Eternal Progression

I. Intelligence — The Eternal Starting Point

The chain of progression does not begin with birth. It does not begin with the pre-mortal spirit world. It begins with intelligence — the co-eternal core of the self that was never created and can never be destroyed. "Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be" (D&C 93:29). God did not make us from nothing. He found us in the midst of intelligences, and because He was more intelligent than them all (Abraham 3:19), He knew how to organize and advance them.

Joseph Smith taught what this means in the King Follett sermon: "The first principles of man are self-existent with God. God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself." The invitation of the plan is not that God creates dependent beings for His pleasure — it is that the Father, being more advanced, opens the path for others to reach where He stands.

II. The Stages of Progression

The Restoration maps out the stages of the soul's ascent with remarkable precision. Each stage adds to the soul without erasing what came before:

• Intelligence — co-eternal, self-existent, the irreducible core of personhood (D&C 93:29)
• Spirit — intelligence organized into a spirit body in the pre-mortal world; the soul gains form, family, and foreordination (Abraham 3:22)
• Mortal — spirit clothed in physical flesh; the proving ground where agency, faith, and covenant are tested (Abraham 3:25–26)
• Resurrected — spirit and element inseparably connected, receiving a fulness of joy; death permanently overcome (D&C 93:33–34)
• Exalted — the resurrected soul sealed into the celestial order, receiving all the Father has, becoming as God is (D&C 132:19–20)

“The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; and when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy.”

III. God Was Once as We Now Are

The most radical claim of the Restoration — and the most carefully suppressed by institutional caution — is that God Himself passed through a progression that led to His present exaltation. Joseph Smith declared it plainly in the King Follett sermon: "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens." This is not a speculation or a fringe teaching — it was the centerpiece of Joseph's final public discourse.

“You have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation.”

The Lorenzo Snow couplet — "As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be" — is not poetry. It is the doctrinal conclusion of the King Follett sermon. And it is confirmed in D&C 132:20: "Then shall they be gods, because they have no end… they shall be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue."

IV. What We Carry Forward

One of the most important teachings in the Restoration is that nothing is wasted in the progression. Every principle of intelligence, every covenant, every truth, every virtue attained in one stage of existence is carried forward into the next: "Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come" (D&C 130:18–19). The soul accumulates. Nothing essential is erased. The resurrection does not reset us — it amplifies us.