lared "the
living Father hath sent me." Not a few of the disciples failed to
comprehend His teachings; and their complaints drew from Him these
words: "Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man
ascend up where he was before?"[21]

To certain wicked Jews, wrapped in the mantle of racial pride, boastful
of their descent through the lineage of Abraham, and seeking to excuse
their sins through an unwarranted use of the great patriarch's name, our
Lord thus proclaimed His own preeminence: "Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Before Abraham was, I am."[22] The fuller significance of this
remark will be treated later; suffice it in the present connection to
consider this scripture as a plain avowal of our Lord's seniority and
supremacy over Abraham. But as Abraham's birth had preceded that of
Christ by more than nineteen centuries, such seniority must have
reference to a state of existence antedating that of mortality.

When the hour of His betrayal was near, in the last interview with the
apostles prior to His agonizing experience in Gethsemane, Jesus
comforted them saying: "For the Father himself loveth you, because ye
have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth
from the Father, and am come into the world again, I leave the world,
and go to the Father."[23] Furthermore, in the course of upwelling
prayer for those who had been true to their testimony of His
Messiahship, He addressed the Father with this solemn invocation: "And
this is the life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the
earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O
Father glorify thou with thine own self with the glory which I had with
thee before the world was."[24]

Book of Mormon scriptures are likewise explicit in proof of the
preexistence of the Christ and of His foreappointed mission. One only of
the many evidences therein found will be cited here. An ancient prophet,
designated in the record as the brother of Jared,[25] once pleaded with
the Lord in special supplication: "And the Lord said unto him, Believest
thou the words which I shall speak? And he answered, Yea, Lord, I know
that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not
lie. And when he had said these words, behold, the Lord shewed himself
unto him, and said, Because thou knowest these things, ye are redeemed
from the fall: