A Knowledge That God Actually Exists
READ LoF 2:1-2
Why
is defining “the object upon which faith rests” correctly, so important?
It is not enough just to have a great
deal of faith.
You must have faith in things that are
true, or your faith will fail in time, as the false premise upon which your
faith rests shows itself to not be capable of fulfilling your trust in it.
You must have faith in things which are
perfect, or the same issue will occur.
You do not need to have a perfect
knowledge to have faith, as obtaining that perfect knowledge is the result of
the exercise of faith; but you do need to choose to act in alignment with what
you know about things (regardless of how small) that are actually true.
Who
must the principle of faith be grounded in, and why?
In God (or the Gods) alone.
The character and attributes of a God,
including the traits of omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and all good
things of which love and mercy are preeminent, are such that you can put your
complete trust in them and feel confident that your faith is well placed – they
will not fail you.
What
is the problem with placing your faith in anything or anyone else, including a
loved one, the leader of a Church, or even the true Church (institution) itself?
Faith in anyone or anything else means
that you do not have the faith necessary to attain to salvation; faith in other
things takes away from your faith in God (you are hedging your bets) and
amounts to idol worship.
Putting your faith in a mortal person or
an institution, however genuinely noble their intentions were, will end up in
heartbreak and disappointment when they fail you, because they will – it is
guaranteed because they lack the individual or collective intelligence or power
to save you or even to love you with absolute unconditionally.
Placing your faith on anything but the
living God is what the scriptures refer to as building on a sandy foundation;
things will seem fine until the floods come… (see Matthew 7:24-27; 3 Nephi
18:12-13; 3 Nephi 11:39-40) but they are not inherently fine and never were –
you just didn’t know it yet.
Why
is it difficult to exercise faith in God if the combination of Their traits and
love mean that They cannot fail you?
Their ways are higher than our ways;
their understanding of what it means to be truly happy, and how to attain it –
while absolutely true – is beyond the comprehension of the natural man, and
this may present real trust problems when what we think will bring joy and what
they know will bring joy conflict (and really even the spiritually reborn may
understand some of it cognitively, but like Christ prior to the atonement, it
Is impossible to truly understand all that is required until you experience it,
see D&C 19:15-20).
We are outside of Their tangible presence
and surrounded by a world which seeks to distract us into worshiping other
things and dissuade us from believing in God; but that is the whole point of
the test of our faith.
READ LoF 2:3-4
What
are the evidences mankind have had to believe in the existence of a living God?
The natural world around us and the
heavens above us; if we knew enough, science itself would provide countless
evidences of the existence of a living God.
The testimony of others’ experience with
God.
The portion of God’s Spirit that dwells
within us if we will listen for it and heed its direction.
READ LoF 2:5-12
What
was mankind’s situation at their creation upon this earth?
Adam and Eve were placed on earth as
adults, in God’s image = male and female.
They were given dominion or made governor
over all things on the earth.
They were in God’s presence and spoke
with Him regularly – there was no veil between them so that they could see what
was actually occurring in the spiritual realm.
READ LoF 2:13-19
What
is implied about Adam “not being left without intelligence” while in the
garden?
When we say he was “innocent”, it’s not
like he was a developmentally impaired adult with the mind of a six-year-old.
Being in God’s presence with the
associated intelligence “bursting upon his understanding”, we seriously
underestimate Adam if we think he was impaired intellectually; he knew enough
to feel fear and shame at the approach of God, having transgressed the
commandment to not partake of the fruit of the tree (until commanded to do so).
Either his
innocence was more of a function of his lack of experiential knowledge, or it
was a factor of the veil of the flesh (albeit Terrestrial, not Telestial, at
that point) that his spirit had been placed in.
It is also
very interesting that Eve was the one with the inherent wisdom to plunge the
world into a Telestial experience (with all of its upside and downside
spiritual risks), as spiritual “wisdom” is associated with women and Heavenly
Mother.
What
is implied by the fact that the Fall did not deprive Adam of the knowledge of
God he had gained previously in the Garden of Eden?
