Bensalem

Members
  • Posts

    408
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Bensalem's Achievements

  1. Okay, just wondering. In answer to your question, I believe you can be a missionary. After baptism you will receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and the priesthood of Christ will be made available to you. All missionaries hold the Melchizedek priesthood. This is the same priesthood the Apostles had and you will have to enter a Temple to receive the ordinances. You can also receive this priesthood and not serve a mission. After all this and if you still wish to serve Christ as a missionary, you will have to speak to your Bishop and submit some paperwork to Utah. All missions are decided in Utah by the prophets and apostles of the Church. Good luck with your conversion and with the promise of baptism the saints welcome you to Israel.
  2. I'm curious as to why you want to serve a mission.
  3. I'm sure it has all been spoken of before and maybe Blake Ostler's book addresses this, but I don't see how foreknowledge by a Godly third party removes my free will. The best argument I have heard against the concept of free will comes from atheists who ask, "Is it really free will if the wrong decision results in a sure damnation." To which I reply, "Life in Christ remains a choice and a means to avoid damnation." Without the Law of Accountability established in Noah, we are no better than the animals in His creation. It seems clear that our human existence is of a higher order or calling than that of the animal kingdom, yet we are free to deny that our being of this higher order is a gift from God. He gave us a life and a spirit like His own and told us we are heirs to a Godly Kingdom, yet we are free to live this mortality no more or better than animals do. Without the pending Judgment of God we have no promise of attaining His Glory. The animals are not judged and they have no promise of Godhood. If anyone wishes to ignore these truths, they are free to do so. But the promise is withdrawn; and we attain only that which our choices allow.
  4. Here's what I know of the subject. Everything that exists must be material, it must be made of matter...spirits included. An immaterial spirit cannot exist. To exist means to be made of substance or matter. Christ said He was the Light and the Resurrection. After this life we will be resurrected in light and light has substance. Visible light is made of photons and photons have mass. There are no forms of energy that exist in the absence of mass. Gravity is a form of energy which cannot be seen, yet it cannot exist without matter. Gravity is a byproduct of matter even as the spirit is. Pre-resurrected and pre-mortal spirits (angels) have shown themselves to man. They are manifested in light, yet are not resurrected. Their substance is different than a resurrected being, but both are material; they both exist in matter. Likewise, our human bodies are tabernacles of substance in which our spirits live. Where is the spirit that once was life? Mortal death is the absence of our life spirit. The body dies, not the spirit. Hence Christ taught that we are eternal...that the spirit continues; and that the spirit proceeded our mortal life. How can something come of nothing? If spirits are immaterial, how can they come to live in us? How can the Spirit of Christ live in us if spirit is immaterial? You must at least admit that Christ is material, that the Holy Ghost is real. Our doctrine, the LDS teachings, come from prophets who have seen and interacted with both resurrected beings (the Father and the Son) and spiritual beings (the Holy Ghost) and have declared that both are material. The "Good News" continues to be broadcast in and through the Church and Her saints which live in revelation from Christ. So much (too much) of Christianity is nothing more than philosophy etched in stone. God lives and He has shown Himself to His saints.
  5. No more than male purity is! The law of chastity in the LDS Church is taught in equal portions to both males and females in the Church. So too do nature's demands tug equally. And the spiritual consequences of impurity by either sex remains the same; namely, we become separated from God as the Holy Ghost can no longer abide in us. The remedy for lack of chastity is also the same for either of the sexes. Repentance through Christ. The only difference that I see is that in the natural world the women carries the larger burden of condemnation by society. And that the woman is less able to claim purity if her actions result in pregnancy. In an increasingly promiscuous world, the advent of female birth-control, availability of abortion, and DNA paternity testing has only leveled the field of plausible denial of impure sexual conduct by both male and female participants. It use to be that impure acts would lead to the corrective act of marriage, but even this is becoming more scarce. The bottom line is that God holds us all equally accountable for such impure acts.
  6. I'm not ready to give up on the notion of an all knowing God; and I don't believe the reality of us living in a world with free agency requires that I do. Did I miss the argument that these two concepts cannot coexist?
  7. I stay because I have a testimony (witness from the Holy Ghost) that the LDS Church is the restored church of Christ. This personal revelation allowed me to know that Christ lives and that He still speaks to man (since He spoke to me). And because the LDS Church came by way of revelation to Joseph Smith, it was a small step of faith to come to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I have never thought of leaving because I would than be abandoning the Truth.
  8. That's fine; I was thinking of the following post. Please follow Seminarysnoozer's link.
  9. It actually came from 'Seminarysnoozer'. I'll try to track it down.
  10. Thank you for your input.Good luck with your studies.
  11. I was only providing you the LDS justification for the idea that Jesus must be married. Many of the points you made, I have made also in the course of this discussion. Likewise, LDS thought is that marriage does not occur after the resurrection because of the parable of the childless woman and the seven brothers (Matthew 22:28-32), (Mark 12:23-27), and (Luke 20:33-39). I do not agree with this restriction, but the general authorities of the church do. I'm just providing the information, not arguing the position.
  12. But my daughter's work does have eternal consequences. Noah's covenant of accountability (Genesis 9:5) makes the promise that we shall be judged by our fellow man and also the animals may be witness for or against us. Since Christ taught that the good (or evil) we do unto the poor is done unto Him, it is clear that my daughter's good service is done unto Christ. By NT standards her work is counted in her favor. As for Cain, it is true that his offering was not in alignment with the symbolism of the atonement, thereby, placing his faith in question. But his larger sin was jealousy, which our Lord warned him of, and which eventually led to the murder of his brother Abel.
  13. No, it doesn't exist. The only thing we have is latter-day revelation that states marriage is required in order to attain the highest exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Therefore, Jesus must be married.
  14. AND What is the difference between promising a wife and promising exaltation, knowing that a wife is required for exaltation? Jesus must have known that marriage was required. So whether he prays for a wife or prays to confirm his exaltation, when the promise is given, it all comes to the same thing...he shall be married (he shall have a wife), his exaltation is assured. The Holy Spirit of Promise (aka, the Holy Ghost) is not limited to affirmation of covenants; the promise can be manifested in any "contract, bond, obligation, oath, vow, performance, connection, association, or expectation." (Bruce R. McConkie) So the expectation (prayer) may have been confirmed before the covenant was made. Btw, a covenant is only a promise connected to a future blessing. So there is nothing wrong in my sequence of events: Prayer leads to confirmation, covenants (promises) are made and blessings are offered, and the fulfillment comes from God in honor of his promised blessing. Jesus had a direct line to the Father; priesthood-to-priesthood. There was no Melchizedek priesthood on earth at that time except Jesus (and later the apostles). So the Jewish priesthood could not have officiated Jesus' celestial marriage as required by D&C today in the latter-day Temples. Isn't Jesus turning to the Father in covenant the same as us turning to the LDS priesthood in the latter-days? The goal is the same, our wish and pray is to be sealed in heaven. The blessing is only fulfilled after (and if) we die in a state of worthiness. The sealing power we maintain in the LDS Church is the same as God and Christ. Its absent from the Jewish landscape does not limit God from officiating a marriage by his own power.
  15. From Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie: Hell is "that part of the spirit world inhabited by wicked spirits..." which "will have an end. As John saw when he wrote, "death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." (Rev. 20:13) Then, "death and hell were cast into the lake of fire." (Rev. 20:14)