What follows are excerpts from divinely appointed sources that can give us greater light and knowledge about our former estate, the purpose of this mortal state, and the potential we hold for eternal progression in our next estate.
The great Plan of Salvation or the Plan of Happiness, as we call it in the church, answers questions that have perplexed human intellect throughout the ages. Who are we? Did we exist before we were born? Where do we come from? Why are we born? What is the purpose of life? Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Is there a God? Who is he? What is he like? Is God a just and merciful God? Is there life after death? Where do we go after we die?
To understand the answers to these questions we must begin with a correct understanding of who God is and who we are in relation to God. At the center of this understanding is the Doctrine of the Family and it’s potential to be eternal. The Doctrine of the Family is found in every part of the Plan of Salvation, because it is for the family that the plan is given.
We often refer to the central points of the plan in three parts, a three-legged stool so-to-speak. These three essential pillars are the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement, but it is just as essential that we understand that these pillars are supports for the primary purpose of the plan, that part that sits firmly upon the “stool,” namely, the family.
“The family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.” (“THE FAMILY: A PROCLAMATION TO THE WORLD,” The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) To begin to understand this transcendently beautiful truth we must start at the beginning and discover our relation to God and the true nature of the Godhead.
OUR HEAVENLY HOME:
"When you were born into this life you were not created then. Only your physical body was created... The part of you that looks out through your eyes and allows you to think and smile and act and to know and to be, that is your spirit and that is eternal. It cannot die... Remember that each of you is a child of our Heavenly Father. That is why we call him our Father." ("Behold Your Little Ones," by Elder Boyd K. Packer. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1973/04/behold-your-little-ones?lang=eng)
"Before our mortal birth we lived with our Heavenly Father (see Job 38:4–7; Jeremiah 1:5; Abraham 3:21–23). Heavenly Father is a glorified, perfected, celestial being with a body of flesh and bones (see D&C 130:22). The Prophet Joseph Smith taught: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345)."
"Heavenly Father is the father of our spirit bodies (see Numbers 16:22; Acts 17:29; Hebrews 12:9; Moses 3:5). He possesses a fulness of all godly attributes and joy, and He desires that His children become like Him (see Matthew 5:48; 2 Nephi 9:18; Moses 1:39)."
"Abraham saw that all of Heavenly Father’s children were “intelligences” or spirits that were organized before the world was (see Abraham 3:18–23). President Packer taught: “The spirits of men and women are eternal (see D&C 93:29–31; see also Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith … , 158, 208). All are sons and daughters of God and lived in a premortal life as His spirit children (see Numbers 16:22; Hebrews 12:9; D&C 76:24). The spirit of each individual is in the likeness of the person in mortality, male and female (see D&C 77:2; 132:63; Moses 6:9–10; Abraham 4:27). All are in the image of heavenly parents” (The Play and the Plan, 3)... Each spirit in premortal life was provided opportunities for learning and obedience. Each was given agency (see Alma 13:3–5).
Paul, in his great speech on Mars’ hill, speaking of God, said: “… in him we live, and move, and have our being; … for we are … his offspring.” (Acts 17:28.)
"God is the father of man’s spirit, even as his earthly father is the father of his mortal body. The nature of a spirit is plainly revealed in the scriptures. Jesus stood before the brother of Jared in the form and likeness of a man and said:
“… Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image?
“Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.” (Ether 3:14–16.)
"The concept that man is a beast relieves him of a sense of accountability and encourages him to adopt the fatalistic attitude of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” He becomes, in truth, as Pope says:
“Fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot. …
"We carry with us some whispered knowledge of our premortal life and our status as offspring of immortal parents... You were born in innocence, for ‘every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning’ (D&C 93:38), and you have an inborn sense of right and wrong..."
[For further study I recommend: “The Great Plan of Happiness” https://www.lds.org/manual/new-testament-teacher-resource-manual/appendix/the-great-plan-of-happiness.p30?lang=eng]
OUR BEGINNING
Where does this "inborn sense" come from? The Light of Christ which is given to all is one source but it is a light which works upon a spirit prepared in the heavenly courts of our beloved Heavenly Parents. There are more questions that we come to ask as we come to understand that we lived before we were born and that we are children of God. Some of those questions deal with our “beginnings” as spirit children.
Where we begotten as infants in our pre-mortal state? Where we nurtured and did we grow to maturity within our pre-mortal state?
