Taken Home to that God who Gave Them Life

One of the most famous verses about death in the Book of Mormon is this declaration by Alma to his son Corianton, “Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection—Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life” (Alma 40:11).  This is a verse that President Monson liked to quote, and it was quoted again at President Monson’s funeral with the comment that he had returned home to his Heavenly Father.  At face value the verse suggests that we will all go back to God (even if just temporarily) at the time of our death before moving on to the Spirit World.

               It has been suggested, though, that this verse may not mean what it seems to say at face value.  President Joseph Fielding Smith understood Alma’s words this way, “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, where they are assigned to a place according to their works with the just or with the unjust, there to await the resurrection. ‘Back to God’ is a phrase which finds an equivalent in many other well known conditions. For instance: a man spends a stated time in some foreign mission field. When he is released and returns to the United States, he may say, ‘It is wonderful to be back home’; yet his home may be somewhere in Utah or Idaho or some other part of the West.” President George Q. Cannon similarly qualified the verse saying that Alma “does not intend to convey the idea that they are immediately ushered into the personal presence of God. He evidently uses that phrase in a qualified sense.”  I think I understand what they are saying, but to me I struggle to accept any explanation of the verse other than the one most obvious.  Alma made it clear that “all men” would be “taken home to that God who gave them life” and that it would happen “as soon as they departed from this mortal body.”  He also suggested that he was absolutely certain of this knowledge because it had been made known unto him by an angel (unlike other things he said to his son which he gave as his “opinion”). 

               This verse by Alma has been mentioned numerous times by other general authorities, and it appears to me that most use it to suggest a literal return to our Father in Heaven at the time of death.  For example, President Joseph F. Smith said, “Now we are called upon to pay our last respects to Brother Clayton. His spirit has taken its flight; it has gone to the Father from whence it came, as is taught in the Book of Mormon.”  President Monson used it this way in a 1995 talk: “Just the day before yesterday, she quietly departed mortality and returned “to that God who gave [her] life.”  In another talk he said, “Arthur Patton died quickly. Others linger. We know, through the revealed word of God, that ‘the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, … are taken home to that God who gave them life.’”  In the Special Witnesses of Christ video President Monson recounted a story of trying to comfort someone who was dying with this verse: “Robert asked me, ‘Where does my spirit go, when I die?”  President Monson opened up the scriptures and found this verse from Alma and read it, providing incredible comfort to the man who was at death’s door.  President Monson summed up the experience by saying the young man “pleaded for truth, and from the Book of Mormon, heard the answer to his question.”  To me he was clearly using the verse to suggest that we do indeed return back to our Father in Heaven at the time of our death.  That was how the verse was used at his own funeral this week, and I have believe that it’s exactly how Alma meant it to be interpreted.