an inquiring non-member

[freedomforall]

Lukeair But Scitor youre putting all your trust in the words of long dead prophets and apostles while rejecting the words of the living.

Paul did exactly the same thing and ended up persecuting and fighting against Christ and his Saints. The Old Testament did not lead Paul to the true Christ. It wasnt until he heard the voice of Christ and was lead to the living anointed servants of Christ that he understood the words of long dead Prophets. You are making the same mistake.

It is the living witnesses of Christ that we must seek. I notice you didn't really respond to my comments earlier of how much of the words of Christ and His servants that we DONT HAVE.

Peter, James, John, Paul, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Matthias, Paul, Bartholomew etc. were living witnesses. There are living witnesses today but you reject those. How sad will be you legacy when you realise your great error.

No it wasn't the old testamnet that saved Paul, or convinced him. But it was the old testament that both Christ and Paul used to support the claims they both made about who was the son of God. They didn't just say, "Hey, just forget those old books, they said that the prophecies in the old testament were proof jof Christs identity.

Also Christ said in John 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. He is saying if his "words" remain in his disciples. The words he left them from his time with them, the words he spoke to them. The words those men wrote down and left for us.
I am still unclear as to what you all use for your measuring stick for truth. The things you have taught me about becomong gods and three levels of heaven don't actually appear in the book of Mormon so i guess you don't use that either. Is it just the say of the current prophets that tell you what is true?

This is our measuring stick:
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

Like I said, even Mormons have to pray about the truthfulness of scripture...why? because our perception and understanding can only go so far. Truth is bourne to us by the Holy Ghost, who bears witness of the truth of all things. Why else did Christ tell His Apostles that after He (Christ) was gone, the Father would send another Comforter?

John 14:16,17
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

Another Comforter...the Holy Ghost
Abide with you...be a constant companion
Spirit of Truth...bears truth of all things
World cannot receive...the Spirit of Truth is not the same as the Light of Christ; only those who have been washed clean of their sins and is baptised can receive this Spirit.
Seeth Him not...most people cannot recognize the Holy Spirit as a Teacher, a Companion or Comforter.
Neither knoweth Him...those without this Spirit don't know Him, nor His purpose and are left to their own understanding.
Ye know Him...the Apostles were called of God to be personal witnesses of Christ, therefore, they were bestowed with the Holy Spirit of God (One of ther Godhead).
He dwelleth in you...to guide, direct, teach and bear witness of God; to know truth from error.
Shall be in you...as long as they are steadfast and immovable in doing good works and being witnesses for Christ sake.

1 Cor 3:16,17
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Temple of God...created by God in His image:
Gen. 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Spirit of God dwelleth in you...Christ was speaking to a particular group, not everyone in the world.
Defile the temple of God...tattoos, sexual impurities, unrepentent, etc.
Shall God destroy...will not be able to dwell with Him in heaven.
Temple of God is holy...performing good works, repenting, striving to be like Christ.
Which temple ye are...one knows from reading scripture that the natural man is an enemy to God, but he who has been washed clean and living their life in righteousness are those Christ is referring. Not every so-called Christian is a holy being.

Another measuring stick:
1 Cor 3:19
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

No matter how wise we may think we are, no matter how smart we may think we are...what we possess is foolishless with God. Therefore, it is essential to pray for understanding, and for truth to be revealed.

Another measuring stick is:
In response to 1 Cor 3:19
Matt 23:12
And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

It is always good to be humble, meek, lowly of heart, teachable, patient, kind, full of love, contrite and submissive.

We believe the Bible and the Book of Mormon go hand in hand with each other. Therefore, ALL of the gospel of Christ that is coupled within these two books comprise what is referred to as the "fulness of the gospel."
There are a lot of topics not found in the Book of Mormon, where the Bible gives us a hint for further research.
One is Baptism for the dead. It is in the Bible 1 Cor 15:29
Three degrees of Glory...in the Bible 1 Cor 15:40,41 and 2 Cor 12:2

I really don't know them all.

[kathyn]

Listen, everyone. Scitor doesn't really seek truth...he seeks to contend with us.

[keeprunning]

Scitor, I already told you that we use ALL scriptures and words of prophets as measuring sticks of truth-in our church meetings and personal study. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ. The Doctrine and Covenants have many additional revelations.

[keeprunning]

I don't think so, Kathyn. Maybe I'm just being too trusting though. I think he's sincere in his questions, and just working with what he knows right now from his bible study. I bet it's shocking to have all these new things thrown in.

I'm just surprised what Mormon books you are willing to read instead of the Book of Mormon, though! It really isn't a hard read, I promise!

[scitor]

Listen, everyone. Scitor doesn't really seek truth...he seeks to contend with us.

But contending for the faith is not a bad thing is it? It is what Jude tells us to do in his epistle contend earnestly for the faith and Also Peter said always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you. Paul's entire epistle of Romans was an argument for his faith and against the faith of others. There is nothing wrong with being able to argue and support your beliefs.
2 Timothy 4: 2 says to be ready to spread the word whether or not the time is right. Point out errors, warn people, and encourage them, and be very patient.

But as I have said if I am in any way making you uncomfortable then please tell me it is time to end this conversation. I am learning tremendous amounts from it, and I did make my intentions clear when i came to visit you, I want to learn about Mormons because i knew absolutely nothing before talking to you. I am also reading although admittedly I am not taking a cover to cover approach with the book of Mormon, more of a piecemeal approach using the things that have come up on the thread that you have told me you believe.

[scitor]

I don't think so, Kathyn. Maybe I'm just being too trusting though. I think he's sincere in his questions, and just working with what he knows right now from his bible study. I bet it's shocking to have all these new things thrown in.

I'm just surprised what Mormon books you are willing to read instead of the Book of Mormon, though! It really isn't a hard read, I promise!

I didn't read the bible cover-to-cover the first time either. I read it bit by bit for a long time. It is a question of time also. As soon as get enough of a context i may read it front to back. First I am getting a feel for how it all adds up with the bible and how the people of the faith see it and use it. There are many protestant sects that do not take the bible literally too. There are ones that have their own version of Christ's message and person, like you all do. I am not putting you into some stereotyped "Mormon" box. I have done studies on lots of other religions but it is way harder to have conversations with the people without them taking offense. You have been very tolerant so far and it has been very instructional for me.
I have tried to have these conversations with other types of Christians but they will usually end up putting me in an "intellectual" box and at best just being tolerant of " Scitor the egghead" "Scitor philosophizing everything" they don't understand that for me this is not just a bunch of words but a very practical actual real thing.

I have had my "sweet, tingling," rush of feelings too, I have had visions and revelations too. My whole life changed too. But if i told you that you would want those experiences to be measured against something in order to classify them as "true faith". What if I told you I had visions and ecstatic feelings in which I just "knew" that Allah was god and Mohammed was his only prophet?

I am trying to figure out how Mormons classify true faith. Its not the bible, its not logic, No one yet has offered me a place in the book of Mormon to locate heaven's levels or people becoming gods, can't you see how this might be a little confusing?
Maybe its your prophets, how about Brigham Young? Is he a good measuring stick, I know he is one of your most famous, or Joseph Smith, can you use what they say as determining what you believe?

[scitor]

Oh, that's crazy about Lennon. Too bad his occultist wife kept him so controlled, he could have done much good. It's so sad how upset they get when they hear Christians say that Christ is the only way.

So, about the 3 levels, I believe it is mostly found in the Doctrine and Covenants. (y'all, is it section 76?) You know, pretty much all 4 works (bible, BoM, D&C, PoGP) are treated equally as scripture for us. We even have quads where you can buy them all in one book, and we study them all equally in church.

I was reading a very interesting presentation that likens the 3 levels to our life here on earth. You might enjoy the insight. http://www.byui.edu/Presentations/Trans ... derson.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But you just spent time in the posts telling me how you cannot trust the bible because it is corrupted by men. I am assuming you all agree on this as no one said any differently.

[scitor]

freedomfighter
We believe the Bible and the Book of Mormon go hand in hand with each other. Therefore, ALL of the gospel of Christ that is coupled within these two books comprise what is referred to as the "fulness of the gospel."
There are a lot of topics not found in the Book of Mormon, where the Bible gives us a hint for further research.
One is Baptism for the dead. It is in the Bible 1 Cor 15:29
Three degrees of Glory...in the Bible 1 Cor 15:40,41 and 2 Cor 12:2

39For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

1 cor 15

This does not to me say anything about levels of glory but about how reality is different in heaven and on earth. In other words the sun in heaven is not like it is here, and the stars are different and bodies are different, everything is different. This makes perfect sense seeing as heaven is an entirely different dimension so everything would necessarily be different. It also accounts for why we cant experience heaven even though they can experience and effect our dimension. All dimensions include the one(s) below them but not above them.

However, the 2 cor 12;2 verse is interesting. It indicates levels definitely. It is not enough from which to build any kind of "heavenly system'

but it is interesting

[jnjnelson]

I am trying to figure out how Mormons classify true faith.

Try Alma chapter 32. True faith is faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ. Any faith that leads one not to the Savior is not of the Savior.

No one yet has offered me a place in the book of Mormon to locate heaven's levels or people becoming gods, can't you see how this might be a little confusing?

Just as it is impossible to find all the doctrines of any other Christian religion within the Bible, it is impossible to find all Mormon doctrines within the Bible, or only within the Book of Mormon. The levels of glory we all obtain after this life are outlined sufficiently in Doctrine and Covenants section 76, along with many other sections in that book.

However, section 76, along with the rest of the Doctrine and Covenants and the entire Book of Mormon, can hold no authority unless one recognizes that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon through the power of God, and that he received revelation through the power of God.

Maybe its your prophets, how about Brigham Young? Is he a good measuring stick, I know he is one of your most famous, or Joseph Smith, can you use what they say as determining what you believe?

This is exactly what each individual must determine for themselves. If you accept Joseph Smith as a prophet of God, accepting the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants as the word of God is the natural, logical, and spiritual conclusion to that acceptance. The acceptance of Joseph Smith as a prophet of God must ultimately come through the confirmation of the Holy Ghost, but once that acceptance is reached, everything else becomes very simple. Not easy, but definitely simple.

[jnjnelson]

But you just spent time in the posts telling me how you cannot trust the bible because it is corrupted by men. I am assuming you all agree on this as no one said any differently.

I believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly. I also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. (see http://lds.org/scriptures/pgp/a-of-f/1.8#7)
The Book of Mormon was translated correctly by a prophet of God who used the power of God to do so, Joseph Smith. The translation and interpretation of the Bible over the centuries has led to misunderstandings of the doctrines that are contained and taught in the Bible. I see many of your comments to be an excellent example of this misunderstanding. I applaud your willingness to work through this misunderstanding; I am on a similar lifelong quest for learning the truth. The Book of Mormon and other more current reveleation helps me to understanding the meaning and intent of the Bible. I love the Bible and study it regularly.

[jnjnelson]

This does not to me say anything about levels of glory but about how reality is different in heaven and on earth. In other words the sun in heaven is not like it is here, and the stars are different and bodies are different, everything is different. This makes perfect sense seeing as heaven is an entirely different dimension so everything would necessarily be different. It also accounts for why we cant experience heaven even though they can experience and effect our dimension. All dimensions include the one(s) below them but not above them.

