'Vessels of Wrath'
What becomes of the 'sons of perdition?'
The Lord’s plan of happiness for his children provide a niche for everyone in eternity. In the October 2023 General Conference, President Russell M. Nelson spoke of the Lord’s mercy in that he allows us to choose how we will spend eternity. This plan, according to President Nelson, “…allows each of us to choose how we will live here on earth and where we will live forever.”
I have noted over the years, that the various religions of the earth have certain expectations about heaven or the afterlife. In large measure, they correspond to the desires of their adherents, and in the Lord’s revealed plan of happiness, they line up pretty well with the expectations they have. What do I mean by that? Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Most sectarian Christians believe in a heaven where they will be with Jesus. Many of them believe in a bodily resurrection. The don’t believe in a principle of eternal marriage, but rather, that husbands and wives will just be like brothers and sisters in heavenly glory. They expect freedom from work and labor, freedom from disease, pain, and stress. They believe that they will be satisfied for all eternity just beholding the glory of Christ’s presence. I had one dear Baptist brother tell me he would spend the first million years in heaven just looking at Jesus. Maybe after that, he might have a glance at his wife, but he’d go right back to looking at Jesus for another million years.”
That description lines up pretty much with the terrestrial kingdom, where the “honorable men [and women] of the earth” who were “blinded by the craftiness of men,” will live in a glorious eternal kingdom as resurrected beings, in the presence of the Son of God. They will not know the blessings of eternal families. In life, they were taught this was unnecessary or impossible. Because they did not desire it, they did not seek it, and thus, they did not make and keep covenants to ensure that this blessing would come to them. In the afterlife, they get what they expected and they will be satisfied with it.
A wicked person doesn’t expect heaven. He doesn’t expect to dwell with Christ and the Father. In fact, such an existence would be uncomfortable to them. They receive an eternal reward to be in a kingdom not much different that the one we live in now. In our temples, we are told the telestial kingdom is the world in which we live. In that kingdom, people have access to higher light and knowledge only through the Holy Ghost. And like this world is glorious in its own way, the inhabitants of a telestial kingdom must have to necessarily deal with the inconveniences and frustrations of interacting with other telestial people who never repented of their pride, selfishness, envy, lust, greed, and other proclivities. The biggest desire these people had in mortality, in regard to eternity, was not to burn in a literal hell with the devil forever. “Verily, they have their reward.”
On Twitter (now known as X) the Latter-day Saints there are constantly bombarded by anti-Mormons and apostate ex-Mormons (ExMos). Some of them can be quite hateful and blasphemous. One of them commented:
“The Bible is a story where God curses humanity for eating fruit, kills most of them, and then saves the rest by impregnating a teenage girl without her consent.”
—Mormon Satan
It’s this snarky kind of mockery that is common among certain apostates. We members encounter different kinds of opposition. Evangelical call us cultists and hurl out-of-context Bible verses at us. Atheists ridicule the prospect that any human should believe in a “Sky Daddy.” The most intense vitriol comes from those who were once members of the Church and fell away. These are the ones who, as the old trope says, “leave the Church but can’t leave it alone.” These are the ones who become “vessels of wrath. “
Section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants contains a vision of the kingdoms of glory and the fate of those who turn wholly against God. Verses 32 through 47 describe the fate of the “sons of perdition,” who become “vessels of wrath.” The Lord explains in this section that he saves all the works of his hands. The only ones he can’t redeem are the ones who reject redemption. They go into “outer darkness” with Satan and his angels. At the end of the Millennium, after a thousand years, these are the ones who still refuse to repent. They are filled with hatred. Their nature has become the opposite of God’s, for God is love. They will experience the “second death.”
Now, I’m going to speculate here. I don’t claim this to be doctrine, but I’m just trying to propose what the second death might be. What is the greatest gift God has given us? I would say life is the greatest gift. I imagine that there is some process where matter becomes self-aware. In nature we see microscopic organisms with components that operate together in harmony. If a paramecium is exposed to an electrical field, it will move away from it. It doesn’t have intelligence, but it reacts to its environment and the parts work as a whole. Likewise, in our own bodies, there are autonomic processes that take place without conscious control. I think agency operates on all of those levels.
In Section 88, verse 30, we read that “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is not existence” (italics added). I think this is important to understand. As soon as anything becomes self-aware in any degree (becomes an intelligence), it has agency. By using agency, it either moves forward toward greater light and truth or away from it.
Now, connecting Abraham chapter 3 here, the Lord gives the “Kolob Syllogism,” stating that if there are two things that exist, and an intelligence is capable of discerning a difference between them, then agency exists. The ability to discern quality in any degree, between two things, suggests that there is a third thing, which is even better. By using discernment and agency to choose, an intelligence can grow in truth and understanding, until it even can understand God, the highest of all.
Let me clarify, with a common example. I have three dogs. My family acquired them at different times. The first one is friendly, but not too bright. We adopted the second one somewhat later. This dog is really smart. It understands human speech like a small child—so much that we have to spell some things around her! Now, according to what the Lord told Abraham, two facts—or two spirits exist, and if I have the ability to discern the qualities of them, I can make an assumption that something greater exists. Because I can identify or discern the difference in the intelligences that form my dogs, I can assume logically that it’s possible for a third dog to exist that is smarter than the first two. If I searched long enough, I could find something to bear that out as true.
This “Kolob Syllogism” describes the nature of spirits and intelligences in the flow of eternal progression. Somewhere along the way, the atoms and molecules that make up our bodies and spirit became self-aware and the Godhead shepherded us through the process to become what we are today. None of that progression occurred without our consent. We willed ourselves to this point by making correct choices and correcting our path as needed. God loves us because has invested eons of his time and care into us. He has a personal interest in our development.
So what happens when a person apostatizes against the truth and becomes a vessel of wrath, one where living hatred consumes everything about them. Realize that our progression to where we are now, as we have read in the scriptures, has been based on our choices to move toward light and truth—what would happen to a person who now rebels against light and truth completely. Love turns to hate. Light turns to darkness. A profound spiritual regression ensues. It becomes all-consuming, even to the point that, given the opportunity, the person reacts to Christ with such hostility that they would crucify him again, if they had the chance.
Relatively few people descend to those depths of hatred. The Lord tells us that he saves almost all of his creations. Only a small part will choose to fight against him because their wrath is blinding and destructive. What then is the “second death?” I believe it is when a soul is so far gone, that will always choose to go against light and truth, that it disintegrates and no longer exists as a living entity. It returns to unorganized matter with no self-awareness. Given the choice to choose eternal life, the greatest gift of all, that being or intelligence chose eternal death—to not exist anymore. I don’t think this takes place suddenly or precipitously. It took a long time for us to progress to this state. I would expect that a merciful Father would give such a person ample opportunity to repent, but in the end, the Lord honors our agency. When agency no longer has the potential to help us progress, agency ceases, taking self-awareness with it.
As I said, all of this is speculative. I could be completely wrong, yet I sense there is some truth to it every time I encounter an apostate. The level of hatred is such that, for some, I can’t imagine that they would end up enjoying any degree of happiness. We are in a dynamic plan, going forward, and for some, going backward. Nobody remains static. There isn’t a spiritual homeostasis. We are always in motion. I wish the few sons of perdition I have encountered could understand this. It is a terrible, dark path that leads on these vessels of wrath to an unspeakable doom of their own choosing.