Part 17
In this antemortal contest the forces were unequally divided; Satan drew to his standard only a third of the spirit children of God (Rev. 12:4; D&C 29:36-38 and 76:25-27), while the majority either fought with Michael or refrained from active opposition, and so accomplished the purpose of their "first estate." The angels who followed Satan "kept not their first estate" (Jude 6) and so forfeited the glorious possibilities of an advanced or "second estate." (Pearl of Great Price, p. 66.) The victory was won by Michael and his angels; and Satan, theretofore a "son of the morning," was cast out of heaven, yea "he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." (Rev. 12:9.)
About eight centuries prior to John's time, the principal facts of these momentous occurrences were revealed to Isaiah the prophet, who lamented with inspired pathos the fall of so great a one as Lucifer, and specified selfish ambition as the cause. Read Isa. 14:12-15.
The question at issue in the war in heaven is of first importance to human-kind. From the record of Isaiah we learn that Lucifer, then of exalted rank among the spirits, sought to aggrandize himself without regard to the rights and agency of others. He aspired to the unrighteous powers of absolute autocracy. The principle for which Michael, the archangel contended, and which Lucifer sought to nullify, comprised the individual liberties or the free agency of the spirit hosts destined to be embodied in the flesh. The whole matter is set forth in a revelation given to Moses and repeated through Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the present dispensation:
"And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying--Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me--Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever. Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down. And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice." (Pearl of Great Price, pp. 15-16.)
Thus it is shown that before this earth was tenanted by man, Christ and Satan together with the hosts of the spirit offspring of God existed as intelligent individuals, with ability and power of choice, and freedom to follow the leaders whom they elected to obey. In that innumerable concourse of spirit intelligences, the Father's plan, whereby His children would be advanced to their second estate, was submitted and doubtless discussed.
Satan's plan of compulsion whereby all would be forcibly guided through mortality, bereft of freedom to act and agency to choose, so circumscribed that forfeiture of salvation would be impossible and not one soul could be lost, was rejected; and the humble offer to Jesus the Firstborn--to live among men as their Exemplar, observing the sanctity of man's agency while teaching men to use aright that Divine heritage--was accepted. The decision brought war, which resulted in the vanquishment of Lucifer and his angels, and they were cast out, deprived of the boundless privileges incident to the mortal or second estate.
Ever since the beginning of human existence on earth, the deposed son of the morning and his followers have been compassing the captivity of souls. The plan of salvation is the gospel of liberty. And now, in these the last days, immediately precedent to the return of Christ, who shall come to rule in righteousness on earth, the arch-fiend is making desperate effort to enthrall mankind under the autocracy of hell. The conflict under which the earth has been made to groan was a repetition of the premundane war, whereby the free agency of spirits was vindicated; and the eventual issue of the later struggle was equally assured.
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WE LIVED BEFORE WE WERE BORN
Our Primeval Childhood
IT is a grievous error to assume that mortal birth marks the beginning of one's individual existence. Quite as reasonable is it to hold that death means annihilation of the soul. The preexistent or antemortal state of man is as plainly affirmed by Scripture as is the fact of life beyond the grave.
We are too prone to regard the body as the man, and this mistake breeds the thought that life in the flesh is all there is to existence. There is in man an immortal spirit that existed as an intelligent being before the body was begotten, and that shall continue to exist as the same immortal individual after the body has gone to decay. Divine revelation attests the solemn truth that man is eternal.
No one who accepts the Holy Bible as the word of God can consistently deny the preexistence of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the first chapter of the Gospel written by John, Christ is designated as the Word, and the Savior's preexistence and primeval Godship are thus set forth: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." We read further: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." (John 1:1 and 14.)
Our Lord's personal testimony is to the same effect. Of the disciples he asked: "What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?" (John 6:62.) And on another occasion He averred "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father." (John 16:28.) In solemn prayer He implored, "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.)
