Where did we come from? Why are we here on earth?

Where do we go after we die?

Mormons, more properly referred to as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, believe that God has a plan for us.

It’s called the plan of salvation, and it contains answers to all of these questions and more.

Latter-day Saints believe that everyone on earth is a child of God.

He is our Heavenly Father, and He loves us.

His purpose, His work and His glory, is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of [His children].”

In other words, He wants us to return to Him and live with Him in a state like Him forever.

To help us do that, Heavenly Father presented a plan for us to follow. In the scriptures, this plan is known as the plan of happiness, the plan of redemption, and the plan of salvation.

Let’s take a more detailed look at the plan. Before we were born on earth,

we lived as spirit children of our Heavenly Father.

This stage of our eternal progression is known as our pre-earth life, or the premortal existence. Because of the love and glory of our Father in Heaven,

we wanted to become more like Him. For this to happen,

God knew that each of us needed to receive a physical body.

This mortal life, with all its challenges and its joys, would be a chance to learn through experience

and “see if [we] will do all things whatsoever the Lord [our] God shall command [us].”

Under the direction of Heavenly Father,

Jesus Christ created the earth so that we could have a place to do all this.

Thus, in the pre-earth life, we chose to accept this plan of salvation and enter mortality. Here God continues to grant us agency, which is the freedom to act so that we can learn the difference between good and evil and choose to do good.

One way that God wants us to show our love for Him is to obey the commandments He gives us. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”

As part of these commandments,

God asks us to receive sacred ordinances like baptism.

As Jesus taught, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he

he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

By receiving these ordinances, we make covenants, or promises, with God. We promise to follow Him, and in return, He promises to bless us.

Of course, God knew that we would make mistakes here on earth,

and if we couldn't repent of our sins,

we wouldn’t be worthy to live with Him again.

To make it possible for us to overcome our sins, God chose Jesus Christ to be our Savior and Redeemer as part of the plan of salvation, Jesus Christ would be born on earth, teach us,

establish His Church, and suffer and die for our sins.

Because of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, we can repent and be forgiven of our sins and mistakes.

And because of His Resurrection, we too will all be resurrected one day and live forever.

As the Apostle Paul wrote, “For as in Adam all die,

even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Of course,

before we can be resurrected, we must die. Just like birth,

death is part of the plan of salvation. Losing friends and loved ones is hard.

We know, though, that the spirit is eternal. After death, the people

we care about and everyone else born on the earth live on. At death,

our spirits leave our mortal bodies and go to the spirit world. In the spirit world, we wait for the time when our bodies will be resurrected.

For those people who chose to follow God on earth,

the spirit world is a place of peace and rest from earthly cares.

The scriptures also tell us in the spirit world, the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to those who never had the chance to hear it during their time on earth

as well as to those who chose not to follow God’s commandments.

When our time to be resurrected comes,

our spirit will be reunited with our physical body.

But this time, our physical body will be perfect and immortal,

and we will never again experience physical death. After the Resurrection,

we will come back into the presence of God to be judged.

We will have a perfect memory of the bad

and good things we did during our life on earth. Because He is our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ will act as our advocate at the Day of Judgment.

If we have repented of our sins, then we will be forgiven of our past mistakes.

Both the New Testament and modern revelation teach that there is more than one kingdom of heaven, or degrees of glory, where resurrected people will dwell after Judgment Day.

As Jesus Himself said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

The first of these and the highest degree is the celestial kingdom. In the scriptures, the celestial kingdom is represented by the sun to evoke its light and glory. This is where the righteous will live—

that is, those people who repented of their sins, received the ordinances of the gospel, and were faithful to the covenants they made with God.

God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, dwell in the celestial kingdom.

Those people who merit life in the celestial kingdom will live with

and be like God forever in a state of glory and happiness.

Another kingdom known as the terrestrial kingdom is provided for those who live generally good lives,

but they were not as faithful to the gospel of Christ. In scripture,

the terrestrial kingdom is represented by the brightness of the moon.

Those people who led evil lives during mortality

but eventually in the spirit world acknowledge Christ as the Savior will live in the telestial kingdom, the lowest of the three degrees of glory. In the scriptures,

the telestial kingdom’s glory is compared to the stars.

Lastly, there is a place of punishment reserved for Satan and the most wicked. It’s called outer darkness, or hell.

The greatest blessing we can ever receive is to live with and like God

together with our family in the celestial kingdom forever.

This is what Latter-day Saints mean by the word exaltation.

So let’s review. What is the plan of salvation?

The plan of salvation is God’s plan to help us, His spirit children, to become like Him. In His plan,

we are born here on earth, where we learn to follow His commandments.

He also sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for the mistakes we’d inevitably make. After we die, our spirits live on in the spirit world, where we will await the Resurrection and Day of Judgment. At the Judgment,

we will be assigned to one of the three degrees of glory

or outer darkness. The Judgment will be based on our actions on earth and who we have become. God loves us.

He wants us to know about the plan of salvation

because He wants us to return to live with Him and be like Him forever.

Now you know.