The Rocket

These two thoughts stood out to me because of a long text conversation Corey has been having with a friend who is a priest in another faith and has been sending lots of accusations and assertions about our religion to Corey. From the book "Embraced by the Light" by Betty J. Eadie during a near death experience in Nov 1973 where she talked with the Savior, from pages 45-46:

"I wanted to know why there were so many churches in the world. Why didn't God give us only one church, one pure religion? The answer came to me with the purest of understanding. Each of us, I was told, is at a different level of spiritual development and understanding. Each person is therefore prepared for a different level of spiritual knowledge. All religions upon the earth are necessary because there are people who need what they teach. People in one religion may not have a complete understanding of the Lord's gospel and never will have while in that religion. But that religion is used as a stepping stone to further knowledge. Each church fulfills spiritual needs that perhaps others cannot fill. Noe one church can fulfill everybody's needs at every level. As an individual raises his level of understanding about God and his own eternal progress, he might feel discontented with the teachings of his present church and seek a different philosophy or religion to fill that void. When this occurs he has reached another level of understanding and will long for further truth and knowledge, and for another opportunity to grow. And at every step of the way, these new opportunities to learn will be give. 

"Having received this knowledge, I knew that we have no right to criticize any church or religion in any way. They are all precious and important in his sight. Very special people with important missions have been placed in all countries, in all religions, in every station of life, that they might touch others. There is a fullness of the gospel, but most people will not attain it here. In order to grasp this truth, we need to listen to the Spirit and let go of our egos."

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Another thought on different churches and religions - this one from the book "I Stand All Amazed" by Elane Durham sharing her Oct 1976 near death experience, page 66-67 (she passed away in May 2021): 

"I was told by the angel that all these churches have a portion of the truth. ... He was referring specifically to the various churches that had fragmented away from Christ's perfected church, but who nevertheless continue to seek diligently for a greater oneness with God. These have a portion of the truth. But only the church as it was created in heaven has all of it.

"To help me better understand this the angel lifted his hand and pointed overhead. As I looked upward I saw all manner or means of transportation crossing the dark and sky, moving from left to right. These means ranged from individuals walking, to horses with carriages, stagecoaches, cars, boats, ships, and all sorts of aircraft, including a rocket. While some of these went at faster speeds, with the rock at the fastest of them all, others went slower, with no two of them going at the same rate. I also noted that while they were going in the same direction, almost all of them were stopping or slowing to crawl along the way. Some went hardly any distance at all, others went farther, a few went a great distance, but only the rocket went all the way from one horizon to the other.  

"The angel explain to me that just as in modes of travel, so we who go to various churches that contain portions of God‘s truth travel the spiritual pathway leading to our ultimate heavenly home. Some of us go rapidly, others slowly; some go great distance, others not so far; and both our speed and our distance are determined by the amount of God‘s truth taught by the church which we choose to join. The more of God's truth in the church we unite ourselves with, and the more we personally adhere to that truth, the faster and the farther we will go. And only Christ’s perfect church--represented by the rock I had seen--could take us all the way to the highest heavenly realm in the shortest amount of time. 

"According to the angel, who was confirming what Christ explain to me earlier, we will each choose our church according to the degree of spiritual comfort we feel in it with it, and will grow from there through spiritual lightening as fast as we desire, and are willing, to receive it."

Genesis 3-4, Moses 4-5 Notes for lesson

Have you ever walked into a play or a movie late? If you miss the beginning of a story sometimes the middle and ending can seem really really confusing. Without the first part of the story you might not know who the villains are, who the heroes are, or what any of them are fighting for. The first part of a story usually sets up the stakes - the conflict - that define the rest of the story.

The book of Genesis tells the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, but the account of the fall found in Genesis essentially leaves out the first part of the story. In the book of Moses which is the restored version of Genesis there is an important prologue to the story of the fall found in Moses chapter 4 verses one through 11, and this helps us understand the good guys and the bad guys. Just after setting us up for the story the fall, Moses for employs a flashback that takes us back to the root of the conflict that plays out in the garden of Eden. 

