'I AM' | ||
"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." ~ Old Testament | Exodus 3:14There is a commonality between Elohim Who is God the Father of Spirits, Jehovah who is the same as Jesus Christ, and man. That commonality rests in the Intelligence of the mind. Joseph Smith taught that, "The mind or intelligence, which man possesses is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself." (King Follet Sermon) In that same message it was also taught that this Intelligence, which is common to God and man, exists on a self-existent principle and that it has been a 'spirit' of Intelligence from age to age and there is no creation about it. In the Doctrine and Covenenants it was also revealed that Intelligence is the light of truth - light and truth, which may explain in part the 'electrical light operations of the human physical brain. This rudimentary mutual commoniality of the spirit of Intelligence is the basis of the eternal nature of God and man. But this in itself does not guarantee Godhood. Lucifer, who was also a spirit son of God the Father of Spirits, is the prime example of that. After one's spirit birth that combines the spirit intelligence with the shape and form of the spirit body, it is what is done with that rudimentary co-equal and co-eternal intelligence. Lucifer did not develop or grow and develop his intelligence along the lines of Godly understanding and wisdom. And he became an enemy to God and was cast out of Heaven, he and his 'demon angels' that followed after him. Jehovah, the Firstborn spirit son and heir of the Father, did develop his rudimentary intelligence to the point that God the Father annointed, ordained and empowered him by Divine Investiture to stand in the stead of the Father in all things as our Ministering Spirit God. And he, Jehovah became a Spirit God, the Word spoken of by John (John 1:1-4). In him Elohim gave the powers of temporal creation, heaven and earth, and all things that in them are. Now man has or has had that same potential. He may live to follow Christ, who is the same as Jehovah, and return to the presence of God and there further develop his own potentials that he might become even as God is. That is the Gospel Plan of Happiness. In us is that co-equal — co-eternal potential. Jehovah even as yet a spirit being only, had already attained to the advanced development level and when he first visited Moses on the mount, he introduced himself as being the very eternal being of God. "I AM THAT I AM." In that mutually shared rudimentry Intelligence of God, Jehovah was even then co-equal and co-eteranl with God the Father, Elohim, at that level of also being God after that level of God the Father. Why God the Father had his Firstborn son to be our Ministering God Jehovah is stated in Doctrine and Covenants 130:5, where it points out that only those who pertain unto this worldly second estate do directly minister unto it — the Father being a Celestial being far in advance of it. |
GOD lives. God announced himself to Moses simply as "I AM." God does exist. "HE IS." And that is one of the most critical facts that man must come to understand. If man does not come to that understanding life has no reason of being. It has no past nor any future beyond the passages of birth and death, nothing before and nothing after. It becomes merely a finite sandwiched between birth and death and 'whatever' happens in between. No further beginnings and a sudden and mostly unexpected ends. This is want those who are turned inward into themselves have come to espouse.
People are often classified into two groups, introverts and extroverts. One is self-centered and the other is other people centered. Needless to say the extroverts are those who get along better in this growingly 'crowded world' of millions of other people that we live in. Saddly most tend to be introverted, selfish in every way and considering only themselves above all else. These type of people often do not 'play well' or get along with other people. And they become obcessed with every thing having to be their way. They will beg for other's understanding and tollerance but will not give others the same return of such tollerance which they demand of others in their own causes and ways.
Now as there is one God who is over all things to be found by those who seek him, thier are those who deny God and cannot tollerate those who do believe in God. To those who have found God life takes on a greater definition than just a terminal sandwich between birth and death. There is a pre-mortal life from whence we come before we were born and that growing fetis is that temporal body which we will be housed in during this lifetime. And life does not simply end in death, but the inner spirit of the essence of man continues on in the living world beyond that shadowy figure of death.
The basic nature of the natural mortal man is to persue that which he immediately desires. He is also of a temperment and ego to consider that he knows what is best for himself and that there is none smarter or further advanced than himself that just might know a better longterm lasting course in life that is more beneficial for him to follow if only he would be so informed and 'humble' enough to listen, consider and possibly take the higher path that takes him out of just floundering around and from self defeating behavior, mistake after mistake.
