The Plan of Salvation is summarized in a chart in my Sunday school lesson manual:

But in reviewing the Plan of Salvation chart and the scriptures on it, I began wondering “What is a basic definition of the plan of salvation? Does it really consist of circles and lines? That can’t be it. Is it really defined by Moses 1:39?”

I felt foolish asking that. I’ve been a member of this church my entire life. I’ve read the Book of Mormon a dozen times in my life. How can I not know what the plan of salvation is? Why can’t I simply state what it is?

My first thought was to consult the Gospel Principles manual. To my surprise, it had no chapter dedicated to the subject. Isn’t that something that is taught to new members? My next idea was to consult LDS.org in a basic search. “Plan of Salvation” led to more than 1,500 hits, and I hadn’t even included “plan of happiness” or any of the other names for it. Where do I begin?

I found that LDS.org has a gospel topic library that provided the best explanation for me:

The plan of salvation is the fulness of the gospel.

Well, that encompasses everything! That would explain why there isn’t a chapter dedicated to it in the Gospel Principles manual: the entire manual is the plan of salvation. That’s the whole point of the gospel and of course new members need to learn it. But it isn’t a one-week lesson.

My next question was this: Why does the manual focus on the chart in the first place, then?

The explanation continues:

As we come to understand the plan, we find answers to questions asked by so many: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go after this life?

I see now that the chart is simply a device to illustrate it. I understand now why this is only the first lesson of an entire year of Sunday school lessons. We get to discuss the answers to those three questions over the course of the year. We get to discuss our purpose over the course of the entire year.

Moses 1:39 is the focusing scripture in this lesson. I decided to put it in context. As I read the rest of Moses 1, I see other things that hint of the miraculous plan of our Father in Heaven.

From the beginning of the chapter, we learn that God has a body. Moses speaks to Him “face to face” (v2). We learn that Moses is the son of God (v4) and that God has a special plan for Moses (v6). I believe we can extend that to all of us — we all are children of God and God has a plan for each of us. I know that is true. God does have a plan for us, as we’ll see in verse 39.

Moses learns that “man is nothing” compared to the glory of God (v10). Because he has had this incredible vision of God’s power, when the adversary comes to tempt him, he recognizes the difference between the adversary and God. He notices that the adversary does not have the same glory that God had had: “Where is thy glory?” (v14). True, Moses is very scared during his encounter with the devil (v20), but ultimately, he knows to call upon God, and he receives strength to command the adversary to depart (v20-21).

Because he has demonstrated his faith in God during such a tremendously difficult encounter, he is filled with the Holy Ghost and again beholds the glory of God (v24-25). It is in this subsequent vision, again when he is “face to face,” that he learns so much more about the plan of salvation. It is in this context that God provides an explanation of his purpose:

For behold, this I my work and my glory: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Immortality, of course, is the ability to live forever, to be resurrected. Everyone will enjoy that blessing. Eternal life is living with Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father again. Achieving eternal life is up to us. Our decisions in this life determine whether or not we will live with God again. It is through the atonement of Christ that we are able to be clean in order to return to God again. This is why an understanding of the plan is so important. If we know what we have to do to gain eternal life, it will be easier to do it.

Moses was the chosen one to write of the plan of the Father at that time. I believe that would be the biblical record we have. But the Father promises that when the “children of men shall esteem my words as naught” and take the truths out of Moses writings, then He would send another. That promise was fulfilled in our dispensation with the Book of Mormon and with modern prophets. In the Book of Mormon, then, we can find the fullness of the plan of salvation, the plan of happiness. We can find answers to the burning questions we have in our life: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

I think that knowledge of the plan does make the difference. Just as recognizing the difference between the power of God and the non-power of adversary made a difference for Moses when he was confronted, knowing the purpose of God in our lives can help us when we are confronted by the adversary.

This is lesson 1 of 45 in how we can prepare for exaltation. I have a feeling that even after 45 lessons there will be so much more to learn!