What Is the Premortal Life? Latter-day Saints on Where We Lived Before Birth

The short answerChildren of God before the world was

Latter-day Saints believe that before you were born, you lived with God as His spirit child. The Family proclamation (1995) says each person “is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents,” and that “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.”

Mortality is not where you began. It is a stage in a much longer journey, and death is going home: “the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

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It is in the BibleJeremiah, Job, John and Paul

The Lord told Jeremiah, “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). You can’t know someone who doesn’t exist yet.

God asked Job, “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). Jesus prayed for “the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5), and Paul wrote that God “hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). Hebrews calls God “the Father of spirits” (Hebrews 12:9).

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The Book of Mormon“Called and prepared from the foundation of the world”

Alma taught that faithful priests were “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). Agency didn’t begin at birth. And the premortal Christ showed the brother of Jared His spirit body: “this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit” (Ether 3:16).

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What the Restoration addsIntelligence, noble and great ones, two estates

The Doctrine and Covenants goes deeper still: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:29). Joseph F. Smith saw in vision that leaders “even before they were born … received their first lessons in the world of spirits” (D&C 138:55–56).

Abraham saw “the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones,” and God told him, “thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born” (Abraham 3:22–23). Then the purpose of life: “they who keep their first estate shall be added upon … and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever” (Abraham 3:26). The first estate was premortal life; the second is this one. There, a council chose a Savior, and Lucifer rebelled. See Are Jesus and Satan Brothers?.

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Where the journey leadsFrom spirit child to heir

If we lived with the Father before, the obvious question is: what is He raising us to become? Joseph Smith answered it. In the King Follett sermon he taught that “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man,” and that the faithful must learn “how to be gods yourselves … from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation.” In the Sermon in the Grove, drawing on what he “learned by translating the papyrus” of Abraham, he said “Intelligences exist one above another, so that there is no end to them,” and taught that the Father Himself “had a Father”: an endless line of divine fathers and children.

That is the shape of the plan: a child grows up to be like his Father. The Lord promised the faithful “all that my Father hath” (D&C 84:38), with eternal increase and worlds without number, while we remain forever His children who worship Him. Premortal life is the beginning of that story. See Was God Once a Man? and The Three Degrees of Glory.

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Check the premiseThe presuppositions baked into the question

Before this question can be answered fairly, the person asking has to justify a few assumptions packed inside it:

1. That life begins at conception for the spirit as well as the body. Jeremiah 1:5 and D&C 93:29: God knew us before we were formed; man “was also in the beginning with God.”
2. That pre-existence is a Latter-day Saint invention. Job 38:7, Jeremiah 1:5, John 17:5 and Ephesians 1:4 all point to life before the world.
3. That premortal life means reincarnation. Latter-day Saints believe in one mortal life, followed by resurrection, not repeated earthly lives.
4. That God is a stranger we meet after death. Ecclesiastes 12:7: the spirit “shall return” to God; it has been with Him before.

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FAQQuick answers

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Sources

• King James Bible (churchofjesuschrist.org): Job 38:4–7 · Ecclesiastes 12:7 · Jeremiah 1:5 · John 17:5 · Ephesians 1:4 · Hebrews 12:9
• Book of Mormon: Alma 13:3 · Ether 3:16
• Doctrine and Covenants: D&C 84:38 · D&C 93:29 · D&C 138:55–56
• Pearl of Great Price: Abraham 3:22–26
• The Family: A Proclamation to the World (1995)
• Joseph Smith, King Follett sermon (HC 6:305–306) and Sermon in the Grove (HC 6:473–476), BYU Studies online edition

• Featured image and in-article graphic: original graphics by thebookofmormon.ai (painterly backgrounds; no photographs or likenesses of real people).