Tag: Masada

If you would like our Savior Jesus Christ’s promised peace and eternal life, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ I invite you to call right now 1-888-537-7700 or 1-800-453-3860 extension 2-4914 or 801-240-4914 in order to visit with the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You can also reach them via the website https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/easter-2021/talk-with-missionaries

God our Eternal Father in Heaven

1. It is life eternal to know God Our Eternal Father in Heaven and His Beloved Son, Jehovah Jesus Christ, Yeshua, The Holy Messiah.
2. There are three separate Gods in heaven with whom we have affinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Of God the Father we testify:
3. “There is a God in heaven, who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God, the framer of heaven and earth, and all things which are in them.” (D. & C. 20:17.)
4. He is not a progressive being in the sense that liberal religionists profess to believe.
5. He was not created by man.
6. He was not a God of vengeance and war in Old Testament times and a God of love and mercy in a later New Testament era.
7. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
8. God is known only by revelation.
9. He stands revealed or remains forever unknown.
10. He cannot be discovered in the laboratory.
11. He cannot be discovered by viewing all immensity through giant telescopes.
12. He cannot be discovered by cataloging all the laws of nature that do or have existed.
13. A knowledge of his powers and the laws of nature which he has ordained does not reveal his personality and attributes to men. This kind of knowledge comes only by revelation from the Holy Ghost as a consequence of obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.
14. Man’s purpose in life is to learn the nature and kind of being that God is, and then, by conformity to his laws and ordinances, to progress to that high state of exaltation wherein man becomes perfect as the Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:48; Teachings, pp. 342-362.)
15. He is God Almighty.
16. He is THE ALMIGHTY God.
17. He is not an amorphous personage of Spirit. He is not properly defined by apostate creeds.
18. Apostate creeds teach that God is a spirit essence that fills the immensity of space and is everywhere and nowhere in particular present.
19. In a vain attempt to support this doctrine that God is a spirit essence, formulated by councils in the early days of the great apostasy, it is common for apologists to point to the statement in the King James Bible which says, “God is a Spirit.” (John 4:22-24.) The fact is that this passage is mistranslated; instead, the correct statement, quoted in context reads: “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. For unto such hath God promised his Spirit. And they who worship him, must worship in spirit and in truth.” (Inspired Version, John 4:25-26.)
20. It is true that God may be said to be a Spirit, but this statement must be understood to mean that he is a Spirit in the same sense that a resurrected man is a spirit.
21. When the apostles, beholding the resurrected Lord, “were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit” (Luke 24:36-43), there was not the slightest intimation that the “spirit” was a vaporous nothingness that filled immensity. Spirits are personages. God the Father is a glorified and perfected Man, a Personage of flesh and bones (D. & C. 130:22), in which tangible body an eternal spirit is housed. It is in this sense that God is a Spirit.

• HIS NATURE IS DIVINE AND ETERNAL.
• God the Eternal Father, our Father in Heaven, is an exalted, perfected, and glorified Personage having a tangible body of flesh and bones. (D. & C. 130:22.)
• All men, Christ included, were born as Heavenly Father’s spirit children in pre-existence. (D. & C. 93:21-23; Moses l; 2; 3; 4; Abra. 3:22-28.)
• He is married for eternity to our Heavenly Mother.
• He is the Great Creator. Through His Son He created, which is to say organized, our universe. He organized the earth and universe from existing matter. All things are round about and known by God the Father including past, present, and future.
• He embodies all virtues perfectly – honesty, trustworthiness, faith, hope, charity, love, kindness, long-suffering, courage, chastity, purity, knowledge, wisdom, happiness and joy.

• BECAUSE HE LOVED US FIRST, HE ASKS THAT WE LOVE HIM AND LOVE HIS SON AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
• He asks that we show our love for Him by helping Him accomplish his singular objective which is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of us his children.
• He asks that we show our love for Him by repenting of our sins and by keeping His commandments for such will bring us his children the greatest happiness. Righteousness is happiness. Wickedness never was happiness.
• He asks that we show our love for Him by visiting with Him in prayer multiple times daily.

• WE LOVE HIM BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US.
• He desires to exalt his children by giving them experience in mortality, death, the resurrection, and exaltation
• He gave his only begotten beloved son that we might not perish.
• He forgives our sins and remembers them no more conditional on our acceptance of Christ Jesus as our Savior and repentance of our sins.

