Spirit Prison
For a different concept with a similar name found in other faiths, see Spirits in prison.Spirit prison is believed by the Latter-day Saints to be both a place and the state of the soul between death and the resurrection, for people who have either not yet received knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ, or those who have been taught but have rejected it. It is a temporary state within the spirit world. Those who rejected the gospel after it was preached to them may suffer in a condition known as hell. The suffering associated with the spirit prison refers to anguish of soul because of acute knowledge of one's own sins and unclean state.
Latter-day Saints believe that spirit prison (a name based on the phrase "the spirits in prison" in the KJV translation of Peter 3:19) is a place in the post-mortal spirit world for those who have "died in their sins, without a knowledge of the truth, or in transgression, having rejected the prophets". This is a temporary state in which spirits will be taught the Gospel and have the opportunity to repent and accept ordinances of salvation that are performed for them in temples. Those who accept the Gospel may dwell in paradise until the Resurrection. Those who choose not to repent but who are not sons of perdition will remain in spirit prison until the end of the Millennium, when they will be freed from hell and punishment and be resurrected to a telestial glory.
Read more about this topic: Spirit World (Latter Day Saints)
Famous quotes containing the words spirit and/or prison:
“And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of
Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was failure, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,—
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man’s despair.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)