Brent L. Top: The Life Before

Brent L. Top:  The Life Before:  How Our Premortal Existence Affects Us Here and Now

T, W, Th, F: 9:50 to 10:45 Marriot Center

Slides and my notes begin with Wednesday.  Bob was there Tuesday.

My notes:

BRENT L TOP

THURSDAY, PREMORTAL LIFE:

All based on

Order

Laws

Taught

Opposition:  It doesn’t have to take a person.  Opposition is a power.  A Force

Evil is a force

Unfettered power of choice

 Isaiah 14:12-15

D&C

75:25-27

Abr. 3

Moses 4

Dualist

REVELATION

Bruce R. McConkie

Who created

Did Christ offer one plan that would offer agency

And Lucifer compulsory

Although we hear, such teaching does not conform

Christ did not present a plan, nor did Lucifer

There were not two plans. 

As his literal son in the flesh, the two never a

It is not true that God the Father did not know what to do, got any ideas, where do we go from here.  It does not make any sense

In order for agency to operate, eternal laws need to be taught. 

HF has a pretty good idea, because it has been done before, principles are eternal

There is a need for a redeeming sacrifice.

And the Father asks, whom shall I send?

Home room representative

We now have to come up with an “election”. Jehovah, Lucifer

When the Lord asked this question, it was a call for our commitment and common consent, not a request for resumes.

Or son F. Whitney

Ina poem said, “All eyes rested upon Jehovah”

Battle between Jehovah and Luifer, see how it plays out

JEHOVAH

Who WAS HE?

Firstborn of all the spirit children  of the Father

Firstborn of everycreature

Oldest of the whole human family

New Testament, our elder brother, does this refer to the body of fliesh and bone, by no means, how is it that he is called our elder brother

To the period that he was he first begotten of the father

1909:  JFsmith

the father of Jesus is our father also

Jesus is the firstborn among all the sons of God, the first born of the spirit and the only begotten (older brother)

Our first born was called associate mother…

Extra responsibility and extra expectation

Go further, the Hebrew word for firstborn is before: BEKOR, the preeminent one

Abr 3:24

Children of our father in Heaven, begotten sons and daughter (also 22, 23)

One of those, more intelligent than all the others, LIKE UNTO GOD

What does that phrase mean? 

Like unto God, how, in what way?

Exalted nature of tangible body?  No? Had yet to

Here we had in this scenario, this person, spirit son of God, like the Fahter in intelligence and understanding,

Plan and purpose, desires for righteousness

In all things

Which none can receive until they live in the eternal family unit.

(LOOK THIS UP..Bruce R. McConkie)

When the Fahter said whom shall I send only without a glorified resurrected body

One member of the godhead with out a resurrected body?

How in the world, did Jesus become that?

John 1:  In the beginning was the word,

Immanuel, God with us!

Neal A. Maxwell:  The best and most qualified of all the spirits, he was there as he was here utterly incomparable in what he is, knows, and has experienced…

He far surpasses..

He rejoices in our progression and improvement

(Not) Any comparison…

Where we stand..  (We do not stand…we kneel.)

JEHOVAH:

WHAT WAS HIS RESPONSE?

1.       “Here I AM send me.”  Contrary acceptance of His “ Eternal Birthright.”

2.      “Not my will, but thine  be done.”  --Total submission to the will of the Father

Birthright includes double portion of all the lands

What is this birthright to me?  (Esau…talking about his responsibility to be a responsible patriarch)

He wants the lands and the flocks, but not the birthright responsibility

Gethsemane…study His response

Imagine the Father posting a job:  Savior of the world and worlds…

Can you imagine the job description, the qualification

Suffer and bleed and die

Sinless, perfect, complete love for all of Heavenly Father’s children

Totally completely capable, humbly meekly submits to the

MISSIOn President:

It’s like being dropped out of a plane, hAVE TO land on a train, all without breaking a sweat

1^st mission president’s seminar:  you know this job could kill you!

WE were honored,

Extraordinary humbled

What did we do to deserve this?

Begin and end, same question, (different meaning)

Has qualifications, the only qualification that really matters, come back to that

Why does he accept the call?

(His divine role)

1.       Perfect love for His brothers and sisters

2.      He has perfect obedience to His Father’s wil (plan)

3.      Only One qualified to be the Savior (sinless)

Faith, taught, that we could be come innocent again.

If sinlessness is required to redeem mankind, pay the demands of sin

If that is the case, doesn’t it make sense, that it was probably literal when Peter spoke of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world?

