californiakid,"moral example"
I think moral example is clearly a portion of what is happening but way inadaquate to describe the whole.
"transfer of sin"
I am at a loss to relate to this idea.
Jesus as sacrifically clean, This sounds a bit backwards to me. What are the rules for maintaining purity for the Son of God? Did he do the correct purification when unclean? I do not recall this being explained in the Gospels. Who had the correct rules for this purity? The pharasees or another group?
John 3:61
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_Black Moclips
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 596
- Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:46 am
Re: John 3:61
"I like to think of Jesus like with giant eagle's wings, and singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd with like an angel band and I'm in the front row and I'm hammered drunk!"
As other have mentioned, I have a hard time understanding the reason for Jesus having to die or suffer. Part of me believes that the event was largely part of his own personal journey and progression, the final culminating event of a myriad of lifetimes and spiritual progression. I believe what we view as the atonement and resurrection is something that we must all pass through and do eventually, and that the biblical account of Jesus was him showing us our potential - the ability to lay down your life and take it up again. The last step in the human spiritual evolution, but the first step in what lies beyond.
As other have mentioned, I have a hard time understanding the reason for Jesus having to die or suffer. Part of me believes that the event was largely part of his own personal journey and progression, the final culminating event of a myriad of lifetimes and spiritual progression. I believe what we view as the atonement and resurrection is something that we must all pass through and do eventually, and that the biblical account of Jesus was him showing us our potential - the ability to lay down your life and take it up again. The last step in the human spiritual evolution, but the first step in what lies beyond.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
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_ldsfaqs
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Re: John 3:61
CaliforniaKid wrote:For God so loved the world that he sacrificed his only begotten son in a bloody spectacle in order to propitiate his own anger toward you and to be able to associate with you without tarnishing his pristine righteous image. Therefore, give thanks.
You are clearly confused....
The purpose of Christ was for both is life and death to be a "power" which will help us mortal "only" beings to overcome both spiritual and physical death to become immortal and eternal beings, because we can't do it of ourselves since we are only mortals.
Christ is our "bridge" to return to the Heavenly Sphere.
"Socialism is Rape and Capitalism is consensual sex" - Ben Shapiro
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_Jason Bourne
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Re: John 3:61
ldsfaqs wrote:
You are clearly confused....
The purpose of Christ was for both is life and death to be a "power" which will help us mortal "only" beings to overcome both spiritual and physical death to become immortal and eternal beings, because we can't do it of ourselves since we are only mortals.
Christ is our "bridge" to return to the Heavenly Sphere.
Why couldn't God just do this without demanding blood?
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_CaliforniaKid
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Re: John 3:61
ldsfaqs wrote:You are clearly confused....
Read the thread before commenting.
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_consiglieri
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Re: John 3:61
Three years back, I was asked to give a sacrament meeting talk about the Meaning of the Atonement. Over the past several days, I have thought about posting it in this thread, as it deals at least in some respect with the difficulty CK expresses regarding getting a handle on the subject. I am reluctant because I doubt there is anything in here that hasn't occurred to you, CK, and everybody else on this board (with the possible exception of ldsfaqs).
But fools and consiglieris rushing in where angels fear to tread, here goes.
So you know, this was also the last time I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting.
______________________
THE MYSTERY OF THE ATONEMENT
I. Introduction
I was asked to speak for 10-15 minutes on the subject of the Atonement. My first thought was, “Heck, I’ve spent 30-years trying to understand the Atonement and still haven’t succeeded.” And besides, who can explain the Atonement in 10-15 minutes, anyway?
Then I was told I might want to focus my comments on how a father teaches his family about the Atonement. That was when I knew I could talk on that subject for even less than 10 minutes. I started racking my brain, trying to think of times I had talked to my family about the Atonement. I was having a tough time coming up with anything.
But as my wife will tell you, I have a horrible memory, so I thought maybe my family would remember some stellar examples of my teaching them about the Atonement that I had forgotten.
Wednesday evening we were all sitting down to dinner. My wife was there, our 12-year old daughter, and two older children who came home from college for Thanksgiving. I told them I had a very important question to ask them; that I had been given the assignment to speak in sacrament meeting about how a father teaches his family about the Atonement; and I wanted to know if they could remember instances of how I had taught them about this important gospel subject.
