brotherofJared

I don't see where u get the idea that progression between kingdoms is not possible from D&C19. In fact, the way I read it. It appears to be a slam dunk that it is possible.

It was a rhetorical question.  If the Lord clearly puts the answer in scripture... and the church clearly encourages you to read said scripture... Why do you need me or anyone else to repeat it?  (aka rhetorical) As for not answering your question.. I see no reason to answer a question that fundamentally misrepresent what I am saying. Rather I address the true issue that you are twisting my words and I do not accept it.

I agree. Sometimes I feel like the real question that shows how we feel about equality of the sexes is if we likewise see nothing wrong with being a stay at home dad.

If I don't eat I get severe sinus headaches that last 18-24 hours.  Fasting is out for me.  To participate in fasting I remove something from my diet that is noticeable.  For me that is any sort of flavored drink.  I notice if I don't drink something with flavor, which reminds me that I am fasting.  Perhaps something akin would work for you as well.

My observation is that those cultures and societies that have a strong patriarchy are accompanied by a well-organized matriarchy. That matriarchy provides a framework where little girls learn what it means to be a woman; where young mothers learn how to rear their little children; where women support each other to "get things done"; where middle-aged (or senior depending how young people die) women receive support transitioning past child-bearing years; where seasoned and experienced women pass on their skills and knowledge. Additionally, my observation is that when people try to dismantle the patriarchy what they really end up doing is dismantling the matriarchy, and place the displaced women in the patriarchy. The patriarchy is still there - it hasn't been dismantled at all! And while some women are quite comfortable in this structure, many find it* difficult to navigate 1) because the framework was optimized over millennia for men, and 2) their support structure has been dismantled. In addition, many men are displaced in the process. 
 
As long as I'm here, I'll add that Toy Story 4 can be viewed from this perspective (of placing women in the patriarchy and displacing men) not just as a story but also as a project. In the story, Woody doesn't have a purpose anymore and has to find one. He never really does so his character doesn't really arc (except to find out he's not needed any more - perhaps Million Dollar Babying him was too dark for Pixar?). In the project, Bo Peep and her girls resolve most of the conflict, so Woody doesn't really have a role in this film either. He doesn't serve to inspire others. And even in his babysitting duties is easily forgotten. 
 
*This is the "trying to have it all" trope from so many forms of media.

Can I just say the most annoying thing about the new films are the depiction of Nephi as a 24 year old football player sized man. Also, why must Rick Macy play. . .Every. . .Single. . .Father. . . in church films? He is not that good and there are many good actors that could play this role better than he does.

...what?

Hi @anatess2, not sure if you remember me, it's been awhile. Anyway, liked your response.
The "justice of God" is in a way illustrated by the problem-solving-test some of you may be familiar with:
"A farmer wants to cross a river with his fox, chicken and bag of grain, because the soil is better on the other side and the grain would grow well, there is unlimited feed for the chicken and unlimited hunting for the fox: everything would be "in heaven." She/He has a boat that is only big enough to hold her/him and one other thing at a time. In what order does she/he carry her/his property across the river so that they all arrive safely on the other side?"
If the farmer takes the fox across first and leaves the chicken and grain waiting together, the chicken will eat the grain; if she/he takes the grain across first, the fox will eat the chicken.
Obviously she/he must take the chicken across first, because the fox won't eat the grain if the two are left together. Then the farmer comes back and takes the grain over and switches it for the chicken which she/he brings back across the river to the original side and switches it for the fox, which she/he takes over and leaves on the other side, then returns and brings the chicken back last since the fox won't eat the grain it's been left with in the meantime. Voila.
The point is the farmer is limited in what she/he can do based on the nature of the fox, the chicken and the grain. The fox wants to eat the chicken, it is the fox's nature. The chicken wants to eat the grain, it is the chicken's nature. So because of what the fox and chicken would choose if given free agency and opportunity, the farmer must move them across the river in a very specific, tedious way.
I've thought about that story from the point of view of both animals:
-the chicken gets to cross first (yay), but then is taken back across the river (a setback) and must wait and be carried across last of all. It might seem "unfair" to the chicken that it be made to wait because of the fox's nature.
-the fox must wait for the chicken to cross first before the fox is carried over. It might seem "unfair" for the fox to have to wait for the chicken to cross first because of the chicken's nature.
I believe that's mortality in a nutshell, metaphorically speaking: God is the farmer, we're the animals. The brilliance of our all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God is that He is able to take all of us with our individual and varying natures, and arrange our stay in mortality such that we each "cross the river" in a way that---I believe--best fulfills His purpose to grant us immortality and at least a chance at eternal life in His direct presence hereafter. (Moses 1:39)
The point is to submit to God's wise and righteous will (2 Nephi 2:24) and wait patiently. The folly of believing we know better than the source of all knowledge is hopefully obvious. If the fox or chicken had disliked the waiting and the way the farmer was doing things, they could have run away but then they'd never have reached the other side where unlimited grain awaited the chicken and unlimited hunting awaited the fox.
So it is with us.

