Second Estate

From The Encyclopedia of Mormonism

See this page in the original 1992 publication.

Author: Baugh, Alexander L.

"Second estate" is a Latter-day Saint term that refers to mankind's mortal existence on this earth. In scripture it occurs only in the writings of Abraham (Abr. 3:26), but the preearth life of spirits is called "their first estate" in Jude 1:6. Latter-day Saints believe that through the process of birth, the spirit children of God who kept their first estate (premortal) enter into their second estate by receiving a physical body with additional opportunities for experience and development. Mortality is then a probationary period in which individuals "prepare to meet God" (Alma 12:24). In the final judgment all mankind will "be judged of their works…which were done by the temporal body in their days of probation" (1 Ne. 15:32; cf. Alma 12:14). All who receive the saving principles and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ (including faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, ordination to the priesthood for men, Endowment, and eternal marriage) and seek to live righteous and useful lives, embracing the fulness of the gospel, will obtain the complete blessings of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. All who had no opportunity to do so during earth life will have it in the postmortal spirit world (1 Pet. 3:18-19;4:6; D&C 138:36-37). Every person who has lived on the earth will be resurrected with perfected corporeal bodies, and those who have kept the commandments will enter into eternal life, and "have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever" (Abr. 3:26). ALEXANDER L. BAUGH

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