For a crude example. The natural man who has allowed himself by his own egocentric self-serving choices to become addicted to and thus a slave to the alcholic patterns of self defeatish may just be floundering about some what aimlessly from drunken night out to drunken night out. From DUI to DUI, until ultimately he crashes, perhaps literally in one of a few different manners of distoryed civil social life in divorce, a life threatening and even changing accident, or even a total acholic wipe out of adiction from which he has a self defeated path of rehabilitation if that is even ever possiblt.
Now would it not be the 'better' and 'highger' way just to avoid those entire set of self defeating pitfalls by never becoming addicted or even aquainted with the acholic syndrome entirely. Now many social people of intelligence preach this path regardless of religion. Many who are of a religious nature have been introduced to it and comply to such a life style of not only alchol free life, but drug free life style as well. But those who would take advantage and seek for monitary gain over dealing in what is best for society sell alchol and drugs as an attractive life style. They gloss over the pit fall and self distructive asspects and sell it as the 'in thing' of societal expected behavior that every one has bought into.
You can't be a part of English society without having a 'Pub' as a part of your life. Forget that it tends to deaden your mind and personal abilities to advance yourself to higher heights by not being drug dependant. You can't be a part of the 'sports crowd' without shagging a case lot of beer on the sports weekend. Forget the possible life relationships that might be at risk from such envolvement to family, wife and children. Not to mention having to recoup one's self every weekend to enable one to get back to Monday's productive work schedule and possible job lost if you fail to be able to do so.
One of the biggest falsehoods is that being perpetuated by the Ivory Towers of Intellectual Science. How is that? Science is into man having to discover everything for himself and if man has not so discovered is, due to the humungous prideful ego of the intellectual innovators of imagination and the facet of human brain power that just nothing could possibly trump that avenue to man's natural avenues of behavior dependant upon what man has determined as being best for himself. Forget the humble consideration that over the ions of time the conceivable truth is that all is not just a path of new discovery, but that just possibly some force or someone has gone on before just happens to have the tried and proven patterns of the higher life already if only one would so humble himself and his prideful ego to come to consider them.
That is where the True God enters in. But, there are so many corruptions of false gods, who is to say just where that 'truest' and 'fullest' path of the higher life patterns is to be so found? But man in his selfness has taken it upon himself to define himself. And most are saddly today lead around by the ring of human intelligence in their nose. And even sadder still that source of 'human intelligence' just happens to be mainstream media hype that is high on drugs, sex and following after that which human animalistic desires dictate in lew of even common sense and reasoning. If Hollywood says so it is so.
Forget even the basic of logic that the body naturally grows old and even grows out of its natural sexual desires, hype them back up with drugs that have the potential of killing you just to get that last bit of supposed sexual desire out of life. Forget that there are other things in life besides sex and that sex itself can be and is as adictive as even the strongest of drugs that destroys a human's existance for life. So what is your are adicted to sex. What a way to go? Right? NO WRONG. That is just the mainstream media hype of the day and those who are getting rich by making it so. After all, 'sex sells' and it is used to sell you right into debt and all types of uncontrolled deviant sexual behaviors, even those which for the time beinging are still considered evil and against the law. But what happens when human behavior have gone too far and degenerated into such a state that they no longer are on paths that are good for human society. And for the lust of the flesh have deviated into that which will in the end actually destory itself?
Pornography is good, right? It is just exercising one of your constitutional rights. But where does that end? For now it is at such as being a pedifile. But that is already being and has been pushed in many national societies here on earth today and in the past. And men are just too smart to allow any such thing as God to give them a heads up on what is best for them and would lead them into paths that are actually the ultimate good for society.
Just how practical is God's religion? Ever hear of being consumed by debt. Yes in a monitary way? Have you ever over spent? Have you ever been caught up on the high interest rates of easy credit? If you want it now have it now and just start paying for it forever until you just can't afford anything any more? Debt consumption is a trap in and of itself. But what does that have to do with practical religion? Jesus and the Bible long ago, and it still does, teach man the ills of being in debt, usury and the prison of being consumed by debt.
