166: Comprehending, Part 7

This is part seven of a series where Denver discusses how we can prepare ourselves to comprehend the things God wants to teach us. Many prefer ignorance to light. They will not draw toward the light when it is revealed to them, and, therefore, cannot comprehend what the Lord is teaching. It makes no sense to them, for light is required in order to comprehend light; a person must be willing to increase in light, or he will be left in darkness and unable to understand any of what saves him. It remains a mystery to them. The way to darkness is broad and easy. It requires no effort. It welcomes one. It tempts mankind with its ease. It's popular, as there are many who go in thereat. The truth challenges you. It requires you to change. It informs us of our faults and mistakes. It's difficult — man is called to rise above what the world is doing, what the world is saying, and what the world accepts as good and true. This tendency to want to be popular can twist a person away from the truth quicker than any other corrupting influence here. This is why Nephi cautioned about the latter-day churches that crave popularity and acceptance (1 Nephi 7:5). There will only be a few who find it. Even in the day in which we live, the measure will always be few. Not in a relative sense, but in an absolute sense. Few. Period. Only a small number. Another person’s ignorance can never define your own faith. Some people are unwilling to study their faith, even though they claim to practice it. If the restoration is truly of God, then it is important enough to warrant the closest of study. When any matter is studied with great care, issues will surface. Quandaries will arise. There will be gaps, problems, and failings. Human weaknesses will be exposed. Some things will get quite messy. The underlying truth, however, deserves a fair and full hearing. Study of the restoration which goes only far enough to discover the quandaries has not proceeded far enough. One should search into it deeply enough, prayerfully enough, and searchingly enough to find the answers. When one person has sought deeply and another has not, there is a gap between the understanding of the two which makes it problematic to have a common understanding. The one in possession of less is really not in a position to correct or judge the one in possession of more. Oddly, however, the one who has less is altogether more likely to judge the one with more, while the one with more is equipped to look more kindly upon the other. After all, the one with more has struggled from the lesser position. Only fools judge a matter before they hear it. Such souls warrant one’s kindly effort to persuade, not censure or condemnation. All of us carry foolishness, learning year by year, struggling to overcome the many things they’ve neglected in their study, prayers, and contemplation. God does not grade on a curve. Therefore, when anyone begins to think he’s outshone his fellow man, he should reflect again on Moses’ reaction to seeing the Man of Holiness: Now for this cause I know man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed (Genesis 1:2). No one has anything to boast of, even if he knows more than his fellow man. All know less than He who is more intelligent than them all (Abraham 5:4). Whenever I contemplate the gulf between He who is Holiness and myself, and the great charity required from Him to condescend for me, I can hardly bear the thought of feeling triumph because of the ignorance of my fellow saints. How unkind. How foolish. How uncharitable. More than that, how very unlike the Lord whom we claim to serve. His graciousness towards us should make all of us gracious and kindly toward our fellow man. I mentioned before that Abraham entered Egypt before he [Abraham] entered Egypt, he received a great revelation about the stars, the heavens, events among the pre-existent spirits of mankind, the fall of Satan, and the Creation of this world. This list summarizes part of the knowledge associated with the Holy Order; God wanted the husbandman, shepherd, and High Priest to comprehend: Why this Creation was organized, Man’s position in the cosmos,Who the “hosts of heaven” were,That there was a cosmic rebellion in the heavens,That a cosmic covenant was established that framed the Creation, established conditions for mankind to gain experience, and through which mankind could progress,That all things in nature—including the light of the sun, moon, planets, and stars— were purposefully organized and governed by a covenant with God. Abraham, like Adam (at the beginning) and his descendant, Enoch, were caught up into Heaven and received a tutorial endowment from God. The purpose was simple enough: helping each of them to understand what came before and what comes after this life. This was to help rescue them from death and hell. In a very real sense, the curriculum of the Holy Order is designed to give both a personal and a cosmic context