Nevertheless, as to earthly birth Christ was born a Child and lived to maturity as a Man among men. Even as His bodily birth was the union of a preexistent spirit with a tabernacle of flesh and bones, such also is the birth of every human being.
Everyone of us was known by name and character to the Father, who is "the God of the spirits of all flesh" (Numbers 16:22; 27:16), in our antemortal or primeval childhood; and from among the hosts of His unembodied children God chose for special service on earth such as were best suited to the accomplishment of His purposes. In illustration consider the Lord's definite revelation to Jeremiah the prophet: "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.)
More than twelve centuries before Jeremiah's time God had revealed unto Abraham the fact of the preexistence of the spirits of mankind, as also the diverse capacities of those spirits, and the Divine purpose in preparing the earth for their habitation. Thus runs the record:
"Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born. And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them; And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads forever and ever." (Pearl of Great Price, pp. 65-66.)
Our life in the flesh is but one stage in the course of the soul's eternal progress, a link connecting the eternities past with the eternities yet to come. The purpose of our mortal probation is that of education, training, trial, and test, whereby we demonstrate whether we will obey the commandments of the Lord our God and so lay hold on the boundless opportunities of advancement in the eternal worlds, or elect to do evil and forfeit the boon of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The condition upon which mankind may have place in that Kingdom is compliance with the requirements laid down by Jesus Christ the Redeemer and Savior of the world, whose name is "the only name which shall be given under heaven, whereby salvation shall come unto the children of men." (Pearl of Great Price, p. 33.)
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MAN IS ETERNAL
Successive Stages of Existence
THERE are four states, conditions, or stages in the advancement of the individual soul, specified in Sacred Writ. These are (1) the unembodied, (2) the embodied, (3) the disembodied, and (4) the resurrected state.
In other words, (1) every one of us lived in an antemortal existence as an individual spirit; (2) we are now in the advanced or mortal stage of progress; (3) we shall live in a disembodied state after death, which is but a separation of spirit and body; (4) and in due time each of us, whether righteous or sinful, shall be resurrected from the dead with spirit and body reunited and never again to be separated.
As to the certainty of the antemortal state, commonly spoken of as preexistence, the Scriptures are explicit. Our Lord Jesus Christ repeatedly averred that He had lived before He was born in flesh (see John 6:62; 8:58; 16:28; 17:5); and as with Him so with the spirits of all who have become or yet shall become mortal.
We were severally brought into being, as spirits, in that preexistent condition, literally the children of the Supreme Being whom Jesus Christ worshiped and addressed as Father. Do we not read that the Eternal Father is "the God of the spirits of all flesh" (Numb. 16:22; 27:16), and more specifically that He is "the Father of spirits"? (Heb. 12:9.) In the light of these Scriptures it is plainly true that the spirits of mankind were there begotten and born into what we call the preexistent or antemortal condition.
The primeval spirit birth is expressively described by Abraham to whom the facts were revealed, as a process of organization and the spirits so advanced are designated as intelligences: "Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones." (Pearl of Great Price, p. 65.)
The human mind finds difficulty in apprehending the actuality of infinite or eternal process, either from the present onward to and beyond what we call in a relative sense perfection, on, on, without end; or backward through receding stages that had no beginning. But who will affirm that things beyond human comprehension cannot be?
In the antemortal eternities we developed with individual differences and varied capacities. So far as we can peer into the past by the aid of revealed light we see that there was always gradation of intelligence, and consequently of ability, among the spirits, precisely as such differences exist amongst us mortals.
"That all men are created equal" is true in the sense in which that telling epigram was written into the scriptures of the Nation as a self-evident truth; for such laws as men enact in righteousness provide for the protection of individual rights on a basis of equality and recognize no discriminating respect of persons. But if applied as meaning that all men are born with equal capacities, or even inherent abilities in like measure for each, the aphorism becomes absurd and manifestly false.
Every spirit born in the flesh is an individual character, and brings to the body prepared for its tenancy a nature all its own. The tendencies, likes and dislikes, in short the whole disposition of the spirit may be intensified or changed by the course of mortal life, and the spirit may advance or retrograde while allied with its mortal tabernacle. Students of the so-called science with a newly coined name, Eugenics, are prone to emphasize the facts of heredity to the exclusion of preexistent traits and attributes of the individual spirit as factors in the determination of character.
The spirit lived as an organized intelligence before it became the embodied child of human parents; and its pre-existent individualism will be of effect in its period of earth life. Even though the manifestations of primeval personality be largely smothered under the tendencies due to bodily and prenatal influence, it is there, and makes its mark. This is in analogy with the recognized laws of physical operation--every force acting upon a body produces it definite effect whether it acts alone or with other and even opposing forces.
The genesis of every soul lies back in the eternity past, beyond the horizon of our full comprehension, and what we call a beginning is as truly a consummation and an ending, just as mortal birth is at once the commencement of earth life and the termination of the stage of antemortal existence.
The facts are thus set forth in the revealed word of God:
"If there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal." (Pearl of Great Price, p. 65.)
To every stage of development, as to every human life, there is beginning and end; but each stage is a definite fraction of eternal process, which is without beginning or end. Man is of eternal nature and of Divine lineage.
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IN THE LINEAGE OF DEITY
Man's Divine Pedigree
THE spirits of mankind are the offspring of God. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so affirms on the basis of scriptural certainty, and as wholly reasonable and consistent.
The preexistent or antemortal state of man has been heretofore demonstrated. God the Eternal Father is the actual and literal Parent of spirits. That many of these spirits in their embodied state manifest more of human weakness than of Divine heritage, that they grasp the earthly present with little regard for the heavenly past and with less for the yet greater possibilities of the heavenly future, is no proof to the contrary of the revealed truth that man belongs to the lineage of God.
Of all the spirit children begotten of the Eternal Father throughout the eons past, Jesus Christ was the firstborn. To this solemn truth the Christ has testified in the current age: "And now, verily I say unto you, I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the firstborn." And as to the human family in general, ponder our Lord's further avowal: "Ye were also in the beginning with the Father." (D&C 93:21, 23.)
The Scriptures aver that all things existing upon earth, including man, were created spiritually prior to their embodiment in earthly tabernacles; and furthermore, that mortal man is fashioned after the image of God. In short, all earthly existences are material expressions of preexistent entities. The human body, so far as it is normal, undeformed and unimpaired, is a presentment of the spirit itself.
One of the essential and distinguishing characteristics of life is the power to select and utilize in its own tabernacle, whether plant, animal, or human, the material elements within its reach, so far as such are necessary to its growth and development. This is true alike of the unborn embryo and of the mature being.
Man's spirit, therefore, is in the likeness of its Divine and Eternal Father, and in the operations of the functions of life it shapes the body to conform with itself. How could the spirit be otherwise than in the image of God if it be divinely begotten and born?
The conformation of the body to the likeness of the pre-existent spirit is attested in a revelation to an ancient prophet and seer, wherein the Lord Jesus Christ, then in the unembodied state, showed Himself to His mortal servant, saying: "Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning, 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." (Book of Mormon, Ether, 3:15, 16).
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the spirit of man being the offspring of Deity, and the human body though of earthly composition yet being, in its perfect condition, the very image of God, man, even in his present and so-called fallen condition, possesses inherited traits, tendencies, and powers that tell of his Divine descent; and that these attributes may be developed as to make him, even while mortal, in a measure Godlike. If this be not true we have to explain a vital exception to what we regard as an inviolable law of organic nature--that like begets like, and that perpetuation of species is in compliance with the condition "each after his kind."
The actuality of the spiritual procreation, with which mortal birth is analogous, is expressed in the inspired hymn by a latter-day poetess, Eliza R. Snow:
For a wise and glorious purpose Thou hast placed me here on earth, And withheld the recollection Of my former friends and birth; Yet ofttimes a secret something Whispered, "You're a stranger here"; And I felt that I had wandered From a more exalted sphere.
I had learned to call thee Father, Through thy Spirit from on high; But until the Key of Knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heavens 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.
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UNENDING ADVANCEMENT
Infinite Possibilities of Man's Estate
THE spirit of man is in the image of God, whose child it is, and every human body conforms, in the measure determined by its perfection or physical defects, to the spirit that tenants it. Furthermore, we know that the spirit existed in the ante-mortal state, that after death it lives as a disembodied individual, and that later it shall be reunited with the body of flesh and bones in an everlasting union through the resurrection inaugurated by our Lord Jesus Christ.
If man be the spirit offspring of God, and if the possibilities of individual progression be endless, to both of which sublime truths the Scriptures bear definite testimony, then we have to admit that man may eventually attain to Divine estate. However far away it be in the eternities future, what eons may elapse before any one now mortal may reach the sanctity and glory of godhood, man nevertheless has inherited from his Divine Father the possibilities of such attainment--even as the crawling caterpillar or the corpse-like chrysalis holds the latent possibility, nay, barring destruction, the certainty, indeed, of the winged imago in all the glory of maturity.
Progression in mortality, that is true progression, advancement of the soul in developing the attributes of godliness, achievement in righteousness that shall endure beyond death and resurrection, is conditioned upon compliance with spiritual law, just as bodily health is dependent upon the observance of what we call natural law. Between the two there may be difference of degree, but not essentially of kind. Physical exercise is indispensable to the development of body, and quite as certainly is spiritual activity requisite to the healthful and normal development of the soul.
Through valiant service, by unreserved obedience to the requirements embodied in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, never-ending advancement is made possible to man. Thus, within the soul are the potentialities of godhood. Such high attainment is specifically the exaltation of the soul as distinguished from salvation. Not all who are saved in the hereafter shall be exalted. One may refrain in large measure from committing particular sins or sin in general, and so gain title to a degree of salvation far above the lot of the gross offender, nevertheless his goodness may be merely passive, and thus distinctly apart from the active, aggressive, positive godliness of him who is valiant in righteous service.
The incident of the rich young Jew who came in quest of instruction as to his duty is in point. See Matt. 19:16-26. "Good Master," said he, "what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" The Lord answered "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments" and in response to further inquiry cited the standard requirements of the Mosaic Law. In simplicity, and seemingly devoid of all sense of self-righteousness, the young man rejoined: "All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?" Then Jesus replied "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." The young ruler, for as such he is designated, yearned to know what he should do beyond ordinary observance of "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" of the decalog. He went away sorrowful in contemplation of the sacrifice required of him for the attainment of perfection. Love of worldly things was this man's besetting ailment. The Great Physician diagnosed his case and prescribed a suitable remedy.
Through the latter-day prophet, Joseph Smith, the Lord has specified the conditions of exaltation in the eternal worlds, by describing those who thus attain:
"They are they who received the testimony of Jesus, and believed on His name and were baptized after the manner of His burial, being buried in the water in His name, and this according to the commandment which He has given. That by keeping the commandments they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins, and receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power. . . . They are they who are Priests and Kings, who have received of His fulness, and of His glory, and are Priests of the Most High, after the order of Melchizedek, which was after the order of Enoch, which was after the order of the Only Begotten Son. Wherefore, as it is written, they are Gods, even the sons of God." (D&C 76:51-58.)
And further, of the supremely blessed we read:
"Then shall they be Gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be Gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them. Verily, verily I say unto you, except ye abide my law, ye cannot attain to this glory." (132:20, 21.)
But all shall be subject to the Eternal Father and His Son Jesus Christ, as thus attested:
"Wherefore all things are theirs, whether life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are theirs and they are Christ's and Christ is God's." (76:59.)
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THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Both to Hear The Gospel
THE Atonement of Jesus Christ is the means by which salvation has been placed within the reach of all mankind--poor and rich, bond and free, and, be it added, living or dead.