To Go No More Out
admin June 9th, 2010
Five times in the Book of Mormon, and once in the New Testament we are introduced to a concept which may be telling us much more than one might initially guess. In fact, the restorationist book of the Holy Twelve suggest that it might be a remnant of one of the many “plain and precious truths” that the Book of Mormon tells us were initially stripped out of the Bible by early Western Gentile Christianity.
Alma 7:25 reads:
25 And may the Lord bless you, and keep your garments spotless, that ye may at last be brought to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the holy prophets who have been ever since the world began, having your garments spotless even as their garments are spotless, in the kingdom of heaven to go no more out.
This principle seems simple enough. The righteous gain rest in the kingdom of heaven, where they “go no more out”. But lets look a little closer and then think of the implications. Alma exhorts his people here to not only be righteous enough to be permitted to attain the kingdom of heaven, but it is his prayer that they might have garments spotless enough that they can enter the kingdom of heaven, and like Abraham, Issac and Jacob, to go no more out. This implies that all but the very most righteous who enter the kingdom of heaven, stand the chance of entering and going back out.
Lets look at the phrase again as it is given in the book of Revelation:
12 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. (Rev. 3:12)
There are three other references to “going no more out” of the kingdom of heaven in the Book of Mormon, but lets first take a look at the insights the restorationist book The Gospel of the Holy Twelve gives to this phrase.
1. As Jesus sat by the west of the Temple with his disciples, behold there passed some carrying one that was dead to burial, and a certain one said unto him, Master, if a man die, shall he live again?
2. And he answered and said, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the Good, the Beautiful, the True, if a man believe in me he shall not die, but live eternally. As in Adam all die, so in the Christ shall all be made alive. Blessed are the dead who die in me, and are made perfect in my image and likeness, for they rest from their labours and their works do follow them. They have overcome evil, and are made Pillars in the Temple of my God, and they go out no more, for they rest in the Eternal.
3. For them that have done evil there is no rest, but they go out and in, and suffer correction for ages, till they are made perfect. But for them that have done good and attained unto perfection, there is endless rest and they go into life everlasting. They rest in the Eternal.
4. Over them the repeated death and birth have no power, for them the wheel of the Eternal revolves no more, for they have attained unto the Centre, where is eternal rest, and the centre of all things is God.” (HT 69:1-4)
So does this have Jesus supposedly teaching reincarnation? Call it reincarnation or resurrection, we shall see in a moment, that in reality this is not teaching us anything new, and yet it is perhaps teaching us a radically clear (and perhaps different) way to look at what we already knew. In reality this passage is making much clearer what the creation drama has been teaching us all along. That Man (Adam), originally lived in the eternal worlds with God, but because of sin, fell from his immortal, eternal abode with God and became a mortal subject to death, sin and the temptations and corrections of the devil. And at the same time, Christ came to show us how and help us escape from the death and sin of this temporal earth, and return to live immortally and eternally with God once again. But the radical lesson has to do with our pre-mortal existence, a plain and precious truth all but annihilated by Gentile Christianity. That the wicked, and in fact all but the eternally exalted, have been born again (or reborn) more than once in our long eternal progression. But not reincarnated over and over into the same world, but born again into new dispensations of new worlds as the old pass away. As we are taught in Ether, “the end [shall] come when the earth shall pass away. And there shall be a new heaven and a new earth; and they shall be like unto the old save the old have passed away, and all things have become new. (Ether 13:8–9) And as God tells Moses, “And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.” (Moses 1:38) The goal of all Christ’s followers however, is not to be born again of the Water (in a future cycle of a temporal world), but to be born again of the Spirit to live “eternally in the heavens (or a celestialized earth which has become like unto the heavens) with God.
In chapter 59 we find one of the many clarifying verses which shows the dispensational cycle’s of restoration:
11. For they who know the Godhead, and have found in the way of Life the mysteries of light and then have fallen into sin, shall be punished with greater chastisements than they who have not known the way of Life.