We will find answers to these questions in the revelations of the Restoration but the understanding will come only as we learn these truths by the spirit. Let’s begin to explore these questions by threading together some key revelations from the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.
"The Creator is an Organizer. God created the earth as an organized sphere; but He certainly did not create, in the sense of bringing into primal existence, the ultimate elements of the materials of which the earth consists, for “the elements are eternal” (D&C 93:33). So also life is eternal, and not created; but life, or the vital force, may be infused into organized matter, though the details of the process have not been revealed unto man. (For illustrative instances see Gen. 2:7; Moses 3:7; Abr. 5:7.) God showed unto Abraham “the intelligences that were organized before the world was”; and by “intelligences” we are to understand personal “spirits” (see Abr. 3:22–23); nevertheless, we are expressly told that “Intelligence,” that is, “the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:29)." ("The Father and the Son," A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, From Improvement Era, Aug. 1916, Reprinted Ensign April 2002. https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/04/the-father-and-the-son?lang=eng)
The scriptures teach us that we are both eternal and organized, these two ideas may at first seem contradictory, but only if we fail to recognize that these revelations define the mode of our creation. We are taught that the elements and material of creation are eternal, thus the part of us that was organized, intelligence, existed eternally. Of this substance, the details of which have not been revealed, were our spirits “begotten” in the courts of our Father in Heaven. Do we know more than this? Can we know if we had a spiritual infancy, a childhood?
I believe we find the answer to this question in a correct understanding of our divine destiny as sons and daughters of God. We are taught that mortals are in very deed the literal offspring of God. Elder Mark E. Peterson taught that, "Since we are His spiritual offspring, as the apostle Paul said, He did not create us in the same way He did other life forms. We came into being by birth and are in the image and likeness of God. And God is our Heavenly Father. It is natural for children to grow up in the likeness of their parents." (How Life Began" by Elder Mark E. Petersen) Do we realize the implications of this doctrine?
"It is the universal law of nature in the plant, animal, and human worlds for reproducing offspring to reach in final maturity the likeness of their parents." ("Man - A Child of God" by Marion G. Romney, April 1973) Therefore it is an established observable pattern that maturity is not the state of creation at its beginning, yet many imagine that spirit children were "organized" as fully grown spirits. Why? Why when every physical pattern we have testifies of a life cycle, of things that begin small and grow to maturity, do we imagine a spirit body being created in an "unnatural" way? Are we not taught that things physical are in the likeness of things spiritual?
"...that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal; and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual; the spirit of man in the likeness of his person..." D&C 77:2
"And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me” (Moses 6:63)
The pattern for how life is created, both spiritual and temporal, is apparent in the pattern of life we are given to observe. We are instructed by our loving Father to see in these "temporal" things those things that were created spiritually first.
A FATHER AND A MOTHER
Now beyond the many scriptural passages that witness of our "literal offspring" from Heavenly Parents, we can gain further understanding of this pattern by considering the female part of doctrine of the Family.
"In 1909, the First Presidency taught that “all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.” Susa Young Gates, a prominent leader in the Church, wrote in 1920 that Joseph Smith’s visions and teachings revealed the truth that “the divine Mother, [is] side by side with the divine Father.” And in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” issued in 1995, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles declared, “Each [person] is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.”
[For further study: "The Origin of Man," By the First Presidency of the Church https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/02/the-origin-of-man.p18?lang=eng]
This begs the question, what is the divine nature and destiny of sons and daughters of God? Are their natures and destinies unique?
"Prophets have taught that our heavenly parents work together for the salvation of the human family," but we know that they perform different roles in this great family work. The question of how a spirit child is "begotten" and how that child grows to maturity in the courts of heaven, becoming prepared for its second estate in mortality, seems a question of great importance to the female component of this eternal union of man and woman. Perhaps it is for this reason that one of the earliest mentions of our Heavenly Mother comes from the ponderings of a great woman of faith, Eliza R. Snow, as she penned this transcendent truths:
O my Father, thou that dwellest
In the high and glorious place,
When shall I regain thy presence
And again behold thy face?
In thy holy habitation,
Did my spirit once reside?
In my first primeval childhood
Was I nurtured near thy side?
I had learned to call thee Father,
Thru thy Spirit from on high,
But, until the key of knowledge
Was restored, I knew not why.
In the heav'ns are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason; truth eternal
Tells me I've a mother there.
When I leave this frail existence,
When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you
In your royal courts on high?
