Posted on 05/27/2002 9:55:07 PM PDT by restornu
Bingo!, that's what I always though, but I wasn't quite sure what way he did mean. You link was quite usefull in that department. Thanks.
I had no idea that "Adam" was used in that way in those days. Yet still, with the "famous" 1852 discourse, you have to go through a column-by-column compare with two other notetakers to show that 50 words or so were omitted in a very critical spot that changes the apparent meaning completely.
It is just incredible the extensive scholarship that is required if you are going to reconstruct fairly and accurately the controversial quotes from these 150-year-old sermons that were transcribed under frontier conditions and were not reviewed by the speakers for accuracy before being published on another continent.
Just reinforces my policy of sticking with the Scriptures.
Thanks for the very informative read.
Not sure what you mean. To my understanding, eternity is a state of existence where the past, present, and future are one eternal Now, and God's course is one eternal round. (Don't ask me how God does that.) Time is a state of existence where the past is a fading memory, the future is a big unknown, and the present moment is all we have in which to act.
Rev. 10: 6
6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:
>> I read what steve posted and did not understand one word of it to be honest...so I am flagging him here.
Which post was that?
>> All of us [are] ... [spirit children of] God the Father including Jesus [and] Michael/Adam [and (my speculation) the Holy Spirit also]. There was [support of our Heavenly Father's plan] to form this current system ...all the spirit children were to get human form [a physical body] so they too could progress. But they needed to have certain trials to do so thus they need to have a human form as the Father himself did
The evidence we have, as I recall, for "as the Father himself did" in Scripture is:
John 5: 19
19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
D&C 130: 22
22 The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.
>> before [God the Father] became God.
More Brownie points lost. Do the Scriptures say there was ever a time when God the Father was not God? He is from everlasting to everlasting.
>> his brother lucifer
Nowhere in Scripture does it ever say that Lucifer is anyone's son or brother. Satan has certainly forfeited any such claim.
(It is also true that the Holy Spirit is not referred to as anyone's Son or Brother either. That is why scottie speculates, if I recall, that He may not be a spirit child of our Heavenly Father. My speculation is different.)
So, sticking to the Scriptures, there is a lot we don't know that we would very much like to know. One day we will have all these questions answered. In the meantime, we have all we need to know that affects our salvation.
I have run out of time, and will have to get to the rest of your post later.
Surely you have had years of conditioning to that effect, that a physical body is limiting and corrupting and cannot be otherwise, even in the Resurrection. But Paul says otherwise:
1 Corinthians 15: 22-24, 50-57The Bible is quite plain. Jesus is our Lord and our God. He was born of Mary. He was baptized by His cousin John, and walked this earth as any other mortal man. He ate and drank. Being the Son of God, no man had power to take His life. But, being mortal, he had power to lay down His life, and take it up again. After His resurrection, He showed His apostles the wounds in His hands and feet and side, and ate before them. Why would He want a physical, immortal, incorruptible, holy, glorious, eternal, celestial, resurrected body if it limited or corrupted His Godhood, His Omniscience, Omnipotence, or Omnipresence in any way, or if it made Him less like God the Father?
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.
24 Then cometh the end ...
50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible teaches us that we will be physically resurrected too, either in the resurrection of the just (if we are just) or that of the unjust (those who are unjust and unrepentant, after they suffer for their own sins).
John 5: 29Our experience with a corruptible, fallen physical nature here will surely help us appreciate an incorruptible, glorious physical nature hereafter. These things are to help us become more like Jesus and more like God the Father, not less like Them. We are created in God's image, male and female.
25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;
27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.
28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
Acts 24: 15
15 And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.
Even though Jesus was God before He was born in Bethlehem, still He said that the Father was greater than He, that He was doing only what He saw the Father do, commanded us to be perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect, then said the third day (referring to His resurrection) He would be perfected. After His ascension into heaven, He visited some of His other sheep, which were "not of this fold", and told them:
Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 12: 48
48 Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.
This is tantamount to a declaration that God the Father has a glorified, immortal, incorruptible, physical, resurrected body which has everything to do with His Perfection, and that Jesus is showing us the Way to Perfection, which includes obedience, faithfulness, trustworthiness, lovingkindness, coming to this earth to receive a physical body, learning self-mastery and self-control and good, wholesome discipline, and then participating in the holy resurrection, becoming immortal and incorruptible, spirit and element inseparably connected, to receive a fullness of joy and die no more.
Doctrine and Covenants 130: 22
22 The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.
>> First, while the Nicene creed was officially adopted in the 300s, this didn't mean that it was all of the sudden thought up then. As early as 180 AD, Theophilus of Antioch spoke of the the Trinity.