This is an excellent example of how you interpret the meaning of the Bible differently than is understood by Mormons. Absent the counsel of a prophet of God on the matter, neither your opinion of the interpretation nor that of Mormons is more nor less valid. With the help of revelation from a prophet of God, scriptures such as this that contain multiple possible interpretations become universally understood. Continuous revelation through a prophet of God, and the authority of that revelation, is one of the most important distinctions between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and every other church.

[[email protected]]

I'm enjoying your conversation Scitor and Joel!

[freedomforall]

I don't think so, Kathyn. Maybe I'm just being too trusting though. I think he's sincere in his questions, and just working with what he knows right now from his bible study. I bet it's shocking to have all these new things thrown in.

I'm just surprised what Mormon books you are willing to read instead of the Book of Mormon, though! It really isn't a hard read, I promise!

I didn't read the bible cover-to-cover the first time either. I read it bit by bit for a long time. It is a question of time also. As soon as get enough of a context i may read it front to back. First I am getting a feel for how it all adds up with the bible and how the people of the faith see it and use it. There are many protestant sects that do not take the bible literally too. There are ones that have their own version of Christ's message and person, like you all do. I am not putting you into some stereotyped "Mormon" box. I have done studies on lots of other religions but it is way harder to have conversations with the people without them taking offense. You have been very tolerant so far and it has been very instructional for me.
I have tried to have these conversations with other types of Christians but they will usually end up putting me in an "intellectual" box and at best just being tolerant of " Scitor the egghead" "Scitor philosophizing everything" they don't understand that for me this is not just a bunch of words but a very practical actual real thing.

I have had my "sweet, tingling," rush of feelings too, I have had visions and revelations too. My whole life changed too. But if i told you that you would want those experiences to be measured against something in order to classify them as "true faith". What if I told you I had visions and ecstatic feelings in which I just "knew" that Allah was god and Mohammed was his only prophet?

I am trying to figure out how Mormons classify true faith. Its not the bible, its not logic, No one yet has offered me a place in the book of Mormon to locate heaven's levels or people becoming gods, can't you see how this might be a little confusing?
Maybe its your prophets, how about Brigham Young? Is he a good measuring stick, I know he is one of your most famous, or Joseph Smith, can you use what they say as determining what you believe?

I answered this in my last post. I know a lot of posts can be submitted all at once and can be difficult to keep up with. However, I told you that not all of our doctrine comes from the Book of Mormon. We believe in the Bible as well, all of this info comprising the "fulness of the gospel." The stick of Joseph and the stick of Judah. A large percentage of information we've given you is becoming redundant, therefore, if you really want to know what we believe, YOU WILL HAVE TO TAKE THE CHALLENGE...AND ASK GOD. But if it is not with real intent and sincerety of heart...don't expect an answer. God knows our intents and our thoughts.[/b]

[LukeAir2008]

Listen, everyone. Scitor doesn't really seek truth...he seeks to contend with us.

But contending for the faith is not a bad thing is it? It is what Jude tells us to do in his epistle contend earnestly for the faith and Also Peter said always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you. Paul's entire epistle of Romans was an argument for his faith and against the faith of others. There is nothing wrong with being able to argue and support your beliefs.
2 Timothy 4: 2 says to be ready to spread the word whether or not the time is right. Point out errors, warn people, and encourage them, and be very patient.

But as I have said if I am in any way making you uncomfortable then please tell me it is time to end this conversation. I am learning tremendous amounts from it, and I did make my intentions clear when i came to visit you, I want to learn about Mormons because i knew absolutely nothing before talking to you. I am also reading although admittedly I am not taking a cover to cover approach with the book of Mormon, more of a piecemeal approach using the things that have come up on the thread that you have told me you believe.

Im glad you mentioned Jude. Jude quotes from a prophecy of Enoch that we don't have in the Bible:

And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. (Jude 1:14-16)

So Scitor. If the Bible contains all the words spoken by God and His Prophets, where is this Book of Enoch that Jude quotes from? What else does it say about the Second Coming and any other doctrine for that matter?

The truth is you don't know Scitor. You have a small portion of some of the words possibly spoken by God, Christ and the Servants of God. You know very little about what was taught and what was said. You can only look back and say once upon a time there were Prophets and Apostles and revelation and authorised teaching and ordinances of the gospel but no longer. For you its all in the dim distant past.

Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever. He has established his Church once again upon the earth. He has spoken to Prophets and Apostles. He has given men his divine authority and commission. He guides his Church today. He has sent his Angel again to preach the everlasting gospel to the inhabitants of the earth. (Rev 14:6)

[LukeAir2008]

Scitor, here are some more books of scripture mentioned by the Bible that we don't actually have in the Bible. Maybe you can write the Catholic Church and complain that you've been short changed and want a refund because the Bible is so incomplete.

book of the covenant, Ex. 24:7
book of the wars of the Lord, Num. 21:14
book of Jasher, Josh. 10:13 (2 Sam. 1:18).
Samuel … wrote it in a book, 1 Sam. 10:25
book of the acts of Solomon, 1 Kgs. 11:41
book of Samuel the seer, 1 Chr. 29:29
book of Nathan the prophet, 2 Chr. 9:29
book of Shemaiah the prophet, 2 Chr. 12:15
acts of Abijah … in the story of the prophet Iddo, 2 Chr. 13:22
book of Jehu, 2 Chr. 20:34
written among the sayings of the seers, 2 Chr. 33:19
spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene, Matt. 2:23
I wrote unto you in an epistle, 1 Cor. 5:9
as I wrote afore in few words, Eph. 3:3
read the epistle from Laodicea, Col. 4:16
when I gave all diligence to write unto you, Jude 1:3
Enoch also … prophesied of these, Jude 1:14

[LukeAir2008]

So Scitor, time for an HONESTY check. Does the Bible contain all of the word of God? Does it contain all of the words spoken by Christ, the Prophets and the Apostles?

A simple YES or NO will suffice!

"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen." (John 21:25)

[freedomforall]

Scitor, ponder these words, please. All of God's words will come together into one. It is described how this is done in these passages. Remember, words of the Jews...the Bible, words of the Nephites...the Book of Mormon, and there are words yet to come forth from the lost ten tribes.

2 Nephi 29
1 But behold, there shall be many—at that day when I shall proceed to do a marvelous work among them, that I may remember my covenants which I have made unto the children of men, that I may set my hand again the second time to recover my people, which are of the house of Israel;

2 And also, that I may remember the promises which I have made unto thee, Nephi, and also unto thy father, that I would remember your seed; and that the words of your seed should proceed forth out of my mouth unto your seed; and my words shall hiss forth unto the ends of the earth, for a standard unto my people, which are of the house of Israel;

3 And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

4 But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

5 O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people.

6 Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews?

7 Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth?

8 Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. And when the two nations shall run together the testimony of the two nations shall run together also.

9 And I do this that I may prove unto many that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and that I speak forth my words according to mine own pleasure. And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever.

10 Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written.

11 For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them; for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written.

12 For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it.

13 And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the words of the lost tribes of Israel; and the lost tribes of Israel shall have the words of the Nephites and the Jews.

14 And it shall come to pass that my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions; and my word also shall be gathered in one. And I will show unto them that fight against my word and against my people, who are of the house of Israel, that I am God, and that I covenanted with Abraham that I would remember his seed forever.

[freedomforall]

Scitor, ponder these scriptures and see if they don't hint at more than one level of heavenly existence.

John 14:2
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you

Deut. 10:14
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.

[SempiternalHarbinger]

Great post LukeAir and Freedomfighter. You guys are bringing up some great points. I want to add to what you two have already brought up. Well, I am actually going to let let Hugh Nibley do the talking.

In one of my favorite books titled Temple and Cosmos by Hugh Nibley, he address the points LukeAir and Freedomfighter bring up. There is a tons of great stuff on lost writings, dead sea scrolls, the Apocrypha and what we can learn from them in this book. There are flaws in these writings, but what you can do is sift through them and find certain patterns, certain topics that are common between them. As well as use the companionship of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things. I don't understand how people put a limit on God and what he is allowed to reveal. But at the same time men do it themselves. In fact, this is how we came up with the bible. One big reason why many books were left out of the bible is because it taught about how we lived before we were born, and about the council in heaven. Men didn't understand this so they took it upon themselves to do away with those books that say as much. Man did this without the approval of God himself. I want to just post one chapter Temple and Cosmos called, "The Expanding Gospel." This book is not just for LDS, but for all followers of Christ. It backs up what LukeAir has been saying. Also, you asked the question where in the bible does it say we lived with God prior to coming to earth. Well, maybe this will help answer this question. For many books say this.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The expression "expanding gospel" is not a contradiction of terms. Even the Roman Catholic authorities concluded after much thought that the proper business of theology and philosophy is to expand men's knowledge of the gospel while leaving the scriptures, the sacred deposit and source of that knowledge, untouched by the addition or subtraction of so much as a syllable.1 Thus men, by the exercise of their intellects, may add to the gospel, but God may not. But this puts the thunder before the lightning: where has God imposed any limits on his own prerogative of imparting his word to man? The scriptural warnings against adding or subtracting, aside from being limited to specific individual books, are addressed specifically to men—no man may add to the scriptures. That imposes no restriction on God. But it is men who have expanded and contracted the scope of the holy writ to conform to their broad or narrow views of the gospel; it is men who have selected the books that make up the word of God, and these men have not been in agreement. The debate has raged for centuries about certain well-known writings, and still remains undecided.2

Now we are faced by a new and important development. A sizable number of writings have recently been discovered claiming apostolic or otherwise inspired authorship and enjoying unprecedented antiquity. What is to be done with them? Of the author of some of the prophecies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Father Daniélou writes:

A revelation was made known to him . . . that the Messiah was near. . . . Now what is amazing is that this prophecy was verified exactly. Thus between the great prophets of the Old Testament and John the Baptist he emerges as a new link in the preparation for the Advent of Christ: he is, as Michaud writes, one of the great figures of Israel's prophetic tradition. It is amazing that he remained so unknown for so long. Now that he is known the question arises as to what we are going to do about this knowledge. . . . Why does not this message, then, form part of inspired Scripture?3

This question, says Daniélou, now confronts equally the Jewish and the Christian world. How can they expand their gospel to include the words of a newly found prophet? If the new discoveries only contained exactly what was already known and accepted, there would be no objection to admitting them to the canon; but neither would they have any message for us, save to confirm what is already known. But what makes the documents so exciting is that they follow along familiar grooves to the end and then continue onward into new territory, expanding the confines of the gospel. Are we to assume that their writers, so strict and upright in their ways and so conscientious in their teachings, are saints as far as we can follow them, only to become deluded purveyors of fraud and falsehood the moment they step beyond territory familiar to us?

Before reaching a decision on this important head, our first obligation is to inform ourselves as to what it is that these writings teach over and above conventional Jewish and Christian doctrine. What they teach, that is, seriously and as a whole. Speculative flights and picturesque oddities can be expected in any sizable apocryphal writing, and when such are confined to one or two texts, they can be ruled out as serious doctrine. But in working through the newly found documents, one soon becomes aware of certain themes that receive overwhelming emphasis and appear not in a few texts but in many or most of them. Such deserve our serious attention. Among the most conspicuous of these is the matter of a certain council held in heaven "at the foundation of the world" where the divine plan of salvation was presented and received with acclamations of joy; joined to this we are presented almost invariably with some account of the opposition to that plan and the results of that opposition. Around these two themes of the plan and the opposition a great deal of the old apocryphal writing revolves.

