Ancient of Days
Brigham Young claimed that Joseph Smith taught that Adam was God.[1] I think this is a misunderstanding on Brigham’s part but it is not the crass error that it at first seems. Joseph’s Adamic theology did indeed accord Adam a semi-divine status. He is, however, subordinate to the Son (and the Father by implication). Joseph linked Adam with the “Ancient of Days” spoken of in Daniel:
“Dan VII Speaks of the Ancient of days, he means the oldest man, our Father Adam, Michael; he will call his children together, & hold a council with them to prepare them for the coming of the Son of Man. He, (Adam) is the Father of the human family & presides over the Spirits of all men, & all that have had the Keys must stand before him in this great Council. This may take place before some of us leave this stage of action. The Son of Man stands before him & there is given him glory & dominion.—Adam delivers up his Stewardship to Christ, that which was deliverd to him as holding the Keys of the Universe, but retains his standing as head of the human family.”[2]
This idea is canonized in D&C 27, which takes it back to perhaps as early as 1830 (although the Adam section only appears from the 1835 D&C).
“Father of the human family,” “presides over the spirits of men,” — these are notions that accord Adam a role far beyond the unfortunate sinner in Eden. But in calling him the “Ancient of Days,” Joseph leaves the biblicists choking on their morning tea and simultaneously lends some irony to the Adam-God doctrine.
“Ancient of Days” is an Aramaic expression (‘atiq yomin) used in Daniel’s vision (it could simply be translated “Ancient One”). The consensus view is that it refers to God. It draws on the imagery of the old Canaanite High God El [3] who was later syncretised with the Hebrew God. El is the father of the Gods — old “greybeard” — the allusion to whom may be a deliberately archaizing strategy by Daniel.
So, the Ancient of Days is God (per Daniel, according to most experts), Adam is the Ancient of Days (per Joseph Smith and D&C 27), but Adam is not God (per Joseph Smith and Orthodox Mormonism)!
If nothing else, this reminds me of Mormon Theology Rule #1: Joseph Smith borrowed heavily from the terminology of the King James Bible but spun new doctrines from it. This new wine in old bottles is what makes Mormon theology (and its relation to the Bible) such tricky business.
I should note, however, that at least one modern scholar has equated Adam with the Ancient of Days (Phillip B. Munoa, III, Four Powers in Heaven: The Interpretation of Daniel 7 in the Testament of Abraham), but one of the reviews I read was not kind (”The reviewer regrets the publication of scholarship of this quality”). As the Testament of Abraham is a favourite Mormon text, I would be happy to see further comment on Munoa’s idea. To wit: in the Testament of Abraham, a judgment scene is described with Adam the chief spectator and his son Abel the judge. According to Munoa, these two figures correspond with the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man in Daniel 7. Read the book, I guess.
We will save Adam=Michael for another day. I would also like to know (if I had the time to do the grunt work) if any of these ideas (Adam, Michael, Ancient of Days) existed in Joseph’s environment. Apologies for the unfinished research. Such is blogging.
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I realise that D&C 27 is accorded revelatory status and thus it is God who calls Adam the Ancient of Days. There’s not much I can say to that other than the fact that in Daniel 7 the same character looks an awful lot like God (and is labeled with “El†language). My only way out would be to say that Adam is the ancient of days, whereas God is the Ancient of Days. Or the biblicists are wrong and the Ancient of Days is Adam. Take your choice.
The picture is William Blake’s “Ancient of Days” (aka “Urizen”) and is seen on the cover of Blake Ostler’s Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes of God. The Ancient of Days also appears in Philip Pulman’s anti-religion children’s saga His Dark Materials (also an upcoming movie trilogy). In the last book, God is truly ancient, but not wise and mystical; he is a bumbling and decrepit old fool.
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1. Buerger’s Dialogue article is a must-read.
2. 1839. WOJS 8-9.
3. Marvin Pope, El in the Ugaritic Texts
Well done thou good and faithful Ronan. All you were missing is a little more on Spring Hill, MO.
Comment by Steve Evans — January 29, 2007 @ 10:03 am
I would wonder if an “apologetic” angle of dualism or symbolism has been fully explored?
Dual Meanings and “sensus plenior” (sp?) have been wildly succesful in faithful discourse of Isaiah, while Symbolism has had equal efficacy in analyzing the Creation Story.
