brotherofJared
-
Posts
536 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Posts posted by brotherofJared
-
-
On 12/7/2020 at 9:28 AM, Jonah said:
Would someone clarify this section.
D&C 10:43
"I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them
that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil"The 1997 Gospel Principles says God's church was eventually destroyed.
Are these two teachings referencing two different events?
It could be the same event. While the priesthood or authority to administer the gospel was taken from the earth, God's work was not destroyed. This is a scenario where Satan gloats over his accomplishments only to find that God's work continues and there really is nothing Satan can do to stop it.
-
On 11/27/2020 at 10:05 AM, Guest Gomezaddams51 said:
I just watched a TV show on Mary Magdalene. There were several conflicting ideas tossed around, one that she was married to Jesus, one that she was one of the lead apostles, and one that she was just a whore who happened to hang out with Jesus. Now according to what I remember about the church teachings, we are supposed to get married here to be able to progress and go on to the highest kingdom. So if Jesus was supposed to "show us the way" then he would have to get married as part of "the way". Being a Demi-God shouldn't exclude Jesus from having to follow the "Plan". God seems to be a stickler for following the rules so it seems natural that he would not include an escape clause for his son.
Fairmormon has a pretty good section on this question. I'm with you. I believe he was married. I don't believe he had any children, but I do believe he was married.
-
On 12/11/2020 at 7:05 PM, gclayjr said:
I am 69 years old, and over the years as things have happened to hurt our freedoms, I have wondered if we are living through when the Constitution would "hang by a thread" . I have always wondered what we as members of the church or Priesthood holders we should do to "save" the constitution when it does "hang by a thread"?
With this obviously corrupt election and the fact that while many brave Americans have come forward to demonstrate this, nobody in charge is even willing to let the evidence be heard. I am also aware that there are many good Christians who have been praying to God to help save this country from a corrupt theft of our rights and to save the Constitution. With the recent rejection by the Supreme Court of the Texas case, virtually all visible paths to even giving a fair hearing to the evidence seems to have disappeared.
I don't see any "normal" path out of this. It is not that important whether BIden or Trump becomes president. What is important is whether our election system becomes so corrupt that the people can never vote out the corrupt or vote in someone who is reasonably honest and believes in letting people live a Christian life.
We have often been counselled to be loving and peaceful. and the 12th Article of faith indicates that we should submit even to corrupt evil totalitarian governments. So if my premise is correct, what is it that we as true believers in Jesus Christ, his restored Gospel, and the Constitution supposed to do to Save it?
I have never been able to find anything other than to stand for the truth and proclaim it. But I don't see how it applies here.
I have a true testimony of Jesus Christ and his restored Church, and know that in the end he will deliver us from evil. That doesn't mean that we may not have to live under oppression for awhile, like the people of Alma did, or the Citizens of Venezuela have been doing for over 20 years. I will willingly, if not necessarily joyfully, submit to God's will.
However what is that? What are our duties as members of the Church to help "Save the Constitution"?
I would love some insight into this.
Thank you,
George Clay
I personally don't think there's much we can do without a leader. We would need a Moroni to rally behind, otherwise; everything we'd be doing would be ineffectual. However, I don't think saving the constitution is something that we will consciously do. I'm not even certain that we'd know how the constitution was saved without some hindsight. Like, who are these elders who will save it? I envision that situation to be like the 7000 who would not bend the knee to Baal when the prophet lamented his isolation. They are there. They don't know who they are. There will be a lot of talkers, a lot of people quoting scripture out of ignorance, but these few people will simply be in the right place at the right time and will do the right thing. If the world knew who they were, the world could stop them.
That's the way I see it. The only thing we can do is rely on the promises of God that if we would obey his commandments, this nation would prosper. That's our job. We have to leave the rest of it to the Lord.
-
On 10/3/2020 at 6:34 AM, romans8 said:
Why is a physical body viewed as a great blessing that resulted from a transgression?
Didn't Adam already have an immortal, physical body, made from the earth?The issue, IMO, is that their body before the fall could die. That is not the state of being the Father's body is in. A resurrected being cannot die and in order to be a resurrected being, a person has to die. To become like our Father in Heaven, we need to be resurrected beings.
