Simple Inspiration

For school, I had a comprehensive final in Bio-Chemistry.  After months of intense studying, the date of the big test was finally here.  Throughout the semester, my wife and I had been praying that I’d have a clear mind on the day of the test and that I’d remember the things that I had studied.

My test strategy is to go through the whole test and answer all the questions, and then go through again and double check them as I transfer my answers to the scan-tron.    I came to a particular question where I was able to narrow it down to two answers.  Initially I had marked “e” being pretty confident with my choice.  But when I came upon it for the second time, I had a distinct thought, “No, that’s not correct”.  Then I suddenly remember the things I learned when I studied the topic earlier.   I changed my answer to “d” and I got the question right.

I thought about my experience throughout the day.  I know that God does answer our prayers.  We believe to receive answers for our questions, we must do our part.  We must study it in our minds and then ask God if it’s right.  If it is, we will feel that in our hearts and in our minds that it is right. (see D&C 9:8 & Moroni 10:3-5)

Does God still speak to us today?

First Vision

While preparing for a class, I came across this talk given by Hugh B. Brown, a member of the First Presidency of our church, who passed away some years ago.  It details a conversation that he had with a member of the British House of Commons and a former justice of the supreme court of Britain regarding our belief in the reality of modern-day prophets.

I will never understand why people reject the doctrine of God still being able to call prophets.  He has always done so and will continue to do so.  I firmly declare that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that there is a prophet today who speaks for God.  Prophets are essential to us knowing who God and Jesus Christ are—their characters and their teachings that will bring salvation.  You too can know of this truth if you will sincerely ask God in prayer with faith to act.

“[This man] called me on the phone one day and asked if I would meet him at his office and explain some phases of my faith. He said, “There is going to be a war [World War II], and you will have to return to America, and we may not meet again.”

When I went to his office, he said he had been intrigued by some things I had told about my church. He asked me if I would prepare a brief on Mormonism and discuss it with him as I would discuss a legal problem. He said, “You have told me that you believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that you believe that God the Father and Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him in vision.

“I cannot understand,” he said, “how a barrister and solicitor from Canada, a man trained in logic and evidence and unemotional cold fact, could accept such absurd statements. What you tell me about Joseph Smith seems fantastic, but I wish you would take three days at least to prepare a brief and permit me to examine it and question you on it.”

I suggested that, as I had been working on such a brief for more than 50 years, we proceed at once to have an examination for discovery, which is briefly a meeting of the opposing sides in a lawsuit where the plaintiff and defendant, with their attorneys, meet to examine each other’s claims and see whether they can find some area of agreement and thus save the time of the court later on.

I began by asking, “May I proceed, sir, on the assumption that you are a Christian?”

“I am.”

“I assume that you believe in the Bible—the Old and New Testaments?”

“I do!”

“Do you believe in prayer?”

“I do!”

“You say that my belief that God spoke to a man in this age is fantastic and absurd?”

“To me it is.”

“Do you believe that God ever did speak to anyone?”

“Certainly, all through the Bible we have evidence of that.”

“Did he speak to Adam?”

“Yes.”

“To Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and to others of the prophets?”

“I believe he spoke to each of them.”

“Do you believe that contact between God and man ceased when Jesus appeared on the earth?”

“Certainly not. Such communication reached its climax, its apex at that time.”

“Do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God?”

“He was.”

“Do you believe, sir, that after the resurrection of Christ, God ever spoke to any man?”

He thought for a moment and then said, “I remember one Saul of Tarsus who was going down to Damascus to persecute the saints and who had a vision, was stricken blind, in fact, and heard a voice.”

“Whose voice did he hear?”

“Well,” he said, “the voice said `I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.'”

“Do you believe that actually took place?”

“I do.”

“Then, my Lord”—that is the way we address judges in the British commonwealth—”my Lord, I am submitting to you in all seriousness that it was standard procedure in Bible times for God to talk to men.”

“I think I will admit that, but it stopped shortly after the first century of the Christian era.”

