Scriptural evidence for "pre-mortal existence". Is there any?

[TexanKnight]

Zaffiroborant, I’m glad to see you are visiting lds.org. Hopefully you’re there in an earnest search for truth and understanding and not just to pick out one-liners to be contradictory.

I keep trying to explain this thing and you keep resisting understanding. I think in your hearts, you all pretty much do believe in a pre-existence and want to believe it but your church won’t let you. You want me to give you permission to believe that but you know I can’t do that. You have to do it for yourself.

Can’t believe in something that is not true…I will leave that up to you

 

[zaffiroborant]

Zaffiroborant, I’m glad to see you are visiting lds.org. Hopefully you’re there in an earnest search for truth and understanding and not just to pick out one-liners to be contradictory.

I keep trying to explain this thing and you keep resisting understanding. I think in your hearts, you all pretty much do believe in a pre-existence and want to believe it but your church won’t let you. You want me to give you permission to believe that but you know I can’t do that. You have to do it for yourself.

Yes I see that you can’t address this issue since what you say conflicts with various LDS publications and your “scriptures”. And so you have to turn this away from the issue of free will and on to me, which lead to this little fantasy of yours about what I think and believe. You are demonstrating here that your position is weak and you are unable to support it so I suppose this deflection is understandable. By the way there is a post stickied at the top of this forum that mentions assuming and saying you know what people think, perhaps you should read it.

 

[rmcmullan]

Zaffiroborant,I’m tossing you in with SteveVH.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Zaffiroborant,I’m tossing you in with SteveVH.

Well that doesn’t surprise me at all considering you are in the same pickle with his point on the parable. And you did exactly the same thing there, turned the discussion away from your weak argument and on to SteveVH. You continue to make clear that you have nothing in the way of support for your weak points, I’ll keep your tactics here in mind when weighing the value of you future posts.

 

[KathleenGee]

I see no need for pre-mortal existence…because the choices are given to us already in this life…it is like a repeat performance…pre and now.

Best to remain in objective reality rather than pre-existing, speculative conjecturing set as false pretext to affirm man to be some sort of pre god.

It is all about wanting to be a god…

 

[1voice]

rmcmullan,
Is there Scriptural evidence that proves pre-existence, beyond question or doubt? I am sure you can provide proof from LDS writings and/or Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible . Can you provide proof from the Bible?

I still see it as this: God created us, body and soul, heart and mind. He gave us the choice to be good or evil and in order to achieve that, he gave us the heart and mind to be enticed by evil.

So why would He get upset if we are enticed? He made us that way.

It makes more sense if we came by our natures on our own and were placed here to try them.

The fact that something doesnt make sense to you does not mean that your alternate view is true. Its just not a valid argument. The topic question stipulates “scriptural evidence” to support pre mortal existence. Your opinion and your questioning God’s logic is fine but in no way supports your position.

I was thinking of the parable of the sower. In that, there was a variety of seed and some grew and flourished and some did not. But the sower has to pick his seed from what’s available. If he could create the seed, he would create nothing but the best.

It seems to me that you are transposing the meaning of words and ‘creating’ a completely different parable …
Correct me if I am wrong but the way I read the story…
Jesus clearly explained that the seed, in the parable, is the word of God… It is not, as in your illustration, the people that hear the word. Therefore the seed, yes, was/is eternally with God. Jesus, in no way, indicates that people were the seed.

 

[SteveVH]

SteveVH, I’ve been through that parable a few times. You entirely missed the mark. If after all the responses and detailed explanations I gave you still don’t get it, there’s not much point in pursuing it. That’s why I don’t respond. If there’s some common ground, we can have a discussion but I don’t see any.

No, mcmullan, your responses have not addressed the actual words within the Parable of the Sower. That is my entire point:

"And he spoke to them many things in parables, saying, Behold, the sower went forth to sow; and as he sowed, some [seeds] fell by the way side, and the birds came and devoured them: and others fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth: and straightway they sprang up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And others fell upon the thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked them: and others fell upon the good ground, and yielded fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He that hath ears, let him hear." (Matthew 13:3-9)

The point of the parable has to do with where the seeds landed, not on the quality of the seeds themselves. It was the type and depth of soil or the fact that they landed among thorns that made the difference as to their fruitfulness. The seed is actually the word of God and the type of soil is our faith. It has nothing to do with pre-mortal existence. So please do not pretend that you have answered my question concerning where this parable speaks of the quality of the seeds. You cannot answer that question for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with bad seeds or good seeds.

And as to your comments in another post that I secretly desire to believe in this preposterous notion, I promise you I do not. I prefer to believe in a God that is so powerful that he creates everything, including us, from nothing, out of absolute love and for no other reason. That is why he died for us. There is only one eternal being and that is Almighty God.

