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Home » The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints » LDS Deep Doctrine » Identity of the Holy Ghost
Re: Identity of the Holy Ghost [message #2563 is a reply to message #2556] Tue, 11 June 2013 10:11 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
RedMint is currently offline  RedMint
Messages: 6
Registered: June 2013
Location: SLC, Utah
Junior Member
Thank you Contemplator! You have literally brought tears to me eyes that you would take the time to give serious reply to my rantings and I do indeed send you my love. A couple things you pointed out have particularly stood out to me. First, as many times as I might have read section 121, I have for some reason never really noticed that particular verse. Maybe that's because we spend so much time teaching out of manuals these days rather than directly from the scriptures, and our attention is carefully directed to just specific verses and specific interpretations. In fact, I remember about a year after my mission that my Bishop's wife rounded up all of the teachers for a special meeting and gave us instruction that we were to teach nothing except exactly what was written in the teaching manuals; nothing more and nothing less. I remember that we were all giving each other perplexed sideways glances, but no one said anything.

The second shocker you brought to me was about the Holy Ghost never actually being mentioned in the temple ceremony. I have to admit that I have never thought about that one before. What's up with that? I must definitely give some deep pondering time to that one. A few months ago someone gave me a copy of Elliason's book about getting your C&E. It was not until that book that I realized that we liked to talk a lot about the restoration of the gospel, but amazingly there seemed no clear consensus as to what the gospel actually was! I did my own personal research project in which I asked twenty of the best, most experienced members that I knew that simple question: what is the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was totally shocked to find no consensus; the answers were just all over the map. Some would go on for a very long time without taking a breath, as if hunting for a good answer, laying out the entire plan of salvation, marching out the ten tribes and putting them back again, and including the sealed book portions and brother of Jared's undisclosed experience and all the records in the hill cumorah and degrees of glory and on and on and on. I don't recall anyone just quoting D&C 39:6 or the various similar definitions in 3 Nephi that the Lord gave to the ancient inhabitants. I never interrupted or offered my opinion in these interviews. I never mentioned that the Lord has consistently defined the gospel as just the preparation for and receiving of this thing we are calling the Holy Ghost. However, if I asked the question a little differently such as, What are the first principles and ordinance of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then there was always a total instant consensus. It seems we have been programmed very well. I decided to take my personal research project and extend it to non-members of various descriptions to see what I got. I found that the responses were always something along the line that the gospel is the good news that: and then a lot of jesus words strung together that had no meaning because it was nothing that you could actually act upon or do anything with, and left you flat footed not knowing how to proceed. However, I did get a lot of free pamphlets.

I read Lectures on Faith 5 as you suggested and read it several times but found it quite confusing. There was a lot about oneness in there. And of course in any classroom setting there is always that guy that jumps to his feet at the mention of oneness and spouts, One in Purpose only! as if the Lord can't speak for himself and aren't we fortunate that guy is there to help the Lord speak understandably to us. The lecture material is very dense but I think Joseph is clearly telling us something of mighty importance there that I do not yet clearly comprehend, but I intend to pursue.

Then there was the Denver Snuffer blogs. Who is that guy??? I've never heard of him before, but I really liked what he was saying, or I should say, asking. He made such a good point that we as members largely do not think about the terms we use or question what they actually mean. We have a tendency to just exchange cliches, smile knowingly at each other and then head home in haste for that sunday dinner. I have so much to think about and research now.

I once was asked to sub as a gospel doctrine teacher. For that class I purposely stuck very tightly to the lesson material, but I purposely used unfamiliar terms and synonyms in everything I said. One brother finally jumped to his feet and told the class that I was teaching the devil's doctrine and that his brother-in-law used to talk like I was and now he is an apostate! I guess all I can say from that experience is that we do not like to be moved out of our comfort zone of familiarity and made to think about what we are saying. Well, I guess that's about all I have to say. I want to understand the Holy Ghost and fully experience this great gift because the Lord has gone to an awful lot of trouble to establish all the infrastructure and make all the sacrifices necessary just so we can experience this unspeakable gift, and it distresses me greatly that we have taken it so lightly and made it a thing of naught instead as the very core of the gospel.

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