So, we all had to be born here, on Earth, in order to get bodies. These bodies are very important because all Gods are really Exalted Men and, evidently, you need a body to be Exalted.

1. Father - has a name, had a body, has an exalted body, now. That's why he's a God.

2. Son - has a name, had a body has an exalted body, now. That's why he's a God.

3. Holy Spirit - doesn't have a name, had no body (at least none of which we know), has no exalted body. That's why he's NOT a...oh wait...he IS a God. How'd he do that without a body?

Was there an exception? Will we receive another scripture, giving us the amazing details ("And it came to pass, that...")?

Back in my TBM days, I asked this question...a lot. The answer I usually got (after a prolonged sigh) was, "It's one of the Mysteries of Faith!" Really? The Mysteries of Faith? Doesn't that sound just a LITTLE Catholic? Then my mind would wander and I would think...he's a Bishop...THAT sounds Catholic, too. Sorry, I'm rambling...

Did anyone ever answer this question for you? Or was there some lesson on it that I missed?

I often wondered about the holy ghost, he seems to have drawn the short straw, or maybe he was tricked into the job. alternately, he may have volunteered because he has some serious voyeuristic issues. I think Mike Rowe should follow him around for a day on "Dirty Jobs".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2014 10:11AM by ladell.

I once heard that Joseph Smith was the Holy Ghost. One of those secret teachings he was spreading around. Weird...

The days of new scripture are long gone.

They used to be wild-eyed visionaries. Joseph Smith's probem
wasn't getting his followers to believe he had visions and
revelations, it was competition from THEIR revelations. He even
had to get a revelation telling his followers to only trust HIS
revelations.

Those days are long gone and the Church is now run by hard-nosed
businessmen. "Scripture" now consists of official
declarations. If you went to your bishop and said an angel
appeared to you and told you to do your home teaching he'd think
you were crazy. Angels don't appear to people in this Church
any more. Even Kimball's "revelation" on priesthood was a
feeling he got--not one word of "thus sayeth the Lord" to put
into the D&C. The "Lord" just "made it known."

To get ANYTHING approaching a "vision" they had to add Joseph
F. Smith's "vision of the redemption of the dead" which was
something he "saw" while dozing off after contemplating the
hereafter.

When I was a kid we used to laugh at the Catholics who no
longer believed in visions and appearing angels. Now the
Mormons have become like that themselves.

Actually, Catholics do believe in visions and appearing angels. There have always been people in the Catholic Church who had Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or perhaps the Angel Gabriel or Michael appearing to them. The Catholic Church has pronounced its approval on many such visions. Catholics no longer believe in public revelation that has to be accepted by the faithful, but it has a strong tradition of private revelation approved by the Catholic Church which the faithful have the option of accepting or rejecting.

The Mormons believe God is a progressing God so that it is possible to be a God while still progressing to receive a body. Jesus had progressed to become a God prior to receiving a body so apparently it isn't necessary to have a body to become a God. So the Holy Ghost is already God, but as he progresses further he will obtain a body just like the Father and the Son have. I think the original premise of this thread is simply incorrect because Mormons don't believe it is necessary to have a body to progress to Godhood although that is the normal way they think things happen.

"...Mormons don't believe it is necessary to have a body to progress to Godhood..."

I disagree. This teaching contradicts the idea that Jesus was a god before he had a body, but these contradictory teachings are both taught starting in primary. The church teaches that we had to come to earth to get a body so that we could progress...there was no way we could progress to be like god if we hadn't come...it wasn't just so that we could be tested. This was taught in the January Primary sharing time lessons this year.

You can disagree all you want, but Jesus was referred to as God before he gained a body. And Bruce R. McConkie wrote:

“He is the First born of the Father. By obedience and devotion to the truth he attained that pinnacle of intelligence which ranked him as a God, as the Lord Omnipotent, while yet in his pre-existent state.” (Mormon Doctrine, P. 129)

I was just stating that the Primary sharing time manual teaches that we had to come to earth to get a body...we couldn't progress to become like god without that body. This was taught in Primary this month.

This clearly contradicts the idea that Jesus was a god before having been born on earth, but these contradictory teachings are both taught today.

