person0

Obviously you didn't read what I wrote accurately: At what point did I say it was anything more than their opinion? At what point did I indicate that it is official doctrine that it is an abomination? BTW since 1972 was too long ago for you, here is a more recent one that is accessible on lds.org from General Conference:

I went back and edited my post for clarification so that it no longer says anticipate. Feel free to review and respond accordingly.

Forgive me if I post too many, I tend to beat a dead horse with these things. I apologize in advance as I believed it was common knowledge. I can provide more examples as well, but I would assume that is more than enough.

I'm grateful for your concern . I will definitely be upset if someone steals my identity :-)

My initial screen name of lds_person_0 was too long and complicated so I changed it to be just Person0 Probably exactly 0 people will care but thought I would let everyone know anyway :-)

No they don't. The scriptures don't say anything about whether or not God knew what they would do, they just indicate that the people had a choice. You contend that if God knew what they would do that they did not actually have a choice, the premise itself is incorrect. Once again, you are attempting to disprove your interpretation rather than the reality. Man is able to act contrary to the will of God. God will always know with certainty which actions a man will make. These two things are not contradictory.

This is the only portion of your previous statement with which I disagree. Nothing within God's stewardship will ever do anything that God did not already know with 100% certainty they would do.

You are assuming my statement disagree's with this, but it does not. The fact that God already knew the choice they would make, does not mean they did not have a real choice. It appears you have difficulty accepting the idea that if God knows with certainty something is going to happen, that thing is not 'pre-destined' simply because he knows it will occur. Modern prophets have also testified of such. You are disproving your interpretation of the doctrine rather than the doctrine itself.

See my previous post that showed up right before you posted this one. That being said, there are a few rare exceptions, such as the fact that modern prophets have revealed that euthanasia is objectively wrong in all cases.

I actually agree with you here and I had considered the idea you present while writing that post. That is why I made sure to include that I wasn't saying it was objectively evil, but my main point in that portion of my statement was that we have no evidence or direct revelation from God that outlines any specific or appropriate use, similar to how each person pays tithing based on revelation between them and the Lord.

Excellent analogy. Regardless of what we are expected to do in the eternities, by the time we get there we will be prepared and more than willing. We will not miss our proverbial coloring books (although don't they have those new adult coloring books now? )

I don't think we will come to a resolution on this. I will give you an example to illustrate my point and then I hope to be done even if you continue to disagree. Assume I have a bowl of orange cream ice-cream and a chocolate brownie and I place them on my dining room table. The ice cream has a strong laxative mixed into it and I already know about it. If I invite my daughter into the room and tell her she can have whichever dessert she wants, she has to eat one of them, but that she should eat the brownie because if she does she will feel well but if she eats the ice cream she will get diarrhea. I can tell you with certainty that she will eat the ice cream, because my daughter hates brownies with a passion. She will then get diarrhea. In this example, if she would have eaten the brownie she would have remained well, that is a fact, but it does not change the fact that I knew she would not do it, and it does not make me a liar for telling her the result of both options even when I knew one of the outcomes would happen. Extrapolate this example to Heavenly Father who has perfect knowledge of everything. I think its pretty obvious he's not lying just because he provides us with multiple outcomes already knowing which one we will choose. To even further prove the point, think about Adam and Eve and the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God gave them a choice and he and they were aware of the outcome of both choices. However, he still already knew what their choice would end up being. It doesn't change the fact that they could have made the other choice, and it doesn't change anything that God already knew they wouldn't make the other choice.

While I personally believe there will be rest and opportunities to enjoy life in other ways besides our work like what @Fether showed from Orson Pratt, one interesting question to help relieve stress about the idea of 24/7 work would be to consider what will become of those who enter outer darkness? If in the celestial kingdom are intended to be working all the time, will they then be doing absolutely nothing all the time? I think a lot of the value in your initial question comes from a natural concern that could be phrased kind of like, 'why would I want to do that?'. No one wants to work all of the time right. However, if you had to choose between literally working all the time and literally doing nothing all the time, which would you choose (even pretending for a minute that the doing nothing still took place in an eternally peaceful and pleasant environment)? I would argue that all things being considered, most people would choose the work.

Is there any point in known history when God introduced or espoused a mechanism to prevent the birth of children? Excepting for those born without the physical capacity to do so, I think not. All methods of contraception and sterilization are inventions of man. Widespread contraception in any form is relatively modern in the history of the world. Sterilization is even more modern. Modern prophets have opined that the prevention of children being brought into this world is an abomination. They have also stated that to continue bringing children into this world at the risk of the life of the mother (especially against a competent physicians recommendation) is also not appropriate to the purposes of the Lord. The topic is a serious matter that should be considered by individual couples because the underlying principles will affect everyone differently. It is not inherently right nor wrong and so requires the specific direction of the Lord in each and every case.

It could be stated that any given President of the United States works all the time, or at least is 'on the clock' all the time. However, how often do they go golfing and on vacation? After Christ was resurrected he ate food, sounds fun to me! The real question is: Will we make our bacon synthetically or will we import it from another world?

