mordorbund

Thanks for all the responses. Now, can anyone provide references for their information? (I got the one on the wiki - what about the others?)

To follow this to it's happy conclusion - a philosopher, an engineer, and a lawyer were comparing God with their own occupations. The philosopher said, "God is a Philospher. 'In the beginning was the Logos' - and from that thought-word was everything created." The engineer spoke up, "Sure, but what was he creating? Just like an Engineer, God created order out of chaos." The lawyer then piped up, "Who do you think creates chaos?!" - Lawyers, FTW.

What's the difference between a temple, tabernacle, and an assembly hall (all in the modern sense). I see that we have one of each on Temple Square, and I've seen a few temples in Utah that have an adjoining tabernacle (funny, I don't think I've ever heard of a tabernacle outside of Utah). I always thought that the purpose of a tabernacle was for solemn assemblies that could be held outside the temple, but then there's an assembly hall right there as well. Any ideas?

I'm stumped. I can't find the hidden message. If I remove MOKSHA from SIMCHA JACKOBI, I'm still left with ICJACBI and I can't form that into anything (J Moksha abicci?)

From Elder Oaks April 2008 conference address on Testimony: What do we mean when we testify and say that we know the gospel is true? Contrast that kind of knowledge with “I know it is cold outside” or “I know I love my wife.” These are three different kinds of knowledge, each learned in a different way. Knowledge of outside temperature can be verified by scientific proof. Knowledge that we love our spouse is personal and subjective. While not capable of scientific proof, it is still important.

I whole-heartedly agree. I have no problems with a missionary strengthening her testimony through her mission service, but that should be a biproduct of the service and not the endgoal. It also irks me when people talk about serving as a missionary opportunity. That's fine if it's a biproduct, but if that's the agenda - it's not service. I had a companion tell me about an experience he had while testifying. He was bearing testimony in the standard fashion and formulaicly preceded each statement with "I know...". The investigator called him on it and asked why he kept saying that, it made it sound like he was trying to convince himself. Since he told me that, I've dropped the formula (though I don't fault anyone for using it) and stated my testimony as a series of facts. Joseph saw God. President Monson is a prophet who speaks for God. etc. It also makes it more conversational. Maybe tonight at the dinner table I'll start using "I know" in the way it's used for testimonies. "I know that this meal looks delicious and I'm very grateful that you made it. I also know that I'm looking forward to watching tv with you tonight. The laugh track is a huge distraction for comedies, but I know that we can find programs that do not employ such nuissances."

And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. Every time I read this, I'm convinced Paul had a mission companion he couldn't get along with. (the little one's Paul)

From The Mortal Messiah “The seeming refusal of Jesus to permit Mary to touch him, followed almost immediately by the appearance in which the other women were permitted to hold his feet, has always been the source of some interpretative concern. The King James Version quotes Jesus as saying ‘Touch me not.’ The Joseph Smith Translation reads ‘Hold me not.’ Various translations from the Greek render the passage as ‘Do not cling to me’ or ‘Do not hold me.’ Some give the meaning as ‘Do not cling to me any longer,’ or ‘Do not hold me any longer.’ Some speak of ceasing to hold him or cling to him, leaving the inference that Mary was already holding him. There is valid reason for supposing that the thought conveyed to Mary by the Risen Lord was to this effect: ‘You cannot hold me here, for I am going to ascend to my Father.’” (The Mortal Messiah: From Bethlehem to Calvary, 4 vols Maybe he had a more pressing agenda than when he visited with the Nephites and tarried at their request?I have also heard that she was trying to embrace him (hence, "hold me not"), and Jesus was reserving the first resurrected hug for his Father (I've heard it attributed to Truman Madsen, but I've never seen a source).

Is he really? I'm so intimidated by his neck, I've never seen if he has a head or not.

Joshua, is that you?

The covering provided by the Lord is also a symbol of the atonement with the word choice. The hebrew word that keeps showing up as atone/atonement means "to cover". The seat of atonement (ark of the covenenant lid) was a seat of covering. So when the Lord covers Adam's nakedness, he symbollically shows that he will atone for Adam's transgression. Compare this also with 2 Nephi 9 (a great chapter on the Atonement): Wherefore, we shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, and our uncleanness, and our nakedness; and the righteous shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment, and their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even with the robe of righteousness.

The Mosaic law called for meal offerings that were basically flour and oil that was cooked into a cake (bread-stuff). So the offering of the fruit of the ground in and of itself does not make it an invalid offer. Cain's primary error was that he was making a sacrifice in obedience to satan's command - not the Lord's.

I got curious on this a couple of months back. The earliest reference I could find to pre-Fall Adam and Eve having spirit coursing through their veins instead of blood was Joseph Fielding Smith. In Doctrines of Salvation, he states essentially what is found in the Bible Dictionary using the verse in Leviticus as support, "the life of the animal is in its blood." In an earlier work (Man, his Origin and Destiny I think), he uses the same verse to show that Adam didn't have blood, and then in DofS it's expanded so that the blood is replaced with spirit. Can anyone find anything earlier?