You're both right. Just shows how amorphous and self-contradicting most LDS doctrines really are.

Unlike the major religions, Mormonism is a for-profit fantasy religion that did not slowly evolve over time. It was created for the sole purpose of creating wealth for its creators. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is a omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent intelligence both corporeal and non-corporeal, without beginning or an end, existing both within and beyond all time and space.

Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were intelligent but uneducated men with megalomaniac traits. Mormon theology is the realisation of Joseph Smith's sex and power fantasies: an endless cycle of men becoming gods with access to endless celestial sex and billions of spirit children who would obey and worship them as people on their own planets. Brigham Young sought to achieve this in his own megalomaniac mini-empire in Utah within his lifetime.

Mormons are trapped by Joseph Smith and his fantasies. It's irrational and it always will be.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2014 09:31AM by anybody.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Unlike the major religions, Mormonism is a
> for-profit fantasy religion that did not slowly
> evolve over time. It was created for the sole
> purpose of creating wealth for its creators. In
> Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is a
> omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent
> intelligence both corporeal and non-corporeal,
> without beginning or an end, existing both within
> and beyond all time and space.

I suppose I should forgive you for not knowing but I will correct you all the same. Judaism considers god to be non corporeal, Islam considers the nature of god to be unknowable, and Christianity considers the nature of god to be mutable.

I'll bet that someone has done a comparison but while all three share a monotheistic mother, so to speak. They have distinct dogma about the nature of god.

Ray: It's a girl...
Egon: It's Gozer.
Winston: I thought Gozer was a man.
Egon: It can be whatever it wants to be...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfdiXBA7f6U

A god that can choose to not be all powerful isn't all powerful.

The true definition of infinite is not that it is immeasurably large it is it that it has no boundary. If god could choose to bind itself it wouldn't be infinite.

If god is the origin of all things and is an uncaused entity than nothing can be without it being of god. Is god then responsible for the evil that it so despises? And if this is the case is god not all good?

If god can choose to become corporeal and then die than is god no longer immortal, or was the immortality part of the nature of god so much so that god didn't die? And if god cannot die than who atoned for mankind's sins?


The bottom line is that god cannot choose to be what ever god chooses to be. Like Joseph Smith (kind of) said, if god does something that violates the nature of god than god isn't god.

I don't believe in the supernatural but that's the problem you run into when trying to apply rationality to something that is irrational. An omnipotent being can do ANYTHING...kill itself, eat itself, be everywhere and see everything.

jacob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> anybody Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Unlike the major religions, Mormonism is a
> > for-profit fantasy religion that did not slowly
> > evolve over time. It was created for the sole
> > purpose of creating wealth for its creators. In
> > Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is a
> > omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent
> > intelligence both corporeal and non-corporeal,
> > without beginning or an end, existing both
> within
> > and beyond all time and space.
>
> I suppose I should forgive you for not knowing but
> I will correct you all the same. Judaism considers
> god to be non corporeal, Islam considers the
> nature of god to be unknowable, and Christianity
> considers the nature of god to be mutable.
>
mu·ta·ble [myoo-tuh-buhl] Show IPA
adjective
1.
liable or subject to change or alteration.
2.
given to changing; constantly changing; fickle or inconstant: the mutable ways of fortune.

Christianity considers God immutable.

IMMUTABILITY OF GOD

Absolute changelessness. That is mutable which goes from one condition to another. In consequence of its finite nature, every creature is mutable. God is unchangeable because he is infinite. Mutability implies potentiality, composition, and imperfection, and is therefore not reconcilable with God as pure actuality, the absolutely simple and infinitely perfect Being. When God acts outside of himself, as in the creation of the world, he does not produce a new effect in himself, but enters on a new realization of the eternal decision of his divine will. The decree of creation is as eternal and immutable as the Divine Essence with which it is really identical; only its effect, the created world, is temporal and changeable. (Etym. Latin immutabilis, unchangeable; changeless.)

Sure, but at what point must god become Jesus so that god can die and become god again?

jacob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sure, but at what point must god become Jesus so
> that god can die and become god again?

It never happens again.

