As I wrote before, the cause of Christmas can be found in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The glory of the Nativity is that the Christ Child was born not merely to suffer and die but to rise into immortality and eternal life. He was not born to die, not even to live. He was born to Live, to Exaltation and Godhood, and to open the path for all of us to follow that we, through His grace, may redeemed, purified, sanctified, and exalted – to be victorious over Death and Hell through Him and with Him to sit down upon the Throne of God as gods ourselves. (See. Revelation 3:21) Thus, our exaltation is the true purpose of Christmas.
The Restoration adds depth to these truths lost in the rest of Christendom, most of whom who cannot even give a good definition of the purpose of life or the life of the Saved in Heaven. As a result, Christendom generally falls short of truly understanding the destiny the Father has in store for us. In doing so they thereby fail to see the fullest glory of the Nativity. By failing to understand the eternal history of the spirit of man and his eternal destiny other Christians fail to understand the place of Christmas as part of the eternal cycle of Creation, Salvation, and Exaltation for all of God’s endless children. But I have recently come across a fantastic example of someone who clearly understood this majestic drama and wrote about it clearly and openly – that person being Apostle Orson Pratt, one of the most influential LDS theologians in Church history.
Elder Pratt wrote the following text in an 1853 edition of The Seer, a magazine he published after being called to oversee Church labors in the eastern United States and to write a magazine which would defend the doctrines of the Church, especially plural marriage. The section below is but part of a larger ongoing series of articles titled The Pre-Existence of Man. In this section Elder Pratt has just finished discussing a rather deeply metaphysical ideal of God wherein he argued that each exalted being, such as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, as well as all other such possible beings, are separate individuals but all share the same eternal attributes, which he summarizes as Truth. This Truth can be said to be the purest essence of God, even God Himself, as it is what exalts, glorifies, and deifies all divine beings. It reminds me of the idea of the Logos, as mentioned in the last article, in that he seems to be trying to define the purest and universal essence of God. While the idea is one that doesn’t fit in with current LDS ideals of God it does anticipate the idea that God’s attributes are what define Him as God such that if He stopped having them – for example if He stopped being perfectly just or perfectly kind – then He would cease to be God, which is currently a common belief among the Saints. After completing his argument, Elder Pratt then gives the best summary of the Eternal Plan of Salvation and the destiny of the faithful, and thus the meaning of Christmas, that I have ever read. I commend it to you as a way to better your understanding of this subject so that you can better appreciate the meaning of Christmas and deepen your appreciation of the birth of Christ by expanding your comprehension of the scope of His work.
A final note: I have updated the punctuation that was in the original newspaper print and broken up the text into more readable paragraphs so as to make it more easily readable. While doing so I have endeavored to maintain Elder Pratt’s language and meaning. You can see the original here on pages 134 and 135 for reference purposes. Everything from here on is Elder Pratt’s writings. Enjoy!
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[111.] It is for this purpose that we have dwelt so long upon the pre-existence of man, in order that we may the more clearly understand, not only our heavenly and God-like origin, but, the grand system of laws by which God originates and prepares tabernacles for His own residence, in which the fulness of His wisdom, power, and glory, are manifested. O’ how great, and how marvelous are the ways of God, and His plans which He has adopted for the salvation and glorification of His intelligent offspring! Who can understand these things without rejoicing by day and by night? And who can understand the works of our God, and the mysteries of His kingdom, unless he is enlightened by the light of the Holy Spirit! Well did the Apostle Paul say, “the natural man knoweth not the things of God, because they are Spiritually discerned …but God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things of God.” [See 1 Cor. 2:10,14] Well did our Saviour say, that the Spirit of Truth should guide his disciples into all Truth — should take of the things of the Father, and should shew them unto his people — should shew them things to come, and thus make them revelators and prophets that mankind would consider upon these things!
