Topics / Plan of Salvation
Where the story starts
Premortal Life
Not an inference in Latter-day Saint scripture but a statement. Spirits existed before this world, were taught, were given a choice, and were foreordained to work — with agency intact on both sides of birth.
20 min2 sections
The texts
From the faintest hint to the plainest statement
- Jeremiah 1:5Known and sanctified before birth. The second verb is hard to explain as foreknowledge alone.
- Job 38:4–7'Where wast thou?' — a question that assumes an answer, asked of someone who was apparently present.
- Ecclesiastes 12:7The spirit shall return unto God who gave it. You cannot return where you have not been.
- John 9:1–3The disciples ask whether a man sinned before he was born blind. Christ corrects the case, not the premise.
- Abraham 3:22–23The intelligences organised before the world was, and Abraham told he was chosen before he was born.
- D&C 93:29'Intelligence… was not created or made, neither indeed can be.'
- Revelation 12:7–9War in heaven, and a third part cast out. Read with Moses 4:1–4 and D&C 29:36–38.
What follows from it
- Agency is real, because something in a person was not manufactured by God and is therefore genuinely their own.
- Everyone alive already passed one test — 'they who keep their first estate shall be added upon,' and a body is what was added.
- Inequality of circumstance at birth is not evidence of divine favouritism, and Latter-day Saint teaching has explicitly repudiated attempts to explain race or condition by premortal conduct.
- Foreordination is a calling extended in advance, not a fate assigned. Alma 13:3–5 makes the point directly.
- Talents, affinities and the strange sense of recognition some people have when they encounter the gospel all have a possible source.
Principle
Premortal existence establishes agency and identity, and it explains nothing about anyone's circumstances at birth.
What this topic holds
Spirits existed before mortality, and something in a person is uncreated.
Foreordination is a calling that leaves agency intact on both sides of birth.
Check your reading
3 questions01What does D&C 93:29 say about intelligence?
02What does keeping the first estate result in?
03How does the Church treat past explanations of racial restrictions based on premortal conduct?
Where to go next
Sources