-
On 12/12/2020 at 7:02 AM, romans8 said:
In the church video, Introduction - Our Heavenly Father's Plan, how does one account for interracial children
like Africans and Hispanics at the beginning of the video?Thank you,
Matteo
Easy. Their mothers were African or Hispanic or white.
-
15 hours ago, CV75 said:
The continuation of the seeds requires two
united as one...
I realize that. I don't think it means that we will be having sex to make spirit babies. I've already explained why.
-
13 hours ago, CV75 said:
Agency: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/agency-and-accountability?lang=eng
It originates in the coeternal beings you brought up, who live in estates prior to mortality, and it continues with them, expanding as they are added upon in life and after death as thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers and dominions expand with the continuation of the seeds.
Inasmuch as there is gender, there is a sexual component in the relationship, so it is not unreasonable to extrapolate current relationships as a working model for one’s understanding of the afterlife. This is not a “baby factory” and of course women are more than that (that’s a straw man). Your preferred – “better” in your opinion -- working model of having children is based on your particular relationships.
Time is relevant because you brought up the vast amounts of time and the numbers involved in the continuation of the seeds (heavenly parenting). Whether time is too much or too little, fast or slow, etc. is a function of our reckoning and perceptions which change from estate to estate. P.S. on a quantum scale, space and time are the same things have no inherent direction.
We do not know the mechanics of the Atonement of Christ either, but we must teach it (and use several working models to do so), along with the covenants and promises associated with it. Many aspects of the Atonement of Christ can be counterintuitive and is therefore difficult for some people to apply, yet it becomes less counterintuitive as we apply it.
I don’t know if you are speculating or assuming; rest assured good people do both. Impatience and weariness with others’ beliefs, and also with one’s inability to answer their and others’ questions to their satisfaction is a separate issue, I think. A red flag is when speculation and assumptions sabotage charity.
The reason I said it wasn't relative is because it has nothing to do with how many children you expect one person to produce regardless of whether it is an eternity or 80 years.
-
I can see this discussion will not go anywhere. No matter how hard I try, the majority here will only see what they want to see and would rather talk about what they believe is my problem than the actual question that I asked. I understand that there are some who think speculation is bad. I disagree. But I have to wonder why they think they need to be the thought police and jump in on a discussion that they don't like. We all speculate. If we didn't, we'd never discover new truths. I believe it's part of studying it out in our minds.
So, I'll leave this discussion actually being more certain than I ever was before, which often happens when one meets so much resistance to an idea. These are my conclusions. When exalted resurrected beings have children, they are physical beings. They do not have spirit babies, they have real babies. I've said this before in innuendo toward this end, but we already know how to have children. I don't believe it will be any different there than it is here and I don't believe we'll have billions of them. And male and a female can produce a whole world of offspring and that's where the 100s of billions of souls will come into life. I said it in another post in this thread, but I'm certain that intelligences will come to a Christ-like intellect who will bring them to us as a group seeking to become even as we are. As we learn of them and learn who they are, a process that I think is not unlike God when he found himself in the midst of glory and intelligence, we will organize them into families with a head like Adam and a Savior, like Christ and we will follow the same plan that God set for us. By organizing these spirits into families, we become their heavenly parents. There are obviously some details missing.
The first thing that clued me in an there being a problem was a statement made by a presenter at a blacks in the priesthood fireside. The speaker was black. He said, I'm not black because God cursed me. I'm black because my mother was black. I puzzled over that for years. It makes sense, but it doesn't fit the Bible narrative. If what he said was true, what color was my mother? Since the obvious answer is white. It seems apparent that we came from different mothers (I understood his statement to mean that black people originated for a black mother, not from a curse. I tend to agree with that). So where did this other mother come from and why aren't we told about her? So that presented a puzzle about Adam and Eve and their story. When I was young, I believed they were made from clay and that God animated them by putting breath or their spirit into the clay. But since that time, I came to realize, mostly from temple experiences that Adam and Ever were not alone in the garden. They were not surprised by the appearance of Lucifer so it seems that other people or beings were not an unusual thing to see. I began to see the narrative in Genesis to be symbolic of birth and marriage. It is not uncommon to find the rib from Adam being mentioned in marriage ceremonies and used frequently to remind couples that the man is not a tyrant leader in the home but a co-partner with is wife. Who were Adam and Eve's actual physical parents then?
