Premortal life (Latter Day Saints)

The concept of premortal life in the Latter Day Saint movement is an early and fundamental doctrine which states that all people existed as spirit bodies before coming to Earth and receiving a mortal body. In Mormonism's eponymous text, the Book of Mormon, published in 1830, the premortal spirit of Jesus Christ appears in human form and explains that individuals were created in the beginning in the image of Christ. In 1833, early in the Latter Day Saint movement, its founder Joseph Smith taught that human souls are co-eternal with God the Father just as Jesus is co-eternal with God the Father, "Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be."

Shortly before his death in 1844, Smith elaborated on this idea in his King Follett discourse:

...the soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation...[The Bible] does not say in the Hebrew that God created the spirit of man. It says, "God made man out of the earth and put into him Adam's spirit, and so became a living body." The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself...Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal with our Father in heaven.

Elder Boyd K. Packer taught, "that we are the children of God, that we lived with him in spirit form before entering mortality."

In the context of this core Latter Day Saint doctrine, the term premortal existence is a more accurate term to describe the time before this mortal existence than pre-existence, since pre-existence has a connotation of something existing before any existence, and Latter Day Saint doctrine specifically rejects ex-nihilo creation. Therefore, the term premortal existence is strongly preferred in the movement's largest denomination, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), to represent the time before this mortal life. However, the term pre-existence is in widespread use.