By Individual Salvation, I mean a salvation from certain consequences that result from transgressing one or more of God's holy laws; a salvation secured by complying with certain conditions specified in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and which can only be secured to those who fulfill said conditions.
First, then, as to General Salvation: Whatever mystery may hang over man's existence, he is conscious of these two facts: first, that he does exist; and second, judging from all human experience, as well as by the decrees of God, the time will come when he will die. No matter how strong the body, how perfect the health, or how buoyant the spirit, man knows that sooner or later time will sap the vital forces, unbend the body's strength, and in a few years the all- beholding sun shall see him no more in all his course.
The experience of the race proves that man is dust, and to dust he must return. It is true that a few, for the time being, have escaped this fate, through being translated by the special providence of God; as in the case of Enoch and many of his people;[A] the prophet Elijah;[B] the three Nephite apostles,[C] and also John, the apostle.[D] But even those who have attained this peculiar privilege, will doubtless yet have to pass through the mysterious change we call death, in order that the decrees of God may be fulfilled. This calamity of death, then, falls upon all mankind; and it was brought into the world through no act of theirs.
[Footnote A: Pearl of Great Price pp. 18, 19, 22.]
[Footnote B: II. Kings ii., Doc. and Cov. Sec. cx. 13.]
[Footnote C: III. Nephi xxvii: 7-33.]
[Footnote D: St. John xxi: 21-25, Doc. and Cov. Sec. vii.]
Adam transgressed the commandments given to him by his God; and through that act, sowed the seeds of death, and became mortal, and his progeny inherited, as a legacy, that mortality, and so death passed upon all mankind. And since death was brought upon mankind through no act or fault of theirs, justice demands that they should receive full and complete redemption from that evil which falls upon them through the acts of another, over which they had no control.
Such redemption has been wrought cut through the Atonement of Jesus Christ; and, in proof that that redemption from the consequences of Adam's transgression is universal, extending alike to the righteous and unrighteous, I cite the following scripture: "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."[E]
[Footnote E: Dan. xii: 2.]