An Intelligence
I believe that Man is eternal and began as an eternal “Intelligence” (Abraham 3:22), which became a Sprit from our Father in Heaven. Then our Spirit and Intelligence was clothed in a physical body of flesh and bones. That physical body will die, yet all those born on earth have a spiritual body forever and because of Christ will become a resurrected eternal being. We will be judged and obtain a kingdom of Glory or be sent to outer darkness. See Alma 40.
If we are eternal beings, how could we begin life as a thing, or a particle, or a bang, or how could we be created from an ape to a man? Aren’t man and animal eternal with a unique spirit? Yes. How could a dog become a cat? Sure a dog could become a different species of dog, but never a cat. Evolution teaches production and development of all things by chance, not by God.
Created Spiritually Before Naturally
“So here we find that the animals, and the plants, the vegetation, became living souls, and were created spiritually before they were naturally upon the earth. These are very significant expressions, and I am stressing them as evidence that contradicts and confutes the organic theory of evolution. . . .
Evolution teaches production and development of all things by chance, development of the smallest germ to a man created in the image of God, requiring several billions of years for that development. Moreover, this process would, if true, produce on other earths, passing through similar conditions, beings of a most hideous and dreadful nature imaginable. As they teach it has produced some very hideous beings on this earth.
There could be no intelligence in a Supreme Being who had each time an earth is formed to leave everything to chance hoping that in some great period of time from an amoeba, creatures would be developed, fit to possess an eternal spirit in his image.
I want you to get that! The idea, for us, sons and daughters of God, to be led astray by these theories of men into thinking that things began way back in that far distant time by some chance, suddenly appearing. Why, conditions today are far more favorable to spontaneous life than they were according to the teachings of science, millions of years ago, and have not men struggled and done everything that they knew how to do to find spontaneous life, and in searching for it they have always been defeated.
So I state, and have the evidence in this book. They have never found life coming only from antecedent life. God is the author of life, and that is one secret he has not revealed to man. . . .
We are transplanted beings. Adam was transplanted. I do not want to get a misunderstanding when I say that. He did not come here a resurrected being. He did not die on some other earth and then come here to die again, to be changed to mortality again, for the resurrected being cannot die. . . .
So, Adam was the first man upon the earth, according to the Lord’s statement, and the first flesh also. That needs a little explanation.
Adam did not come to this earth until it was prepared for him. The animals were here. Plants were here. The Lord did not bring him to a desolate world, and then bring other creatures. It was all prepared for him, just according to the order that is written in our scriptures, and when it was all ready for Adam he was placed upon the earth.
Then what is meant by the “first flesh”? It is simple when you understand it. Adam was the first of all creatures to fall and become flesh, and flesh in this sense means mortality, and all through our scriptures the Lord speaks of this life as flesh, while we are here in the flesh, so Adam became the first flesh. There was no other mortal creature before him, and there was no mortal death until he brought it, and the scriptures tell you that. It is here written, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. . . .
Here the Lord says to Adam that through the fall came death, and other statements of that kind are given in these scriptures. . . .
Now, evolution leads men away from God. Men who have had faith in God, when they have become converted to that theory, forsake him. Charles Darwin was a religious man when he started out. I have told in this book something about what happened to him, and how his feelings changed, and what was beautiful to him in the beginning ceased to be beautiful to him thereafter.” [Seek Ye Earnestly, 277-283]” ― Joseph Fielding Smith, Seek Ye Earnestly.
Define Resurrection
“Resurrection comes from Anglo-French resurreccioun. Originally, the word was used in Christian contexts to refer to the rising of Christ from the dead or to the festival celebrating this rising (now known as Easter). The word eventually began to be used more generally in the senses of “resurgence” or “revival.” Its Latin root, surgere, means “to rise.” Merriam Webster
A Distinction Between the Resurrected Bodies and those that have not been Resurrected
“Adam, Seth, Enoch, and the faithful who lived before the flood, will possess their proper inheritance. Noah and Melchizedek will stand in their proper places. Abraham, with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise, will come forward at the head of innumerable multitudes, and possess that land which God gave unto them for an everlasting inheritance. The faithful on the continent of America will also stand in their proper place; but, as this will be the time of the restitution of all things, and all things will not be fully restored at once, there will be a distinction between the resurrected bodies and those that have not been resurrected; and, as the scriptures say that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption; and although the world will enjoy just laws — an equitable administration, and universal peace and happiness prevail as the result of this righteousness; yet, there will be a peculiar habitation for the resurrected bodies. This habitation may be compared to paradise, whence man, in the beginning, was driven. The Gospel Kingdom: Selections from the Writings and Discourses of John Taylor page 200
A True Experience of Resurrection
EXPERIENCE OF ZEKE JOHNSON, son of Joel Hills Johnson, born in 1869. (Recorded in the JOHNSON BULLEITN, September 1973)
“I have been requested to relate an experience I had in 1908-9 in San Juan Co. I was just making a home in Blanding and the whole country there was covered with trees and sagebrush. I was working hard to clear the ground to plant a few acres of corn. We had five acres cleared and stared to plant corn. My little boy, Roy, about 7 or 8 years old was there to help me plant the corn. I’d plow around the place, then he would plant the furrow with corn, then I’d cover it and plow again. While I was plowing on that piece of ground, I discovered there were ancient houses there, that is the remains of them.
