The Plan of Salvation, or the Plan of Happiness. In our premortal realm, we decided to go with Jesus' plan. We know it as the Plan of Salvation. This post is about the pre-earth life as well as the Plan of Salvation, which go hand in hand. Sorry if it bounces back and forth...it is a bit of a continuation of the previous post...
How can I know that I will see my lost baby again? I believe that we can be with our families for all of eternity, through the sealing powers set forth by the Lord. My husband and I had the opportunity and great blessing of being sealed together, along with our 2 month old son, nearly 10 years ago. Subsequently, each child born to us thereafter was "born in the covenant", meaning they are automatically sealed to us upon being born, for time and all eternity. I believe that babies, who are born, but later die, will return to their parents again, or rather their parents will return to them when we die, and those parents can have those babies to raise. This belief is based on the doctrine currently available. There is no current doctrine that is 100% clear on miscarriages or stillbirths, though surely at one time, there must have existed such knowledge, which may have been lost due to wickedness or disobedience. However, I know that each spirit receives a body, though the exact moment at which the vessel receives the spirit is not known. If a baby is born, then dies (at any time during childhood), the mother can raise that baby at a later time. If a baby is not born alive, but has received it's spirit in the womb, surely a mother can raise that baby at a later time, as well. However, if the vessel of the body was prepared, but never received the spirit, perhaps that spirit will return to the next vessel its parents create. Either way, the parents will receive that baby. What a miracle! What a gift! The Lord does not take our loved ones from us - he gives them back! We are separated for what seems like forever to us, but a brief moment to those who have passed, but then we are reunited, and given the freedom to choose eternal life with our families.
Excerpt A:
WHERE DID I COME FROM?
Your life did not begin at birth, nor will it end at death. You have a spirit body (sometimes called the soul) and a physical body. Heavenly Father created your spirit, and you lived with Him as a spirit before you received your physical body and were born on earth. This period is called pre-earth life or premortal life.
Throughout your pre-earth life, you were taught the principles and commandments that would lead to happiness, with freedom to choose to grow in intelligence and love of the truth, or not. During this pre-earth life, Jesus Christ, then known as Jehovah was chosen as the Savior and you learned that, through Him, you would be able to overcome the effects of any wrong choices.
God’s purpose—His work and His glory—is to bring to pass the immortality (resurrection) and eternal life (life with God) of His children. He desires every one of His children to find peace in this life and a fulness of joy in His presence after this life. Heavenly Father knew that you could only progress to a certain point without the experience of mortality. In order to become more like Him, you would need to:
Receive a physical body.
Thus, God our Father is the creator of our spirits, and we are created in His likeness physically.
Gain experience from overcoming trials and temptations.
Learn to walk by faith.
Learn to choose between good and evil.
Thus, your Heavenly Father instituted His plan to help you reach your divine potential.
Excerpt B:
John the Revelator speaks of that struggle:
“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
“And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him”
Excerpt C, as defined in the Gospel Library:
In the premortal existence, Heavenly Father prepared a plan to enable us to become like Him and receive a fulness of joy. The scriptures refer to this plan as "the plan of salvation" (Alma 24:14; Moses 6:62), "the great plan of happiness" (Alma 42:8), "the plan of redemption" (Jacob 6:8; Alma 12:30), and "the plan of mercy" (Alma 42:15). The plan of salvation is the fulness of the gospel. It includes the Creation, the Fall, the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and all the laws, ordinances, and doctrines of the gospel. Moral agency, the ability to choose and act for ourselves, is also essential in Heavenly Father's plan. Because of this plan, we can be perfected through the Atonement, receive a fulness of joy, and live forever in the presence of God. Our family relationships can last throughout the eternities.
Excerpt D - from a Q&A article in the New Era, a publication of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
“A friend of mine says that there is nothing in the Bible that gives conclusive evidence one way or the other about the pre-existence. Can you clarify this?”
Eldin Ricks, “Q&A: Questions and Answers,” New Era, Feb. 1972, 35–36
Answer/ Eldin Ricks
Let me tell you what the Bible says on the subject, and then you decide whether the evidence is conclusive.
1. Jesus had a premortal existence. The apostle John, who speaks of Christ as the Word made flesh (John 1:14), opens the book that bears his name by testifying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1.) In other words, in the beginning was Christ, and Christ was with God, and Christ himself also was a God. The important thing for our purpose at the moment, however, is simply that “in the beginning” was Christ.
The apostle Paul also says that in the days of Moses—more than twelve hundred years before Jesus was born—the children of Israel “drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.” (1 Cor. 10:4.)
If any more Bible evidence should be needed to establish the premortal existence of the Savior, you may wish to note a statement that Jesus himself made the night before his crucifixion. With apparent longing for the glory of his previous existence, he prayed, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5.)
Thus we see that Jesus was in existence long before his advent into mortality. Let us now check to see whether the Bible teaches that people other than the Savior had a previous spirit life.
2. Jeremiah had a premortal existence. Through revelation the prophet Jeremiah learned something about the preexistence of his own soul. The Lord spoke to him and said, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” (Jer. 1:5.)
Since, as this passage states, the Lord knew Jeremiah before he was born and sanctified Jeremiah before he was born and ordained Jeremiah before he was born, it must be clear that Jeremiah was in existence before his mortal birth.
3. Job had a premortal existence. On one occasion the Lord asked the prophet Job, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4, 7.)
Now although the Lord didn’t tell Job where he was before the foundations of the earth were laid, the very question implies that Job was in existence somewhere—and not only Job but “all the sons of God.” And when we recall that the Bible teaches that we are the sons of God (“the offspring of God” is the way the apostle Paul phrases it in Acts 17:29), we can’t help but conclude that we were in existence with Job (and Jeremiah and the Lord Jesus Christ) before the earth was created.
4. Jesus made no attempt to correct his apostles when they expressed a belief in man’s premortal existence. This conclusion is based on an incident narrated in the ninth chapter of John. In reference to a blind man the apostles asked Jesus, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2.) Note that their question was not simply whether the man’s parents had sinned before he was born but whether the man himself had sinned before he was born. Their query plainly shows that they believed that the man had been both alive and capable of sinning before he was born.
Jesus explained (John 9:3) that neither the man nor his parents had sinned, but the striking fact is that he made no attempt to challenge or correct or alter their basic assumption that the man had had a premortal existence.
5. Certain passages of the Bible make sense only in the light of man’s premortal existence. We as Latter-day Saints understand that during the course of man’s premortal spirit career one third of God’s children rebelled and followed Satan. (See D&C 29:36–38; Moses 4:1–4; Abr. 3:22–28.) This understanding gives meaning to a number of biblical passages bearing on the expulsion from heaven of certain disobedient beings. Consider, for example, 2 Peter 2:4 [2 Pet. 2:4], Jude 1:6, and Revelation 12:7–9 [Rev. 12:7–9].
While the several passages mentioned in the foregoing explanation may or may not offer your friend “conclusive evidence” of the premortal existence of man, I am confident, if he is sincere in his search for divine truth, that they will offer him sufficient evidence to incite an earnest, prayerful inquiry into the doctrines and claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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