Hi All – over time and place of the past 60
years I’ve written, spoken, and tried to be an example of a ‘truth seeker’. By
sharing experiences – discerned study – careful analysis – reasoned questioning
– my life reflects travel from 3000BC to the present day of the teachings of
the Father, His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ (our Lord and Savior) and the
Holy Ghost! This include reading and studying the teachings of all of the
Prophets who there is written material which can be directly attributed to them
– and witnesses to their truthfulness. What is below is a presentation From an address, “The Godhead,” delivered during the seminar for new
mission presidents at the Provo Missionary Training Center on June 23, 2013 by
Elder Jeffery R. Holland of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This contains true doctrine – which one can pray about. I add
only a short thought to go with it – and this reminder either The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true or it is false! I know it to be true –
others disagree – but each of our eternal salvation’s depend on the Restoration
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ prior to his 2nd coming to rule and
reign on this earth. Thus the only Church who claim this restoration is The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – therefore if this is true – then there
is but one true Church on the earth today – if it is false then there is no
true church (all are creations of men/women) and therefore deistic in their
teachings – and void of the authority to act in either the name of the Father
or the Son. Does this sound like hard doctrine – to some yes – but if one
applies the teachings found in the Scriptures (all of them inclusive-translated
correctly) – common sense and understanding then it is easy doctrine. May each
of you have blessings needful in your lives – you are my friends – sharing truth
is the only reality which makes any sense to me – I testify of in the name of
Jesus Christ – amen – c/ork
*A belief in the existence of a God on the
evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation
(distinguished from theism ). 2. belief in a God who created the world but has
since remained indifferent to it.
“Knowing the Godhead”
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
We
are to know these Divine Beings in every way we can. We are to love Them, draw
near to Them, obey Them, and try to be like Them.
The
Prophet Joseph
Smith said, “It is the
first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God.”1Furthermore,
he added, “I want you all to know Him, and to be familiar with Him.”2 We must have “a correct idea of his … perfections, and
attributes” and an admiration for “the excellency of [His] character.”3
I
wish to expand the Prophet’s challenge to us and say that we and our
missionaries, our members, and our investigators must know for a certainty the
character of the members of theGodhead. We
must have a correct idea of Their individual perfections and attributes and an
admiration for the excellency of Their personal character.
It
is not happenstance that the first article of our faith is “We believe in God,
the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus
Christ, and in the Holy
Ghost” (Articles of Faith 1:1). The message
is clear for all who teach the gospel. There is no point in going on to the
other truths we believe if we haven’t fixed in our minds and in the minds of
those we teach the preeminent role of the Godhead in our doctrine and in our
eternal destiny. We are to know these Divine Beings in every way we can. We are
to love Them, draw near to Them, obey Them, and try to be like Them.
When
we bring people into the Church, we are not baptizingthem
into the Church of a man, whether that man be Joseph Smith or Brigham Young or Thomas S. Monson—revere those
prophets as we do. And we are not baptizing them into the Church of happy
families or of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
When we bring people into the Church, we baptize them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In doing so, we are
leading them back to the presence of the Father through the ministry,
Atonement, and grace of His Son, with the influence of the Holy Ghost guiding
them to this goal. We must always keep uppermost in our minds this preeminence
of the Godhead as both means and end as we undertake the work of salvation.
If,
as King Benjamin counseled, we truly know these Divine Beings whom we serve
and make certain They are not strangers to us and are never far from the
thoughts and intents of our heart (see Mosiah 5:13), then we might have
the results King Benjamin had. And what were those? His people experienced “a
mighty change,” had “no more disposition to do evil, but to do good
continually,” and were “willing to enter into a covenant … to do [God’s]
will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he [should]
command [them], all the remainder of [their] days” (Mosiah 5:2, 5).
That
was the impact of King Benjamin’s teachings upon his congregation, and it is a perfect scriptural definition of the real growth in our converts we are emphasizing as
we establish the Church in “all the world” (Mark 16:15).
