The Premortal Existence

• Tad R. Callister, "The Inevitable Apostasy", pp. 126-134

The Bible Speaks of a Premortal Life. p. 126

The Early Christian Writers Spoke of a Premortal Life. p. 129

The Doctrine of a Premortal Existence is Banned by the Ongoing Church. p. 131

Human Experience Confirms a Premortal Life. p. 133

Why the Doctrine Needed to Be Restored. p. 133

• Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."

• Enoch 48:1-3

Description of the time when Christ ("the Elect One") was foreordained to his mission, "before the sun and signs were created ...".

Notes

The Premortal Existence is often referred to as the pre-existence. This usage has been criticized as being wrong, because it is interpreted as implying a reference to a time before our existence, while out intelligences are eternal. This criticism seems to be clearly overshooting the mark of proper pedantry. If we want to be pedantic about this, the most we can say is that the term is ambiguous. The prefix, "pre" does mean before, but a pre-slithy could be either of two things. In the first place it could be something before a slithy (eg. precolumbian, prepubescent, preteen, premarital, etc.) or it could be a slithy that is before (eg. preview, prescience, predrilled, premade, etc.). Clearly, when people say pre-existence, they are using it in the latter sense, but to people who are not familiar with LDS culture, this may be a point of confusion, so it would still be advisable to use the clearer term.

Cross-References

• Free Will
• Intelligence
• War in Heaven