[Exaltation Implications]

" Nevertheless, he has sinned; but verily I say unto you, I, the Lord, forgive sins unto those who confess their sins before me and ask forgiveness, who have not sinned unto death."

 

God may or may not forgive them. He has more information than we do, and He will make that call. We, you and me and everybody else on this Earth, don't get to make that call. We have to forgive everybody, period. I think at minimum that would include not praying for their damnation.

 

 

D & C  42:18

[Exaltation Implications]

"I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men."

- Doctrine & Covenants 64:10

 

Even murderers, false priests, fornicators, ect.

 

Then see Doctrine & Covenants  64:7  (what you surely have at your hands by chance ...it depends on the deed).

[Joseph Smith, multiple wives]

(...)

The missing doctrine that is absent from the Catholic teaching is the doctrine of Eternal Marriage/Eternal Families.

 

(...)

Polygamy, therefore, is an Eternal doctrine. So that, even if God commands to only have one living spouse in mortality, it does not change the eternal principle of polygamy.

 

Hope this clarifies things.

 

 

I wish I could have given her this answer and speak the way you can.

[Exaltation Implications]

C'mon German Engineer... We're trying to keep this thread fantastic!

Claire started the thread because she wants to know what we believe on xyz. Let's keep it there instead of pointing out how terrible you think her church is.

Vin danken dir, my friend. <3.

 

 

-first post deleted, Jimmi-

 

All right, but I couldn't stop myself to mention it.

[Exaltation Implications]

I suppose there are a few clarifications I should make here on Catholic dogma.

 

 

 

First: I'm not very much interested in debating the dogma of your church.

 

Second:  I mean all the crimes, i.e. the "crusade" against the Albingensers  in South France around the year 1200. Pope Innozenz III. himself initiated the "crusade" against those Gnostics in South France, because in the eyes of your church they were heretics, and I would like to call it back to your memory that alone in the town of Béziers on Juli 22, in the year 1209, more than 20.000 (!) people, men, women, children, had been brutally massacred. That was the first European genozid, in this case against a Christian community.

 

But that was only the prelude to further greater things innitiated by your church: the inquisition. And in the course of the centuries thousands and thousands of innocent women and men became their victims. That institution, claiming they are Christians, has been an institution that should be hold responsible for uncountable crimes against humans and the humanity by the centuries.

[Exaltation Implications]

Very interesting – your personal views of Robert Eisenman.  Prior to 1993 Robert published a book called Dead Sea Scroll Conspiracy.  In that book he claimed that the Catholic Church via scholastic suppression was hiding at least 50 Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts and preventing publication of such manuscripts.  In 1993 microfiche photos were discovered in a basement of a university in Boston.  These microfiche photos were published on the internet despite threats of lawsuits to prevent publication were taking place.  Among the microfiche photos 50 previously unrecorded and unpublished Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts were discovered – Just as Robert Eisenman had claimed.  (...)

 

 

God knows what they still are hiding. I would guess they want to hide and suppress all modern revelations and manuscripts.

[Significance of Resurrection]

If the Dakota medicine man blue feather is asking me, should I be converting to some form of Native American spirituality?

 

Mostly because feathers aren't a good look for me

 

I'm some kind of sure you wouldn't. Anyway, we share our opinion about feathers. They aren't a good look for me, either. Astonishing similarities we have... 

[California judges and the BSA]

Is this the craziness we'll see in the rest of the country soon and the creep into religious freedom territory?

 

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765667022/California-bars-judges-from-Boy-Scouts-membership.html

 

 

"The group allows the participation of openly gay boys but continues to prohibit gay and lesbian adults from serving as leaders."

 

I think that's more than enough. Should they also allow homosexuals to serve as leaders, to give them a fine place for sexual abuse? 

[Significance of Resurrection]

(...)

 

When you are resurrected, are you given your own body or some other one? A new body?

 

Or will you remain a nobody...? 

[California judges and the BSA]

 

I may have already mentioned this on lds.net, but it's an interesting story.

 

When Proposition 8 (...)