• He is GOD the First in the godhead.
• He is bound by law.
• He is Holy, Holy, Holy.
• He is immortal which is to say He cannot and will not die.
• Once again, He has a resurrected, glorified, perfect body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.
• He is an exalted being.

• He is Perfect in Spirit, Mind, and Body.
• He is Omnicharitable (all loving).
• He is Omnipotent (all powerful).
• He is Omnipresent (all present, in and through all things).
• He is Omniscient (all knowing).

• His is the great plan of our Happiness.
• He implemented His great plan of joy and happiness, salvation and exaltation.

• He holds the keys of presidency of our universe.
• He holds the keys of creation delegated to His Son.
• He holds the keys of the priesthood from eternity to all eternity delegated to His Son.
• He holds the keys of the resurrection delegated to His Son.

• His Son mirrors Him in person and attributes.
• If you know the Son, you know the Father.
• Like His Son, He is a God of mighty miracles.
• We come to the Father only through His Beloved Son.

• He is our Father in Heaven.
• He is our Holy Father.
• He is the Father of our spirits.

• Like His Son, He is the God of truth and cannot lie.
• Like His Son, He is the Great Creator of our universe.
• All of his billions if not trillions of creations were organized by His Son and are known, named and numbered to both of them.

• We worship the Father in the Son.
• We also worship the Son.
• Heavenly Father is the only true God whom we worship in the name of His Son.

• He is the source of good.
• He is the supreme being in our universe.
• He is the Supreme God we worship in the name of his son Jesus Christ.
• He lives in eternal celestial burnings.
• He lives in the center of our universe near a great governing star Kolob.

• He receives and answers our prayers proferred in the name of the Son.
• He too has a father and a mother as rightly taught by The Prophet Joseph Smith.

• Lucifer opposed Him and His Son.
• In pre-existent counsels, He was opposed by his son Lucifer.
• By Jehovah and Michael Heavenly Father banished Lucifer with “a one third part” of His rebellious children.
• As consequence, Lucifer with his fallen angels became Satan the god of evil on earth.

• His Son Jesus Christ is in His express image.

• In addition to the fact that all men are brothers in the sense that all have descended from Adam, they are also brothers in that they have the same personal Father who begat them in the spirit.

• Pre-existence.
• In heaven, He convened the grand council and other councils to discuss the plan of salvation and exaltation.
• Sacrament.
• In the name of Jesus Christ, He blesses the sacrament in remembrance of His son’s atoning sacrifice, including His broken body and shed blood.

• Fatherhood of God
• It is only by understanding the real and literal sense in which God is our Father that we are able to understand what is meant by the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.
• Our Lord had reference to this when he said, “Go to my brethren, arid say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” (John 20:17.)
• The designation Father is to be taken literally; it signifies that the Supreme Being is the literal Parent or Father of the spirits of all men. (Heb. 12:9.)
• This is the reason men are commanded to approach Deity in prayer by saying, “Our Father which art in heaven.” (Matt. 6:9.)
• We are His and our Heavenly Mother’s spirit children.

• Beatitudes and Ten Commandments
• Through His Son, He is the source of beatitudes.
• Through His Son, Jehovah, He is the source of ten commandments

• Godhead.
• There are three Gods-the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-who, though separate in personality, are united as one in purpose, in plan, and in all the attributes of perfection. Thus anything, in these fields, which is revealed with reference to any of them is equally true of each of the others; and hence no attempt need be made in these fields to distinguish between them.
• By definition, . God (generally meaning the Father) is the one supreme and absolute Being; the ultimate source of the universe; the all powerlul, all-knowing, all-good Creator, Ruler, and Preserver of all things.
• Of him, when considering the object upon which faith rests, the Prophet observes “that God is the only supreme governor and independent Being in whom all fulness and perfection dwell; who is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; without beginning of days or end of life; and that in him every good gilt and every good principle dwell; and that he is the Father of lights; in him the principle of faith dwells independently, and he is the object in whom the faith of all other rational and accountable beings centers for life and salvation.” (Lectures on Faith, p. 9.)

