Question
Gramps,
My name is Ed and I was a little bit disturbed last week. My wife came home from a Relief Society function and told me that they had a speaker there that said in the premortal life we had the choice of what sex we wanted to come to earth as. I do not believe that is true but maybe I missed something some place. Do you know the answer to this? I would like an opinion from someone there at your end. Thank you.
Ed
Answer
Dear Ed,
We came into being in the premortal life by being born as spirit children of our Father in Heaven. We were born as either male or female spirits. That natural attribute of a living being is a part of our nature and of course was not open to choice any more than the gender of someone in this life is open to choice. It is a condition determined at the very moment of conception.
Here are the comments of a few of the Church leaders on the subject.
“Elder Packer declared that gender did not begin at mortal birth, but the scriptures and teachings of the prophets speak of earth’s inhabitants in their premortal life as sons and daughters, spirit children of God” (Church News, The Conference Issues, October 9, 1993, p.8).
“Now, we are the sons and daughters of God. He has begotten us in His own image. He has given us faculties and powers that are capable of enlargement until His fulness is reached which He has promised-until we shall sit upon thrones, governing and controlling our posterity from eternity to eternity, and increasing eternally. That is the fact in regard to these matters” (Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, p.2-3).
“Man is the greatest of all the creations of God. He is his offspring. We are all his children. It was made known through the Prophet Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, who saw it in vision, that the inhabitants of this earth and other worlds are begotten sons and daughters unto God. That ought to put an end-so far as Latter-day Saints are concerned-to all this nonsense prevailing in the world regarding the origin of man” (Joseph Fielding Smith Jr., Doctrines of Salvation, Vol.1, p.62 – p.63).
“We are of the race of God, the sons and daughters of a King. What monarch’s children do not hope and look forward to sovereignty. May we, who are the offspring of the Almighty King, not hope for crowns and kingdoms in eternity? (George Q. Cannon, Gospel Truth, Vol. 1, p.110).
“All men were first born in pre-existence as the literal spirit offspring of God our Heavenly Father. This birth constituted the beginning of the human ego as a conscious identity. By the ordained procreative process our exalted and immortal Father begat his spirit progeny in pre-existence. All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.” (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.84).
Gramps
