Posted on 09/06/2010 1:57:21 PM PDT by restornu
“This is how I separate most cults in my mind. “
First of all in days yonder like England and Europe all Religions were called cults
“I believe in one God in three persons.”
“I will never become a ‘god’”
My point and undersanding it makes no different how we understand the word god in gerneral.
The spirit nevers dies just like Lucifer/Satan he is a wicked god!
My spirit your spirit never dies therefore a god
“I am adopted into the family of God by the saving grace of the gospel which is the death, burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus.”
Now this is different when one is adopted into the family of Heavenly Father GOD you would be joint heirs a member of the enternal family of gods.
I beleive like we are today we will be there only learning more as righteous child of God we will always be humble beings unto the Father, Son and Holy Ghost!
Do I give this any thought here no I just try to do the Lord will as the scriptures say
Matt 6
31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Jesus gave us the instruction and that is where man focus should be
Matt 25
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
1 Cor 9
17 For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.
18 What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.
Mosiah 2
16 Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God.
17 And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.
I am trying to understnd your post but it is vague in some areas.
I beleive in the Hevenly Father and His only begotten Son Jesus Christ and Holy Ghost
I believe that Jehovah aka Jesus Christ is the God of Isaac, Abraham and Jacob!
My faith has nothing to do with the gnostici every one is trying to pigeon hole to fit a concept but it just is not so!
Apostle Dallin Oaks on PBS
When Apostle Dallin Oaks was interviewed on July 20, 2007, for the PBS special The Mormons, he candidly spoke of Joseph Smith’s doctrine that God was not always God but progressed from mortality. The following is taken from the LDS web site and is part of his interview with PBS producer Helen Whitney:
D[allin] H O[aks]: Before the close of his ministry, in Illinois, Joseph Smith put together the significance of what he had taught about the nature of God and the nature and destiny of man. He preached a great sermon not long before he was murdered that God was a glorified Man, glorified beyond our comprehension, (still incomprehensible in many ways), but a glorified, resurrected, physical Being, and it is the destiny of His children upon this earth, upon the conditions He has proscribed, to grow into that status themselves. That was a big idea, a challenging idea. It followed from the First Vision, and it was taught by Joseph Smith, and it is the explanation of many things that Mormons do — the whole theology of Mormonism.
H[elen]W[hitney]: Is it the core of it?
D[allin H O[aks]: That is the purpose of the life of men and women on this earth: to pursue their eternal destiny. Eternal means Godlike and to become like God. One of the succeeding prophets said: “As man is, God once was. And as God is, man may become.” That is an extremely challenging idea. We don’t understand, we’re not able to understand, all [about] how it comes to pass or what is at its origin, but it explains the purpose of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is to put people’s feet on the pathway to a glorified existence in the life to come that is incomprehensible, but far closer to God than the Christian world generally perceives.
While Oaks was candid about Snow’s couplet, others have deliberately evaded discussion of their doctrine of God with non-members. When Joe J. Christensen, of the Presidency of the Seventy, addressed a Utah audience in 1995 he told of side-stepping the topic with a non-Mormon professor. The Deseret News reported on his speech:
He [Christensen] told of speaking to a university class in the Southwest on the Church during a Religion in Life Conference. After the class, the [non-Mormon] professor approached him [Christensen] and asked him if he believed the statement, “As man is God once was, and as God is man may become.”
“I had purposely not used that statement during my remarks to the class because I felt that I could raise more dust with that one than I would be able to settle in one class period,” he recalled. “After circumlocuting around and around the question, I finally said, ‘Yes, we believe that.’ “ (”Prophet Joseph Taught ‘Powerful Ideas’,” LDS Church News, Deseret News, Feb. 4, 1995.)
Couldn’t one simply be honest and answer “yes” to the question? Willful “circumlocution” on doctrinal issues does not lead to clarity.
http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no110.htm
Hinckley’s “I don’t know”
For over 150 years the LDS Church has defended the doctrine that God evolved to godhood and that man has the same potential. When President Gordon B. Hinckley was asked in 1997 about their doctrine of God he seemed to be dismissing the doctrine. In the San Francisco Chronicle interview, Hinckley was asked,
Q: There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don’t Mormons believe that God was once a man?
A: I wouldn’t say that. There was a little couplet coined, “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Now that’s more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don’t know very much about (San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1997. p. 3/Z1).
That same year in an interview in Time magazine President Hinckley again downplayed the idea of God having once been a man or that man could become a god: “It’s of course an ideal. It’s a hope for a wishful thing.” He later added that “yes, of course they can.” Further on in the article we read:
On whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man, he sounded uncertain, “I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it . . . I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don’t know a lot about it, and I don’t think others know a lot about it” (Time, Aug. 4, 1997, p. 56).
Joseph Smith seemed to be certain about the doctrine. One wonders why President Hinckley would equivocate on a doctrine that is central to LDS theology? It appears to be a public relations effort to hide true LDS beliefs from the public. (For more examples of Hinckley’s “I don’t know” statements, see
http://www.i4m.com/think/leaders/Hinckley_dontknow.htm
http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no110.htm
To avoid derailing this thread I'll leave the issue of gnosticism alone as much as possible and restate my questions.
