Is Jesus My Brother?, by Sandra Tanner

okay tonight we're looking at the topic is Jesus my brother many people have a high regard for Jesus as a teacher but pull back at the thought that he was God incarnate in certain circles it is popular to claim that Jesus never said he was God that it was a later teaching read back into the story however the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament carried the same message as it does today the first chapter of Matthew tells us that after Mary was found with child the angel told Joseph that the pregnancy was of God and that he was to name the child Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins this would be in fulfillment of the promise in Isaiah 7:14 that the Messiah would be Emmanuel or God with us in John chapter 10 we read that one day at Jerusalem as Jesus was walking in the temple courtyard certain Jewish men demanded that he tell them plainly if he was the promised messiah he responded I told you and you believed not then after comments about his sheep hearing his voice Jesus plainly said I and my father are one this so angered the men that they took up stones to stone him Jesus then asked them for which good work they were prepared to do this they responded we are not stoning you for any of these but for blasphemy because you a mere man claimed to be God the men recognized that for Jesus to declare I and my father are one was to claim that he was deity John 8:58 is another example Jesus declares I tell you the truth before Abraham was I am again the Jews response was to take up stones in an attempt to stone him Jesus announcing his identity as I am is a direct application of the Old Testament name of God in Exodus 3 13 through 15 when God called Moses to go to his people Moses asked who shall I say sent me and God responded tell them I am sent you why would the Jews want to stone Jesus if he had not said something they had believed to be blasphemous namely a claim to be in God clearly the New Testament puts forward the claim that Jesus is one with the father John 1:1 through three says in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God the same was in the beginning with God all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made I might mention here that we have a manuscript part of John 1:1 that dates to about 180 ad and so that particular first as one that's pretty well nailed down as coming to us about as direct as you can get there's obviously been no change in that even though Joseph Smith made changes in his inspired revision the earliest manuscript of John 1:1 is still reads the same a few verses later John writes the word became flesh here we see John is presenting Jesus as both our creator and God when Thomas saw the risen Christ he declared my Lord and my god and for him to say that is acknowledging for Jesus to accept that would be to it be accepting worship and if Jesus had not been God he would never have allowed Thomas to do that to address him that way in a similar manner Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians the son is the image of the invisible God the firstborn over all creation for in him all things were created things in heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether Thrones or powers or rulers or authorities all things have been created through him and for him he is before all things and in him all things hold together I don't know how many times all it's used in that section but I think we get the point when he says all he kind of means all all things were created by him if the Sun is before all things and all things were created by him then he is truly God and not a spirit being who had to advance to godhood the author of Hebrews declares Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever then he has always been God and he had no beginning the Apostle Peter says the same referring to the Sun as our God and Savior Jesus Christ but when we turn to LDS literature we find that the deity of Christ has been greatly modified according to Mormonism Jesus has not always been God but is one of millions maybe billions of spirit brothers each of whom could potentially have been chosen as the savior last week we looked at the LDS teaching on the nature of God Joseph Smith taught that God was once a mortal on another world and after his death and resurrection he advanced to become the Heavenly Father for our world in the encyclopedia of Mormonism we read just as God organized pre-existing matter to create the universe so he organized pre-existing intelligence to create the spirits that eventually became human beings this would mean that not only you and I were first pre-existing intelligence before our birth as spirit children of heavenly father and mother but that Jesus was the same this would rob jesus of his uniqueness as god then it could not be said of him that he was from everlasting to everlasting and thomas was wrong to proclaim that the risen christ was his lord and god mormons not only teach that jesus is our elder spirit brother but that lucifer is as well let's look at a few statements by LDS leaders now we'll see how smart I am hey Nadine I couldn't do it last week one button is a little hard okay LDS church leader adjusts Christensen wrote in the ensign magazine which is the official magazine for the Mormons on first hearing the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord Jesus Christ our brothers may seem surprising to some especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations but both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and therefore spirit brothers but as the first born of the father Jesus was Lucifer's older brother from this we see that prior to