Connecting that with a continuation of the seeds, then I can see that through the same process of having children the way we do it now is most likely the same as it will happen in heaven amongst legally married gods. This creates the potential of peopling many earths and giving home to trillions of beings without the gods making their god wife produce them all. We just do it the same way it has always been done. We don't have to invent anything new. Further, with such a community, it's entirely likely that Eve's parents were not the same as Adam's parents.
Then there was the question of how could Christ be the firstborn and not be the head of the human family? How did Adam get that slot and somehow find Jesus in the middle of the human family? There is obviously to two family relationships. One where are the children of our existing families and one where we are the children of God. That same relationship could have existed in heaven in the preexistence as well. In one relationship we are directly the children of God. In the other relationship, we are the children of Adam and by extension, the children of God (that extension is too vast to contemplate, but it's should be easily understood).
Then there was the big problem of a savior. If we were to make our own planet and put our own children on it, who in all our offspring could ever say that they can only do what they saw their father do? Since that is what Jesus said and I take it literally, that he actually saw his Father do the things he did and was about to do. Joseph Smith stated that he could not tell the Father from the Son until one spoke to introduce the other. But we all know that he should have been able to tell the difference. Wouldn't Jesus have scars on his hands and his feet? Joseph didn't say it about the vision, but he did alude to it in the KFD. It appears that His Father, in the first vision also had the same scars. Which one of us will ever be able to do that? None of us.
I don't believe Christ's atonement atoned for worlds yet uncreated. I believe every world, as it seems that at least one other world did, goes through the same evolution that our world did and that they each will have a Savior. We can't be the example of what a Savior must do. Only one being can be that person and lucky for us, we'll be sharing that throne with Him.
Those were the issues. They were the dots. This is the way I connected them. You all might have a different way of connecting them, but this is how I did it.
Thanks
-
15 hours ago, NeedleinA said:
^^^^ Why then disseminate such ideas?
I believe I stated why and I was not disseminating any such ideas. I brokered this thread in the form of a question. Expecting to get valid Christ like answers and discussion in return. Instead, It seems that I am talking to group of Methodist ministers who can't handle anything outside of their status quo. Don't question our beliefs even if they aren't doctrine. Your very close to apostasy, if you don't get in line, you'll be preaching your nonsense from hell. Yea. Right.
-
14 hours ago, laronius said:
Where has it been said by any prophet past or present that we must do everything God did in order to be like him? It doesn't. You give your opinion as proof that it is so and then use your completely unsubstantiated view as basis for everything else.
Nowhere. I never said that any prophet past or present ever said any such thing nor am I arguing that that is what we must do to be like him. In fact, I'm arguing the opposite. I'm arguing the prevailing belief is that we will be just like him and do everything that he did. That is what many members of the church think. They believe that to be gods we must be God. But our scriptures teach us that simply being all-knowing and all-powerful does not make God, God. Our scriptures tell us exactly what will make us gods. And from those scriptures, which I have posted in this thread, I have offered my "substantiated" opinion and did so in the form of a question to invite discussion, not lectures based on an opinion about me that is unsubstantiated.
-
13 hours ago, CV75 said:
You agree with me that the number and reckoning are not relevant, but that they are relative in that different women have different perspectives on this.
No. I disagree with you. It is very relevant and I haven't found a single woman who is willing to be a baby factory. There may be some, of course, there will be some but a few who are willing doesn't make it any more relevant.
14 hours ago, CV75 said:As to Heavenly Mother(s)’s perspective(s), I do not know. I have found that the practicality of the Gospel and the principles of godliness very often come across as contradictory or counterintuitive, but less so the more we live by them.
Well, I don't see how that is going to become any less counterintuitive.
