Separation from God

     The last few blog entries have focused on the salvation we can gain through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  The last of these is salvation from separation from God, which is spiritual death.  Today’s entry will focus on this salvation.

     Let me start by explaining how separation from God is a spiritual death.  Think about the death of your body.  Your spirit is what gives energy to your body, lighting up your eyes with the essence of life.  So your spirit can be thought of as the light of your body.  When your body dies, your spirit leaves your body and the body loses its light.  So upon death your physical body becomes an empty shell incapable of growth or progression.   This body will lie in decay until the resurrection, when your spirit returns to your body and reanimates it. 

     Separation from God has many similarities to your physical death.  The Old Testament teaches us that “…the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light…” (Isaiah 60:19).  Other verses of scripture (such as 2 Nephi 10:14) support this teaching.  Our spirits are everlasting and God can be thought of as the Light of our spirits. 

     Separation from God, then, brings about the separation of your spirit from the Light of your spirit.  Your spirit then suffers similar effects as those your body suffers when your spirit leaves your body.  The impact depends on the amount of separation.  Complete separation from God, for example, completely stops your ability to grow or progress.  Any other level of separation limits your ability to grow or progress.

     Many of the spirit children of God suffered complete separation from God in the Premortal Existence.  These spirits rejected Jehovah (who would come to earth as Jesus Christ), choosing not to place any faith in Him in the beginning.  Because of this they lost the ability to progress beyond spirits.  The rest exercised faith in Jehovah and were guaranteed physical bodies.  This includes all of us that are born into earth.

     For those of us born into this world, our separation from God begins at the time we are born into this world.  At this time we are placed within a veil that separates our minds from the knowledge we obtained in the Premortal Existence, hindering our ability to grow and progress.  This veil is weakened or strengthened throughout our lives depending on the amount of faith we place in Jesus Christ, or by how much we reject Him and His teachings. 

     Let me clarify this a little bit.  Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognize that a veil separates us from the Spirit World.  There are those for whom this veil is weak.  These people see spirits or other manifestations of the spirit world frequently.  Your level of faith does not necessarily have an impact on the strength of this veil.  Only God can determine this, and only He knows why it is weaker for some than it is for others. 

     The veil that will be weakened or strengthened depending on your faith in Jesus is the veil that separates you from all the knowledge you gained in the Premortal Existence.  As you exercise your faith in Jesus Christ, you learn more of the eternal truths you knew before coming through the veil.  If you reject Him, you lose what knowledge you have.

     This carries over into your separation from God as well.  If you choose to go through life exercising faith in the Son of God, you will grow closer to God.  This means the degree to which you are separated from Him is lessened.  Thus your ability to progress is increasing because you are growing closer to God and becoming more like Him.  If, however, you reject the laws of God and choose to pursue paths of wickedness, you will grow further and further away from God and increase the degree of spiritual death you face.  This means you will be making your progression more and more difficult. 

     Let me point out that any and all sin is a form of rejection of the laws of Jesus Christ.  Repentance, on the other hand, is using the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ through faith to increase your ability to follow the laws of God.  So sin separates you from God and decreases your ability to progress, while repentance exercises faith and brings you closer to God so that your ability to progress increases.

     This all comes to an end when we stand before the judgment bar of Jesus Christ.  Here we stand to be judged, and it is determined to what degree we will ultimately be separated from God for all time and all eternity. 

     This degree of separation is entirely dependent upon the degree of separation from God we attained through the choices we made in life.  Those who focused their life on eliminating separation from God will be granted access to the highest courts of heaven, where they will have the ability to fully eliminate their separation from God.  Those who exercised less faith will find themselves dwelling in lower courts of heaven, or even entirely separated from heaven so their separation from God is complete.  In following entries I will focus on what the various courts of heaven are, and thereby describe the degrees of separation from God.