“...you have to learn to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, - namely, by going from one small degree to another...” (Journal of Discourses Vol. 6 Page 4, 1844. Joseph Smith)In the very beginning the Bible shows there is a plurality of Gods beyond the power of refutation. It is a great subject I am dwelling on. The word Eloheim ought to be in the plural all the way through--Gods. The heads of the Gods appointed ONE God for us... (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 372)
“I will go back to the beginning, before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth; for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why he interferes with the affairs of man. God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret. (Joseph Smith, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 6, p. 3, 1844)
Do you, Jeff, really believe those teachings from your founding 'prophet' agree with what the entire Bible teaches? If you agree with that blasphemy from Smith then you need to ask yourself why you would claim to be a Christian, because such blasphemies are very uncomfortable for a Christian with God's Spirit in their human spirit, the earnest of their inheritance.
I do read the Bible. Have done so all of my life. Both before I became LDS and after.
Read Genesis 1: 26-27. God himself says, “Let us make manin our own image,” male and femalee. So apparently there is an “us” to the Gods, and male and female have something to do with being in their image. In Genesis 3:22 after Adam had sinned, again, God said, “he (Adam) has become as one of us,” again speaking of the plurality in Heaven, and showing, BTW that the lie Lucifer told Adam and Eve was not that they would become as the Gods (because God himself in vs. 22 says that they had), but that Adam “would not surely die,”...because God brought him into mortality, dust to dust afterwards.
In Matthew 5:48, Jesus Christ commands us to, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”
We believe He meant it. Paul spoke of that potential as well in Romans. John also spoke of it.
At Christ’s baptism the Holy Ghost descended, Christ was being baptised, and the Father spoke from Heave...indicating a plurality. The same occurred at the mount of transfiguration. The martyr Stephen saw Christ sitting, seprately on the right hand of God, also indicating their seprateness and plurality.
Jesus Himself explained in the intecessory prayer in John what their oneness meant when He prayed that His disciples would, “become one,” even as He and the Father were one. He didn’t mean for them to come together mysticly and be one entity/personage with twelve different representations, He meant for them to become perfectly united through Christ in heart and mind.
There’s lots more.
So, there is plenty of evidence in the Bible itself for what those men opined on in their personal teachings.
You disagree hotly with their interpretation and that is fine, you have every right. But do not suppose or indicate that what they were talking about does not have biblical, both Old and New Testament, reference.
So, yes, I believe as Christ commands that I can become as God the Father is. It will probably take many, many millinea in the herafter I suppos...or longer, but I believe that is what He wants for His children because He had Jesus Chriost Himself command us to do so. I also believe that becoming like Him involves more than me, it involves my wife, as God indicated when He created Adam and Eve.
You believe differently and I am sure can show me all sorts of great scholars who indicate differently...but I read the Bible and take it for what it says, and believe it when Paul also indicated in the New Testament that Christ’s Church was made up of Prophets, Apostles, Evangelsist, Teachers, Bishops, etc. It is the way the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is organized precisely for that reason.
Those apostles did tell us to look out for false prophets, and I agree...but they also taught that His church would have prophets so there clearly should be true prophets as well.
You believe and teach Joseph Smith was false. I have a testimony of him being true. We disagree.
In the end, it will be our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified that will both save us and lead us to all truth. And that is where I am content to leave it.
Hi MHG,
Thanks for pointing these quotes out. I don’t find them contradictory to the Bible, or to be blasphemous.
If we are to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), and inherit all that the Father has to give, it makes full sense to me that our possibility is to at some day in eternity we may become like our Father in Heaven.
Of course He will always be our God, and Christ will always be our Savior, so there is no talk of us becoming higher than, or replacing the Father or the Son.