Thank you for admitting/acknowledging it. ". . . knowledge which he has of all things, from the beginning to the end. . ." Does it matter who placed them? Also the concept of "given conditions" is used in maths and sciences universally for scenarios such as, "If A and B then C", etc. Knowledge is knowledge, faith is faith, they work together but are not the same. It doesn't matter that foreknowledge is related to faith, the only reason it is related is solely because the event has not yet happened, you act as though the foreknowledge could somehow change because someone does something that God didn't anticipate, that is false. God's faith is dormant, its on the back-burner, it is second nature like breathing, he doesn't have to exercise faith the way we do, he has all knowledge and knowledge of all things, his knowledge is what causes his faith to be dormant. The scriptures and modern prophets agree with me, I believe some people don't want to accept this truth because they interpret it to mean that there would be no real choice if all choices are known in advance, that is false, that is what Talmage himself said. Lawyering of words makes it easy to fit scriptures and statements to a particular belief.

So because God has a perfect knowledge of what would happen as the result of two different choices, but also at the same time already knows which choice his children would make you are saying he is a liar just because he didn't straight up tell us which one we were going to pick? That doesn't seem like a reasonable conclusion to me.

I have chosen a specific number (not random at all) between 1 and 100. Of which number am I thinking? See how you didn't disprove his assertion in any way?

@CV75 Seems like some exactness in the vision from my understanding. As to the rest I will let the prophets do the talking: Mic Drop . . .

Once again, I applaud your reasoning. It is very compelling, and I can certainly understand your perspective, however, I do not believe the fact that our actions can be determined based on known information to mean determination of our actions has occurred. Just because it is knowable and exactly predictable does not mean it is required. You do have the choice, God knows what choice you will make, you do not yet know what choice you will make, but you are still the one who makes it and God is still the one who already knows it in advance. Some have postulated that God could have told us before coming to earth who would make it and who would not. I believe that in his omniscience this is true. That being said, if he did not give us the option to choose it ourselves and know for ourselves that it is what we would do he could not justly assign us to our eternal destination (obviously there are other topics inherent in this example but I am ignoring them since they don't pertain to the discussion). Just because it is already known, does not alter whether or not we ourselves made the choice. That being said, in reality it doesn't matter who is right. At the end of the day what matters is if we choose to believe in determinism (pre-destination) and use it as an excuse to commit sin. I do not believe in determinism, but I do believe God knows my every move before I make it, because he knows me and everything around me to perfection. How, I cannot say, but I hope to learn from him one day!

So here's a crazy thought! What if God is not actually omniscient at all, but instead he uses a massive self building supercomputer with an ever growing number of processing cores and celestial surveillance equipment that monitors everything at all times and does all the calculations for him, and that any time he acts or teaches based on foreknowledge he is actually just using a GUI to get the knowledge he needs. Then when he needs to show someone a vision he just gives them access to the the display screen on his supercomputer for a brief moment. He can be god and let his PC do all the work for him! Or is it a Mac? #DontDrinkCoffee

That is an amazingly good example! You definitely win the award for best example to establish a concept. True and sincere kudos to you and your excellent mind! That being said, I believe that if you take into account that God's omniscience would include a perfect knowledge of our height and weight and all physical attributes, add in walking patterns, mood, as well as all external factors that affect those things such as weather, other people, etc, etc, etc, then an action which to us would be 'random' (like the one which you have very cleverly suggested), he would understand to have an actual basis which could be calculated. That doesn't make it any less 'unpredictable' from your perspective as the human agent, but from the perspective of a truly omniscient god, it would be knowable.

I agree with you. The real point behind my statement was to give a possible reason behind why I am not concerned about the significant assets and liquid funds of the church and that I have full confidence they will be used appropriately at the right place and time for the building of the kingdom. That being said, there will likely be many righteous poor who will be called to Zion that will be subsidized by the funds/resources of the church. For example, in my home town the church owns a residential home next door and in the past occasionally used it to provide temporary housing to impoverished member families.

God expects us to respond, but he already knows exactly how we will respond. God's knowledge is perfect and as a result his faith is dormant in all things: If God is able to show Moses, Nephi, John, and others, a true and exact vision of future events, how can this be done if he doesn't already know 100% what will happen? He does know, but the fact that he has this knowledge has no bearing on the reality that we are still the ones who make the choice.

I have always paid tithing. I will always pay tithing. Tithing is 10%, if someone pays less than 10% they are giving an offering (which is still good) but are not paying tithing. The word tithing inherently represents 10%. It is definitely true that church funds have in the past been used illegitimately. There have been local bishops and others who have taken the funds, but who have been dealt with according to the appropriate disciplinary action. There was even a time when the U.S. government confiscated church owned property paid for by tithing. However, while individuals may corrupt the use of tithing, the church and it's leadership as a whole uses and allocates the funds with the guidance of the spirit in order to help the church achieve the objectives of the Lord. The Church is currently estimated to have between 80-100 billion USD in total assets worldwide. Many people scoff at this because there are members living in extreme poverty who still pay tithing yet the church has great funds and in theory could help them by re-distributing the funds in a different manner. However, this is an area where members must exercise faith. Tithing is not really about money, it is about trusting in the Lord. That being said $80-100 billion is not even close to what the church needs in the long run. Consider this: The Church teaches that the literal location of Zion, The New Jerusalem, will be in Jackson County, MO. If one were to take this literally then at some point the church would need to be able to take complete ownership, whether gradually or all at once. I recently did the calculation of what the cost would be to purchase all residential homes in Jackson County, MO at current market value. The estimated cost came to roughly $46 billion. That is only residential homes, not businesses or other types of property. I am not saying that this is what will happen exactly, but the Church does not have anywhere close to enough resources if this were to be the Lord's plan. I will continue paying my tithing because I trust in the general leadership of the church to allocate the funds appropriately with the guidance of the spirit. However, each of us must pray to receive the answer on our own.