But no one reads the Bible any more, right? God has long set out his messages to aid man in dealing successfuly with life and how to get the most out of it. And even eventually becoming even as God is. It is in the Bible and even in additional added scripture if one just takes the time and effort to find it. Even beginning with the first commanded given to Moses, God has told man what is best for him.
Man is on a course of creating for himself many other gods, false gods, that man has taken to worship and become subject to. In ancient times there were the false gods of the high places and the groves of trees. What? High places and trees? What are they? In terms of today's world they are any and everthing man places before himself as an item of worship. That distracts them from life and addicts them to being subject unto these false gods.
Anceintly man would carve out or molten an image of his false god by the work of his own hands. Man has done so today only their gods are a bit more sophisticated, such as the cell phone, the iPad, the sports network, the night club or bar. Even intellectualism become many a man's god. The evening mainstream news is many person's god. If it is so hyped, spun or reported on the news it must be true and what is right, right? Forget that it is under laid by the extreme amoral left that teaches that there is no God while all the time selling and addicting men to false gods of their own. These are a few of the false gods of the high places today.
And the false gods of the shaded groves of trees? The are the fields of the pleasures of the world. Any physical desire may be held therein. Sex related matters is one of the most prevealent here, but there are certaily a multitude of others as they are the weaknesses and desires of the flesh that tend to enslave a person with unbridled pursuits which lead into not only social deviantcy but into all sorts of social corruptions of self destruction. Pornography is one such item. And the standards of what is acceptable are daily further taking human kind down that path of undress. Prime time programming is filled with sex and what they call 'soft-ponogrpahy' of various states of undress made to appeal to the carnal nature and stimulate and titilate and children are being drawn into it at younger and younger ages. Victoria Secret sexual underwear programming where once a commercial of a lady in underwear was not deamed appropriate to set before general audiences.
Commercial today are filled with sex, errection advertisements at all times of the day for the youth to be draw into. Sex enhancing drugs are sold and sexual explicite advertizing is advancing at alarming rates to the morally minded. But to the carnally minded there is no consideration of the exposure that the younger and younger child's mind that is being continually increasingly draw into it. You can't even watch the news but that it is being broadcasted by, in and a part of the commercial products advertized during many of those skewed liberal news media programmings.
Children are turning up missing on a daily basis. Where are they going? Abduction and even human slavery is at increasing levels. And children are being exported to other nations where little if any social concern is being taken in those nations to deal with it. Oh, another child is missing today. Oh another teenager, female or even male is just gone. Oh well. Yes there are programs attempting to deal with such but the interests are not in it and national programming and what is in commercial on media outlets are indirectly supporting its existance by what is allowed to be shown over their meida broadcasts.
Gone are the days of any Religious awareness being able to vigerously effect what the media does. In fact the mainstream media is grossly anti-conserative, anti-Christian, and anti-God when it comes to adhereing to any Religious standard of decentcy. In the programming there is everyone having sex with everyone. Their reality shows are full of it under the cover of self expression and what is deamed acceptable exposure of children to various raw asspects of human behavior. There is no more protection of moral values. It is all amoral liberal exposure to whatever as it is everyone's constitutional right to exposes everyone else to their immorally, religiously sinfull ways of standardless living.
Instead of protecting and building society, they are into exposing society to everything and anything, tearing it down to the bases standards of amoral living. By the assoiation of human rights, they are vending the standard of a moralless society that cultures depravity and degenerate behaviors at an alarming rate that would not have been tolerated to push upon general society in the past. What was not accept in college life is not acceptable in grade school life even down into the youngest of years. Transexual exposures in elementary school. The evolution of gender selection being thrust upon the very young that have no moral reason to be exposed to it little alone considering making such early choices concerning it.
Yes, children are being groomed by our amoral society into becoming ever more sexually cognicent and exposed that ever before. Where male and female healthy gender supportive structuring according to the birth of the child. What is now being pitched is the false freedom of not accepting one's birth orintation but to have parenting, elementary schools and social avenues and training in making children that tend to reject who they really are into falsely being intentially led into being what they are not and at even pre-school advocacy training of non compliance to sex related norms. Can't have a boy being raised as a boy or a girl being raise as a girl. Now can we. NOT ANY LONGER IN THIS AMORAL GODLESS SOCIETY. Children today are NOT to be raised as what the hand of God gave them at the time of their birth. They are being sold dissatifaction with what they really truely are and taken into realms of consideration of being sold unnatural sexual moletation opperations that will make them what scientific man can make them just because science thinks they can. Forget the confusion of mind mental torments that are being put upon the child. It is after all their 'right.' But by what 'right?' Certainly not that of a God given right but a man's contrived intellectually imagined right being thrust upon an unsuspecting youthful mind in its most formative stages of coming to terms with themselves and what they are and have been given to be.
