So, from where did people originate? The world says in a puddle a zillion years ago. The Latter-day Saints say they didn't. That is people didn't have an origin. They—we—have always existed in one form or another as individuals each with our own personality. As spirits we lived with our Heavenly Family and were taught the theory of mortal life and how to successfully live it.

We knew God. We knew Jesus Christ and we knew Lucifer. We also might have known each other although there were a lot of us so there is some debate about that. (Have you ever been sure you had met someone or been someplace before but knew you hadn't? Shades of former memories just out of reach.)

Choice And The Plan Of Happiness

At the point when we were ready and had learned all the theory and were ready for the practical lab, Heavenly Father proposed a plan. It was a simple plan but one fraught with danger and difficulty but we had learned that challenges provide opportunities to learn and grow and that sometimes failure teaches more than success.

If a child didn't fall down 100 times before he learned to walk, he would never have learned to walk. Keep the choice from him to try and he will never learn.

God would make for us an earth that would be a different kind of place for us to live where we could learn very quickly by trial and error. It was our lab to learn by experience what we had already learned in theory.

We would have to work, eat, and sleep otherwise we would not survive but we could make our own choices about everything we did. We would also lose the conscious memory of our pre-mortal life and we would no longer have His immediate companionship. It would be a rude and painful place but also very beautiful with lovely experiences to be had. It might also be lonely.

Guidance By A Still, Small Voice

Even so, God would give us His Spirit to guide us. We would have to listen for it. It would not yell at us. It would not force us to hear it. But it would always be available to let us know what was right and wrong, if we asked. We would call it our conscience. Everyone would have one and no one would have an excuse for mistreatment of others.

Try as we might, however, to listen to the still, small voice of the Spirit, we would all err making us imperfect. An interesting characteristic of God is His perfection. As imperfect beings who had committed sins—that is, ignored the voice of the Spirit and behaved against God's will—we would be subject to our imperfection and not be able to return to live in the same environment with God. There would be nothing we could do of ourselves to "earn" our way back.

You can imagine the great communal sigh when we all heard that part of the plan. We wanted to come back to live with Heavenly Father. We were part of His family then and we wanted to continue to be part of His family after mortality was over.

Continuing with His description of the plan, Heavenly Father told us that because it was His plan and all of creation honored and obeyed Him because He was always perfect in His judgements and administration of perfect love and mercy, that if He allowed us to return after decreeing that no unclean thing could be in His presence, it would make of Him a liar and God cannot lie.

So the answer was to have someone else do something in mortality (a great personal sacrifice) that would be so amazing and engender so much compassion throughout all of creation, that the one so doing would have the power to request our forgiveness and receive it.

Because of this great sacrifice, all of creation would agree that those chosen by this special person would be allowed to be forgiven of all their sins, be returned to a state of perfection, and thus be allowed to live in the presence of God. They would not be given this incredible gift without their effort, however. They would have to have lived lives listening to the Spirit and been kind and forgiving. They would have had to bend their will to that of the Father.