Comment by Matt W. — January 29, 2007 @ 10:50 am
I agree that Joseph used biblical phrases to spin new doctrines that aren’t always consistent with the Bible itself. Not being a scholar, I can’t really comment on this particular situation.
Section 27 is interesting as it is actually two separate revelation (given months apart; i.e., vs. 1-4 & everything else). They are early revelations as you say (summer 1830), but as we have discussed esp. with relation to Elijah, we have repeated phrases given by God (and in the case of Elijah, the angles) where Joseph later in his life basically says the words aren’t correct. They were simply the words of the KJV. Perhaps there is some of that going on here?
Comment by J. Stapley — January 29, 2007 @ 10:56 am
…but I do love that painting.
Comment by J. Stapley — January 29, 2007 @ 10:57 am
What J. said. While I’ve only looked at the issue in a fleeting way, it would come as no surprise to me that a) what the Bible means, b) what Joseph means and c) what is current LDS doctrine are three different (and potentially unharmonizable) things.
Comment by Steve Evans — January 29, 2007 @ 11:08 am
The Ancient of Days can’t be God because he instructed Oliver Olney to rob Moses Smith’s store in the 1840s. (Smith laughed at him and jailed him for breaking and entering; Olney was a mentally ill visionary thrown out of the church in Nauvoo after he published a rambling and bizarre expose circa 1841).
The standard saw is that Adam was Adam-Kadmon, right, the “first man” hence something like the ancient of days. I wonder to what extent Ancient of Days came along for the ride when Smith appropriated the mighty archangel Michael from Dan/Jude/Rev for Adam’s identity.
I also think that Ancient of Days played into the deathbed blessing of Adam, which appears to have been Smith’s main visionary encounter with Adam-Michael-Ancient. THe Dan 7 text sounds a lot like Smith’s vision of Adam’s deathbed combined with judgment–remember Adam was meant to judge all of humanity and then hand them off the Jehovah/Elohim.
And I agree that while BY pushed the envelope, the Adam-God conflation was a natural extension of Smith’s own teachings on the nature of deity and the human family.
Also note that Dan 7:13 sets up (for early Mormons) a necessary distinction between Jesus/Jehovah and Adam/Ancient given their way of interpreting ben Adam. I would pursue the Michael and John’s Apocalypse parallels to the Daniel prophecy.
Comment by Sam MB — January 29, 2007 @ 11:19 am
Ronan, great post and good work.
Sam #6, also interesting material. I have to object to your last comment, however. The evidence I’ve seen suggests that the identification of Jesus with Jehovah was not especially clear or widespread during the 19th century and was not really established until Talmage’s writings were published in the 1910s. A classic reference on this, of course, is Boyd Kirkland’s article in this issue of Sunstone; our own Kevin Barney made the same point in a BCC comment last fall. So I think many or most early Mormons would have been surprised by your “Jesus/Jehovah.”
Comment by J. Nelson-Seawright — January 29, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
The only problem with the “AoD is not the biblical AoD” idea is that Joseph explicitly ties Adam with the AoD figure in Daniel. And in Daniel, read with my Bible Geek eyes, the AoD is God. At some point we need a Theory of Everything to easily describe Joseph Smith and the Bible. Until then, it will all remain a headache. [Or Brigham was right...]
Sam MB,
What is the deathbed vision?
Comment by Ronan — January 29, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
ronan,
i dont think its quite correct to state Adam is not God per Joseph Smith. A number of individuals certainly thought Joseph believed this (Eliza Snow, B. Young, etc.)
As to Adam not God per Orthodox Mormonism. I guess it depends on which orthodox mormonism you refer to. The orthodox mormonism that threatened Orson Pratt with discipline for denying the teaching and was considered church doctrine or the orthodox mormonism after we swept all of those ideas under the rug.
clearly the ancient of days equated with adam is a strong point used by those supporting an Adam=God belief. i would also argue many other ancient religions appeared to equate Adam with God. Nibley’s Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri seems to indicate this.
Comment by josh madson — January 29, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
Josh,
I’ll say this: Mormonism holds Adam to be a god. As for the rest…there’s a good reason Brigham stopped teaching it.
Comment by Ronan — January 29, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
“We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.”
Meaning that we don’t believe it to be error-free. Perhaps the language that hints at the Ancient of Days being God is a mistake that crept in. I could see some later scribe, once the knowledge that the Ancient of Days referred to Adam had been lost, assuming (and not unnaturally so) that it must refer to God and adding what he thought was the appropriate language.