As
the Savior Himself taught, missionary
work—the work of salvation—is like a net that we are throwing to a
wider and wider world of nations, cultures, and people. As such, we will
gather, as the parable says, fish “of every kind” (Matthew 13:47). Many of those
“fish” in our expanding frontier do not know who God is or what His Fatherhood
is actually like; they do not know who Jesus Christ really is or why His is the
only name given under heaven whereby we may be saved (see Acts 4:12); they do not know who
the Holy Ghost is or why this member of the Godhead “was sent forth to teach
the truth” (D&C 50:14).
Knowledge of the
Godhead
Of
course, there are a lot of other things these fish gathered of every kind don’t
know, but if they are to embrace the restored gospel and truly find salvation
for their souls, it will have to begin with some knowledge and understanding of
the members of the Godhead. Ultimately, “true and saving worship is found only
among those who know the truth about … the Godhead and who understand the
true relationship men should have with each member of [what one of the Brethren
has called] that Eternal Presidency.”4
Elder Bruce R. McConkie (1915–85) of the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles reminded us that Lucifer understands the significance of such
doctrine, even if we don’t. He said:
“There is no salvation in believing … false doctrine,
particularly a false or unwise view about the Godhead or any of its
members. …
“It
follows that the devil would rather spread false doctrine about God and the
Godhead, and induce false feelings with reference to any one of them, than
almost any other thing he could do.”5
So
no investigator can come into this Church with a realtestimony, with real conversion, with what we are seeking
for and calling real growth in each convert, unless he or she has had at least
the beginning of some personal, spiritual, true experience with God. That kind
of true experience can come only when there is the realization that He is a
real being, an actual person, a literal Father of flesh and bone who speaks and
sees and feels, who knows all His children’s names and all their needs, who
hears all their prayers, and who wants all His children in His Church. These
investigators need to know He has a plan for their salvation and that He has
given commandments as to how we find our way back to Him.
A
God who cares about them as tenderly as a parent cares for a child cannot be an
ethereal mist or a vague philosophical First Cause or a deistic absentee
landlord. He must be recognized for what He truly is—a merciful, compassionate
Father, in whose image every one of His children has been made and before Whom
all of us will one day again stand—and then kneel! Few of our investigators
will know that kind of God now, in or out of
contemporary Christianity.
In
that regard, it is most significant that lesson 1 in Preach My Gospel begins with the simple declaration
that “God is our Heavenly Father.”6 In that lesson the first determination
missionaries are to make is what each person being taught understands regarding
the true nature of God.
If missionaries can get a proper understanding of God in the
minds and hearts of their investigators at the outset of their teaching,
everything else will fall into place much more easily in all the instruction
that follows.
The Mission and Message of Jesus Christ
In
like manner, elder, sister, and investigator alike must appreciate much more
than they do the majesty of the mission and message of Jesus Christ, who came
down from the Father and taught what the Father taught Him. All must come to
realize that Jesus came into mortality to show us the way, the truth, and the
life. Indeed, He is the only way, the whole truth, and theperfect life. As such, He is the only child in
the human family of whom the Father can fully and
completely say, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew
17:5).
We
are to have faith in Christ, trust that He has redeemed us from death
physically and hell spiritually, accept His Atonement as the only means of reconciling ourselves before
God, and acknowledge that there is no other path to salvation. The world, if it
is to be redeemed, must bend its knee and with tongue confess that Jesus is the
Christ, the living Son of the living God. We need to teach with faith and
fervor “the doctrine of Christ” (Hebrews
6:1; 2 John
1:9; 2 Nephi 31:2, 21; 32:6; Jacob 7:2, 6) as declared in the
scriptures and as summarized in lesson 3 ofPreach My Gospel.
Our
fish of the far-flung net need to know that the Holy Ghost is the member of the
Godhead with whom they will have their most frequent and most intimate
relationship as they receive the missionaries and pray for heavenly guidance
regarding their message. It is this member of the Godhead who will leadinvestigators to truth
and will then bear witness of that truth when they encounter it.
The investigators must be taught to recognize the Spirit when it manifests
itself during the course of the lessons. Certainly the missionaries must
understand the Holy Ghost’s divine role in the conversion process and must strive
to carry the Spirit with them at all times.
“Unto what were ye ordained?” the Lord asks. “To preach my
gospel by the Spirit, even the Comforter which was sent forth to teach the
truth. …
“Wherefore,
he that preacheth [by the Spirit] and he that receiveth [by the Spirit],
understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together” (D&C 50:13–14, 22).