Then, at length, when I've completed
All you sent me forth to do,
With your mutual approbation
Let me come and dwell with you.
The "literal" bearing and nurturing of children is the primary role of mothers in this Great Plan of Happiness, and as such it prompts women to ponder more particularly upon the immortal state of womanhood and motherhood. As Sister Snow pondered her spiritual childhood it is easy to imagine that her thoughts of a nurturing mother contained visions of her own eternal role. What are the implications upon the divine nature and destiny of daughters of God should the essential nature of this mothering role cease to follow the temporal pattern? Is the irreplaceable divine role of women lost in a construct wherein the “creation” of spirit children are not of equal part the product of father and mother?
A thorough study of the question from divinely appointed sources will testify of not only the eternal destiny of God's sons but of his daughters and their eternal potential and purpose. "Indeed, as Elder Rudger Clawson wrote, 'We honor woman when we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal Prototype.'" In the Gospel Topic Essay, “Heavenly Mother,” on LDS.org, it states:
"We have been given sufficient knowledge to appreciate the sacredness of this doctrine and to comprehend the divine pattern established for us as children of heavenly parents."
It is because of the "sacredness" of the doctrine and powers surrounding "procreation" and "eternal progression," that the words of the prophets are guarded with respect to this aspect of the pattern of family life, especially as it pertains to eternal marriage unions, but this does not diminish the truth that is so plainly given if we but seek, ponder and pray upon those truths revealed.
[For further study: Gospel Topic Essays: Heavenly Mother. https://www.lds.org/topics/mother-in-heaven?lang=eng]
ETERNAL INCREASE
"Latter-day Saints believe that this pattern is reflected in Paul’s statement that “neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.” Men and women cannot be exalted without each other. Just as we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. As Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has said, “Our theology begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.”
There are many commandments an individual can fulfill on their own, but the first commandments given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to marry and to have children, these commandments require an individual to seal their life to another. This sealing is intended to last forever and to provide for their eternal progression and increase. For this reason, they are incapable of reaching the measure of “their creation” without entering this union. One of the most powerful temporal evidences of this truth is the biological impossibility of a child being created without both the male and female part. This co-dependency is not only a biological fact but a spiritual fact and it’s remains true in the exalted state. How do we know this? We look to the pattern.
GOD OUR FATHER AND HIS FIRST BORN SON
"God the Eternal Father, whom we designate by the exalted name-title “Elohim,” [Elohim being the name of the Father in the plural form and denoting Eternal Parents, Father and Mother] is the literal Parent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and of the spirits of the human race."
"God is not the Father of the earth as one of the worlds in space, nor of the heavenly bodies in whole or in part, not of the inanimate objects and the plants and the animals upon the earth, in the literal sense in which He is the Father of the spirits of mankind. Therefore, scriptures that refer to God in any way as the Father of the heavens and the earth are to be understood as signifying that God is the Maker, the Organizer, the Creator of the heavens and the earth."
"So far as the stages of eternal progression and attainment have been made known through divine revelation, we are to understand that only resurrected and glorified beings can become parents of spirit offspring. Only such exalted souls have reached maturity in the appointed course of eternal life; and the spirits born to them in the eternal worlds will pass in due sequence through the several stages or estates by which the glorified parents have attained exaltation."
"Among the spirit children of Elohim the firstborn was and is Jehovah or Jesus Christ to whom all others are juniors... That the spirits who were juniors to Christ were predestined to be born in the image of their Elder Brother... There is no impropriety, therefore, in speaking of Jesus Christ as the Elder Brother of the rest of humankind."
“Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17)
"Let it not be forgotten, however, that He is essentially greater than any or all others, by reason (1) of His seniority as the oldest or firstborn; (2) of His unique status in the flesh as the offspring of a mortal mother and of an immortal, or resurrected and glorified, Father; (3) of His selection and foreordination as the one and only Redeemer and Savior of the race; and (4) of His transcendent sinlessness."
"That Jesus Christ, whom we also know as Jehovah, was the executive of the Father, Elohim, in the work of creation... Jesus Christ, being the Creator, is consistently called the Father of heaven and earth... and His creations are of eternal quality He is very properly called the Eternal Father of heaven and earth."
"He is further designated as “the firstborn from the dead,” this having reference to Him as the first to be resurrected from the dead, or as elsewhere written “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Cor. 15:20; see also 1 Cor. 15:23); and “the first begotten of the dead” (Rev. 1:5; compare Acts 26:23)."
