Question
Dear Gramps,
I have a brother who was born intellectually handicapped. He died just over a year ago at the age of 56. Is it true that handicapped people like him escorted Satan and the 1/3 part of spirits that followed Satan out of heaven? If not, what is the purpose of them coming to earth like that as they are unable to work towards perfection in this lifetime. (Mind you — from the people like my brother that I have known, they already seem way above us “normal” people when it comes to being loving and accepting of each other).
Lynne
Answer
Dear Lynne,
I know of no place in the Mormon scriptures or in the writings of the Mormon prophets that anyone escorted Satan and the other wicked spirits out of Heaven. I believe that your concern about your brother’s pre-earth life and its relationship to any disadvantaged condition that he would have brought with him to mortality is adequately answered by the dialogue between the Savior and His disciples, as recorded in John 9:1-7 –
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
Thus, those that come into this life with any type of handicap are vehicles by which, through caring for them, others may develop Christ-like qualities. Further, those who are physically handicapped in mortality are in no way disadvantaged in their eternal potential. They will be resurrected without blemish, will have the opportunity to learn and obey the principles of the Mormon gospel if any of that opportunity has been denied them in mortality, and will be judged by the thoughts of their hearts by a just, kind, and loving Heavenly Father.
Gramps
