The Fall of Adam

After the completion of the creation of the earth and of Adam and Eve, the first earthly couple lived in the Garden of Eden. This garden was a place of peace and tranquility. Adam and Eve were entirely innocent and had no knowledge of things beyond what God had told them. The instruction He gave them was to take care of the garden, eat the fruit of the trees, but not any fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They were also commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. This state of innocence meant that not only did Adam and Eve not know sorrow, sin, pain, or death; but they didn't know joy, happiness, goodness, or life. In other words, Adam and Eve could not progress at all. They had no opposition and although they had agency, they only had a very limited number of choices, and didn't always recognize them without guidance.

This so called guidance came to them soon enough. God allowed Satan to move about freely in the Garden as an essential part of His plan of salvation for His children. Satan, who came disguised as a serpent, tempted eve and she partook of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

This caused that she would immediately be cast out of the Garden of Eden and separated from the presence of God. This also meant that she would be separated from Adam, so he also partook of the fruit and they both fell together. The couple experienced a spiritual death by being separated from God and were also subjected to a physical death by becoming mortals with bodies of flesh and blood. They could now experience pain and sickness. They also began to gain understanding of good and evil. They were subjected to the adversary, but only after being given proper teaching by Heavenly Father. This way they could exercise their agency wisely. Another blessing that came from the fall of Adam and Eve is that they became able to have children, thus paving the way for every member of the human race to come to earth and get a body. This would not have been possible if Adam and Eve had not fallen.

Through the reasons stated, it is clear that the fall is an essential part of God's plan for us. He allowed for this to happen and structured the entire plan around it happening. We are now able to live here on this fallen earth where Satan ravages souls by tempting us to sin, and God allows for afflictions in mortality of every shape and size to come upon us. We may suffer from chronic illness, poverty, poor living conditions, abuse, neglect, war, loss of loved ones, or any other type of affliction brought about by being mortal or by other people's misuse of agency and some of us may suffer all of these things. We are also inevitably going to sin. No mortal that has ever lived on the earth to the age of accountability has ever escaped sin. We are all going to fall short of the mark of perfection solely based on the fact that we are living in a fallen state. This is a harrowing thought in and of itself. If we understand that God is perfectly just and also perfectly pure and clean, then we cannot expect to be allowed into His presence. Not only would this cause us filthy sinners an immense amount of guilt and anguish, but it would make God less than perfectly pure. Because of this nobody can return to live with Heavenly Father or ever expect to become like Him. But because God is perfectly wise and knows all things, He prepared for this poor performance on our part by offering us a mediator or a person to absolve us of the debt of sin we have to the laws of justice that God must enforce.

This mediator is of course Jesus Christ. It is only through His Atonement that any and all the effects of the fall of Adam can be negated. He overcame the physical death by loosing the bands that would have held our bodies separated from our spirits eternally. Those bonds are no longer efficacious and all men women children or creature will be resurrected or have their spirits reunited with their body in an immortal and perfect state like Adam and Eve experienced before the fall. All the problems that caused damage to our bodies in life will be fixed, even if we were bald or overweight we will be restored to a perfect physical state. That part of the fall has already been overcome for all of us whether we like it or not. We will all live again in immortality.

The second part of the fall was the spiritual death that is our separation from God. This part is much more difficult to obtain. Since this death is caused by sin that we bring upon ourselves, we must get rid of the sin to overcome the death. The only way to overcome and remove the effects of sin is through the only person who has ever lived and not sinned. Christ has the ability to stand before God as our representative and plead our case. He has not offended God and can stand in His presence. He only asks that we make adequate payments to Him to show that we have learned from our mistakes and can exercise our agency with wisdom. This process of learning and change is called repentance and is provided for us as a gift from our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I know that the fall of Adam, although not pleasant, is an essential part of our attainment of exaltation and eternal life which type of life is the same that God enjoys. It is only in and through Jesus Christ that all the devastating effects of the fall can be overcome. I am eternally indebted and sincerely grateful to Christ for paving the way for me so that I can attain all the gifts that the perfect plan of our Heavenly Father provides for us.

The Creation the Earth

Since the beginning of recorded history, mankind has postulated on how the earth was created. I do not claim to know the answer to the question of how the earth was created, but I do know why the earth was created, who created it, and by what powers this creation was accomplished. The earth is central to our Heavenly Father’s plan for us to become like Him, and an understanding of the creation of it and the creation of our own mortal bodies is therefore essential to fully understanding the great plan of salvation that we are a part of.