Comment by Proud Daughter of Eve — January 29, 2007 @ 1:23 pm
PDoE, mistranscription is a crock! Has Aaron Brown taught us NOTHING??
Comment by Steve Evans — January 29, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
Definately interesting topic. I thought about this at the temple the other day. As well as the other post from last week or so. As of yet we have not recieved a real clarification on the issue.
Comment by Ben Shafer — January 29, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
Well to be fair, we have received some significant clarification regarding the whole Adam-God confusion of the 19th century.
Comment by J. Stapley — January 29, 2007 @ 1:42 pm
Is it possible that there are Quakers on the moon, but that Apollo 16’s cameras were not strong enough to find them as it passed over the far side?
Comment by Reznor — January 29, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
Ben,
Ambiguity is a good thing. Embrace it.
Comment by Ronan — January 29, 2007 @ 1:45 pm
Ronan,
I will now be known as Ambiguous Ben.
Thanks!
Comment by Ambiguous Ben — January 29, 2007 @ 2:05 pm
JNS, I’m aware of Boyd’s attribution of the Jehovah=Jesus to Talmage, and it’s absolutely clear that such was not the dogma of the church until Talmage, but Talmage was responding to a theme present before him. There is a reasonably clear vision of this complex interaction by 1845 at the latest, particularly as BY and others attempted to understand what JSJ had revealed regarding creation/divine councils (shortly thereafter think of BY’s tritheist Godhead of E-J-M). I had in mind this particular strand from the mid-1840s as the referent and admittedly did not make that clear. Thanks for clarifying.
R: The grand council at Adam-ondi-Ahman at the eschaton is actually something like a recapitulation of Smith’s first vision of Adam, which took place shortly before his death (three years) with his posterity all in attendance around him. That is such a classic expression of an antebellum deathbed, that it’s hard to see it understood in any other way.
Comment by Sam MB — January 29, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
Yes, while Boyd’s article is good, it is not so cut and dried (albeit the 1910’s with the FP Proclamation and Jesus the Christ were the last word). While perusing Kenney’s transcript of the First Presidency letterpress, I came across a 9/1/1899 letter to B. E. Rich (Souther States Mission President) on the fact that Jesus is Jehovah of the Old Testament, including scriptural support, especially from the Book of Mormon.
Comment by J. Stapley — January 29, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
was looking back through my notes, and the idea that Michael would receive all humanity is a reasonably well attested Christian one (P. Aries 1981, 100), so Adam-Ancient may have been part of the Michael package. if i had more time i’d track down a stray comment on Jehovah-Jesus independent of the E-J-M thread that i’m remembering from pre-1860.
R: I think of JSJ’s encounters with the OT/NT as similar in a way to his encounters with the Egyptian papyri (and if we believe Blake’s classic argument, the gold plates): in each case he encountered sacred artifacts which ranged from the clearly physical to the conceptual and linguistic and from them liberated secret meanings. He’s not bound by the methodical mastication of the scholar, he’s revealing hidden essences on encounters with artifacts.
Finally, the deathbed scene is encoded in DC 107:53ff. Nice parallelism, I think, of Adam’s deathbed being recapitulated at the earth’s deathbed.
Comment by Sam MB — January 29, 2007 @ 3:48 pm
Ronan,
I agree there is a good reason, well I wouldn’t say Brigham Young stopped teaching it, but at least Wilford Woodruff and his successors stopped teaching it.
The question in my mind is whether it stopped due to veracity or volatility.
B. Young did state that if there was one thing he regretted, it was teaching too much about the nature of God.
J. Stapley -
I wouldn’t agree that we have received clarification as to the “Adam-God confusion”. It seems to me that there has been a public message, not always as genuine or honest about the past as one might hope
Comment by josh madson — January 29, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
Josh, I agree that the way the Church approached the history of the Doctrine wasn’t particularly accurate in all cases. But to reject the 1916 FP Message on the Father and the Son or President Kimball’s 1976 General Conference address (calling it false doctrine) as clarification is simply ridiculous.
