In what sense are we “taken home” to God?

Thomas R. Valletta

“If at death we enter the spirit world, not God’s actual presence, how are we to understand Alma’s words? President Joseph Fielding Smith … explained that Alma did not necessarily mean that we are brought back into God’s presence: ‘These words of Alma [40:11] as I understand them, do not intend to convey the thought that all spirits go back into the presence of God for an assignment to a place of peace or a place of punishment and before him receive their individual sentence. ‘Taken home to God’ [compare Ecclesiastes 12:7] simply means that their mortal existence has come to an end, and they have returned to the world of spirits” (Book of Mormon Student Manual, [2009], 242).

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