I submit to you that

Were poople of the Old Testament cleansed?

Yes,

Why could it not work in the pre existence

That leads me to

LUCIFER

I have a few things to say about him

No where in the scriputres do you see Lucifer saying to the Father, here am I, and I will do it your way.

Proposes something dramatically different than the Savior’s plan.  Can he do it?  No he can’t. 

D&C 76;

1.      Angel of God in authority.

2.      A son of the morning—older spirit son

3.      Name means” light bearer: -“Shining One”

4.      Possessed great powers of persuasion (David O. McKay..quote)

(Get the quote of John at the beginning)

Now we know why it is a war.

Total speculation which number of son Lucifer

WHAT DOES HE PROPOSE?

1.      Give me thine honor

What is that (see John 17) even Christ wanted the glory of God

A palace coup. 

I will redeem all mankind, eliminating responsibility.  Righteousness would not matter.

Do you like being forced?  NO!  Agency is part of our spiritual nature!

If he would destroy agency by eliminating, it doesn’t matter what you choose.

The scriptures did not say

Going to force

Eliminate any one of the imperitves of agency

Pres. Packer, you will not take any notes

What are we going to do for fun? 

Put it away, the Sprite will bring it back to your remembrance

WHY DID HE PROPOSE WHAT HE DID?

1.      Contempt for the Father’s authority

2.      Jealously of Jehovah’s nature  and role

3.      Cowardice and lack of love for us

4.      Recognition that he could not be the savior

Eons and ages

WHAT DOES THIS

Wilford Woodruff:

They are seeking to destroy

Implications are the same

Victory is the same

War in heaven was won through the testimony of the saints.

FRIDAY

THE LIFE BEFORE

Cast out not just for one day brain freeze

Not just one day

Denied, defied God’s power,

As if crucifying Jesus anew (D&C 76)

Not bacsliders

Cast down to earth

That is what we struggle with in mortality

We forget that we were among those who overcame hosts of Lucifer

Because our our faith in the blood of the Lamb and the AtomentP and

Who we were there,

How does it affect us here?

English major, literature major in my undergraudate

William Wordsworth:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star

Hat had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar

Not in entire forgetfulness

And not in utter nakedness

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home: 

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Hard drive not wiped clean..

You will have times that you will find the veil is thin

They come into the world

We bring with us more memory than we think, not entire emptiness, we bring some things with

You think you packed everything you need

Not just our infancy, but youth and adulthood

Colleague…

DIVINE NATURE

FOREORDINATION

?  Church callings

Patriarchal blessing

You will know about your foreordination

Fasting: 

Empty stomach, empty mind

Much counsel, now I see the prophetic statements

Did not say bishop, stake president, mission president

Various types of Foreordination:

What kind did you bring with you?

In your Patriarchal blessing the most significant is often the part that is skipped over.

You were pronounced to be of the HOUSE OF ISRAEL

Of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

You can get a second patriarchal blessing.

Stake president can petition

If your declaration of lineage is not recorded

Melvin J. Ballard:  There was a group of souls tested, tried, and proven before they were born into the world, and the Lord provided a lineage for them.   That lineage is the house of Israel, the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their posterity.  Through this lineage were  to come the true and tried souls that had demonstrated their righteousness in the spirit world before they came here.  Our particular branch  in the house of Joseph through  his son Ephraim.  That is the group whence shall come the majority of the candidates for celestial glory

Elder MJ Ballard. In Crusader for Righteousness, pp 218-219)

You have been called and elected.  Your duty is to make that calling and election SURE. (see Peter)

Single most foreordination: to kneel across an altar

Called, and elected to eternal life==you were foreordained to eternal life

VARIOUS TYPES OF FOREORDINATION

Deuter. 32:7-9

A.      The House of Israel

Acts 17:24-26

B.       “The Bounds and Times of Habitations”

1.       

2.       

Elder McConkie:

God sends his spirit children children to earth on a regular, organized schedule.  There is nothing haphazard or accidental about the peopling of the earth or the assignment of various land areas to the races of men.  The race and nation in which men are born in this world is a direct result of their pre-existent life.  All the spirit hosts of heaven deemed worthy to receive mortal bodies were foreordained to pass though this earthly probation in the particular  race and nation suited to their needs, circumstances, and talents.”

Was I more faithful because I was born in the Church with active LDS family

Less active, non LDS father

Probably just the opposite

She would do well and I would need all the supervision I would get

Friend Nancy  phillippines

Elder Neal A Maxwell,

They waited (Africa) have

Controlling factors that determine the bounds and times of our habitation

Without seeing eternal past or future

David O. McKay

Did not the Lord need noble and great one in every dispensation?

