As
to the reason for an atonement, or the need of an atonement, certainly these
physical bodies which we have received must have been, must be, a tremendous advantage
to us. From all the analogy of the race we learn that we were waiting for the
opportunity to enter into this physical body and obtain possession of it, and
we anxiously was ready and we were permitted to come we sang the songs of God,
and could get a tabernacle in a physical body like this. The punishment of the
rebels, the sons of God who went after Lucifer and his hosts, punishment, it
must be a wonderful blessing that we are permitted to come and inhabit physical
bodies. Those who were denied the privilege are cast out, and when they are
cast out, as indicated in the Savior’s casting some out, they desired a body so
much that they were willing to take the body of a swine rather than to have no body
at all. It must be a terrible punishment to them. The advantage of the body is
perhaps more clearly seen if we will look at some other force, steam, for
example, rises all over the face of the earth but it is not effective in accomplishing
any end for the good of man or rendering any great amount of service until it
is harnessed in a body, sent through the engine, then it can render service.
Electricity that leaps from cloud to cloud, mountain top to mountain top is just
as powerful, it is the same kind, but it does not do intelligent work, nor can
it be controlled until you harness it—give it a body, so to speak, that it may
be controlled and its operations directed. If these things are true, and they
are, then the most subtle, the most intelligent, the most powerful of all the
spirit forces there are is the spirit intelligence that dwells in us. There is
not anything equal to it. Powers and forces of electricity and these other
forces are insignificant in comparison to the power, to the might, to the
ability of these children of our Heavenly Father, spirit children, and they,
bring given a body, become more effective. We can do things today that we never
could do before we received these bodies. We are able to feel things that we
never would have felt without these bodies. We never would have realized them.
What would we have known of fatherhood and motherhood without these physical
bodies? There would have been yearnings of the soul wholly unsatisfied, and
there are a thousand other things that we would only have comprehended very
meagerly, just anticipated and longed for and never could have accomplished
without these physical bodies.
So
these physical bodies are a great blessing to us in mortality, and we believe
that they will be not only as great a blessing, but a far greater blessing, to
spirits in the life that will come following the resurrection from the dead. Those
who teach that the resurrection is the rising of the spirit out of the body do
not comprehend, and it is a very strange thing to them, do not comprehend the
necessity of a body after the resurrection. Sir Oliver Lodge in his book “Life
After Death” gives some very excellent reasons why the spirit is more powerful in
earth life functioning here in a physical body, and then the strange conclusion
he reaches after this life, we do not need a body any more. All the argument that
he brings forth showing that we need a body in this mortal life is equally
applicable and more so to the spirit after the resurrection. For instance, we
will turn to do a thousand things that we are unable to do without a body. We will
start but cannot finish because we have not a physical body. And so in the
great providence of God, this body, this tabernacle, shall be ours in the
resurrection. We shall be able to function and operate in all realms in the
spirit world, able to grasp and comprehend spiritual things. (Melvin J.
Ballard, "The Atonement," June 24, 1921, BYU Seminary Lectures,
Lecture 11, pp. 2-3, John Mills Whitaker papers, 1847-1963 box 20, folder 5,
University of Utah Libraries, Special Collections)