Thoughts on Repentance based on

[I Nephi 3:210 – 216]

210 And it came to pass that the angel spake unto me, Nephi, saying, Thou hast beheld that if the Gentiles repent, it shall be well with them;

211 And thou also knowest concerning the covenants of the Lord unto the house of Israel;

212 And thou also hast heard, that whoso repenteth not, must perish;

213 Therefore, wo, be unto the Gentiles, if it so be that they harden their hearts against the Lamb of God;

214 For the time cometh, saith the Lamb of God, that I will work a great and a marvelous work among the children of men;

215 A work which shall be everlasting, either on the one hand or on the other;

216 Either to the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or unto the deliverance of them to the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds, unto their being brought down into captivity and also unto destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil, of which I have spoken.

 

As an individual we have a choice to either be repentant, or allow our hearts to be hardened against the workings of the Holy Spirit. If we are repentant, we are recipients of peace and life eternal. If we are repentant of our pride, of our vanity, our eyes are opened to the blessings and protection of God.

Our eyes are opened to the Godly potential within ourselves and others. We are opened to building upon those potentials to bring about the Kingdom of God and we can then say as the Apostles of old, “The Kingdom is come nigh unto you.”

If we allow our hearts to be hardened, then we are led into captivity. Our eyes will be blind to the needs of others and our hearts will be hardened to think of only ourselves.

We will adopt our own ways instead of God’s ways. We will skew the words of God to bend them to our desires rather than his desires for us.

We will no longer be under the protection of our Heavenly Father, but left to our own defence of which is vulnerable to the power of the Devil by the blindness of our eyes and the hardness of our hearts. This will lead us to destruction both in a temporal way, and in a spiritual way.

These choices are not just an individual choice, but also the choice of our nation. We live in a choice land by the grace of God, but for how much longer?