• The godhead is comprised of three glorified, exalted, and perfected personages. They are the supreme presidency of the universe. (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. I, pp. 1-55.)
• They are: God the Father; God the Son; God the Holy Ghost. (First Article of Faith.) “Everlasting covenant was made between three personages,” the Prophet said, “before the organization of this earth, and relates to their dispensation of things to men on the earth; these personages, according to Abraham’s record, are called God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the witness or Testator.” (Teachings, p. 190.)
• Though each God in the Godhead is a personage, separate and distinct from each of the others, yet they are “one God” (Testimony of Three Witnesses in Book of Mormon), meaning that they are united as one in the attributes of perfection. For instance, each has the fulness of truth, knowledge, charity, power, justice, judgment, mercy, and faith. Accordingly these three separate persons think, act, speak, and are alike in all things; and yet they are three separate and distinct entities. Each occupies space and is and can be in but one place at one time, but each has power and influence that is everywhere present. The oneness of the Gods is the same unity that should exist among. the saints: (John 17; 3 Ne. 28:10-11.)
• Perhaps no better statement defining the Godhead and showing the relationship of its members to each other has been written in this dispensation than that given by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Lectures on Faith. “There are two personages who constitute the great, matchless, governing, and · supreme, power over all things, by whom all things were created and made, that are created and made, whether visible or invisible, whether in heaven, on earth, or in the earth, under the earth, or throughout the immensity of space. They are the Father and the Son, the Father being a personage of spirit meaning that he has a spiritual body which by revealed definition is a resurrected body of flesh and bones (I Cor. 15:44-45; D. & C. 88 :27)], glory, and power, possessing aII perfection and fullness.
• The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, is a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man, or rather man was formed after his likeness and in his image; he is also the express ·image and likeness of the personage of the Father, possessing all the fullness of the Father, or the same fullness with the Father; being begotten of him, and ordained from before the foundation of the world to be a propitiation for the sins of all those who should believe on his name, and is called the Son because of the flesh, and descended in suffering below that which man can suffer; or, in other words, suffered greater sufferings, and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be. “But, notwithstanding all this, he kept the law of God, and remained without sin, showing thereby that it is in the power of man to keep the law and remain also without sin; and also, that by him a righteous judgment might come upon all flesh, and that all who walk not in the law of God may justly be condemned by the law, and have no excuse for their sins. “And he being the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fullness of the glory of the Father, possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit, that bears record of the Father and the Son, and these three are one; or, in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme, power over all things; by whom all things were created and made that were created and made, and these three constitute the Godhead, and are one; the Father and the Son possessing the same mind, the same wisdom, glory, power, and fullness-filling all in all; the Son being filled with the fullness of the mind, glory, and power; or, in other words, the spirit, glory, and power, of the Father, possessing all knowledge and glory, and the same kingdom, sitting at the right hand of power, in the express image and likeness of the Father, mediator for man, being filled with the fullness of the mind of the Father; or, in other words, the Spirit of the Father, which Spirit is shed forth upon all who believe on his name and keep his commandments. “And all those who keep his commandments shall grow up from grace to grace, and become heirs of the heavenly kingdom, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ; possessing the same mind, being transformed into the same image or likeness, even the express image of him who fills all in all; being filled with the fullness of his glory, and become one in him, even as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one.” (Lectures on Faith, pp. 50-51.)
• That exaltation which the saints of all ages have so devoutly sought is godhood itself. Godhood is to have the character, possess the attributes, and enjoy the perfections which the Father has. It is to do what he does, have the powers resident in him, and live as he lives, having eternal increase. (D. & C. 132:17-20, 37.) It is to know him in the full and complete sense, and no one can fully know God except another exalted personage who is like him in all respects. Those attaining this supreme height are sons of God (D. & C. 76:50-60); they receive the fullness of the Father and find membership in the Church of the Firstborn (D. 294 GODHOOD & C. 93:17-22); they are joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:14-18), inheriting with him all that the Father hath. (D. & C. 84:33-41.) They are gods. (Ps. 82:1, 6; John 10:34-36; Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 2, pp. 35-79; Gospel Kingdom, pp. 27-30.) Joseph Smith said: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! … 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 we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a· man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, ·the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible . . .. “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, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power … . [Such persons are] heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. What is it? To inherit the same power, the same glory and the same exaltation, until you arrive at the station of a god, and ascend the throne of eternal power, the same as those who have gone before.” (Teachings, pp. 345-347.) Again: “Every man who reigns in celestial glory is a god to his dominions.” (Teachings, p. 374,)