1.  Do you take *every* picture in a religious text as establishing doctrine?  What about all those pictures of the nativity that show Jesus in a wooden manger, even though we know Palestinian Jews of the first century AD would have been using stone mangers?
In answer to your question, Heavenly Father is the embodiment of a union between a spirit (or “spirit body”) and an immortal physical body of perfected flesh.
2.  That’s very nice.  But the invented dogmas of hellenized third-century Christians who lionized Socrates as much as Jesus and who were confounded by Jews who pointed out that worship of a God who was also the Son of God couldn’t possibly be “monotheistic”, are wholly irrelevant to the current discussion.  You’re alleging that Latter-day Saint theology is internally inconsistent; it’s a non sequitur for you to trot out trinitarian fables to further that effort.  The question I asked you challenged you to explore the situation from an LDS perspective, which of course you didn’t do; because as I said earlier, you’re here as an accusing ha satan; not as someone sincerely seeking truth or even as a teacher lovingly trying to understand another’s error before correcting it.
3.  Jesus said He had done nothing but what He had seen the Father do (John 5:19).  Many Saints have taken this literally in the context of Joseph Smith’s proposals in the King Follett discourse.  I think often they perhaps push the analogy beyond its usefulness.  That said, the process Jesus apparently went through was:
a.)  Organized as a spirit (from pre-existing intelligence) by God the Father;
b.) Progressed further than any other spirit, accepted the role of Savior, and attained status as a “god”, but still lacking a physical body;
c.)  Condescended to give up His divine power and live a sinless life as a mortal, in political weakness and social obscurity and poverty, ultimately suffering a painful and humiliating death; 
d.)  Was resurrected, being permanently joined to a perfected physical body and returned to the physical presence of the Father.  
The fact that the Book of Mormon generally focuses on c.) and d.) does not obviate or contradict a.) and b.).  
As for God the Father - we surmise He always existed at least as an intelligence, at some point was organized into a spirit, at some point received a body, lived, died, was resurrected, and became an embodied God; just as (in rough terms) Jesus did.  The degree to which the particulars of God the Father’s journey through mortality may or may not have paralleled Jesus’s own experiences as outlined above, is speculation upon inference.  I think some Church members like to believe that God the Father also went through the full  series of steps a) through d) because it lets us immediately dismiss uncomfortable questions like whether God the Father has a savior or whether God the Father ever sinned during His mortality; rather than acknowledging that we just don’t know. 

I think a miracle explained is still a miracle.

Ran into a tithing discussion on Facebook, and to my surprise a repeated comment rubbed me the wrong way.
The question began with just what income/increase/services/returns/social security/investments are we supposed to pay tithing on? (Cue Backroads: finances are soooo booorrrrrring).
Now, because of the bore that is finances, I would never judge another's interpretation of tithing.
However, every other person was chiming in with the cutesey chant of "do you want gross blessings or net blessings?"
And for some reason, it drove me bonkers.
It made it sound tithing was not a commandment but a... Blessing grab.
As I currently understand it, there is no official accountant-approved calculation for determining one's 10% increase tithe, just a 10% determined between one and the Lord.
I do not doubt the miracles and blessings associated with tithing, but I don't know if I'm comfortable with the notion of "net/gross blessings".
 

