“Forgiven… Our… Murders”
Because of the false traditions of their fathers, before their conversion these Lamanites had taken life in unrighteous wars. Though such needless killing is a sin of the gravest magnitude, it is not the same as the willful and premeditated taking of life that, in the United States system of jurisprudence, is called first-degree murder; or that is spoken of in the scriptures as being “sin unto death” (1 John 5:16-17), meaning that its perpetrators cannot, even through repentance, obtain a glory greater than that of the telestial kingdom in the worlds to come. (See D&C 42:79; Revelation 22:15; also 3 Nephi 30:2.)
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