Sunday Afternoon Session
They Are Their Own Judges
Excerpts
A primary purpose of the Creation and of our mortal existence is to provide us the opportunity to act and become what the Lord invites us to become. …
… We have not been blessed with moral agency to do whatever we want whenever we will. Rather, according to the Father’s plan, we have received moral agency to seek after and act in accordance with eternal truth. …
President Dallin H. Oaks has emphasized that the gospel of Jesus Christ invites us both to know something and to become something through the righteous exercise of moral agency. …
[And yet] our works and desires alone do not and cannot save us. “After all we can do,” we are reconciled with God only through the mercy and grace available through the Savior’s infinite and eternal atoning sacrifice. …
Many of us may expect that our appearance before the bar of the Eternal Judge will be similar to a proceeding in a worldly court of law. A judge will preside. Evidence will be presented. A verdict will be rendered. And we likely will be uncertain and fearful until we learn the eventual outcome. But I believe such a characterization is inaccurate. …
The fear of the Lord is not a reluctant apprehension about coming into His presence to be judged. Rather, it is the prospect of ultimately acknowledging about ourselves “things as they really are” and “as they really will be.” …
Ultimately, then, we are our own judges. No one will need to tell us where to go. In the Lord’s presence, we will acknowledge what we have chosen to become in mortality and know for ourselves where we should be in eternity.