But it is in the very oldest records of the race that we find some of the clearest statements of the doctrines, which in the oldest fragment of all, actually goes under a recognized label as "the Memphite theology." The antiquity of the material contained in the so-called Shabako Stone of the British Museum has been fully demonstrated and is today not seriously questioned.4 The only puzzle to scholars has been how anything so completely thought-out and sophisticated could turn up in what may well be the oldest known text in existence. There is nothing "primitive" in this dramatic presentation which was to mark the founding of the First Dynasty of Egypt. It is divided into two parts—historical and theological—the former explaining how the kingdom came to be established and organized after its peculiar fashion, and the latter how and why the world itself was created. The beholder of the drama, which was enacted by the priests with the king taking the leading role, is never allowed to forget that what is ritually done on earth is but the faithful reflection of what was once done in heaven.5 Since a number of scholars today see an unbroken line of succession between the "Memphite theology" and the Logos-theology of John, the Shabako Stone may not be out of place as the starting point in a study of the expanding gospel.6 But quite aside from that, it deserves mention as the earliest and one of the best descriptions of the council in heaven.

In the beginning, we are told, "all the gods assembled in the presence" of Geb, who "made a division between Horus and Seth, and forbade them to quarrel," giving each his assigned portion.7 Then for some reason Geb decided that Horus should be his unique heir, and solemnly announced to the assembled gods, pointing to Horus, "I have chosen thee to be the first, thee alone; my inheritance shall be to this my heir, the son of my son, . . . the first-born, opener of the ways, a son born of the birthday of Wep-wawet," that is, on the New Year, the Day of Creation.8 Thus, instead of being two portions, they were both united for the duration of the festival.9 The middle portion of the Shabako Text is obliterated, but from countless other Egyptian sources, we know that the conflict between Horus and Seth never ceased on this earth, the combat and victory of Horus being ritually repeated at every coronation.10 After rites dealing with a baptism, resurrection, and the building of the temple at Memphis, the texts break off completely to resume with a catalogue of Ptah's titles as "he who sitteth upon the great throne, Heavenly Father who begot Atum, Heavenly Mother who bore Atum, the Great One, the Mind and Mouth [heart and tongue] of the Council of the Gods [the Ennead]."11 "In the heart [of Ptah] through whose mind and word all the spirits were brought forth."12

And through whose mind and word [of God] all physical members were invested with power, according to the doctrine that He [God] is as that which is in every body [i.e., the heart] and in every mouth [i.e., the tongue] of every god, of every human, of every animal, of every creeping thing, of whatsoever possessed life; for whatever is thought and whatever is uttered is according to his will. . . . The council of the gods brought forth the seeing of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, the breathing of the nose, that these might convey information to the heart, which in turn became aware of things, to which awareness the tongue gives expression, giving utterance to the mind. In such a way were all the gods brought forth—Atum and the council of Nine. But the word of God was first that which was conceived in his mind and then what was commanded by his tongue. In such a way were the spirits brought forth and the hmswt-spirits elected, for the provision of all nourishment and food, according to the mind and word of God.13

The best interpretation of hmswt-spirits, following Sethe's long discussion of the word, would seem to be spirits chosen for specially high callings, in particular to have progeny.14 The spirits having been thus created and a physical basis for life supplied, a law was laid down,

that he who does what is good [lovable, desirable] shall be given life to be in a state of peace [or salvation], while he who does evil [that which is hateful] shall be given death to be in a state of punishment [or condemnation]. All the works [of men], all the arts and crafts, the labors of the arms and the goings of the legs, the motion of all the members are subject to this law, conceived in the mind and declared by the tongue [of God], which law shall be the measure [yimakh] of all things.15

All this was done and nourishment and food and all other good things provided by God alone and he saw that his work was good.16 "And thus it was that all the gods and all the spirits assembled" before the throne of God, the source of all life and joy.17 The king, representing Osiris, who is the dead king, his own predecessor, "goes through the secret gates in the splendor of the lord of Eternity, . . . in the footsteps of Re of the great throne, to enter the courts on high and become united with the gods and with Ptah, the ancient of days [lord of years]." In the concluding scene the earthly king publicly embraces his son and heir, declaring his calling and succession, even as the god did in the beginning.18

That the picture actually goes back to Menes, the founder of the First Dynasty, is confirmed right at the beginning of the Pyramid Texts in a writing for Teti, the second king of the dynasty and immediate successor of Menes:

Spoken by the great heavens in the midst of the lower hall of Geb [i.e., the temple of Memphis as the earthly counterpart of the heavenly court]. This is Teti, my beloved son, who sits upon the throne of Geb [the principle of patriarchal succession], who is well pleased with him; he hath declared him to be his heir in the presence of the great assembly of all the gods; every god hath acclaimed him joyfully with upraised hands, saying, Worthy is Teti with whom his father Geb is well pleased!19

In the Coffin Texts the theme is carried on as Ptah summons the Great Assembly, "they who share the secrets," gives them formal greeting, and introduces his son and heir to them, who, shouting for joy, acclaim him as the earthly Prince of Peace and Righteouness.20 The earthly rites reflect the heavenly, and the king (or noble) announces in his Coffin Text, "I am in the human assembly what he is in heaven. I am . . . the seed of Atum, the issue of him who gives the names in the day when Atum discussed it with the gods."21

The great Babylonian creation text, the Enuma Elish, begins and ends with the great assembly in heaven. "As once above," it starts out, "when the heavens had not yet received their name and the earth below was not known, . . . the Creator, he of vast intelligence, omniscience, omnipotence," presided over "a great assembly among his brethren the gods."22 Since the purpose of this version of the hymn is to exalt Marduk of Babylon, he takes over the principal functions of creating man and settling the score with the adversary. The most concise statement is on tablet VI: "Then Marduk resolved upon a wondrous work. He opened his mouth and addressed Ea [his father], and told him of what he had conceived in his heart: 'I wish to bring blood and bone together and to organize them into a human being, whose name shall be man; let it be his duty to serve the gods and satisfy them.' "23 To provide satisfaction, however, was beyond the power of man, and "Marduk, in order that there be satisfaction, proposed a plan to the gods: 'Let one of their race be put to death that humanity might be. Let one of the assembled gods be delivered up as a guilty one, that they might subsist.' "24 But Kingu opposed the plan; it was he who made Tiamat rebel and caused the war. But he was defeated and cast down by Marduk, and the great assembly gave all the power of heaven and earth to Anu and through him to Marduk for carrying out the execution of the plan.25 Throughout, the earthly rites are a ritual repetition of what was done (in the opening words and title of the hymn) "Once above" (enuma elish); and the affair ends with the admonition that the rites be repeated at the same place from year to year forever:

Let them rehearse throughout the ages to come at this spot what God has done, that they may never forget it. . . . For this is the earthly image of that which is done in the heavens. . . . Great planner, full of loving-kindness, may he forgive their sins and deliver them by his grace. . . . Let us praise his name. They who have taken their places in the assembly to declare his name, in the holy place let them all together proclaim his name.26

Though the texts are full of repetitions, contamination, overlapping of different versions coming from different times and places, the main themes of the council and the plan recur consistently.27

We know today that the religion of Israel cannot be studied in isolation from that of its neighbors, and for many years the experts have recognized affinities between the documents just cited and certain biblical texts. We have referred to them here, however, primarily to forestall the claim commonly made that the doctrines we are considering are of late, even Gnostic origin. The newly discovered Jewish and Christian apocrypha have so much to say about the council in heaven and the plan laid down at the foundation of the world that every student should be aware of the very great antiquity and wide ramifications of the idea. According to Ben Sira, the great assemblies of Israel were the ritual repetition not merely of the gathering at the foot of Sinai but specifically of the great assembly at the creation of the world, when "God set before them [the human race-to-be] a covenant, the Law of Life . . . and showed them his judgments. Their eyes beheld his glorious majesty and their ears heard his voice."28 According to 2 Baruch the whole plan of the history of the world was set forth in detail "when the Mighty One took counsel to create the world."29 According to the book of Enoch, in the beginning "the Head of Days, his head like white wool, sat with the Son of Man beside him upon the throne of His glory, and the books of the living were opened before Him," the books of the living being the register of names of those who were to live upon the earth.30 Then the calling or mission of the Son and the plan, both of which had been kept secret until then, were "revealed to the Elect."31 It is not too much to say that the dominant theme of the Thanksgiving Hymns of the Dead Sea Scrolls is an ecstatic contemplation of the wonder of man's participation in heavenly affairs going back to the beginning. Consider a few lines from Hymn 6 (or F):

Thou hast caused me to mount up to an eternal height and to walk in an inconceivable exaltation. And I know that there is a hope for everyone whom thou didst form of dust in the presence of the eternal assembly; and that the sinful spirit whom thou hast purified of great sin may be counted with the host of the saints and enter the society of the congregation of the Sons of Heaven. Thou didst appoint unto man an eternal share with the Spirits that Know, they praise thy name in joyful unison with them and to recount thy wondrous works in the presence thereof.32

The whole point of this is that man actually belongs by prior appointment to that community of the Elect who share in the knowledge of the plan and who shouted for joy at the foundation of the world. In the preceding hymn, God is hailed as "Prince of the Gods and King of the Venerable Ones": and we must remind ourselves that this is neither a Gnostic nor a pagan production.33 The baffling tenth and eleventh pages of the Manual of Discipline come to life in light of this imagery. To refer their message to prayers at various times of day makes good sense, since, as we have noted, earthly rites are but the reflection of heavenly events; but if we leave it there much is left unexplained. "He has placed them as an eternal treasure, and established for them a share with the saints, and has joined their society to the family of the sons of Heaven, the council of the Church, and the assembly of the Temple, an establishment [literally, "planting"] which reaches forever into the future and the past."34 The word that we have translated as "share" above is usually rendered as "lot" (it occurs seventy-six times in the Old Testament), but it is not the gift of chance, but is rather one's "lot" in the sense of having been appointed by God ahead of time. If we turn back to the opening lines of the preceding section of the hymn (plate X), we may see in prayers at dawn a conscious counterpart of the celestial drama: we are told of God's blessing "at the times which he fixed at the beginning of the rule of light, along with his cycles, and in the assembly at the place appointed by him, when the Watchers of Darkness also began." The Watchers, as is well known, were fallen angels, here the equivalent of those who first opposed the Rule of Light. At that time, the text continues, God "opens his treasury and shows his plan." The treasury is referred to many times in the apocrypha, especially in the Hodayot Scroll, as that knowledge which was with God in the beginning, and which he imparted to his Elect.35 The last word of the phrase is in code—a plain indication that the text does indeed have a double meaning, as it goes on to tell us in terms of lamps in a shrine, of the shining ones being received in the mansion of glory. We are even told that the great light of the Holy of Holies here actually signifies something else.36

This interpretation is borne out at the beginning of the Clementine Recognitions, a work having close affinities to the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which Peter tells of "the plan [definitio] of God which he announced [promisit] as his own will and desire in the presence of the First Angels, and which he established as an eternal law for all."37 This is from a very early and strongly anti-Gnostic work, but the Gnostics have preserved the teaching and given it a characteristic Gnostic twist: "My Father, the joyful glorious light," says the Psalm of Thomas, "summoned all the Aeons of Peace [the First Angels have here become mere abstractions], . . . all his sons and all the angels, [and] . . . established them that they might rejoice in his greatness [i.e., share it]38 "All bowed the knee before him and . . . sang his praises together, . . . hailing him as the Illuminator of the Worlds."39 The newly discovered Creation Apocryphon, another "Gnostic" interpretation, tells us that this earth is the result of a discussion in heaven: "On that day began the discussion in which gods, angels, and men participated. And the decisions of the discussion were then carried out by gods, angels, and men. But the Prince Jaltabaoth did not understand the power of faith," and so was denied "the authority over matter" which the others shared.40 The power of faith, it will be recalled, was the power "by which the worlds were created" (cf. Hebrews 11:3).

