Moses 8:17

[inquiringmind]

What does "My Spirit shall not always ^astrive with man, for he shall know that all ^bflesh shall die; yet his days shall be an ^chundred and twenty years; and if men do not repent, I will send in the ^dfloods upon them" (Moses 8:17) mean?

Did the antediluvians have The Spirit?

Are these the spirits that "were once disobedient, when the ark was being prepared in the days of Noah," and can they still be forgiven?

Edited December 27, 2012 by inquiringmind

[inquiringmind]

Does it mean the same thing it does in 2 Nephi 26:11?

For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man then cometh speedy destruction, and this grieveth my soul.

What exactly does "strive" mean?

[CV75]

"Strive" means to exert great effort, or struggle with. The Spirit does this with God's children until they sufficeintly shut Him out, as He will not overpower their agency or the consequences thereof.

The Holy Ghost operated among the antedeluvians. Those who were once disobedient can be forgiven if they want to be. They can be forgiven if they choose to rely on their own merits and suffer for their own sins, or if they choose to rely on the Christ's merits and suffering. If by their own merits, they go to to a lesser kingdom; if by the Christ's, to exaltation. At the same time, some may view relying on one's own merits to pay the price of sin or being given a lesser kingdom as a form of unforgiveness. It can be looked at both ways.

The verses you cited mean that when people resist the Spirit enough, the Lord may decide to remove them from mortality (as in the flood) or allow them to suffer the consequences of their rebellion (speedy destruction, temporal and/or spiritual in this life, or physical and spiritual in the next by a lesser glory in the resurrection). This destruction can range from anything less than exaltation to complete perdition.

[teddyaware]

CV75 said

"The Holy Ghost operated among the antedeluvians.Those who were once disobedient can be forgiven if they want to be. They can be forgiven if they choose to rely on their own merits and suffer for their own sins, or if they choose to rely on the Christ's merits and suffering. If by their own merits, they go to to a lesser kingdom; if by the Christ's, to exaltation. At the same time, some may view relying on one's own merits to pay the price of sin or being given a lesser kingdom as a form of unforgiveness. It can be looked at both ways."

I believe it is very unlikely any sinner can atone for his or her own sins by suffering sufficiently in order to satisfy the demands of divine justice, relying on "their own merits" in the manner you describe above. Speaking specifically of these same antideluvian sinners who had ripened in iniquity, the Saviour taught Enoch the following in Moses 7:

36 Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the creations which I have made; and mine eye can pierce them also, and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been so great wickedness as among thy brethren.

37 But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?

38 But behold, these which thine eyes are upon (the extremely wicked antideluvians) shall perish in the floods; and behold, I will shut them up; a ^aprison have I prepared for them.

39 And ^athat (i.e. the Saviour) which I have chosen hath pled (in behalf of the extremely wicked antideluvians who perished in the flood) before my face. Wherefore, he suffereth for their sins; inasmuch as they will repent in the day that my Chosen (Christ) shall return unto me, and until that day they shall be in torment; (suffering but never coming close to actually making an atonement for their personal sins)

40 Wherefore, for this shall the heavens weep, yea, and all the workmanship of mine hands.

So from the above it's plain to see:

1.The Saviour pleads before the Father's face that the redemption for mankind, he purchased by his atoning sacrifice, be applied even to these most evil people.

2.Their sufferings in the Spirit Prison (hell) will come to an end only upon conditions of repentance and acknowledgement that Christ suffered and atoned for their sins.

3. They will remain suffering in the Spirit Prison until the time of the resurrection of Christ, when the Saviour returns to the Father's presence in a glorified body, and missionaries are sent to the Spirit Prison to preach to the wicked the gospel

Jacob, son of Lehi, taught:

10 O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit.

11 And because of the way of deliverance of our God, the Holy One of Israel, this death, of which I have spoken, which is the temporal, shall deliver up its dead; which death is the grave.

12 And this death of which I have spoken, which is the spiritual death, shall deliver up its dead; which spiritual death is hell; wherefore, death and hell must deliver up their dead, and hell must deliver up its captive spirits, and the grave must deliver up its captive bodies, and the bodies and the spirits of men will be restored one to the other; and it is by the power of the resurrection of the Holy One of Israel.

The foregoing says nothing at all about men atoning for their own sins by suffering. They can only suffer for their own sins (not atone), and -- except for the sons of perdition -- this suffering will eventually work to soften even the hardest of hearts (like unto the hellish experience of Alma the younger), and all who escape death and hell will do so by coming unto Christ, repenting of their sins and accepting the atoning sacrifice of Christ.