Beyond Mitt's Underwear: Part 3: The Preexistence, Creation, and Plan for Salvation
Father in Heaven (Elohiem) and His wives live near the star called Kolob on a pair of magic stones. They were once mortal humans just like we are and have retained their physical bodies of flesh and bone, but instead of blood they have “spirit matter, a substance which is more refined and pure and glorious than blood”. At the time of creation
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Let's clarify - if you took the fastest starship, perhaps one that could fold space and teleport from one place to another, you could not find Kolob anywhere in our universe. It cannot be reached physically. I couldn't tell you anything beyond that, since we're not entirely sure what was meant by all of that.
Brigham Young once taught that Adam was the son of Elohiem, father of Jesus, and God of our world, a teaching which was incorporated into the “lecture at the veil” portion of the Temple Endowment ceremony, but this was removed in 1877 when Brigham Young died and the modern church no longer teaches it.
Son of Elohiem = true, just like we all are
Father of Jesus = true in the sense that if Adam was the first man, he is physical father to us all
God of our world = true in the sense that he helped create it, and since he is the father of us all, he is invested in the lives and salvation of all of us. Like Revelations says, Michael ( ... )
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I think it's your turn to provide a citation. Who says that?
This is a silly misinterpretation.
Nice to know we've finally gotten to the silly part. I was having trouble figuring out which part was the silly part.
Don't shoot the messenger. Take up this "misinterpretation" with the Quorum of the Twelve, Priesthood Correlation Program, or whoever's telling the LDS.org webmasters to write that stuff down as if it's officially accepted doctrine.
Weren't you the one saying that it's not up to us to question the wisdom of the Prophets, since they speak to God and we have to take their word for it? This is what God told your Prophets, the Church accepts it and teaches it. Deal with it.
every Mormon I've ever talked to agreed with me that Mother Theresa will get to heaven faster than the rest of us.That's wrong on multiple counts ( ... )
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Lots of people I have talked to over the years within the church. Maybe Hugh Nibley? This is organically received info, so I have no citation. Anyone reading this can believe whatever they like - you or someone who has lived it for almost 40 years. :)
Nice to know we've finally gotten to the silly part. I was having trouble figuring out which part was the silly part.
Heh. Yeah, I know. Any religion seems silly to non-religious people, so I accept your comment as a good faith one.
Don't shoot the messenger. Take up this "misinterpretation" with the Quorum of the Twelve, Priesthood Correlation Program, or whoever's telling the LDS.org webmasters to write that stuff down as if it's officially accepted doctrine.Fair enough. I didn't make myself clear in my own comment, so you are totally fine to call me on it. Let me try again ( ... )
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I'm wondering what your characterisation of Mother Theresa as a "magnificent selfless soul" is based on.
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What she did, what she professed, the sacrifices she made to help those who had no other defender, the life she was willing to live in order to do what she did, etc.
I'm being broad, and I know that wikipedia catalogues some of the issues surrounding her, but I'm willing to accept some of those issues when we see her willingness to help as much as she could.
I'm not casting her as the essence of perfection, but I do recognize that she performed some amazing feats of service throughout her life, even if she was struggling with her faith itself. She still helped those that needed help, regardless.
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I didn't say "blindly obey". I did (in the next post) say that the Laws of Obedience, Sacrifice, and Consecration basically amount to that.
I also started this series of posts by saying "there’s a difference between what the LDS gospels say, what the general authorities of the Church say, and what most Mormons currently believe and practice." I can't say that all every single Mormon blindly obeys. But I can say not just that the Laws require this, but that when they blew their means and time dog whistle you guys certainly hopped to it.
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I've vastly abbreviated all the claims of Adam-God Doctrine which were unambiguously explicit, spoken by a sitting Prophet, accepted and taught as doctrine by the Church, and go well beyond Adam being the "father of us all".
For a time, the Church taught that Adam (not Elohiem) was not just the co-creator of the earth but the direct, spiritual father of our spirits in the Preeixstence. There's a whole story about Adam being mortal, becoming Exalted, becoming a God, creating our world, then eating the apple to become mortal from human, and eating another kind of magic fruit to turn back into a God later. It gets complicated.
I'd be happy to write a whole separate detailed post on the subject, but it seemed kinda moot since the Church basically threw out the whole thing, stopped teaching it, and removed it from the temple ceremony after Brigham Young died.
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Questions of character and daily living are far more defining of who we are than all this space doctrine, which is why I simply shrug and say you're missing the whole point, though I'm happy to engage and clarify up to a certain point.
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Is it just coincidence - you're LDS because you were born into an LDS family, and you'd be unexaminingly accepting Scientology if your parents had been Scientologists?That's an excellent question, one that if I answered fully might take us a while, so let me see if I can hit the highlights ( ... )
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I'm sincere most of the time. I'm just ALSO rude.
Except you are saying the source of the answers is Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, etc, and that's not true.
They claim their source goes back farther, but, and this is important, all the subsequent investigation has shown that everything that WOULD be true if their source went further back than them is not true.
You don't even believe in God,
True.
and so when I say that God is the source of those answers and I already have a relationship with him, you dismiss that out of hand, which is fine.This part, I disagree with ( ... )
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Except, and this matters, you have no reason to consider your Gospel any more credible than that of anyone else.
I discover that this world was mainly a testing ground for character, not doctrine.
Which is to say, you discovered that your doctrine was unsupportable, and thought of something else. A little *more* digging would have shown you that the claim that the world is a testing ground for character is ALSO unsupportable.
when you see billions of people claiming the same source but getting different answers, you see evidence of No God.Clarification: I see billions of people claiming many different sources, and getting contradictory answers, with all answers either matching their own preconceptions (and thus, are their own inventions) or having better explanations than a deity. Which is why I see no evidence of a God, which is NOT the same as "evidence of No God". The ( ... )
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