• . Christ is the God of, our Fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (D. & C. 136:21-22; Ex. 3:1-16.) It was he who appeared to and covenanted with Abraham (Abra. 2:6-11), who was the one by whom salvation should come (I Ne. 6:4), and who was destined in due course to come into the world and be crucified for the sins of the world. (I Ne. 19:7-17.) 2. Since Abraham, who had the fulness of the gospel, worshiped both the Father and the Son, Peter and others have taken occasion, quite properly, to refer to the Father also as the God of our Fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (Acts 3:13; 5:30; 22:14.)
• “Every man who reigns in celestial glory is a god to his dominions,” the Prophet said. (Teachings, p. 374.) Hence, the Father, who shall continue to all eternity as the God of exalted beings, is a God of Gods. Further, as the Prophet also taught, there is “a God above the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . … If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that he had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? … Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that he had a Father also?” (Teachings, pp. 370, 373.) In this way both the Father and the Son, as also all exalted beings, are now or in due course will become Gods of Gods. (Teachings, pp. 342- 376.)
• Christ [the Son] is the God of Israel (I Ne. 19:7-17; 3 Ne. Il:7-17), the God of Jacob (Ps. 146:5; Isa. 2:3; D. & C. 136:21), the Lord God, the Mighty One of Israel (D. & C. 36:1), the Lord God of the Hebrews. (Ex. 3:18.) These names signify both that he came of Israel himself and also his personal, attentive care toward that chosen race. They point to his “great goodness toward the house of Israel, which he hath bestowed on them according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his Iovingkindnesses.” (Isa. 63:7-9; D. & C. 133:52-53.) Christ is the God of Jeshurun (Deut. 33:26), meaning that he is the God of Israel. Jeshurun or Jesurun, translated as upright one, is used by Moses and Isaiah as a symbolical name for Israel. (Deut. 32: 15; 33:4-5; Isa. 44:2.) Many who do not profess belief in God as he is revealed in the scriptures, or even as he is described in the false creeds of sectarianism, yet recognizing that law prevails in the universe and among all forms of life, speak of the manifestations of this law as the God of Nature. In reality, Christ [the Son] is the God of Nature (l Ne. 19:12), for it is in and through his almighty power that all things are created, upheld, governed, and controlled. Our Father in Heaven (Matt. 6:9) is the God of Spirits (Num. 16:22; 27:16) or the Father of Spirits (Heb. 12:9), meaning that he is the literal Parent of the Spirit Christ and of all other spirits. Inasmuch, however, as Christ attained Godhood while yet in preexistence, he too stood as a God to the other spirits, but this relationship was not the same one of personal parenthood that prevailed between the Father and his offspring. Christ is the God of the Whole Earth (Isa. 54 :5; 3 Ne. 11 :14), an appellation he carries to bear record of his universal interest in all men and their salvation. He is not alone the God of the Jews, or of Israel, or of the Latter-day Saints, but of the whole earth and all life on its face. This world of carnality and lust, of every lascivious and · evil thing, belongs to Satan. He created it; he is its father and its god. All those who belong to it-all those who are carnal, sensual, and devilish- are _his children, the children of disobedience. The earth itself is the Lord’s, and he is its ruler; but the world (the corrupt society on earth) is under the rule of him who is the god of this world. “If our gospel be hid,” Paul wrote, “it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Cor. 4:3-4.) Christ is a God of Truth (Ex. 34:6; Deut. 32:4; Ps. 31 :5), meaning he is the embodiment and personification of truth. In the same sense he is the God of grace, mercy, love, righteousness, charity, integrity, and all of the attributes of godliness.
• Sources. Holy Scriptures. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine.
• Godhood. See CELESTIAL MARRIAGE, CHURCH OF THE FIRSTBORN, DAUGHTERS OF Gon, ETERNAL LIFE, ETERNAL LIVES, EXALTATION, fULNESS OP THE FATHER, JOINT-HEIRS WITH CHRIST, PLURALTI’Y OF Gons, SALVATION, SoNs OF Goo God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. See CHRIST, Gon, Gon OF ISRAEL, GREAT I AM, JEHOVAH.

• If you would like our Savior Jesus Christ’s promised peace and eternal life, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ I invite you to call right now 1-888-537-7700 or 1-800-453-3860 extension 2-4914 or 801-240-4914 in order to visit with the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You can also reach them via the website https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/easter-2021/talk-with-missionaries

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