"Jesus Christ is the Son of Elohim both as spiritual and bodily offspring; that is to say, Elohim is literally the Father of the spirit of Jesus Christ and also the body in which Jesus Christ performed His mission in the flesh, and which body died on the cross and was afterward taken up by the process of resurrection, and is now the immortalized tabernacle of the eternal spirit of our Lord and Savior. No extended explanation of the title “Son of God” as applied to Jesus Christ appears necessary."
"Jesus Christ is regarded as the “Father” has reference to the relationship between Him and those who accept His gospel and thereby become heirs of eternal life... all who are thus saved become sons and daughters unto God in a distinctive sense... to Emma Smith, the Lord Jesus addressed the woman as “my daughter” and said, “For verily I say unto you, all those who receive my gospel are sons and daughters in my kingdom” (D&C 25:1)."
"If it be proper to speak of those who accept and abide in the gospel as Christ’s sons and daughters—and upon this matter the scriptures are explicit and cannot be gainsaid nor denied—it is consistently proper to speak of Jesus Christ as the Father of the righteous, they having become His children and He having been made their Father through the second birth—the baptismal regeneration."
"The title “Father” to Jesus Christ is found in the fact that in all His dealings with the human family Jesus the Son has represented Elohim His Father in power and authority... Thus the Father placed His name upon the Son; and Jesus Christ spoke and ministered in and through the Father’s name; and so far as power, authority, and godship are concerned His words and acts were and are those of the Father."
"Those who have been born unto God through obedience to the gospel may by valiant devotion to righteousness obtain exaltation and even reach the status of godhood. Of such we read: “Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God” (D&C 76:58; compare D&C 132:20, and contrast D&C 132:17 in same section; see also D&C 132:37). Yet though they be gods, they are still subject to Jesus Christ as their Father in this exalted relationship..." [Our Eternal Head]"
[For further study: "The Father and the Son," A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, From Improvement Era, Aug. 1916, Reprinted Ensign April 2002. https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/04/the-father-and-the-son?lang=eng]
ADAM
"Who is Adam? He is Michael the archangel, appointed by God and Christ to be the mortal progenitor of the race."
"Adam and Eve knew God personally. They saw him and talked with him. They were taught the gospel of Jesus Christ even in that early time... They were highly intelligent people, not at all like either the hominids or the cavemen some claim the first humans to have been. They were well educated, having been taught by the Lord himself. What an education! What an instructor!... No one else could teach them, because they were the first human beings. That task was left to the Lord and his angels... They taught their children to read and write, “having a language which was pure and undefiled,” given them by God (see Moses 6:6)."
"Although we are all spirit children of the Father, Jesus is the Only Begotten of the Father, in mortality, even from the beginning, not Adam, not anyone else... God had only one begotten son in the flesh... Adam... was a child of God in the spirit as we all are (see Acts 17:29). Jesus was the firstborn in the spirit, and the only one born to God in the flesh."
"Satan came among them... and said to the children of Adam, “Believe it not,” and from that time some of the family loved Satan more than God (see Moses 5:13). They apostatized from the truth. These dissenters lost the Spirit of God and as a result became carnal, sensual, and devilish (see Moses 5:13). With these evil attributes always comes retrogression."
-- Excerpts from, "Adam the Archangel," by Mark E. Peterson, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1980/10/adam-the-archangel?lang=eng
"Adam, the first man, knew that he was a son of God. He walked and talked with him in the Garden of Eden before the fall."
THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL, THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW THEE
"We mortals are in very deed the literal offspring of God... Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accept this concept as a basic doctrine of their theology. The lives of those who have given it thought enough to realize its implications are controlled by it; it gives meaning and direction to all their thoughts and deeds."
"The truth is, my beloved brethren and sisters, man is a child of God—a God in embryo... That man is a child of God is the most important knowledge available to mortals... The aspirations, desires, and motivations of one who accepts, believes, and by the power of the Holy Spirit obtains a witness to the truth that he is a begotten son or daughter unto God differs from the aspirations of him who believes otherwise, as the growing vine differs from the severed branch."
"He thinks of himself, as the scriptures teach, possessed of the innate ability, as are all other reproducing offspring, to reach in final maturity the status of his heavenly parents and have “glory added upon [his] head for ever and ever.” (Abr. 3:26.) This is his goal."
[For further study: "Man - A Child of God" by Marion G. Romney, April 1973 https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1973/04/man-a-child-of-god?lang=eng#]
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