A friend from my childhood once told me that he did not believe that the Book of Mormon was the word of God. When I asked why, he said that he did not believe Joseph Smith's story about the angel and the gold plates. I responded by telling him that whatever he believed was not relevant, because the issue is not what we believe. I told him that the only thing that mattered was what was true and that his belief played no part in that determination. I also told him that my believing Joseph Smith's story was also irrelevant. A whole world of non-believers does not make something not true any more that does a whole world of believers make something true.
The greatest truth of all is that there is a God, a God who is full of grace and truth; a God who is our Father in Heaven; who loves us and wants us to receive all that He has; who sent His Son to atone for our sins and provide a way for us to return to Him. The only truth is what has been revealed by Him. He has revealed His plan and given us what we need to know to return to His presence. And anyone can have this truth revealed to him/her.
And He has given us a definition of truth: "The word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is spirit, even the spirit of Jesus Christ" (D&C 84:45). And anyone can have this truth revealed to him/her: Only what He has revealed is truth.
We learn from Enoch that God taught men how to write so they could record His words to them. "For a book of remembrance we have written among us, according to the pattern given by the finger of God, and it is given in our own language" (Moses 6:46).
On the other hand He has also revealed to us that anything that does not come from Him is not truth, and is the mainspring of all corruption, and the "influence of that spirit which hath so strongly riveted the creeds of the fathers, who have inherited lies, upon the hearts of the children, and filled the world with confusion, and has been growing stronger and stronger, and is now the very mainspring of all corruption, and the whole earth groans under the the weight of its iniquity. It is an iron yoke, it is a strong band; they are the very handcuffs, and chains and shackles, and fetters of hell" (D&C 123:7-8).
This contrast between the word of God and everything else is stated revealingly by Oliver Cowdery:
"Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but ...one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind."
Dad this is great, thanks for sharing. I was reading the scripture you quoted the other day, D&C 84:45...the word of the Lord is truth! I have been in primary for a long time now so my brain tends to work on the simpler side of things. Thanks for making my brain think harder than usual :), love ya!
ReplyDeleteHi Clark: it looks like we're approaching the 10 year anniversary of your blog, started back in 2013. That is quite an accomplishment.
ReplyDeleteTo commemorate the occasion, I went back to the beginning to search for other instances of "finger of God" in scripture. I didn't think I'd find any, but I was wrong.
I stumbled upon a verse I had forgotten about, where Amulek gives his bonafides to the people of Ammonihah, "I am Amulek; I am the son of Giddonah, who was the son of Ishmael, who was a descendant of Aminadi; and it was that same Aminadi who interpreted the writing which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God" (Alma 10:2). I wish he had shared what was written! But it's interesting that it was written "upon the wall of the temple."
Next I found Jesus using the phrase (which I hadn't noticed before) when He's accused of harnessing the power of Beelzebub. "But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is upon you" (Luke 11:20).
The last two instances I found involved Moses; during the plagues the magicians tell Pharoah, "This is the finger of God" (Exodus 8:19); and then of course the most famous instance, the two tables of testimony from Sinai "written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18).
What I learned from this was that, whether written or spoken, the finger of God represents God's word.
Here's to another 10 years of sharing the good word! All the best, Tim