theidler,
Jesus was born on this earth, a planet. He is Man of holiness. He took upon himself a tabernacle of flesh and bones. After His death, He brought about His own resurrection with a glorified body of flesh and bones.
To say that the Father also did those things, before, on another earth, is the answer to your question about why those verses apply. Jesus did what He had seen that His Father had already done.
Okay, I’m understanding how they get there. This is inference. Inference is a “guess” based on what the majority of people agree is that natural progression and conclusion of a scenario or situation.
I recently had it explained to me like this -
You are going into a court in the morning and it is sunny outside. The court has no windows to see outside. Several hours later, a person walks into the court and they are carrying a wet umbrella. A few minutes later, a second person enters the court carrying a wet umbrella. You may reasonably infer that it is now raining outside.
The problem with that is - I could also infer that there was an inaccurate weather forecast, the new hip trend is to carry an umbrella, two people were standing together on an elevator when a woman walking in carrying bottled water, tripped and spilled it on them - one went to the restroom to clean up, while one walked directly into the court room. It is far better to know the truth than to rely on inference or conjecture.
At the end of the day - inference is just that. What a group of fallible human beings voted on and decided was plausible.
You stated that Jesus did what He saw the Father do … (because He had seen Him do it before). In this context - He (Jesus) was not referring to making man out of the dust of the Earth and breathing the breath of life into him. He was actually referring to teaching Truth, praying for us and our salvation, and giving Mercy to sinners.
To be invited mystically into the body of Christ and become a co-heir with Christ, does not mean that all of sudden we, as humans, are now gods and able to function as gods. It means that God, in His mercy has condescended to reach down to us at our sinful, fallible state and give us a dignity (crowning us with eternal life) that comes from His own power (He has the eternal life to give us, we do not posess it in and of ourselves). WE still are not doing any of it by ourselves.
To argue the contrary, I would listen and just ask for an example of one person - really any Latter Day Saint, okay, let’s dispense with limiting it to LDS - let’s broaden it to ANYONE at all…
an example of any human being becoming a god and doing that which only God can do. What is a function of God that only God could do? Create something that did not exist before out of nothing. Radically alter the weather… turn day into night at his command. Be present in several places at one time, know all things, send an Angel to fill the sky and speak their message to several witnesses… Anything like that?
There isn’t any. It has never, ever happened. There’s black magic, Satanic power, but absolutely no record of any LDS followers who’ve become “gods” ever doing anything a “god” would do. They just die and people talk about how they became a god becausee they had several wives.
People rule and kings reign on Earth. I rule over my car on the way to work, and control its every movement, but I can’t supernaturally “heal” it if it breaks. I can’t know in advance and prevent another driver from hitting me. I can’t physically transport myself and my car to a different location to prevent a collision.
Kings have reigned, but none like Christ, whose reign is eternal and of whose rule there shall be no end. The scripture about us ruling and reigning with Him in Heaven is about Him being God and inviting us to be with Him. It’s still His kingdom, we don’t turn into gods just because He invites us to His banquet.
And literally multitudes of people have been married to multiple wives. It’s never resulted in deifying anyone. Ask their wives if you don’t believe me.
And the Bible is very clear about worshipping anything but the One, True, Almighty, and Ever-living God. Idolatry and Self-idolatry (mortal men becoming gods) is a mortal / deadly sin. It kills the soul and those who die with this sin on their soul do not go and sit in thrones next to ‘John Smith and his buddy Jesus-the-lesser’. Jesus is God eternally. He has the Authority to judge the sins of man and if you stand before Him with this sin on your soul in the final judgement, you consign your own soul to eternal damnation. That’s no laughing matter. It’s forever.
Men cannot become God, some just think they can. Jesus did do miracles (things that superceded the laws of nature, which He created,) and manifested His divine wisdom in His teachings. God has made the claim - not that man would never fail, but that He would never fail…HIs Church - He is the head, we are INCORPORATED into Him as parts of one body. We don’t incorporate ourselves by our own will and our own power. It’s HIs body. It’s His Chruch. He is God, He can make that claim and back it up. To believers - “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you.” “The world will pass away, but not one iota of my Word will pass away…” He is “the Beginning and the End.” He is already there eternally, so He can tell you accurately what will happen, not make educated guesses. He is.
If John Smith were “god” would he not be here still? Does he still speak, or has he passed into a higher realm where he’s too good to speak with lesser mortals?
No LDS ‘god’ has ever done anything truely divine or supernaturally miraculous, have they? I mean, wouldn’t we have heard about it by now?
