One of the most distinctive of all teachings in the restored gospel is the bold but comforting perspective that men and women did not suddenly flare into existence at the time of their physical birth; rather, we have always lived. Indeed, there was never a time when we did not exist. This precious truth began to be revealed as early as 1830 as the Prophet Joseph Smith was engaged in his inspired translation of the Bible. Later, in a revelation given to the Church in May of 1833, the Lord declared that “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” We lived with our Heavenly Parents in a family setting before we came into this life.
Only a matter of weeks before his death, the Prophet Joseph stated:
We say that God himself is a self-existent being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles. . . . The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That which has a beginning may have an end (emphasis added).
This was a consistent and persistent theme in the teachings of President Lorenzo Snow, the fifth President of the Church. “I believe that we are the sons and daughters of God,” he observed, “and that He has bestowed upon us the capacity for infinite wisdom and knowledge, because He has given us a portion of Himself. We are told that we were made in His own image, and we find that there is a character of immortality in the soul of man.” “We have divinity within ourselves,” he stated on another occasion; “we have immortality within ourselves; our spiritual organism is immortal; . . . [W]e will live from all eternity to all eternity.”
Latter-day prophets have taught that we lived with our Heavenly Parents in a family setting before we came into this life. We were taught and schooled by Them, instructed and prepared to come to earth and take a physical body. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained:
When the time arrived for us to be advanced in the scale of our existence and pass through this [mortal] probation, councils were held, and the spirit children were instructed in matters pertaining to conditions of mortal life, and the reason for such an existence.
The Father’s plan of salvation was presented to us, and we must have had extended conversations about such matters as what earth life would be like, the importance of a physical body, the reality and evil intent of Lucifer and his diabolical hosts, and what would be required of us in terms of receiving and accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ, with its accompanying covenants and ordinances.
Today, we find ourselves on earth, seeing, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “through a glass darkly,” or, as the Revised English Bible renders it, “we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror.” The memories of our first estate and our premortal family relationships are blocked temporarily from our conscious minds. But we were once a part of the immediate family of God and were taught and nurtured in a family setting for what may have been eons of time. The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches: “In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life.” Consequently, each of us comes to earth with yearnings for closeness, for belonging, for tenderness and affection, for love and happiness; all of these were an integral part of our lives as premortal spirits.
We have been taught by latter-day prophets that the family is the most important unit in time or eternity. It is in the family that loving relationships are formed, personalities are shaped, values are established, consciences are awakened, Christian qualities and attributes are developed, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His gospel are planted in the human heart. And it is in the family that the greatest fulfillment in this life is to be found.
It is so easy in this busy and exceedingly complex world to be distracted, to begin to focus on means rather than ends, to labor in secondary rather than primary causes. To the extent that we, as members of the Lord’s Restored Church, continually strive to maintain the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, we will be led to focus more and more on those matters that are eternally relevant. President M. Russell Ballard declared:
In my ministry, I have learned what matters most is our relationships with Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, our families, and our neighbors, and allowing the Spirit of the Lord to guide us in those relationships so we can testify of the things that matter most and last longest.
President Joseph F. Smith taught that
Our knowledge of persons and things before we came here, combined with the divinity awakened in our souls through obedience to the gospel, powerfully affects, in my opinion, all our likes and dislikes and guides our preferences in the course of this life, provided we give careful heed to the admonitions of the Spirit. All those salient truths, which come so forcibly to the head and heart seem but the awakening of the memories of the spirit (emphasis added).
A classic example of these “spirit memories” is the kind of vague homesickness we occasionally feel, a longing for another time and place. “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy,” C. S. Lewis stated, “the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. . . . I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.” Our souls pine for our eternal home.
President Russell M. Nelson taught that what we refer to as “the spirit of Elijah” is no more nor less than “the Holy Ghost bearing testimony of the divine nature of the family.” The closer we draw to that Holy Spirit and the more we strive to keep it with us at all times, the clearer will be our views on life here and the sharper will be our focus on things hereafter. As we go into the House of the Lord and are endowed with power from on high, then as we enter into the highest and holiest of all priesthood ordinances in the temple—the new and everlasting covenant of marriage—we begin the formation of an eternal family, a union that transcends time and brings us even closer to that eternal family we left behind when we came into mortality. Moses wrote that the same Priesthood that was in the beginning—a family order of priesthood government—“shall be in the end of the world also.” And as it is with the Holy Priesthood, so it will be with the eternal family unit, for “the course of the Lord is one eternal round.”