 

 

 

I remember the whole story that started in 2008 (Prop. 8,  pro: 52,24 %, against: 47,76 %). And there is one fact: the majority of the voters in California were against the same sex marriage.  That was the official result. Quite interesting to see how supporters of homosexuality and some activists have been succesful in undermining by appeals the will of the majority of the citizens of the State of California. I wouldn't call it democracy, if the US constitution supposedly doesn't allow such a vote on such a (important) subject. A Supreme Court can easily transform into some kind of a gravedigger of democracy if it ignores the will of the majority of the people and tells them what they are allowed to vote about and what they are not.

 

And just to mention it:  the Mormons with their 2 percent religious portion there in California have hardly played a significant roll.  And I've seen many people (i.e. in German forums) who were surprised when I told them about the only 2 percent Mormons there in California, and they understood it was nothing else but anti-Mormon propaganda.

[California judges and the BSA]

Is this the craziness we'll see in the rest of the country soon and the creep into religious freedom territory?

 

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765667022/California-bars-judges-from-Boy-Scouts-membership.html

 

It doesn't surprise me. I'm personally convinced,  many Californian judges are not only friends of homosexuals but homosexual themselves.  (Remember Proposition 8). 

 

In my opinion one should pay attention in the future to the fact, that there is a certain parity between homosexual judges and normally oriented ones. Therefore the state or the authorities would have to put those sexual inclinations publicly. And it should be possible to disqualify a judge of suspected bias if he's a homosexual and has to judge about cases around homosexuality.

[Significance of Resurrection]

Thanks...I think...

 

"So why not converting...?"    Dakota medicine man Blue Feather would ask you...

 

(Maybe he looks a bit angry, but not all Dakota are like that, not even the South Dakota.    Yelo!)

[Significance of Resurrection]

It is my belief and understanding that we will be resurrected as ourselves and not as anybody else.  Whatever it is that is actually and uniquely you is what will be resurrected.  Sometimes words and their definitions are important.  Take the term salvation.  This word has the same root as the word salvage.  When we salvage a ship wreak we gather up that which remains that has value.  I believe this is important to understand.  In essence I believe we are salvaged in the resurrection according to those "elements" that have remaining value.  I believe this is why the scriptures differentiate the resurrection.

 

But what if there were not so many elements that have remained value...? Okay - I see the point. Then you will not be restored. And fifty-fifty ...? And if there have remained 50 percent good value and 50 percent bad value ...? Let the coin decide then ...?   

[Significance of Resurrection]

 

 

 

I'd agree that our DNA tends to stay the same throughout our lives, and would even go so far as to say that then general structure of our bodies (i.e. 2 arms, 2 legs, a working heart, ect) stays largely the same. My point really was that the individual atoms that makes those things up do, for the most part, swap out.

 

(...)

 

 

You are surprising me, because you are right. The process of breathing and the metabolism of our body swaps out an uncountable number of atoms. With one single breath we take up approx. 10 high 22 atoms of our universe,  a number of 22 zeros. The substantial amount of raw material from our universe spreads till the very back corners of our body, till the cerebral cells, heart cells, nephric cells etc. while exhaling approx. the same number of atoms that come from our body. So we breath out literally parts of our heart and our brain (some people more, some less ) and our nephric fabric etc.

[Significance of Resurrection]

Germans and their engineering...

 

Okay, from an engineering standpoint - the physical body is the vehicle that provides the desires, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opposition to our Spirits.  It's like the training wheel on the bicycle.  It prepares our Spirits to learn to drive the real-deal big-boy bicycle, which is our Spirit Bodies.  Now, the real-deal big-boy bicycle (spirit matter) was created by God in pre-mortal existence and given to our Spirits to exercise dominion over.  But, our intelligences do not have the necessary experience (knowledge, truth) to gain the proper balance to ride that bicycle.  So, the Plan of Our Salvation was masterminded by God to give us physical bodies (created from dust matter) over our Spirit Bodies for our intelligences to learn on.  At our death, the training wheels come off (dust matter goes back to dust), our Spirit Bodies get resurrected (spirit matter perfected), and our intelligences should be able to ride this real-deal big-boy bicycle according to what we have learned with our training wheels.  Now, if you're a crazy bicycle driver who keeps running over the orange cones with your training wheels, you'll have to go to the Telestial roadway so you don't hurt the not-as-crazy drivers who are in the Terrestrial roadway.  If you're super perfect on your training wheels, you get to ride with God in the celestial roadway.

