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.