We
can be absolutely certain that it will not go well—for the missionaries or for
their investigators—if we slide past our teaching of the Divine. We must not
point toward mortal leaders before we have taught and testified of celestial
ones. We must not try to teach ancillary truths before we have taught the
fundamental ones. We must not rush toward baptism and the goal of a new convert
before we have taught true faith in God, explained the need for true repentance
in Christ, and made certain that those crucial first shoots of a convert’s
growing testimony are kept strong and viable through the nourishing agency of
the Holy Spirit.
Christian Confusion
Regarding
the distinct nature of these Divine Beings, our latter-day revelations teach
that “the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son
also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage
of Spirit” (D&C 130:22).
You can’t get a baseline statement clearer than that! But
unfortunately, nearly two millennia of Christian history have sown terrible
confusion and near-fatal error in this regard. Many evolutions and iterations
of religious creeds have greatly distorted the simple clarity of true doctrine,
declaring the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be abstract, absolute,
transcendent, immanent, consubstantial, coeternal, and unknowable; without
body, parts, or passions; and dwelling outside space and time.
In such creeds, all three members are separate persons, but they
are a single being, the oft-noted “mystery of the trinity.” They are three
distinct persons, yet not three Gods but one. All three persons are
incomprehensible, yet it is one God who is incomprehensible.
We
agree with our critics on at least that point—that such a formulation for
divinity is incomprehensible. With such a confusing definition of God being
imposed upon the Church, little wonder that a fourth-century monk cried out,
“Woe is me! They have taken my God away from me, … and I know not whom to adore
or to address.”7 How are we to trust, love, and worship,
to say nothing of striving to be like, One who is incomprehensible and
unknowable? What of Jesus’s prayer that it “is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”? (John
17:3; emphasis added).
It
is not our purpose ever to demean any person’s belief or the doctrine of any
religion. We extend to all the same respect for their doctrine that we ask for
ours. (That too is an article of our faith.) But no less a source than the
stalwart Harper’s BibleDictionary, the gold standard in that field,
records that “the formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great
church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found [anywhere]
in the [New Testament].”8
So
we are very comfortable, frankly, in letting it be known that we do not hold a
fourth- or fifth-century, pagan-influenced view of the Godhead, and neither did
those first Christian Saints who were eyewitnesses of the living Christ.9 We are New Testament—not Nicene—Christians.
The Unity of the
Godhead
However,
I now quickly stress that when we have made the point about the distinctiveness
of Their persons, it is equally important to stress how unified They are and
how truly One the Godhead is. I think I am safe in
saying that part of the reason we are so misunderstood by others in the
Christian tradition is because in stressing the individual personages of the
Godhead, we have not followed that up often enough by both conceding and insistingupon Their unity
in virtually every other imaginable way. For this we have reaped needless
criticism, and we have made our LDS position harder to be understood than it
needs to be.
Indeed,
the great “doctrine of Christ” passage in 2 Nephi
31 ends with this
declaration: “This is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without
end” (2 Nephi 31:21).
We
have all read the Savior’s majestic Intercessory Prayer inJohn 17.
We know it to be a declaration of unity between the Father and the Son and
between Them and us, Their earthly disciples. Read it often, particularly
inasmuch as President David O. McKay (1873–1970) once called it “the
greatest prayer … ever uttered in this world.”10 We ought to strive to be one with the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as Jesus prayed we would be.
An Apostle’s Witness
I
close with my testimony of each of these Divine Beings, who constitute that
“Eternal Presidency” spoken of. I bear witness of the Holy Ghost by the spirit of the Holy Ghost, witnessing and
testifying being two of its great roles. I bear witness that the Holy Ghost is
a teacher, a Comforter, and the agent of personal revelation. I bear witness
that the Holy Ghost will bring all things to our remembrance—a particular
blessing inasmuch as remembering is one of the great commandments given to us,
including in the sacramental prayers (see D&C 20:77, 79).
