Someone shared this brief video on the Trinity with me and I think it's pretty good, and might even be helpful for our Muslim fellow monotheists:
Cc: @ฉันเป็นมุสลิม
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These are definitions from the minds of men, not of God. This is, of course, my own personal testimony which I will share below.
“In contrast to the belief that God is an incomprehensible and unknowable mystery is the truth that the nature of God and our relationship to Him is knowable and is the key to everything else in our doctrine. The Bible records Jesus’s great Intercessory Prayer, where He declared that “this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).”
God the Father and his son Jesus Christ are just as separate as you and I are.
The development of the Trinity was a politcal seizure of power and control. Mystifying God and his nature, and in extension our nature and true relationship to him allowed the powers that be to further instill the idea that royalty and the like were men divinely appointed to rule over the inferior masses.
In truth? All men and women are indeed created equal. We are all literal children of our Father in Heaven. This plain and precious truth defies the elite ruling class and their ever present agenda to subjugate all of mankind.
“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us” (D&C 130:22).
“Any person that had seen the heavens opened knows that there are three personages in the heavens who hold the keys of power, and one presides over all. …
“… These personages … are called God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the Witness or Testator.
“[It is] the province of the Father to preside as the Chief or President, Jesus as the Mediator, and the Holy Ghost as the Testator or Witness.”
—Joseph Smith
Questions like “Where did we come from?” “Why are we here?” and “Where are we going?” are answered in what the scriptures call the “plan of salvation,” the “great plan of happiness,” or the “plan of redemption” (Alma 42:5, 8, 11). The gospel of Jesus Christ is central to this plan.
As spirit children of God, in an existence prior to mortality, we desired a destiny of eternal life but had progressed as far as we could without a mortal experience in a physical body.
To provide that opportunity, our Heavenly Father presided over the Creation of this world, where, deprived of our memory of what preceded our mortal birth, we could prove our willingness to keep His commandments and experience and grow through the other challenges of mortal life.
But in the course of that mortal experience, and as a result of the Fall of our first parents, we would suffer spiritual death by being cut off from the presence of God, be soiled by sin, and become subject to physical death. The Father’s plan anticipated and provided ways to overcome all of those barriers.
In concluding his second letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul makes this almost offhand reference to the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion [or fellowship] of the Holy Ghost, be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).
This biblical scripture represents the Godhead and references the all-defining and motivating love of God the Father, the merciful and saving mission of Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.
It all begins with God the Father. While we know comparatively little about Him, what we know is decisive in understanding His supreme position, our relationship to Him, and His superintending role in the plan of salvation, the Creation, and all else that followed.
As Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote just before his death: “In the ultimate and final sense of the word, there is only one true and living God. He is the Father, the Almighty Elohim, the Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the universe.” He is the God and Father of Jesus Christ, as well as of all of us.
President David O. McKay taught that “the first fundamental truth advocated by Jesus Christ was this, that behind, above and over all there is God the Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”
Jesus spoke often of his Father. His words were never meant to conflate his being with that of his Father’s.
What we know of the nature of God the Father is mostly what we can learn from the ministry and teachings of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has taught, one of the paramount purposes of Jesus’s ministry was to reveal to mortals “what God our Eternal Father is like, … to reveal and make personal to us the true nature of His Father, our Father in Heaven.” The Bible contains an apostolic witness that Jesus was “the express image” of His Father’s person (Hebrews 1:3), which merely elaborates Jesus’s own teaching that “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).
God the Father is the Father of our spirits. We are His children. He loves us, and all that He does is for our eternal benefit. He is the author of the plan of salvation, and it is by His power that His plan achieves its purposes for the ultimate glory of His children.
To mortals, the most visible member of the Godhead is Jesus Christ. A great doctrinal statement by the First Presidency in 1909 declares Him to be “the firstborn among all the sons of God—the first begotten in the spirit, and the only begotten in the flesh.” The Son, the greatest of all, was chosen by the Father to carry out the Father’s plan—to exercise the Father’s power to create worlds without number (see Moses 1:33) and to save the children of God from death by His Resurrection and from sin by His Atonement. This supernal sacrifice is truly called “the central act of all human history.”