After an uncomfortable pause, my 20-year old daughter offered, “Well, you sent us to church every week.”
She made it sound like I stood in the driveway in my bathrobe waving good-bye to them.
I said, “I am the worst father in the world.”
I felt like a total loser.
But as I thought about it some more, something important came to me, “The Atonement is meant for total losers.”
Because left to our own devices, all of us come short of the glory of God. Apart from the Atonement, no matter how hard we may try personally, we miss the mark of returning to our Heavenly Father. And you can’t lose more totally than that!
II. Understanding the Atonement—Mission Impossible?
As I said, I have spent 30-years trying to understand the Atonement and still haven’t succeeded. But let me share with you some thoughts about what I have learned regarding this supremely important subject.
The Atonement is so amazing that it beggars belief; so vast that it defies description.
As Stephen Robinson, BYU religion professor put it, the closer we come to the heart of the gospel manifest in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the fuzzier our thinking becomes. In order to correct this problem, Stephen Robinson wrote a book about the subject, Believing Christ, which is a wonderful book, dealing with the grace of God as manifest in the Atonement. He then wrote a second book, a sequel, dealing with the other side of the Atonement, that being what we have to do to qualify for the Atonement. Ironically, the second book ended up dismantling pretty much everything he said in the first book.
And this is one of the problems with trying to understand the Atonement on a purely intellectual level. It seems that it cannot be done. And it isn’t for want of trying. The most brilliant people on earth have been trying for about 2,000 years and so far have managed only to fail spectacularly.
III. Things you wouldn’t understand, things you couldn’t understand, and things you shouldn’t understand
This is not a recent phenomenon. For example, there are some aspects of the gospel that are not explained in the Book of Mormon. These can be divided into two categories. Mormon tells us that there are some things that Jesus taught the Nephites that he was forbidden to write.
But importantly, there is second category of things that Mormon tells us “cannot” be written. There is something about these teachings that is “ineffable,” that defies the ability of language to express them. I think the Atonement is one of these subjects. When we discuss the Atonement, we enter the Holy of Holies, and in approaching so near to God, we encounter beauty and glory inexpressible.
IV. Parables and Models
This is not to say that we cannot intellectually understand and teach many important aspects of the Atonement; that it was accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of the living God; that it was provided freely and out of love; that without the Atonement we would all be doomed forever; that there is no salvation for any of us apart from the Atonement; and that there is no other way to heaven than through the Atonement provided by the Savior.
These are all vital aspects of the Atonement, but they fail to fully explain how the Atonement works to bring about our salvation.
Because mere language is insufficient to express the fullness of the Atonement, inspired people have long attempted to use poetic forms to capture its meaning. Often, parables and models are employed. Such parables include the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and Boyd K. Packer’s more recent parable of the Mediator. All of these parables are important in that they illustrate profound aspects of the Atonement. But at some point, each of these parables breaks down in capturing the Atonement in its totality. None of them is completely satisfactory. Indeed, the fact that multiple parables are employed suggests that none of them is completely satisfactory.
The same can be said of “models” of the Atonement. The New Testament is full of different models of the Atonement. There is the model of a gift that is freely and lovingly given that we must receive. There is the model of our being in debt and in debtor’s prison and Jesus paying our ransom. There is the model of our being a slave and Jesus setting us free. There is the model of Jesus being a sacrificial substitute to mercifully appease the demands of justice. As with parables, all of these “models” illustrate important and profound aspects of the Atonement. But at some point, each of these models breaks down.
This is not just an ancient exercise, but something that continues to this day. I have already mentioned Boyd K. Packer’s parable of the Mediator. Some of you may know the works of Cleon Skousen. He is a master scriptorian, and because he, too, felt the various parables and models of the Atonement were insufficient, he spent many, many years, on his personal quest for the meaning of the Atonement. He came up with a new theory, and it is set forth in his paper, A Personal Search for the Meaning of the Atonement, which is also a popular and famous talk on tape.
V. How can we come to understand the Atonement?
Well, with the most brilliant minds spending 2,000 years trying to explain the Atonement and still not succeeding, is it just possible that the Atonement is something that really cannot be expressed in words? But if it can’t be expressed in words, does that mean it cannot be understood? I think that the Atonement can be understood, but in order to explain how, I have to talk about two types of learning.