Comment by J. Stapley — January 29, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
If I recall correctly, Kirkland’s article argues that Talmage is the point when the Jesus/Jehovah doctrine became unambiguous, not that it was the point where it emerged. People like George Cannon (who also believed in Adam-God) were teaching it in the late 19th century. Abraham Cannon, George’s son, wrote of his father: “He believes that Jesus Christ is Jehovah, and that Adam is His Father and our God …. Jesus, in speaking of Himself as the very eternal Father speaks as one of the Godhead, etc.” [Abraham Cannon diary, June 23 1889, quoted in Kirkland's article]. At the same time, people like John Taylor were identifying Jehovah as the Father, and explicitly not the Son. So, to continue a theme, ambiguity.
Comment by Matt Bowman — January 29, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
Sam MB, Matt Bowman, and J. Stapley, I agree that there were elements in Mormonism before Talmage that suggested an equation of Jesus and Jehovah. I truly doubt that this identification was made by more than perhaps a handful of rank-and-file members during the period from about 1835 until the death of Brigham Young, though. In particular, Jesus Christ was probably not a member of Brigham Young’s Elohim-Jehovah-Michael set of Gods; Adam/Heavenly Father was Michael, and Jesus was Adam’s son — hence, a fourth God other than Elohim, Jehovah, or Michael. So the idea that people in Joseph Smith’s lifetime identified Jesus and Jehovah is problematic; Joseph Smith himself tended to use Jehovah, Elohim, and God the Father interchangeably. My objection was to Sam’s claim in his comment above that early Mormons in the 1840s would have seen Jehovah and Jesus as the same person. Mormons in the early 1830s did sometimes make this identification — but that was usually in the context of statements that Jesus was the Father and the only existing God. By the 1840s, such concepts were superannuated.
Comment by J. Nelson-Seawright — January 29, 2007 @ 4:46 pm
JNS, thanks for encouraging me to look more carefully at the sources. i’ll get back to you if i can track down the sources I vaguely remember. I agree Jesus=Jehovah was not the predominant thread in earliest Mormonism (except in the confusing trinitarian sense). I do wonder how the earliest Mormon dealt with the encounter between son of man and ancient of days in daniel. does anyone have contemporary exegesis on this point?
Comment by Sam MB — January 29, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
Thank you Ronan, what a great post. My pile of things to think about just keeps growing and growing…
Comment by Tracy M — January 29, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
J. Stapley -
I believe there is a difference between what is accepted often times as church “doctrine” at different times and what is truth.
As to the 1916 FP statement and Pres. Kimball’s, these statements smell a bit of pushing things under the rug to me. Joseph F. Smith apparently believed Adam-God in his own private journals just not publicly. And Spencer W. Kimball apparently clarified that he was referring only to apostates interpretations. The problem with Adam-God is that it appears to pit prophets against one another. We in turn choose to believe which ones teach things we find agreeable.
It appears to me, that under Wilford Woodruff the church adopted a policy in part related to the events of the Bunker trial to no longer teach Adam-God and later to publicly deny it. Perhaps that is wisdom. I do know that there is often a difference between what is taught to the general membership and what is believed by leaders in private.
The question I’m concerned with, however, is whether it is true. Does Pres. Hinckley’s statement, imho misleading at the least if not dishonest, as to man becoming God and that God was once a man clarify our beliefs in eternal progression?
Comment by josh madson — January 29, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
josh,
“Joseph F. Smith apparently believed Adam-God in his own private journals just not publicly”
Can you give me a source for this?
Comment by HP/JDC — January 29, 2007 @ 6:47 pm
Is it true…no; it is goofy. Yes, that means Bro. Brigham was wrong. That is okay. I guarantee that the modern prophets believe that Jesus is part of the Godhead. JFS changed his mind on a number of things. I’d like to see any support after he was in the FP.
Comment by J. Stapley — January 29, 2007 @ 7:24 pm
Josh Madson: “Does Pres. Hinckley’s statement, imho misleading at the least if not dishonest…”
Come now. We’re not going to get anywhere here if you’re labelling the current prophet of the church like that. To say that you don’t understand his statement, or that you have a hard time reconciling his statement with the public statements of prior prophets, would be far more accurate and less inflammatory.
Comment by Steve Evans — January 29, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
Yeah, I didn’t even get to that. Copy what Evans said.
Comment by J. Stapley — January 29, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
Having looked over my notes (and with Stapley’s quick reminding), the reference I was thinking of is the Kirtland-era revelation (Intimate Chronicle 518-9) on Priesthood in which Adam-Michael-AoD is specifically modeled on Dan 7:9ff, with Jesus coming for AoD to report to (rather than receive report from). Two figures present at the eschaton, one clearly Jesus, Adam had to be the other one. (Incidentally several early Mormons reasoned that AoD had to be Adam instead of God because “of days” implies an entity living in human time, which God did not.)