The earth we live on was created under the direction of our Heavenly Father by His son, Jesus Christ. Through the infinite and eternal power of God, He took the elements that already existed and He organized them into what we know as our planet and home, but also created the heavens in which our planet resides. He created our sun and our solar system and the entire universe. Although omnipotent, God is still subject to the natural laws that govern the universe, like gravity or conservation of mass. We are not aware of what all these laws are and most likely have a very infantile understanding of most of them, but we can be sure that God obeyed these laws throughout the creation. He is the master chemist, biologist, and physicist. The elements obey His every command. He took matter and formed the spherical beginnings of our home. He caused darkness to come upon the earth first and then caused light to follow that. He separated light from darkness and made day and night. This was the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. Next, He divided the waters out and created the firmament, or separated out the sky and the atmosphere from the earth itself. In the next period of the creation the dry land was separated from the water. Now that dry land existed, all manner of flora was created from phytoplankton to giant the sequoia. After plants had filled the globe, animals were added. All manner of animals were created and all the plants and animals gave variety to the earth. Once again, subject to natural laws like natural selection, I believe God used some degree of evolution to create the diversity of life on earth. I do not believe that this process happened unchecked or uncontrolled, but I do believe that evolution was used at least partially by God to accomplish His great work.

After the creation of all plants and animals came God’s crowning glory, His children. First came man in the form of Adam, and then came woman in the form of Eve. I do not believe that man evolved from primordial ooze, or even apes for that matter. I know that only after all the plants and animals had been placed on the earth was the earth fit for the physical creation of man. We all existed spiritually before any of this physical creation took place, and we all had individual forms and identities. We were created in the image of our Heavenly parents and not in the image of a chimpanzee. I believe as mortal humans, we are physiologically similar to animals, but fundamentally different in our purposes from all other life forms on earth. All plants and animals were created to benefit us and be used by mankind to accomplish the end purpose of our mortal lives which is, of course, to obtain the same perfect eternal glory that our Father possesses.

The earth is a beautiful and diverse place that God created for His children to use as a testing ground where we can exercise our agency to make choices and learn through our choices how to be perfect like God is perfect. The earth was created for us; we do not exist because the earth was created.

The Purpose of Life

Many people, at some time or another, ask themselves what their true purpose in life is. Some may decide that their only purpose in life is to gratify their own desires and passions without any thought of a premortal or a postmortal state, while others may decide that their purpose is to serve and help others in times of need. Regardless of what you may currently believe our purpose here in life is, it is essential for each person to understand why they exist so as to make decisions about how to conduct their lives.

I believe through my own study and faith, that we have one great overarching purpose here on earth and that is to become like God, our Heavenly Father. This goal can be subdivided into many parts, but I will only discuss the two main reasons we are here living a mortal life. As I wrote in an earlier post, God is the literal father of our spirits. He has a perfect and immortal body, and as His spirit children, we did not enjoy the blessings of such bodies. In order to gain a fullness of joy and glory, we have to have perfect bodies. The process begins by having mortal and imperfect bodies. These bodies are subject to disease and death, but can be made perfect through the Atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who also had a mortal body, but has since overcome mortality and become perfect like our Father is perfect.

The second and more pressing reason for our mortal existence on this earth is to gain the necessary experience that will allow us to think, feel, and become like our Father in Heaven. I believe it is a rare event that a person makes it through this life without experiencing the sufferings of the mortal experience. Most people will face disease, death, and despair. Most people will struggle with temptations, tough choices, and trials of all sorts. The fact is, we all go through mortality experiencing suffering and sorrow along the way. Conversely, we also get to experience the beauty of life. We can all see, feel, and taste the marvelous things our father has created for our enjoyment. We can all enjoy the company of good friends or the warmth of a glowing fire. Mortality is filled with good and bad things. This is wisdom in God. We cannot learn to choose good if no option to choose evil exists. We cannot know what cold feels like if we never learn what hot is. We cannot feel loneliness if we never feel togetherness. There must be opposition in all things. This allows our mortal lives to be places of testing and trying along with places of teaching and training.