I get nervous when I hear that we chose our family in the premortal world.

Generally, those assignments are made by a Heavenly Father

The Lord does that which is best for us.

All throughout school, my wife went to church by herself.

Alvin r. Dyer:

Assignment…associated with a judgement and assignment to that division to which they are best suited and can make the more effective progress wlithin that realm.

Believing Christ

Following Christ

Some of the most difficult spirits have come to the best homes

Some children do well in spite of their knucklehead parents (vice verse)

Called to be bishop (not because you are the

Some wards are trials to bishops, some vice verse.

LVINING WORHT TO FULFILL OUR FOREORDINATION ISMOREIMPORTANT THAN KNOWING WHAT THEY ARE

Aha realization (that!).

Primary pianist

Talents and Abilities:  music

When

Not environment nor genetic…something they bring with them

1971 published

Autistic savant syndrome

Rain man.  Severe disabilities, limited in function, other areas of life, genius

Oprah

Remarkable, abandoned

Born without eyes, cerebral palsy

May Lemke

Named Leslie, plucking string on box

Upright piano

16 years old before could stand, fingers between chain link fence

Did you leave the radio on?

Set at the piano playing a concerto

Never before

Singing Pavarotti

Cannot be explained any other way

Couldn’t feed himself, use a fork or knife, but playing a concerto

Cleaning stalls of horses, incredible sculpture

How did you gain this skill?  I remember.

Horses and Track.

I remember

DISPOSITIONS AND DESIRES

Different personalit

Response to Orson F. Whitney

Is there something to the philosophy of de je von

RESPONSIBILITIES

ELDER Neal a Ma

Premortality  is not a relaxing doctrine

Just because you were born, does not mean you can relax 

Bob's notes:

Brent Top — The Life Before: How Our Premortal Existence Affects Us Here and Now

Church said in 2007 that not everything spoken by church leaders in the past, on one occasion, are church doctrine. Sometimes they are just the personal opinion of that leader. And of church doctrines, some are core doctrines that are more important than other doctrines.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “A scriptural and theological examination of man’s premortal existence is ‘one of the doctrinal roads least travelled by.’”

Joseph Smith once said, “Would to God that I could tell you who I really am.”

“Intelligence, or the Light of Truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can it be.” — D&C 93

“Intelligence exists upon a self-existent principle, it is a spirit from age to age, and there is no creation about it. … The first principles of man are self-existent with God.” —Joseph Smith, Times and Seasons, Aug. 15, 1844.

In Abraham 3, it is talking about intelligences that had already been born as spirits.

We are “Gods in Embryo.” We have divine DNA. We must develop those divine attributes through experience and effort. Incorporating this knowledge of our divine potential leads to increased self-respect. Realizing that God is our literal father can increase our intimacy with him.

Brent Top, the Life Before, Part 2

It may have been more similar to earth life than we have thought. D&C 77:2. Spiritual and temporal are in the same likeness. God’s house is a house of order. It is reasonable to believe that there was a church organization there. The priesthood was there. Ordinances pertaining to that sphere of existence were required. The love of God prevailed. Priesthood is the power of God throughout the universe to fulfill God’s purposes. Wilford Woodruff said, “I feel that we should humble ourselves before God, that we should labor to magnify our callings and honor this priesthood which we received before we came here.”

A house of order: Organization, priesthood, instruction. We were reared to maturity in the heavenly mansions. D&C 138 55-56. There was agency there. Eternal laws were taught. There was opposition in all things. We had to have been enticed there. There was a knowledge of good and evil. There was unfettered power of choice. There was varying levels of faithfulness and progression. We had the ability there to sin and to choose evil and to be disobedient. Some were greater there than others. Spirits of men there were not equal, because some were more righteous than others. We don’t know if there were a third part or a third, literally, who chose to follow Satan. The plan of salvation is eternal. There was need for faith, repentance, and the cleansing power of the Atonement.

Among the two-thirds who remained, it is probable that some were not valiant, but were able to repent and be forgiven through the Atonement. There was a preparatory redemption, before we were ever born. 

Brent Top — The War in Heaven

You don’t need a Satan to have opposition.

 In the Bible, there are verses that refer to the war in heaven. Taken singularly, they don’t talk about the premortal life in a way that other churches accept, but taken together, and with modern revelations as well, they clearly talk about the war in heaven.