Using the word Trinity is fine with me, so long as we stay with the Biblical definition of the Godhead or Trinity. The word means Three (who are) One, as John says:
1 John 5: 7
7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
I also concur with the rest of your post. I would just remove two words at the end of the parallelism paragraph so that it reads: "the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three divine persons who are one (God)."
>> It's hard for me to exactly understand what the sticking point is with the Mormon faith on the Holy Trinity, except that you believe that God in fact is a physical being and we believe He is purely a spiritual being, until He was born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit and became man.
The sticking point is your belief that unity or one refers to the number one, which the Bible does not teach. It contradicts what Stephen saw just before his martyrdom:
Acts 7:55-56
55 But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,
56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
It also contradicts John 17:20-21 (where Jesus prayed that all believers would be one as He and the Father are One) and every other passage where Jesus prays to the Father as we would or speaks of Him as we would of another Individual. In the Old Testament, we also have references to the Father and the Son as separate Individuals who are One:
Gen. 3: 22
22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Pearl of Great Price, Moses 4:28
28 And I, the Lord God, said unto mine Only Begotten: Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand and partake also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever,
Isaiah 44: 6
6 Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel [God the Father], and his redeemer the LORD of hosts [God the Son]; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
Ps. 110: 1
1 THE LORD [God the Father] said unto my Lord [God the Son], Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
The Holy Spirit is also referred to many times:
1 Samuel 10: 6
6 And the Spirit of the LORD will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.
Unity or oneness is unity of heart, mind, thought, action, purpose, etc. This is a unity that we can learn to emulate, that Jesus had with the Father while the Father was in heaven and Jesus was here in mortality. Jesus said if ye are not one, ye are not Mine (D&C 38:27).
As for Jesus being a spiritual being until He was born of the Virgin Mary (as were we all before we were born here):
Book of Mormon, Ether 3: 16
16 Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.
This occurred shortly after the time of the Tower of Babel, before the days of Abraham or Moses.
Thanks for your post.
As I said in my previous posts (to you and Gophack), Jesus did what He saw His Father do, and did all that He did to show us the way to become more like our Father in Heaven. You are wanting to extrapolate that back and reach some conclusions about what God the Father did, the things Jesus saw Him do. I think you are troubled by the thought for which you have been losing all these Brownie points, that somehow there was a "time" when either God the Father or Jesus or both were not God, were not Eternal, and that maybe "eternal" only goes back to "the beginning of our recorded time".
As I said before, the Scriptures say that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is from everlasting to everlasting, the same unchangeable God, the same yesterday, today, and forever, without shadow of turning. Otherwise we could not learn to place absolute rock-solid faith and trust in Him.
So when we try to extrapolate back, long before the events described in the Scriptures, we are entering the realm of speculation, and we must be sure to keep the above paragraph firmly in mind as we do so, lest we go against Scripture and lose more Brownie points. I would pray about these things, that the Spirit may speak peace to your soul.
>> 2)Is Jesus a spirit child of God [omitting some stuff that doesn't make any sense]. If Jesus is 1st spirit child [firstborn] then [the only mortal] child of the Father [Only Begotten Son]..[more omissions] ( He can be called a God now as he has his resurrected body ...where others do not yet right?)
As I said, Christ was God before He was born in Bethlehem, He was God when He taught the Sermon on the Mount, He was God when He died and rose again, He is God now and evermore.
>> You do not mean that he was "eternally" in the same state he is now correct? But you speak to his pre existance???
Christ was in the beginning with the Father, before the world was, as were all of us. He was God then, but had not had a mortal experience then, and was not resurrected then.
>> I still am trying to grasp the Holy Ghost..but I keep getting hung up here.
Since the Scriptures are silent, we can only engage in foolish speculation. My speculation is that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, like Jesus, is a spirit child of our Heavenly Father and that the plan that was presented at the Council in Heaven -- where we would come to this earth to gain a physical body, have a mortal experience, and end up with a resurrected body like our Father in Heaven -- includes Him also. After that was done, He would not be called the Holy Spirit anymore, of course.
fickle perhaps, forgotten no.
What I THINK I understand
1)we all prexisted as "intelligences" BEFORE we became spirits
2) We became spirit children through the Heavenly Father and mother
3) In order to continue to progress" we need to have bodies and have trials and make corect choices.
4)IF we meet all the prerequisites ( another discussion) we can then obtain "exultation" and godhood with a ressurected body
_________________________________________________
Now if I am right that far (more or less:>)) my questions are pretty straight forward..what does the LDS teach about the pre human Christ? You say he was "always " with the father..but that does get into a needed defination of what is always, as the father was once an intelligence, then a spirit child of another god, and then a human (a man as you are now) , and then having overcome and being obedient became the God of this world.
So with that understanding Jesus could not be both the spirit child of God the Father and have always been with him...impossible..so I do believe we are working from a diferent defination of eternal .