We learn to even before Adam and Eve or any of us came to earth there was a great council in heaven. The Father proposed plan. Sometimes when we imagine this scene, we make it seem like there was some kind of election and that Jesus just got more votes than Lucifer so he was chosen as the savior. Instead Moses tells us that Jesus was the Father‘s beloved and chosen from the beginning. Heavenly father didn’t ask for volunteers. He had already chosen Jesus, the only person qualified to act as the savior and is the key figure in the plan. 

When Satan said here am I send me he was acting against the wall the father because the father had already chosen Jesus as the savior. 

we do get a little bit of Satan sales pitch in these verses however he apparently said that if he was sent instead of Jesus that not one soul would be lost. The passage also says the Lucifer became Satan and that he’s sad to destroy the agency of men. We sometimes summarize this by saying that Satan‘s plan was the force everyone to be righteous but there are problems with oversimplifying his approach in this way. 

First there’s no mention of Satan having a plan in any of the scripture passages to talk about the premoral War in Heaven. Satan didn't have a plan. Just empty promises that he couldn’t even fulfill. 

Second forced righteousness is a philosophical impossibility. If you have to force someone to commit a righteous act it just isn’t a righteous act. Righteousness is found when we willingly follow God‘s commands. No one can force a person to be righteous because removing our will from the question removes righteousness as well. 

So how could same destroyer Agency? There are several things required for Agency to exist. 

First for agency to exist they have to be laws that allow us to know good from evil. 

Satan can’t destroy the laws but if he ensure that we never knew about them it would seriously limit our power to choose.

We all also have to know about those laws in order to follow them to grow in progress in this life. 

If Satan kept us in ignorance about the laws, it would limit our agency. There must also be opposites or opposition in all things. There have to be good and bad choices for Agency to exist. Again Satan can’t take away opposite but he can deceive us into thinking there is no right and wrong and that whatever person feels is right is right.

If we don’t believe in objective good and evil, then our choices don’t have any power to bring about good or evil things in our agency is limited again. 

Finally we have power to choose. God empowered Adam and Eve when he explained the laws they have a follow in the garden of Eden. He also told them they were free to choose. All along the way God was giving them knowledge to allow them greater Agency, while Satan was covering up and blurring the truth in an attempt to deprive them of their agency. 

This culture culminated in Satan‘s approach the Eve in the garden. He told a half truth telling her that she would know good from evil like God but lied by saying that she wouldn’t taste of death when she took the fruit.

God wants us to have greater Agency. he’s constantly seeking to give us light and knowledge, increasing our understanding of the laws of the universe, it’s light and darkness, AND helping us on our way to immortality and eternal life. 

Satan wants to limit our agency. The only real tool he hast to do this is the blur our perception of the way things really are. They both want us to become like them but God wants us to become beings of light and knowledge while Satan wants us to become like him: a creature of darkness, misery and ignorance

Mastering the Mind

I really liked this podcast today - "All In" podcast with Craig Manning. Transcript here. I'll try to come back later to note out my favorite parts

Trusting When Things Look Scary

"There are things, say in learning to swim or climb, which look dangerous and aren’t. Your instructor tells you it’s safe, you have good reason from past experience to trust him, perhaps you can even see for yourself by your own reason that it is safe. But the crucial question is will you be able to go on believing this when you actually see the cliff edge below you, or actually feel yourself unsupported in the water. You will have no rational grounds for disbelieving; it is your senses and your imagination that are going to attack belief. Here, as in the New Testament, the conflict is not between faith and sight. We can face things that we know to be dangerous, if they don’t look or sound too dangerous, our real trouble is often with things we know to be safe but which look dreadful. Our faith in Christ wavers not so much when real arguments come against it as when it looks improbable, when the whole world takes on that desolate look, which really tells us much more about the state of our passions and even our digestion, than about reality.

When we exhort people to faith as a virtue to the settled intention of continuing to believe certain things, we are not exhorting them to fight against reason. The intention of continuing to believe is required because, though reason is divine, human reasoners are not. When once passion takes part in the game, the human reason, unassisted by grace, has about as much chance of retaining its hold on truths already gained as a snowflake has of retaining its consistency in the mouth of a blast furnace.

The sort of arguments against Christianity which our reason can be persuaded to accept at the moment of yielding to temptation are often preposterous, reason may win truths, without faith she will retain them just so long as Satan pleases. There is nothing we cannot be made to believe or disbelieve. If we wish to be rational, not now and then but constantly, we must pray for the gift of faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason, but in the teeth of lust and terror, and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth.

And the answer to that prayer will perhaps surprise us when it comes, for I am not sure afterall whether one of the causes of our weak faith is not a secret wish that our faith should not be very strong. Is there some reservation in our minds, some fear of what it might be like if our religion became quite real? I hope not, God help us all and forgive us.”

C.S. Lewis, Religion: Reality or Substitute?

The Rising Glory of the Son

From a facebook post I saw today and liked: Amy Killingsworth:

I’m a 3rd generation pastor’s kid. I grew up in a religious environment which was obsessed with the “end times.” By the time I was 10 years old, I had been exposed to so many sermons, movies and conversations about the mark of the beast, the Great Tribulation and the rise of antichrist that I legit had a panic disorder that persisted well into adulthood. I would come home from school and not be able to find my mom and panic because I thought I had been “left behind” in the rapture.

As I got older, thanks to some awesome mentors and logical inquiry, this narrative began to crumble. The one question that I apply to nearly everything that doesn’t add up is this: “who benefits?” That along with the words of Jesus, “you shall know it by its fruit” are what is needed to sharpen discernment.

Who benefits when believers are:

✔️ Looking for the rise of the antichrist instead of the Return of the King

✔️Obsessed with the mark of the beast instead of being marked by Christ’s love and presence

✔️Focused on escaping the earth instead of redeeming it

✔️Immersed in fear rather than hope

Darkness benefits. Yes there is darkness and it seems to be increasing (side note, the presence of darkness isn’t increasing, only the exposure of it) AND according to prophetic scripture, when darkness is at its thickest, that’s when the glory of the Lord rises upon us! Which side of the same coin do YOU want to focus on?

The end is indeed near, but it’s the end of the reign of terror that has kept God’s children enslaved to a matrix of lies and hopelessness.

Those of us who are alive during these times, get the incredible privilege of seeing with our eyes what prophets of old only dreamed about.

Let us fix our eyes on the rising glory of the Sun of Righteousness instead of the momentary darkness that quakes and trembles at the mention of His name.

Let’s find out where our position is - because if you are alive, you have a part to play! Let’s declare the solution instead of wringing our hands over the problem. The end is near, AND the future is bright! Remember who you are. Rise up and reign.

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Go forward with faith! Find Joy in the Journey! 

Elder Holland in "An High Priest of Good Things to Come: "You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead. Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”

“Yes, and . . .”: The Creative Art of Living

THIS WAS SO GOOD, I love love love it!

Amazing talk, what a powerful message and she and her husband Christopher are such powerful examples for good. I want to be better. I'll at more time stamps and notes as I relisten to this again and again. I've listened to it 3 times, will start taking notes

14:32 - I've learned that a lot of humor and joy is found in the unexpected or seeing the unexpected happen. But to see it or experience in it, we have to accept the offering we have, be honest about it, and make a choice to act. President Nelson taught that our circumstances don't have to dictate our happiness when he said "And I promise you that your capacity to feel joy will increase even if turbulence increases in your life."

18:08 - Serve God, Love me, and Mend

Thriving Spiritually

This is a great talk that we listened to today. 

The story at 16:46 was shared during our Sunday School class today and then I shared with the kids later tonight. Very cool! Elder Holland's talk "The Laborers in the Vineyard"

My notes from class today - 

(I'll enter them in after my kids give me back my phone)