 

A good comparison. Maybe you're right to say that it's (only) our Spirit Bodies that will be resurrected, and maybe that makes things even a bit easier, seen from the technological point of view.

 

I remember, when I was a very young boy, my parents bought me my first bicycle. But I was so much ashamed of the training wheels, and the other boys (and not to forget the girls...) were laughing about me, so that I was learning very quickly to ride on the bike and to get rid of the training wheels. I've never learned something so quickly any more. 

[Significance of Resurrection]

(...)

 

The physical matter that makes up my body right now is probably 99+% different from the physical matter that made it up when I was first born, but we still consider it to be the "same" body. What this means is that, over and apart from the physical stuff making us up, there has to be some underlying unchanging thing that makes us up. (...)

 

Even if I can accept that our body changes, that metabolism and growth takes place, and that everything and everybody must also stand in a clearly defined temporal context (and here the Americans, in this regard, with their grammar and tenses, are a little bit ahead in comparison to us  ), I'm tending to the conviction, that the genetic code and the DNA show firmly the same patterns since our birth. We still don't know enough about matter and quantum phenomena, and, therefore, we should be very careful calling God's abilities to restore something into question. And, by the way, I think that God would consider our individual wishes - within some certain limits, of course - at the process of the final resurrection or restoration, because somewhere everyone has a picture of himself, and we would remember with pleasure how we once were, with maybe a certain image of how we were once, when the sun still was standing for us in the zenith of our life... 

[Significance of Resurrection]

From dust we came and to dust we shall return.  Our physical bodies are going to dust.  Our spirit bodies - created in pre-mortal existence - is what is going to resurrect and be perfected.

 

Sorry, but this doesn't answer his question completely. I think we should bring the aspect of an inconceivable higher technology in here, and see God Allmighty as a supernatural power acting beyond our technological and scientific knowledge. From my point of view, and many sections of D & C and the words of Joseph Smith have inspired me to see it like this, God Allmighty has the knowledge, the power, and the technology to restore everything. So our physical bodies may go to dust, but what does it mean? As I've mentioned before, the atoms, or let's even talk about subatomic particles and pure energy, remain. "Dust" is matter, and from matter and energy God can create or restore everything, with the efficiency and unbelievable arithmetic ability of a quantum computer which works on the other side of our image of temporal events (see quantum coherence); that's what I am convinced of. And, at least, don't forget Joseph Smith's word, that all spirit is matter, only fine and more purely...

[Significance of Resurrection]

I heard somewhere that in the resurrection, we will have the same bodies that we do now, only perfected. How this will happen with cremation, etc. we don't know.

 

Is there some deeper significance to this? Why doesn't God just give us new bodies?

 

When I'm talking about God, I certainly do it in the meaning of a supernatural power, with technological abilities surely comprising methods and applications far beyond our imagination (i.e. "creation"). For me, God exists in a higher dimensional multiverse (instead of "universe"), and for him the four-dimensional spacetime (three-dimensional space plus velocity and "time") is maybe only a lower part of a multi dimensional super space (however, "space" wouldn't be the right word). As former spiritual beings in God's sphere or multiverse we have been reduced (from a higher-dimensional "spiritual" being) to experience a lower existence in a mortal body. This, according to the Mormons' belief, is part of God's great plan of redemption. I would also call it refinement.

 

During our mortal existence we have to make choices. This is also part of the Mormon belief. After we will have been gone through this mortal status, with new experiences, knowledge, insights, worthy and deserving the next step of an eternal progress God Allmighty has planned for us, during a certain time in the Ghost World, a spiritual form of existence, after we've lost our physical body, we will be expecting God's final judgement, and maybe become resurrected as immortal beings, with a physical body and our soul (the spiritual part) united and inseparable combined forever and eternally.

