Alma describes the ‘restoration’ which resurrection brings to pass in this way:
The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.
Alma 40:23
I’ve always considered this in the sense of our mortal bodies; that we will be as we are here, but in a perfected state. Dad used to always joke that he’d get all his hair back in the resurrection, and we know that people with disabilities here won’t have them after this restoration. But this morning, as I read it for my scripture study, I had a slightly different perspective, and it’s that last line that triggered it.
All things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.
What is that frame? The one we have here? These bodies are for mortal purposes – with their passions, inconsistencies, weaknesses, responses to stimuli, genetic legacies from our forbears, fragility, and unstoppable tendency towards entropy. These are all conditions necessary for the particular challenge of this life. It seems right that the point to which we’ll be restored isn’t a reset to how we are now, just better, but to our proper and perfect frame – what we were always intended to be. That it won’t just be our current bodies without their messy bits, but a body that is the appearance of who we really are – all that we will have become, from our life as spirits before this one, and with what we’ve become on earth. Nothing shall be lost that we have gained in our development.
Just my thoughts. I’m going further here than Alma did, and he was very careful about what he told his son and recorded about this. It appears as a logical conclusion to me, but who can say? It’s probably one part of the whole story. It will be very interesting to see what the reality of it is.
Peaceable Treasures 