The Book of Mormon contridicts Mormonism

[_Bazooka]

Maybe the question should be "why does the Mormon Church" contridict what was taught by Joseph Smith? In my mind, one who follows his teachings, he who brought forth the Book of Mormon, is the true Mormon. So if the Church has gone down another path, what does that make its followers?

The FLDS today has more in common with the Church that Joseph restored than the LDS variant does.

[_Jay]

Maybe the question should be "why does the Mormon Church" contridict what was taught by Joseph Smith? In my mind, one who follows his teachings, he who brought forth the Book of Mormon, is the true Mormon. So if the Church has gone down another path, what does that make its followers?

The FLDS today has more in common with the Church that Joseph restored than the LDS variant does.

In many ways that is true. But for the Zion that Joseph Smith revealed to be established, it has to be right on target. Closer is still not good enough.

[_Bazooka]

Jay, the Church Joseph Smith restored died when he did.
What we have now is a disparate band of uninspired sects, collectively kniwn as Mormonism.

[_Jay]

Jay, the Church Joseph Smith restored died when he did.
What we have now is a disparate band of uninspired sects, collectively kniwn as Mormonism.

There is no question that important keys went to the grave with Joseph, but they will be restored to build Zion. Without them, what you said is basically true. The good news is that the Lord said Zion would not be moved out of her place. We can rely upon the Lord.

[_Bazooka]

Jay, the Church Joseph Smith restored died when he did.
What we have now is a disparate band of uninspired sects, collectively kniwn as Mormonism.

There is no question that important keys went to the grave with Joseph, but they will be restored to build Zion. Without them, what you said is basically true. The good news is that the Lord said Zion would not be moved out of her place. We can rely upon the Lord.

There is no evidence to suggest the Lord even knows we're here....

[_Jay]

There is no evidence to suggest the Lord even knows we're here....

So why are you here? What evidence do you have of that?

[_seven7up]

The full context has now been provided, so everyone can clearly see what you and mittens were trying to do. It was an attempt to mislead by cutting out context and take advantage of assumptions.

Do you believe the doctrine that 'men like us' can be come Gods and obtain all the wisdom and knowledge that God The Father has and become perfect like Him?

You are treading into the topic of exaltation/theosis, a topic which was not being addressed on this thread, ... until you tried to change subject. Mittens gave an opening post, which was related to the idea of God and whether or not God can be considered "eternal" in LDS theology; and that it contradicted the scriptures. Mittens posted the following:

"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret... … I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. … It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know...that he was once a man like us.... Here, then, is eternal life - to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you... (“King Follett Discourse,” Journal of Discourses 6:3-4, also in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345-346, and History of the Church, vol. 6, 305-307,)"

Mittens says: Why would we image and suppose God is God from Eternity ? because the Book of Mormon and Bible teaches it
...
2 Nephi 26:12 And as I spake concerning the convincing of the Jews, that Jesus is the very Christ, it must needs be that the Gentiles be convinced also that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God;

Moroni 7:22 For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting , behold, he sent angels to minister unto the children of men, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing.

Moroni 8:18 For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.

Mormon 9:9 For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever , and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?

So, Mittens was arguing that the teachings of the LDS church, and what Joseph Smith taught, contradict the Book of Mormon. To which I responded with the following:

... let's discuss the definition of “eternal”. Do you want to use a specific option in the definitions found in modern dictionaries? Or do you want to look at the words as they were used and understood in ancient times as written in the Bible?

Perhaps your view of "eternal" is that only God is eternal, existing in some kind of simple (no parts), metaphysical, unchanging state from infinite past to infinite future, existing before anything else ever existed. However, those are leaps beyond how the Bible uses “eternal”.

All that can be said of the scriptural usage of these terms (everlasting/eternal) is that whatever is called “eternal” goes beyond our usual sense or scope of existence or beyond our experience of time. The ancient authors wrote to an audience according to their understanding, which is limited. Our understanding is limited as well. Time is relative, and anything outside time as we currently know it is beyond the human experience. We think that living 100 years is a long time. Imagine living 100 thousand or 100 million years. It is unthinkable in relation to what we see in our mortality.

God is well beyond even billions and billions of years. How can we even fathom that? Having created the Universe and time as we know it, God transcends time in our Universe, and, if we want to speculate, He may very well have created another Universe or Universes ...

Anyways, here are a few Old Testament examples of two terms which are sometimes translated as everlasting/eternal. Let's see if they fit into what you are implying to mean as “eternal”:

עוֹלָם `owlam
Deut 33:15 describes the hills/mountains as "everlasting/eternal". Yet clearly the Bible teaches that the Earth along with the hills and mountains were created.
This is the same term used in the Psalms for God being “from everlasting to everlasting”. Yet most of the time we find this word translated as “ancient”. Other examples include “ancient people” (Isa 44:7), ancient landmark (Prov 22:28), and so forth.

Similarly, we have the Hebrew wordעַד `ad
Job 20:4 "Haven't you known this from ***everlasting/eternal***, since mankind was placed on the earth?
So here, having known since the beginning of the Earth is sufficient to be considered eternal/everlasting. The meaning is "antiquity or of old'. (Interesting also that Isaiah uses this same term in 57:15 to say that God “inhabits eternity.” Almost as if eternity can also be considered a place.)
Keep in mind that this is the same term that is used in Isaiah 9:6 for the “everlasting/eternal Father”.

Lets look at some New Testament words, like Ἀΐδιος aïdios
Jude 1:6 uses the term to describe “everlasting chains” for the angels who “kept not their first estate” which they will have “unto the judgement of the great day.” So, did these chains under darkness exist (in eternal past) before God supposedly created everything Ex Nihilo, including the angels themselves?
Yet this term is the same word used to describe God's “eternal power and Godhead” in Romans 1:20.