Christ did not present a plan of salvation, nor did Lucifer. There was only one plan, and that was the plan of the Father. In order for agency to operate, eternal laws had to be taught. The principles are eternal, and it had all been done before. The question was who was going to implement the plan. “Whom shall I send?” Jehovah or Lucifer? It was a call for our commitment and common consent, not a request for resumes. All eyes fell upon Jehovah. He was the firstborn of the Father. He has a birthright. He was like unto God. Like him in plan and purpose and in power. Like him as the creator of worlds innumerable. He rejoices in our genuine goodness. The Father wasn’t going to choose between two equally qualified applicants — Jehovah and Lucifer. “Here I AM send me.” Voluntary acceptance of his eternal birthright. The birthright is all about caring for others. “Not my will, but thine be done.” Why did Jehovah accept the bitter cup and agree to be the Savior? The Savior has perfect love and perfect obedience. He was the only one qualified to be the Savior. His Atonement covered the premortal existence, as well as here on earth.

Lucifer couldn’t perform the plan the Father’s way. He presented a radically different plan. He was an angel of God who was one in authority. He was an older spirit son. The name Lucifer means “lightbearer” or “Shining One.” He possessed great powers of persuasion. “Give me thine honor.” Lucifer sought to obtain the throne of the Almighty and to carry out his own purposes in preference to yielding to the purposes and power of the Almighty, according to Orson Pratt. Scriptures don’t say that Satan was going to force people to be good. He was trying to destroy agency. He had contempt for the Father’s authority. He had jealously of the Saviors role. Cowardice and lack of love for us. Recognition that he could not be the Savior.

Why was he and the third part cast out of heaven? Brent Top believes that the war in heaven took place for eons and was an ongoing rebellion. Because of open rebellion and their betrayal of the Father and Son, they committed the unpardonable sin. It is an awful thing to defy the Lord to make open warfare against the Supreme Being.

The war in heaven continues on earth, and the issues are often the same.

Brent Top, How our premortal experience affects us here and now

With our agency in preexistence, there were varying levels of progression. The plan of salvation was an eternal principle. The third part who followed Satan didn’t just vote wrong on one day. They were in open, long-term rebellion against the Father and crucified Jesus unto themselves.

We bring with us more memory than we think, and not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness, as William Wordsworth says. We brought with us more than we realize. Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.

We have divine nature packed with us in our bags. We have foreordination. Brent’s patriarchal blessing was nearly all counsel, not predictions. “Foreordination is like any other blessing — it is a conditional bestowal subject to our faithfulness. Prophecies foreshadow events without determining the outcomes, because of a divine foreseeing of outcomes. So, foreordination is a conditional bestowing of a role, responsibility, or a blessing which, likewise, foresees but does not fix the outcome.” — Neal A. Maxwell.

Brent says the most significant part of our blessing is our declaration of lineage in the house of Israel. “There was a group of souls tested, tried, and proven before they were born into the world, and the Lord provided a lineage for them. That lineage is the house of Israel, the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their posterity. Through this lineage were to come the true and tried souls that had demonstrated their righteousness in the spirit world before they came here. Our particular branch is the house of Joseph through his son Ephraim. That is the group whence shall come the majority of the candidates for celestial glory.” — Melvin J. Ballard.

We have been foreordained to have all the blessings and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that was the most important ordination that we have had.

“God sends his spirit children to earth on a regular, organized schedule. There is nothing haphazard or accidental about the peopling of the earth or the assignment of various land areas to the races of men. The race and nation in which men are born in this world is a direct result of their pre-existent life. All the spirit hosts of heaven deemed worthy to receive mortal bodies were foreordained to pass through this earthly probation in the particular race and nation suited to their needs, circumstances, and talents.” — Elder Bruce R. McConkie

Controlling factors of foreordination: 1. Result of premortal faithfulness. But it’s not the only thing. 2. It’s done for what is best for the individual. There is nothing scriptural that we ever chose our families before we came to earth. “I believe that the Lord does that which is best for us,” Brent says. Sometimes children are sent to families because the Lord in his wisdom knew who could best work with them. 3. What will further God’s purposes and bless all humanity?

Priesthood callings and offices are way down the list as far as foreordinations. You may have been foreordained to make a difference in somebody’s life in a non-priesthood, non-church way. If we live worthy, we will fulfill our foreordinations.

We brought with us certain talents and abilities. President Joseph Fielding Smith said we brought different dispositions, likes and talents. Some are mechanical and become great inventors, etc., some have musical or math abilities.