To Be Carnally-Minded Is Death

"Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded is life eternal" (2 Nephi 9:39). "And this is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." (John 17:3). We are born with time-bound, mortal, carnal minds, but God never intended for us to keep them that way. Just because at present our thoughts are not the Lord's thoughts does not mean that there is no plan for our thoughts to eventually become the Lord's thoughts. God gave us carnal minds to practice this thing called life, but like all other things in the mortal, fallen world, the ultimate fate of our carnal minds is death. The brains of the most brilliant men and women to ever walk the Earth, Newton, Einstein, Galileo and all the rest have ended up in the ground right alongside the brains of even the simplest of pigeons or mice or earthworms. But death does not have to be the end, and our minds do not have to remain carnal. As we come to know God and His Son Jesus Christ, our thoughts become a little more like Their thoughts, our ways a little more like Their ways, our carnal minds become a little more like Their spiritual minds. We cannot be saved in ignorance. We can not keep our carnal minds if we want to escape the clutches of death. It is only as we grow from grace to grace and increase in wisdom and stature and exchange our carnal minds and our temporal intelligence for spiritual minds and eternal intelligence that we can begin to lay hold of the promises of life eternal. The more light and knowledge that we are willing to receive, the more that our Heavenly Father is willing to give us. This knowledge begins to transform our carnal minds into spiritual minds and begins to remove us from the carnal realm of death and prepare us for the spiritual realm of life eternal. The more spiritually minded we become, the less susceptible we will be to the false promises of the adversary, the less likely we will be to make choices that lead to our death and destruction and the more likely we will be to make choices that will lead to our salvation and eternal life. We are all born carnally minded and if we stay that way, we will surely die. But if we learn of and come to truly know our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ, then we can become spiritually minded and if we stay that way, we will surely live for all eternity.