Lucifer's rebellion he and Jesus were on equal footing whatever could have been said about Jesus and his nature at that time could have been said of Lucifer and all of us Mormons believe that in the distant past all of Heavenly Father's millions of spirit children were called to a Grand Council where the two oldest sons Jesus and Lucifer presented their plan for life on Earth LDS Apostle John a Witsel wrote in the Grand Council called to ratify the Father's plan a great difference arose the majority led by the first born of the father our elder brother Jesus the Christ was ready to accept the plan with all its conditions the minority led by Lucifer a son of the morning feared the isolation and the pains and ills of Earth for them Lucifer proposed that they should be sent to earth but returned with earthly bodies irrespective of their works on earth this latter plan seemed seemed desirable that one-third of those present favorited in direct opposition of God's plan Lucifer and his followers were thrown out of the council and as opponents of God's plan became the devil and his angels who strive ever to tempt men to disobey the laws of God that's the end of the quote by witzel thus according to Mormonism Jesus stood for free agency with the possibility that some would not return to Heavenly Father but Lucifer wanted all to be saved with no free agency this resulted in a great war at which time God expelled from heaven Lucifer and one-third of his spirit children who would then become the devil and his agents on earth so we want to look at a statement by Joseph Smith the contention this is Joseph Smith the contention in heaven was Jesus said that there would be certain souls that would not be saved and the devil said he could save them all and laid his plans before the Grand Council who gave their vote in favor of Jesus Christ so the devil rose up in rebellion against God and was cast out with all who put up their heads for him end of quote here we see Joseph Smith teaching something totally outside the Bible God did not need a planning committee with all of his millions of spirit children to vote on how to govern people on his future earth God spoke and it was done Isaiah wrote this is what the Lord says your Redeemer who formed you in the womb I am the Lord the maker of all things who stretches out the heavens who spreads out the earth by myself but who is the God who spoke in the old testament to Christians it is the Lord God who spoke to Moses the great I am also referred to as Jehovah to Mormons Jehovah is the son of totally separate from Heavenly Father they teach that God the Father is named Elohim while Jesus is named Jehovah LDS President Joseph F Smith stated among the spirit children of Elohim the first born wasn't is Jehovah or Jesus Christ to whom all others are juniors notice when he says juniors it takes away from Jesus being God eternally because we're all on the same footing but the Bible does not separate Elohim into a different God from Jehovah when we read in Deuteronomy 6:4 hear o Israel the Lord our God is one Lord it is using both words Elohim and Jehovah here o Israel the Lord and when you see Lord in all caps in the Old Testament it stands for Jehovah our God meaning Elohim is one Lord meaning Jehovah so it's here o Israel Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah Mormons want to take this these names and break them down into two separate people and you just can't do that if you're reading the Old Testament and see the Hebrew words behind Lord and God you realize how they're all interchanged it's one being one God being referenced whether it's Lord or Jew Jehovah or Elohim however in the LDS temple ceremony the creation drama has Elohim the Father and Jehovah the son as two separate individual gods if Jesus is Jehovah of the Old Testament then he is the one who said to Isaiah before me there was no God formed neither shall there be after me which wouldn't fit the Mormon understanding of God according to Mormonism after Lucifer was cast out of heaven God's plan could proceed each spirit would now be sent to earth to work toward his own godhood just as Heavenly Father had done in the encyclopedia of Mormonism we read the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints teaches that all resurrected and perfected mortals become God's they will dwell again with the Father God the Father and live an act like him in endless worlds of happiness power love glory and knowledge above all they will have the power of procreating endless lives latter-day saints believe that Jesus Christ attained godhood and that he marked the path and led the way for others likewise to become exalted divine beings by following him but the Bible teaches no such doctrine Isaiah proclaimed with whom will you compare me or count me equal to whom will you liken me that we may be compared I am God and there is no other I am God and there is none like me Isaiah 46 verses 5 and 9 LDS President Gordon B Hinckley admitted that the LDS view of Jesus is completely different from standard Christianity in 1998 the Deseret News reported in bearing testimony of Jesus Christ president Hinckley spoke of those outside the church who say Latter day Saints do not believe in the traditional Christ no I don't the traditional Jesus of whom they speak is not the Christ if who might speak for the Jesus of whom I speak has been revealed in this dispensation of the fullness of times that was Gordon B Hinckley in 1998 there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that Lucifer and Jesus are our brothers or that we are the same species as them when Jesus said you are from below I am from above you are of this world I am not of this world in John 823 