As promised, my little attempt at making Sunstone into something else. Hoping it is worth reading…
Sunstone Sermon
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modern + ancient
modern + ancient
As promised, my little attempt at making Sunstone into something else. Hoping it is worth reading…
Comments are closed.
these mystry woods
I’m glad for your soul, and for bringing a person and thought to the gospel.
Daymon
Are you saying that Ahman is Jesus, who is also the very Eternal Father who created Adam, the Man who sits yonder and is our Heavenly Father, or are you saying the same Adam is Ahman and as the father of Jesus in the flesh, is the Greatest of them all, greater even than Jesus?
Neither. I’m saying “Ahman” is a name for Adam, who is called “the father” by Jesus, who is himself “the son of God” only because he received “the fullness of truth and light” from Adam; although, in truth, Jesus is the eternal father spoken of in the BoM. One sentence theology…In other writings I explain this more carefully than what I’ve given in the Sunstone talk.
Yes, you are saying exactly what i meant, and what I thought you are saying. Except, your penchant for words is far more vast and at times confusing. And thats a complimentary statement.
So, in easier terms:
The Great and Eternal Father who is the Greatest of all, creates uncountable universes. He is perfect and cares about only one thing: bringing joy to His living creations. During this eternal round, He creates Adam a.k.a. Ahman, A.K.A Michael, and lets Adam along with Lucifer or Satan (perhaps they’re two different beings, or not) and a host of others, to reorganize this space, that may have been used for other peoples thousands or millions of millenia ago, for the current group that is now here- us.
In doing so, the Great and Eternal One introduces deat as a merciful act to limit suffering and decides to redeem those that love Him by taking on flesh and condescending by coming to earth as Jesus, subject to Adam, the Ancient of days, and thus the Great and Eternal Father becomes the Son. Adam having gone to heaven, was the earthly father of the human race, but being in heaven is now referred to as Heavenly Father. Jesus, the amazing judgement-free Greatest of All, does all this for no other reason but to raise up Adam to be a god of these mortals- us. Adam has the power, given by Jesus, to answer prayers and so miracles, thus being one with Jesus, but never being greater obviously.
This One, known as Jesus, continues on in His eyernal round doing the same for others like Adam, both in future generations upon this earth, and also for the gazillions of the other worlds Moses was told did not concern him, yet were real and co-exist is other space and times. Perhaps He is known as Jesus for this current group and has different names for others.
if this is what you are sayin, i am amazed, as this is what i strongly believe. But if not, go ahead and shatter my paradigm. I’m ready.
How was your Sunstone talk received?
It gave me some ideas.
This morning on my facebook, a friend mentioned a new online system for submitting tithing payments. He thought that, since payments can now be submitted electronically, the annual “tithing settlement” meeting ought to be done online also. What if one could declare one’s tithe-payer status simply by clicking on a checkbox? Following this suggestion, he ended with, “Come on, let’s pray for this change to follow online payments!”
Gods and levers! It’s on my mind now. Sometimes I think we imagine a god who is a kind of lever, or machine. The machine is powered by “prayer” as if there were no prayers at all, only a kind of electricity that can be prayed out. The electricity goes up to the god, who is a sort of mechanical Turk that, when it receives just the right current, can be made to move in the requested manner. This power then gets transformed into something called “priesthood,” which descends back down into other Turks that leverage even lesser Turks who implement system programming changes through a series of motions. This allows people to click on checkboxes. That’s how the Kingdom rolls forward.
My old bishop would say, “you know the church is true, because it works.” It works! He seemed to be wonderfully impressed that anything got done at all, what with the number of very specific jobs to fill with so many untrained and unwilling volunteers to fill them. How could “it work,” even just a little bit, unless it were true?
I was in a club of model ship builders once, and we did things. It worked. We had no training on what a model builders club should be, what its various jobs were… nobody to boss us or use us as leverage. No dues, even. It got into its own rhythm, it was organized. Self-organized. We didn’t have a proper leader calling the shots, although there were the ones we looked up to because they had built the best ships. They imparted wisdom and showed us things. They didn’t manage us, though, or tell us what we should do. We’d sometimes start projects together, or find a new venue if the old one stopped being convenient. No assignments were made, but still plenty of content got discussed and lectured about. We didn’t have to pray to any gods to make it happen. We could recognize what was needed, and then do things by ourselves. Nobody was concerned if the club was true or not, or about orthodoxy; but we all knew it was good, and that’s why we were there. We didn’t even need to affirm: “I know the club is good!” Or true, or whatever. It went without saying; an axiom that everyone sensed already. It would have been awkward if someone had to say that. Even though there was no Jesus-talk, it still seemed a better and a holier church than the one that vests itself with authority and tells me about how attendance at inane meetings (all of them!) is a duty and a point of personal worthiness, or else there will be penalties to pay.