14 hours ago, CV75 said:I find that gospel speculation is typically rooted in expectations for the world outside of us and does not involve much introspection. On the other hand, assumptions or working models are typically rooted in kind of person we are, the way we live, etc. Our personal experience is a component of both, and out of that some people prefer speculation and others prefer working models to inform their understanding of the next life.
I don't know what kind of person you think I am or what way you think I live but I think such statements about people who want to connect the dots have every right to. I'm tired of sitting in Sunday School classes where someone will say, we'll be the gods of our own planets and put our spirit children there. Everyone in the room nods their head like bobblehead figurines and no one blinks an eye. If that's the kind of mortal life you want to live, then I'm okay with that. It's not the kind of life I want to live and I believe there are a lot of youth who won't buy into such inane ideas. That's not what's going to happen. They know it and, at least, I know it. One day you'll get asked the question and just like the ignorant protestants and Catholics, you'll have to say, don't question your faith. Just believe and we'll all know after we die (of course, then it's too late to do anything about it).
-
13 hours ago, CV75 said:
The scriptures cover a few principles: 1. Agency expands with correct choices, and this expansion qualifies us to advance into new estates while the reduction or stagnation from poor choices condemn us (e.g. devil and his angels, lesser degrees of glory).
Agreed. What has this got to do with the topic? And, what scripture are you quoting that principle from? I'm not sure what you mean by agency. I don't know what other "new estates" you think we might advance to. IMO, the only thing that damns us is being single and choosing not to follow Christ. I believe that so long as this earth stands and has mortals on it, we will have the opportunity to do both. Once this earth has been celestialized, those options will be off the table.
13 hours ago, CV75 said:2. Exalted parents have gender and sexual attributes ("seed").
They do. I don't believe they use sex to produce spirits anymore than mortals do.
13 hours ago, CV75 said:3. Time is measured according to our estate and reckoning, so a "long time" in our experience would be a very "short time" in other estates (in this case, exaltation).
Because the reckoning of time varies, it is irrelevant to this discussion. Except if you think that we can travel back in time. I believe that time is always moving forward. There is no such thing as time travel, except in our minds and in that state, it is only wishful thinking. But time is irrelevant to producing children. I don't care how much time one might give a person, no one wants to give birth to 100s of billions of babies. We love them yes, but there is a much better way to make a family and God has shown us how.
13 hours ago, CV75 said:Obviously we do not fully know what we have not yet experienced, or remember what is behind the veil, so the mechanics of previous and future estates are a bit beyond us right now.
Then I guess we shouldn't teach anything about either. Sadly, I guess... We do and I don't think it so far beyond us that we won't be able to grasp the idea of having children. We are very practiced at doing it. Having children is not a mystery.
-
On 10/8/2020 at 11:04 AM, Traveler said:
1. The basis of family is marriage. Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman. In this life we know that the human race is only propagated through male-female sex. I do not follow your logic that sex in not a divine design for eternal husband - wife relationships and the creation of life.
I don't think I ever produced such logic. If I gave that impression, it's not what I meant. Sex between husband and wife will continue, IMO, just as it does here and for the same purpose. That will continue throughout eternity. That is continuing the seeds. My point is that is not the way spirit children are formed. I hope this is cleared up now.
On 10/8/2020 at 11:04 AM, Traveler said:In scripture the label or title of child, children, son or daughter denotes a covenant - for example the term "Son of G-d" implies a covenant with G-d - as does "the children of G-d" or "children of Israel". For most of history if a child was born outside of a marriage covenant they were considered illegitimate and had no legal family right or claim. I bring this up because there is a growing trend to consider that if you hang around someone or like them - they are family. I am quite sure that without covenant there is no eternal family claim - legally or morally. (See D&C 132). I see no logic in families consisting of only brothers and sisters without parents of at least one male and one female.
I see no logic in that either. I'm not sure what point you are driving at. The concept of family will always exist had has always existed. That does not change the fact that we are co-eternal with God. Because we are all co-eternal with God, I do believe that at one point in time, we were without family. Family was vital to our progress, but the concept has always existed. The idea that I'm trying discuss is how that relationship, being co-eternal, affects the development of family. I assume that the only point where we forgot our previous estate was at mortal birth. I don't believe we go through cycles where we forget everything we ever knew and start over again repeatedly. Do spirit children forget their preexistence as intelligences? I don't think so. I don't think there are any spirit babies. They aren't raised to maturity. They aren't born in the same way as mortal children are born.