The key to all of this mortality business lies in one key principle, agency. Agency, or the freedom to make our own choices is what makes God’s plan so perfectly possible. It is also a main reason why this life is so painful and difficult. God has given us agency and promised us that He will never force our hand in any matter. He cannot take this agency from us in any way. This leaves us free to make our own decisions based on what we believe and feel to be right. Most people try to choose things that appear to lead them to happiness and away from sorrow, but often times we fail to do this. As we progress through mortality hopefully we will learn more and more how to make correct choices and as we make more correct choices we are becoming more like God. This principle becomes very easy to see if we look at a more familiar scenario. We have all been children and all been under the responsibility of an adult. For most of us that was one or both of our parents. As parents, they wanted us to learn how to make choices on our own. My parents showed me how to drive a car, but didn’t let me drive it by myself until they thought I was ready. Even then, they drove with me and guarded me carefully. They started by taking me to open parking lots where little damage was possible. Gradually as I learned, they gave me more and more freedom until they let me take the car our all by myself and make my own choices as to where to go and how to use the car. I never would have learned how to properly use a car had my parents never given me the chance to learn. They took every precaution they could to minimize the chance for problems, but they still had to let me sit in the driver’s seat to really learn how to drive.

In life, we have been give all sorts of precautionary tools by our Heavenly Father because He wants to minimize our chances of having problems, but we are still in the driver’s seat. We get to make our own choices and the end goal is that we learn how to make correct choices and become perfect just like God the Father. I know that we have all made incorrect choices that will bring us and those around us pain and suffering, but we are granted mercy by our loving Father through His son Jesus Christ and we can erase our mistakes and try again and again and again to make the right choice. I know that if we keep trying God will help us become who He wants us to become.

Life is hard, but it is for a great purpose that we are here learning and being tested. We are subject to the weaknesses and frailties of having a mortal body and we are also subject to our own flawed and imperfect decision making skills and those of others. The combination of these things make up our lives here on earth and provide us with great joy and great misery. In the end it is all for the purpose of becoming like our perfect Father in Heaven. I know that with His help we can make it through this life and take on the glory of the next life.

Where did we come from?

The premortal existence

The concept that we all existed before we were born into mortality is not hard to understand, but the details are often difficult to comprehend. In the life before we lived on this earth, we all existed as intelligence that was organized into spiritual beings by our loving Heavenly Father. As spiritual beings, we were and are all brothers and sisters and had to progress in knowledge and experience. Some progressed more than others. Jesus was our oldest brother and had progressed more than any other spirit. Christ was thus able to take on a key role in the great plan that our Heavenly Father had for His children.

Heavenly Father held a council to present His great plan of happiness. This was a plan that would allow all of God’s children to progress eternally and obtain the same glory and joy that He possesses. As a father, I want my children to have a better life than I have. Since God is perfect and has perfect joy and glory there is no way to have anything better than He does, He wants us to have the exact same life that He has. He wants us to be like him and live like him.

The plan was presented and one of God’s children named Lucifer offered an alternate plan. His plan would provide the same mortal experience, but would not offer any agency. This plan was fatally flawed because without agency, there can be no learning and no progression so this plan would ultimately lead to damnation of all. The plan did not involve any possibility to make wrong decisions though, so it was appealing to many. Lucifer also wanted all the glory to go to himself and not to the Father. This was rebellion against God and Lucifer was ultimately cast out of Father’s presence. God chose instead, Jesus Christ to execute His great plan. Jesus was to go down to earth with all the rest of us and get a mortal body. He was to live a perfect life and atone for everyone’s mistakes and sins, and overcome spiritual and physical death. This would provide us with the opportunity to overcome the obstacles that would keep us from becoming like our Eternal Father.

After our Father’s perfectly just and merciful plan of salvation and Lucifer’s awful plan of damnation were presented, a battle broke out. Not a physical battle, but a battle for our souls. Lucifer charismatically recruited souls to his plan by telling them they would not have to suffer or work. Heavenly Father recruited souls to His side by promising them exaltation and eternal life even though it would be very hard work and many would suffer greatly.