As I was plowing around I noticed that my plow had turned out the skeleton of a small child, the skull and backbone, but most of the bones of course were decayed and gone. Part of the skeleton was there, so I stopped immediately as my plow had passes it a little. I turned and looked back against the bar of the plow between the needles. As I was looking at that little skeleton that I had plowed out and wondering, all of a sudden, to my surprise, I saw the bones begin to wiggle and they began to change position and to take different color and within a minute there lay a beautiful little skeleton. It was a perfect little skeleton.
Then I saw the inner parts of the natural body coming in the entrails, etc. I saw the flesh coming on, and I saw the skin come on the body when the inner parts of the body were complete. A beautiful head of hair adorned the top of the head, and in about a half minute after the hair was on the head, it had a beautiful crystal decoration in the hair. It was combed beautifully and parted on one side. In about half a minute after the hair was on the head, the child raised up on her feet. She was lying a little on her left side with her back toward me. Because of this I wasn’t able to discern the sex of the child, but as she raised, a beautiful robe came down over her left shoulder and I saw it must be a girl.
She looked at me and I looked at her, and for a quarter of a minute we just looked at each other smiling. Then in my ambition to get hold of her, I said, ‘Oh you beautiful child.’ I reached out as if I would embrace her and she disappeared. That was all I saw, and I just stood there and wondered and thought for a few minutes… Now, I couldn’t tell that story to anyone, because it was so mysterious to me and such. Why should I have such a miraculous experience? I couldn’t feature a human being in such a condition as to accidentally plow that little body out and see it come alive. A body of a child about 5 to 7 years old, I’d say. I just couldn’t tell that story to anyone until finally, one day I met a dear friend of mine, Stake Patriarch, Wayne II. Redd of Blanding. He stopped me on the street, and said, ‘Zeke, you have had an experience on this mesa you won’t tell, and I want you to tell me.’ Well, I told it to him. Then he had me tell it to other friends and since then I’ve told it in 4 temples in the United States, and many meeting houses, many socials, Fast meetings, and at Conference time.
I wondered and worried about it for years as to why I was allowed to see it, a common man like me – uneducated as I was. Why was I, just a common man, allowed to see such a marvelous manifestation of God’s powers? One day as I was walking along with my hoe on my shoulder, going to hoe some corn, something said, ‘Stop under the shade of the tree for a few minutes and rest.’ This just came to me and I thought I would, so I stopped there and this was given to me:
It was an answer to my prayers. I prayed incessantly for an answer as to why I was privileged to see that resurrection. Then I was told why. When the child was buried there, it was either in time of war with the different tribes, or it was wintertime when the ground was frozen, and they had no tools to dig deep graves. If it were during time of war they couldn’t possibly take time to dig a deep grave. They just planted the little body as they could under the circumstances. Then it was done, the sorrowing Mother knew that it was such a little shallow grave that in her sorrow she cried out to the little group present, ‘That little shallow grave, the first beast that comes along will smell her body, and will dig her up and scatter her to the four winds. Her bones will be scattered all over these flats.’
There just happened to be a man present holding the Priesthood. (A Nephite or a Jaredite, I don’t know which, because they both had been in this country.) This man said, ‘Sister, calm your sorrows. Whenever that little body is disturbed or uncovered, the Lord will call her up and she will live.’ Since that time I have taken great comfort, great cheer, consolation, and satisfaction with praise in my heart and soul, until I haven’t the words to express it, that it was I that uncovered that little body.
Thank you for listening to me. I just can’t tell this without crying.”
Zeke Johnson, son of Joel Hills Johnson