On 10/8/2020 at 11:04 AM, Traveler said:The ancient concept of "born" also denotes a covenant. The idea taught by Jesus of being Born Again centers around this notion. It is logical to me that every child that comes into this life - comes through covenant. I see no reason not to assume that all such arrangements were pre-arranged in the pre-existence. It is logical to me that we have spent significantly more time with more understanding and knowledge in the pre-existence than here in this life. Therefore, it is logical to me that "important things" were arranged there rather than here.
"Arranged there rather than here" is, in my mind, the same as saying they were "pre-arranged". In essence, I understand the spiritual birth in the preexistence to be a covenant and not a literal birth in the same sense as mortal birth. Since I see it as a covenant it makes sense to me that we chose to be children of God, but our lineage, the order in which we were born into mortality, was "organized", IMO. For example. I believe, Satan is also a spirit and that makes him a child of God, but he has no familial, nor do I believe he was ever supposed to be someone's mortal son and chose to abort or leave that family.
So, I guess I'm reconciling two threads here. One is as a son of God, which you have stated is by covenant. This is not a being who is born of a father and mother. And then we have the family that we are associated with in mortality who we look like and are similar characteristics. This is the same duality of family we have in mortality. We are born, naturally of our mortal parents and we are born by covenant, a son of God whose mother not seen and there is no literal birth. I believe this same duality continues throughout eternity and that spirits are formed in much the same way (this would seem to indicate spirit babies, but I believe the organization of family is simply by appointment, not birth. This is obviously a gray area even for me, and I'm willing to be wrong, but the point of this discussion is that God, the Father's wife did not give birth to our spirits).
On 10/8/2020 at 11:04 AM, Traveler said:Generally ordinances are performed as a type and shadow of what is to come or what has taken place or been determined. For example, anciently the ordinance of animal sacrifice was a type and shadow of what would come when Christ too upon our sins. Then baptism is an ordinance today that is a type and shadow of what Christ did in the past for us to wash away our sins. I am sure there was an ordinance and ordinances performed in the pre-existence that were types and shadows of our spiritual birth of heavenly parents.
You may not believe this or you may not accept it, but I believe this aligns with what I've been saying.
On 10/8/2020 at 11:04 AM, Traveler said:It is my personal opinion that our spirits were "changed" and given power (light and intelligence) that could not have come by any other means when we were spiritually born of our divine parents. From my scientific background I favor the idea of a spiritual conception from which our spirit essence grew and developed form like unto our parents - all through covenant.
I see this from the opposite perspective. Our light and intelligence was given spirit form that could not have come by any other means except through covenants with God. I believe we were already developed when we made that covenant. I believe our identity, the essence of our being is in our intelligence, the amount of light and truth we were willing to accept or emanate and our spirit was just the embodiment of that intelligence, just as I believe that our physical bodies is simply the embodiment of that same intelligence or light and truth.
I hope this makes some sense. The issue I have is that it does impact our salvation; or the expectation of our salvation.There are a lot of people that accept things as they come and are willing to dwell in the uncertainty of what will come. They have a come-what-may kind of attitude. Any discussion of what may be will be meaningless to these people. I'm not that way. I have expectations and when that expectation is not met I am disappointed and often feel cheated. I don't buy into this idea that whatever will be will be far better than anything I could have ever imagined. Not so. That's for born-again Christians who have no clue what the next life will be. Of course, anything besides singing in a choir for eternity would be an improvement so maybe if my expectations were low, I could be impressed, but our expectations in this church are not low.