In the end of the battle one third part of all of Heavenly Father’s children chose to follow Lucifer and have forfeited their opportunity to come to earth, gain bodies, and progress. The other part chose the correct plan and we are able to come to earth and have the opportunity to get eternal life and exaltation with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. The children of God that chose the plan of salvation began coming to earth and getting bodies when Adam came to earth. Every child that is born on the earth has come from that premortal spirit world and is here on earth to fulfill the plan that our Father presented all that time ago when we all sat in the great council in heaven. With this knowledge we are equipped to take on the vicissitudes of life and return again to our Father in Heaven, but we can only do so by following the exact course that has been laid down by our Father and that path is through the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The Holy Ghost

The Holy Ghost is the third member of the godhead along with God the Father and Jesus Christ. All three of these individuals are separate and distinct beings. The Father and the Son have bodies of flesh and bone, but the spirit doesn’t have a body of flesh and bone, but is a personage of spirit. The three are unified in purpose, perfection, and will. The Holy Spirit differs from the Father and the Son in that, as a spirit, He can be in all places at once. He is the way by which God communicates to us. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we are able to learn anything for ourselves.

The Holy Ghost is also known as the comforter. He is the one who gives us the comfort and help we need when we are weighed down with the cares of the world. He will whisper peace to our hearts and calm our fears. He is the one who provides God’s love for us in this life.

The Holy Spirit can be a sanctifier. As we repent, it is by the power of the Holy Ghost that we are purified and cleansed. The scriptures speak of the baptism by fire. This burning fire is the Holy Ghost’s ability to sanctify us. We can have the desire to do evil and the carnal desires of our hearts taken away by the power of the Holy Ghost.

He is the Testator and as such can bear witness of truth directly to our spirits. In this manner we can come to know truth from falsehood. God would not leave us alone in this mortal existence to guess as to what is right and what is wrong. For this reason we can have this witness born to us by His spirit.

This witness of truth is available to all men and women, and allows us to find the answers to the deep questions about our mortal life, like who we are, why we are here, where we came from, and where we are going when we die. The Holy Ghost can visit us and bear witness of the truth, but all the blessings the Holy Ghost has to offer to mortals are not available to just anyone. In order to experience the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost one must receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands by one who has the priesthood authority of God. This gift will be discussed more thoroughly in a future post.

I know that the Holy Ghost is a member of the godhead whose main role is to testify of Christ and Heavenly Father. He also comforts us, and purifies us. The Holy Ghost has the capacity to be in all places at all times because He is a spiritual being. He has the same goals and desires of Christ and the Father and thus acts in unity and perfection with them.

Jesus Christ: The Only Begotten Son of God

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Like us, He is a spirit Son of our Heavenly Father and as such is our brother. He is the firstborn in the spirit and was able to attain a much higher degree of glory in the premortal existence than anyone else. While we all lived in the premortal existence, Heavenly Father proposed His plan to allow all of His children the opportunity to become perfect like He is. This plan required that we obey every law that He set forth. He knew that we would not be able to live up to this high standard, so He asked for one to go down and be a Savior for the rest of us. Our older brother, Jesus Christ, volunteered to do the job.

He then became the executor of the creation of the earth and of all things that live thereon, including all of mankind. We were all created spiritually and physically in the image of God the Father and His son, Jesus Christ. Adam was the first man and Eve was the first woman on the earth and all mankind are physical descendants of them. Adam and Eve transgressed the law that God had given them and as a consequence they were cast out of the His presence. This fall of Adam brought about spiritual death due to sin and physical death due to being mortal and imperfect.

In God’s great love for us He provided a savior for mankind. This savior was Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. Known as Jehovah in the Old Testament, Christ came down to earth and took a mortal body having a mortal mother in Mary, but retained His divinity by having a literal physical father in God the Eternal Father. With this dual nature, Christ was able to live a perfect and unspotted life and thus was able to appease the demands of justice in the great plan of our Heavenly Father by taking the payment for the sins of all mankind upon His own shoulders. Our Savior did not stop there though, He also took on Himself every pain, affliction, temptation, or trial whether emotional, physical, or spiritual upon Himself. He did this because He loves us and wanted to be able to comfort us in our mortal lives. He has felt every possible feeling and knows what it takes to get through it. He is there to comfort us and help us along the path of life, but we must first seek Him out if we want His help.

In the garden of Gethsemane Christ was able to overcome the spiritual death through accomplishing the great Atonement for sin, and on the cross He died that He might be able to overcome the physical death. Three days after He was crucified and laid to rest, Christ’s spirit once again united with His body and the first resurrection took place. Because Christ was able to overcome death, He has opened the door for all of the descendants of Adam and Eve to do the same. At the right time, all men, whether good or evil will rise again. Our bodies will be made perfect and all of our mortal frailties will be taken away. Our bodies will become immortal, just like our Heavenly Father’s body and our older brother Jesus Christ’s body. This gift of immortality is freely given to all men, but the gift of spiritual life with God, or exaltation, is reserved only for those who have faith in and follow the teachings of the one with power to overcome this death, Jesus Christ.

