Jesus came and died for our sins, but if we were not on our way to outer darkness or "hell" anyway, then what did the death of Christ do for us? What role did the crucifixion play in our final destination after this earth?

Mormon doctrine effectively removes Jesus from the equation. Instead of simply accepting Jesus as your saviour and being "saved" (as they teach in most Christian churches), now you have to go thru the temple in order to live with Jesus again.

This is one of the many reasons Christian churches dont consider mormons to be Christian.

brett Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mormon doctrine effectively removes Jesus from the
> equation. Instead of simply accepting Jesus as
> your saviour and being "saved" (as they teach in
> most Christian churches), now you have to go thru
> the temple in order to live with Jesus again.
>
> This is one of the many reasons Christian churches
> dont consider mormons to be Christian.


Yes, but that is not actually LDS doctrine. They still teach all are saved by just accepting (the telestial glory). But not all are given the highest reward. The reason other xtian churches don't accept mo's is because they are confused by the convulted doctrine. Once you understand it, you realize the Mo doctrine includes xtian salvation, and adds a lot of complexity on top. See my post below.

He's the son of God, yes, but Jesus only performs a perfunctory role. He died to open the door so that God's children could claw their way back to Him. It wasn't to provide actual salvation in and of itself. That is done by people themselves through works after all they can do. The main duty of Jesus is to play messenger boy between Elohim and Michael and then to "return and report."

But what did his death on the cross mean? Did it mean anything? What did it do? What result came of it? Before he died, where were we going, or what was our destination to be?

Okay. So he died so we could get a chance to claw our way back to God. Otherwise we would just be hanging out who knows where.

I always found the sacrificial lamb and spreading of blood on altars to get forgiveness of sin a difficult concept to digest. Why would death please God? I don't know the answer.

and spend like a year repenting and being gossiped about for not taking the sacrament and paying your tithing and stuff. Mostly paying your tithing.

Makes one wonder about the veracity of the all powerful god’s plan in the first place.

It is an immoral act to take upon oneself the sins of others. Shall I take on all the sins for the folks locked up in the local prison if they believe on me and repent. Should I then let them go free? Nope. Cause that would be insane! Christ’s story is not different than this.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2010 11:44AM by AmIDarkNow?.

I have come to realize that all this makes a lot more sense if we keep in mind one crucial fact: Jesus was not Christ!

Jesus was a (probably) historical person who merely wanted to reform Judaism. I don't think he had any idea about "dying for sins" or anything like that. He just wanted people to be good Jews and little else.

The Christ was and invention - likely by Paul - who was fabricated to promote a particular theology. Jesus knew nothing of the Christ character.

Bottom line, the Jesus of history was hardly at all like the Christ of mythology.

When I grew up TBM in SLC in the 50s, I had no idea what that was. I'm still pretty foggy about it.

Most of the finer points of Christian theology were simply never brought up. Good Friday? I still can't figure out why the stock market closes randomly on some Friday afternoon every spring.

I thought Jesus' main function was to relay our prayers to his Dad, that's why we prayed in his name. And he was a really loving looking white guy.

I'm so glad, Heresy, to hear you didn't know either. I thought I was the only one. I asked my husband but he just said my question was stupid and to read the Gospel Principles.

A couple of examples of "grace":
1.Grace is God's unmerited favor. That is, grace is God doing good for us that we do not deserve. In the Bible, grace and mercy are like two heads of the same coin. Mercy is God withholding judgment or evil that I deserve; grace is God giving me blessing or good that I do not deserve. Because of God's mercy, I do not receive the judgment of God against my sins; because of God's grace, I receive eternal life and a promise of heaven though I do not deserve them. Both mercy and grace come to me though the Lord Jesus Christ.
2.Grace can also be defined as God's sufficiency or God's fullness in the life of the believer. God told Paul, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

See All...). That is, the grace of God in Paul enabled him and empowered him in his weakness. Another verse states, "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (2 Corinthians 9:8And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:

See All...). God's grace working in us supplies the sufficiency whereby we may abound to every good work. I like to call grace "God's enoughness." By this I mean that God is enough for us no matter what the situation we face.

I think most LDS believe that they really do know Christ more so than any other christian church on earth. They'll stand up in testimony meeting and talk about how grateful they are for Christ - but then they'll immediately drop it and go on and blather about the church.

I really believe that most mormons don't have the faintest idea who Christ is. They certainly don't talk much about Him. They talk about their church. Their callings. Their prophets and apostles. Their history. But Christ? This always bothered me even as a TBM. Sundays you are more likely to hear more about Moroni or Mormon or John Taylor or King Benjamin or Gordon B Hinkley than you would hear any talk about the actual life and ministry of Jesus Christ as presented in the New Testament.

Mormonism reminds me so much of a scripture in Isaiah that they themselves site so often: "They grow near to me with their lips but their hearts are far removed...". Even the temple isn't really about Christ. Its all about committing oneself to the organization of the Church.

He fulfilled the law making it possible to return to the Father.

In the end however, his willingness to submit to the father was just setting a good example for us to follow.

Does that include the original prophets like Abraham and Moses who were born before Christ? It probably covered them too. Maybe no space and time, and fulfillment of the law fullfilled the law of the past too in one fell swoop. If one reads only the words of Jesus, he was all about love and acceptance, and nothing about church.

Suckafoo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Does that include the original prophets like
> Abraham and Moses who were born before Christ? It
> probably covered them too. Maybe no space and
> time, and fulfillment of the law fullfilled the
> law of the past too in one fell swoop. If one
> reads only the words of Jesus, he was all about
> love and acceptance, and nothing about church.


