We Lived with God Before We Were Born

Did my consciousness or intelligence exist before I was born?

At some point or another, many people ask three fundamental questions about their existence:

1) Where did I come from?

2) Why am I here?

3) What happens after death?

Science provides no satisfactory answers to these questions. Using the scientific method of observation and empirical evidence, all that scientists can say is that physical life begins at conception, life on earth has no specific purpose except to perpetuate the species, and death results in annihilation with nothing beyond.

Philosophical Answers

The meaning of life and the universe, therefore, belongs to philosophy and religion. Modern philosophers sidestep any questions of the origins of life on Earth. They accept the scientific theory that we are the product of blind evolutionary forces. Given that there is no good reason for humans to exist beyond sheer luck, philosophers focus on the question of whether human life can hold genuine value.

Nihilists say that life has no purpose or meaning, and to try to create meaning is a fool's errand. Existentialists believe that we have no inherent purpose, and each person creates their own meaning.  Objective naturalists claim that we can create our own meaning in life when we harness our natural passions to achieve something that benefits others. In other words, either there is no God, so who cares, or we are our own God, and we make ourselves whatever we want to be.

While many people accept these secular views of life, I choose to reject them in favor of a fourth belief. I believe in objective purpose, ultimate accountability, and intrinsic human worth anchored in a divine being and an eternal destiny. In other words, I reject the notion that I am an evolutionary accident, the universe is a cold and silent place, and an ant and I are of equal value on the cosmic scale. Because science and philosophy cannot give me a soul-satisfying answer to my basic questions, the fourth avenue is religion.

Religious Answers

Turning to religion, before I try to understand the purpose of my life, I want to know where I came from. Most religions provide an answer to this question. The majority teach that the soul is created at conception. Only a few (Hinduism, Jainism, and Kabbalahism) claim that the human soul exists with God before birth. Only one Christian faith tradition teaches of an eternal soul that exists before birth and continues to exist after death, namely, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the reasons I was first attracted to the Latter-day Saint church was its belief in a preexistence or ante-mortal state of man.

I choose to believe the doctrine that my identity, consciousness, and personality did not begin at conception or birth. I lived as a spirit-child of my Heavenly Father. In fact, I am co-eternal with God. Just as He did not create the earth out of nothing, but rather, organized existing materials to form the earth, He did not create me out of nothing, but rather, brought my beginningless intelligence into His family by clothing me with a spirit body.

As a spirit-child of God, I participated in a Grand Council in heaven before the earth was created. God presented His plan of salvation, in which the earth would be prepared, and I would have a chance to receive a mortal body, experience the pains and adversities of mortal life, and exercise my moral agency. I made my first important choice when I chose God's plan.

Latter-day Saint Answers

This doctrine of preexistence is distinctive to the Latter-day Saint tradition among Christian denominations; it has scriptural backing. Ancient Scripture hints at the doctrine, and modern revelation speaks explicitly of human origin.

For example, in Numbers 16:22, Moses addressed Jehovah as "the God of the spirits of all flesh." In the Book of Job, God responded to Job's complaining by asking, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? ... When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4, 7) In calling Jeremiah to be His prophet to the Jews, God 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" (Jeremiah, 1:5).

In Jesus's day, the notion of a person's existence before birth was not foreign. The apostles asked Jesus, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2). The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4).

In the Book of Mormon, another ancient text translated and published in modern times, the Prophet Alma spoke of men ordained to the priesthood as "being called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works; in the first place being left to choose good or evil" (Alma 13:3). And the Prophet Samuel taught, "the resurrection of Christ redeemeth mankind, yea, even all mankind, and bringeth them back into the presence of the Lord" (Helaman 14:17). People could not be "brought back" into God's presence if they had not already been there in the first place.

Further, in the book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price we read, "And he [Enoch] beheld the spirits that God had created" before they came to the earth (see Moses 6:36). In plain language, Father Abraham testified: "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" (Abraham 3:22-23).

And to put a finer point on this discussion of the preexistence of man, God revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1833, "Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be" (Doctrine and Covenants 93:29).

Conclusion

I believe, therefore, that we all were spirit-children of God and lived with Him before we were born on this earth because I believe in what the Scriptures have said about man's origin. I believe the Bible. I have an undeniable testimony of the Book of Mormon as the word of God. And I possess an unshakeable witness of Joseph Smith as God's prophet in these last days. I choose to believe I have a divine origin, a meaningful purpose, and an eternal destiny because to believe anything less would make life meaningless and untenable.