In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that our spirits are the literal offspring of God the Father.
Acts 17:28-29
28 For in him we alive, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.
Hebrews 12:9
9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
As spirit children of the Father, we looked forward to coming to this earth and taking on a body of flesh and bones. We were to experience good and evil and through our free will be given the opportunity to choose for ourselves whether to do good or evil. Some of God's spirit children did not like the idea of having free will and possibly never returning to live in the presence of God eternally. Lucifer, aka Satan, presented a plan to take away free will and force mankind to do good and have all mankind return to heaven. This plan was rejected by the Father because for one to truly become a good being, one must learn to choose in and of himself to be a good being. Once Lucifer's plan was rejected, he rebelled against God and sought get others to follow after his plan. This battle for over which plan we should follow was known as the War in Heaven.
Revelation 12:7-11
7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
We can see in verse 11 that those who sided with God's plan in the War in Heaven eventually overcame Satan and his angels by the blood of the lamb and their testimony. They were even subject unto death. Only those who come to this earth and take upon mortality are in need of the blood of the lamb and are subject unto death. Thus we see that it is we who are on earth that were those who were in the War in Heaven. After taking upon us mortality and eventually suffering death, our spirits are then taken to the world of spirits. It was there that Jesus went between his death and resurrection to teach the gospel to those who had died.
1 Peter 3:18-20
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
1 Peter 4:6
6 For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
So once we are dead, our spirits go to the world of spirits and there too is the gospel preached among the dead who are spirits. A revelation given to the prophet Joseph F. Smith was received which spoke of these things, see
Doctrine and Covenants 138. In the world of spirits we await our resurrection and judgement. After our judgement and resurrection, we are to be sent to one of four places:
The Celestial Kingdom where God resides.
The Terrestrial Kingdom
The Telestial Kingdom
Outer Darkness where Satan and his angels will reside
This information was also received by revelation to the prophet Joseph Smith in
Doctrine and Covenants 76.
Eventually our earth will become part of the Celestial kingdom of Heaven and we will live upon it if we are saved into the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:5
5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.