There are many subjects that we learn by reading books or hearing lectures or through personal study; subjects such as math and physics and chemistry.
But there is another group of subjects that absolutely cannot be learned from books and lectures and study; subjects such as dance and singing and martial arts. Let me take dancing as a case in point. I choose dance because, although you might find this hard to believe, I majored in dance in college. I do not mean ballroom dance, but performance dance: Ballet, jazz, modern, tap.
Now, you can go check books out of the library about ballet and you can learn a lot ABOUT ballet from reading those books. But (and this is important) you can memorize every item in every book written about the ballet and you still will not have learned how to dance.
There is only one way to learn how to dance, and that is by dancing.
There are some subjects that we learn with our minds, such as math. There are some subjects that we learn with our bodies, such as ballet. May I suggest that the Atonement is a subject that we learn with our souls? And perhaps that, metaphorically speaking, our souls learn the Atonement through dancing with God?
VI. “Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn in no other”
We can only learn the Atonement experientially. By that I mean it is something that we have to experience personally. Nobody else can experience it for us and then tell us what it is like. That doesn’t work. We have to experience it for ourselves; just as the Nephites went forward one by one and felt the prints of the nails of the resurrected Savior, and each individually experienced Him.
The idea of learning through experience is not foreign to the gospel; in fact we find it in the other primary cornerstone of the plan of salvation; in the fall of Adam and Eve. Good and evil was not something that Adam and Eve could learn in a classroom. It was something they had to experience for themselves. “If they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet.” (D&C 29:39). As Alma put it, we have to plant the seed so they we can know that the seed is good. (Alma 32:33). As the Lord said to Joseph Smith about his trials, “Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give the experience, and shall be for thy good.” (D&C 122:7).
Perhaps the Atonement is like a rainbow in that the more we pursue understanding it with our minds alone, the more it recedes from us.
Perhaps the Atonement is like the sun, which we cannot see by direct observation, yet we can feel its warmth and experience its light.
Perhaps the Atonement is like a faint star on a dark night which we see best by looking a little to the side.
Perhaps the Atonement is like a bumblebee, that the most brilliant scientific minds in the world cannot explain how it is able to fly . . . and yet it flies. (And here it may be fitting that the emblem of the state of Utah is the beehive; I like to think those are honeybees in that hive.)
Perhaps the Atonement is what Nephi was talking about when he said, “I do not know the meaning of all things, but I know that God loveth his children.” (1 Nephi 11:17 paraphrase).
Perhaps the Atonement is one of those things about which Paul said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Cor. 2:9-10).
And as Adam and Eve had to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge to learn by experience the good from the evil, perhaps we have to partake of that other tree, the tree of life, in order to experience for ourselves the Atonement.
VII. Becoming one with God
It is widely understood in the church that the word “Atonement” literally means at-one-ment. It is the act of becoming one with God.
And so perhaps the Atonement is understood by coming into contact with God; by becoming one with him; by being, as Mormon puts it, “clasped in the arms of Jesus.” (Mormon 5:11) As Nephi puts it, “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.” (2 Nephi 1:15) Or as Nephi puts it in his psalm, “O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of they righteousness!” (2 Nephi 4:33).
VIII. Understanding the Atonement in different ways
I also think it is possible that each of us may experience the Atonement in different ways from each other, and also in different ways at different stages of our life. This is not to say that the Atonement is a thing that changes; but rather we are all different from one another, and we ourselves change throughout our life. If the Atonement occurs when we become one with God, then it may yield different results based upon the differences that we bring to that divine combination.
For example, I am somewhat of an amateur magician. When I was 12, I used to do a magic trick that involved pouring water into several glasses of water. Magically, the clear water changed color when it was poured into the glass. And not only that, but the water turned a different color in each glass.
Of course, this calls to mind Jesus’ miraculous changing of water into wine.
I do not know how Jesus performed that miracle, but the explanation in my case was rather simple. Prior to performing the trick, I had placed a small tablet of food coloring in the bottom of each glass, a different color for each glass.
So when I poured the water, it mixed with the different food color tablet in each glass, producing in one a beautiful green, in another a beautiful blue, and in another a beautiful red, and so on.
