But you don’t obey the commandments. What is the first? That you shall have one God and no others? But yet your church and its leaders teach that you will become gods and God has a father and so on. So how do you obey? And what about bearing false witness? Your missionaries do it all the time. Lying about a new gospel when the bible clearly says otherwise.
I will take that as a compliment.You sound like a Muslim who has been visited by LDS missionaries.
Worship in the mind of the Christian is not primarily emulation (since emulating God is impossible in many respects), it is giving the honour, glory and praise to God via prayer, works or in whatever we do. Now, your last paragraph, are you saying the Christian idea of God being being utterly beyond conception and utterly beyond full understanding is a bad idea? Are you saying your God can be conceived of in totality and that at a certain point you will fully experience his blessedness and comletely know what he is? If so, there are problems with that, but I need to know if that is your position before I respond.
Right. That’s why I felt it was important to define worship. It’s not simply honor or praise, but something more. As has been said, “The greatest adoration is emulation.”
Yes, but Its not just a bad idea, it’s false.
At some far future point eons from now if we are worthy we will know him as he is. But here and now in this mortal realm, no.
You say it is a false notion that all the Christians of the last two thousand years have taught, that God cannot be completely understood, that we cannot truly ever know what God is.
You misunderstand our theology. Just like us, God is being of body and spirit. While indeed it is true that his body can only be in one place at one time through spirit he can know and understand all his creations.
In conceding the point that the body is limited to one place and time you has necessarily limited the fullness of God. Is God’s fullness experienced in merely feeling his spirit? Again what is his spirit that we feel? is it the holy spirit which Mormons tell us is not God or is the spirit of the Father himself? Or is the fullness of God, much like the knowledge of him, only experienced in flesh and spirit? If it is better to be with a friend in the flesh, than on the phone, how should it not be better to be with God in the flesh and not merely in the spirit? So there are some things you need to clarify. First, what is God’s spirit that pervades existence? Secondly, if it is the holy spirit you need to demonstrate how the holy spirit’s presence is the equal to the presence of God the father in the flesh.
The Holy Ghost is a member of the Godhead. However, his being is no more everywhere at once than the Father’s. For personages, weather composed of the substance called spirit or the less refined substance called flesh cannot be in all places at once. Terminology and words have become confused on this important distinction between the influence of God and spirit. For there is another substance sometimes called spirit, or called the spirit of truth, or the power of the Holy Ghost, or intelligence, which is the power by which God works.
To help in understanding God’s influence it has been compared to electricity.
The christian world has gotten confused on this point and believes that God’s very being can be in them (which is of course false). But your assumption that having his power and influence with us is somehow less valuable than having his being in front of us holds no weight. In the flesh we have gotten used to needing someone in front of us because communication is otherwise limited. But do you know the extent of the power of God, and how fully he can communicate, appear, and influence man? I say you do not, for it is not of this earth.
I recently had a Mormon coworker explain that Jesus was not perfect until he died on the cross and resurrected from the dead.
My 89 year old LDS friend has said the exact same thing to me.
Do Mormons acknowledge that they have a completely different idea of Jesus than all other Christians or do they think we are all on the same page in this regard?
Dang, it seems like the Book of Mormon supports that “old sectarian notion.”
In His divine nature, the Son is unchanging, perfect, etc., but in His human nature, Jesus grew, matured, gained experiential knowledge, etc. I can only assume that this is the basis for that teaching.
Yeah that’s an issue my Mormon friend was talking about. From their angle (as best I understand), if you are godlike enough on this Earth, you become a god of your own doing in the next life. He told me the god of “this universe” didn’t want to be alone, and already had his wife…but…he never mentions his wife because “humanity would badmouth and disrespect her to a horrible degree”. So basically we are being spared?
Mormons have an interest in Asherah. In their reversion and revision of Christianity towards the multiple gods of paganism, some Mormon scholars have speculated that Asherah is an ancient hint of reference about their hidden Heavenly Mother. More specifically they think the tree of life is in reference to their Heavenly Mother, and they make a connection to Asherah, who was a pagan tree goddess.
There are a number of scriptures which point to his ultimate perfection after the cross. From the Bible we have: