Wound #12
[If you have not read Mandate and Joseph’s Call, please do so before continuing.]
The final wound that has hurt God so badly is one that makes Him less than what He IS—the belief by Joseph’s followers that He’s progressing and was once mortal. The Book of Mormon does not teach this or anything like it.
The Book teaches that Jesus is both the Son of God and, in other places, God the Father. It even says people prayed to Jesus, and Jesus allowed them. It leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It does not give information on the later ideological developments of Joseph, Rigdon, or others—in particular, a Hebrew teacher who showed Joseph some different meanings for “God” in the book of Genesis.
When Genesis says, “man has become like us” and “let us go down and confound their tongues,” the plural in Hebrew can lend itself to a world of possible interpretations. And with a verse like “whether there be lords many or gods many,” plus a personal revelation by a young elder (Lorenzo Snow – later LDS Church prophet) who proclaimed:
As man is, God once was, and as God is man may become.” (Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1884, 46, 47)
Joseph was able to formulate a new view of the Godhead. People sometimes confuse the similarity in the glory of the Father and the Son—that Jesus is the Father or that the Father is the Son. When Lorenzo thought he was seeing God the Father, he was actually seeing the Son. Thus, he should have said:
17 As man now is, Jesus once was, and as Jesus now is, man may become (Joint heirs with Christ, Romans 8:17)
This coincides with the traditional view of Christ.
THE MYSTERY OF GOD
The Book of Mormon respects John the Revelator. Nephi saw the same events as John but was not permitted to write them, for he was told they were reserved for John to write. In the Revelation of John, he says that the nature of God will remain a mystery until after the Lord comes:
7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. (Revelation 10)
Therefore, no one’s salvation must be based upon an interpretation of God, His origins, or any unknowns. But it will be based upon our acceptance of His messenger and Son—Jesus Christ, and in knowing his true nature.
That he was born of a virgin—Mary, that he was raised among men and rejected, then crucified and buried, and on the third day rose again. That he showed himself unto men and ascended into heaven where he now sits at the right hand of God. The Book of Mormon supports each of these points, for their prophets saw and wrote them.