“Restored to Its Proper Frame”

Church Educational System
There is no reason for any person to be concerned as to the appearance of individuals in the resurrection. Death is a purifying process as far as the body is concerned. We have reason to believe that the appearance of old age will disappear and the body will be restored with the full vigor of manhood and womanhood. Children will arise as children, for there is no growth in the grave. Children will continue to grow until they reach the full stature of their spirits. Anything contrary to this would be inconsistent. When our bodies are restored, they will appear to be in the full vigor of manhood and womanhood, for the condition of physical weakness will all be left behind in the grave… .

President Joseph F. Smith when speaking at the funeral of Sister Rachel Grant, the mother of President Heber J. Grant, had the following to say in relation to deformities in the resurrection:

‘Deformity will be removed; defects will be eliminated, and men and women shall attain to the perfection of their spirits, to the perfection that God designed in the beginning. It is his purpose that men and women, his children, born to become heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, shall be made perfect, physically as well as spiritually, through obedience to the law by which he has provided the means that perfection shall come to all his children...’

Salvation would be incomplete if individuals should arise in the resurrection with all the deformities, weaknesses, and imperfections that are found in so many of the human family in this mortal existence. We have every reason to believe that the spirits of mankind and all other creatures were in a perfect form in the spirit world. It would be an awful stretch of the imagination to think that the imperfections found so frequently in mortality were defects which were designed in the creation. Moreover, as the Lord made it clear in relation to the man who was born blind, it was not an immortal condition… .

It is the will of the Lord that in the restoration of all things there shall come perfection. The physical defects, some of which may have resulted before birth, are defects which are due to some physical and mortal condition and not an inheritance from the spirit world.

(Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 4:185–87, 189)

Book of Mormon Student Manual (1996 Edition)

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