In my apologetics, I frequently face ridicule for the childish view that our church as that we will be Gods. And don't get me wrong, I believe we will be, but the idea that we will ever do what God did (it baffles me that the present and future tense would be in question here, but anyway) simply cannot be. So, first expectation shot down. We're not going to do everything that God did. Never will happen in an eternity. We not going to make planets and put our own spirit children on them and be like God the Father over those planets. That is never going to happen, noting any eternity. There's another expectation shot down. The disappointment is rising. Our doctrine teaches simply this, that we will be gods because we will continue to increase and this increase comes solely through continuing the seeds, not in knowledge or power, but in children. I think it is very important to know and understand how that works and in what it will mean to us and for them. Will we create worlds without end? Probably. Will we put our own children on them? I hope not. I mean, consider this. I'm white. My wife is asian. If only my children are on that planet, then there would be no children of any other color on it. It would be a planet full of incest. My Adam and Eve would be brother and sister. That's gross regardless of the excuses we give to that possibility for our first parents, but I don't believe they were brother and sister. I believe they were born of completely different sets of parents who were not God the Father and his wife. I also don't believe that God made them out of dirt, just in case anyone here doesn't get it that I didn't buy into that scheme either.
I believe life goes on there, just as it goes on here with the same kind of sociality. I certainly hope it does. I believe that we will always work as a society, as a council under Jesus Christ. There is no running off into the universe to do our own thing and build our own worlds. I'm not disappointed with that. I find it acceptable and doable. What I look forward to is finding myself in the midst of spirits and glory and seeing fit to institute laws whereby they might advance and become like me. That is what God did that we can do. That is the essence of godhood.
-
On 10/8/2020 at 11:54 AM, Vort said:
I agree with the above, but there's more to it than that. Most speculation is garbage. When speculation gets treated as actual Church doctrine in the minds of participants or readers, then not only do we run the danger of casting pearls before swine, but we run the much bigger (and IMO more damaging) risk of people thinking that the Restored Church actually believes and teaches the nonsense being discussed.
I agree with that. And the nonsense being taught in the church today is that we will make our own planets and put our own spirit children on them. That speculation is not correct and it is damaging, IMO.
-
On 10/8/2020 at 9:37 AM, NeedleinA said:
Our Sister?
I don't know. Is God a singular entity or is God binary? Can he do all this without a woman? When I refer to God, I understand it to be Elohim or the gods. Not just one individual, but a multitude. This seems important to me seeing as after exaltation, there is very little recognizable difference between any of them as far as power, authority and knowledge. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it.
-
On 10/8/2020 at 4:53 PM, CV75 said:
The number and reckoning are not relevant, only relative, even among women. For example, how many children are too many, and how many months of spacing are insufficient? What is the difference between organizing matter that is more fine or pure and less discernible than the elements that mortals are constrained to work with? What are the physical, social and spiritual differences between a mortal soul and an exalted soul?
I haven't met a woman yet who found the reckoning and number of 100's of billions of offspring regardless of how long it takes to produce that many children is relevant. None of them are willing to submit to such barbarism. It's not very practical to expect that any single woman is going to produce that many children for just one planet and then do it again and again for worlds without end.
It's far more practical to extend the family just like we do it here and every woman can participate as they choose by having the number of children they want or having none if they so choose. The ability to have children does not mean that we must have children. My question might have been better understood if I had asked, do you think that our mother in heaven produced the 100 billion children that were born on this earth? How many 100's of billions of children do you think she is still producing?
The relevance is that it is not practical that a single being would produce or be the mother of that many offspring, personally, or even sharing the load (pun intended) with several other sister wives.
What isn't relevant is the social, physical and spiritual differences between a mortal soul and an exalted soul - as far as how many children a single woman might be expected to produce through out the eternities.
-
On 10/9/2020 at 1:04 PM, Carborendum said:
BOJ,
The summary of your central argument is this:
Not buying it.
I'm glad you're not buying it. That's not what I'm selling.
On 10/9/2020 at 1:04 PM, Carborendum said:Because we know it isn't EXACTLY like we see things in mortality, then it MUST be NOTHING like what we're familiar with. Therefore, the ENTIRE concept that we have in our minds is COMPLETELY false doctrine.
This misses an essential portion of my question and that is that the scriptures suggest that birth to heavenly parents is not anything like birth in mortality. I haven't really been back to this argument because for me, it is settled. When I put together Abraham 3 (below), I had the answer to my questions.