 

Coming back to your question I would say, this will be some kind of a new body; improved, without former handycaps, calamities or disabilities, but in the same shape and with the same physiognomics and characteristics as before. You've mentioned "cremation", but this means nothing for God. He can delete and restore. This is part of his allmightyness. Of course we can't see how it works, but could a man of, let's say,  the 15th century once imagine men were landing on the Moon? Or even on Mars? What a radio was? And could a man of the, let's say, beginning 1950s imagine what a computer was and how people communicated via internet...?

 

God is billions and billions of years ahead, eons and eons. It's always difficult for me to understand or accept peoples' naive questions concerning God if, besides, the questioner ignores God's allmightyness and inconceivable technological abilities. And if you say "technology" isn't the right word, I would like to ask you for a better one. But in this connection or sense the word "technology" should not be understood within the frame of its common meaning according to human technological achievements.

 

In German we make a difference between das selbe... and das gleiche... and this means the same is not always exactly the same. Therefore, a duplicate wouldn't be the same as the original. But imagine God's technology would be able to restore a human being, his physical body, with the same atoms or subparticles and molecular structures, and under further aspects we don't know and we can't imagine, so that it would be the same person (united with his soul) again. And would you say there is no eternity only because a human mind can't imagine there was one...?

[Exaltation Implications]

The basis of the Catholic beliefs on this subject are divine revelations (which culminated in the life and teaching of Christ) along with the interpretation of those revelations by the Magisterium of the Church as guided by the Holy Spirit.

 

My question wasn't so much why you believe what you believe, but what you believe in the first place. I'll admit that the why is probably the more important question, but it's also a subject that we've also somewhat gone over already :)

 

You've given the answer by yourself. Your doctrine is based on events that once were culminating during the life of Christ on Earth. The Mormon belief is based on modern revelations given by God the Allmighty and the teachings of the ever lasting Gospel and the living Christ, revealed by their prophets. However, your doctrine denies the possibility of present and modern revelations consequently.

 

What Mormons believe in is a great divine plan and the individual freedom of decision, the freedom to return, to get through this life according to the divine laws and commandments God the Allmighty has revealed to Joseph Smith, the prophet, his successors and the present authorities of a re-established church.  And it's even more than that. I would call it a Christian doctrine and a life philosophy or a lifestyle.

[Cops are people too]

Jesus taught that we are sheep. He didn't shame us for the fact; he merely pointed out that we need to choose our shepherd carefully.

 

Provided we are not silly sheep. 

[Exaltation Implications]

(...) Further, we also do not believe that we can become in any way become intrinsically divine ourselves, meaning that while we can share in God's divine nature we cannot become gods ourselves.

 

That does bring about a question though. As I mentioned, participation in the divine life for Catholics  requires the mediation of Christ, and this mediation is perpetual (forever). Where exactly does Christ fit into LDS escatology (...)  Does he have any distinct purpose in the afterlife? I'm particularly curious about after final judgement, as if I remember correctly he reigns over the Millenial Kingdom prior to that.

 

 

And what makes you so sure you can share in God's divine nature?  What would you think is the first step, therefore?

 

And who can look behind the curtain? Who will say the Catholics are able to do it possibly better than the Mormons? Where are the divine revelations, the spirit of the Gospel, where is the living Christ to be found? In your doctrine...?

 

You are concerned about the mediation of Christ and his "distinct purpose in the afterlife"...? Be sure at least he will be in your neigbourship, then. 

[Peace]

Peace! 

[Inactive Member trying to find the guts to go back!]

Love the Lemons sig! 

 

But if we keep the lemons, as recommended in the signature, they are no longer free lemons.  So let the lemons free and let them fly!    Peace!

[Inactive Member trying to find the guts to go back!]

Hi! Do you wear a Stetson there in Texas or flowers in your hair? 

[New to lds.net and want to share my blog]

Isn't there a difference (creed-wise) between the "catholic church" and the "Catholic Church"?

 

Maybe the same as between "mordorbund" and "Mordorbund"... provided that we would be ready to let the etymology and the meaning of the word "morðor" in Old English completely disregarded, of course.