The water remained the same, as does the Atonement. It was the constant factor in the minor miracle I performed. It was the food color tablet that was different, and perhaps the food color represents the differences we bring to the equation of the Atonement; all of them different, and yet all of them combining with the clear water of the Atonement to produce a wonderful rainbow of color.
Now it seems I am back to my rainbow analogy. But perhaps the Atonement is not the rainbow that we try to catch, but the rainbow that we become; all of us, experiencing the Atonement in different ways, and coming together to form a rainbow of indescribable beauty, with Jesus in our midst. Perhaps this is the “rainbow connection” a little frog once sang about. Perhaps we are the gospel version of the “rainbow coalition.”
IX. Conclusion
And perhaps one of the Atonement analogies Jesus used of himself is apropos here: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:14).
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
__________________
All the Best!
--Consiglieri
But fools and consiglieris rushing in where angels fear to tread, here goes.
So you know, this was also the last time I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting.
______________________
THE MYSTERY OF THE ATONEMENT
I. Introduction
I was asked to speak for 10-15 minutes on the subject of the Atonement. My first thought was, “Heck, I’ve spent 30-years trying to understand the Atonement and still haven’t succeeded.” And besides, who can explain the Atonement in 10-15 minutes, anyway?
Then I was told I might want to focus my comments on how a father teaches his family about the Atonement. That was when I knew I could talk on that subject for even less than 10 minutes. I started racking my brain, trying to think of times I had talked to my family about the Atonement. I was having a tough time coming up with anything.
But as my wife will tell you, I have a horrible memory, so I thought maybe my family would remember some stellar examples of my teaching them about the Atonement that I had forgotten.
Wednesday evening we were all sitting down to dinner. My wife was there, our 12-year old daughter, and two older children who came home from college for Thanksgiving. I told them I had a very important question to ask them; that I had been given the assignment to speak in sacrament meeting about how a father teaches his family about the Atonement; and I wanted to know if they could remember instances of how I had taught them about this important gospel subject.
After an uncomfortable pause, my 20-year old daughter offered, “Well, you sent us to church every week.”
She made it sound like I stood in the driveway in my bathrobe waving good-bye to them.
I said, “I am the worst father in the world.”
I felt like a total loser.
But as I thought about it some more, something important came to me, “The Atonement is meant for total losers.”
Because left to our own devices, all of us come short of the glory of God. Apart from the Atonement, no matter how hard we may try personally, we miss the mark of returning to our Heavenly Father. And you can’t lose more totally than that!
II. Understanding the Atonement—Mission Impossible?
As I said, I have spent 30-years trying to understand the Atonement and still haven’t succeeded. But let me share with you some thoughts about what I have learned regarding this supremely important subject.
The Atonement is so amazing that it beggars belief; so vast that it defies description.
As Stephen Robinson, BYU religion professor put it, the closer we come to the heart of the gospel manifest in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the fuzzier our thinking becomes. In order to correct this problem, Stephen Robinson wrote a book about the subject, Believing Christ, which is a wonderful book, dealing with the grace of God as manifest in the Atonement. He then wrote a second book, a sequel, dealing with the other side of the Atonement, that being what we have to do to qualify for the Atonement. Ironically, the second book ended up dismantling pretty much everything he said in the first book.
And this is one of the problems with trying to understand the Atonement on a purely intellectual level. It seems that it cannot be done. And it isn’t for want of trying. The most brilliant people on earth have been trying for about 2,000 years and so far have managed only to fail spectacularly.
III. Things you wouldn’t understand, things you couldn’t understand, and things you shouldn’t understand
This is not a recent phenomenon. For example, there are some aspects of the gospel that are not explained in the Book of Mormon. These can be divided into two categories. Mormon tells us that there are some things that Jesus taught the Nephites that he was forbidden to write.
But importantly, there is second category of things that Mormon tells us “cannot” be written. There is something about these teachings that is “ineffable,” that defies the ability of language to express them. I think the Atonement is one of these subjects. When we discuss the Atonement, we enter the Holy of Holies, and in approaching so near to God, we encounter beauty and glory inexpressible.
IV. Parables and Models
This is not to say that we cannot intellectually understand and teach many important aspects of the Atonement; that it was accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of the living God; that it was provided freely and out of love; that without the Atonement we would all be doomed forever; that there is no salvation for any of us apart from the Atonement; and that there is no other way to heaven than through the Atonement provided by the Savior.
