Thomasticguy equates revelation with philosophical speculation and scientific dispute in writing “The most essential and fundamental statement given to us by the revelation of Scripture is from Genesis 1:1 “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” …It tells us several things: 1) the universe had a beginning; 2) God is the creator and originator of all things; and 3) God created everything from nothing. These insights remain on the cutting edge of philosophical speculation and scientific dispute.”

For all at Dummies, reason through logic has been applied to the method of treating revealed truth theologically, by casting it into a reasoned discussion and forum, and employing philosophical classifications in its elaboration.

Through this method, Thomisticguy and all his disciples constantly revise and adopt new theological principles through the use of reason, thereby neglecting the supernatural, extracting pertinently true revelation, discarding faith. Faith is lost when fundamental truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ are acceptable only upon reason. Where pieces of revealed truth has been forgotten, reason will not bring it back.

Where we have Moses separating the Red Sea by the authority of God because he is a Prophet, we have the well reasoned theologian reasoning that it could have been accomplished naturally through certain weather conditions. Thus in neglecting the supernatural, we loose the true demonstrated meaning of the event. Reason, in this way, denies revelation. Reason allows for the possibility of mistakes having been made by Christ and the Apostles with debatable non-essential parts of religion. Over two millennia, all gospel principles have become non-essential due to the infestation of those who work iniquity. The once noble forest of revealed truth has become infested with termites. Noble doctrinal principles have fallen where it is unreasonable in our world to preserve them.

Whenever the Lord has had a people on earth, they have received revelation from appointed prophets, apostles, and seers. If at any time they ceased to receive revelation, they ceased to be the Lord’s people. This has been the unvarying course from Adam to the present moment. The receipt of revelation is one of the chief identifying characteristics of the true saints; where there are saints there is revelation, and where there is no revelation – coming from apostles, prophets, and seers – there the true church is not. The true church receives revelation from those who are called of God to receive his mind; false churches are not guided by prophets, do not have living apostles and seers, and do not receive the mind and will of the Lord for their day and time.

From Adam to Jesus and his apostles, there was an almost unbroken period of some four thousand years during which appointed leaders received the word of the Lord and announced it to the people. From Adam to Noah, there was no break whatever, nor was there after the flood until those periods in the history of the Israelites where there was utter and complete rebellion and when the people worshipped Baal or other false gods.

Either there is revelation or we receive nothing from the spiritual realm; either there is revelation or there is no purpose in life, no hope in the future, no glory in Christ or in his atonement. Revelation is truly the beginning and the end, the reality that makes all things possible, the great and outrageous principle that separates the saints from those in the world who are without God and without authentic hope.

In the world of the Orthodoxy, where they tell us there are no truths above reason, they stand revealed.

God has been destroying the spirits of all animals yet has been preserving the souls of all men because He is "Good" and is a "Good Governor".

Thomisticguy, while telling the reader that God has no need for us, on December 14th wrote God "is neither mean, cruel, nor nasty. He made us with out eternal souls out of the goodness of his heart, and now He is preserving the souls of all men. Yet an earlier post (December 2) this same God is apparently destroying the spirits of every other thing in His creation, in violation of His goodness. This is mind boggling given Thomasticguy later conceded that all animals have spirits.

Thomas provides the Protestant way of thinking saying "God is not only good in Himself, but He is the cause of goodness in others. This is why He has created the universe." It would seem the only ones God is good to are humans.

At the end of his post, Thomisticguy reminds us "The Bible forbids cruelty to animals". That is God forbids us to be cruel to animals. Are we to believe we are to do what He says and not regard what He does?

The LDS teach that this doctrine is blindness and has come to be out of man's arrogance for himself. The tradition of men can not abide the thought that God created eternal spirits for each and every living thing He created (not just man). That He being "Good" will not destroy the spirit of a single sparrow.

Thomisticguy, at his very successful blog, leads the pack of orthodox Protestants with genuinely valuable science and philosophy, but always the weight of it comes from man and not scripture. I genuinely like this man. But clear to my judgement, Thom will go to the Bible, find an obscure phrase, using it as his meat hook where His thoughts can be attached and displayed. He is a man of dark age philosophers with a complete dependence upon this myth #4.

Let's spend an entire topic looking at the scriptures on the subject. How refreshing, I say.

And here I pass by that marvelous appearance of God unto Abraham in the plains of Mamre, when three "men" came into his tent, one of whom was the Lord, who conversed with him, and partook of his hospitality, and disclosed to him His intention with reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen. 13.) But this Thom has need to ignore.