“Why do you think it stopped?”

“I can’t say.”

“You think that God hasn’t spoken since then?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“May I suggest some possible reasons why he has not spoken. Perhaps it is because he cannot. He has lost the power.”

He said, “Of course that would be blasphemous.”

“Well, then, if you don’t accept that, perhaps he doesn’t speak to men because he doesn’t love us anymore. He is no longer interested in the affairs of men.”

“No,” he said, “God loves all men, and he is no respecter of persons.”

“Well, then, if you don’t accept that he loves us, then the only other possible answer as I see it is that we don’t need him. We have made such rapid strides in education and science that we don’t need God any more.”

And then he said, and his voice trembled as he thought of impending war, “Mr. Brown, there never was a time in the history of the world when the voice of God was needed as it is needed now. Perhaps you can tell me why he doesn’t speak.”

My answer was, “He does speak, he has spoken; but men need faith to hear him.”

(President Hugh B. Brown, Conference Report, October 1967, Third Day—Morning Meeting 118.)

Scriptural Evidence of a Pre-Existence

Q: Can Mormons support their view of a pre-existence with God before being born on this earth…using scriptures only?

Ecclesiates 12:7 (italics added)  Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Jeremiah 1:5 (italics added)  Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Jude 1:6 (italics added)  And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgement of the great day.

Revelation 12:7-9 (italics added)  And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought againts the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.  And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Abraham 3:22-24 (italics added)  Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was: and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones.  And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.  And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;

It is clear from just the Bible that there was a “pre-existence” where we, as spirits, lived with God.  The scripture that God has given us through Joseph Smith (I picked only one) confirms this doctrine.  Thanks for your inquiry.

A FAIR Perspective on Critical Claims

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who don’t like us Mormons.

I can understand why.  We aren’t like most break-off sects, based on our peculiar interpretation of scripture.  People are more or less comfortable with these groups.  After all, if Martin Luther said something you don’t agree with, you can rest assured that his foundation is firmly rooted in the Bible.  He might be mistaken on some things, but by and large he agrees with mainline protestantism.  He never claimed to be a prophet.

But Mormons are new and different.  It’s all or nothing.  It can’t be swallowed half-way.

Joseph Smith described in detail a visitation from God the Father and Jesus Christ.Either Joseph Smith was honest about his first encounter with God or he lied about it.  He was visited frequently by angels or he wasn’t visited at all.  He was a prophet or a hoaxer.  If one is not Mormon and will not be baptized, “Joseph Smith was a fraud” is the stance one is required to take.  The middle ground is removed.

This polarization has energized detractors to produce mountains of criticism to discredit Mormonism, which if seen by itself makes our religion look plain silly, or worse.  The criticisms range from sophomoric name-calling and laughably-inconsistent retelling of our beliefs to historical documentation and intellectual DNA analysis.  Most of this is aimed not at Mormons (these kinds of attacks rarely have the gravitas to significantly shake LDS faith), but primarily at potential investigators of Mormonism.  They are designed to damage the Church’s reputation enough that you’ll dismiss anything we might offer.

The criticism, in turn, has prompted Latter-day Saints for years to rebut the arguments and point out evidences in our favor.  This rebuttal in defense of faith is called apologetics from the Greek apologia, meaning “defense.”

The leading body defending Mormon doctrine from critical arguments is the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR).  It is an independent, non-profit group of Latter-day Saints dedicated to “providing well-documented answers to criticisms of LDS (Mormon) doctrine, belief and practice.”  They have a website and a wiki full of every piece of anti-Mormon material you could ask for and a confident, clear response to each.

