Ceeboo wrote:Hello splendid people!
On a thread I was reading earlier today (as well as many other references I have read in the past on these boards), I read something that my dear friend Nightlion authored about Joseph Smith's "Calling and Election made sure."
After the many times I have seen this in written form over the years, I am still unsure as to what it really means? Where it originated? Who has it? (Or is it given/earned?)
And, is this topic something that is not suppose to be openly discussed? Sacred?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance and peace,
Ceeboo
Sorry, Ceeboo, I just saw this now.
D.H.C. 3:379-381/TPJS 150
The other comforter spoken of is the subject of great interest, and perhaps understood by few of this generation. After a person has faith in Christ, repents of his sins, and is baptized for the remissions of his sins and receives the Holy Ghost, (by the laying on of hands), which is the first Comforter, then let him continue to humble himself before God, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and living by every word of God, and the Lord will so say unto him,
Son, thou shalt be exalted.When the Lord has thoroughly proved him, and finds that the man is determined to serve Him at all hazards, then the man will find his calling and his election made sure, then it will be his privilege to receive the other Comforter, which the Lord hath promised the Saints, as recorded in the testimony of St. John, in the 14th chapter, from the 12th to the 27th verses.
note the 16, 17, 18, 21, 23 verses
16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
17 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.
18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
[Joseph continues:]
Now what is this other Comforter? It is no more nor less than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself; ...He will have the personage of Jesus Christ to attend him, or appear unto him from time to time, and even He will manifest the Father unto him, and they will take up their abode with him, and the visions of the heavens will be opened unto him, and the Lord will teach him face to face, and he may have a perfect knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God....
Joseph had his calling and election made sure in 1831. And yet the Lord said in 1843..
D&C 130
15 Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter.
16 I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face. That is almost fifty years from the time of this revelation. The Kirtland manifestations excepted.
It is not all about SEEING Christ as many a pretender has vaunted. Not like Jesus is down with you for breakfast every morning. Which certain vain and vulgar Mormon types have given out and taken many down to great folly by their pretenses.
Christ and the Father abide with us and attend to us in Spirit more after one hears the excellence voice declare that he shall be exalted with them. This intimacy with God is manifested from time to time in many splendid ways.
If not for the oft charge of narcissism leveled at me, I could account of a few such things that I have experienced myself after having heard the excellent voice declare to me "thou shalt with us partake of eternal life" [repeated three times] May 1987. Other than in dreams I have not yet seen God face to face.
At such a late hour and with so much to be accomplished anyone who would say that such an experience is too sacred to share is a liar, for a coward would never get such an experience.