Posted on 07/13/2007 3:58:12 AM PDT by Gamecock
Part 1: Our Mormon Brothers?
Ping
Your OP references the writings of Mormons Prophet Joseph Fielding Smith in his work; “Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith”
This excerpt from that work is particularly telling IMO.
Joseph Smith (Mormon prophet) stated:
“Here, then, is eternal life — to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you,... To inherit the same power, the same glory and the same exaltation, until you arrive at the station of a God.... “ (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 346, 347)
Milton R. Hunter, a member of Mormonism’s First Council of the Seventy, wrote in The Gospel Through the Ages, p 104:
“Mormon prophets have continuously taught the sublime truth that God the Eternal Father was once a mortal man who passed through a school of earth life similar to that through which we are now passing. He became God - an exalted being - through obedience to the same eternal Gospel truths that we are given opportunity today to obey.”
Hunter further wrote in the chapter, How Men May Become Gods:
“Thus all men who ascend to the glorious status of Godhood can do so only by one method - by obedience to all the principles and ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If to obtain eternal life means to enjoy the same type of life that God lives and to experience similar experiences, then those people who receive it to the fullest degree shall actually be Gods.” (The Gospel Through The Ages, p. 117)
But our Bibles state:
Psalm 90:2 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
FIP ping
Ping!
An while you’re at it you may want to swing by YouTube and view this.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPyvJacwUI
It really is sad. These young men are so undereducated, that they can not even defend their own faith beliefs. I have encountered these “guys” and it only takes about a minutes before they excuse themselves and ride off.
Yet, I laughed.
My hearing isn’t good enough to understand that clip with the traffice noise, but what I noticed is those mishies looked about 14-years-old. Am I getting old, or what? ;)
Yes, I too felt sympathy for those young men still in their teens, sent off into a world unprepared with an answer, and unaided by the Holy Spirit.
My father was once such a man. His missionary journal is sad to read. It is full of hunger, fatigue, doubt, and sacrifice....and to what end? He was in the Northern Mexico, Southern California region....a Spanish speaking mission, where the only converts joined the LDS as a means to an end, and when they discovered that their membership didn’t bring automatic citizenship, they promptly abandoned their new “faith.”
I think it makes it more difficult to view the obvious pain of those young men when you have grandsons who are the same age.
I can’t even imagine sending my grandson (who is LDS BTW) out into the mission field in only five years. He’s a very unsure and imature young thirteen year old, and actually better prepared to answer than these young men.
It makes my spirit weep.
bflr = bump for later reading
John 17
11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
...
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
As a former POTUS once said, "It depends on what the meaning of is is.", or something like that.
Jesus gave to ‘them’ the same thing that He had within His human spirit, The Holy Spirit. Jesus walked the Earth as a man, God as a man indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, thus Jesus is The Man-God, as the Holy Spirit is The Spirit-God, and The Father is Almighty-God. That same indwelling Holy Spirit makes the Saved one with Him by the same Holy Spirit, else Jesus would not have told the lowly Apostles ‘greater works/miracles will you do’.
Thanks for providing the trinitarian understanding.
read later
-A8
If the answer lies further down the thread, and I'm mis-reading, my apologies. I have been out-of-country for a month and have not had time to catch up.
On the other hand, if my interpretation is that the "doctor" is an anology for the "prophet" JS, my congratulations for an excellent illustration!
Unlike our adamic state, with a human spirit void of LIFE, Jesus had a human spirit ALIVE with The Spirit of God. It was this Spirit which left Him at calvary, leaving the human to die in our place, It was The Holy Spirit Who raised Him from the dead by coming again into His human spirit. IMHO, that's why the negative image is found on the Shroud, because the Light of LIFE came from the inner to the outer, quickening the body wrapped in the Shroud.
Sorry for the late reply....I was camping.
Yes the story of the unliscensed medical doctor was an analogy.
You’ve probably caught on by now.
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