Man in his allpowerfull self ego has taken it upon himself to place such on unsuspecting children. And largely not according to any such parental approval of the healthy society norm of the family of mother, father, sister, and brother. Thust the family into an anti-God, anti-moral man imagined and innovated by the mind of some designing men to trump what is and what is of God.
The Fulness of the Story of Christmas By Elder Craig C. Christensen Of the Presidency of the Seventy Christmas invites feelings of tenderness, joy, and love. And as any parent will attest, similar feelings typically attend the birth of each newborn child. Of course, Christ’s birth was unlike any other. The precious details—the journey to Bethlehem, an overcrowded inn, a lowly manger, a newfound star, and ministering angels—make His a birth story for the ages. Yet the story of the Savior’s birth represents only a part of why we feel the Spirit during the hristmas season. Christmas is not only a celebration of how Jesus came into the world but also of knowing who He is—our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—and of why He came. President Thomas S. Monson has taught: “Because He came to earth, … we [can] have joy and happiness in our lives and peace each day of the year. … Because He came, there is meaning to our mortal existence.”1 The Firstborn of the Father This meaning becomes clearer when we consider the fulness of the Christmas story. As President Gordon B. Hinckley explained: “There would be no Christmas if there had not been Easter. The babe Jesus of Bethlehem would be but another baby without the redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary, and the triumphant fact of the Resurrection.”2 Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem is not the beginning of the story, and Calvary is not the end. The scriptures teach that He was “in the beginning … with God”3 in the premortal Council in Heaven. We also were there, where we knew Him as Jehovah, the Firstborn of our Eternal Father.4 We learned that He would perform the central role as Creator and Redeemer of the world. We shouted for joy as we embraced our Father’s great plan of happiness.5 Albeit there were some who rebelled against God’s plan, we are among those who placed our faith in Jesus Christ. We willingly accepted the perils of mortality because we had confidence that Jesus would accomplish the will of the Father—that through Him we would be saved. The Birth of God’s Only Begotten Son Here on earth, the memory of our former life is covered by a veil of forgetfulness. Our purpose in coming to earth was to learn how to “walk by faith, not by sight.”6 To strengthen that faith, God sent prophets who foresaw and foretold of the coming of the promised Messiah. One of these prophets was Nephi, who saw in vision a tree that was exceedingly beautiful and white. When he asked to know the interpretation of his vision, he was shown the city of Nazareth and Mary, a virgin who was most beautiful and fair. The angel attending to Nephi then asked this most penetrating question: “Knowest thou the condescension of God?” In other words, “Do you understand why God Himself will come into the world, why He would condescend below all things?” Nephi’s response was somewhat tentative: “I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” The angel then said, “The virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God.” Nephi saw Mary holding a child in her arms, and in joy the angel cried out, “Behold the Lamb of God, … even the Son of the Eternal Father!” Suddenly, the meaning of the tree—and the reason we celebrate Christ’s birth—became clearer to Nephi. Said he, “It is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things.” “Yea,” the angel added, “and the most joyous to the soul.”7 Finally, nearly 600 years after Nephi’s vision, the long-awaited, long-prophesied day arrived. Jesus passed through the veil and entered the world as a helpless baby, though a baby unlike any other. God’s Firstborn Son in the spirit became His Only Begotten Son in the flesh. This child, born in the humblest of circumstances, would carry on His shoulders the salvation of God’s eternal family! Truly, “the hopes and fears of all the years” converged in the “little town of Bethlehem” that night.8 But the story, of course, does not end there. As miraculous as the Savior’s birth was, greater miracles were about to follow. The Father’s Business We know very little of Jesus’s early years. We are told that He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”9 By age 12, His expressed desire was to “be about [His] Father’s business.”10 That business was to manifest to the world the Father’s “great and wonderful