Anyway, I congratulate you on extracting a gospel from Alma, instead of an economy. Contrary to what I believed, perhaps Alma really isn’t like that LDS bishop who separates himself from Corianton by a manager’s desk, measuring behaviors on official worthiness scales and pronouncing penalties for Corianton to fear, should certain accounts not come into balance. Instead, maybe Alma is like the old guy at my ship model club, who was at Normandy where he had the image of ships burned into his mind. He could reproduce them in exquisite detail, in miniature; and he became a bearer of their signs– signs recognized years later by others interested in making ship models. Intelligence is recognition, maybe; So Alma bore signs of true things instead of rules and performances. If Corianton could recognize what Alma recognized, he would already know what to do, all by himself.
I admit, I never liked the Alma-Corianton story very much, it having been “kidnapped and made to say absurd things.” I’ve always viewed it in the darkness of the economy of sin. Mercy can’t rob justice. I.e.: *Someone* has got to pay! There are debts and payments enough to make atonement and redemption into banking terms– all of the dark, Satanic doctrine that people nevertheless get very weepy and grateful about. Then I got thinking that maybe those words about justice and mercy don’t mean what I had been told they meant. Maybe mercy doesn’t rob justice because it tempers justice. Nobody has to pay, and still justice is not robbed. If God, knowing our weakness, wanted to forgive us, he would forgive us.
Oh well. Just some ideas from reading your talk, and sorry for the long comment.
A man is talking.
Listener 1: This is too long.
Listener 2: It shall to the barber’s, with your beard.—Prithee, say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on. Come to Hecuba.
Great comments from the rabbi and mccomb.
I have a question for daymon in regards to these.
When we pray to the father, who exactly are we praying to then? Adam or Jesus?
And what does it really mean to ‘pray (or ‘ask) the father in my (jesus’) name?
That is a most confusing phrase that is too often breezed over.
Perhaps you could shed some light on this?
Regards
Boy, “pray to” is a tough one. I’d say we talk to Adam, and talking can take on any variety of sentences. Probably the talking that is most honest is only worth doing, here. Questions, requests, declarations, orders, etc. can all be done, of course. Yet more often than not, he seems interested in our requests for assistance to people other than ourselves, and happy to dispense knowledge to us, when inquired of (taking more than thought merely to ask, of course). What else one does is, you know, a matter of one’s relationship with Him. Can you talk to Jesus, too? I don’t see why not. Can you talk to John the Baptist? You could try, without any harm, I suppose.
Thank you Daymon
Could you back that up with scriptures, that all this prayer or conversing is with Adam? Adam is never mentioned in this regard. Outside of Brigham Youngs discourses that is.
Kind regards
I’m saying, you can talk to whomever you’d like, and call it prayer. I think “the Father” in the BoM is also called “Adam” elsewhere, being called a son of God, and also the father of humanity. Not only BY said this, and he attributed some version of it to Joseph Smith, and did not meet resistance from anyone other than Orson Pratt (who was not present, you’ll recall). If you have another candidate for “the Father” you are welcome to pray to this person, but I wonder how you’d back that up with magic writings, as well. Or do you mean, “the Father” is his name, and he is “the Father”? Well…
Actually, i agree with you a hundred percent. It is just so against the grain that it is hard to wrap my head around it.
It is a very logical conclusion that Adam is the Father. I’m just looking for scriptures to back it up, or something real from Joseph himself. Brigham is the last person i want to accept as a conduit of any truth.
I wonder if the secret stash of stuff at Church Headquarters includes anything concrete from JS on this. Or if that was one of the plain and precious truths removed from the Bible.
One more thought. If Adam is the Father, would he have a father, as JS said? Or would Adams father be the One who created him, Jesus?
I’d say Jesus, the One.
Hi Daymon
I have a question. If Adam is the Ancient of days, them who is the ‘one like the son of man’ that is brought to the Ancient and given kingdoms and dominions in Daniel 7:
13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.