These are all vital aspects of the Atonement, but they fail to fully explain how the Atonement works to bring about our salvation.
Because mere language is insufficient to express the fullness of the Atonement, inspired people have long attempted to use poetic forms to capture its meaning. Often, parables and models are employed. Such parables include the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and Boyd K. Packer’s more recent parable of the Mediator. All of these parables are important in that they illustrate profound aspects of the Atonement. But at some point, each of these parables breaks down in capturing the Atonement in its totality. None of them is completely satisfactory. Indeed, the fact that multiple parables are employed suggests that none of them is completely satisfactory.
The same can be said of “models” of the Atonement. The New Testament is full of different models of the Atonement. There is the model of a gift that is freely and lovingly given that we must receive. There is the model of our being in debt and in debtor’s prison and Jesus paying our ransom. There is the model of our being a slave and Jesus setting us free. There is the model of Jesus being a sacrificial substitute to mercifully appease the demands of justice. As with parables, all of these “models” illustrate important and profound aspects of the Atonement. But at some point, each of these models breaks down.
This is not just an ancient exercise, but something that continues to this day. I have already mentioned Boyd K. Packer’s parable of the Mediator. Some of you may know the works of Cleon Skousen. He is a master scriptorian, and because he, too, felt the various parables and models of the Atonement were insufficient, he spent many, many years, on his personal quest for the meaning of the Atonement. He came up with a new theory, and it is set forth in his paper, A Personal Search for the Meaning of the Atonement, which is also a popular and famous talk on tape.
V. How can we come to understand the Atonement?
Well, with the most brilliant minds spending 2,000 years trying to explain the Atonement and still not succeeding, is it just possible that the Atonement is something that really cannot be expressed in words? But if it can’t be expressed in words, does that mean it cannot be understood? I think that the Atonement can be understood, but in order to explain how, I have to talk about two types of learning.
There are many subjects that we learn by reading books or hearing lectures or through personal study; subjects such as math and physics and chemistry.
But there is another group of subjects that absolutely cannot be learned from books and lectures and study; subjects such as dance and singing and martial arts. Let me take dancing as a case in point. I choose dance because, although you might find this hard to believe, I majored in dance in college. I do not mean ballroom dance, but performance dance: Ballet, jazz, modern, tap.
Now, you can go check books out of the library about ballet and you can learn a lot ABOUT ballet from reading those books. But (and this is important) you can memorize every item in every book written about the ballet and you still will not have learned how to dance.
There is only one way to learn how to dance, and that is by dancing.
There are some subjects that we learn with our minds, such as math. There are some subjects that we learn with our bodies, such as ballet. May I suggest that the Atonement is a subject that we learn with our souls? And perhaps that, metaphorically speaking, our souls learn the Atonement through dancing with God?
VI. “Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn in no other”
We can only learn the Atonement experientially. By that I mean it is something that we have to experience personally. Nobody else can experience it for us and then tell us what it is like. That doesn’t work. We have to experience it for ourselves; just as the Nephites went forward one by one and felt the prints of the nails of the resurrected Savior, and each individually experienced Him.
The idea of learning through experience is not foreign to the gospel; in fact we find it in the other primary cornerstone of the plan of salvation; in the fall of Adam and Eve. Good and evil was not something that Adam and Eve could learn in a classroom. It was something they had to experience for themselves. “If they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet.” (D&C 29:39). As Alma put it, we have to plant the seed so they we can know that the seed is good. (Alma 32:33). As the Lord said to Joseph Smith about his trials, “Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give the experience, and shall be for thy good.” (D&C 122:7).
Perhaps the Atonement is like a rainbow in that the more we pursue understanding it with our minds alone, the more it recedes from us.
Perhaps the Atonement is like the sun, which we cannot see by direct observation, yet we can feel its warmth and experience its light.
Perhaps the Atonement is like a faint star on a dark night which we see best by looking a little to the side.
Perhaps the Atonement is like a bumblebee, that the most brilliant scientific minds in the world cannot explain how it is able to fly . . . and yet it flies. (And here it may be fitting that the emblem of the state of Utah is the beehive; I like to think those are honeybees in that hive.)