he was declaring his eternal godhood he is from heaven we are mortals on earth he is the creator and we are the creation Paul explains in Colossians 1:15 through 17 that Christ is the creator as such he stands at the head of creation quote the Sun is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation he is for in him all things were created things in heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether Thrones powers rulers or authorities all things have been created through him and for him he is before all things and in him all things hold together many times when I talk about these things with a Mormon they always want to make but they all apply to all things up from the time of creation forward but that isn't the meaning when you go through the Bible verses it means all things all time all creation there's there's one God who is always existed it isn't a matter of saying well the there's only one God starting from creation the Bible's declaring there's one God eternally outside of time outside of creation thus we see the distinction between Jesus and humans he has always existed this God we had a beginning as his creation Paul explained in 1st Corinthians 8 that even though there are beings who have been designated gods there is only one true God quote so then about eating food sacrificed to idols we know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no god but one for even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or earth as indeed there are many gods and lords yet for us there is but one God the Father from whom all things came and from whom we live and there is but one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things came and through whom we live I no more must like to take this verse about gods and Lords many but the context is clearly about pagan deities has nothing to do with anyone that's truly deity this is reinforced in the book of in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God he was with God in the beginning through him all things were made without him nothing was made that has been made in him was life and that life was the light of all mankind in John 1:1 through four also Mormonism maintains that angels are our spirit brothers just in another stage of advancement yet the Bible presents them as God's creation not his literal children the psalmist declares praise him all his angels praise him all his heavenly hosts let them praise the name of the Lord for at his command they were created some 148 verses 2 through 5 nehemiah wrote you alone are the Lord you made the heavens even the highest heavens and all their starry hosts the earth and all that is on it the Seas and all that is in them you give life to everything and the multitudes of heaven worship you speaking at the October 1969 LDS conference apostle sterling W sill explained how men angels and gods are the same species quote it is helpful for us to remember that God angels spirits men are all the same species in different stages of development in a various degrees of righteousness I find that one a little curious various degrees of righteousness God angels spirits men well I guess men are at varying degrees of righteousness but you see how the whole concept here is diminishing the holiness the uniqueness of Jesus of God bringing them down to human level Mormons will say to me no we're not bringing God down were elevating man well by elevating man you are bringing God down because we are sinful we are not consistent we are not holy not all-knowing and God is again we see how the LDS idea that God men and angels all have the same origin as intelligences with the same ability to progress to godhood Robb's both the father and son of their singularity and eternal existence as God now we get to another curious aspect of Mormonism is Jesus married Joseph Smith maintained that Jesus followed his father's footsteps in becoming a savior quote the son do with what he has seen the father do then the father hath some day laid down his life and taken it again and that's from teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith pages 311 and 312 so here Joseph Smith's trying to say that Jesus does just what he saw the father therefore if the father if Jesus was going to be a do an atonement his father also did Anna told me because he's following what he thought saw his father do but by this reasoning it would follow that Jesus was also married since Mormonism clearly teaches that Heavenly Father has at least one wife also Mormonism insists that for mortals to advance to godhood they must be sealed in an LDS temple marriage in the 2000 LDS manual duties and blessings of the priesthood basic manual for priesthood holders it states eternal marriage is a basic doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ and a very important part of the Lord's plan for us without it we cannot be exalted in the celestial kingdom in eternity it follows then that if Heavenly Father was married while immortal Jesus would have done the same while the LDS Church is currently reluctant to discuss Jesus possible marriage it was a popular teaching during Pioneer times in 1854 LDS apostle Orson Hyde preaching at General Conference announced Jesus was the bridegroom at the marriage of Cana and Galilee later in his sermon he stated I shall say here that before the Savior died he looked upon his own natural children as we look upon ours he's speaking of Jesus saw his seed and immediately afterwards he was cut off from the earth LDS apostle Orson Pratt writing in 1853 said next let us inquire whether there are any intimations in scripture concerning the wives of Jesus we have already spoken of the endless increase of Christ's government now we have