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This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.
==== Joseph Smith taught that spirits were not created, and that spirits did not have a beginning because they will not have an end. In scripture, however, there are many verses which stated that God created spirits. Did what Joseph taught contradict the scriptures?
The statement upon which this teaching is based is actually an excerpt from Joseph Smith's April 7, 1844 talk known as the "King Follett Discourse." In the 2008-9 lesson manual Teaching of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, we find the following in Chapter 17 - The Great Plan of Salvation:
The present text of quotes from the "King Follet discourse" as recorded in the lesson manual is from the Grimshaw Amalgamation, which was the work of Jonathan Grimshaw in 1855. Grimshaw was a clerk in the Church Historian's Office assigned to prepare Joseph Smith’s sermons for inclusion in what would eventually become the 7-volume History of the Church.
Since there was no stenographic report of the sermon and no prepared text from which to reconstruct the sermon, Grimshaw relied upon the accounts of the four men who made record of the prophet’s words on that day. Three of these men, Thomas Bullock, Willard Richards and William Clayton, were assigned to do so and the fourth, Wilford Woodruff, made a record for inclusion in his journal.
Thomas Bullock amalgamated together his account and that of William Clayton in 1844, which was then printed in the LDS periodical Times and Seasons. Grimshaw took this amalgamation and amalgamated it with the accounts of Willard Richards and Wilford Woodruff in an attempt to provide the most complete account possible. This version of the sermon has been reprinted more than any other and has been published in the Ensign, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is also the source of the quotations noted above from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith.
The following quote appeared in the April and May 1971 Ensign on pages 13-17 of each. Within the sermon, Joseph is reported as having said:
The question is: Are there indications within the scriptures regarding creation contradict such a statement? It should be noted that the scriptures themselves clearly state that,
Does the fact that we existed as “intelligence” previous to our organization into spirits preclude “creation”? Not necessarily. It would all depend upon how one views the process of “creation.” Did God create the world from nothing as most of our Christian brothers from other faiths infer? Joseph did not think so. In the same sermon he stated:
Therefore, it is not merely “intelligence” which cannot be “created or made” but “chaotic matter” or “element.” Something existed, some form of primordial “matter” or “element” which “had an existence from the time He [God] had” just as “The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself.”
It should be noted specifically that Joseph addresses the word “create” as meaning “to organize” and not to “create out of nothing.” Therefore, God can still at some point “organize” whatever composes spirits just as He organized the “chaotic matter” into the world and all that we see. As long as one properly understands that "to create" is “to organize” rather than “to create out of nothing,” there is no problem or conflict between God creating spirits and creating the world. In both instances He used some preexistent material from which He organized both.
== Notes ==
The Fallacy of Fundamentalist Assumptions, Blake Ostler, 2005 FAIR Conference |
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