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.
Your post deeply saddens me, my FRiend, for it indicates without doubt that you are not led by the Spirit of the Lord. That you can seek to give credence to such blasphemies, and do so with such pride in MormonISm as founded by a man such as Joseph Smith, is deeply disturbing to this Christian of forty years.
My last words to you, Jeff, are as follows.
You appear to have fallen for the same temptation and lies upon which satan hooked Eve. Without God's Spirit in you, Jeff, you cannot be perfect; you, as a created human, cannot be perfect except by the coming into your dead human spirit the Holy Spirit of God.
Everyman, and I do mean every including myself, will sin while in the flesh, even after being born again by His Spirit, for it is not the flesh and behavior mechanism which God redeems, it is the dead soul which God makes alive by His Spirit. When you can assert that you are seeking to behave perfectly in order to be worthy, you are proving that your spirit is still dead in pridefulness (to be worthy by behaving perfectly is what you wrote, between the lines, as we both know from studying MormonISM).
No degree of imitating goodness can make your human spirit come alive.
There is ample scripture to show you that The Lord our God is One. God is not one of many gods, God is One. His name is I AM and he did not have to earn the attributes of godhood as the peepstone predator of married women, Joseph Smith, taught in establishing your faux Christianity religion.
At your age I would assume that you have become a member of the LDS inc Melchizadek priesthood. I warn you in the strongest sense I can, there is only One Melchizadek High Priest and He is alive forever more, so there will never be another Melchizadek priest since Jesus arose from the dead.
May The Lord have mercy upon you and shake you out of your darkened stupor before it is too late.
In Matthew 5:48, Jesus Christ commands us to, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”And, from the grave, your second Living Prophet® speaks as well:
"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned;
and I will go still further and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that the Lord has given,
and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned.
Brigham Young - JoD 3:266 (July 14, 1855)
Looks like only the Flds folks are gonna make it; according to a man that spoke for GOD.
So apparently there is an “us” to the Gods, and male and female have something to do with being in their image.It is apparently you who disagree with Joseph Smith's early monotheism:
Book of Mormon, Alma 11:26-28 (1830)
“And Zeezrom said unto him: Thou sayest there is a true and living God. And Amulek said: Yea, there is a true and living God. Now Zeezrom said: Is there more than one God? And he answered, No.” The Book of Mormon 'Testimony of the Three Witnesses' Preface:(1830)
“And honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.”
Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible Isaiah 44:6,8 (left unchanged): (1833) “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer, the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.”
The Book of Moses, Moses 1:6: (1830-1831)
“And I have a work for thee, Moses, my son; and thou art in the similitude of my Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth; but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all.”
Then again, JS's doctrine of God changed in 1834-1835 into Binitarian, or Bitheism, and by 1842 it had degenerated into full-blowhard polytheism. (The latter development no doubt in direct proportion to his lust for women)
Except that if one looks at the historical chronolgy of when these books were supposedly written, you get this:
What is sad to me is that you can apparently see through the Romney con but you are completely blind to the much more evil and deadly cons of that false flip-flopping 'prophet' Joseph Smith. Sometimes I think that if you would just use a fraction of the brain power that you have used to discern what Mitt Romney really is and apply it to Joseph Smith you might actually stumble into some truth about Who God really IS. In the final analysis, though, I think that MHGinTN is right, I pray that God will open your blind eyes and regenerate your heart and bring you to Himself - The One, The Only True God.
Cordially, ,