"You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me."

This is Isaiah 43:10 in the bible.

What's their explanation for the very obvious contradiction between this verse and the whole 'as we are god once was' and 'we will become gods' stuff?

I'm pretty sure they claim they will be 'God-like',not Gods.

See the chapter headings for D&C 132:

15–20, Celestial marriage and a continuation of the family unit enable men to become gods

Also, search LDS.org for "deification." They do in fact teach that we will become gods in the CK, even if old what's-his-name (Hinckley?) didn't know it.

The other problem that this verse presents is that it's contradictory to the fact that mormon doctrine says that jehovah is Jesus, not god the father. And in the verse, it says "declares the LORD", which is actually written as "Jehovah" in the original transcripts (mormons know this). Anyway, no god before Jesus? Supposedly according to mormon doctrine, god was around first and had one of his spiritual wives give birth to this Jehovah.

Big Gods and little gods is their take. There is Big HF and then His son little god adam who create this earth.

They contextualize it and then re-contextualize it when the first contextualization runs into problems.

They get around this verse like they get around every other thing that doesn't support their fictional world:

1. It's not important to your salvation
2. We'll know the answer in the next life
3. The bible isn't translated correctly
4. Do you want me to go on? They have endless dodges to this and any other fact/issue/problem with their cult beliefs.

Wow, I thought I had found the golden verse that would bring the church down...I guess not

There are no Gotchas when it comes to Teflon. The facts just slide right off.

The good news is their non-stick surface has become repeatedly scratched and nicked by rough stuff like the Internet, crappy apologetics, and the Jesus Mall. Stuff is sticking and people are leaving.

The 'golden verse' is in Isaiah still . It brings down the Book of Mormon , and conversely it brings down the church . But it's found in 14:12 .

"......as long as it is translated correctly"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2013 04:36PM by almost.

trouble is, it's not the translation that's so much the problem here. It's the original beared bozos pretending they were prophets spewing out crap out of their asses and calling it doctrine and the "word of god".

Critical thinking has no place in Mormonism.

Thinking back at when I was Mormon, I would have rationalized it by the following:

1) The KJV Bible is not 100% reliable as it has many errors in it and has been translated and changed many times by many different writers and scribes over thousands of years. Who knows what this verse originally said 2500 years ago?

2) There are many other verses in the Bible which appear to contradict this passage and appear to support the idea that there many be multiple gods, that we existed before, and that we may be "gods" ourselves. (You can look into Mormon apologetics for these verses)

3) The whole God was once a man and we can become gods is a DEEP DOCTRINE not meant for all man at all times throughout history. When this Bible verse was written it was meant for a certain audience that wasn't "ready" for the deeper doctrine. At the time God had a problem with people worshipping different, false gods, so he was trying to tell people that there were NO OTHER gods that they need to be concerned with. As the LDS scripture states "line upon line precept upon precept." Thank God that we have living prophets today to give us this added light upon the subject. Its kind of like the doctrine completely changing when the New Testament times rolled around. Old testament doctrine and practices were completely different from what was taught and practiced in the New Testament. There was no such concept of man-god coming down to live and teach love and accepting his atonement. Jesus did away with all the animal sacrifices and Mosaic laws and so forth. The god of the old testament was a very strict, scary god. Jesus came and was a big hippie telling people to ignore all the stuff that was done before. Old Testament people would NOT recognize the religion or god of the New Testament.

3) When the Bible talks about only one god and that god was always god, this is really only dealing with OUR known world/universe/reality. God always existed in THIS universe, was always the god to THIS universe and was ALWAYS the only god to worship in THIS universe. Each "god" is the "only god" in their own respective world/universe/reality. Its not like God's father or siblings are running around trying to interfere in this world trying to get us to worship them.

4) The term "god" can hold different meanings and usages. It can mean a person's Lord. It can mean an exulted and eternal being which we will become. When the god of the Bible speaks about "no other gods before him" he is only speaking in the terms of who the people are to worship. The gods the Israelites were incorrectly worshipping were man made gods that weren't real. The only real god was Jehovah. He was the only god with which this earth was to be concerned with.

(please read the following as if being read by a condescending Bishop)

First, you're talking about the Bible, everyone knows that their are all kinds of problems with the Bible and if you look to the BoM or the PoGP, which was translated by direct inspiration, rather than all those messy error prone "human" translations.

Second, he's referring to the God, or preferably, "Heavenly Father", of our world. The only "God" we should have before us, the only one that matters. He's just saying that he's the only "God" we need to worry about. Any other personage who has attained the same level of salvation doesn't matter to "us" we aren't their children and we don't need to worry about their rules, only our Heavenly Father.

You need to have a better understanding of Biblical english, sometimes things don't quite mean what you think.

See doesn't it make perfect sense? Now, come and be baptised like a good little heathen.

The ones I've talked to simply add "with whom we have to do.." (something like that) - and that's good enough for them!

marriedtoexmo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my
> servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know
> and believe me and understand that I am he. Before
> me no god was formed, nor will there be one after
> me."
>
> This is Isaiah 43:10 in the bible.
>
> What's their explanation for the very obvious
> contradiction between this verse and the whole 'as
> we are god once was' and 'we will become gods'
> stuff?

Isaiah was speaking as a man, not as prophet. It was just his opinion, besides I don't know that we teach that



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2013 08:08PM by sparkyguru.

In the past, I always explained this using Moses 1:35: "But only an account of this earth and the inhabitants thereof, give I
unto you...". Mental gymnastics and some assembly required.

Anyone else have more thoughts on this? (other than the fact the whole PoGP can't be taken very seriously..)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/2013 01:15AM by msp.

Isaiah is hard to understand, especially without pondering, prayer, and the holy ghost.

If it doesn't make sense then oh well "God will tell us later" I'll just turn off my brain until I die.

The Bible is twoo as far as it is translated correctly, but they don't use the Smith translations despite Joseph being such an aaaasome translator guy. They also won't use the most correct versions of the Bible, instead using the KJV which has been proven to be incorrectly translated.

Here is the bigger problem in my eyes.

What happened to Prince Ali's people in Aladdin?

"Genii, I wish for you to make me a prince!" These are the words of Aladdin, when he wants to win the hand of the lovely Princess Jasmine. The Genii agrees, and makes Aladdin a menagerie, fills up his pockets with money, and gives him tons of servants. We don't see any of them again after his introductory parade. Later in the movie, the evil Jafar gets powers, reveals Aladdin to be poor, and that's that. What happened to all those people?

When you are dealing with a work of fiction you are going to have problems with internal consistency.

Using another source of fiction (bible) to prove or disprove a second work of fiction (mormon doctrine) is mental masturbation. It might feel good and it might make you sound smart, but it isn't really accomplishing a whole lot. No offense intended.

" For I am the Lord,* I change not." Malachi 3.6a

*YHWH, "Yahweh," often rendered in English as "Jehovah."