Good thing back then it was called the Plan of Salvation, not the Plan of Happiness. I don’t think we would have calmed down till he launched into the Pre-Existence and allayed our fears.

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I also have a watershed memory of teachings on this subject when I was in the MTC and the teacher, pulling from Alma 40, taught how the righteous who go to Paradise in v12 was not just contained to being LDS, and how the wicked go to outer darkness (v13). He tried to impress upon us the LDS cultural misunderstanding of this “circle” of the diagram, that it is not a Paradise/prison kind of separation. I remember how radical it felt to me when he taught that all spirits are in Spirit Prison, and would remain so were in not for the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and that missionary work in Spirit Prison was not one of evil people getting a second chance at conversion. He talked about Moroni 8:22 about the state of those not under the Law — that this was not an “outer darkness” state.

He emphasized that our righteousness was one of our state of heart, not a state of our efforts to become righteous. I thought it was a fresh argument then — and a very bold approach now looking back. My doctrinal commitments are not exactly the same now, yet, still, I appreciate and admire his example of turning to the LDS scriptures in an effort to help us missionaries shape our understanding as much as possible by them and not by what we culturally assumed.