Does God the Father possess a physical body?
If God the Father possesses a physical body what is the origin of that body?
Does God the Father have a wife who also possesses a physical body? What is the origin of her body and what is the origin of her being?
Is the physical body of God the Father integral to his person or is it merely a (for lack of a better word) "meat bag" with which he interacts with the physical world?
Did God the Father have an origin? Is his being now, or was it ever, contingent upon another?
I hope that's not vague. I think the problem is Catholics and Protestants are convinced the the God that Mormons profess belief in was created by another God... even if that happened outside of or above the present universe that's pretty much polytheism.
Oh and kolob, we get the chuckles about kolob. Can't help it really, we laugh about Scientology too... well, when we're not crying about it.
Do you have a mormon source for that statement? For all the years I was a mormon, the saying was often repeated from the pulpit..."as man is, God once was, as God is man may become". Other than Hinckley's remark, "I don't know that we believe that", I'd like to see something that backs up your statement.
Two different prophets differ with this statement.
"Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith" (TPJS) record that, on April 6, 1844, LDS Church founder Joseph Smith preached to a congregation of 20,000 saying, "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" (JOD 6:4; TPJS p.346).
"Brigham Young, the second prophet and president of the Mormon Church, delivered a message in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on August 8, 1852, in which he affirmed this teaching when he said, "The Lord created you and me for the purpose of becoming Gods like Himself" (JOD 3:93).
It is my belief that the is only the One and no many can ever reach that height.
Yes it does my friend ,the God of the bible is a jealous God that will not share His glory..He cares
The spirit nevers dies just like Lucifer/Satan he is a wicked god!
And the brother of jesus and a spirit child of the father and one of his wives
Lucifer is a fallen angel.. he is god of this earth according to the scripture ...how many little gods are there on this earth?
So this planet has 2 gods? The heavenly father and jesus??
One does wonder....
I step in that quicksand...now and again, but generally regret it later.
Best FRegards,
Someone saying that little Mormon creedo and Jesus Christ saying “I and the Father are one”, are not the same thing.
Christ was saying He was God. That’s why they were going to stone Him. He didn’t say I was a man and attained godhood, and if you work like I did, you can too.
No Christian ever walks around and says “I and the Father are one.” We know that would be a lie. We are not God. We are spiritually adopted as His children, but we are not God nor are we little god(s) either.
Was that a yes, Mormons do become Gods?
Does God the Father possess a physical body?
****
Please tell me what you mean when you say physical body?
Conclusion Latter-day Saints are not polytheists in any reasonable sense of the term”
Key word in the first definition is the word "or"
–conjunction
1.(used to connect words, phrases, or clauses representing alternatives): books or magazines; to be or not to be.
For the statement to be considered true, one of the following must be true
1. Both statements on either side of the 'or ' are true
2. Only one side is true.
While mormons claim to worship only one 'god', they actually espouse belief in more than one 'god' Therefore the fundamental statement IS TRUE, mormons are polytheists. They may also fall into a subgroup - henotheists, but the bottom line is - by definition - mormonism is polytheistic.
Instead of defending the grossly dishonest redefinition of the terms, FAIR attacks the Monotheistic Trinitarianism. Sorry FAIR, the early church doesn't agree with you.
1- Do you have a mormon source for that statement?
For all the years I was a mormon, the saying was often repeated from the pulpit...
2- "as man is, God once was, as God is man may become".
***
It is my understand from what I read from LDS Standard works
It is explained in Abraham 3
17 Now, if there be two things, one above the other, and the moon be above the earth, then it may be that a planet or a star may exist above it; and there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it.
18 Howbeit that he made the greater star; as, also, if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other,
yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before,
they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.
19 And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits,
one being more intelligent than the other;
there shall be another more intelligent than they;
I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.
8 ¶ For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
I have never thought of it in that terms and I am sure other members have never thought of it in those terms.
What I have thought of was what a blessing if would be to be in the presents of God the Father and the Only begotten Son Jesus Christ the rest is beyond my mind for anything else would be speculation not knowledge.
I believe if one does strive to do the will of the Father to the best of their abilities one will be received.
John 14
6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
John 15
1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.
11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
John 16
12 I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. (Milk before Meat)
13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
14 He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
15 All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
16 A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.
Hmmmmm.....I wonder where I've heard that phrase before? Pun intended?
I know what I understand and somethings you asked the Lord has not spoken yet.
“Also, no matter how good you are in this life, if your husband doesn’t become a god you can not enter the celestial kingdom, so your ultimate salvation is dependant upon another human being, not yourself. How does that make you feel?”
The covenant was made by the husband to God and the wife to God if the husband was abusive or other reasons could not be receive the wife if she kept her covenant will be honored and vice versa.
Much of what you are asking is speculation yet when one sincerely takes it in prayer many thing of the question will be resovled or one will not be bothered by it.
There is an order to everything and like this too much has been taken out of order to confuse and that is not a good things that is why there is good advice milk before meat or it makes it that much longer to grow in understanding.
If one has no foundation in basic math should they be exposed to calculus first.
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