to Christ. The Holy One of Israel is the redeeming Messiah who has been our constant Protector, Example, and Guide from the foundation of Creation. The Messiah was the central figure in the Creation. The Messiah was the foremost figure opposing the rebellion in the Heavens. The Messiah came to save the Creation by His self-sacrifice. Man’s universal death is reversed by their universal resurrection, made possible by the Messiah. And it will be the Messiah who judges mankind and will assign them to various conditions following mortality. It is the Messiah who occupies the central position in all the mysteries of godliness. The members of the Holy Order understood this best and, therefore, were most trusted to preach, teach, testify, minister, and watch over the posterity of Adam (and later, the posterity of Abraham). The most useful and obedient servants of the Lord have been those who have been exposed to the greatest understanding of His eternal role. The opening paragraph of Abraham’s book is a direct statement of the relationship between knowledge and obedience. From the first generation, the Patriarchs used ritual to convey a great body of information (a theatrical revelation) to initiates. The Book of Abraham itself appears to be a ritual text. ...the book of Abraham, far from being merely a diverting or edifying history, is a discourse on divine authority, which also is the theme of the three facsimiles. The Please view this post in your web browser to complete the quiz. to the three plates make it perfectly clear that they are meant as diagrammatic or formulaic aids to an understanding of the subject of priesthood on earth. (Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, p. 178) Enoch’s account (now in Genesis of the Restoration Edition of Scriptures) also appears to be a ritual text. Hugh Nibley calls Enoch, ...the great initiate who becomes the great initiator... He adds: His is the independent intelligence always seeking further light and knowledge. He is the great observer and recorder of all things in heaven and earth, of which God grants him perfect knowledge. The great learner, he is also the great teacher: Enoch the Initiator into the higher mysteries of...faith and secrets of the universe; Enoch the Scribe, keeper of the records, instructor in the ordinances, aware of all times and places, studying and transmitting the record of the race with intimate concern for all generations to come. He offers the faithful their greatest treasure of knowledge. He is the seer who conveys to men the mind and will of the Lord. (Enoch the Prophet, p. 19, 21) The religion of the Fathers cannot be adequately conveyed if it is separated from ritualized knowledge. By using symbol, movement, gesture, dress, architecture, sound, orientation, and setting, it is possible to embed light and truth in a way to engage the mind, spirit, and heart of mankind. The temple can be the house in which it is possible to stretch the mind of man both upward and downward by the things presented there. “The temple itself was but a copy of the heavenly temple, the liturgy on earth a shadow of the worship of the angels” (Margaret Barker, The Great Angel, p. 118). It is through covenant-forming ordinances—including rituals—that the power of Godliness has been manifested to mankind. The order of the House of God has and ever will be the same, even after Christ comes, and after the termination of the thousand years it will be the same, and we shall finally roll into the Celestial Kingdom of God and enjoy it forever (T&C 117:4). Christianity was languishing at the time that Joseph Smith lived, and Joseph Smith took Christianity and changed it (to borrow from Mark Twain) to the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Joseph Smith envisioned a form of Christianity in which the God of Heaven Himself was accessible, living, proximate, nearby to each and every one of us—as opposed to Christianity in a diluted form, in which the philosophies of men (which are considerably far more boring than the declarations of Scripture) were mingled with and diluted Scripture into something that only a philosopher could really appreciate. Joseph Smith’s “living Christianity” promised things that were akin to what Christianity looked like when the New Testament was being composed. The culmination of the development of doctrine and teachings by Joseph Smith was a temple ceremony that (in a diluted form) is still reenacted in LDS temples today—in which the journey of Adam and Eve is simply figurative, and those who participate are instructed to envision themselves as if they were, respectively, Adam and Eve. The journey culminates with an experience in which “having been true and faithful,” they’re invited to “converse with the Lord through the veil” and then, having conversed with the Lord through the veil, to “enter into His presence.” That part of the ceremony is rife in the form of Christianity that Joseph Smith restored,...