The teachings of Christ are clear and easy to understand. He was the master teacher and provides a clear path for us to follow. The basic steps are first, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, second, repentance, third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and fourth, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. If we do these things and faithfully endure to the end of our mortal lives, we are promised to be saved from our spiritual death or separation from God. Christ taught these things to Adam and Eve, He taught them to Moses, He taught them to his disciples in Jerusalem, and He has taught them to us in our day through a living prophet. Christ loves us just as much as anyone who has lived and continues to provide the same blessings as He always has. Every man woman or child who has lived or ever will live will have the opportunity to learn of the gospel of Jesus Christ and accept it or reject it according to their own agency. Christ has established His church upon the earth in our day and provided the way for us to learn of His gospel. We live in a time when the entire and full gospel has been given and are entitled to a fullness of the blessings that go with following that gospel.

I know that Christ is the literal Son of God and that He has power to do all that He said He could do. I know that He took upon himself the sins of the entire world and overcame death by being resurrected. I know that He lives today and speaks to man just as he always has. I know that if we choose to listen intently to his word with a desire to know if they are true and right, He will let us know. If we do this we can develop the faith necessary to bring us to change through the process of repentance that has been given to us because of the Atonement. If we do this and make the sacred covenants with God that Christ has asked us to make, we can return to live with our Heavenly Father and our brother, Jesus Christ.

Who is God The Eternal Father?

God, the Supreme Creator of all things is a perfect being who knows all things did not achieve His exalted state without great effort. He progressed line upon line and little by little was able to attain his glorious perfected state. He was and is obedient to all the laws and principles of the gospel and He is subject to all the laws that govern the universe. He had to study, work, and learn just as we are doing right now on this earth. As a perfected being He is able to progress eternally through His spiritually created offspring. We are these spirit children that He has begotten, and as such, He is our Spiritual Father. He is also the Literal and physical father of Jesus Christ.

As any mortal father can attest, fatherhood brings love. We are imperfect and still feel this overwhelming love for our children so the magnitude of love a perfected Father in Heaven must feel for us, His children, is incomprehensible. As a perfected being, He feels perfect joy and desires nothing more for His children than for us to become perfect as He is and feel the same joy He feels. Since He has already made the journey to perfection, He perfectly knows what it requires and has provided a plan for all of His children to attain the same state that He has. His plan is perfectly just yet merciful too. It provides us with our agency so we can progress without being forced and grow in knowledge and wisdom with each time we exercise this agency. God will never take our agency from us. We can know that this plan is perfect because God is perfect and cannot lie or He would cease to be perfect. We can trust that our loving Heavenly Father will do nothing that would not lead to our eternal happiness and joy.

Part of the plan Heavenly Father has for us to become like Him is to physically become like Him. He has a perfect and immortal physical body of flesh and bone. We were created first as spirits, but we now have bodies of flesh and blood. Our bodies will one day become perfect like our Father’s body. The other part of the plan was to become like our Heavenly Father in glory. The way we do that is by obeying the commandments and laws that He has given to us. These laws are many and will be discussed later. We also know that our Heavenly Father is no respecter of persons and holds all of His children to the exact same standard of excellence. He will not judge one more harshly than another and we will all be blessed equally for being obedient. We also know that He is personally involved in helping us reach these lofty goals. Although we are not in His presence, we are allowed access to Him through prayer and are guaranteed that He will hear and answer our prayers. The answer may not come when or in the form we desire, but it will come. He knows each one of us personally and by name. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses and He will give us what He knows will allow us to be happy. Does this mean life will be easy? Not at all, but it does mean that if we are obedient all of our experiences here on earth will be for our benefit and will help us become more like God.

God is the ruler of the universe and is aware of the most minute particle. We are His children and as such have the opportunity to become as He is. The plan of salvation has been given to us by our Heavenly Father in order to accomplish this perfection. We can’t do it alone, but we can do it if we are obedient to the laws of the plan. Undoubtedly, God loves each one of us more than we can currently comprehend. He wants us to succeed and He wants us to be happy. We just have to have the faith to believe Him and follow what He teaches us to do.