As the BoM calls it, it is the infinite and eternal sacrifice. It covers all time, all people. It goes backward in time, and forward in time. That's the incredible miracle--time-traveling telepathy. :-)

Sounds like several of you didn't pay attention to sunday school or read Jesus The Christ. The mythology is pretty standard in christianity, except the Mo twist is the extra heavens you get through works.

You must be perfect to get into any of the 3 degrees of heaven, even the least. But no one is without sin. All also die. Jesus resurrected so that all, even the most vile sons of perdition, will live in body again. Also, Jesus pays for the sins of all except those sons of perdition that purposely rebel and reject him knowingly (don't bow the knee to him whether in life or in spirit before the final judgment). They get to suffer, in the new body, forever without god in the party that is eternal darkness.

The mormon part: The rest of the resurrected souls, the saved, also have the chance to improve the heaven they go to by acting well here (and in spirit prison). If you do nothing but just shrug and accept that jesus suffered for you, you get the telestial, even as a murdering adultering pagan. If you led a good life and reject the church of the lamb (i.e., LDSinc) you get the terrestial (which is essentially heaven as defined by most christianity--to live in the kingdom Jesus presides over). If you accept the church you get celestial (and the top of that is reserved for those that do all the things in the temple and the profits ask).

This is all contingent on a few things: Adam partook of the forbidden fruit and cause the fall of man into sin, agency, satan tempts us, we commit sins defined by the church doctrine, and jesus actually did some sort of hocus poke-us miracle in the garden by bleeding out of his eyes and everywhere. The cross is just required because he had to die to resurrect.

So several miracles are required: Adam 6000 years ago being the first man (contrary to all evidence), absolute truth that defines sin (only comes if there's the miracle of god existing from somewhere no one knows), the miracle that jesus telepathically and empathically takes on our guilt and sin and suffering, and jesus can come back from dying. There are minor miracles that come with these, like talking snakes that cause adam to fall, magical spears that gush water out of christ, and so forth.

Yep, what a logical system it is. :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2010 12:15PM by Jesus Smith.

Damn, I thought my mother was a food nazi.

Haha! I tried reading Jesus the Christ but fell asleep before I could get past Chapter 2! Thank you for the answer though. It adds some good insight, but never really answers where we would have gone had he not resurrected. I'm supposing we would have just stayed in the ground.

Suckafoo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... never really answers where we would
> have gone had he not resurrected.

Stayed in paradise or in spirit prison/hell, depending on if you were a total sinner or just a dumb one. A spirit forever could never become elohim Jr.

They say that if you could see it you would kill yourself to get there, but they also say that that's where all the liars, murderers, adulterers and people who drink tea go. (Okay, maybe not the last part.) It's salvation, but it's kind of a backhanded salvation. You won't be with your eternal family. Your parents and children will weep for your soul, etc. It still sounds like hell to me.

That is the literal definition of hell to many people.

If you want a shot at dwelling in the presence of God, you'd better be a married Mormon and get to the CK.

I'd like to hear missionaries explain that to investigators.

Heresy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That is the literal definition of hell to many
> people.
>

The telestial kingdom, while a glory, is without jeebus (though with the reign of the holy ghost (who we're not sure will ever resurrect or ??). And this lowest telestial glory is reserved (per D&C 76) for adulterers, murderers, liars, etc. The terrestial glory is where Jeez reigns, and it is defined a lot like the typical xtian heaven getaway: peaceful in the bosom of christ without toil or trouble. Clydesdale mormons who like to toil go to the kingdom of elohim, where they take on building huge starscraper planets and populate them with their polygamous resurrected wives.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2010 12:39PM by Jesus Smith.

Well, your parents and children can't weep for your soul because there won't be any sadness there. Instead, they will likely forget you even existed at all as you roam around without a purpose or with nothing to do or eat.

It was always very hard for me to understand any of the reasoning for the need for someone to die and pay for all the sins of humanity. Never made any real sense to me. Common logic and reasoning would seem to indicate that each person on this earth is responsible for his own life and the good and bad that they do.

If per chance, there is an afterlife, and what we have done upon the earth during our lives makes a difference to what happens to us after we die then why is it okay for someone else to take on themselves the responsibility for our "sins" or bad behavior and give us a free ticket to a better after life if all we do is have to say that we believe in this person. How does that make sense and seem fair at all?

And how can you be sure you've done enough. Was there one more thing you should have done that was the thing that would have tipped the scale in your favor? Or did you get smacked by that car one day too soon.

I'm a never-mo with a mormon gf. She's only been active for a couple of years, and seems to just be on auto-pilot going to church to appease family, but she is not very well versed in much of the historical and symbolic aspects of the church's history, and almost completely ignorant of "regular" christianity.

Is this ignorance common in the church? Is it not taught?

I grew up being an occasional church goer (protestant congregationalistism) and I know way way more than she does about christianity.

What role does he play?

Ron

Set us free from the law of sin and death by becoming the ultimate sacrifice. Showed us it is more important to love God and our neighbor than it is to care about what we eat or what we drink or what we put on. Give us an example of what it means to love the Jew if we are a Samaritan or have mercy toward strangers, and not esteem others as less important based on stature in life. That all are of equal value to God. Little of that was the case back the Jesus time. They cared more about whether you washed your hands or did something extra on the Sabbath, or ate something offered to idols. All the outward show of discipline means nothing to God. He cares that we love God and our neighbor above all else regardless of the written law and traditions.