The unimpeachable orthodox Pastor of Hermas is quite as specific: "Behold God, constructing the world in accordance with the great council [in some manuscripts, 'the most honored council'], . . . creating the beautiful world and turning it over to his chosen ones, that He might carry out his promise to them, which he gave in the midst of great glory and rejoicing, that is, if they keep his laws (legitima) which they accepted in great faith."41 The Mandaean version is interesting because it calls the Creator Ptah-il, combining the archaic Egyptian and Semitic names,42 and while giving the familiar account of the great council, adds the important detail that three messengers were sent down to supervise the word and to instruct Adam, these three being glorious angels who were later to live upon the earth as ordinary mortals and prophets.43

So far we have only mentioned the bare fact of an assembly in the presence of God at the foundation of the world, but even so it has not been possible to do so without giving some indication of what the business of the meeting was, namely, the agreement upon the great plan which is to be "the measure of all things" for those who live upon the earth. Recently J. Fichtner has pointed out that the preoccupation with "Yahweh's plan" is the very core and center of Isaiah's thinking, and scholars are now noting that the presence of a heavenly council from the beginning has been part and parcel of Jewish thought from the earliest times.44 In fact, it was concentration on God's preexistent plan, Seligmann avers, which freed the Jews from the danger of falling into the "naturalistic fatalism" that engulfed the religions of their neighbors. Before the creation, according to 4 Ezra, "even then I [God] had these things in mind . . . as also the end";45 and at the Creation itself "when the Most High made the world, and Adam, . . . he first [of all] prepared the Judgment, and the things that pertain unto the Judgment."46 Where there is a purpose there is a plan; where there is neither, there is only chaos and change, leading to the "naturalistic fatalism" of the pagans and the philosophers. God knew, Enoch tells us, "before the world was created what is forever and what will be from generation to generation."47 Or, in the words of Ben Sira,

When God created His works from the beginning, after making them he assigned them their portions. He set in order his works for all time, and their authority unto their generations; . . . and after this God filled the earth with good things, . . . and then finally created man, . . . and gave him a fixed number of days, and gave him authority over all the earth.48

When the plan is discussed, we usually hear of a definite time schedule as part of it, with set ages, dispensations, and ends carefully worked out and determined ahead of time, along with a definite and fixed number of spirits appointed to go to the earth in each of those dispensations. The so-called Manual of Discipline has a positive obsession with times and periods as part of God's plan: "From God is the knowledge of all that is and all that will be; and before they existed he established their whole plan [mahasebtam], and when they exist [upon the earth] he prescribes the conditions of their existence according to his glorious plan."49 Since God created man "according to his own plan [or purpose]," says a Thanksgiving Hymn, "before thou didst create them, thou didst know all their doings from eternity to eternity."50 This writer often reminds us that man was allowed to share in the plan: "In the wisdom of thy knowledge thou didst establish their knowledge before they existed . . . and without thy knowing nothing was done."51 The War Scroll reminds us that both blessing and cursing are but the faithful working out of God's plan, that a definite day "has been appointed for the overthrow and humbling of the rule of Wickedness," and that the saints should never despair in their time of probation "until God gives the sign that he has completed his test."52 The Zadokite documents teach that the wicked on this earth were those who were not chosen and called up in the preexistence; thus Rabin translated a key passage on the subject:

For God has not chosen them "from of old, [from the days of] eternity," and before they were established He knew their works and abhorred the generations [when they arose], and He hid His face from the land from [their arising] (or: and from Israel) until their being consumed. And He knows (or: knew) the years of their existence and the number (or: set times) and exact epochs of all them that come into being in eternity (or: in the worlds) [and past events], even unto that which will befall in the epochs of all the years of eternity (or: the world). And in all of them He raised for Himself "men called by name," in order "[to leave] a remnant" for the land and to fill the face of the universe of their seed, and to make (or: and He made) known to them by the hand of His anointed ones His holy spirit and shew them (or: [demonstration of] truth. And with exactitude He [set out] their names; but those whom He hated He caused to stray.53

Rabin has taken liberties with the next-to-last sentence which, as many have pointed out, states as clearly as possible that God has made known the truth to chosen spirits, called up in the premortal existence, through the Holy Ghost, bestowed "by the hand of His Messiah."54

Almost always when the plan is mentioned something is said about its glad reception, "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:7). The great year-rites, common to all ancient societies, are a rehearsal of the Creation, usually presented in dramatic form; invariably the rites end with a great and joyful acclamation.55 Thus the concluding lines of the Shabako Stone, with which we began our story: "so all the gods and all the spirits came together to hail God upon his throne . . . and they rejoiced before him in his temple, the source of all good things."56 And the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish ends with an exhortation to all men to "come to this place and rejoice and celebrate the festival," hailing God for his wonderful deeds and his loving kindness, even as was done "once above," [Akkadian: enuma elish].57 In the rites of the asvemedha, the king is joyfully hailed at the Creation as a reminder that the question put to Job, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" was not a rhetorical question at all, for Job is expected to give the right answer—"answer for thou knowest!" This is confirmed in the Testament of Job, where that prophet says, "the Lord spake with me in power, and showed me the past and future."58 The same writing recommends study of the hymns of Job's daughter, designating them as inspired poems. The word poema, meaning literally creation, owes its prominence, as Walter Otto has shown, to the circumstance that the first poets were all inspired people who sang one and the same song, namely the Song of Creation: that was the standard ritual hymn at all the ancient cult centers where the Muses were housed and the royal year-rites rehearsed and performed.59

The whole purpose of the book of Jubilees is to show that the great rites of Israel, centering about the temple and the throne, are a celebration "which had been observed in heaven since the creation."60 All who were present on that occasion, according to 1 Enoch, took an oath to abide by the proposed order and then burst forth into a mighty spontaneous shout of joy.61 Like Job, the psalmist of the Thanksgiving Hymns is frightfully downcast until he is reminded that "the humble bless thee, while the Sons of Heaven jubilate in eternal glory."62 "Thou hast placed the lot of man eternally with the eternal spirits to shout for joy and to tell thy wonders."63 The thing to notice here is that man shares fully in these heavenly jubilations; the poet is simple intoxicated with the assurance that man, a mere speck of "wet dust," is allowed not only to know about the secret councils of the beginning, but actually to share in them, not only as a participant but as one of the directors! The words marvellous, knowledge, treasures, secrets, counsel, intelligence, understanding, etc., occur in constant and varied association in the scrolls. "Mere man is to be raised up to join the heavenly hosts . . . and be among Those Who Know in the great choir of jubilation."64 "Who is man that God gives him intelligence to share in such marvels and let him know his true secrets?"65 "Thou hast given to thy children a rich portion of the knowledge of thy Truth, and to the degree of a man's knowledge will he be glorified."66

This equating of knowledge with glory may lie at the root of the unique Jewish reverence for things of the mind: "Endowed with intelligence, O Lord, I have known thee. . . . I have learned sure and certain things regarding thy marvellous secrets, thanks to Thy Holy Spirit."67 And "in the wisdom of thy knowledge didst thou establish their knowledge before they existed."68 The same thoughts preoccupy the author of the Manual of Discipline, who also asks, "Who is man . . . that he should take place before thy face. . . . How can the clay and the potter sit together; or who understands thy wonderful plan of God?"69 The War Scroll supplies the answer: "For eternal glory he has chosen me, and for that he teaches me."70 The Way of Light itself is "the spirit of the understanding of all the Plan. . . . Without thee nothing came into existence—and he instructed me in all knowledge."71 Even the War Scroll recurs to the theme: "Thou hast engraven them," speaking of the elect of Israel, "on the Tablets of Life for Kingship . . . in all the promised ages of the eternities."72 Hence if it should happen that the hosts of Israel are defeated in battle, one seeks the explanation where Job found it, in the economy of heaven; the ultimate victory of the earthly hosts is assured by their close cooperation with the heavenly hosts, of which they are but a local extension:

He hath magnified the authority of Michael through eternal light, . . . so as to raise amongst the angels the authority of Michael and the dominion of Israel amongst all flesh. And righteousness shall flourish in heaven while all those who embrace God's truth [on earth], shall have joy in the knowledge of eternal things. So, Sons of the Covenant of God, be ye strong in God's crucible, until He shall lift up His hand and shall complete His testings [through] His mysteries with regard to your existence.73

This was the answer that Job received.

The oft-recurring statement that nothing exists whatever except in the will and plan of God has led scholars to see a connection not only of the Dead Sea Scrolls but of the Shabako Stone itself with the Gospel of John.74 One scholar's suggestion, that the logos may sometimes be translated "council," deserves closer consideration.75 If applied to the beginning verses of the Gospel of John, the passage would read: "In the beginning was the logos [council, discussion] and the logos was in the presence of God, and God was the logos. This was in the beginning in his presence. Everything was done [determined] by it, and without it not a single thing was created" (cf. John 1:1-3). Recently N. A. Dahl has shown that the early Christian conceived of salvation "as a counterpart to the beginnings of the world. . . . As a divine act of creation, conforming to the creation of the world, eschatology and creation can be linked up with one another even in this way."76 Eschatology, that is, cannot be understood without protology (Dahl uses the word), or an understanding of what took place in the beginning before the foundation of the world. The words of the early Christian Barnabas might have been taken right out of the Dead Sea Scrolls: "Praise the Lord who put wisdom and intelligence (nous) in us for the understanding of his secrets. . . . Who understands the Plan (parabolen: project) of the Lord save the wise one who knows and loves his Lord?"77 We have seen in the Pastor of Hermas that God's plan was "promised in the midst of great glory and rejoicing."78 The theme is as conspicuous in the earliest Christian writings as in the Jewish, but after the fourth century the Doctors of both religions rejected it completely.79

The early Christian Apocrypha are especially concerned with the opposition to the plan, which was also initiated at the foundation of the world. The combat between the powers of light and darkness enjoys a very conspicuous place in ritual, being one of the essential episodes of the worldwide creation drama of ancient times.80 In the scroll entitled The War between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, we have ample illustration of the ritual and doctrinal concern of the Jews for this motif, and the quotation just cited from that work shows that the embattled hosts on earth were but a local version of the war in heaven.81 Satan, who opposed the plan, led a rebellion and was cast out of heaven with his followers, to become an unwilling agent in the carrying out of the plan upon the earth. The name Mephistopheles "der stets das Böse will, und stets das Gute schafft," denotes the ultimate frustration of the Evil One, who with the worst intent in the world, can only contribute to the exaltation of man by providing the opposition necessary for testing him in the time of probation upon the earth.82 In the early Christian Apocrypha, Satan's rebellion in heaven begins not with a refusal to worship God, but with his refusal to bow down to Adam. "I have no need to worship Adam," he says in one early writing, "I will not worship an inferior and younger being. I am his senior in the Creation; before he was made I was already made. It is rather his duty to worship me! When the angels who were under me heard this, they refused to worship him also," and so the revolt was on.83 "Now, the Prince," says the recently discovered Papyrus Bodmer X, "not being righteous wanted to be God"; he had his own counterplan to propose, and the apostates of the Church "actually accept the plan of the serpent whenever they reject God's plan."84 The two plans represent the two ways that confront us in life, the devil himself having a definite mission on earth. "If I am a fisherman of men," says the Lord in the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles (a writing which Origen says is older than the Gospel of Luke),85 "the Devil is also a fisherman, who catches many in his nets. . . . If I have come to take for my kingdom those who are mine, why should not he do the same?"86 The Evil One, upon meeting Adam out in the dreary world after the Fall, cries out:

O Adam, I was cast forth from my glory because of thee, and behold I have caused thee to be expelled from paradise . . . because thou didst cause me to become a stranger to my home in heaven. Know thou that I shall never cease to contend against thee and all those who shall come after thee . . . until I have taken them all down into Amente with me!

