In the Mormon Church, can someone wait until the millennium to repent?

Question

Dear Gramps,

We introduced our neighbors to the Mormon Church last year. They were soon baptized and fully embraced the church…so it seemed. They declared how the church had changed their lives. They said they could not deny their new faith. They glowed with the light of Christ and they were so happy that they had found the true church. Unfortunately, it was difficult for them to stay committed to living the gospel. They were swayed by their nonmember friends and relatives that our church was a cult and that Joseph Smith couldn’t be a prophet who restored the true church on earth. They were given anti-Joseph Smith material from the internet. They were very impressionable and, in a nutshell, left the church within a few months. They broke the news to us last summer that they wouldn’t be coming to church anymore. The husband remarked that it didn’t matter that much, that they don’t have to be active in the church now, because during the Millennium, he knew that all good people would do well on the earth, and they could just wait until then to embrace the Mormon Church. He said that he believed in repentance and that it could wait till then. Will these friends who accepted and then rejected the church here and now, be given the chance to embrace it during the Millennium and come unto Christ, into full fellowship, even though they have put it behind them now, intentionally taking on the “we’ll wait til later to see if it’s really true, then we’ll act” approach?

Marie

Answer

Dear Marie,

In Mark 4:3-7 it states;

Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow:

 

And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.

 

And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth:

 

But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

 

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit 

And then in Alma 34:33-35 you find;

And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.

 

Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.

 

For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.

The bottom line is, one should never procrastinate the day of their repentance.

Gramps