Read the following excerpt, look for what President Oaks uses and doesn’t use to help teach about the spirit world.

Of course, we know from the scriptures that after our bodies die we continue to live as spirits in the spirit world. The scriptures also teach that this spirit world is divided between those who have been “righteous” or “just” during life and those who have been wicked. They also describe how some faithful spirits teach the gospel to those who have been wicked or rebellious (see 1 Peter 3:19; Doctrine and Covenants 138:19–20, 29, 32, 37). Most important, modern revelation reveals that the work of salvation goes forward in the spirit world (see Doctrine and Covenants 138:30–34, 58), and although we are urged not to procrastinate our repentance during mortality (see Alma 13:27), we are taught that some repentance is possible there (see Doctrine and Covenants 138:58).

The work of salvation in the spirit world consists of freeing spirits from what the scriptures frequently describe as “bondage.” All in the spirit world are under some form of bondage. President Joseph F. Smith’s great revelation, canonized in section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants, states that the righteous dead, who were in a state of “peace” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:22) as they anticipated the Resurrection (see Doctrine and Covenants 138:16), “had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:50).

The wicked also suffer an additional bondage. Because of unrepented sins, they are in what the Apostle Peter referred to as spirit “prison” (1 Peter 3:19; see also Doctrine and Covenants 138:42). These spirits are described as “bound” or as “captives” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:31, 42) or as “cast out into outer darkness” with “weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth” as they await resurrection and judgment (Alma 40:13–14).

Resurrection for all in the spirit world is assured by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (see 1 Corinthians 15:22), though it occurs at different times for different groups. Until that appointed time, what the scriptures tell us about activity in the spirit world principally concerns the work of salvation. Little else is revealed. The gospel is preached to the ignorant, the unrepentant, and the rebellious so they can be freed from their bondage and go forward to the blessings a loving Heavenly Father has in store for them.

The spirit-world bondage that applies to righteous converted souls is their need to await—and perhaps even be allowed to prompt—the performance of their proxy ordinances on earth so they can be baptized and enjoy the blessings of the Holy Ghost (see Doctrine and Covenants 138:30–37, 57–58). These mortal proxy ordinances also empower them to go forward under priesthood authority to enlarge the hosts of the righteous who can preach the gospel to the spirits in prison.