no reason to suppose that this increase would continue unless through the laws of generation whereby Jesus like his father should become the father of spirits and in order to become the father of spirits or as Isaiah says the everlasting father it is necessary that he should have one or more wives by whom he could multiply his seed not for any limited period of time but forever and ever if all the acts of Jesus were written we no doubt should learn that these beloved women and he had earlier named them Mary Martha and Mary Magdalene that these beloved women were his wives nests from the seer page 159 and I know some Mormons will dismiss statements by Pratt or Hyde but remember these were apostles and the Mormons want to claim that they have priesthood authority and the same set up in their church as the original Church therefore any one ordained and set apart in us an apostle that is officially teaching for the church should be someone that we could go to for instruction otherwise what's the point in having them I could just ask the person next door the idea of having an apostle is so that you have sort of surety to doctrine that Jesus was married and had children was widely accepted at that time not only that many leaders also believed that Jesus descendants were among the top LDS leadership LDS apostle Rutger Clausen recorded in his diary for July 2nd 1899 the remarks made at a solemn assembly attended by 700 men this is a quoting from his diary and their meeting at the Salt Lake Temple President Snow read section 89 86 book of doctrine of covenants said we are the sons and daughters of God and descendants of the prophets and apostles skipping down at about 5 o'clock the meeting was resumed in the celestial and terrestrial rooms of the temple President George Q cannon spoke among other things he said there are those in this audience and that's the seven hundred Mormon men sitting in this temple solemn assembly there are those in this audience who are descendants of the old Twelve Apostles referring back to Jesus Twelve Apostles and shall I say it yes descendants of the Savior himself his seed is represented in this body of men in 1963 a man wrote to Joseph fielding Smith the tenth president of the LDS Church and asked if Jesus was married Smith's answer was yes but do not preach it the Lord advised us not to cast pearls before swine and I have a copy of that letter and I know the man who wrote to Joseph fielding Smith but it was a private letter however the Bible never mentions that Jesus had a wife or children in fact his statement that the son of man hath not where to lay his head in Matthew 8:20 what seemed to indicate that he was not maintaining a family also at the cross Jesus asked John to take care of his mother but said nothing about taking care of a whole family you can see that in John chapter 19 if in fact Jesus was leaving a widow with children surely he would have asked someone to take care of them as well as a curious side note if Jesus did what he saw the father do namely take on human flesh why hasn't the Holy Ghost done the same also if all of God's Spirit children needed a resurrected body and an eternal marriage why didn't the Holy Ghost need that as well Mormons concede that the Holy Ghost does not have a body yet they say he is part of the God God head while Mormons maintained that our eternal progression would have been thwarted without obtaining a body somehow the Holy Ghost got a different path to godhood in relation to Christ's atonement Mormons teach that it was an infinite atonement covering everyone on all worlds under Heavenly Father's rule in the 2010 booklet doctrines of the gospel student manual page 25 we read now our Lord's jurisdiction and power extended far beyond the limits of this one small earth on which we dwell he is under the Father the creator of worlds without number and through the power of his atonement the inhabitants of these worlds the revelations say are begotten sons and daughters of God and that's from the doctrine Kona's which means that the atonement of Christ being literally and truly infinite applies to an infinite number of Earth's however this raises the question of who was covered by Heavenly Father's atonement remember Joseph Smith said that Jesus followed his father's footsteps and being a savior of the world then the quote was son do with what he has seen the father do then the father has someday laid down his life and taken it again so the question is who did Heavenly Father died for and if man is going to progress to godhood and have children that never end will someone in his world have to atone for his children to add to the confusion Brigham Young declared sin is upon every Earth that was ever created consequently every earth has its Redeemer and every earth has its tempter and the people thereof in their turnin time receive all that we receive and pass through all the ordeals that we are passing through that's Journal of discourses vol 14 pages 71 and 72 further diminishing the role of Christ we read in the encyclopedia of Mormonism latter-day saints believe that Jesus Christ attained godhood and that he marked the path and led the way for others likewise to become exalted divine beings by following him thus every faithful Mormon is promised that he too can achieve godhood the same as Jesus but this is not the Jesus we discover in the Bible Mormonism also diminishes the importance of the cross the LDS Church claims that Jesus honed for our sins mainly in Gethsemane partly due to the over emphasis of Gethsemane Mormons do not place crosses on their buildings or wear crosses speaking at the April 2004 LDS conference apostle M russell Ballard stated there in the quiet