Earthly ordinances help us on our journey to the presence of Heavenly Father and are outward demonstrations of the covenants we make with Him. When we are baptized, we take upon us the name of Christ and promise to keep His commandments. In return, the Lord joins us to the body of the Saints, gives us His spirit to be with us, and cleanses us from sin. These are not only part of our earthly journey, it takes a body to be baptized. After we leave this earth, we are spirits until we are resurrected. As spirits, we cannot be baptized.

Marion G. Romney, of the First Presidency, speaking of people’s divine origin as children of God, stated, “Through that birth process [and we don’t know what that process was], self-existing intelligence was organized into individual spirit beings” (Ensign 8 [Nov. 1978]:14).

The question of whether prespirit intelligence had individual identity and consciousness remains unanswered. Elder Joseph Fielding Smith gave this caution in 1936: Some of our writers have endeavored to explain what an intelligence is, but to do so is futile, for we have never been given any insight into this matter beyond what the Lord has fragmentarily revealed. We know, however, that there is something called intelligence which always existed. It is the real eternal part of man, which was not created or made. This intelligence combined with the spirit constitutes a spiritual identity or individual [p. 10].

So, in other words, we’re still not sure whether individuals were individual intelligences before they were spirits. It hasn’t been completely revealed to modern prophets.