I had some questions about what I read on the material posted in regards
to the General Conference (The Message, the Meaning, and the Multitude)
One concluding thought: Joseph Smith’s 19th-century frontier environment was
aflame with competing crowds of Christian witnesses. But in the tumult they
created, these exuberant revivalists were, ironically, obscuring the very
Savior young Joseph so earnestly sought. Battling what he called 'darkness
and confusion,' he retreated to the solitude of a grove of trees where he
saw and heard a more glorious witness of the Savior’s centrality to the
gospel than anything we have mentioned here this morning. With a gift of
sight unimagined and unanticipated, Joseph beheld in vision his Heavenly
Father, the great God of the universe, and Jesus Christ, His perfect Only
Begotten Son. Then the Father set the example we have been applauding this
morning: He pointed to Jesus, saying: "This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"
No greater expression of Jesus's divine identity, His primacy in the plan
of salvation, and His standing in the eyes of God could ever exceed that
short seven-word declaration.
How were they obscuring the Savior?
Regarding the term 'begotten', what is the difference in how Jesus was
one of many spirit children begotten of Heavenly Mother and Father and the
reference to Jesus being the only begotten of the Father (through an
earthly woman instead of a heavenly one)? Was he begotten both inside and
outside a marriage covenant between husband and wife?
Jonah/Rachel