That the “veil
of forgetfulness” is the body of flesh, which Adam was already “wearing”.
And since he
was already in the flesh and had experienced God face to face, when he fell he
retained his memories of being in God’s presence.
It was his
life with God prior to his introduction into the Garden of Eden that was
forgotten (as Satan pointed out to him).
READ LoF 2:20-25
What
motivated Adam to continue to pray and offer sacrifices to God “for many days”
without any sign of acknowledgement from heaven?
He KNEW God; he had past experience with God and while
he was now separated from Him, it did not deter him from continuing to seek Him
– to beg Him to come out from behind the veil that was hiding Him – to
reconcile with Adam and Eve.
This knowledge or memory of the nature of their former
relationship before the Fall was augmented when Adam was filled with the Holy
Spirit or mind of God; Adam now had God within Him in the form of His Spirit,
so while he continued to be separated from His being, he now was a step closer
by being connected to God via His Spirit – or more precisely, Adam’s spirit had
become quickened to some degree – His spirit had become more holy or like God.
READ LoF 2:30
How did Adam
first become acquainted with the existence of a God?
After God breathed the breath of life into Adam and he
awoke into this existence, the first thing he saw was God.
Man did not conceive of God, but God manifested or
revealed Himself to Adam, first.
Why did God
continue to communicate to man after the Fall via His voice but not face to
face?
Seeing God face to face or being brought back into His
presence is redemption from spiritual death (see Ether 3:13).
Mankind was not yet ready to be redeemed; they must
first be made aware of the reality of God and their desperate need for Him,
then exercise faith and repent and covenant with Him via baptism, to take upon
themselves His name – to become His children; in time they would regain His
presence and speak with Him again face to face in mortality.
However, God did not leave Adam alone and He “called”
to Him from “eastward in Eden”, if Adam had the ears to hear Him (was waiting
and listening for Him; was attuned to His frequency), which He did.
God’s instructions to Adam, by voice, were designed to
enable him to exercise faith sufficient to repent, be baptized by water and
fire, and begin the journey back into His presence again, in the flesh – but
with more light and knowledge from his obedience and experience in this
mortality, than he had previously when he had lived in God’s presence.
READ LoF 2:31, 33-35
How did
Adam’s children and the rest of posterity first conceive of the thought that a
God existed?
Through the testimony of those who had already gained
direct, experiential knowledge of Him.
In the economy of heaven (and to further test those to
whom such a testimony has been given), mankind must minister unto mankind
regarding things that are fully within their ability to do so – like their own
personal experiences with God.
Not only are these experiences not “too sacred
to share” but the salvation of many people hang in the balance, dependent upon
the willingness of true witnesses to share their testimonies of the existence
of God and the path they followed to find Him; without that knowledge, the rest
of mankind cannot conceive of God or His correct attributes until He either
reveals Himself to them or those to whom He has revealed Himself bear testimony
to that fact in a way that guides and motivates others to seek and have the
same experience – to know Him for themselves.
READ LoF 2:32
What
is implied by the fact that God continued to speak to Cain AFTER the murder of his
brother?
If God will speak to Cain after he has
committed the world’s first murder, He will SURELY condescend to speak to us,
if we will muster the faith to hear His voice and receive His words.
Although God cannot tolerate sin in the
least degree, He will still have mercy and communicate with those who
demonstrate the required level of faith in Him; our faith is even more
important than our relative righteousness in hearing the voice of the Lord.
READ LoF 2:36
What
can be implied about all the different religions of the world from the fact
that Adam walked with God before and after he fell?
As Adam is the common progenitor of all
mankind and bore his witness of the true and living God, it follows that all
the various religions are influenced, to one degree or another, by the truths
he taught his descendants.
And given this fact, coupled with the
depth of truth that is the gospel of Christ, it would be foolish not to seek
truth from all of the various peoples and religions of the world, on the off
chance that they have kept safe some particle of truth that your belief system
subsequently lost.
What
differentiated Abel’s experience with God from the rest of his brothers and
sisters?