On 10/8/2020 at 8:47 AM, brotherofJared said:I came down in the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences thou hast seen. ... Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; ... These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good;
We were not born as infant spirits nor were we raised to maturity. God organized the intelligences. They did not roll out in familial order. They were placed in accordance with God's wisdom in order to bring about and accomplish his work. That process, "organizing the intelligences", can be considered a birth or a beginning of sorts, but it wasn't an 9 month gestation period with an occasional set of multiple children being born in one set.
-
5 hours ago, CV75 said:
The scriptures give us the essential framework, and I’m sure we will understand it better as time rolls on.
Time is rolling on and I think it's time that we consider the essential framework of the scriptures to better understand it. I'm not making this up from non-existing material.
-
On 10/7/2020 at 10:20 AM, Vort said:
How is this obvious? I assume my spiritual parents begat me in spirit exactly as my physical parents begat me in the flesh.
How many spirit children do you think your spiritual parents had that way? How long do you think it took for your spirit parents to produce a spirit child?
On 10/7/2020 at 10:20 AM, Vort said:How do you know this? Why would we assume that the "bodily mechanics" of a resurrected couple must be fundamentally different from that of a mortal couple?
Probably because the mechanics of producing every human spirit that will ever live from single set of parents doesn't make sense, especially from a woman's point of view.
-
23 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:
A important thing here: we humans default to "parent" = "somebody whom gave literal birth to our physical body". That's obviously not the case for spiritual parents. We don't know how the mechanics involved with eternal intelligences / spirits, etc, but it's not the bodily mechanics we think of with bodily parents.
Agreed. Our understanding of what a parent is, from a human perspective, is not sufficient to explain the birth of spirits or even the order of family as we now know it here. Once we begin to get a clear understanding that it is not the same and therefore, words such as "begotten" and phrases such as "raised to maturity" take on new meaning. I'm not entirely sure that those who produced these terms understood them the same way we do. I know that, growing up in the church, I always thought they were exactly as we understand them in human terms. There are statements in our manuals that tend to support that understanding.
The idea that we will go off and make worlds of our own and people them with our spirit children seems preposterous to me now. The narrative is ok, but it has to be couched in the idea of community. We will not be doing any of this alone or even as a couple, but instead, it will always be under the direction of and in concert with Christ. We will continue the seeds, yes. But those seeds will not be spirits except through the act of organizing them from preexisting intelligences (i propose that we will organize them into families), but that is not the process of continuing the seeds. The process of continuing the seeds, IMO, will continue exactly as we continue the seeds now.
-
22 hours ago, estradling75 said:
Indeed... Take for example our earthly parents. They are our parents and they have begotten us. But they are also our Brother and Sister because we are all Children of Heavenly parents. Having one type of relationship status does not preclude the other from also being true. We are children of Heavenly parents and we are also co-enteral with them. One does not preclude the other.
So God is also our Brother or Sister. That has been my point all along. Your scenario allows for heavenly parents being the very same beings who are our earthly parents. That, I believe, is a reasonable explanation for being raised to maturity, except for one thing. Christ was the firstborn of all creation. So, something occurred out of order. Christ would have been inserted into the natural process of family. For that reason, I find it difficult to believe that any of us were raised to maturity. Further, when you consider the idea that many of us were held in reserve (that's not scripture, that I know of, but can easily be supported by the advent of specific beings and specific times, Joseph Smith, for example. These beings are not products of their families or of the environment they were born in. They stood out from all the rest. And Christ was preeminent from the moment of his spiritual birth. That is not something that can be raised to maturity. He already was what he is. The placement of these beings indicates that someone established that order. I don't believe it was naturally occurring through a process that resembles anything like our birth here and being raised to maturity in mortality.
This post contains how I believe God the Father with the help of his wife or wives can be understood as being our heavenly parents. In essence, we were organized into families that we are now part of (Abr 3:21-23)
I came down in the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences thou hast seen. ... Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; ... These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good;
Here, we have a transition where before, they were intelligences, then they were organized and then they were spirits. No birth and no maturity. They were already what they were. Am I wrong? Have I misunderstood these passages?