love” for His children.11 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, … that the world through him might be saved.”12 His Father’s business was to “[go] about doing good.”13 It was a work of compassion—“healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear.”14 His Father’s business was to open the eyes of our faith, to arouse our spiritual faculties, and to heal our pain, our pride, our sickness, and our sins. It was to “succor [us in our] infirmities.” And to accomplish this, Jesus willingly suffered pain, rejection, afflictions, and temptations of every kind.15 His Father’s business was to help us fulfill our purpose on earth—to “fit us for heaven,” that we might “live with [Him] there.”16 In other words, His Father’s business was—and is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”17 The Atonement of Jesus Christ Ultimately, the fulness of the story of Christmas culminates with the last three days of the Savior’s life. In that pivotal period, the Savior passed from the Garden of Gethsemane to the cross of Calvary to the Garden Tomb. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught, the “impact and efficacy” of that moment would “reach back … to the beginning of time, and forward … throughout all eternity.”18 With the fate of every human soul hanging in the balance, Jesus entered the Garden of Gethsemane virtually alone. There followed interrogation, scourging, and finally an excruciating death on the cross. With the same humility and submissiveness in which He declared from the beginning, “Here am I, send me,”19 he now said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”20 The earth groaned, His friends grieved, and darkness covered the land. The Savior passed into the world of spirits, where “an innumerable company of the spirits of the just”—righteous souls who had died—awaited His coming. In striking similarity to what had happened in the beginning of time, the sons and daughters of God shouted for joy and bowed down to worship their Deliverer.21 The Resurrection of the Light of the World Soon the time came for the Savior to take up His physical body again and complete His victory over death. Early in the morning on a spring day, the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went to His tomb and found it empty. She was the first to hear His voice and see His beloved face. Jesus later appeared to His Apostles, inviting them to behold His hands and feet, to “handle [Him], and see”22 that it really was Him—that their Redeemer did indeed live again! These are the “good tidings of great joy”23 we celebrate at Christmas—not only that Christ was born but that He lived among us, gave His life for us, was resurrected, and ultimately “finished the work which [His Father gave Him] to do.”24 We rejoice because the confusion and chaos of this world can be hushed by the promise made to us from the very beginning—a promise fulfilled by the Atonement of Jesus Christ. For this reason, the story of Christmas is not fully told without the story of Easter. It was the Savior’s atoning sacrifice that made holy the silent night in Bethlehem. It was His gift of redemption that caused us to shout for joy in the premortal world—this gift that heals our sickness, restores our sight, and wipes away all tears.25 The light we love at Christmas emanates from the Light of the World, Jesus Christ. The story we cherish at Christmas tells of our Father’s plan of happiness, which Christ made possible. The gift that makes the Christmas season sacred is His very life, which He gave that we might have everlasting life. May we receive this gift and share His love and His gospel with all the world, particularly during this wonderful season of the year, is my prayer in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes 1. Thomas S. Monson, “Because He Came” (First Presidency Christmas Devotional, Dec. 4, 2011), lds.org/broadcasts. 2. Gordon B. Hinckley, “The Wondrous and True Story of Christmas,” Ensign, Dec. 2000, 5. 3. John 1:1. 4. See Doctrine and Covenants 93:21. 5. See Job 38:7. 6. 2 Corinthians 5:7. 7. See 1 Nephi 11:8–23. 8. “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” Hymns, no. 208. 9. Luke 2:52. 10. Luke 2:49. 11. Doctrine and Covenants 138:3. 12. John 3:16–17. 13. Acts 10:38. 14. Mosiah 3:5. 15. See Alma 7:11–12. 16. “Away in a Manger,” Hymns, no. 206. 17. Moses 1:39. 18. Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Atonement of Jesus Christ,” Encyclopedia of Mormonism, com.byu.edu/index.php/Atonement_of_Jesus_Christ. 19. Abraham 3:27. 20. Luke 23:46. 21. See Doctrine and Covenants 138:12–23, 37. 22. Luke 24:39. 23. Luke 2:10. 24. John 17:4. 25. See Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 21:4.
