I was on a Zoom call the other day and we got onto the topic of pre-incarnation— the idea that we existed in the heavens in eternity before our spirits incarnated into our bodies and formed a living soul. What brought it up was somebody mentioning the idea that we choose the type of pain we will experience in our life—and how for some, this can be a difficult concept to reconcile with their belief in God. Because why would God pre-choose suffering for me? That idea doesn’t seem to match with a good and loving Heavenly Father. In this article, I will try to help reconcile some of the perspective about a pre-incarnation existence in heaven and choosing our incarnation, with the fact of God’s nature being good and loving and kind, etc.
As with most things, I think we need to begin by understanding Jesus is our model. When I look at Jesus as our model, I see that Hebrews 12:1 says this of him: “for the joy set before him endured the suffering of the cross. Therefore let us run our race.” It wasn’t that God desired suffering for us so He sent us to incarnate into the earth. Rather, it’s that in order to incarnate into a fallen world that needs restoration, it was a fact that we would experience pain, suffering, and problems. I believe that our Heavenly Father is a good God, and so I believe that He actually gave us a choice with *disclosure* of what we would face. Our Father wasn’t simply condemning us to some sort of painful 3-D reality, bur rather He invited us into a partnership with Him to restore the cosmos. One that He knew would cost us each individually, but ultimately was going to cost us far less than it cost Jesus.
If I back up a bit and explain this concept of pre-incarnation which I have sometimes referred to as preexistence, there are a few different Bible verses that point to this being a possibility. I say “possibility” because the Bible doesn’t explicitly state the level of depth of pre-incarnation experience that I’m talking about, but it does hint at the fact that there was some sort of “ before” that we each experienced in some sort of conscious manner. To explain from the scriptures, I am pulling a quote from my book The Gamer’s Guide to the Kingdom of God. This comes from the first chapter of the book.
“Numerous verses in the Bible point to this reality of predestination or pre-choice. Jeremiah 1:4-5 says, “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’” This says God had already chosen Jeremiah to be a prophet long before Jeremiah was born, but that’s not all it says. This passage suggests Jeremiah and God had a discussion about it. To know someone is an active and ongoing process, not simply a momentary absorption of knowledge. According to Strong’s Concordance the word know in this passage is the Hebrew word ‘yada’, which is not just a factual head-knowledge, but a perception, discernment, and understanding of a person or thing by experience and acquaintance. Simply put, God said he knew Jeremiah because he didn’t just know about him, but that God and he knew each other relationally before Jeremiah came to earth as a baby. Thus, Jeremiah had pre-existed in Heaven. Furthermore, the word ‘appointed’ in the above passage is the Hebrew word ‘nathan’ which means to appoint, consecrate, bestow upon or put onto. The very nature of that definition suggests that God didn’t just have an idea in his head but actually held a ceremony of some kind in heaven to consecrate Jeremiah and bestowed that office upon him.
Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Simply put, David recognizes here that God actually wrote a book about David before David was even born. Both this passage and the passage from Jeremiah point to the reality of our pre-existence. Here, David recognizes and has some memory or revelation of the fact that his destiny—the choices he pre-determined to make before coming to earth—were decided and recorded in heaven before he became a living being.”
Jeremiah mentioned God knowing him experientially before he was formed in his mother‘s womb . And I clarify above that it was experiential because the Hebrew word yada means to know something by experience. It wasn’t simply that Jeremiah was a concept in God‘s mind before he incarnated, but that there was an experiential relational knowledge that God had of interacting with him in some way before he incarnated. Whether there are any other verses that discussed this or not, there are at least two places where the Bible communicates that there is something that happens *before* we incarnate more than simply not-existing or being a thought in God’s mind.
Something else to consider is that in the New Testament in 1 Peter 1:20-21 it says that Christ was foreknown apart from the foundations of the world, ie. outside of space time, but that he was manifest (incarnated) for us at that time. It is the same Greek word (conjugated differently) as the one in Romans 8:29 that says for those of us He foreknew He predestined to be conformed into Christ’s image. I think no one would argue that Jesus was only a thought in the Father’s mind. And it is the same word used to describe us in “the before.”