 

[Telstar]

Cain and Abel had the exact same DNA from the very first human beings, Adam & Eve. How do you explain one being so evil and the other so good? Did God make a mistake by choosing to give an “evil intelligence” to Cain and a “good intelligence” to Abel? Was God responsible for causing Cain to murder Abel by doing that? Or, did God create them both equally good when they were born, but Cain chose to follow the path of evil, instead of good? Since God always knows who will be evil and who will be good, is it His fault for sending evil “spirit children” into the world? If they were already evil in the “preexistence”, wouldn’t He have cast them out of Heaven along with Lucifer, and never given them a body in the first place? Is God somehow at fault for not recognizing that people like Stalin and Hitler would turn out to be even more evil than Cain, in this life?

Your false concept of creation can also be twisted into blaming God for all the evil in this world, too. Having free will, or “free agency”, always makes it our own responsibility for whatever we choose to do, or believe, in this life. You have the free will to choose to follow good or evil in your own life. It’s always been your own choice. God will judge us all on the choices we make for ourselves. That’s why it’s so important for us to find the real truth that comes from God, and not be fooled into following the false doctrines that are made up by evil men. Jesus taught us the right way to live and follow Him. Anyone that claims that He fell short in His mission in any way, and poorly chose Apostles and followers that would ultimately fail to continue to follow Him, is evil. He sent them the Holy Spirit to ensure that they would never stray from the true path. But, you have the right to choose to believe that they did. So, you have to choose wisely in this life, because you won’t get a second chance to choose, after you pass over the veil.

Telstar, I’m sorry but your post is a bit off the mark. Good and evil intellegences? Never heard of such a thing. Cain & Abel with the same DNA? As for the point you try in your second paragraph, I don’t see how you established it? Did you?

I suppose we’re even then, because I think most of your posts are “a bit off the mark”, as well.

You contend that our existence comes from eternal “intelligences” that God used to create us as “spirit children”, so that would indicate that some of those eternal “intelligences” tend toward being good or evil to begin with, especially if you also believe that we’re somehow ‘predestined’ for certain tasks and circumstances. In that case, then all the talk about “free will” or “free agency” would be basically pointless. It would also mean that God knowingly used evil “intelligences” as well as good ones.

If God is Omnipotent, then He would have already known which were good and which were evil. So, the end result of that line of thinking is that God purposely created evil beings. That’s completely impossible for God to do. It would also mean that when God was finished with His creation of the whole world, including man, and declared that “it was good” when He looked at it, He was lying.

I also noticed you didn’t give any response to my question of how anyone that came to earth from the preexistence could somehow turn evil if they were already found to be good in the preexistence. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It also doesn’t make sense that God has to test us twice by sending us to earth, just to make sure we’re*** really*** good (as if He didn’t already know from the events in the preexistence). That’s just one of the huge holes in LDS theology that you can drive a mack truck through. LDS theological beliefs are a lot like Swiss cheese. There are so many holes and gaps that you can’t avoid finding them, everywhere.

Cain and Abel were the children of Adam & Eve, so there couldn’t be much variation in their DNA from other sources. My point is that DNA has very little to do with how anyone turns out. The same parents can produce a saint, and a serial killer. The choice of which they’ll be is up to them as individuals with free will. The more someone sins, the more they want to sin. The effect that sin has on a soul is like a cancer that keeps growing. It actually acts more like a flesh eating virus, except it eats away at the grace God places in our soul, until there’s nothing left but the putrid, cancerous effects of sin.

Maybe it would help more if I tried it in more Catholic terms? Free will, individual free will, is eternal and it varies from individual to individual. When God created us, He did not change it but granted our free will to us as it had always existed.

I’m guessing that doesn’t help but I tried anyway.

Terminology doesn’t matter. How can anyone have more or less free will than anyone else? It’s either “free” or it’s not. I still say LDS belief limits the true power of God to ever create anything at all. It seems as if they picture that He’s confined to playing with some kind of tinker toys, whenever He wants to create anything. That’s an unbelievable insult to the truly magnificent power of God.

Free will isn’t something you hold in your hand, nor is it something you can either give or take. It’s a condition of existence–it’s you making choices. Having choices and making choices exerts your free will.

Some of your choices are made by your spirit–your conscious part. If God made that, then He controls it. If He didn’t make it then it was eternal and always existed.

We have dispositions, dictated by our soul, the union of our bodies and spirit. We make choices based on our soul’s inclination. That’s free will.

No part of us existed before God created us. He gave us free will and doesn’t control us, as you assume. It’s still your choice. Good or evil?

