Lehi describes the purpose of existence in a very unique fashion and links it profoundly to the Atonement of Christ. Lehi explains that the world was created specifically to provide us with an opportunity to come and experience opposition in all things. Absent the opportunity to be tried, we could not ultimately experience happiness and we ultimately could not become righteous.

But the dilemma is that it’s clear that we can’t do it ourselves. We fall short of that goal and make wrong choices regularly. Without a savior, the eternal purposes of God would be frustrated. His power and mercy would be thwarted. It is the Atonement of Jesus Christ that ultimately brings coherence to God’s plan.

I am therefore so grateful for Christ and his atonement. Without him, God’s plan could not work. We would be stuck with no means to progress towards righteousness or holiness. It is only through him that it is all possible

11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

12 Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.



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