Several years ago Marjorie was invited by one of her piano students to attend her baptism in another church.  The baptism was to be done following the pastor's Easter sermon.  Marjorie found the pastor and the sermon interesting.  He was dressed in an Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts.  He said that he had been reading the Bible, and had come to the conclusion that he thought that Jesus was a God.

His hesitation to make such a statement was a shock and an eye-opener to Marjorie who already knew this thing that he was proposing as an hypothesis.  The idea that someone could have the Bible and be conversant in it and still be doubtful about the Godhood of Christ was a thought that had never occurred to her.  It jarred her senses.

How grateful we must be for The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.  Not only is it a second witness of Christ, but it makes clear many things in the Bible which are not plainly stated therein.  The Godhood of Christ is one of them.  In the Book of Mormon Nephi says plainly, "There is a God, and he is Christ."  (2 Nephi 11:7).

This same pastor would have difficulty explaining who Jesus is and what He looks like.  The pastor would be like my sister, herself a Protestant minister, who affirmed that she believed the Athanasian Creed which was hammered out by the church fathers many centuries ago, and which was truth.  That muddy creed states that Jesus is a spirit, a mystery, and is unknowable.

If Jesus is a spirit what happened to His body?  What was the purpose of Easter and the Resurrection?  Did He lay His body by, and die again?

The whole plan of salvation is plainly laid out by the Book of Mormon and the Restored Church.  In two chapters Alma variously calls it "the plan of restoration' (Alma 41:2), "the great plan of salvation (42:5), "the great plan of happiness (42:8), "the plan of redemption (42:4), and "the great plan of mercy (42:31).  It is all of those things.  It is also what Nephi called "the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death."  (2 Nephi 11:5).

It is this plan of deliverance from death that I am thinking about.

Did you know that you are already dead, and in need of deliverance?  Samuel, the Lamanite, said, "...for all mankind, by the fall of Adam being cut off from the presence of the Lord, are considered as dead, both as to things temporal and to things spiritual."  (Helaman 14:16).

We left God's presence and committed sin, and, therefore, died a spiritual death.  The only way for us to get back to the presence of God is for a Redeemer to pay for our sins and to make us clean again.  Conditioned upon our repentance, the Redeemer has done that.  He activated "the plan of redemption."

It is through His mercy and grace.  He activated "the great plan of mercy."

He was resurrected.  Through "the plan of restoration" "the soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame."  (Alma 40:23).

Through "the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death" we are being delivered from our current state of being cut off from God.  Our dead bodies will be rescued from the grave, and will be restored to our spirits, as Jesus' was, and we'll become resurrected souls, never to taste of death again.

"The great plan of happiness" is brought to fulfillment as we return, in our bodies, to the presence of God where we can finally become like Him.  We will have overcome both deaths--the spiritual death of being separated from God, and the physical death of having our spirits separated from our bodies.

How grateful we must be for our Savior and our Redeemer, who is Christ, our God.