No reason why it can't be both. The kind of mediating you're observing is the same kind of mediating Moses did on behalf of Israel. If you'll recall, God was ready to destroy all of Israel and establish just Moses' posterity as the covenant people. But Moses convinced him otherwise. When we look at the symbolism of OT sacrifice, we see a sinner voluntarily giving a proxy. The sacrifice represents the sinner who merits death ("the wages of sin is death"). So the animal stands in for the sinner. Simultaneously, the animal also represents the Savior, who is the "great and last sacrifice". So again, there's no reason why it can't be both.

Sure. First off, if you take away verse 19, I think the sermon is very clear. Jesus has power to "quicken" or bring life because it is a power his Father has given him. In addition to that, Jesus can use his own discretion about the use of such power because his Father has granted him Judgement also. This was the case of his healing the invalid, and telling him to carry his cot on the Sabbath. These same principles are then broadly applied to refer to a general resurrection, when the dead will hear his voice and be quickened. Now add verse 19 back into this context, and you still have the exact same framework. Jesus has power to to quicken the man's lame legs (this is the Father's power given to him). He has authority to command his legs to walk, and authority to tell the man to carry his cot (this is the Father's authority, who's Sabbath it is). And if onlookers have a problem with this, they will really have a problem when Jesus judges the dead (the Father's authority and work) and resurrects them (the Father's power and work). So first thing, I don't think you've met the burden to show that this section includes Jesus' own death and resurrection. That being said, I'm in a sporting mood so I'll continue with the assumption that you post something stronger. You're right that it's not exactly the same. But the principles are still the same whether it's your own life or someone else's. The heart must stop.I took a second look at John 5. Nowhere in this passage is death mentioned except to segue to the resurrection theme. "The Son lays down his life" is only used in connection with this chapter in Joseph Smith's sermon. So I'm willing to go so far as to show some similarities between the work that is traditionally associated with the Father (stopping of life), but not so far as to what is generally considered blasphemy by our Christian friends (the Father died at some point). For this point, you need to first show that 1) Jesus mentions here that he has power to take life (or at least his Father does - and this can be something as simple as a withering in the same general sense as quickening), and 2) Jesus mentions that he has power to give up his own life. Once you get that far, I may be more willing to yield some space on this point. The logical conclusion from the Bible alone, is that Jesus communicated directly with his Father; that his Father showed him how to judge righteously; that his Father showed him the principles of Life and how to use it to raise the dead; and (from the Hebrews verse you just added) that many worlds were created (not really tied in with John 5). Addressing your Hebrews 11 reference, nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about other worlds being peopled. So if you see that in verse 3, you are adding that in yourself. Addressing John 5, the Son resurrecting himself in no way precludes the Father from having done the same. But you cannot arrive at that conclusion from the Bible alone, and working only within the biblical text was a limitation that you placed on your argument from the start. I mentioned it because I am not a Trinitarian. So I don't know what other churches teach concerning who raised Jesus from the dead. Come to think of it, I'm not too sure I know the official LDS stance on who raised Jesus from the dead (maybe the start of another thread?). But for any religion that feels there's enough in the Bible to definitively conclude that the Father resurrected the Son, you'll have to address that argument as well. And it may be as simple as saying, "The Bible says the Son resurrected himself." Finally, I think you're argument stated elsewhere in this thread applies nicely here. (edits in bold).

What about the child labor in our own back yard. The other day I was walking around a typical capitalist American mall and saw a factory where parents PAID to have their kids LABOR on the assembly line manufacturing teddy bears!!!!! Perhaps we wouldn't be so upset at Nike if they had their own Build-a-Shoe Workshop.

There's only 1 gluon you heretic. (although, now that I try to see your side of things, I can see how you could think there were 8 based on the configurations of the 3 in the 1 gluon).

Wait, so Jack Chick worships a gluon?

Sooooo.... We have one god for every wife? Are these referred to as gods-in-law?

The Revelation of St John the Divine has this to say: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God The Son doesn't seem to have any qualms with identifying himself as a creation. Mathematically, a ray can be infinite in length (and has the same length as a line).

Sounds like you're okay with it but your fiance is giving you grief. I say, pay for your education out of pocket and spend the scholarship on her. See if she's still opposed to your "ill-gotten gain".

I'm not a Trinitarian, but I think I can see where you're think there's more to it than stated. For a moment, forget about the King Follett sermon. Forget about LDS theology and just focus on the words cited and their context. Before v17, Jesus had just healed an invalid on the Sabbath. Jesus, Why did you do this on the day of rest? "My Father works today, and so do I." Then, in proper manner, Jesus further explains his thesis. The Father shows the Son what work he does (even if it is the Sabbath: He raises the dead; and gives them life.He judges righteously (the execution of which belongs to the Son).He is the source of Life; and the Son is similarly a wellspring of Everlasting Life.Now the stickler for you seems to be v19: The Son will only do something if he saw the Father do it. You've mentioned that the Son lays down his life. Has the Father ever stopped a person's life? If so, that is something that Jesus may have seen his Father do, and done the same to himself. Has the Father ever raised the dead? If so, that is something that Jesus may have seen his Father do, and done the same to himself (it is clear that Jesus had learned this skill, since we see him apply it 3 times on others).Now I'll raise a counterpoint, that prior to Jesus' resurrection, raising the dead was only a temporal, not an eternal life. This can be explained with the Father and the Son both having life in themselves. The Father may have shown the Son what "I AM" really means. You have Life in Yourself. Command your body to rise, the same as you did to Lazarus, and this time animate it with Your everlasting wellspring of Life! Or you can sidestep it with Peter's testimony that the Son didn't actually resurrect himself, but was raised up by God on the 3rd day.

