Good Tidings to All

I just saw (and shared) a picture of a cat-person (I think they're called "Khajiit" in her universe) offering a present to a dragon. The picture had the caption "Good tidings to all... even dragons." This gave me pause for thought (no pun intended), so I looked it up and, sure enough, Luke 2:10 tells us that "the angel said unto them [th shepherds], Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people"[emphasis added]. Everyone is blessed by the birth of Jesus Christ, even the people who don't believe in Him, even those who never heard of Him, even those who actively fought against Him and crucified Him. Everyone.

How is this possible? In what way are literally "all people" blessed by the birth of Jesus Christ? I can think of at least two ways. The first is a bit of a cop-out, and the second will take some explaining. First, the easy one:  Resurrection. Thanks to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, everyone who has ever been born, or even just conceived, will be resurrected with a perfect, fully-functioning, pain-free, immortal body. Everyone who has ever had a body or will ever have a body will ultimately be given the best body they could possibly hope for, and they get to keep them forever. Isn't that cool? I'm looking forward to having a body that never gets tired and is immune to injury and disease.

There's another aspect of the Atonement that offers forgiveness and salvation to everyone who seeks it. Yet, as awesome and essential as that is, it doesn't really help everyone. There are those who don't seek salvation and don't repent, and for those people, it's like that part of the Atonement never happened:

But remember that he that persists in his own carnal nature, and goes on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God, remaineth in his fallen state and the devil hath all power over him. Therefore he is as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy to God; and also is the devil an enemy to God. - Mosiah 16:5

Jesus also performed miracles while He was on the Earth, but those didn't bless everyone, either. Compared to the all-time global population, only a relatively small number of people were personally cured by Jesus, and even if we could those people's friends and families as being positively affected by those miracles, that still only blesses a small percentage of the people who were alive on the Earth at that time, much less across the whole history of the Earth.

Not even Christ's teachings bless everyone in the world. While there are many, many people who are blessed directly by the teachings of Jesus Christ, and even more people are blessed by the actions of those who follow His teachings, I must admit that there are still some people who slip through the cracks. There are those who, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, have never heard of Jesus Christ and have never interacted with anyone who had. There are some people who are completely unaffected by the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Yet, even those people are blessed by Jesus. The people who were not blessed by the teachings of Jesus Christ are instead blessed by the Atonement of Jesus Christ which covers both those who repent of their sins and those who sin in ignorance and are "without the law. For the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law" (Moroni 8:22). So, for each person on Earth, either they heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ and were therefore blessed by the life and teachings of Christ, or they didn't hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ and are "without the law," so they're granted mercy and redemption through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

So Jesus birth was good news to everyone in at least two ways. First, His victory over death means that they will be resurrected, and second, they either learned His teachings and/or were redeemed through the power of His Atonement. Through these methods, Christ's birth offers "good tidings" to everyone, even the worst people who ever lived. First, everyone will be resurrected, no exceptions, and second, either they heard the teachings of Jesus Christ and were blessed to have the opportunity to follow those teachings (even if they ultimately threw away that blessing by rejecting that opportunity), or they didn't hear the teachings of Jesus Christ, and their sins were committed in ignorance and are therefore covered by the Atonement. Either they were blessed to have the chance to seek mercy, or they didn't get that chance and will receive mercy anyway. And, either way, they're guaranteed to be resurrected, so at least there's that.

It seems amazing to me that there are two separate ways in which literally everyone who has ever lived or will ever live are blessed by Jesus Christ. So, when the angel said that those "good tidings of great joy" would "be to all people," he really meant it.