Posted on 05/26/2015 1:05:01 PM PDT by piusv
"I feel like saying something that may sound controversial or even heretical. But there is someone who knows that despite our differences we are one. It is he who is persecuting us. It is he that is persecuting Christians today; he who is anointing us with the blood of martyrdom, knows that Christians are disciples of Christ. That we are one, that we are brothers! He doesn't care if they are Evangelicals, Orthodox, Lutherans, Catholics or Apostolic. He doesn't care! They are Christians."
Poor Alma...
...flunked geography...
Genesis 12:1
The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you.
And now you're taught to distrust Southern Baptists!
HMMMmmm...
I don't think we can ever transcend Joseph Smith or consider him to be a valued personality, but now we'll move on.I don't think you'll see that among believers in the faith, because there are too many other things that came from himthat are the reasons why we do what we do and we are what we are. That there are unanswered questions, to be sure.That there are things that I'm as anxious as the next guy to learn more detail on, I really want to know. But in the interim,it really doesn't, doesn't trouble me.We're in the religion-making business, as you intimated earlier, only for a short time, I mean, compared to theChristian church, which has been at this for a couple of millennia. We're about halfway to Nicaea.And so, and so in that sense I remember a very tender moment. I was speaking with I've been invitedto the Salt Lake Theological Seminary, basically an Evangelical seminary, to discuss a book I had done on Jesus.And they had read it, and they wanted me to come and just respond to questions.And it was, it was a very enjoyable couple of hours.The very last question that was asked by one of my friends there was this one.He said, 'Bob, what can we do for you?'And I, I wasn't ready for that question. I said, 'What do you mean?'He said, 'What can we, as Evangelicals, do for our Mormon friends?'And I, I guess my mind could have gone a hundred different ways, but what I came back with was this.I said, 'Boy, I appreciate you asking that. I don't think I've ever been asked that.'But, but I said, 'Try this. Cut us a little slack, will you? Give us a little time.We're in the religion-making business, and this takes time. It takes centuries.And, and trying to explain the faith and articulate the faith, that doesn't come over night.We've really only been about that for 20 or 30 years.'
Are you worthy enough to enter a Mormon Temole?
Do you have a Temple Recommend®?
Why not?
Even the big dude can get away with it!!
The bothersome reply
"I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. 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."
The reporter wrote, "On whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man, he sounded uncertain." That's an unfortunate conclusion. Of course I wasn't at the interview and neither were you but I'll bet the reporter mistook careful thoughtfulness for uncertainty. This doctrine is indeed deep territory and not something that is taught outside the LDS Church.
An earlier and similar interview
The San Francisco Chronicle, published an interview with President Hinckley in April of 1997. The reporter asked, "There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don't Mormon's believe that God was once a man?" President Hinckley responded, "I wouldn't say that. There is a little couplet coined, 'As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.'"
He then said, "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." The reporter pounced on this. "So you're saying that the church is still struggling to understand this? " President Hinckley responded, "Well, as God is, man may become. We believe in eternal progression. Very strongly."
President Hinckley's response
President Hinckley said in October 1997 General Conference: "I personally have been much quoted, and in a few instances misquoted and misunderstood. I think that's to be expected. None of you need worry because you read something that was incompletely reported. You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine.
"I think I understand them thoroughly, and it is unfortunate that the reporting may not make this clear. I hope you will never look to the public press as the authority on the doctrines of the Church." And there lies the whole point of my post today. Some members did indeed become a little concerned by the exchanges they read in the press reports of those interviews.
Does the Church still teach this?
I know this is old news but it still bothers some people when they discover the anti-Mormon attacks floating around on the Internet. President Hinckley was right. We really don't know much about how our Heavenly Father became a God. The idea that he passed through a mortal probationary state like you and me is certainly not documented in any scripture of which I know.
However, it is still taught. In the Gospel Principles manual in the chapter on exaltation we read, "Joseph Smith taught: "It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God. . . . He was once a man like us; . . . God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 345-46)."
Summary and conclusion
I don't know why this should bother anyone. The doctrine is true. Joseph Smith knew a whole lot more about this than I do. President Hinckley also knew a whole lot more about this doctrine than he was willing to share with reporters who did not have the background to understand it. It must have been difficult for President Hinckley to hold back and not teach it in those interviews.
It didn't bother me when I read the interviews back in 1997 and it doesn't bother me today. However, I know it does bother some people. We each have trials of our faith. I have never depended on an intellectual understanding of the gospel in order to accept it and live it. There are some things that just can't be fully comprehended without the temple, prayer and faith.
There are some things that just can't be fully comprehended without the temple, prayer and faith.
I have no idea what you really believe.
I do; however; have actual, factual material from Mormon sources that SHOWS what is taught.
Your problem is NOT with us news boys; but with the news gatherers!
No; because the BIBLE says so.
Because Mormon SOURCES say so.
Who has taught you this?
I'd like to see the EVIDENCE for this claim.
Who knows?
I can report and post what he HAS said...
What 'doctrines' would that be?
Does MormonISM have a list of them for us to look at; or are they like the boogyman that little kids get scared with?
Here is the Nicean creed.
for the sake of men's SOULS; tear it apart and show us what is WRONG with it!!!
For how long?
Back in the day, I thought about it, but the code requirement was to me; STUPID!
NO one was clicking anything but their lips at the time, an was deemed by me to be an anachronism that I didn't need or want to learn.
Heck; I even wrote a Morse Code program in assembly language on a development kit (MC6800) that would do the work for me.
Does ANYONE today even know what a resistor is?
Ya go to the store and buy you some Japanese transceiver and jabber away!
Does Dayton still have a Hamfest in the Spring anymore??
I was sure going to try one night with the great Millet himself!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AjNeXXY--U
He never showed.
After waiting an hour or so in a small room, someone came by and told us he was not coming - no explanation.
A study of Reformed Egyptian© would benefit you in understanding the Book of MORMON.
Oh...
Wait...
D&C 49:18-19 18 And whoso forbiddeth to abstain from meats, that man should not eat the same, is not ordained of God; |
|
D&C 89:12-13
12 Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; |
There are an AWFUL lot of folks who seem to KNOW things, that cannot post any EVIDENCE of these ‘facts’.
No LDS leader has EVER said God had sex with Mary. Ever. It's not there.
So do me a favor and stop trying to tell me what I believe. I think we have a better understanding of what our leaders have taught than an outsider. Thanks.
This is the ONLY way that the anti-Catholic / anti-Mormon bigots have a leg to stand on. You can repeat the truth of your faith to them till you are blue in the face and the cows come home and they will just keep repeating their own false witness.
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