Perhaps the Atonement is what Nephi was talking about when he said, “I do not know the meaning of all things, but I know that God loveth his children.” (1 Nephi 11:17 paraphrase).
Perhaps the Atonement is one of those things about which Paul said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Cor. 2:9-10).
And as Adam and Eve had to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge to learn by experience the good from the evil, perhaps we have to partake of that other tree, the tree of life, in order to experience for ourselves the Atonement.
VII. Becoming one with God
It is widely understood in the church that the word “Atonement” literally means at-one-ment. It is the act of becoming one with God.
And so perhaps the Atonement is understood by coming into contact with God; by becoming one with him; by being, as Mormon puts it, “clasped in the arms of Jesus.” (Mormon 5:11) As Nephi puts it, “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.” (2 Nephi 1:15) Or as Nephi puts it in his psalm, “O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of they righteousness!” (2 Nephi 4:33).
VIII. Understanding the Atonement in different ways
I also think it is possible that each of us may experience the Atonement in different ways from each other, and also in different ways at different stages of our life. This is not to say that the Atonement is a thing that changes; but rather we are all different from one another, and we ourselves change throughout our life. If the Atonement occurs when we become one with God, then it may yield different results based upon the differences that we bring to that divine combination.
For example, I am somewhat of an amateur magician. When I was 12, I used to do a magic trick that involved pouring water into several glasses of water. Magically, the clear water changed color when it was poured into the glass. And not only that, but the water turned a different color in each glass.
Of course, this calls to mind Jesus’ miraculous changing of water into wine.
I do not know how Jesus performed that miracle, but the explanation in my case was rather simple. Prior to performing the trick, I had placed a small tablet of food coloring in the bottom of each glass, a different color for each glass.
So when I poured the water, it mixed with the different food color tablet in each glass, producing in one a beautiful green, in another a beautiful blue, and in another a beautiful red, and so on.
The water remained the same, as does the Atonement. It was the constant factor in the minor miracle I performed. It was the food color tablet that was different, and perhaps the food color represents the differences we bring to the equation of the Atonement; all of them different, and yet all of them combining with the clear water of the Atonement to produce a wonderful rainbow of color.
Now it seems I am back to my rainbow analogy. But perhaps the Atonement is not the rainbow that we try to catch, but the rainbow that we become; all of us, experiencing the Atonement in different ways, and coming together to form a rainbow of indescribable beauty, with Jesus in our midst. Perhaps this is the “rainbow connection” a little frog once sang about. Perhaps we are the gospel version of the “rainbow coalition.”
IX. Conclusion
And perhaps one of the Atonement analogies Jesus used of himself is apropos here: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:14).
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
__________________
All the Best!
--Consiglieri
You prove yourself of the devil and anti-mormon every word you utter, because only the devil perverts facts to make their case.--ldsfaqs (6-24-13)
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_consiglieri
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 6186
- Joined: Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:47 pm
Re: John 3:61
I apologize for killing the thread by posting the entirety of my sacrament meeting talk . . .
You prove yourself of the devil and anti-mormon every word you utter, because only the devil perverts facts to make their case.--ldsfaqs (6-24-13)
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_harmony
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 18195
- Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:35 am
Re: John 3:61
Could you come speak in my ward? I might actually go to church, if that was going to happen (and I'd know... I'm the bulletin lady)!
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
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_CaliforniaKid
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 4247
- Joined: Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:47 am
Re: John 3:61
You didn't kill the thread, consig. I just have family in town this weekend.
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_huckelberry
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 4559
- Joined: Wed Dec 27, 2006 2:29 am
Re: John 3:61
CaliforniaKid wrote:For God so loved the world that he sacrificed his only begotten son in a bloody spectacle in order to propitiate his own anger toward you and to be able to associate with you without tarnishing his pristine righteous image. Therefore, give thanks.
I think to have been clearer in my comments I could have started by stating that the objective substitutionary atonement is an understanding I hold to be true. I see that view is referenced in this mock scripture but given what is to my view a flawed coloration or implication. I believe it was undertaken in love serving Gods committed purpose of bringing good out of his creation.
Now I realize that to say it serves that purpose is easier than explaining the fundamental mechanics. I sympathize with Consigliera caution with claiming to have come to an understanding. Yet the reflection on what partial limited understanding I can find is direction for my heart.