always amazed that anyone would expect otherwise. We stumble, we pick ourselves up, and we try to learn from the painful experience.
Besides human error, there is a jokingly-called “law” named “Murphy’s Law” which states that “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong”. Especially in complex tasks, there are so many ways for something to go wrong, that it should not surprise us when something does. There are various other wordings of Murphy’s Law.
For example,
There are several Murphy’s Laws attached to travel. I remember three business trips in a row in which I almost missed my flight due to problems that caused me delays of over an hour. The first was caused by traffic. The second was caused by all my normal parking lots being full. The third was caused by an unbelievably long security line. After that I gave up and started leaving for the airport an hour earlier than should have ever been necessary. (As an aside, since it is Christmas time, I should remind you of Joseph and Mary’s travel dilemma. They had trouble finding room at an inn. I can relate…)
I know that believing in Murphy’s Law may be a bit of a pessimistic way of looking at life. But things go wrong in life. When traveling, traffic, weather, flight layovers, or hotels, all must go right for you to get to your destination and back without serious delay. There are other examples of complex projects that were interrupted by small things gone wrong.
Do you remember the story of Apollo 13, an attempted flight to the moon that was interrupted due to an oxygen tank that exploded? NASA’s investigation revealed that an oxygen tank on the ship had been accidentally dropped just a couple of inches during maintenance, causing slight internal damage that didn’t show up in later inspections.
Have you heard of the Hubble space telescope? When it was first launched, its images were unfocused and much poorer than expected. It turned out that there was an optical defect called a spherical aberration. Someone had failed to correctly calibrate a measuring device used during the polishing of the mirror. It took three years for NASA to mount a mission to fix the defect.
Apollo 13 and the Hubble Space telescope are indeed complex, but not more so than the Plan of Salvation. The earth life part of the Plan of Salvation is extremely complex, involving millions of people who make mistakes and centuries of time for them to make those blunders.
I don’t think we can overestimate the importance of the Plan of Salvation to our understanding of why we are on the earth. I joined the church at the age of 19.Of all the lessons taught me, the Plan of Salvation was the most meaningful. It pulls everything else in the Gospel together into one great plan. For example, you need to understand the Preexistence to understand the need for a Savior. You need to know about the Spirit World to understand what happens when we die. You need to understand the purposes of earth life to understand the Great Apostacy and the Restoration. You need to understand Free agency to understand the reasons for evil on the earth. The Plan of Salvation provides the backdrop to everything about the Gospel and allows you to see how it all fits.
Alma spends a good amount of time explaining the Plan of Salvation to his errant son Corianton in the book of Alma. Alma obviously wants Corianton to grasp the big picture of the Gospel Plan to understand the answers to his questions about punishment of sinners. In Alma chapter 42, Alma points out several times where the Plan of Salvation / Happiness could have gone awry.
In verse 5, we read
“For behold, if Adam had put forth his hand immediately, and partaken of the tree of life, he would have lived forever, according to the word of God, having no space for repentance; yea, and also the word of God would have been void, and the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated.”
Three verses later, Alma identifies another potential failure of the plan of Happiness, or Salvation.
“Now behold, it was not expedient that man should be reclaimed from this temporal death, for that would destroy the great plan of happiness.”
In verse 15,
“And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made…;”
Alma goes through all the ingredients of the Plan of Salvation, noting if they ALL don’t come together in the proper sequence, then the plan fails. In verse 22, Alma then assures his son (and us today) that the Plan of Salvation is a complete package, and all the pieces are in place.
“But there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God.”
Once last observation of the attitude of the prophets towards the Plan of Salvation. In the Book of Mormon, Jarom was the son of Enos and a man of few words.He wrote the book of Jarom, comprising only 15 verses. In verse 2, he states:
“…but I shall not write the things of my prophesying, nor of my revelations. For what could I write more than my fathers have written? For have not they revealed the plan of salvation? I say unto you, Yea; and this sufficeth me.”
His attitude seems to be that if you know the plan of salvation, really, what more is there to say?
When the Restoration occurred as part of the Plan, there were lots of opportunities for things to go awry. There was much to do, yet there was also overwhelming resistance by people in Palmyra, Kirtland, and Missouri. At any time, Joseph Smith could have decided the persecution was too much for him and walked away. But he didn’t. Later, with the martyrdom of Joseph and Hiram, the church could have fallen apart. But it didn’t. Brigham Young led the Saints to Utah. Did things go wrong during the migration of the pioneers? Absolutely. But the Saints made it to Utah and the rest is history.
Now, you may be thinking that God the Father would never allow the church to be destroyed, and you’re right. However, the church did disappear during the Great Apostacy, requiring a Restoration.But we are assured that the priesthood shall never be taken again from the earth in Doctrine & Covenants 13. In Doctrine & Covenants 121:33, we are further reassured, when the Lord says,
“How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.”
But mankind can still reject the plans of the Father. Plans for the future of the lands around Independence, revealed in Doctrine and Covenants 57, were rejected by the people of Missouri. Mobs killed Joseph Smith. The Nauvoo temple was burnt down. None of this was the will of God.
So we should take confidence in the fact that the overall Plan of Salvation will roll forward. The church and the Plan of Salvation will continue. But we should appreciate the work that has been done by innumerable prophets, stake presidents, bishops, missionaries, and other church leaders to make the Plan a reality for as many people as possible. We should appreciate that we entrusted Jesus Christ with the responsibility of being the chosen Savior. He too had His agency, and it was His choice to be the Lamb of God. In Doctrine and Covenants section 65, we read the following promise
“The keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth, and from thence shall the gospel roll forth to the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, until it has filled the whole earth.”
In summary, the Plan of Salvation will roll forth – but it has never been easy. It was a complex plan from the very beginning, with lots of opportunities for human error and Murphy’s Law. At this time of year, I am very grateful for the efforts of those who have brought the Plan of Salvation to pass, and especially for Jesus Christ, who took on the role of our Savior.
That is all I have for you today. This is Scott Frazer of the podcast “Science and Scriptures”. May you have a very Merry Christmas, that is full of joy and love. Take care.