34 And wo be unto him that will not hearken unto the words of Jesus,
and also to them whom he hath chosen and sent among them;
for whoso receiveth not the words of Jesus and the words of those whom he hath sent receiveth not him; and therefore he will not receive them at the last day;
 35 And it would be better for them if they had not been born… (3 Nephi 28:34-35)
These are pretty stiff words, especially the declaration at the end that it would be better if they had not been born.  It is so startling it is worth thinking about it.  My first reaction is to wonder if Mormon was making a final judgment about those who reject Christ’s words and those of his servants.   It sounds as if he is saying it would be better if these people had never existed.  But after some thought, I realized that wasn’t what he meant at all.  Mormon spoke as one who understood there was a pre-mortal existence of the spirit before birth, and he was saying that if a person was going to use their valuable probationary time on earth making choices to reject the words of Jesus and His servants, then he or she will be worse off spiritually than they were before they started mortality.   It would have been better for them not to be born than to have made those choices.  Not only will the person have partaken of the fall of Adam and committed sins, but to reject Jesus and the salvation that He worked out is like discarding the only hope of rescue.  It is like a person in a deep pit rejecting the ladder leading out.

Let’s not assume, though, that this pronouncement only applies to those who reject Christianity from the outside.  The words of Christ and His servants can be rejected even by those who are in the church, if Christ’s Atonement is never considered as a solution.

I used to wish that I could go back to my pre-mortality for the sake of the things that I probably knew before my birth, but I don’t any more.  I have since recognized that having received Christ’s words and those of His servants, I am much better off than I ever was.   And if I endure with faith to the end, the state of my soul can only get better from here.



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