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An LDS Genuine Article
Saturday September 2, 2006
 Myspace LayoutsMyth #4: God is impersonal, incorporeal, invisibility, without body, without parts, without passionsThomisticguy, 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
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Friday September 1, 2006
Click for Hawaii Blog - if you like-------------------------------------------------------------  Myspace LayoutsMyth #3: We are made in God's intellectual image only. Thomisticguy is the voice of Orthodox Protestants (Dummies) here at Blogstream. He stated some time ago on Friday, December 2nd: "mankind is said to be in the image of God, not in regard to our bodies, but in regard to the way mankind excels (has “rule”) over the animal kingdom. The one thing that humans excel with is our reason or intelligence. Therefore, we are able to rule over the animal kingdom because of our mental abilities." As a matter of course, if the Bible explicitly states that mankind is made in God's image, then Thom is pressed to find a reason other than the obvious. Protestant theologians have painted themselves into many corners. It is fun for me watching them perform unbelievable tricks in the effort of getting out of them. If we are made in God's image intellectually, then I have a computer that can beat him at chess. But that is absurd. Just because we are currently at the top of the food chain here on Earth doesn't begin to make us God-like. And that doesn't begin to explain the existance of RedNecks.
If you have evaluated God's personal interactions with man, you'ld come away knowing that God particularly scorns our intellect. The commands of God cannot be evaluated by a computer. The true wisdom of man is seen as foolishness to Him. That being the case it would take a real blindness to teach such a principle. Besides, all advancement is not found in the realm of the intellect. He laid down moral laws to aid man toward his ultimate destiny, that of becoming like our Father in heaven. It takes more than scientific achievements, dazzling as they are, to make us God-like. Without goodness—in character, in Christ-like living, and in clean morals—it can never be. It is possible that our scientific progress can fail through a breakdown in character. All of our vaunted intellectuality can fade and die in the ashes of moral corruption. And as you examine the history of Christianity the ashes are found in heaps. In the whirl of present-day change, we must keep our feet on the ground and maintain our proper balance. We must not build on the sand of intellect. We are told "that the world by wisdom knows not God;" yet they do comprehend a great many things, and because of the spread of general intelligence and the great progress of science, literature and the arts, they believe they can find out God. Like the framers of Babel's Tower, they seek to penetrate the heavens on natural principles (I can think better than animals!!). Like them they are mistaken, as all men have been who sought to solve the problem of life through the influence of human true wisdom. No man ever did understand God on this principle; neither can they by intellect understand the principles of life and salvation. One may be deeply versed in theological lore, and yet be lacking in religious and even in moral character. If theology be theory then religion is practice; if theology be precept religion is example. Each should be the complement of the other; theological knowledge should strengthen religious faith and practice, for it is in the faith and practice that matters. As accepted by the Latter-day Saints, theology comprises the plan of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its entirety. Theology as a science has to do with classified or collated knowledge (Intelligence) respecting the relationship between God and man; while religion includes the application of that knowledge, or genuine belief, to the individual course of life It should be noted that intellect is not a measure of salvation, thus it is not to be a measure of Godliness either. I know it to be impossible to please the Lord by following the counsels of our own minds, unless they are enlightened by the Spirit of the Almighty. The wisdom of man is not the wisdom of God, and to be successful in extending and strengthening the cause of God on the earth, we must have his Spirit to guide us. If our intellect were as God's intellect, we would do as he would have us do always; but it is evident to all who are acquainted with the actions of the human family, not excluding the Latter-day Saints, that the mind of man is not as God's mind. 1st Corinthians 2:11:—"For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but, the Spirit of God." Indeed, our earthly probation was intended as a test of faith, not a test of intellect. That test must of necessity include things that defy the intellect.
Paul said,"We speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual." And we do so, knowing that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" 1 Corinthians 2:13-14 This is what the LDS requires of men — this is the price of eternal bliss, exaltation and glory in the celestial kingdom of God —a price that the proud, wealthy, and so-called educated classes are seldom willing to pay for the precious gift of eternal life. They are "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God;" they delight in forms of godliness rather than in the powers thereof; love to be honored of men, and value too highly their good name and standing among their fellows to sacrifice them for the truths of the Gospel. Not willing to forego the pleasure of this present world for the truth's sake, they must find some excuse for neglecting it; hence they seek to hide themselves behind the wisdom of man's learning, pretend to be above investigating the evidences of the truthfulness of the Latter Day Saints, deride our faith sneeringly, and call it superstition, and cry aloud, delusion! delusion! heresy, heresy!
In like manner the divine precepts of the Messiah were treated by the intellectual classes of society in Judea. It was the common people who heard Him gladly. It was the intellectual rabbis, corrupt lawyers and the worldly doctors who sought the suppression of His doctrines and the destruction of their Founder. What goes around comes around. It was to the poor (unlearned) the Gospel was preached. The wealthy turned away from its precepts because of their riches / their idolatry. Jesus thanked His Father that the precious things of the kingdom had been hidden from the "wise and the prudent;" and rejoiced because of it. Can man through his own intellect create the doctrines of his own religion, his own power to preach, his own salvation? Yes, indeed they are, as easily as gold can be made from lead. |
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