PURRDITA - My husband and I are not able to physically bear children. We understand that when the Lord comes there will be children for adoption, however we would
like to also be able to bear children of our own and not be limited to
adoption. At this point in our eternal progression we are not interested in
having millions and millions of spirit children that will populate millions
of worlds and I suspect it will be several million years before we would be
interested in doing that. When the Lord comes if we have passed to immortality will the Lord allow us to physically bear children and have the children that we wanted but could not have during mortality? It really doesn't matter to us whether the children are mortal or immortal.
JOEL - The way I understand it, according to the scriptures and latter-day prophets, those who are alive when the Millennium begins will live in a state similar to a translated being. The body will be changed so it is no longer subject to disease or death (3 Ne 28:30-40). During this state procreation will continue, even for those who could not bear children before this change. Children born to parents in this state will also live as a translated being and they will also have children and so on (D&C 45:58). All will eventually be changed in the "twinkling of an eye" to full immortality when they reach one hundred years (D&C 63:51, Isa. 65:20). This would be the same as a full resurrection.
If we die before the Millennium and are resurrected everything will be "restored to it's perfect frame" and "not so much as a hair of the head be lost (Alma 11:43-44).
Joseph F. Smith said that the resurrected person will "be the same person we knew... in our mortal existence, even to the wounds in the flesh. Not that a person will always be marred by scars, wounds, deformities, defects, or infirmities, for these will be removed in their course, in the proper time. Defects will be eliminated and men and women shall attain to that perfection of their spirits, to the perfection that God designed in the beginning."
We might assume this would mean that a man and woman, who could not at one time bear their own children, would be able to do so after they are resurrected. However, even though resurrected bodies will have tangible flesh and bones, their bodies will be spiritual in nature. The body will be without blood, which seems to be the portion of man that makes him mortal. Since their bodies are now spiritual in nature they therefore would be incapable of producing a mortal baby of flesh and blood. This is why the Virgin Mary was so important to God so He could father a son that was part mortal. Resurrected beings would be capable of bearing spiritual children just as God does.
The way I see it, only those who are still alive when the Millennium begins may be able to bear mortal children of their own when they could not previously. Those who die before the Millennium begins and then come forth during the first resurrection will be in an immortal state where they would be able to create only spiritual children.
One thing we should remember is that, to God, we are all his children. And that, during the Millennium, it will make no difference to Him if the righteous parents who raise His children are the biological parents or not. There will be plenty of babies who will come forth during the first resurrection who had parents that will not rise until the last resurrection. Those babies will need someone to nurture them until they grow to their full stature. The parents to whom those babies are given to will be happy to do this.
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