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The contrast and choice between the Way of Light and the Way of Darkness is made possible by Satan's presence upon the earth. "Horus has two heads," says the famous seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead, "the one is truth, the other is sin; . . . he gives truth to whoever brings truth to him, and sin he gives to whoever sins."88 The concept of this world as a double sphere of light and darkness, good and evil, war and peace, meets us in the earliest meaningful human documents, the prehistoric palette, seals, "standards," reliefs on temples, and designs on clay vessels. On these we find in dramatic opposition to the happy and orderly banquet scenes, rural charm and religious processions opposing scenes of conflict, rapine, and military aggression.89 The contrast is shown on the shield of Achilles in the eighteenth book of the Iliad,90 and Hesiod in the eighth century B.C. reminds his wayward brother that two ways are always open to man: "O Perses, the better road of the two is that of Righteousness," the hard and narrow one.91 Evil upon the earth is not a dreadful mistake, as St. Augustine thought,92 for, as the Zohar says, "if God had not given men a double inclination to both good and bad, he would have been incapable either of virtue or of vice; but as it is he is endowed with a capacity for both."93 "All things have their opposites," says the old and mysterious Sefer Yetzira, "good and evil." It is "the good" which "marks out the evil," and visa versa.94 Hence in this world "we may live either by the Law of the Lord or the Law of Belial," according to the Testament of Naphthali,95 and though the Testament of Abraham announces the alarming news that for "seven thousand that walk on the road of perdition, there is hardly one soul that walks on the path of righteousness . . . to find salvation."96 The presence of the two ways is a blessing, giving man a freedom of choice and opportunity for exaltation that makes him "envied of the angels."97 "Happy is the man," says Ben Sira, "who could have fallen away and did not fall away; who could have inflicted injury but did not do so. . . . Poured out before thee are fire and water, stretch forth thy hand and take thy choice. . . . Life and death are before man, and that which he desireth shall be given him."98 This state of things, according to 4 Ezra, was established when the Most High made the world and Adam, and is "the condition of the contest which every man who is born upon the earth must wage."99 The Manual of Discipline takes up the theme with zeal: "To these two ways all the children of men are born, and to these two divisions they are heirs; every one of them each in his generation, and in his time every man shares more or less in both of them."100 The whole human race, "all kinds of their spirits and their natures," are put to the same test, each in his own dispensation, "until the final appointed end-time." The real issue is never lost from sight, for Satan himself remains actively engaged:

And all the blows that smite them, (and) all the times of their distress, are because of the dominion of his malevolence [Angel of darkness: mastemah]. And all the spirits of his lot cause the sons of light to stumble; but the God of Israel and His Angel of truth succour all the sons of light. Truly, the spirits of light and darkness were made by Him; upon these (spirits) He has founded every work, upon their [counsels] every service, and upon their ways [every visit]ation. [Him] God loves everlastingly, and delights in all his deeds forever.101

The main idea of "the plan which God laid down . . . in the presence of the First Angels for an eternal universal law," according to the Clementine Recognitions, is that "there shall be two kingdoms placed upon the earth to stay there until judgment day, . . . and when the world was prepared for man it was so devised that . . . he would be free to exercise his own will, to turn to good things if he wanted them, or if not to turn to bad things."102 In the Dead Sea Scrolls and the earliest Christian writings this is expressly designated as "the ancient Law of Liberty."103

The Didache, one of the oldest (discovered in 1873) Christian writings known, begins with the words, "There are two roads, one of life and the other of death, and there is a great difference between the two," which difference it then proceeds to describe.104 All the other so-called apostolic fathers are concerned with this doctrine, but one of the most striking expositions is in the newly found Gospel of Philip, a strongly anti-Gnostic work: "Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers to one another. It is not possible to separate them from one another," in this world, that is, though in the next world where only the good is eternal this will not be so.105 This is the doctrine of "the Wintertime of the Just," i.e., that while we are in this world men cannot really distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous, since in the wintertime all trees are bare and look equally dead, "but when the Summertime of the Just shall come, then the righteous shall bear their leaves and fruit while the dead limbs of evil trees shall be cast into the fire."106 It is another aspect of the plan. "We believe that God organized all things in the beginning out of unformed matter," says Justin Martyr, "for the sake of the human race, that they, if they prove themselves by their works to be worthy of his plan, having been judged worthy to return to his presence [so we believe], shall reign with him, having been made immortal and incorruptible. At the creation they themselves made the choice . . . and so were deemed worthy to live with him in immortality."107

There are many other areas of doctrine and important rites and ordinances set forth in the newly found writings and in the longer known texts which must now be reread and reconsidered in the light of recent discoveries. In time these are bound to exert some pressure to push out the walls of conventional Christian doctrine. But before the student gets involved in them it would be well to consider one issue which forces itself on the attention of every serious student of early Christianity and Judaism. We mean the problem of literalism. Just how literal are all these things supposed to be? What we have been talking about implies a different view of reality from that of conventional Christianity; it introduces as it were a third dimension into the purely two-dimensional pictures given us by scholastic philosophy and naturalism. The great difference between the Primitive Church and conventional Christianity is that the two take different things literally.108 The history of Christian dogma has been one long process of accommodation and deeschatologizing by which one body of belief has been completely displaced by another, eschatological reality being supplanted by sacramental piety. The teachings with which we have been dealing in this paper definitely imply a level of reality above that of the allegory and symbolism of the schools of rhetoric which became the official teachers of Christianity. The early Christian literalism was an horrendum to the schoolmen, but the more we learn about the early church, the clearer it becomes that that very literalism is the distinctive stamp not only of the Christian religion but of the Jewish as well.109 Today scholars are being forced into a compromise. A recent study of Christ's forty-day ministry concludes: "What happened after our Lord's resurrection was that He moved constantly back and forth between these two 'spaces' or worlds—the seen and the unseen. There is another world than this. It is not at some remote point in outer space. It exists side by side with this; . . . it is the world of the spirit, and this is the world of matter."110 Here a rather surprising concession to literalism is made only to be promptly withdrawn as the "other world" turns out to be only the immaterial "spirit" world after all, in spite of all the pains to which the Lord went as he "moved continually back and forth" between the two worlds to make perfectly clear that he was not a spirit.

The earliest Christian apologist, Aristides, rejects spiritual or allegorical interpretations outright when his colleagues at Athens want to introduce them into their religious discussions. If religious stories are "mythical," he insists, "they are nothing but just so many words . . . but if they are allegorical they are simply myths and nothing else."111 Early Christians were not interested in myths or allegories. The youthful Clement leaves the schools of the philosophers in distress because they cannot answer what he considers the important questions of life: When was the world created? What was before that? Will a man really continue to live after death?112 Only Peter could answer such questions, and Peter opens his discourse by saying, "To begin with, we say unequivocally that there is nothing bad about material substance."113 This was the absolute antithesis of the teachings of the schools; it was the Gnostic intellectuals who first insisted on dematerializing Christian doctrine, followed by the Neoplatonists. Between those two the attitude of Christian theology to literalism was given its fixed and permanent form. The Papyrus Bodmer X shows how early they attacked with their basic weapons: "They deny the resurrection, they are ashamed of the physical birth and death of the Lord."114 The charge is repeated by all the apostolic fathers and in all the oldest Christian Apocrypha. "Christianity," wrote Schopenhauer, "has this peculiar disadvantage, that, unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection of facts."115

If the eschatological drama deals with real rather than allegorical events, part of those real events took place long ago and far away, but part of them are actually being acted out here upon the earth. If the saints were taught to think of themselves as outcasts in a hostile world, it just so happened that they were outcasts in a hostile world; one had only to look around to see that the pitfalls and dangers were real and physical as well as "spiritual." The faithful actually have found themselves more often than not holding up in the desert places of the world—Ernst Käsemann's "Wanderndes Gottesvolk"—and when they talked of being gathered out of the world and taking leave of it, they were thinking in the most factual and spatial terms.116 Even those learned Doctors of the church who utterly deplored the old-fashioned literalistic ways of thinking constantly slip back to those ways themselves, especially in times of crisis; and the spiritual miracles, spiritual parousia, spiritual pilgrimage, spiritual temple, and spiritual Jerusalem, etc., of the schoolmen never proved very satisfying to the Christian mind, which displays a constant tendency to revert to the tangible article whenever possible—even the great Doctors prefer the dinner to the menu, when they can get it!117 Today a return to literalism is part of the expanding gospel.

But there is ambiguity here. Take for example the business of light and darkness. In the thousands of passages contrasting the two they are most of the time quite plainly figurative. Yet the shining garments of heavenly beings, as of Jesus at the Transfiguration, are real; and so is the darkness: "As every man's nature in this life is dark," says Enoch, "so are also his conception, birth, and departure from life."118 When in the Pastor of Hermas, the church is described as a tower built above the water, we are told that the tower is a symbol, but that the water is very real: no one can enter the topological tower without passing through real water.119 From this we see that rites and ordinances present an ambiguous situation, with some things to be taken literally and done literally and others figuratively. But in our ancient texts the reader is rarely left in doubt as to which is which; it is only the Doctors of the church, all men of the schools, who insist on minimizing the literal at the expense of the allegorical. Once one comes to understand, Origen assures us, that the historical parts of the Bible are to be understood symbolically, the historical interpretation of the whole becomes not only expendable but actually misleading, and should be abandoned altogether!120

The mixing of types and images with reality is of the very essence of our life upon the earth, where we see through a glass but darkly. In the scriptures and the Apocrypha we are told of things that are real and yet too wonderful for us even to imagine here, let alone describe; we simply can't conceive them: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared" (1 Corinthians 2:9). Consequently, if these things are to be mentioned at all, it must be in terms of types and images which are not real. Yet the types and images are not for that reason to be despised. A valuable commentary on this theme is supplied in the newly discovered Gospel of Philip: "Truth did not come into the world naked, but she came clothed in types and images. One cannot receive the truth in any other way."121 The solid reality behind the images can only be known through apocatastasis, or restoration to a former state.122 If people do not receive the ordinances here, we are told, they will not enjoy the real thing hereafter.123 Marriage, for example, has a different form in the next world to what it has here;124 but only by entering it here will one be allowed to enter it there: "If anyone does not receive it while he is in this world, he will not receive it in the other place."125 So it is with all the ordinances: he who has not mastered "the places" here "will not be able to be master of that place."126 "The mysteries of the truth are revealed as types and images" here, while "the veil conceals how God really governs the physical creation."127 The rending of the veil is not the abolition but the revelation of what is behind it, "in order that we might enter into the truth of it. . . . We enter in our weakness through despised symbols,"128 but enter we must, for who does not "receive the light" through these ordinances "will not receive it in the other place," while he who does receive it "cannot be held back, and will be beyond the reach of all his enemies even in this world. And when the time comes for him to go out of this world he has already received the truth in the images."129