I
testify that through the power of the Holy Ghost, we can chase darkness from
among us and be warned against danger and against untruth. I bear witness that
the Holy Ghost is also the Holy Spirit of Promise, confirming and
authenticating covenants and ordinances and ultimately sealing all saving
blessings unto eternal life. I am in awe that we have such ready access to a
member of the Godhead and have it so constantly and repeatedly if we live
worthily of it. I express my near-inexpressible gratitude for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
I
bear witness of Jesus Christ, the living Son of the living God, who paid the
liberating ransom for your soul and my soul and the soul of every man, woman,
and child from Adam to the end of the world. I testify that the first principle
of the gospel is faithin
the Lord Jesus Christ and that it is the foundation of and the central message
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I testify that every human being born into this world is born
with the Light of Christ in his or her soul. I bear witness that He is the
First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega of our
salvation. I declare that He is the great Jehovah, the redemptive I Am, the
Lamb of God slain from before the foundation of the world. I testify that in
Him the fulness did dwell and that He was born, lived, and died a perfect,
sinless Man, without blemish and without spot.
I am grateful that the authority of Jesus Christ, which
regulates everything of eternal significance in this universe, bears His
name—the Holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God. If I were to live
to be a thousand years of age, I could never adequately express my wonder and
inadequacy at being called to be one of His Apostles, a witness of His name in
all the world.
I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me,
I bear witness of God the Eternal Father, the grand Elohim, my
Father and your Father, who gave us spiritual life. I testify that He is the
Man of Holiness, that mercy and goodness, love and compassion only begin to
note His chief and eternal characteristics. I testify that Christ came to show
us the Father and as such was rightly called the Son of Man (of Holiness).
I
bear witness that God our Father is the author of the great plan of salvation
and that what came to be known as the gospel of Jesus Christ is also known as
“the gospel of God” (Romans
1:1; see also verses
2–3). I bear witness that the Father was and is the Creator of all
things, working through Jehovah and other heavenly agents to accomplish that
Creation and sharing the title of Creator with His Beloved Son. I testify that
we are to serve the Father in the name of the Son just
as we are to pray to the Father in the name of the Son.
I
testify that Jesus Christ came to do the will of the Father, taught the
doctrine of the Father, and worked out His own salvation through the Father. I
bear most solemn witness that the Father so loved the world, His children, that
He gave His best child, His perfect child, His Only Begotten Child, that
whosoever would believe in Him would have everlasting life (see John 3:36; 6:47;Helaman 14:8).
I am grateful for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in
whose names the sacred and saving ordinances from baptism to temple sealings
are performed in this Church. I invite each of you to know deeply these Divine
Beings.
Notes
1. Joseph Smith, in History of the Church, 6:305.
2. Joseph Smith, in History of the Church, 6:305.
4. Bruce R. McConkie,
“Our Relationship with the Lord” (Brigham Young University devotional,
Mar. 2, 1982), 1,speeches.byu.edu.
5. Bruce R. McConkie,
“Our Relationship with the Lord,” 1–2.
7. In Owen Chadwick, ed., Western Asceticism (1958), 235.
8. Paul J. Achtemeier,
ed., Harper’s Bible Dictionary (1985), 1099.
9. For a thorough discussion
of this issue, see Stephen E. Robinson, Are Mormons Christians? (1991), 71–89; see also Robert L.
Millet, Getting at the Truth: Responding to Difficult
Questions about LDS Beliefs (2004), 106–22.
10.
David O.
McKay, in Conference Report, Oct. 1967, 5.
11.
“I Stand All Amazed,” Hymns, no. 193.
“Deistic
Belief Systems*”
cji
2/2/16
How easy
to ignore the Scriptures
intermixing
them with philosophy
finding
fault or without witnesses
denying
that the heavens are open
dehumanizing
the Father and Son
repeating
as truth rhetorical myths
how easy
to justify non-obedience
doing
whatever one wants to do
claiming
to believe but not to love
for to
love is simply to be obedient
choices
we make or totally ignore
pretending
to know and not to know
satisfying
the carnal nature only
and
giving lip service to all else
death
bed confessions too late
when
planed on in advance
deistic
belief systems prevalent
when
false doctrine’s contention
taught
in place of the truthful
Satan’s
plan to destroy all
given as
his plan of salvation
leading
the very elect astray
how easy
to ignore the truth!
Copyright © 2016 – cji
*A belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation (distinguished from theism ). 2. belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it.
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