Josh, I think I understand where you’re coming from, but it feels extreme to accuse Hinckley of dishonesty in trying to deal with complex issues on a talk show.
Comment by Sam MB — January 29, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
J (#22),
What exactly are you suggesting the statement on the Father and the Son clarified? That there was a genuine disagreement about the status of Adam? I will buy that. I don’t sign up for A-G, but I’m not ready to sign up for believing the 1916 statement on all of its finer points either.
Comment by Jacob J — January 29, 2007 @ 11:16 pm
I’m definitely not scholar, but I note that figures often _share_ names in our theology. Hence, Jesus is “the very Eternal Father”, a name he shares with God the Father, for only slightly different reasons - and, in fact, He, Jesus, has many names, including “God”, and such as “Alpha and Omega”, which could in any particular context easily be made to refer to God the Father. When we say the “Holy Spirit”, we are sometimes refering to the ‘Holy Ghost’, sometimes to the ‘Light of Christ’ - the ‘Spirit of Christ’ is sometimes conflated with Christ Himself, and in at least one place He, Jesus, refers to Himself as the ‘Spirit of Truth’, which might more commonly be thought of as refering to the Holy Ghost.
Even we mortals are sometimes named little g gods, and we are said to share Christ’s name if we follow Him.
I think that these gents are all very similar beings. Christ says that to have seen Him, even in a mortal body, is to have seen the Father - yet we plainly know that they are not one and the same being. Seeing that they are so similar that they might be though of us One, it isn’t surprising that they share names.
Might not “Ancient of Days” be a name that applies to both Adam and to God the Father in different contexts? Isn’t it an apt descriptor of both?
~
Comment by Thomas Parkin — January 30, 2007 @ 9:11 am
In volume 3 of my Exploring Mormon Thought I address the Jehovah/Elohim issue. To make a very long story way too short, Yahweh is the name given to Jesus as not only an honorific title but also a term of Patron/Broker/Client identification. In the Hebrew tradition the one sent or messenger is considered identical to the sender or Patron for purposes of recognition and response. Christ is given the name Yahweh and acts as one in concert with Yahweh so that his acts are the same as the acts of Yahweh. Thus, he both bears the Name, bares the Name and that is in fact his name. A name is a way of identifying the attributes of the named in such cultures — and thus Christ takes on the attributes of the Father in being recognized as the one named with the name above all other names.
The Ancient of Days is a Baal figure who is both the Most High God and subject to the High God El in Ugaritic and Near Eastern thought. Christ takes on the role of the Son of Man/Ancient of Days both! Check out for instance the Ancient of Days tradition in Kaballah lore: http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/glossary/ancient.html The dominion and glory of the Ancient of Days is given to the Son of Man — and this connection is in mind also in references to the name of Yahweh given to Christ by the Father. So both the Father and the Son are Yahweh — the Father as originator and giver and the Son as receiver and creator/word of the Father.
Comment by Blake — January 30, 2007 @ 9:29 am
I think though Blake that one has to be very, very cautious when using Kabbalistic texts both because of their late date but also because of the Kabbalistic hermeneutic that tended to switch names based upon similarities (even numeric similarities).
Put an other way, while I’m not opposed to using Kabbalistic texts to establish general patterns, I’d be cautious in this regard.
Also, while it’s just confusing based upon the way you phrased it, clearly Christ isn’t in the Kabbalah. In the Kabbalah the ancient of days is Keter, or the highest level of god’s attributes.
While the Kabbalah does use these divine emanations as a mirror of what is on the earth, I’d say that the Kabbalistic use is much more in line with the ancient of days as the Father. Perhaps, as Kerry hinted, you can get at the Adam Kadmon issue. But it seems to me that still makes things problematic.
Comment by Clark — January 30, 2007 @ 10:07 am
Jacob, I agree that the 1916 over simplifies, but do you disagree that Adam has been clarified by Church authorities as not being in the Godhead?
Comment by J. Stapley — January 30, 2007 @ 10:51 am
Clark, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I pointed to the Kabbalah as just one way (or tradition) of looking at it. Sorry for the confusion.