 

[SteveVH]

I suppose we’re even then, because I think most of your posts are “a bit off the mark”, as well.

You contend that our existence comes from eternal “intelligences” that God used to create us as “spirit children”, so that would indicate that some of those eternal “intelligences” tend toward being good or evil to begin with, especially if you also believe that we’re somehow ‘predestined’ for certain tasks and circumstances. In that case, then all the talk about “free will” or “free agency” would be basically pointless. It would also mean that God knowingly used evil “intelligences” as well as good ones.

If God is Omnipotent, then He would have already known which were good and which were evil. So, the end result of that line of thinking is that God purposely created evil beings. That’s completely impossible for God to do. It would also mean that when God was finished with His creation of the whole world, including man, and declared that “it was good” when He looked at it, He was lying.

I also noticed you didn’t give any response to my question of how anyone that came to earth from the preexistence could somehow turn evil if they were already found to be good in the preexistence. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It also doesn’t make sense that God has to test us twice by sending us to earth, just to make sure we’re*** really*** good (as if He didn’t already know from the events in the preexistence). That’s just one of the huge holes in LDS theology that you can drive a mack truck through. LDS theological beliefs are a lot like Swiss cheese. There are so many holes and gaps that you can’t avoid finding them, everywhere.

Cain and Abel were the children of Adam & Eve, so there couldn’t be much variation in their DNA from other sources. My point is that DNA has very little to do with how anyone turns out. The same parents can produce a saint, and a serial killer. The choice of which they’ll be is up to them as individuals with free will. The more someone sins, the more they want to sin. The effect that sin has on a soul is like a cancer that keeps growing. It actually acts more like a flesh eating virus, except it eats away at the grace God places in our soul, until there’s nothing left but the putrid, cancerous effects of sin.

Terminology doesn’t matter. How can anyone have more or less free will than anyone else? It’s either “free” or it’s not. I still say LDS belief limits the true power of God to ever create anything at all. It seems as if they picture that He’s confined to playing with some kind of tinker toys, whenever He wants to create anything. That’s an unbelievable insult to the truly magnificent power of God.

No part of us existed before God created us. He gave us free will and doesn’t control us, as you assume. It’s still your choice. Good or evil?

The entire belief structure that surrounds pre-mortal existence obliterates God’s omnipotence. It makes him dependent upon pre-existing things in order to create. If God is dependent, he is not, by definition, omnipotent. He does not truly create, but rather organizes co-eternal things into something else. This is the question that has yet to be answered by any Mormon poster, yet they will all tell you that they believe in God’s omnipotence. In truth, they believe in a god very limited in his powers because they have created a god in their own image who is even subject to the laws of his own creation.

 

[RebeccaJ]

I keep trying to explain this thing and you keep resisting understanding. I think in your hearts, you all pretty much do believe in a pre-existence and want to believe it but your church won’t let you. You want me to give you permission to believe that but you know I can’t do that. You have to do it for yourself.

Yes, I pray every day that I’ll stop believing in a pre-existence. j/k of course. There are a lot of things in Catholicism that have just been one giant relief to not try to figure out how to maintain a belief in, a pre-existence is just one of them. It has absolutely no purpose to the Christian understanding of creation or salvation.

 

[jesus_is_brony]

 

[RebeccaJ]

jesus_is_brony:
^ person reported

 

[TexanKnight]

Yes, I pray every day that I’ll stop believing in a pre-existence. j/k of course. There are a lot of things in Catholicism that have just been one giant relief to not try to figure out how to maintain a belief in, a pre-existence is just one of them. It has absolutely no purpose to the Christian understanding of creation or salvation.

I am glad I can stop looking for Kolob

 

[rmcmullan]

Okay, Telstar, we’re down to the nature vs. nuture argument?

Take another look at the quote I made from the Book of Abraham. The intelligences are not either good nor evil. And the ones that are enjoying earth life are the ones who “signed up”. I included that quote just for you and Miriam1947 and you missed the part about the first and second estate. By keeping your first estate, you come to earth. By maintaining your integrity here, you keep your second estate. This earth is a proving ground for the spirits.

That makes a lot more sense to me than God creating people He has no idea how they’ll turn out or keeps on creating them even though they’re up to a lot of mischief and out of His control. So the concept of the pre-existence is fundamental to the very purpose of our earthly life.

 

[JHow]

…That makes a lot more sense to me than God creating people He has no idea how they’ll turn out or keeps on creating them even though they’re up to a lot of mischief and out of His control…

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

 

[TexanKnight]

Mac, you do not need to keep stretching truth and reality to make prexistence fit into your plans…

 

[Miriam1947]

Okay, Telstar, we’re down to the nature vs. nuture argument?