isolation of the Garden of Gethsemane he knelt among the gnarled olive trees and in some incredible way that none of us can fully comprehend the Savior took upon himself the sense of the world even though his life was pure and free of sin he paid the ultimate penalty for sin yours and mine and everyone who has ever lived his mental emotional and spiritual anguish were so great that they caused him to bleed from every pore however the Bible does not say that Jesus actually sweat blood only that his suffering was so intense that it was like it was as if he was cutting drops of blood but notice the emphasis on the atonement being in Gethsemane LDS president Ezra Taft Benson gave this description of the atonement it was in Gethsemane that Jesus took on himself the sins of the world in Gethsemane that his pain was equivalent to the cumulative burden of all men in Gethsemane that he descended below all things so that he could reap so that all could repent and come to him however the New Testament links Jesus suffering and death on the cross with the atonement not his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane in his letter to the Corinthians Paul stressed that Christ's death was of primary importance in the intone Minh Tinh 1st Corinthians 15:3 he wrote for what I received I pass on to you that Christ died for our sins not that he suffered incus M&E but that he died for our sins throughout the New Testament it is the death of Christ that is stressed not to suffering incus M&E in Romans Paul wrote but God demonstrates his own love for us in this that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us Romans 5:8 then in Galatians Paul writes may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world that's Galatians 6:14 we see the cross repeatedly mentioned in the New Testament that's where the emphasis is that's where Christ hung and when he said it is finished it was from his suffering on the cross his death in closing let me review a few passages John 1:1 tells us that the Word was God John 1:14 says the word became flesh thomas declared to Jesus my Lord and my god the Apostle Paul describes him as our great God and Savior Jesus Christ the Apostle Peter says the same our God and Savior Jesus Christ Isaiah prophesied for to us a child is born to us a son is given and the government will be upon his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor mighty God everlasting father Prince of Peace why is the question over Jesus true identity important why does it matter whether or not Jesus is God the most important reason that Jesus has to be God is that if he is not God his dead would not death would not have been sufficient to pay the penalty for the sins of the world only God could make such an infinite atonement Jesus had to be God so that he could pay our debt Jesus had to be man so that he could die salvation is available only through faith in Jesus Christ Jesus deity is why he proclaimed I am the way the truth and the life no man comes to the Father except through me thank you [Applause] well the way the Mormons do it is by simply saying that we are we are they were dead we follow the living prophet and say always put it to living prophet and then I remind them yes but a hundred years ago those guys were the living prophets so it must have been true 100 years ago so I don't see how you can use that as a way of dismissing the problem the problem is their leaders do contradict each other they do say different things and yet they want to say that the Christian Church is so divided and Christianity has such contradictions within it that you can't believe it and so we needed the restoration of the true church which supposedly gave us a prophet that supposedly gave us the sure Word of God and yet we find over the 100 and some odd years that Mormon is has been going almost 200 there is this continual revamping of the doctrine reformulating and today we see them toning it down whereas when I was a Mormon back in 50s they were very proud of a lot of the doctrines that they won't even talk about today such as man's ability to become a God just like God did so it's trying to be more accepted but I don't see that the doctrine has really changed it's just that they have finessed how they word it and so they can say to the Christian will we believe in the Father Son Holy Ghost we just see them as three different gods not three gods and one a three men in one or whatever and they always get all that mixed up but it isn't just that it isn't just saying whether or not Father send the Holy Ghost or three separate or three and unity it's that they aren't just three got they got mother God's out there that they don't want to even talk about and supposedly every Mormon woman's goal is to get married in the temple to a husband that where she and her husband will go off and start creating spirit babies for their worlds and she becomes a silent partner then so they don't want to talk about that part but they don't talk about the fact that there were gods before the Father Son and Holy Ghost not only that by Mormon standards our God would have brothers all through the universe who would have done the same thing because when he says he was once a human on an earth and died and made in the tongue when the father made me Tolman that was for some other God who had billions of spirit babies that were sent to some other world and our God was the savior for that world but that means there were positively millions of people on that world that had the potential to become gods and so it just spreads out forever it isn't just father son Holy Ghost it's that everybody's got mom and dad Grandma and Grandpa uncles cousins they're running world's out there so