Note: I grab bits and pieces along the way and I noticed there have been claims of a witness of the spirit and on the basis of scripture. I don't know why you all think I'm getting my ideas from anywhere else. So, I thought I might highlight along the way, the text I have obtained from scripture starting with this post. Both are the basis for my questions.
-
22 hours ago, CV75 said:
It makes perfect sense when there are so many estates the coeternal beings go through at a different times and paces.
That statement could easily be constructed as an argument for reincarnation.
Spirits don't die, do they? That state of being will never end. There is no death of our spirits and can never be an end. But that is not true of our mortality. This state has a beginning and an end. I'm just saying that the beginning of this state is not the same as the beginning of our spirit state. There is no reason to believe that the state of our spirits began the same as the state of our mortality even though we call those beginnings, birth.
-
14 hours ago, CV75 said:
As long as gender is an essential characteristic and marriage requires a man and a woman, sexual means cannot be avoided whether through procreation or adoption. In either case, many separate processes and functions must be carried out that are unique to each parent.
I'm not questioning the role of sex in procreation. I'm questioning the role of sex in creating spirits. I do not believe they are procreated unless their parents are spirits who have never been mortal and even then, I doubt it would be through sex. That's how it works among mortals or beings of flesh and bone.
I'm trying to get a better understanding of our role after the resurrection. I do not believe that resurrected beings have spirit babies. I do not believe that they raise these spirit babies to maturity. I do not believe that spirits even have an identifiable age. They would be as eternal as their intelligence except that before they were a spirit they had no family identity.
Our role, where spirits are concerned would be whatever God did for us, IF it hasn't been done already. It is quite possible that the worlds that will be inhabited may also already be formed. There is no reason to wait billions of years to get started. My question is about what God did for us that we will also be doing. It could have been as simple as associating / organizing every intelligence to a family. No sex. No birth. Just a simple assignment. Organizing the families and setting key persons in those families to ensure the work would roll forward. Or, it could have been that an agreement among the intelligences growing my choice. I just don't see God having sex to produce spirit children.
-
14 hours ago, CV75 said:
I’m saying He brought coeternal intelligences after Him in the sense that we became His spirit children and will continue to follow Him. He received a fulness of all truth and offers us the means to receive it also, which truth I take to be a condition or existence consisting of eternal life and exaltation.
That we "became His spirit children" is the focus of my question. To understand our role in the next life, we have to have a better understanding of how that happened. I believe most people just accept that we are his spirit children and they never think that someday we will also have spirit children. How does that happen? I disagree with the current speculation on how that happens because the beings who become spirit children are co-eternal with the beings who are supposedly their heavenly parents. It is a change, for sure, but the intelligences that were spiritually begotten had a choice in it just like those who are spiritually begotten in mortality, IMO.
14 hours ago, CV75 said:For these reasons I believe it does address your question: we can conclude that our heavenly parents are coeternal with us, just as our earthly parents exist at the same time as we do, their ancestors (given a reasonable lifespan) do, and our children and descendants do (assuming a 2 to 4 generation lifespan). The way we manifest our existence is simply a matter of timing.
What you've just described here is the basis for my question. I agree, we are all co-eternal. But God is not my mortal father and His wife is not my mortal mother. My heavenly parents do not have to be God himself. God can be the Father of us all, not directly, but still literally.
“God’s” Plan
in LDS Gospel Discussion
Posted
A perfect plan does have the resemblance of being the only way it could be done. But God's plan is not like gravity. Gravity is a law that will always respond in the same way every time. God's plan didn't always exist. Gravity did. The plan from getting from point A, a state of intelligence, to point B, a state of neverending life has a lot of obstacles in the way. God knew what the objective was, but getting there without cheating (as some of our critics seem to be okay with) takes considerable planning.
For example, I find it fascinating that the best way to preserve the Biblical witness through time was to keep it out of the hands of men and that's exactly what God did with the Book of Mormon. It laid dormant, untouched by man, buried by a prophet, uncovered by a prophet. If the world accepted it as authentic, it would be the most valuable source material of any ancient records that we have. That's just one piece of a perfect plan and it was God that set it to preserve his work, not just something that had to be done. Of course, it had to be done, but that doesn't make it any less God's plan.