It began exactly like the experience each
of his brothers and sisters had: his father told him about his own experiences
with God – that He existed, what He was like, and how he came to know Him.
But for Abel it did not end there; Abel
planted that seed of faith in God’s existence, believed in the attributes of
God that he’d been told of including His love for His children and that He is
no respecter of persons but wants all to come unto Him, and followed the path
his father followed which had led Adam back into God’s presence (including the
making of sacrifice, hearing the voice of God, etc.), until Abel’s own
sacrifices were accepted by God, preparatory to entering back into God’s
presence himself.
Cain also sought the path but did not
follow it precisely but instead was tempted by Satan to make changes; when
those changed ordinances were rejected, in his hurt and pride, he rebelled
again against God instead of humbly repenting.
But most of the rest of the posterity of
Adam never even pursued the path in the first place – they did not seem
interested and did not believe him.
READ LoF 2:37-53
Why
did Joseph Smith go to the trouble of laying out the lifespans of the
patriarchs?
He wanted to show that access to a person
who walked and talked with God was always present on the earth from Adam to the
flood, and again from Noah and Shem (who was Melchizedek?) through to Abraham,
despite the apostasy of Abraham’s father(s) (see Abraham 1:5).
He was trying to show that Adam, Seth,
Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech (the father of
Noah) all knew each other and were “preachers of righteousness” (see D&C
107:53-56).
That Adam died 57 years before Enoch and
his City of Zion was translated.
That the patriarchs who remained (Seth,
Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Lamech, and Methuselah) all died before the
flood but that all of them except Seth also knew Noah.
And that Shem (who some think was
Melchizedek) would have been alive to know Abraham; he “died” (or was
translated to heaven with his city of Jerusalem) just a few years later, but
would have been alive to anoint him prior to receiving the fullness of the
priesthood from God and to give him the keys of the kingdom (the “keys” or the knowledge regarding how to
reconstitute the kingdom of God on earth via the Law of Adoption and the
Patriarchal Priesthood with its sealing power; see Abraham 1:2-4).
READ LoF 2:54-56
What
is the proper role of men, women and a Church with regards to your faith?
First of all, as Church is a collection
or fellowship of likeminded believers; the testimony of their experiences should
instruct you about the existence of God and about the true nature of God.
Their role is to inspire or motivate you
to obtain the same knowledge and relationship they and others have obtained; to
seek after Him, that through your own diligence and obedience (faithfulness to
His commandments and eternal law, which will enable you to be filled with a
greater portion of His light or Spirit), you might also obtain faith in God
sufficient to behold Him yourself, face to face, that you might also know Him –
which is eternal life.
What
is “the most glorious discovery”?
It is to “discover” the person of God.
To know God for yourself.
To know that He really exists – really
lives, with a surety or physical encounter.
And that He wishes to reveal Himself to you,
and to any who will seek after Him, as He is no respecter of persons.
What
is “the eternal certainty” that we most want?
It is knowing the actual state of our
salvation, which only God can give to us.
It is to obtain the promise or “hope” of
our salvation or exaltation from God’s own lips, knowing He cannot lie; and
that He will then be bound to help us to achieve it, as long as we honor Him
and do His will – which is to align ourselves perfectly with eternal law.
What
is implied by Joseph Smith’s statement “the inquiry…always terminated when
rightly pursued”?
One’s inquiry of the Lord, to know Him,
ALWAYS ends in His personal ministry to you, and your being sealed up to
eternal life by His promise.
If your inquiry after the Lord does not
end in a personal manifestation, it is not being “rightly pursued” or in other
words, you are doing it wrong; Joseph would suggest that it is because you do
not have a correct understanding of God’s attributes and characteristics and
this is limiting your faith, while others would say that you are not keeping
all of the commandments you’ve been given because you do not yet love Christ
enough; a third option might be that you are being tried (an Abrahamic
sacrifice) and you must be patient and wait upon the Lord in humility.
But we should all find solace and hope in
the Joseph’s statement; God is hiding in plain sight and wants us to find Him.