from the Christian act if this becomes a crate blasphemy because it tears God down to man but they just say that was then this is now move on okay I think it's interesting when Joseph Smith writes his book of mormon and I think he is the author of it when you look at the title page where it says wherefore it's an abridgment of the record and it's got these two little paragraphs on the front and it says to come forth by the gift of power of God unto the interpretation thereof sealed by the hand of Moroni and hit up by the Lord to come forth in due time by way of the Gentiles and it goes on and on you get down to the bottom and it says the whole point of this coming forth this book and also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentiles that Jesus is the Christ the eternal God manifesting himself to all nations that's a title page then it turned back to the testimony of the witnesses and it ends the three witnesses ends and the honor to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost which is one God when you read through the Book of Mormon you will find that it teaches one God now some parts of the Book of Mormon sound like standard Christian Trinitarian doctrine but there are parts of it that are like modalism where it's a confusion of Jesus with the Father but it is firmly committed to one God and when you look at the earliest revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants you will see they also point to just one god I'm not sure what all influenced Joseph Smith to move away from that but we find that in his Protestant upbringing he was dissatisfied with the churches but he had basically layman's understanding of basic Christianity that bleeds through into the Book of Mormon but the further he moves away from that Protestant upbringing or Catholic for that matter but he was a Protestant upbringing the further he moves away from that the more speculative and wild his doctrines become and I think as he finds out people believe him it sets his mind free to just imagine greater and bigger things and so he starts this evolution I assume he's trying to make sense of the Trinity and so in the Book of Mormon he's struggling and he gets it confused and and Jesus and the father the same thing then he starts trying to separate this out and maybe because of Sidney Rigdon who was a candlelight preacher who joined Mormonism he may have been an influence on this Joseph starts to develop a difference between the father and son and so in Kirtland in the doctrine of covenants at that time there was a section called the lectures on faith and in the lectures on faith I think it's number five he talks about the father being a personage of spirit and the son being a personage of tabernacle so in 1835 Mormonism there was not a teaching that the father had a physical form now Mormons will balk at that because they say oh no in 1820 he saw the father and son and then he knew that God had a body well the problem is that's back dating a story that he didn't tell at that time and the doctrine of God having a body developed much later in Mormon 1835 Mormonism the father was a spirit the Sun had Tabernacle or a body and he starts playing with this and so the the separating out of the father and son leads him and then he studies Hebrew with this Jewish man and finds out that Elohim is a plural word and also that sets him off on this other tangent that oh if Elohim is a plural word then there must be portal gods but the Jews always knew it was a plural word and it didn't make them see that as talking about a Council of gods they always saw that as just one God and the use of Elohim was used in majesty of the plurality of God not in the sense of numbers of persons but Joseph takes the plurality of Elohim and from that jumps into a further doctrine he gets the Book of Abraham started the papyri and starts working on this book of Abraham but which has thorough gods in the last half of it but that last half wasn't written in Kirtland it represents a development of a theology that comes after that and when he gets to Nauvoo by the 1840s Joseph Smith has moved into this plural God idea but even then it grows over the few years there it at Nabu so the whole thing keeps getting more radical and then Brigham takes it a step further he's gonna take it to our God is Adam and so he bumps up this stepladder of God that whereas you had before Elohim Jehovah and Michael in the temple ritual Brigham's bumping it back so that you have Elohim Jehovah and Michael God in creation and it just makes it all the more confusing so for 40 years for him Young leads Church teaching that atoms are fathering a God in this step down of the hierarchy of God's well when he dies they scrap that idea and move back to a little more traditional idea of the father and son while traditional by Mormon standards Brigham claimed that Joseph taught him the out of God but I'd see that developing out of a lot of Joseph's revelations where he said that Adam is the Ancient of Days and referring to Daniel and Christians always assume that the Ancient of Days was God and so to make it Adam would seem to be making deity claim at that point I don't know if brigham extrapolated from that revelation that Adam Michael was the Ancient of Days if that led and Adam God or not but he claimed Joseph Smith taught him that doctrine anyways over Joseph Smith's life and Brigham Young's we see this evolving doctrine and now we see the church trying to reel it back in and make it sound more normative so this is true of Mormon doctrine in general it was on this speculative well I was going to say writing but maybe it's diminishing this changing doctrine that got more and more speculative after they