Comment by Blake — January 30, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
josh madson #27: Does Pres. Hinckley’s statement, imho misleading at the least if not dishonest, as to man becoming God and that God was once a man clarify our beliefs in eternal progression?
Josh — see HERE for some background on that Hinckley quote. He misunderstood the question posed to him.
Comment by Mike Parker — January 30, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
For what it’s worth, I have yet another take on this Ancient of Days identification….I see Clark has hinted I have it, but here is the link.
http://www.backyardprofessor.com/the_backyard_professor/2007/01/metatron_michae.html#more
Best,
Kerry
Comment by Kerry Shirts — January 31, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
HP,
Joseph F. Smith clearly was aught the doctrine and appeared to believe it at one time. However, at the turn of the century he began to distance himself until finally in the first presidency message denied the teaching.
Some earlier quotes indicating Joseph F. Smith was taught the idea and apparently believed it at one time.
“Elohim, Yahovah and Michael were father, Son and grandson. They made this Earth and Michael became Adam. (Brigham Young, as recorded in the Joseph F. Smith Journal, 17 June 1871 entry; Church Archives)
In 1873, Joseph F Smith stated with respect to Adam-God that “the enunciation of that doctrine gave him great joy.”
(Salt Lake School of the Prophets Minute Book, June 9, 1873, Church Archives)
Comment by josh madson — February 1, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
I don’t know the reasons for Pres. Hinckley’s statement. Frankly, it may have something to do with casting pearls before swine, albeit a sort of elitism I don’t like. Or perhaps Hinckely does not believe it, or maybe he misunderstood the question as one person suggested.I just don’t understand his statement.
Steve Evans- yes, his statement is hard to reconcile. I did not intend to inflame anyone and have the highest respect for Pres. Hinckley and believe he is a good man and a prophet.
J. Stapley - I’m not sure how you can say its not true merely because you find it goofy. I personally think it makes alot of sense. And yes I would agree that Joseph F. Smith either changed his mind or the first presidency chose to let “mysteries” remain mysteries.
SAM MB- I agree. I have always felt that Christ is being presented to the AoD in Daniel and apparently is in a lower station than the AoD. Even while pulling away from A-G, Joseph F. Smith reiterated on multiple occasions that Adam is the AoD.
At the end of the day it seems there is ample sources for the idea that Adam is God as well as later statements that such is not the case. Is truth merely the latest statement by church leaders on the matter or is truth independent of their statements. Perhaps this is more suited for another topic, but I am always curious why some people like A-G while others pull away from it.
Comment by josh madson — February 1, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Why can’t we just call a spade a spade here?
This whole Adam/God issue is silly and all made up by a man who was a very good fairytale maker.
The Ancient of Days is a name for the God the Hebrews knew of as Yaweh.
Not Adam.
Ask any Hebrew, Look it up in an encyclopedia.
It’s amazing what we will believe just because somebody says so.
Angie
Comment by Angie Dean — February 23, 2007 @ 1:54 am
Who are we to decide that history has a purpose?I truely believe we as a human race spend to much time researching so called history (the past) in order to understand the future which doesn’t exist. Quote, ‘It is man that created yesterday and tomorrow. God created NOW!’
GODS ENERGY IS NOW! How we use that energy now will provide heaven on earth. Gods divine light is for love, compassion, and empathy for every soul, now. I beleive there is no separation between God for he is everything, everywhere.
Maybe spending our time to look within ourselves for ‘Self Realisation’ to attain ‘God Realisation’, instead of searching the history books for answers (spending time argueing and going to war over them) would bring Gods Will into the present, the now.
Just a thought but definitly my truth:-)
Comment by Esse — February 25, 2007 @ 11:09 pm
Josh’s statement or quote from BY regarding Adam or Michael being the grandson of Elohim or son of Jehovah just makes no sense whatsoever when contrasted with the teaching that only an exalted being with a physical body can create spirit children. This is one of my biggest problems with l.d.s. doctrine and policies…inconsistency. Like trying to nail jello to the wall.
Comment by Craig — February 26, 2007 @ 3:47 pm
GOD’S ENERGY IS NOW!!
Comment by Steve Evans — February 26, 2007 @ 5:02 pm
Craig, it works better when you eat jello with a spoon. occasionally with a fork.
Comment by Sam MB — February 26, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Sam, you just need more carrots in the jello.
Comment by KyleM — February 26, 2007 @ 6:35 pm