It was obviously the deceleration burn of a Star Drive on the Lord’s interstellar yacht. Sheesh, so simple.

You mean our underwear? 
Yes. I don't think we'll need the temple garments that we wear under our everyday clothes in heaven.

Iggy, I understand and appreciate your concerns. 
That said, I’m frankly not in a mood to mollycoddle trolls who ask gotcha-type questions in bad faith and then refuse to engage with any sincere answers offered (as @GaleG has been doing consistently for months now), or to completely forfeit the use of irony in dealing with trollish behavior just because a Google bot may relay my comment, devoid of context, on a search result displayed to someone who can’t be bothered to actually click through to this site for the full discussion (let alone actually visit an official LDS site, as opposed to an explicitly unofficial site such as this).
One reason I, and some others, no longer take the time to compose what you would consider to be ideal, informative, duly-sourced answers to GaleG’s questions is that we have actually done so in the past, and (s)he has repeatedly failed to engage with them or posed follow-up questions indicating (s)he didn’t bother to read what had already been written in the thread.  
Am I being my best self?  Admittedly not.  I’ll work on it.  But I also expect people like Gale to work on being their best selves by being sincere in their questions and thoughtful in their responses to the answers given; and I also expect genuinely curious investigators of the LDS faith to work on being their best selves by not limiting their research to the few-dozen words that show up on a Google search result page; by developing a basic understanding of the difference between “official” and “unofficial” sources; and a gaining passing familiarity with the sorts of dynamics that sometimes arise in online communities.

It's easier to complain about others when, for less effort, you could just provide the link yourself.   Common aspect of humanity, one to which I often fall prey.  
Good reminder that we can all be the change we seek.

Do you all realize that your comments here on this forum are open to the public. Google same sex + LDS + "forums" and you responses and topics with those words in them from this forum pop up. When you are "Just Joking", "LOL", or being sarcastic, that does NOT show up.
All of you when you are answering about Church Doctrine and Church Policy be correct in those answers and post links to www.churchofjesuschrist.org to back up your answers.
As for that holocaust comment, THAT was so out of line. I am helping a member in her attempt to get the proxy work done for her great grandparents and the aunts & uncles who were slaughtered by the Nazi's. Her Grandmother made it out alive. Man sakes alive, the letters she has to write, documents that have to be witnessed as they are copied and then sent to SLC.
THAT glib comment regarding LDS Church Policy is just one of the many reasons I really don't like this forum, very few of you back up your LDS church answers with links to prove them. That and the mass immaturity of the members as is evident in the "Sarcastic", "Just Joking" ,"🤣 " placed after your sentences.
 

I'm okay with many of the things that McConkie taught, but even he admitted that he had to eat crow, specifically on race an the priesthood. So, we both have our examples of things he was right about and things he was wrong about. I'm not bad-mouthing McConkie. I'm bad-mouthing some of his teachings, namely this one. Just because McConkie said it doesn't mean it's true or that it's doctrine. It's not. When I read McConkie, there are things that I love and there are things that I can't abide by.
In a talk given to BYU on marriage, he made the bold statement that a returned missionary got married outside the temple because of circumstances and while they were on their way to the temple to get sealed, they had an accident that killed them both. He basically said, too bad for them, they can never be married in all the eternity because they had their chance and blew it. I skip that portion because it's basically baloney. He also told a story of a woman who was married to a member of the church who chose not to live the gospel. She said that when she asked her husband about it, saying, You know it's true, why don't you take me to the temple and be sealed to me. His reply was that yes, he knew it was true, but he liked the kind of life he was living and he knew that when he died, she'd take him to the temple and be married and sealed by proxy for all eternity. Then McConkie said of the situation, He died and she took him to the temple to be sealed and it was the biggest waste of time. More baloney. This is the hard line that McConkie drove like a stake through the heart of people whose circumstances weren't perfect through no fault of their own. Basically... Too bad, you're going to hell.
What was this woman supposed to do? Divorce her husband and find a better one? What if she didn't want another one? What if that one man was the one? She can't force him to do what she wants. But, even more to the point, was McConkie now advocating divorce to fix eternal issues, issues that aren't necessarily eternal? That's a new one for me. I don't recall any GA recommending divorce except for personal safety. There was one that I heard rumored where Brigham Young suggested it as an alternative for a couple where the husband was sterile and then when she got pregnant, she could divorce biological father and marry the first husband, but I hardly believe that's true.
IMO, people love to be able to pigeon hole others and judge them to be in less than Celestial. There's just no way so-and-so can get into the Celestial kingdom because of this and that. So-and-so is telestial material and he'll never ever get into the Celestial kingdom because he can't advance.
The only stipulation is that those who don't rely on Christ in this life will have to work it out themselves in the next life and that they will suffer for their sins even as Christ suffered for our sins which caused him to bleed at every pore. Tell me, if they suffered like this, why do you think they can't advance to live with that being who did the suffering for us?
So sorry, but we are not capable of pigeon-holing anyone. Our knowledge is limited to this life. We have almost no knowledge of the previous one and just a little more of the next one and we still arent' talking about the resurrection and life thereafter.
All I'm saying is that it is entirely possible that we can advance to the Celestial Kingdom so long as we have not sinned against the Holy Ghost. Why would the next life be different than this one? We are sinners in this life and have hope for exaltation, why shouldn't we expect to have the same hope in the next life before the resurrection? Is it because McConkie said so?

That would be a discussion about God, the Father, not the traditional Christ or the Trinity. The New Testament is clear that there are three persons in the Godhead. The doctrine of what the Trinity is comes from a much later philosophy that flesh is corrupt and spirit is pure. That started a struggle with the idea that Jesus was God because he was a being of flesh and God is spirit (according to the argument). The New Testament tends to support that assumption (I've argued this idea here before but it wasn't well-received).
The points about the traditional Christ that I believe we can all mostly agree upon is:
He is the son of God He was born of a human mother Was human as well as divine Existed before he was incarnated Exists now as an embodied spirit, resurrected never to die again Saved everyone from permanent death, bringing everyone into the same resurrected state as He is in. Enabled those who believe in him to dwell with him forever by covering their sins; cleansing them through his infinite sacrifice in their behalf Where we disagree largely stems from our understanding of who God the Father is and from there all the issues arise. If Jesus was supposed to reveal the Father; bring us to the Father, then either He did a very poor job of it or it is not easily discerned. It requires help, but understanding who or what the Father is, is the key to understanding who Christ is. I believe when non-LDS Christians dispute our explanation of the traditional Christ, it is because they are arguing who God is. For them, God is totally embodied in Christ and there is none else and that is simply not what the scriptures teach. They leave out an important clause, "beside him" and have gone through extreme lengths to prove that it means exclusively, so they drop the phrase. I might also add the phrase, "to us" because this observation is relative. They refuse to consider the possibility that we are not God's only work where they would have also had an Adam and Eve and produced children in sin and would be in need of a Savior. What is that person's name? Does He have anything to do with us? If we stretch this out across eternities, we can be pretty sure that worlds can into existence and expired long before ours did and will continue long after ours. What will our Savior be to them? Could he have been crucified for a people who did not know him? 
These are, of course, rhetorical questions. When Paul presented this in the scriptures, he very clearly stated that there are gods many and lords many, but to us there is but one God, the Father and one Lord, Jesus Christ.