How about another term, from which we get aeon. Αἰών Aiōn
Sometimes this one it is not just understood as long periods of time, but as “the worlds” or the Cosmos/Universe, which, as we both know, are created by God, so does not really fit your definition of something that always has been.

Finally, we have χρόνος and Αἰώνιος aiōnios ,
It is used over and over to describe both eternal salvation/redemption/inheritance as well as eternal judgment/fire/destruction.
It is also used to describe a whole host of other things, like the “eternal weight of glory” to be bestowed upon the faithful. It is used by Paul to describe an “everlasting covenant” between God and man. It is used in conjunction with another Hebrew term to say “since the world began”. It as also used to things that will exist in the future, for example, when comparing our earthly tabernacle, which is temporal, to the tabernacle we will have in the resurrection. (2 Cr 5:1).

So, again I ask you, is your definition of “eternal” consistent with how these terms were used and understood in ancient scripture? Or are you adding meaning beyond what the scripture actually says?
Have you weighed all of this against what Joseph Smith was trying to explain in relation to God?

So, as you can see, the conversation was about what "eternal" means and in what sense the God of Mormonism can be considered "eternal". We know that Mormons don't believe that Christ is created from nothing, as even regular people are considered in LDS theology to have an "intelligence" that has always existed. Anyways, you came along and tried to argue that I did not believe in LDS doctrine, and you posed the following accusation:

Why are you trying to reinterpret what Joseph Smith clearly and explicitly stated - "God was once a man like us....".
I interpret that to mean that God was once a man like us. Which supports the Mormon notion that we can become God's.
Are you saying you don't think the teaching on this is correct?

I pointed out, for starters, that the words, "God was once a man like us..." as posted by Mittens, and again here in your accusation, were taken out of context. In what sense is Joseph saying that God was a man like us? The completed teaching says, "If you were to see God, you would see him in the form of a man,... God was once a man like us... He lived on an Earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did."

Joseph Smith had a vision where he saw God, and God had the form of a human body. So, the question was, "How did God get a body?" Joseph answered, in the whole context of this sermon, that Jesus was following in the same path that God the Father had accomplished.

Concerning the question of exaltation/theosis, yes, I do believe it. As I have posted elsewhere on this forum, I believe that God has provided a way for us to become like Him, God will share everything He has with us, and while the organization isn't very clear to us, I believe that God will give us the opportunity to live the kind of life that God lives (including having spiritual children). However, God will always be our Father, Jesus will always be our savior, and "nothing will ever change the relationship that we have with them."

-7up

[_Bazooka]

7up,

The point I am making is that if it reasonable to believe the doctrine that 'we' can become Gods, then it is equally reasonable to believe that the person we now know as 'God' has experienced the journey we are going through. They are two sides of the same coin. If one day you have been good enough you will be a God. Somebody somewhere might say of you "7up God was once a man like us...".

[_Bazooka]

There is no evidence to suggest the Lord even knows we're here....

So why are you here? What evidence do you have of that?

I don't know why I'm here. I just know that I am.
"The Lord" is just your way of getting over that ambiguity and assuaging the fear of death.

[_seven7up]

The point I am making is that if it reasonable to believe the doctrine that 'we' can become Gods, then it is equally reasonable to believe that the person we now know as 'God' has experienced the journey we are going through. They are two sides of the same coin. If one day you have been good enough you will be a God. Somebody somewhere might say of you "7up God was once a man like us...".

As you well know, this is understood by LDS to be true in a general sense. (I.E. the same sense that Jesus Christ was "a man like us" and "the journey we are going through" in the same sense that Jesus went through all that we go through... and more.)

All of the LDS doctrine concerning the idea of God the Father once being a man who lived on an Earth originated from Joseph Smith, and any insight on detail was given by the King Follett discourse. And the King Follett discourse describes God the Father as having lived as Jesus Christ did - (Also described as Jesus as following the same path as God the Father.) So, any discussion on the matter should always be understood in that context, and originally from that source.

Certainly, there is a deeper and more detailed discussion concerning whether or not there is a difference between "gods by grace" and "Gods by nature". As I said, the details are not clearly defined in LDS doctrine concerning how the organization of worlds, galaxies, universes holds together with exalted "gods" and those who, like Jesus, were naturally divine.

In my mind, the most consistent interpretation is this: That Jesus Christ would become the "God the Father" of a new creation (possibly a new universe) and he would be at the head of the "heavenly host" , who are "gods". Thus making him the "God of gods" and "Lord of lords" or "the Most High God" of the new universe. Or as Joseph taught, the "Head of the gods". (We would still have the same relationship with God the Father of our universe.) Again, our Christ would be "the Father" of the new universe (Note that the Book of Mormon calls Christ "the Father" when we are "born again" through Jesus, and in this sense, Jesus would always be considered "the Father" of our becoming "partakers of the divine nature". We would be "one" with Him in this endeavor. All of these exalted would share involvement in the spiritual creation - intelligences into spiritual bodies, who are the spiritual children of "Elohim" (plural).

Among the spiritual children of Elohim would be a perfectly and naturally divine spirit, who would be the new "Christ" of the new creation, and would then enact the physical creation, place spirits into bodies, and say "man has become as one of us, knowing good and evil" etc. etc. This seems consistent with LDS scripture to me, because God the Father is the Father of "worlds without number".

Granted, this includes speculation on my part, and there are complications and implications. For example, it could potentially mean that God the Father of this Universe is not actually the father of every spirit, at least not directly; but instead, spirits may be created from other couples. Not that there would be much of a difference (at least not to me), but that would be one of the implications to this theory which people may have difficulty with.

-7up