Take another look at the quote I made from the Book of Abraham. The intelligences are not either good nor evil. And the ones that are enjoying earth life are the ones who “signed up”. I included that quote just for you and Miriam1947 and you missed the part about the first and second estate. By keeping your first estate, you come to earth. By maintaining your integrity here, you keep your second estate. This earth is a proving ground for the spirits.

That makes a lot more sense to me than God creating people He has no idea how they’ll turn out or keeps on creating them even though they’re up to a lot of mischief and out of His control. So the concept of the pre-existence is fundamental to the very purpose of our earthly life.

God has no idea? Does HE know that? I bet that He is really surprised that according to rmcmullan, He doesn’t have a clue.

 

[1voice]

That makes a lot more sense to me than God creating people He has no idea how they’ll turn out or keeps on creating them even though they’re up to a lot of mischief and out of His control.

Who believes this?
Where is this description of God, acting in this manner, written in the Bible?

 

[zaffiroborant]

.

That makes a lot more sense to me than God creating people He has no idea how they’ll turn out or keeps on creating them even though they’re up to a lot of mischief and out of His control. So the concept of the pre-existence is fundamental to the very purpose of our earthly life.
1voice;8991155:

Who believes this?
Where is this description of God, acting in this manner, written in the Bible?

Mr. Mcmullan finds it irksome when people say* “Mormons believe this…” or “Mormons believe that…”* and then he turns around and says we believe this or that:shrug: After the ad hominems he dodged with in this thread I didn’t think my respectometer could register any lower, I was mistaken.

 

[Telstar]

Okay, Telstar, we’re down to the nature vs. nuture argument?

I have no clue what you mean by that. Please explain, because I’m not so sure that my view of what you might mean is compatible with your view.

Take another look at the quote I made from the Book of Abraham. The intelligences are not either good nor evil. And the ones that are enjoying earth life are the ones who “signed up”. I included that quote just for you and Miriam1947 and you missed the part about the first and second estate. By keeping your first estate, you come to earth. By maintaining your integrity here, you keep your second estate. This earth is a proving ground for the spirits.

I read that quote, but it’s meaning is not exactly clear to me, and since I don’t consider it to be scripture, I really didn’t want to get into it. Your telling me that these ‘intelligences’ somehow “signed up” makes even less sense to me than God picking them out, Himself. But, if you insist that I respond to it, then I’ll comment on it, passage by passage.
“22 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;”
OK… so these “intelligences” always existed … somewhere. I would have to assume they were just floating around somewhere out in space, along with the rest of the eternal matter that was also floating around, without having any kind of form as we know it. Apparently, God could tell that some of them were “noble and great”, but it doesn’t say what He thought about the rest of them.
“23 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.”
This passage is the beginning of my confusion. Wasn’t he just talking about them being ‘intelligences’? So, how did that somehow switch to them being ‘souls’? Are they believed to be the same thing? The next thing is the fact that he then tells Abraham that those ‘intelligences/souls’ would be his “rulers”, and they’re then described as being ‘spirits’. Huh?? So, what are they, really? It doesn’t even seem like God knows what they are from one minute to the next.

Also, if they all supposedly started out being so “good” and noble, how did so many of them turn out to be so evil in Heaven, and still others only turn out to be evil once they came to earth? It all makes absolutely no sense to me on any level.
“24 And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;”
Was the “one among them” supposed to be Jesus? That would mean that Jesus was just one of the intelligences in the bunch that God decided to “use” to make into a human? I can’t even express how much of an insult that would be to the dignity of Jesus if that’s what it’s supposed to mean. Please, tell me I’m wrong.
“25 And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;”
I don’t recall there being any priority set for “proving” the fidelity of man, before he was ever created, in Genesis.
“26 And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.”
I really don’t get the whole “estate” thing. That makes no sense to me, either. It seems that LDS think God just keeps testing us, forever. By the time He’s done testing us He’ll be all alone, and have to start all over again.

That makes a lot more sense to me than God creating people He has no idea how they’ll turn out or keeps on creating them even though they’re up to a lot of mischief and out of His control. So the concept of the pre-existence is fundamental to the very purpose of our earthly life.

Wow… Do you really believe that just because He created us from nothing and gives us free will to choose our own path, that God has no idea, and really doesn’t care about how we’ll turn out? Do you honestly think He completely ignores us once He creates us? Don’t you think He still listens to our every prayer, and waits for us to approach Him with our imperfect love, so He can return it with His perfect love, and continue to love us with all His heart, even when we hurt Him with our sins? Why do you think He sent His Only Son to reconcile us to Him, so we can more easily find our way back to love Him more than ever?