Amazing how esoteric this thing can become. No one seems to temper this pre-existence thing with the obvious: Any soul who touches Christ by faith is reconciled to the very same depth and capacity of any other. The human reckoning of pre-existent greatness is very, umm, what's the word?Elizabeth wrote:https://www.lds.org/manual/the-life-and ... d?lang=eng
"God chose Jacob over Esau while the two were yet in Rebecca’s womb and before either, as far as the works of this life are concerned, had earned any preferential status. Why? It is a pure matter of pre-existence. Jacob was coming into the world with greater spiritual capacity than Esau; he was foreordained to a special work; he was elected to serve in a chosen capacity.
You Are Favoured Because of Your Conduct in Premortal Life
Not all the reasons for your blessings are because of your conduct in this world; some go back into the beginning with God. “God gave his children their agency even in the spirit world, by which the individual spirits had the privilege, just as men have here, of choosing the good and rejecting the evil, or partaking of the evil to suffer the consequences of their sins. … some even there were more faithful than others in keeping the commandments of the Lord. …
The spirits of men … had an equal start, and we know they were all innocent in the beginning; but the right of free agency which was given to them enabled some to outstrip others, and thus, through the eons of immortal existence, to become more intelligent, more faithful, for they were free to act for themselves, to think for themselves, to receive the truth or rebel against it.” (Smith, Doctrines of Salvation,1:58–59.)
Many responded to the spirit of God there. They were favoured and foreordained to receive privileges."
See the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.
Or the banality of the disciples contemplating their status and seniority.
How dumb. Jesus had to set them straight. Had to tell them that the last are first and the first last.
And that there will be new initiates greater than John the Baptist, who among, prophets, there are none greater. Sound a bit mystical and contradictory? Because status in eternity is a paradox.
Explaining Jacob's status above Esau's by pre-existent accolades is silly. His name means "supplanter, or status-thief."
He's a sympathetic, desperate, redeemed character with a very heavy identity crisis. Sound familiar?