On those unique and sacred occasions when God the Father personally introduced the Son, He has said, “This is my beloved Son: hear him” (Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35; see also 3 Nephi 11:7; Joseph Smith—History 1:17). Thus, it is Jesus Christ, Jehovah, the Lord God of Israel, who speaks to and through the prophets. So it is that when Jesus appeared to the Nephites after His Resurrection, He introduced Himself as “the God of the whole earth” (3 Nephi 11:14). So it is that Jesus often speaks to the prophets of the Book of Mormon and to the Latter-day Saints as “the Father and the Son,” a title explained in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve’s inspired doctrinal exposition just 100 years ago.
—Elder Dallin H Oaks
Jesus Christ is the “father of this earth” as he organized it with God the Father’s permission. He is the Son because he is the only literal mortal son of God the Father.
I could say so much more, but this is good to start.
Things for you to consider, friend. God speed!
#jesus
#trinity
There's no need for the Trinity. It was an error. Religious people are just too prideful to admit that they are supporting an error.
God is not limited. No definition can define him. Calling him "him" is equally nonsense. "It" is closer in a wat, but still wrong. Even if you could fully appreciate three facets of the object you call God, there aew still infinite unexplored facets.
Some people experience the Holy Spirit as a feminine entity. Some people experience some lesser power helping and healing them and assume it's the Holy Spirit - which it is and isn't. God is all in all.
The Father and the Son are one. The holy spirit is one too, but you experience it as transmission of grace, or directed grace, but that's not to say its in specific locations - its in all locations.
Frankly, most people should just quit this Trinity nonsense. I don't know how to make it understandable to anyone who doesn't already get it. The clergy of the false church certainly didn't get it. I don't understand how they can receive the good news and then say, "gee, we should go kill all those people who don't agree with our definitions" - but they did.
The Trinity is an idol. Its a perpetual festering wound in the body of Christianity.
Thank you for sharing. I've never delved too deeply into LDS teachings. My first thought was how do you know that the quotes and thoughts that you've shared are not mere definitions from the minds of men? Aren't Joseph Smith and all those Elders and Presidents men?
Do you believe in one God, as Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote that he did, per your quote? Is the Father God, is Jesus God, and is the Holy Spirit God? Or do you not consider Jesus and the Holy Spirit to also be God? Or do you believe that they are three gods? I've heard that Mormons believe that we can all become gods; is that correct? If so, doesn't that mean Mormons are polytheists?
I'm not trying to be argumentative, just seeking understanding. Hear, O Israel!
i just saw you use the word "Elohim" and i just wanted to point out that the hebrew word means "bright ones" and -im is a plural modifier.
there is remnants of this understanding that "the Godhead" is a plurality, and it's my position that it refers to the angels, who are his messengers, and that the word angel is ancient greek for messenger, messiah is hebrew, and christ is another variant, with an extra nuance, but foundationally is about bringing a message from God.
and that just as you see depicted in all the icons of saints, the halo around their head is a visual motif that signals that the person has risen to a state of angelhood, as their message was needed and valued by those who celebrate them.
when you keep this in mind, and consider the many contexts in which sainthood, enlightnenment and similar concepts are universal across all religions, and in most cases, like christianity, the organised establishment has sought to occult it and make it into little known esoteric theory, like the gnostics or the kabalists, the hermeticists, the zen buddhists, and numerous other variants of the same essential esoteric wisdom. even Taoism, despite the character of its most famous book the Tao Te Ching, is polluted with this "polytheist" stuff, the taoist equivalent of Mary is Quan Yin, the "goddess of love", and also in esoteric shinto and taoism, and hinduism, many grimoires of spiritual entities, demons, sages, and so on.
Someone once told me that the halos around the heads of Jesus and the saints in paintings and icons indicates that they were aliens. Just like astronauts wear a bubble-helmet around their heads. 😄
i think i literally had that thought at first before someone explained it to me. especially the orthodox style icons.
could actually be more correct than we realise. not that they are aliens, but that what we think are aliens, are more enlightened versions of ourselves, our species, but space travellers.
oh yeah, reminds me too, of the "space ships" on some orthodox church ceiling.
The church you're referring to is Dobarsko Church in Bulgaria, built in 1614
2. This Orthodox church features a distinctive fresco called The Transfiguration in its central dome, which depicts Christ "ready for takeoff in a spacecraft"
2. The church also contains other unique elements, including frescoes of the twelve apostles painted full-length