If one makes a sketch of a mountain, what is it? A few lines on a piece of paper. But there is a solid reality behind this poor composition; even if the tattered scrap is picked up later in a street in Tokyo or a gutter in Madrid, it still attests to the artist's experience of the mountain as a reality. If the sketch should be copied by others who have never seen the original mountain, it still bears witness to its reality. So it is with the apocryphal writings: most of them are pretty poor stuff, and all of them are copies of copies. But when we compare them we cannot escape the impression that they have a real model behind them, more faithfully represented in some than in others. All we ever get on this earth, Paul reminds us, is a distorted reflection, but it is a reflection of things that really are. Since we are dealing with derivative evidence only, we are not only justified but required to listen to all the witnesses, no matter how shoddy some of them may be. For years the evidence of the Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians, etc., has been brought into court as a powerful refutation of the Bible's claims to originality and inspiration. Their voices do indeed refute the claim of conventional Christianity to the absolute originality and exclusive inspiration of the Bible, but the Bible itself never made such claims.130 What the outside texts prove is the antiquity and universality of the gospel and its central position in the whole history of civilization. It is not a local or tribal tradition on the one hand, nor is it the spontaneous expression of evolving human intelligence on the other, but is the common heritage of all ancient civilizations, battered, corrupted, and distorted in most cases, to be sure, but always recognizable in its main features and much too ingenious and elaborate to be the product of independent discovery.131

But what are we to make of pagans possessing the gospel, and that from the most ancient times? We did not say they had it, but only that their records testify to it. If we examine those records we soon discover that all that their authors possess are mere fragments which they do not pretend to understand. For them all those elements of the gospel which fit so perfectly into the account of things given in the story of the redemption are but distant traditions, shattered remnants of a forgotten structure, completely mystifying odds and ends that once meant something but whose meaning can now only be guessed at. This attitude to the heritage of the past may fairly be called the basic mood of Egyptian religion. In the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead, to which we have already referred, the question is regularly asked, "What does this mean?" and fourteen times when an answer is supplied, it is with the reservation that "others say" it means something else. From the earliest times "the impression made on the modern mind" by the Egyptians, according to I. E. S. Edwards, "is that of a people searching in the dark for a key to truth . . . retaining all lest perchance the appropriate one should be lost."132 They know there is a key, that is, but they also know they do not have it. It would be easy to show that the keynote of the literature and religion of all ancient people who have left us their records, with the exception of Israel, is one of pessimism and despair. We would only have to quote the authors of the standard literary histories of the various nations to make that clear. Israel escaped both that pessimism and fatalism by being constantly reminded by the prophets of the great preexistent plan that lies behind everything that happens. This we believe to be the most significant element in the expanding gospel.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publica ... hapid=1151" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[SempiternalHarbinger]

Here is a few more from the book "Temple and Cosmos"

"Apocryphal Writings and Teachings of the Dead Sea Scrolls"

Throughout Christian literature, going to heaven is consistently described as a return to an old home, which raises the notion of premortal existence. In the First Apocalypse of James, the Lord says to the apostles, "They will ask you where you are going. Your answer: The place from which I came. I return to that place."146 "The elect are those individuals," says the Gospel of Thomas, "who shall find the Kingdom, because they came from it in the first place."147 The Gospel of Truth dwells at length on the theme of the return:

Whoever has this knowledge is a being from on high. When he is called, he hears, answers, and turns toward him who calls and reascends to him. He knows when he is called; he knows whence he has come, and where he is going. He has turned many from error and proceeded unto places which belong to them, but from which they have strayed. Joy to the man who has rediscovered himself, awakened, and has helped others to wake up.

148

Just so, according to the Manichaean Psalm-Book (a marvelous book), Adam is received by a happy family when he dies and goes back to the other side. We are told that on the other side they have been awaiting him in high expectation. They have been awaiting the return of the first man and news from him. They eagerly await the news of his victory, the success of his mission. And they want to hear it from his own mouth when he returns.149 On his part, Adam, being away from home, asked the news-bearer who comes down to visit him after his death (he's called "the news-bearer of the skies"), "How is my Father, the Father of Light? How is my Mother, the Mother of the Living, whom I left, and her brethren also? Rejoice with me, ye Holy Ones, for I have returned to my original state again, my archaic, my original rule, and place."150 And again, in leaving the earth, he says, "My hour is come; they summon me. I will go from your midst and return to my true home."151 Accordingly, the Sent One comes to take the soul of Adam back to the great first house of the Father, to the place where he formerly lived.152 And so his children are admonished, "Arise, oh soul, return to your original home, to the place from which you were planted. Put on your garment of glory, sit down upon your throne, and dwell in the dwellings among thy brethren."153 Again, the Ginza says, "Now, arise and return to the place of your true family."154 "I came from the house of my father," says the Psalm of Thomas, "from a far land. I shall mount up until I return to the land of the pure."155 In a moving scene at the end of The Pearl (an early Christian hymn), the hero finally returns to his home, his mission accomplished. He is met at the "gate of greeting and honor" (as it's called) by his entire family. He bows and worships his Father, and the Christ and the Father, the Eldest Son who is with him, "who has sent him the garments and given him the orders of what he should do to get back. All the princes of the house were gathered at the gate. All embraced me with tears of joy." And as the organ played, they all walked back into the house together.156

Commenting on this, Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great Doctors of the fourth century, observes: Christians are all confused about the premortal existence (he refers to the state of things in his church in Palestine). Some say we lived in families there, and in tribes, just as we do here, and that we lost our wings when we came down here, and that we'll get them back again upon returning.157 The Christians mixed up tenable and untenable, and all sorts of other teachings. The church was in great confusion on this doctrine in the fourth century. Regardless of what the true explanation might have been, it is clear by such remarks from the early Fathers that the early church did preach the premortal existence, the idea of coming from heaven and returning. Pope Paul VI is preaching that, referring to life as a short pilgrimage away from home, etc. These ideas are coming back. Talk of returning to heaven as a return home does away with creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). If we just came into existence here—if this is the only place we've ever lived—why are we homesick? Why aren't we properly adjusted here? Why does everybody suffer a nostalgia and want to return to their heavenly home? Thus the Pope talks about being strangers here; this is a wayfaring church; we are lost here, wandering, looking for a return to our heavenly home, etc.158 He himself has been reading these early writings. The decline of the idea of creation ex nihilo of course necessitates our existence in some sort of a spiritual state before our coming here.


"The Terrible Questions"

With regard to a premortal existence, Clement said, "Well, if I live after, I must have lived before. Doesn't that follow?"112 The idea of "the memory of all former births" and of "Buddha-lands innumerable"113 is akin, in its appeal, to the individual ego of Plato's anamnesis and its elaboration by Plotinus. They believed in it. In other words, it's an idea older than the Jews and Christians, an ongoing belief from very early times. Iamblichus, commenting on Pythagoras, notes that it was the story of Euphorbus and the Phrygian in Homer which offered a key to the recollection of one's premortal existence; and even finds the genius of Homer to lie in his power to stir such intimations of immortality—a sense of other world, in all of us.114 Plotinus, one of the greatest of the Christian Neoplatonists, argues that the recognizable differences in children at their very birth shows that each must bring something with him into this life from another one115 (as anyone who has had a lot of children recognizes).

R. H. Charles, commenting on 2 Enoch 23:4 says: "For all souls are prepared to eternity, before the foundation of the world," and he notes that "the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul is here taught. We find that it had already made its way into Jewish thought in Egypt. . . . This doctrine was accepted and further developed by Philo [De Somniis i:22]. . . . This doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul was, according to Josephus, . . . held by the Essenes. . . . It became a prevailing doctrine in later Judaism,"116 and is still taught by the Hasidic Jews who join the Church, one of the reasons they accept the gospel. They firmly believe in the doctrine.

Origen, following the teaching of the early brethren (an interesting explanation of why people are born so unequally), explains these inequities on the grounds that the soul had a previous existence in a life of its own, where even as in this life it was given its free agency by the Creator: such souls as grew weary in doing good entered this life at a disadvantage, having passed the test less satisfactorily.117

The Pastor of Hermas (c. A.D. 120), in one of the earliest postapostolic writings we have, says, "All flesh which is found undefiled and unspotted, wherein the Holy Spirit dwelt, shall receive a reward."118 Clement of Alexandria, in the second century, writes, "God knew us before the foundation of the world, and chose us for our faithfulness even at that time. . . . Now we have become babes to fulfill the plan of God."119

Clement of Rome, whom Barnabas converted, tells us that "cujus interna species est antiquior," that the Earth was created and prepared for man, whose real nature, though he came last of all, is older than any of it. And Clement's Second Epistle to the Corinthians tells us of "the first church, the spiritual [one, (spiritum) which] was created before sun and moon." He says he got the doctrine from "The Book of the Apostles."120 Man existed before the creation of the world—a doctrine that Peter taught him.

The Dead Sea Scrolls bring up much of this creationism material. In the Odes of Solomon, for example, one of the early Christian hymns, we read, "For I know them," says the God of the Saints, "and before they came into being I took knowledge of them, and on their faces I set my seal. . . . By my own right hand I set my elect ones."121 The famous poet of The Pearl said the same thing.

Thanks to the Patrologia, a collection of the writings of all the Christian Fathers, in chronological order, which grows all the time, we literally have hundreds of volumes of writings; and the first volumes say more on this subject than any others, because Christians depart from the doctrine after that. In these volumes the editor, J.-P. Migne, speaks of the four different positions on the subject. "For some taught that the spirit was before the body, others that it came after, still others, that they came into existence together, while others are not willing to make any assertion. Along with these opinions should be mentioned the errors of the Pythagoreans, Platonists, Gnostics, and Origenists."122 The later Doctors still could not make up their minds. "Under the influence of the prevailing philosophy, many Christian thinkers asked themselves," writes H. de Leusse, "in the third and fourth centuries, if it was permissible to think of a pre-existence of souls."123 Augustine believed the doctrine firmly up until the year A.D. 410; after that, he hesitates, and does not cease to hesitate between traducianism (the idea that the spirit enters the body at the moment of conception, and didn't exist before, but was "traduced" into the body at the moment of conception) and infusionism (the idea that the spirit existed before). . . . He repeats endlessly that he has not made up his mind. In short, Augustine "truly does not know, . . . and it is perhaps temerity to want to penetrate a mystery reserved to God himself."124 So the first of the great Latin theologians, who got nearly all of his doctrines from Origen, anyway, could never resolve the problem for himself.

In A.D. 523, the African bishops agreed that "we should either leave the question in silence or consider it without contention"; since "the holy scriptures give us no clear statement, it should be investigated with caution. The more so since it's possible for the faithful to ignore it without any particular disadvantage (detrimento) to their faith."125

Brigham Young said that more Saints apostatized because of the doctrine of premortal existence than any other doctrine—more than polygamy, more than tithing, more than jealousies, or anything else. Over it, people left the Church in droves, yet today, everybody accepts the doctrine as the most natural thing in the world. Eliza R. Snow, as well as Wordsworth, taught it. When Augustine's personal friend Jerome read in Revelation 4:6 about the familiar animals around the throne of God—the same types of beasts found on earth—and asked whether this didn't imply a premortal existence, he rejected the idea, because such literalism destroys the allegorical value of the scriptures.126 If you take it literally, you can't use it as an allegory.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publica ... hapid=1154" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[scitor]

Oh, that's crazy about Lennon. Too bad his occultist wife kept him so controlled, he could have done much good. It's so sad how upset they get when they hear Christians say that Christ is the only way.

