The Lord Explains the Nature of Spirit Bodies and Mortal Bodies
Ether 3:15–17
15 And never have I showed myself unto man whom I have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast. Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image.
16 Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.
17 And now, as I, Moroni, said I could not make a full account of these things which are written, therefore it sufficeth me to say that Jesus showed himself unto this man in the spirit, even after the manner and in the likeness of the same body even as he showed himself unto the Nephites.
Elder Erastus Snow said:
“Now what is this spirit? Is it an immaterial substance? No! . . . It is a being precisely as we are seen here today; and if you ask, ‘How does brother Snow’s spirit look when it is disembodied?’ Why, you just look at me now, and you can answer the question. How does the spirit of my wife look? Why, just look at her and see. And if we were both disembodied at the same instant, we should scarcely know that we were changed any more than we would if we both started out of the door at the same instant and found ourselves outside, looking at each other, and do not see very much difference between us than what there was when we were both inside the house. Whether inside or out of it, we are the same beings.
“Conversing together? Yes. Looking at each other? Yes. The same features exactly. Our tabernacles are formed for our spirits, yes, expressly for our spirits. But why were they not all made alike? Why were they not all made just six feet high, and why were they not all, in every respect, all the same length; limbs, likeness, the same; the same length of an arm? You may just as well ask the tailor, ‘Why do you make different sized coats and pants?’ And say to the milliner also, ‘Why do you make different sizes of dresses and other garments?’ And their answer is, because I have so many different persons to fit, and I make the garment to fit the person. And that is the answer concerning the tabernacles. They are made to fit the spirits . . . , the spirit being of finer material, possessing greater intelligence, more fully developed, and organized for greater and more glorious works.”
(“Discourse,” Deseret News, May 8, 1878, 211.)