12. Such shall return when their cycle is completed and to them will be given space to consider, and amend their lives, and learning the mysteries, enter into the kingdom of light. (59:11-12)
Let us first present the rest of the scriptures given in the Gospel of the Holy Twelve teaching this new view of the resurrection
1. JESUS sat in the porch of the Temple, and some came to learn his doctrine, and one said unto him, Master, what teachest thou concerning life?
2. And he said unto them, Blessed are they who suffer many experiences, for they shall be made perfect through suffering: they shall be as the angels of God in Heaven and shall die no more, neither shall they be born any more, for death and birth have no more dominion over them.
3. They who have suffered and overcome shall be made Pillars in the Temple of my God, and they shall go out no more. Verily I say unto you, except ye be born again of water and of fire, ye cannot see the kingdom of God.
4. And a certain Rabbi (Nicodemus) came unto him by night for fear of the Jews, and said unto him. How can a man be born again when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born again ?
5. Jesus answered, Verily I say unto you except a man be born again of flesh and of spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and ye hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
6. The light shineth from the East even unto the West; out of the darkness, the Sun ariseth and goeth down into darkness again; so is it with man, from the ages unto the ages.
7. When it cometh from the darkness, it is that he hath lived before, and when it goeth down again into darkness, it is that he may rest for a little, and thereafter again exist.
8. So through many changes must ye be made perfect, as it is written in the book of Job, I am a wanderer, changing place after place and house after house, until I come unto the City and Mansion which is eternal.
4. Nevertheless if any be sick among you, let them send for the presbyters of the church that they may anoint them with oil of olive in the Name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith, and the going out of power, with the voice of thanksgiving, shall raise them up, if they are not detained by sin, of this or a former life. (92:4)
… I say, unto you there is no death to those who believe in the life to come. Death, as ye deemed it, is the door to life, and the grave is the gate to resurrection, for those who believe and obey. Mourn ye not, nor weep for them that have left you, but rather rejoice for their entrance into life.
2. As all creatures come forth from the unseen into this world, so they return to the unseen, and so will they come again till they be purified. Let the bodies of them that depart be committed to the elements, and the Father, who reneweth all things, shall give the angels charge over them, and let the presbyter pray that their bodies may rest in peace, and their souls awake to a joyful resurrection.
3. There is a resurrection from the body, and there is a resurrection in the body. There is a raising out of the life of the flesh, and there is a falling into the life of the flesh. Let prayer be made For those who are gone before, and For those that are alive, and For those that are yet to come, for all are One family in God. In God they live and move and have their being.
4. The body that ye lay in the grave, or that is consumed by fire, is not the body that shall be, but they who come shall receive other bodies, yet their own, and as they have sown in one life, so shall they reap in another. Blessed are they who have worked righteousness in this life, for they shall receive the crown of life. (94:1-4)
23. As in the inner so in the outer: as in the great so in the small. As above, so below: as in heaven so in earth. We believe in the Purification of the soul: through many births and experiences. The Resurrection from the dead: and the Life everlasting of the just. The Ages of Ages: and Rest in God forever.— [Amen]. (96:23)
19. And this by ascent of the soul into the spirit and the descent of the spirit into the soul. Who cometh from heaven, and is incarnate of the Virgin ever blessed, in Jesu-Maria and every Christ of God: and is born and teacheth the way of life and suffereth under the world rulers, and is crucified, and is buried and descendeth into Hell. Who riseth again and ascendeth into glory; from thence giving light and life to all. (96:19)
8. Put ye not off from day to day, and from cycle to cycle and eon to eon, in the belief, that when ye return to this world ye will succeed in gaining the mysteries, and entering into the Kingdom of Light. (65:8)
Joseph Smith clarified that the doctrine of reincarnation as taught by eastern religions is diluted in the way they teach multiple births in the same cycle, and transitions from animal to human….. quote..
Finish this……. more to come….
5 other accounts of “to go no more out”…. “who did sin that this man was born blind”, born again symbolism… wicked will inherit death… “mortal realms are only place death is inherited!…so of course they will be born again… people here in this mortal realm for different reasons as taught in creation drama, some are deceived, and some fall because they don’t want to leave their brides, and some fall simply to help…
etc..
- Insights & Ramblings , works in progress
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