So, about the 3 levels, I believe it is mostly found in the Doctrine and Covenants. (y'all, is it section 76?) You know, pretty much all 4 works (bible, BoM, D&C, PoGP) are treated equally as scripture for us. We even have quads where you can buy them all in one book, and we study them all equally in church.

I was reading a very interesting presentation that likens the 3 levels to our life here on earth. You might enjoy the insight. http://www.byui.edu/Presentations/Trans ... derson.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

you are right, John Lennons life was so sad, it always makes me think, "there but for the grace of God go I" I would be just like him, always fumbling around for the truth but just going farther into the darkness. When I knew, by grace, that Jesus Christ was real, and everything is the bible was true and could be trusted to be true, it didn't matter what arguments people set against me. I knew that they could be logically countered.
Because I trusted that God made logic and "every good and perfect thing comes from the father of Lights in whom there is no variation or shadow of turning" therefore, there was a logic that was perfect. Just like in 1 Corinthians 15 it talks about the stars and moon being different in heaven, " a star differs from a star in glory" everything in glory is different from here "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another" and earthly logic given the glorious light of the heavenly kingdom is wisdom. for "The spirit of God is wisdom and understanding" Isaiah 11:2
Logic was made by God for us as a free gift too, it comes with the world he made,but it is just earthly logic and so imperfect, but with the light given by grace through the eyes of faith, which is itself a gift, we can see the perfection of God's reasoning, his logic. And if we lack wisdom, we are told in James to ask for it.
So the things I don't understand in the bible,about those things I pray for wisdom, and he always comes up with a logical answer.

I have still been looking for the three levels of heaven in the D&C can't find it yet but I will keep looking. I did find something interesting though about many Mormons not making it to heaven,by the prophet joseph Fielding "There will not be such an overwhelming number of the Latter-day Saints who will get there. President Francis M. Lyman many times has declared, and he had reason to declare, I believe, that if we save one-half of the Latter-day Saints, that is, with an exaltation in the celestial kingdom of God, we will be doing well. Not that the Lord is partial, not that he will draw the line as some will say, to keep people out. He would have every one of us go in if we would; but there are laws and ordinances that we must keep; if we do not observe the law we cannot enter" (Doctrines of Salvation 2:15).

So here a prophet says not every one will be saved, maybe only half the Mormons will be saved. So this is different from what you believe which is everyone is saved but not exalted.

[LukeAir2008]

Here is a few more from the book "Temple and Cosmos"

"Apocryphal Writings and Teachings of the Dead Sea Scrolls"

Throughout Christian literature, going to heaven is consistently described as a return to an old home, which raises the notion of premortal existence. In the First Apocalypse of James, the Lord says to the apostles, "They will ask you where you are going. Your answer: The place from which I came. I return to that place."146 "The elect are those individuals," says the Gospel of Thomas, "who shall find the Kingdom, because they came from it in the first place."147 The Gospel of Truth dwells at length on the theme of the return:

Whoever has this knowledge is a being from on high. When he is called, he hears, answers, and turns toward him who calls and reascends to him. He knows when he is called; he knows whence he has come, and where he is going. He has turned many from error and proceeded unto places which belong to them, but from which they have strayed. Joy to the man who has rediscovered himself, awakened, and has helped others to wake up.

148

Just so, according to the Manichaean Psalm-Book (a marvelous book), Adam is received by a happy family when he dies and goes back to the other side. We are told that on the other side they have been awaiting him in high expectation. They have been awaiting the return of the first man and news from him. They eagerly await the news of his victory, the success of his mission. And they want to hear it from his own mouth when he returns.149 On his part, Adam, being away from home, asked the news-bearer who comes down to visit him after his death (he's called "the news-bearer of the skies"), "How is my Father, the Father of Light? How is my Mother, the Mother of the Living, whom I left, and her brethren also? Rejoice with me, ye Holy Ones, for I have returned to my original state again, my archaic, my original rule, and place."150 And again, in leaving the earth, he says, "My hour is come; they summon me. I will go from your midst and return to my true home."151 Accordingly, the Sent One comes to take the soul of Adam back to the great first house of the Father, to the place where he formerly lived.152 And so his children are admonished, "Arise, oh soul, return to your original home, to the place from which you were planted. Put on your garment of glory, sit down upon your throne, and dwell in the dwellings among thy brethren."153 Again, the Ginza says, "Now, arise and return to the place of your true family."154 "I came from the house of my father," says the Psalm of Thomas, "from a far land. I shall mount up until I return to the land of the pure."155 In a moving scene at the end of The Pearl (an early Christian hymn), the hero finally returns to his home, his mission accomplished. He is met at the "gate of greeting and honor" (as it's called) by his entire family. He bows and worships his Father, and the Christ and the Father, the Eldest Son who is with him, "who has sent him the garments and given him the orders of what he should do to get back. All the princes of the house were gathered at the gate. All embraced me with tears of joy." And as the organ played, they all walked back into the house together.156

Commenting on this, Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great Doctors of the fourth century, observes: Christians are all confused about the premortal existence (he refers to the state of things in his church in Palestine). Some say we lived in families there, and in tribes, just as we do here, and that we lost our wings when we came down here, and that we'll get them back again upon returning.157 The Christians mixed up tenable and untenable, and all sorts of other teachings. The church was in great confusion on this doctrine in the fourth century. Regardless of what the true explanation might have been, it is clear by such remarks from the early Fathers that the early church did preach the premortal existence, the idea of coming from heaven and returning. Pope Paul VI is preaching that, referring to life as a short pilgrimage away from home, etc. These ideas are coming back. Talk of returning to heaven as a return home does away with creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). If we just came into existence here—if this is the only place we've ever lived—why are we homesick? Why aren't we properly adjusted here? Why does everybody suffer a nostalgia and want to return to their heavenly home? Thus the Pope talks about being strangers here; this is a wayfaring church; we are lost here, wandering, looking for a return to our heavenly home, etc.158 He himself has been reading these early writings. The decline of the idea of creation ex nihilo of course necessitates our existence in some sort of a spiritual state before our coming here.


"The Terrible Questions"

With regard to a premortal existence, Clement said, "Well, if I live after, I must have lived before. Doesn't that follow?"112 The idea of "the memory of all former births" and of "Buddha-lands innumerable"113 is akin, in its appeal, to the individual ego of Plato's anamnesis and its elaboration by Plotinus. They believed in it. In other words, it's an idea older than the Jews and Christians, an ongoing belief from very early times. Iamblichus, commenting on Pythagoras, notes that it was the story of Euphorbus and the Phrygian in Homer which offered a key to the recollection of one's premortal existence; and even finds the genius of Homer to lie in his power to stir such intimations of immortality—a sense of other world, in all of us.114 Plotinus, one of the greatest of the Christian Neoplatonists, argues that the recognizable differences in children at their very birth shows that each must bring something with him into this life from another one115 (as anyone who has had a lot of children recognizes).

R. H. Charles, commenting on 2 Enoch 23:4 says: "For all souls are prepared to eternity, before the foundation of the world," and he notes that "the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul is here taught. We find that it had already made its way into Jewish thought in Egypt. . . . This doctrine was accepted and further developed by Philo [De Somniis i:22]. . . . This doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul was, according to Josephus, . . . held by the Essenes. . . . It became a prevailing doctrine in later Judaism,"116 and is still taught by the Hasidic Jews who join the Church, one of the reasons they accept the gospel. They firmly believe in the doctrine.

Origen, following the teaching of the early brethren (an interesting explanation of why people are born so unequally), explains these inequities on the grounds that the soul had a previous existence in a life of its own, where even as in this life it was given its free agency by the Creator: such souls as grew weary in doing good entered this life at a disadvantage, having passed the test less satisfactorily.117

The Pastor of Hermas (c. A.D. 120), in one of the earliest postapostolic writings we have, says, "All flesh which is found undefiled and unspotted, wherein the Holy Spirit dwelt, shall receive a reward."118 Clement of Alexandria, in the second century, writes, "God knew us before the foundation of the world, and chose us for our faithfulness even at that time. . . . Now we have become babes to fulfill the plan of God."119

Clement of Rome, whom Barnabas converted, tells us that "cujus interna species est antiquior," that the Earth was created and prepared for man, whose real nature, though he came last of all, is older than any of it. And Clement's Second Epistle to the Corinthians tells us of "the first church, the spiritual [one, (spiritum) which] was created before sun and moon." He says he got the doctrine from "The Book of the Apostles."120 Man existed before the creation of the world—a doctrine that Peter taught him.

The Dead Sea Scrolls bring up much of this creationism material. In the Odes of Solomon, for example, one of the early Christian hymns, we read, "For I know them," says the God of the Saints, "and before they came into being I took knowledge of them, and on their faces I set my seal. . . . By my own right hand I set my elect ones."121 The famous poet of The Pearl said the same thing.

Thanks to the Patrologia, a collection of the writings of all the Christian Fathers, in chronological order, which grows all the time, we literally have hundreds of volumes of writings; and the first volumes say more on this subject than any others, because Christians depart from the doctrine after that. In these volumes the editor, J.-P. Migne, speaks of the four different positions on the subject. "For some taught that the spirit was before the body, others that it came after, still others, that they came into existence together, while others are not willing to make any assertion. Along with these opinions should be mentioned the errors of the Pythagoreans, Platonists, Gnostics, and Origenists."122 The later Doctors still could not make up their minds. "Under the influence of the prevailing philosophy, many Christian thinkers asked themselves," writes H. de Leusse, "in the third and fourth centuries, if it was permissible to think of a pre-existence of souls."123 Augustine believed the doctrine firmly up until the year A.D. 410; after that, he hesitates, and does not cease to hesitate between traducianism (the idea that the spirit enters the body at the moment of conception, and didn't exist before, but was "traduced" into the body at the moment of conception) and infusionism (the idea that the spirit existed before). . . . He repeats endlessly that he has not made up his mind. In short, Augustine "truly does not know, . . . and it is perhaps temerity to want to penetrate a mystery reserved to God himself."124 So the first of the great Latin theologians, who got nearly all of his doctrines from Origen, anyway, could never resolve the problem for himself.

In A.D. 523, the African bishops agreed that "we should either leave the question in silence or consider it without contention"; since "the holy scriptures give us no clear statement, it should be investigated with caution. The more so since it's possible for the faithful to ignore it without any particular disadvantage (detrimento) to their faith."125

Brigham Young said that more Saints apostatized because of the doctrine of premortal existence than any other doctrine—more than polygamy, more than tithing, more than jealousies, or anything else. Over it, people left the Church in droves, yet today, everybody accepts the doctrine as the most natural thing in the world. Eliza R. Snow, as well as Wordsworth, taught it. When Augustine's personal friend Jerome read in Revelation 4:6 about the familiar animals around the throne of God—the same types of beasts found on earth—and asked whether this didn't imply a premortal existence, he rejected the idea, because such literalism destroys the allegorical value of the scriptures.126 If you take it literally, you can't use it as an allegory.

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Thanks for this. One of my favorite books if not 'the' favorite. Everyone should read this before going to the Temple. What a great loss when Nibley died. My three favorite teachers and mentors all died in a short space of time. Nibley, Cleon Skousen and Truman Madsen.

[LukeAir2008]

Oh, that's crazy about Lennon. Too bad his occultist wife kept him so controlled, he could have done much good. It's so sad how upset they get when they hear Christians say that Christ is the only way.