If you consider that eternity for us began with the creation...then your assertion that Jesus was "always" with the Father might make sense.But it makes no sense with the defination of eternity used by most RC's and protestants..
One other issue is part of this. We are told that we are the spirit brother and sisters of Christ..that presumes that we all have the same Father ...again that Jesus was a created spirit child of the Father.
I do not believe lookling at the doctrine of the LDS you can seriously claim an "eternal " relationship " between the Father and Jesus unless you use a different defination of eternity in there WM. I think you are parcing words when you say Jesus was "with the Father" implying a co godship (godhead)or a Father son relationship....as if we were all intelligences first we were all together for every but not in relationsip with each other.
So it could be speculated that at the end of time the Holy Spirit will come to earth and have to make the same choices all men have to make..and then continue on the progression? Does that mean the trinity would cease to exist at the end? Woukd that then free Jesus to move to the level of a heavenly Father? Or is it assumed that Jesus will never leave the father?
Or that the HS might decide to become a Calvinist (a little humor here:>)..Seriously would you presume that he would come with a foreknowlege of what he had to do here as a human .or would he be subject to the same tests as the other spirit children?
I trust you had a wonderful weekend!?
Kings game six, stolen quite blatantly by the referees. Kings game seven, lost by the Kings, many opportunities, the champion did prevail, at least in this pressure situtation, The Lakers prevailed as champions. My only regret is that The Lakers had help to get to game seven. But I am a Kings fan, win or loose, next year will be just as exciting as this one. My prediction, Lakers by 4-1, against New Jersey.
Now with basketball nearly gone, I will work on my own sports rather than watching them.
I no longer follow basketball since Buffalo lost our team (the Braves)..it USED to be my favorite spot (college level) as a kid....I will try to read that link later
Hugh Nibley, in talking about examining ancient early Christian Church documents and trying to weed out the spurious from the genuine, said something in "The Prophetic Book of Mormon" that would seem to be equally aplicable with regards to Brigham's Adam/God statements:
Now today interesting things are happening on many fronts. They are dealing with things differently than they ever have before. If it looks like an elephant, call it an elephant; no matter how queer it may sound, you have to pay attention to it now. Things must be explained. You just can't fit everything into the well-known, established patterns. Before, if anything seemed odd, strange, or weird, you just discounted it; but you can't do that anymore. It is these things that are odd that are most significant. For example, speaking of documents, the best kind of document is the one that has fantastic mistakes in it—when you get a weird anomaly or contradiction or something impossible. That is the time to start looking; that is not the kind of thing that copyists put in. Copyists have a weakness for correcting texts they don't understand, so they write it so they can understand. So if you have a flawless text, look out; it has been faked, doctored; the copyists have taken care of it, they have brought it up to date. But if you have one that is full of the weirdest stuff, there you have a real gem, because that stuff came from somewhere.
I have the Gospelink software, which includes a library of early LDS Church periodicals, and I did a search of the phrase "with whom we have to do" in order to see how many references to Brigham's statements could be found in other places. Lo and behold, the following paragraph turns up:
There is an eternity, and you, with myself, reader, are fast approaching it. There is no stay with time it flies—it hastens—it will soon close. The sound of that trump which will awake the sleeping millions, will ere long be heard, and all nations, kindreds and tongues be brought to stand before the judgment seat of Christ—The wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked—no excuse can be offered to prolong the summons, or a show of righteousness, clothed with deception, escape the scrutinizing eye of "him with whom we have to do." These are realities without the least shadow of fiction.
This is from, believe it or not, Volume 1 of the "Messenger and Advocate", by Oliver Cowdery, in May of 1835, when he announced that he was leaving the editorial department of the paper. Given that Brigham Young claims that Joseph Smith taught him the "Adam/God doctrine", and that Oliver Cowdery references his use of the phrase by placing it inside quotes himself, it makes me wonder if there isn't a tie between Brigham's use of the phrase in 1852 (did Joseph originate the phrase "the God with whom we have to do" and teach some about the doctrine as early as 1835?) and Oliver's use of the same phrase some 17 years earlier.
There's no proof of anything here, of course, but I find Oliver's use of the phrase in 1835 to be very curious. It could simply be that the phrase "Him with whom we have to do" was a popular idiom of the day used for referring to God. I don't know one way or the other.