Works for me. Let's say God exists in linear time. The model I'm describing has two dimensions of linear time - God's, and ours. God still has a moment in his time where he's weeping, but that doesn't necessarily map cleanly in our time unless he was in a cross-section of our time when it happened. Just because his time is linear, that doesn't mean that our time is viewed linearly for him (because his time is orthogonal to ours). Both of what you're describing fits here. If God is interacting with our time, then he can weep over something that happened in his past that happened for us in our past or even our future. If God is outside of our time when he weeps, we could say that he's always weeping. You can apply what we know about multiple spacial dimensions to multiple temporal dimensions. If you have a sphere that intersects with flatland, it would be accurate for the flatlanders to say that "Sphere is a circle (sometimes ellipse) that appears as a point and gets larger until it fills a specific place with such and such coordinates. It exits by diminishing in size until it is a single point again and then disappears." From the flatlanders' perspective, they would be completely correct. From the sphere's perspective, there's more to the story, but it's accurate enough. But now lets say that flatland fits within the sphere and is circumscribed by the sphere. Now what could the flatlanders say? "Sphere is mystically both greater/larger than flatland, and exists everywhere in flatland." And from their perspective, they'd be correct. From the sphere's perspective, they are only half right. The sphere is greater/larger than flatland, but infinite in flatland doesn't count for much in the 3rd dimension (classic example is the math case of Gabriel's horn, which has a infinite surface area but finite volume. This works because I can keep squashing a single drop of paint to fill any flat space you have). I hope this helps and doesn't actually cause more confusion.

I'm sidestepping the first part of your post (about Adam's status vs Satan's) because for me it comes down to the things I posted above. Whether or not the cherubim interfered with Adam's agency. This reminds me of a Monkey Math word problem. 3 ladies go to a hotel and share a $30 room. They split it evenly $10 a piece. They head up to the room and the fellow that checked them in realizes that he's made a mistake and it's really a $25 room. So he sends the bell hop up with $5 to return to the ladies. The bell hop, knowing that the 3 ladies wanted to split the bill evenly, decides to give them each $1 and keep $2 as a tip. So in the end the ladies each paid $9, for a total of $27 between the 3 of them. Add the $2 tip, and you've got $29. What happened to the last dollar? The monkey math is in the question. And the difficulty is, once you've heard the question, you have a hard time correcting it into what it should be. The question should not be (3x9)+2=29 != 30. It should be 3x9=25+2 : they paid a total of $27 and $25 went to the room and $2 went to a tip. Or it could similarly be 3x10=25+2+(3x1) : they paid a total of $30 up front and $25 went to a room, $2 to a tip, and $1 each came back to them. I feel like you keep harping on "the cherubim remove a choice and interfere with Adam's agency" (where's the other dollar? WHERE'S THE OTHER DOLLAR??). But we've been trying to tell you, it's not really a valid question. There are actions and consequences; acting and acted upon. Natural or artificial, a consequence is a consequence. Angels guarding the Tree of Life is a consequence, Adam didn't have a say in it anyway. Adam is shown the lesson of Alma 34 - you cannot suddenly say "No fair! I chose this path, and now that the consequences are upon me I want to take another." When the consequences are upon us, it is too late.

It wasn't an entrance from the premortal world to the Garden (it may have been, but I couldn't support that argument). It was an entrance from the uninhabited, unused, lone and dreary world into the Garden. [qutoe]Eve not recognizing Lucifer for who he was is interesting. I'm not certain of this one. We recognize Satan and what he wants us to do, but that doesn't mean we don't choose it from time to time. Is there a scripture or quote that makes you think Eve did not know who he was? I'm not doubting, I'm just looking for evidence. I'll pull a page from the Old Testament student manual (3-6) and simply say that we learn from modern revelation that Eve did not recognize her tempter. It is the same specific revelation referenced in the manual. You'll hear no disagreement from me. And also the presence of a veil, which means decisions are not made with full knowledge. Admittedly, the physical body may be what causes the veil. but the veil changes the inputs, and so the output is different. Satan's plan is interesting to me. I find the standard "communism=satan's plan" or "satan's plan was built on compulsion" uncreative and not generally well-thought out. I posted earlier in this thread an outline of general principles that Satan could advance that would destroy Agency (in theory - I'm still not sold that Agency can be removed). I also included a quote from John Taylor with his speculation. Would you mind sending me a pm of the theories you've read?