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A few weeks ago I attended their annual conference in Sandy, UT.  They had speakers from a variety of professional backgrounds.  A lawyer-economist spoke on the failed Kirtland Safety Society, a banking endeavor that Joseph Smith initiated (and according to critics, caused to fail in order to steal parishioners’ money).  A physicist (a former member of the federal government’s — and no, this isn’t a joke — Dark Energy Task Force) gave a lecture on Joseph’s cosmology compared with a modern physics account of the creation of the universe.  There were talks with titles like, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Plural Marriage (but were afraid to ask),” “Haplogroup X in Light of Recent Book of Mormon Claims,” and “Joseph the Seer, or Why Joseph Translated with a Rock in His Hat.” I came away impressed with their professionalism and their ability to make the topics accessible, interesting, and relevant.

Dr. Daniel C. Peterson, the face of modern Mormon intellectualism

My favorite FAIR contributor is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic named Daniel C. Peterson.  I became a fan through watching his FAIR presentations on YouTube.  (Click here to see Dr. Peterson’s review of Christopher Hitchens’ infamous book god is Not Great).

Members of FAIR look into the criticisms in their spare time and on their own dime; the Church doesn’t fund their research.  There are important reasons for that.  One of the key reasons is that Father has a different method for teaching us, which the Church favors.  It doesn’t require advanced degrees or superior reasoning capacity, and the objective isn’t merely knowledge.  The objective is goodness, even Godliness.  He created this whole world as a sort of school.  A proving ground.  What is required is a humble heart and a will to follow Jesus Christ.  Learning how to pray is much more vital to this kind of education than writing a thesis.

So, if you are investigating the Church, and you’ve been bombarded with defamatory information in anti-Mormon pamphlets or movies, first go to God.  You can learn a lot through prayerful revelation.  This should be your first step.  Always.  If it still bothers you, poke around FAIR’s website.  They’ve heard it all.  You may find peace in knowing that when you don’t have all the answers, some smart, faith-filled people have blazed the trail ahead of you.  It certainly helps me.

Do Mormons ever have questions about what they believe?

In the course of my journey as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, there have been numerous times where I have questions come up that challenge my faith.   I can’t speak for all Mormons, but I would assume that we all go through these cycles from time to time.  I picked this topic to write about, because I want others who are not of our faith to know that I do have questions and from time to time finding answers to these questions causes spiritual turmoil.  However, it is during these times that I grow the most spiritually.

The foundation of my belief is rooted in Joseph Smith’s testimony that he was in fact visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ.  This visit came in response to Joseph’s prayer to know which church he should join.  They gave him specific instructions — he was to join none of the churches, because none of them were right (Joseph Smith History 1:1-20).  What followed next in Joseph’s life is phenomenal:  through him Jesus Christ re-established his Church, the Book of Mormon was translated, the authority to act and perform ordinances in God’s name was given to man again, and the list could go on.  I will always remember the day that the truthfulness of this man’s testimony was written upon my heart by the Holy Ghost.  I feel much the same as Joseph did:  I know it and I know that God knows it and I cannot deny it (JS-H 1:25).

However, even though I know Joseph Smith’s story to be true, from time to time, something will come up that causes me to wonder.  For example, polygamy, or how the priesthood was distributed prior to 1978.  These challenges of faith, no matter how big or small, cause me to reflect and evaluate.  Sometimes, they cause me to think, “how could God’s prophet do this, or say that?”  I learned a long time ago that there is a reason; however, in these times I have yet to discover the puzzle piece that makes the picture complete.  Often I have to go back to the basics that I know to be undeniably true–that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that he did in fact translate the Book of Mormon.  In other instances, I have to sit down and think about other confirmations that I have received from the Holy Ghost about a particular piece of doctrine, whether it is prayer, fasting, scripture study, marriage, or the priesthood for a few examples.  As I do this and ponder my question throughout the day or weeks, eventually someone will say something, or I will have a thought that comes to me, always accompanied by another confirmation through the Holy Ghost.  Then I can clearly see what I was missing.

These experiences strengthen my faith and further buttress my basic testimony of God.  In this way I have been able to move from truth to truth and from grace to grace, learning about God and the grand plan that He has designed for our eternal happiness.  I am grateful that there is a God and that He loves me perfectly (as He does all of us), even if that means that from time to time I have to struggle in my faith, because it helps me to grow stronger.