Nevertheless, no less than B. H. Roberts himself wrote an article for the May, 1889 "Contributor", wherein he refers back to the teachings of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young by saying (emphasis is mine)
The Prophet Joseph Smith is credited with having said that our planet was made up of the fragments of a planet which previously existed; some mighty convulsions disrupted that creation and made it desolate. Both its animal and vegetable life forms were destroyed. And when those convulsions ceased, and the rent earth was again consolidated, and it became desirable to replenish it, the work was begun by making a mist to rise that it might descend in gentle rain upon the barren earth, that it might again be fruitful. Then came one of the sons of God to the earth—Adam. A garden was planted in Eden and the man placed in it, and there the Lord brought to him every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and Adam gave names to them all. Afterwards was brought to Adam his wife, whom, since she was derived from man, he named woman; and she became his help-mate, his companion and the mother of his children. In this nothing is hinted at about man being made from the dust, and woman manufactured from a rib, a story which has been a cause of much perplexity to religious people, and a source of much impious merriment to reckless unbelievers. We are informed that the Lord God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb before it grew on our planet. As vegetation was created or made to grow upon some older earth, and the seeds thereof or the plants themselves were brought to our earth and made to grow, so likewise man and his help-meet were brought from some older world to our own, to people it with their children. And though it is said that the "Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground"—it by no means follows that he was "formed" as one might form a brick, or from the dust of this earth. We are all "formed" of the dust of the ground, though instead of being moulded as a brick we are brought forth by the natural laws of procreation; so also was Adam and his wife in some older world. And as for the story of the rib, under it I believe the mystery of procreation is hidden.
This would appear to be B. H. Roberts standing up for, at a minimum, certain aspects of Brigham's statements regarding Adam and Eve coming to Earth from a previous mortality somewhere else, and the idea that Adam being formed from the dust of the ground by his Father occurred in exactly the same way I formed my own children from the dust of the ground.
All in all, I think there's more substance to Brigham's "Adam/God" statements than the current LDS Church leadership is prepared to see taught to the members. Brigham felt that it was a doctrine important enough that it merited some amount of explanation to those in the tabernacle that day, and for a Church that claims continuous revelation from God, the "we really don't know what he meant" defense is laughable and inexcusable.
I agree. But such was never my contention. My contention is that this belief in an Adam/God doctrine is the creation of non-members and apostates, decades after the death of Brigham Young. It was not a "doctrine" that suddenly ended, it never got started.
Now you can discount the words of Joseph Fielding Smith, about Brigham Young if you wish, by his statement that "Young was most likely misquoted", yet you must admit that Smith took those very same words and defended everything that Young said and claimed the interpretations of Young were in error. I think that Smith provided sufficient arguments that the proponents of Adam/God are guilty of, "misquoting Young".
After considering the entire volume of what Brigham Young wrote, huge volumes contradictory to the claims of what people thought Brigham meant, it is the "we know what he meant" claims from known enemies and apostates that I consider as laughable and inexcusable.
Apostasy is in the eye of the beholder. When later mainstream Christians backed away from Paul's statement "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?" by basically admitting they weren't sure what Paul was talking about there, was it because Paul was the apostate for bringing up weird stuff, or because they had lost something along the way?
I doubt that anyone posting articles at the UK site would consider themselves to be enemies of the Church. There are aspects of the Adam/God doctrine that used to be taught at the Lecture at the Veil in the temple. Were we wrong for including it in the ceremony in the first place, or for eventually taking it out?
Yes it is! The course that I recommend is to consider what Brigham Young said, then consider what other people say he said. Judge them by their fruits. Judge them by the four Standard works. Judge them by the other doctrines taught, whereof Adam/God is kingpin.
When later mainstream Christians backed away from Paul's statement "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?" by basically admitting they weren't sure what Paul was talking about there, was it because Paul was the apostate for bringing up weird stuff, or because they had lost something along the way?
Clearly this better supports what I was saying. You have an apostate group "mainstream Christians" trying to find meaning in words preserved by people dedicated to preserving the word of scripture, regardless of whether it is fully understood. That the mainstream Christians could not understand it is not surprising and does nothing to discredit Paul. The only discredit here is in what the apostates say Paul meant by those words. Again, the eye of the beholder.
I doubt that anyone posting articles at the UK site would consider themselves to be enemies of the Church.
I agree. But this seems to be the slippery slope observation, "If the church is hiding this, certainly other things are amiss." Again, consider all fruits.
There are aspects of the Adam/God doctrine that used to be taught at the Lecture at the Veil in the temple. Were we wrong for including it in the ceremony in the first place, or for eventually taking it out?
I think here you may more honestly address this by saying, "What makes both versions correct?" "How does the newer version support and sustain the members better than the one in the past?" I don't see either one as right and the other by necessity wrong, I see two examples, both mutually acceptible to God, one more acceptible to a qrowing, culturally diverse, church.
It s just heart breaking that those who claim to love the Lord bait and taut. You can tell them over and over what was really recorded and days later its repeating vicious gossip.
There are a few here I can respect for they find our believe peculiar and questionable, because of their love for of the Lord that they refrain from engaging in being mean spirit.
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