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Mortality Unites Spirit with Flesh—We do not know exactly how long all the inhabitants of this earth existed as organized, intelligent spirit beings before entering their second estate. For those souls now living on the earth, they are at least six thousand years old, since all spirit children of God participated in the premortal council prior to his sending Adam and Eve to begin the human family. In any case, our spirits had more time to grow and develop in premortality than any of us have in mortality. What is it then—in this short, critical time of earth life—that our spirit, united with our flesh, needs to accomplish? The answer lies in realizing that for the first time in our existence, we live—albeit temporarily and imperfectly—as a complete person, with intelligence, spirit, and body. These three elements will also comprise our future immortal beings as we exist forever after the resurrection. This life, then, is the best facsimile of eternity and provides the only total, intensive training ground in which we can harmonize all the elements of our being in preparation for our final estate: “Therefore this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God; a time to prepare for that endless state … which is after the resurrection of the dead.” (Alma 12:24.) Before we meet God and are judged by him, we must concentrate our efforts during mortality on training our mature spirits to develop, control, and utilize our relatively new and immature physical bodies. To complete this preparation and probationary period, we need to enrich ourselves in three dimensions, experiencing a new life through our physical bodies, building new families and social relations with our spirit brothers and sisters, and developing a renewed bond with our Heavenly Father, his Son, and the Holy Spirit.Share
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