A bit more anecdotally, I have a few friends who actually have preexistence memories. I even once wrote a post on social media asking others to share any pre-incarnation memories or experiences, and in less than 24 hours I had ten different people who either had either had their own experience of pre-incarnation or knew of someone else who had one. I personally find this to be an interesting phenomenon because most people when they incarnate either at the time of incarnation or sometime in very early childhood seem to forget whatever came *before*. Chinese mythology actually has a belief that explains this to a certain degree. In Chinese lore, Granny Meng waits at a bridge by the six springs of reincarnation. Before someone reincarnates they have to drink from her bowl of water or soup or whatever it is, and when they do they forget all memories of their past life. Now, I don’t believe reincarnation is God‘s plan for us, nor is it something I teach. I do, however, find it quite fascinating that there is an existing cultural mythology to explain this phenomenon of forgetting an existence prior to our current life, as much mythology has at least a grain of truth to it. This overall idea would explain why there is such a disconnect between who we have always been in eternity and what happens when we incarnate into a body and form a soul.
Now, before going further, I want to be clear about something—this is honestly optional cosmology. You can be a Christian and you absolutely don’t have to believe this. There are some things in Christianity and in life is a whole that we really have the freedom to pick and choose what we do or don’t believe because the ramifications of believing or disbelieving that thing are fairly small. I personally want to know more Truth, if for no other reason than because I believe everything in creation fits together the way it was designed, and I would rather understand the way God made it, free of veil and mystery and confusion. And for a variety of reasons, including the ones I have shared above, this feels right to my spirit, so until God clarifies something further, this is what I believe about this subject.
I want people to know that this is optional not because reading this article automatically forces you to believe what I am saying, but because I think sometimes we get into situations where we feel like we have to make a decision for our theology to move forward. And I don’t want anyone feeling stuck over this. Yes, more and more people are coming into revelation about this, and I personally believe that is simply because it is true. But I also don’t think there’s any real harm that is done if for some reason someone chooses not to believe it. On the converse, even if it isn’t accurate, provided we take the right perspective on it I also think it has little to no ability to cause harm.
And this may sound like a strange disclaimer to make, but I want to briefly explain something about beliefs, discernment, and harm before we dive back into preincarnation. We all have things we believe that aren’t true. The problem is that we *don’t know* they’re not true or we wouldn’t believe them. Healthy people, anyway, want to believe truth and are willing to adjust their thinking once they learn new information. So whenever I come across new beliefs that force me to look at making significant shifts in some area of my belief system, especially when it just feels “right/true” in my spirit, I do a bit of a risk analysis. If I am completely wrong, what is the potential harm of accepting this belief as true over and above what I have been believing before? If the risks are low and/or approaching zero and the benefits are good or at least no worse than the previous belief, you’re likely just fine to switch to the new belief system, especially if it feels like God is already confirming it in your spirit.
Back to the subject of pre-incarnation, I want to lay out why this matters that we understand this. If it causes us to believe that God is afflicting us with something harmful then I could see how that would be a very toxic belief. It would cause us to believe that God is not in fact, good, that He’s not actually very loving, and that He doesn’t actually care about us much at all, because no good Father would intentionally subject someone to the level of abuse and pain that He would knowingly be subjecting us to unless there was a deeper reason behind it. But I believe there *is* a deeper reason for it, and a good one. I believe that God spoke to each of us individually in advance and gave us each a choice because we each had a mission to play—a role in the redemption of all creation. We have to remember that the Bible says Jesus is the firstborn of many brothers, but *we* are the brothers. Meaning, our eldest brother paved the way for the rest of us to come, and the rest of us are here to finish the job in restoring all creation back to full union with the Father. Honestly, it’s a noble mission, and one that I’m rarely sorry for agreeing to. Is it hard sometimes? Absolutely. But I believe that’s a significant part of why God gave us a choice in advance—because He knew that things would get tough and be painful and hard at times. But He also knew that there would be joy set before us that would help us to endure every trial and tribulation and problem that we would face. And then, as I mentioned in a previous article, Jesus already conquered every enemy that we would face, so restoring creation is not an impossible task. It’s an extremely doable one.
About two years I was in a time of prayer and encounter with the Lord and He showed me the globe of the Earth. And as He did, so, I began to see represented before me in the vision all of the problems and opportunities that humanity was facing at the time He was showing me. What made it interesting is that while I was very clear that God was showing me both problems and opportunities, there were zero problems and only opportunities. And that seems strange at first until we understand that with the right perspective, *everything* is an opportunity. My friend Barry Maracle has a saying that I absolutely love, but which I am also going to butcher a bit. The general gist of it is that opposition is not meant to delay or deny you, but to propel you into your destiny. Every obstacle that we face is an opportunity to conform into the image of Christ Jesus. It’s an opportunity to trust the Father one more time. But a little bit more this time than the last time. It’s an opportunity for God to reveal a new aspect of His nature as provider, protector, or some other aspect of His being that He wants to reveal to us. Problems aren’t enjoyable, but with the right perspective, they are opportunities. I believe likewise that this belief in pre-incarnation is an opportunity. It’s an invitation, taking one or two deeper steps into fulfilling the plans and purposes of God in this generation. And I believe understanding pre-incarnation helps clarify some of our purpose and position here on the Earth.
I want to share with you three more examples that point to the reality of pre-incarnation to leave you with more data-points to consider about all of this. The first example is that of a friend of my ex-wife’s who we will call “Katy.” She once had a dream where she was talking to an infant girl planning on coming to earth. Katy told her it wasn’t the right time to do so, and shortly after this dream she had an early first-trimester miscarriage—early enough that she hadn’t even known she was pregnant until the miscarriage occurred. Katy was not even aware she was pregnant, but her spirit knew and told the baby it was not time to incarnate yet. Keep in mind that this is only possible if there is a not-yet-incarnated person in the spirit realms who she can talk to in order to tell her not to incarnate into a body.
A second example is that of Kat Kerr, a prophetess who travels and speaks to various churches about her revelation on heaven and who has taken multiple trips to heaven herself. She speaks in a number of her messages, including at meetings I have personally attended, that we are all spirits that exist in heaven with God beforehand and how we choose to come down to earth, knowing our parents and families and the trials and difficulties we will face, which closely matches what I have been saying.
Third is the well-known minister Jesse DuPlantis who was taken into a heavenly visitation which he recounts in the video and audio recording titled Close Encounters of the God Kind. In that message, he shares that he saw in heaven a great many spirits going up to the throne where God was seated and these spirits clamored excitedly, asking God to send them to be human spirits here on earth. As Jesse watched, he saw God take a deep breath and as he exhaled those spirits were sent from heaven into bodies here on earth, much like in Genesis 2:7 where it says that God breathed spirit into Adam and he became a living soul.
Because eternity operates outside of the realm of time, it is not bound by our human understanding of time. God and each human spirit have decided together when in history we will be born and to what set of parents. Before conception, we are shown in heaven what our life will be like on earth, including the problems we will face physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. As hard as this is for some to believe, we chose to be here in this time and place. We did not create the physical circumstances, but we did pre-know and willingly choose to enter the body that would accompany those traits. The good news about all of this is that if we agreed with the Father to come here, then it means we were sent on a mission and *also* were properly equipped for the task. God doesn’t sabotage people. If He asked us to incarnate here in this time and place, then He already had a plan to meet us at every turn. He already foreknew the challenge we would face, and in many ways we were picked because we were *more* capable of dealing with those things than anyone else! Think about it. No matter what difficulty I face in life, it’s probably a good thing I’m the one dealing with it because anyone else would be less-prepared than I am to deal with that task. Its my life and God asked me for a *reason*.
I hope this is enlightening and encouraging for you, but if nothing else, keep in mind that God the Father and Jesus have been clearly expressed to be one and the same in nature and purpose. So regardless of what you choose to walk away with as a belief, know that the Father’s nature was revealed in Jesus, so whatever we believe, we have to remember that Jesus is perfect theology, and let our understanding of the Father reflect that. Be well and be blessed!