In Christianity Jesus is fully human and fully divine.

And thereby not infinite.

How could you be a god WITH a body? Early Christians landed where they did for a reason, a corporeal god is inherently limited.

You can't. God needed body in order to get Mary pregnant. And Eve too (after all, He is Adam). Oh, and Heavenly Mother and his other heavenly wives needed to have spirit children-- you can't do that without a body. Ewww, gross - that means he 'did' his own children (Mary and Eve). Sicko.

Or, think of this: How could I be a god WITH a body? One might well ask.

Don't forget that Jesus was a god before getting his skin.

Officially, NuSkin.

Exactly. Michael/Adam was a god before getting a body as well, right? I'm guessing that's why BY taught that Adam was our god...he recognized that it made no sense that any ol' spirit could help create the world in the pre-existence. He was trying to reconcile all the stupid doctrine that had been thrown out there.

that Joseph Smith or someone helping him invent the religion thought was important to keep. And the body thing is something that differentiates it from traditional Christian religions. Our bodies are so good looking and work so well and everything ... who wouldn't want one, right?

Being a narcissist, Smith probably loved his body and assumed everyone else loved theirs, too. Or maybe he just assumed they loved his body. I doubt he cared or gave much consideration to other people's thoughts about anything but Joseph Smith.

OP: Sounds like a great question for "Chat with the missionaries" at Mormon.org! That should be good entertainment.

Holy Ghost is not a god but a member of the god head.
Holy Ghost is a calling.
JS was the holy ghost until he was born. Then someon else became the holy ghost.
at least that is what I have heard.

if God has a body just like us, it means under that shower curtain robe of his he has an asshole. What is its celestial purpose? He doesn't take craps, obviously, so what is it for? Do revelations spew forth?

What are his legs for?

He floats in the air, he doesn't need to walk or run. Legs on humans are the size they are because we are limited by gravity, and need a certain musculature to keep us up in a terrestrial environment. But on a celestial see of glass, legs would be pretty useless.

Why does god have eyes?

He sees everything in the universe simultaneously, so obviously he has no need of two optical devices that show a limited range.

Why does god have fingers?

I guess they come in handy for pointing at his beloved son, but for the purpose of creating worlds, they really aren't up to the task. Hindus solved this problem by giving gods hundreds of arms

If you contemplate all of gods body parts and passions, it becomes obvious that the instruments that allow us to live in a limited way in our terrestrial environment, that are highly adapted and limited to the human condition, would not exist on a godly being.

Christians solved this problem by getting rid of god's body.

I was taught the non-doctrine, "deep doctrine" theory (and I don't know the source of it off the top of my head) that the Holy Ghost would be the last to be born right before The End... In that way he would get his body. We wouldn't need the "Holy Ghost" at that point because it would be a sign that The Millennium had started and God would come down and Christ would be around and there wouldn't be any more evil, etc.

What was always weird to me was the thought that Christ, according to Mormon Doctrine isn't the "God" of this earth, he's this earth's savior, but Heavenly Father is "God" for us... Further, that since Christ is a child of God, just like the rest of us, that he would go on to create worlds of his own, and so would the Holy Ghost.

Not in the original, top question but later on in this thread a couple of people mention that Joseph Smith was supposed to be the Holy Ghost until he came to earth then someone else became the Holy Ghost? Wow! I'm STILL amazed how much crazy stuff about the church I've never heard before and I was BIC and now in my 50's!

I really appreciate and am indebted to all of the people who contribute on this board! There is so much wealth and knowledge out there from so many of you! Fascinating conversations and topics found here and I continue to learn so much! Thanks to all of you!

In Mormonism, Christ created worlds without number prior to coming to this earth and receiving a body. He was a God prior to coming to the earth. Another contradiction.

Divine investiture of authority.

Which is your question?

1) How could you be God without a body?

In the Bible humans are created out of the dust and can become sons of god by adoption.

2) How could God be God without a body?

In the Bible and in 1830 book of Mormon - God was a Spirit and was one God.

Joseph was the one who changed the nature of a supreme being.
1830 book of Mormon is available online databases.
I like archive dot org, if you know someone you want to share the changes with.