So, about the 3 levels, I believe it is mostly found in the Doctrine and Covenants. (y'all, is it section 76?) You know, pretty much all 4 works (bible, BoM, D&C, PoGP) are treated equally as scripture for us. We even have quads where you can buy them all in one book, and we study them all equally in church.

I was reading a very interesting presentation that likens the 3 levels to our life here on earth. You might enjoy the insight. http://www.byui.edu/Presentations/Trans ... derson.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

you are right, John Lennons life was so sad, it always makes me think, "there but for the grace of God go I" I would be just like him, always fumbling around for the truth but just going farther into the darkness. When I knew, by grace, that Jesus Christ was real, and everything is the bible was true and could be trusted to be true, it didn't matter what arguments people set against me. I knew that they could be logically countered.
Because I trusted that God made logic and "every good and perfect thing comes from the father of Lights in whom there is no variation or shadow of turning" therefore, there was a logic that was perfect. Just like in 1 Corinthians 15 it talks about the stars and moon being different in heaven, " a star differs from a star in glory" everything in glory is different from here "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another" and earthly logic given the glorious light of the heavenly kingdom is wisdom. for "The spirit of God is wisdom and understanding" Isaiah 11:2
Logic was made by God for us as a free gift too, it comes with the world he made,but it is just earthly logic and so imperfect, but with the light given by grace through the eyes of faith, which is itself a gift, we can see the perfection of God's reasoning, his logic. And if we lack wisdom, we are told in James to ask for it.
So the things I don't understand in the bible,about those things I pray for wisdom, and he always comes up with a logical answer.

I have still been looking for the three levels of heaven in the D&C can't find it yet but I will keep looking. I did find something interesting though about many Mormons not making it to heaven,by the prophet joseph Fielding "There will not be such an overwhelming number of the Latter-day Saints who will get there. President Francis M. Lyman many times has declared, and he had reason to declare, I believe, that if we save one-half of the Latter-day Saints, that is, with an exaltation in the celestial kingdom of God, we will be doing well. Not that the Lord is partial, not that he will draw the line as some will say, to keep people out. He would have every one of us go in if we would; but there are laws and ordinances that we must keep; if we do not observe the law we cannot enter" (Doctrines of Salvation 2:15).

So here a prophet says not every one will be saved, maybe only half the Mormons will be saved. So this is different from what you believe which is everyone is saved but not exalted.

Try Section 76...

[freedomforall]

Oh, that's crazy about Lennon. Too bad his occultist wife kept him so controlled, he could have done much good. It's so sad how upset they get when they hear Christians say that Christ is the only way.

So, about the 3 levels, I believe it is mostly found in the Doctrine and Covenants. (y'all, is it section 76?) You know, pretty much all 4 works (bible, BoM, D&C, PoGP) are treated equally as scripture for us. We even have quads where you can buy them all in one book, and we study them all equally in church.

I was reading a very interesting presentation that likens the 3 levels to our life here on earth. You might enjoy the insight. http://www.byui.edu/Presentations/Trans ... derson.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

you are right, John Lennons life was so sad, it always makes me think, "there but for the grace of God go I" I would be just like him, always fumbling around for the truth but just going farther into the darkness. When I knew, by grace, that Jesus Christ was real, and everything is the bible was true and could be trusted to be true, it didn't matter what arguments people set against me. I knew that they could be logically countered.
Because I trusted that God made logic and "every good and perfect thing comes from the father of Lights in whom there is no variation or shadow of turning" therefore, there was a logic that was perfect. Just like in 1 Corinthians 15 it talks about the stars and moon being different in heaven, " a star differs from a star in glory" everything in glory is different from here "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another" and earthly logic given the glorious light of the heavenly kingdom is wisdom. for "The spirit of God is wisdom and understanding" Isaiah 11:2
Logic was made by God for us as a free gift too, it comes with the world he made,but it is just earthly logic and so imperfect, but with the light given by grace through the eyes of faith, which is itself a gift, we can see the perfection of God's reasoning, his logic. And if we lack wisdom, we are told in James to ask for it.
So the things I don't understand in the bible,about those things I pray for wisdom, and he always comes up with a logical answer.

I have still been looking for the three levels of heaven in the D&C can't find it yet but I will keep looking. I did find something interesting though about many Mormons not making it to heaven,by the prophet joseph Fielding "There will not be such an overwhelming number of the Latter-day Saints who will get there. President Francis M. Lyman many times has declared, and he had reason to declare, I believe, that if we save one-half of the Latter-day Saints, that is, with an exaltation in the celestial kingdom of God, we will be doing well. Not that the Lord is partial, not that he will draw the line as some will say, to keep people out. He would have every one of us go in if we would; but there are laws and ordinances that we must keep; if we do not observe the law we cannot enter" (Doctrines of Salvation 2:15).

So here a prophet says not every one will be saved, maybe only half the Mormons will be saved. So this is different from what you believe which is everyone is saved but not exalted.

Here is where we have conflict. We are quoting scripture out of two very different translations of biblical writings.

We use the King James where the terms Celestial and Terrestrial have greater meaning.

In your Bible the term Heavenly bodies can be construed as describing every existing element in the heavens.
The term Earthly bodies only talks in generalities of what's on earth.

In the KJV we see the words Celestial and Terrestrial, Telestial having been removed by someone a long time ago.

The Celestial equates comparison to the brightness of the sun in glory, majesty and power.
Terrestrial to the moon, Telestial to the stars.

When one hooks up a transformer to a light bulb and barely turns up the electricity you can compare the brightness of the bulb to what the Telestial world will be like for those people who inherit it.
When one turns up the power on the transformer to the halfway mark, the light bulb gets brighter...this would represent the brightness of the Terrestrial world for those who inherit it.
Then when the transformer is turned up to full output, the bulb brightens up to the point where it is hard to look at without squinting. This brightness is compared to the Celestial world for those who inherit it. Thus, we have from our view and comparison the stars/telestial in glory, power and majesty, the moon/terrestrial in glory, power and majesty, and the sun/celestial in glory, power and majesty.

As Mormons, we believe the earth is now in a telestial state. When the Savior comes and dwells for a thousand years the earth will have been changed to a terrestrial state. Then when the earth comes to the end of its existence, it will be renewed and become the celestial kingdom. That is why we here about a new heaven and a new earth.

Isaiah 65:17
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

Perhaps there are others on the forum who can expound on my thoughts further.

There has already been at least three biblical verses that hint to a multiple amount of levels, or degrees.

Many mansions...suggesting more than one place of dwelling.
Third heaven...describes a place above two others.
Heaven of heavens...suggests a plurality of heavens or levels.

[SempiternalHarbinger]

scitor has still not answered LukeAirs questions. Also, there have been many ancient writings discovered (dead sea scrolls) as well as apocrypha writings that talk about different glory's and different kingdoms. Here are a few examples of this doctrine which man took upon themselves to leave out of the bible.

Hugh Nibley;
One of the many points of difference between the Gnostics and their rivals was the different way they would put in order and arrange the cosmic hierarchy. All of them, however, share the idea of three main degrees of glory. The Pistis Sophia says, "You can visit the order below you, but not the levels or orders above you."109 This is the rule in all worlds: you can go to the lower ones, but not to the ones above you. The degrees are described in many of these writings. In his early Epistle to the Trallians, Ignatius (the second earliest Christian writer we have who is accepted by everyone as authentic) says, "I could write you about the mysteries of the heavens, but I am afraid to, for it would do you harm. . . . But I am able to understand the orders of the heavens, the degrees of the angels, the variations among them, the differences of dominions, of thrones, of powers"—of the Holy Ghost, and of the kingdom of the Lord, and the highest of all—the rule of God over everything else."110 "There's an infinite hierarchy in the worlds," says the Sefer Yetzira.111 "Christ rules in the second place, his rule exactly duplicating the Father's, but over a more limited number of cosmoses." Methodius explains, "If other stars are greater than our world, then it is necessary that they contain life greater than ours, and greater peace, and greater justice, and greater virtue than ours."112 Of course we think of Abraham: If there is one, there shall be a greater one, and "I am more intelligent than they all" (Abraham 3:16-19). The hierarchy goes on and on until there's no place to end it, except when it reaches the Father himself.

These writers were aware of the fact that these doctrines carried over, but they couldn't understand them anymore, so the church Fathers got rid of them in the fourth century.

The church Fathers called them "the teachings of the elders" and considered them great mysteries, because they didn't know what to do with them. Methodius says that the spirits are equal in age, but different in power, intelligence, and appearance. They have been so throughout all time. Why should one be greater than another? This is one of the things the fathers liked to talk about. Origen was greatly intrigued and exercised by the diversity, and especially by the inequality among God's creatures. "Such an inequality," he says, "could not have been arbitrary, or else the Creator would be unjust. He couldn't create a thing small with another great over it—would that be just?" So he concludes that the levels on which we all find ourselves in this world must somehow have been merited in a former life.113 However, the later schoolmen, following Aquinas, said that "there is indeed a hierarchy and a diversity simply because God wants it to be that way, and for no other reason."114 They gave the idea up.

Aquinas had his ideas of the multiplicity of worlds, and the great differences among them, and the hierarchy of worlds. What next? The idea that they are all moving forward. It is not a static system; every world is progressing. "Until Christ opened the way," says the Gospel of Philip, "it was impossible to go from one level to another [death and resurrection]. He is the great opener of the way because he gave us the plan by which we can progress. He is the way."115 That's why we call him "the way, the road, or the gate." The false progress of this world he compared to the @#$ turning a wheel, going around and around, turning the wheel and getting nowhere at all.116 But being the "way," the Lord himself also advances. The Gospel of Truth says, "Thus the Word of the Father advances in the cosmos, being the fruit of his heart and the expression of his will." Through the ordinances, one makes progress in knowledge, and the ordinances go on and on.117 "There are mysteries so much greater than these," says the Pistis Sophia, "that they make these look like a grain of flour, just as the sun looks like a grain of flour from distant worlds."118 That's in an old Jewish source too. "Everyone here on this earth descends, as it were, to the dregs [earth or dirt] and shares a common substance with all living things." We are the same matter as the oyster, the cockroach, etc. They will be resurrected too, for they have a spiritual side—another very common teaching. "We share a common substance with all living things, and from here on out we begin to work our way up, step by step, to a knowledge of all things, ever seeking for instruction and carrying out the required ordinances that will lead us to more," says the Epistle of the Apostles. This is the idea of progress.

"Thus we move," says 1 Jeu, "from truth to truth." The farther advanced one is, the faster one moves.119 The gap broadens as you move in a progression. The more advanced you are, the faster you go, and the more advanced you get in relation to each other—a principle Latter-day Saints also teach. "To them that have shall be given." With exaltation comes an increase and acceleration of exaltation. Thus "we are passed on from hand to hand, from degree to degree!" Our example is Adam, who, having been established in Christ and God, next established his son Seth in the second order, which was to follow him on up, says the Pistis Sophia.120

"He who has fulfilled all the ordinances and has done good work cannot be held back," says the Ginza. "We are taught the principles of salvation, so that we cannot be held back in this world. Those who receive certain teachings and carry out their instructions in this world cannot be held back in this world or the next." "Those who shut the doors against me will be held back in the abode of darkness. Those that open the doors to me will advance in the place of light." The great blessings pronounced on Adam, according to the same source, say, "Thou shalt have progress onward." (Hugh Nibley)

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