I really enjoyed this, thank you for your time to compile this! I do have a question, however: why would we, as angels (spirit beings, pre-mortal), choose to take on such a risky, and dangerous task of coming to Earth to be tried and tested, with the risk of being cast away and subject to a hierarchy of perfection?
It seems like an unnecessary risk.
Mormonism teaches that, during our pre-mortal life, we had a close personal relationship with our Father in Heaven and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We wanted very much to become like our Father, and understood that the experience of mortality was a requirement for us to do so. Remember how in Genesis, in the story of the Fall of Adam, right as God is going to cast Adam and Eve out into the world, He says, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." If you think about this sentence, you'll probably realize that a knowledge of both good and evil is necessary for a person to become like God (i.e. "as one of us," meaning like the Father and the Son). Eden was a perfect place where Adam and Eve could have lived forever without experiencing any of the negative things they would encounter in the world outside. We are taught that if a person never experiences the evil, it is impossible for him to fully appreciate the good. For instance, think about how you felt after recovering from a sickness. Your health probably meant more to you at that time than it usually does. If you'd never known illness, you would be unlikely to be able to really understand the blessing of good health. We need both light and darkness, pleasure and pain, sickness and health, success and failure, etc. in order to recognize and value the other, and in order to begin to progress to the point where we are "perfect, even as [our] Father which is in Heaven is perfect."
We fully understood this when we made the decision to participate in God's plan. We also knew that, even though there would be a risk, if we really wanted to succeed and find ourselves in a position of being welcomed back into Heaven someday, we could know for a surety that we could do so through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We knew that God would not lie to us and that if He told us that He would do everything in His power (except to coerce or force us) to help us return to His presence, that we could trust Him. Even though we have been made to forget this part of our existence, we did understood the Plan of Salvation, and we knew that we would receive help and guidance along the way. I don't think we really saw it as all that much of a "risk," even though we knew it might end up being a real challenge.
