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Joseph Fielding Smith on Resurrection

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Joseph Fielding Smith

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Now what is a spiritual body? It is one that is quickened by spirit and not by blood. Our Father in heaven and our Savior and all those who have passed through the resurrection have physical bodies of flesh and bones, but their bodies are quickened by spirit and not by blood, hence they are spiritual bodies and not blood bodies. The immortal body is quickened by spirit, but the mortal body is quickened by blood. The Lord said to Noah, that blood is the life of the body in this mortal sphere. In latter-day revelation we have the following:  “For notwithstanding they die, they also shall rise again, a spiritual body. They who are of a celestial spirit shall receive the same body which was a natural body [i.e, a mortal body]; even ye shall receive your bodies, and your glory shall be that glory by which your bodies are quickened.”  From this we have the Lord’s endorsement of a spiritual body being the body which has ceased to be a blood body.

Doctrines of Salvation 2:286-288
Bruce R. McConkie, ed., Bookcraft, Salt Lake City, 1954

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In the resurrection from the dead, the bodies which were laid down natural bodies shall come forth spiritual bodies. That is to say, in mortality the life of the body is in the blood, but the body when raised to immortality shall be quickened by the spirit and not the blood. Hence, it becomes spiritual, but it will be composed of flesh and bones, just as the body of Jesus was, who is the prototype.

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