April 21, 2019

Is Jesus real?

The testimony of Christ comes from more than historical facts. It comes from more than the biblical witness. It is more significant than knowledge from the living prophets. It reaches farther than the witness in Latter-Day scripture. These witnesses with the testimonies of our forefathers establish a footing that stabilizes our view into His heavens. They provide stability for patient ponderings within our soul. The testimony of Christ lives through the grace of His covenants

April 8, 2019

Can God marvel?

Background: My nephew shared this amazing podcast from the Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University of a conversation between Terryl Givens and Steven Peck. You can watch the video of the podcast below or read the full transcript. I have included a few impactful parts of their conversation that relate to our discussion here at mostmovedmover.com. As I was sharing ideas from this podcast with my daughter, she shared D&C 133:17 and D&C 65:1 where the Lord asks us to ‘make his paths straight.

April 7, 2019

How does Moses 7 frame God's knowledge of the future?

Background: When discussing the openness of God with my friends a few different chapters in the LDS canon pop up in the conversation. These chapters provide a fairly detailed narrative of future events. Sometimes, they even have verses with statements that many LDS have traditionally seen as statements of fixed future omniscience. Two of the most often referenced chapters include; Moses 7: Enoch foresees the coming of the Son of Man, His atoning sacrifice, and the resurrection of the Saints—He foresees the Restoration, the Gathering, the Second Coming, and the return of Zion.

March 31, 2019

Inspiration, Revelation, and God's Will - Temples and Gordon B. Hinckley

Background: Recently President Nelson invited the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to use the full name of our church in our daily referencing of the church. A few of my friends have taken this pronouncement in different ways. Most have started the journey of changing our historical habits of calling ourselves Mormons. A few have recoiled at President Nelson’s invitation as an attack on statements of our previous prophets.

March 20, 2019

Should we try to understand God?

Background I think many of us are good at applying our daily reading to our lives. This application is essential and has eternal impacts on our lives and our relationship with Deity. We also need to pull scripture together to find a comprehensive meaning. We need to spend the struggle and time to see the big picture - not just the maps and storyline big picture, but the attributes of God big picture.

March 16, 2019

Does God exercise faith?

Background The simple answer is yes. The more complicated conversation is in how God exercises faith. I hope to use scripture, the Lectures on Faith, and some insightful commentary around the first lecture to discuss how His faith could be applied.1 Lectures on Faith Latter-Day Saint history has a unique interaction with a set of philosophical notes on faith that were developed by early leaders of our church. For a long time, many would say that Joseph Smith was the author.

March 9, 2019

Is prayer a test or a relationship?

As Latter-Day Saints, we see God as a relational God. In fact, this strong view of loving familial relationships can create misunderstandings by other groups that believe in Christ. Often those that want to attack The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will drop the question, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”. The question is inflammatory. The underlying concept is that we believe in a pre-mortal existence where we all lived as children of our Heavenly Father.

March 5, 2019

Are 'Most Moved Mover' and 'Divine Designer' synonymous?

Background: In October 2017 Elder Ronald A. Rasband shared a message titled, “By Divine Design”. This talk caused a little bit of a stir in my ward. I think the teachers that got a chance to teach this talk in a lesson at church may have over-interpreted his talk and created a false idea that Elder Rasband was not promoting. I heard about two different teachers getting a little exasperated at how the talk seemed to imply that God controlled every moment in our lives and neither of them could work out how that could be true.

March 4, 2019

Can randomness be part of God's plan?

Background Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s “Your Adventure through Mortality” uses the word random in a talk he gave in January 2018. I wanted to take some time to share what randomness means and how it relates to God’s plan and probability. We will know that the Master Artist had a plan for those random dots all along. We will see that He amplified our talents, prepared opportunities, and introduced us to possibilities far more glorious than we ever could have imagined or accomplished on our own.

February 24, 2019

What is the foreknowledge of God?

Background: My last post about the omniscience of God motivated me to look at the LDS topical guide under God, foreknowledge of. I quickly realized that foreknowledge is a very complicated concept in protestant Christianity and in LDS teachings. Before we tackle the references under God, foreknowledge of, Election, Foreordination, and Predestination we need to work through what each word means, how they relate, and how they are different. One of the issues with each word is that their definitions are nuanced by the various beliefs of each Christian theology.

February 18, 2019

What are the Omniscience of God references in the LDS Topical Guide?

Background: I wanted to pull all the references from the topical guide under God, Omniscience of to help us get a ‘deeper acquaintance with the word of God.’ In a future post we will look at the topic of God, Foreknowledge of (As a side note, I am developing a small R package to process items from the topical guide). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a Topical Guide to the Scriptures that was initially published in 1979.

February 10, 2019

Does God live within time?

Background I have had a few discussions recently where I have been surprised by the answers given concerning God and how he relates to time. Once again, I think many of us are unwittingly letting Aristotle’s unmoved mover philosophy drive our beliefs in God. The scriptures are full of clear statements about God and his relation to time. The Old and New Testaments have a few verses that provide value to this discussion.