had to give up polygamy in 1890 then we see everything is starting to be muffled as they try to gain acceptance in the world and so the whole message of Mormonism changes were originally under Brigham Young it was all about men becoming gods and you had to look polygamy to get there they can't have polygamy so then they have to change the whole emphasis and hence today the whole emphasis of Mormonism as families that can be forever that wasn't the end of emphasis of the church before 1900 they didn't push that kind of thing this is a later development so in the whole history of Mormonism there is an evolution of things because of that we have all the break off groups of Mormonism for whatever period you want to pick in Mormonism from 1832 now you can find every decade probably a different church that holds that particular position and and they just keep proliferating and today they are and now we have the Denver snuffer movement going on where he's trying to pull them back to more of a Book of Mormon kind of an idea but there's there's been over a hundred different breakout groups of Mormonism so if the whole point of Mormonism was that Christianity was so divided that we needed a restoration the restoration hasn't helped because now we have one to two hundred more churches than we had before Joseph Smith came along so that was my long rambling answer no I was just ok no I am not enough research on that to talk off the top of my head I don't see it as relating to anything to do with humans all of that relates to fallen being fallen Angelz I don't see it as relating to anything with humanity no no no no in Mormonism the third that fell became demonic spirits the 2/3 that were left in heaven to come to earth as humans according to Mormonism were varying degrees of righteousness or standing for God's cause and because of that of the two thirds that were left in heaven according to Mormonism God sent them to earth under different living conditions according to what they deserved and so this was the development of the idea of the blacks not holding the priesthood is that there were certain spirits in heaven when they had the big war the ones I mean the the failures got thrown out so if you think at the rest of having grades A to D the gay guy's got to come out as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the B guys came out as Baptist or Methodist and the see guys came out as Hindus or Chinese or something and the DS just barely made it past the cutoff and didn't get thrown out so God sent them to black bodies so in Mormonism the black and their old racial doctrines the blacks were not considered part of the one-third cast out they were part of the two-thirds but they were at the bottom rung less than valiant crowned that didn't deserve to get preached until everyone else had a shot at it and that's why the polygamists were so upset when the Mormons gave priesthood to blacks because they said Brigham Young always said the priesthood would not be given to blacks till all the white people had a chance first because everyone that was born white obviously was part of the a B or C crowd and deserved to get priesthood before the DS so now they've given up that except on the racial issue the Book of Mormon is still a racial book and they're saddled with that and I don't know what they're going to do with it because although they no longer teach that blacks are black because of some sort of disobedience The Book of Mormon still teaches the Indians the American Indian is dark because of disobedience and the book Mormon specifically says their skin color was changed so it still it saddles the Mormons with a certain amount of racism even though they try to brush it aside [Music] we'll be talking about this more next week but in Mormonism they they used the word salvation in different ways and so there is general salvation which they say when Jesus died on the cross he procured for us general salvation meaning general resurrection of everyone but that doesn't mean that we have eternal life we just have resurrected bodies and then where we go in heaven is determined by how we performed then they speak of individual salvation which means how each of us did in our life in living for God and so individual salvation refers to exaltation the ability to progress to godhood so it gets very confusing and talking with Mormons because they redefined the words and that's why there's a little sheet over there on terminology differences Mormons interchange that word salvation and don't always tell you which meaning they're using and so it gets kind of confusing but generally Jesus brought resurrection and the possibility of eternal life but salvation and eternal life are not the same things so Jesus gave you salvation resurrection now you have the ability to progress to have individual salvation or eternal life through performing all the Mormon rituals living a good Mormon life with the hope that eventually God will award you with eternal life in the celestial kingdom but that separates in Christ's atonement so in their view of the atonement they are limiting it and the saved in Mormonism is not having eternal life being saved in Mormonism is being guaranteed resurrection so they speak of salvation and then they speak of exaltation which is different okay if you want to ask what questions you can come up afterwards it's something to do with eternal progression I party member what if that's on the brochure but that's what it's going to be covering is is how do we get right with God and get back to his presence

Channel: Aaron Shafovaloff

Views: 9,010

Keywords:

Id: SIwPcmGgqsM

Length: 57min 11sec (3431 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2018