Then there is the marvelous revelation of God to Joshua, when Joshua drew near to Jericho and saw a person in the form of a man standing with sword in hand. Joshua approached him and said: "Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" "Nay," replied the person, "but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come." And Joshua bowed himself to the very earth in reverence, and worshipped that august warrior. (Joshua 5: 13, 14.) Do not tell me that it was an "angel"; for had it been an angel, the divine homage paid by Israel's grand old warrior would have been forbidden. The fact that this personage, before whom Joshua bowed to the earth, received without protest divine worship from him, proclaims with the sound of trumpets that He indeed was God. Furthermore, that personage bade Joshua to remove the shoes from his feet for even the ground on which he stood was holy. Again, this Thom has need to ignore.

I call attention to that marvelous vision given of the Son of God to the pagan king of Babylon. This king had cast the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace, and lo! before his startled vision were "four men" walking about in the furnace, "and," said he, "the form of the fourth is like the Son of God." (Dan. 3: 25.), But again Thom blinks.

The great Apostle to the Gentiles, writing to the Colossian saints, speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ, "in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins," as being in the "image of the invisible God." (Col. 1, 15.) Blink, Blink.

Again, writing to the Hebrew saints, and speaking of Jesus, he says: "Who, being the brightness of his [the Father's] glory, and the express image of his [the Father's] person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." (Heb. 1: 1, 2.) Thom doesn't see this.

In the face of these scriptures, will anyone who believes in the Bible say that it is blasphemy to speak of God as being possessed of a bodily form? We find that the Son of God Himself stood among us as a man, with all the limitations, as to His body, which pertain to man's body; with head, trunk, and limbs; with eyes, mouth and ears; with affections, with passions; He exhibited anger as well as love in the course of His ministry; He was a man susceptible to all that man could suffer, called by way of pre-eminence, the "man of sorrows," and one "acquainted with grief"; for in addition to His own, He bore the world's sins, and suffered that men might not suffer if they would but obey His gospel.

What do you think of Christ, (open the eyes)?" Look at Him? Is he God? Yes. Is he man? Yes—there is no doubting it. His resurrection, and the immortality of His body, as well as of His spirit that succeeds His resurrection, is a reality. He Himself attested it in various ways. He appeared to a number of the apostles, who, when they saw him, were seized with fright, supposing they had seen a spirit; but He said unto them, "Why are ye troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." (Luke xxiv: 36-39.) Then, in further attestation of the reality of His existence, as if to put away all doubt, He said, "Have ye here any meat?" And they brought Him some broiled fish and honeycomb, and "He did eat before them." (Luke xxiv: 41-43.) Think of it! A resurrected, immortal person actually eating of material food! But this you ignore.

But not only did the risen Messiah eat in the presence of His disciples, but with His resurrected hands He prepared a meal on the seashore for His own disciples, and invited them to partake of the food which He, with His resurrected hands, had provided. (John 21: 9-13, and Acts 10: 41.) Further, for forty days He continued ministering to His disciples after His resurrection, eating and drinking with them (Acts 10: 41, and Acts 1: 2, 3); and then, as they gathered together on one occasion, bang! He ascended from their midst, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. Presently two personages in white apparel stood beside them and said. "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." (Acts I:11.) What! With His body of flesh and bones, with the marks in His hands and in His feet? Shall He come again in that form? The old Jewish prophet, Zechariah, foresaw that He would. He describes the time of His glorious coming, when His blessed, nail-pierced feet shall touch the Mount of Olives again, and it shall cleave in twain, and open a great valley for the escape of the distressed house of Judah, sore oppressed in the siege of their great city, Jerusalem. We are told that "They shall look upon Him Whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son," and one shall look upon Him in that day and shall say, "What are these wounds in Thy hands and in Thy feet?" and He shall answer, "These are the wounds that I received in the house of my friends." (Zech. the 12th, 13th and 14th chapters).

What think ye of Christ? Will that resurrected, immortal, glorified man ever be distilled into some bodiless, formless essence, to be diffused as the perfume of a rose is diffused throughout the air? Will He become an impersonal, incorporeal, immaterial God, without body, without parts, without passions? Will it be? Can it be? What think ye of Christ? Is He God? Is He an exalted man? Yes; in the name of all the Gods He is. And one wonders why Christian ministers arraign the faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because they believe and affirm that God is an exalted man, and that He has a body, tangible, immortal, indestructible, and will so remain embodied throughout the countless ages of eternity?—And since the Son is in the form and likeness of the Father, being, as Paul tells us, "in the express image of His [the Father's] person"—so, too, the Father, God must be a man of immortal tabernacle, glorified and exalted: for as the Son is, so also is the Father, a personage of tabernacle, of flesh and of bone as tangible as man's, as tangible as Christ's most glorious, resurrected body