Why We Can Live Forever

Today, I spent my time reading a conference talk given by Bruce R. McConkie back in 1985. This apostle of God has given some of the best talks I have read. The talk that I read today was called "The Purifying Power of Gethsemane" and it's main focus is Jesus Christ's atonement for us.
Never have I seen anything that has been able to so well describe an act that is so unknown to men. The atonement was the biggest event in history, but most people do not really understand how deep it goes and how much it affects us.
As Elder McConkie says "We do not know, we cannot tell, no mortal mind can conceive the full import of what Christ did in Gethsemane.We know he suffered, both body and spirit, more than it is possible for man to suffer, except it be unto death.We know that in some way, incomprehensible to us, his suffering satisfied the demands of justice. As near as we can judge, these infinite agonies—this suffering beyond compare—continued for some three or four hours."
But the atonement didn't just end after the pains in the Garden of Gethsemane. It continued on as he went to trial and faced punishment for his righteous acts. Elder McConkie describes the scene like I have never heard it before "The Roman soldiers laid him upon the cross, With great mallets they drove spikes of iron through his feet and hands and wrists.Then the cross was raised that all might see and gape and curse and deride. This they did, with evil venom, for three hours from 9:00 A.M. to noon.And truly he was, for while he was hanging on the cross for another three hours, from noon to 3:00 P.M., all the infinite agonies and merciless pains of Gethsemane recurred.And, finally, when the atoning agonies had taken their toll—when the victory had been won, when the Son of God had fulfilled the will of his Father in all things—then he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), and he voluntarily gave up the ghost.Then, in a way incomprehensible to us, he took up that body which had not yet seen corruption and arose in that glorious immortality which made him like his resurrected Father."
After all this suffering and pain, the atonement was complete. And "Again, in some way incomprehensible to us, the effects of his resurrection pass upon all men so that all shall rise from the grave." So that all men can have immortal life. Then he makes a connection that I have never before thought of.
"As Adam brought death, so Christ brought life; as Adam is the father of mortality, so Christ is the father of immortality. And without both, mortality and immortality, man cannot work out his salvation and ascend to those heights beyond the skies where gods and angels dwell forever in eternal glory.Thus, Creation is father to the Fall; and by the Fall came mortality and death; and by Christ came immortality and eternal life. If there had been no fall of Adam, by which cometh death, there could have been no atonement of Christ, by which cometh life."
I have never before thought of the atonement in this light, and compared it to the fall of Adam. It has changed my view of what Christ did for us and strengthened my faith in him. I know that because of what Christ did in his last moments of mortal life on this earth, that we can be raised from the dead, cleansed from sin, and return to our Heavenly Father once again.