It makes sense that each of us had a set of heavenly parents but we have to consider the doctrine that we were neither created nor made but have existed from all eternity to all eternity. If that is true, then we cannot see those parents as our originators. We would be the same age as they are, the same age as God is. As such, the definition of parents cannot be the same as we understand it to be in mortality (but even that definition is different for us. The rest of the world believes we started, came into existence at birth. But we understand that is not true, that we existed before we were born).
I personally believe that God, the Father can be our literal Father without any heavenly mother involved. I would suggest that the connection is similar to the connection we have with Christ as our Father in this life and still, we can have heavenly parents, both a father and a mother. It is possible that neither of them is God, the Father. Again, the same as is Jesus Christ is not either of our parents, yet He has spiritually begotten us and so, in that sense, He is also our Father.
But also consider that God, the Father, started all this eons ago and no one that has ever been born in a mortal body could be born if it had not been for God, the Father's work. As such, even though his mortality is far far removed from our mortality that would make Him the great Father of us all, literally.
These are just some speculations/ideas that some may wish to consider as we discuss heavenly parents. I'm not trying to prove anything or to disagree with our doctrine. But I believe everything I've stated so far is in our scriptures. The way we put them together sometimes doesn't quite fit when other things are considered.

I will add another post to this thread.  Traditional Christianity created "creeds" to define the doctrine of Jesus and The Father that created the "Trinity" doctrine.  Joseph Smith Jr. gave witness that the creeds that so defined "Traditional Christianity" were an abomination to G-d.  It is this Trinity creed that became more important to Traditional Christians than the sacred words of Apostles and Prophets - and as Paul said - that Christ spoke in his days.  For over a thousand years (almost 2000 years) Traditional Christians defined Christ and Christianity by the man made Trinity creeds putting to death anyone claiming to be Christian that believed any other interpretation of scripture contrary to Trinity doctrine.
 
The Traveler

Based on The Family - Proclamation to the World , is the word "idea" a weak word to use?
Cheers.

I get it but do not agree. Yes, we justify our actions, and rationalize/moralize our selfish decisions. Mao saw 50 million starve and believed the sacrifice was worth it to create a new socialist man. Yet, if we are truly made in the image of God, then something in him knew it was wrong. So, while we can all make our case, before God, come judgment day, there will be no objections to righteous judgments rendered.

Have you ever been nominated for a Welcoming Committee?   🙂

It is neither heretical nor is it deadly. Purgatory is spelled out in D&C 76
These are they who are thrust down to hell.
These are they who shall not be redeemed from the devil until the blast resurrection, until the Lord, even Christ the Lamb, shall have finished his work.
The principle qualifying factor between any of these glories is who one is willing to accept as God, from what I can tell. Telestial, accept the Holy Ghost or the being best described in the creeds, The terrestrial accept Jesus but not the Father and the Celestial accept the Father. The other major factor is the glory they are willing to abide, meaning the law they are willing to obey. If one can progress from hell to the telestial kingdom, it seems that their only limit would be based on what they were willing to obey and who they were willing to accept. I see no reason we cannot see a person who is willing to accept the Father and obey the Celestial law cannot advance, like all the other sinners to be in the Celestial kingdom with them.
Like others have stated here, it is not likely that they would be willing to do something for eternity that they were not willing to do for a small moment in time. However, with encouragement from family, it must be feasible that it could be done. As far as I know, nothing but McConkie says otherwise.

I believe that the statement that Joseph Smith made meant, simply, that God was once a man on an earth just like we now are and has experienced all that we now experience. In other words, God is one of us. He was dispelling the myth that God is a being that lives outside of time and space and has no connection with us at all.
No amount of study about what God did would lead one to God. In fact, I would think that a neutral study of Christ would lead a person to question whether Jesus knew what he was doing because it all relied on things that were not yet realized and still aren't realized. However, if one is convinced that Christ is who he said he was, the study would be quite different. It's not the study of the character of God that brings us to him or even enables us to strive to be more like him, but; there is a separate element which draws us to him which cannot be found in books or even association, had we been alive in his day. There are two things that I believe lead to this, 1) His message is familiar to us, we knew him before and heard this before. and 2) the inexplicable blessing of a witness that He has what we are looking for, that He is the way. Then our study of him will be more meaningful, but such a study will not reveal how truly close to us He actually is. To get this "first principle", we needed a teacher sent from God.