Pre-Mortal Life (Part 5)

We lived long before we came to this earth, as a result we made many choices there using our free agency that we must fulfill here. Therefore, by using our agency there we pretty much formulated our existence here. One of the most important purposes of this life is to use our agency here to carry out the commitments that we made in our life before we came here.


He (God) looks to us and to nobody else. He looks to the Latter-day Saints. Why? Because nobody else has received the fulness of the everlasting Gospel; nobody else has taken hold to build up this kingdom. My faith and feeling about this matter is that we were appointed [p.85]before the world was, as much as the ancient apostles were, to come forth in the flesh and take hold of this Kingdom, and we have it to do, or be damned. That is our position today. The eyes of the heavenly hosts are over us; the eyes of God himself and his son Jesus Christ and all those apostles and prophets who have sealed their testimony with their blood are watching this people. They visit you, they observe your works, for they know very well that your destiny is to build up this Kingdom, to build up Zion, sanctify it, sanctify the earth and prepare the world for the coming of the Son of Man.
Wilford Woodruff, Conference Report, April 1880, p.84


Then, if it be true that we entered into a covenant with the powers celestial, before we left our former homes, that we would come here and obey the voice of the Lord, through whomsoever he might speak, these powers are witnesses of the covenant into which we entered; and it is not impossible that we signed the articles thereof with our own hands,-which articles may be retained in the archives above, to be presented to us when we rise from the dead, and be judged out of our own mouths, according to that which is written in the books.
Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 7:, p.315