O’ that they would come unto God, like men in days of old, and learn of Him now, as they did then. that they would reflect upon their heavenly origin, and what maybe their future destiny if they would only claim, through obedience and faith, the high privileges set before them! O’ that they knew what belongs to their peace and welfare, both here and hereafter, but they know not — they are like the beast that perisheth, for whom slaughter is prepared, and he knoweth it not! Even so, it is with this generation; they know nothing, only what they know naturally. They have denied the necessity of present revelation, therefore, all spiritual light and heavenly knowledge are withheld from them, and they will bring swift destruction upon themselves, and perish in their sins. And this causes my heart to be sorrowful; and I mourn over the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of their minds, by day and by night. And I labour and toil, and also my brethren, to recover them, but their hearts are fully set within them to do evil, and they must soon be ripened for the destructions decreed upon the nations in the latter days.
112. We have, in this article on pre- existence, traced man back to his origin in the heavenly world, as an infant spirit. We have shown that this spirit was begotten and born, by celestial parents, long anterior to the formation of this creation. We have shown that the great family of spirits had a probation and trial before they came here — that a third part of them fell, and were cast out of Heaven, and were deprived of fleshly bodies while the remainder have come forth in their successive generations to people this globe. We have shown that, by keeping this their second estate, they will be perfected, glorified, and made Gods like unto their Father God, by whom their spirits were begotten.
The dealing of God towards his children, from the time that they are first born in Heaven, through all their successive stages of existence, until they are redeemed, perfected, and made Gods, is a pattern after which all other worlds are dealt with. All Gods act upon the same great general principles; and thus, the course of each God is one eternal round. There will, of course, be a variety in all His works, but there will be no great deviations from the general laws which He has ordained. The creation, fall, and redemption of all future worlds with their inhabitants, will he conducted upon the same general plan; so that when one is learned, the great fundamental principles of the science of world-making, world-governing, and world-redemption, will be understood.
113. The Father of our spirits has only been doing that which His Pro- genitors did before Him. Each succeeding generation of Gods follow the example of the preceding ones. Each generation have their wives, who raise up from the fruit of their loins immortal spirits. When their families become numerous, they organize new worlds for them, after the former patterns set before them. They place their families upon the same, who fall as the inhabitants of previous worlds have fallen. They are redeemed after the pattern by which more ancient worlds have been redeemed. The inhabitants of each world have their own personal Father, whose attributes they worship, and in so doing all worlds worship the same one God, dwelling in all of His fulness in the personages who are the Fathers of each.
Thus will worlds and systems of worlds, and gorgeous universes, be multiplied in endless succession through the infinite depths of boundless; space- some telestial, some terrestrial, and some celestial, differing in their glory, as the apparent splendor of the shining luminaries of Heaven differ. All these will swarm with an infinite number of living, moving, animated beings ,from the minutest animalcules that sport by millions in a single drop of water, up through every grade of existence to those Almighty, All wise, and Most Glorious Personages who exist in countless numbers, governing and controlling all things.
Addendum
I merely want to add my voice to Elder Pratt’s in rejoicing in the Plan of Salvation. This is one of those truths that many Saints are afraid to share because they think its will be seen as strange. And perhaps there is more than a bit of truth to the apostolic advice that we should have milk before meat. But I remember just how profound learning this truth was to me. It not only makes more sense than all other religious and philosophical ideas that I have been exposed to, but it makes sense of religion itself. Fools may mock it, but as Elder Pratt noted in sorrowful terms, they will mourn their error one day. In the meantime I think we Saints should do more to embrace these truths more openly. The power they have to enlighten the mind to its eternal nature and purpose are greater than any other idea out there. In terms of Christmas, by understanding the eternal cycle of the Plan of Salvation we can see the Nativity for what it is – the pivotal moment not only for the salvation of this Earth but for the founding, saving, and exalting of all those who are the eternal children of the Eternal fathers and Eternal Mothers created through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is not only a blessing to our lives, but it is an eternal victory and glory to an endless number of lives to come. To think of the eternal richness of the birth of Christ in this way causes my soul to leap with joy and causes me to wonder more every year at the true and everlasting beauty that was and is the Nativity of the Lord.