Man’s Eternal Nature and Premortal Existence (Part 2)

Another major doctrine that Joseph Smith restored tells us about our eternal roots. All people are different from one another, with varying talents, interests, and inclinations. Why do such differences exist? Can they be adequately explained in terms of biological and environmental factors? The doctrine of man’s premortal existence answers these questions.

Some spirits who sanctioned our Heavenly Father’s plan were foreordained to special callings on earth. Such spirits come to earth not predetermined but predisposed to recognize and obey the voice of truth.

Not only were Abraham and Jeremiah called in this way (see Abr. 3:23; Jer. 1:5), but also, as Joseph Smith taught, “every man who has a calling to minister to the inhabitants of the world was ordained to that very purpose in the grand Council of Heaven before this world was—I suppose that I was ordained to this very office in that grand council.”

Joseph Smith taught that “all the spirits that God ever sent into this world are susceptible of enlargement.” In the Doctrine and Covenants, he said that the Spirit gives light to everyone who is born and that it enlightens everyone who hearkens to its voice. (See D&C 84:46; John 1:9.) Those who continue in obedience to God receive more light, and that light can grow “brighter and brighter until the perfect day.” (D&C 50:24; see also Alma 12:9–11; John 8:12.) With such assistance, men and women are able to rise above the negative aspects of their earthly training and environment. Thus, it is possible for everyone to receive the blessings of heaven.

Eternal life is also possible, in part, because an element of every human being is divine and eternal. Joseph Smith used several different terms to refer to that eternal essence—spirit, soul, mind, and intelligence. He received the knowledge that “man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” (D&C 93:29.) He taught that “the mind of man is as immortal as God himself” and that “the Spirit of Man [meaning intelligence] is not a created being.”

He did not define, however, this element’s form and substance, nor did he identify its attributes, other than its eternal nature.

This eternal element of intelligence or light of truth is something other than the spirit bodies God created later; these later entities were “the intelligences that were organized” and were the spirits that Abraham saw.

From revelations given to Joseph Smith (see D&C 131–32) and from his own comments about them, plus subsequent statements from later prophets, we know that spirit bodies are procreated by resurrected, exalted couples who have “a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.” (D&C 132:19.) Spirits are “begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father.”

In our own primeval births, the eternal intelligence part of us was “organized” and provided opportunity to become part of God’s plan of salvation—with the potential to become like him. This doctrine is ennobling and intriguing—a subject that we hope will be among the many great and important things about which God will yet reveal more. (See A of F 1:9.)

That the ancient prophets knew of the doctrine of man’s premortal existence is clear. (See Abr. 3; Moses 3–4; Gen. 2:4–5; Jer. 1:5.) The doctrine also circulated among early Christians but was declared anathema, that is, (Something or someone that one vehemently dislikes or a formal curse by a pope or a council of the Church, excommunicating a person or denouncing a doctrine).

In the fifth century A.D. 32 An early Christian poem known as “The Pearl,” for example, begins: “In my first primeval childhood … I was nurtured in the royal house of my Father. … Then my parents sent me forth from our home in the East (the source of light), supplied with all necessities...

They removed from me the garment of light … and they made a Covenant with me, and wrote in my heart, lest I go astray.”

Nevertheless, at the time of Joseph Smith, little trace of the doctrine had survived. No part of man was thought to have existed eternally, for God was said to have created all things out of nothing. Most Christian churches today do not teach that mortals existed as spirits prior to their mortal births.(That makes the LDS children's song, I Am a Child of God, all the more important). They generally acknowledge that Christ existed before his birth and that God created other beings who exist in the universe but who do not become mortal.

The most common view is that God creates a person’s spirit at the time of his or her mortal birth. This view interprets biblical passages that suggest premortal existence as referring to Christ or saying that all things existed only in the mind and plans of God before their actual creation.

Joseph Smith, however, restored the doctrine of man’s premortal existence. The doctrine can be both comforting and unsettling—comforting in that it tells us we are literally of the family of God with unlimited potential; unsettling because it tells us that we are responsible for what we are now and for what we will become. (to be continued)