God and man exist upon the same principles. There never was a father without there first being a son, meaning that the being that we consider God the father, was first a son to another father, just as Christ showed us how we could become sons to him as our father.
One thing the endowment teaches so plainly and so up front that most miss it. The players in the drama are playing ROLES. They are acting in certain offices, just as the patrons are to consider themselves in the roles of Adam and Eve. The art of the drama imitates the life of the reality.
God is our god and our father, not only because he demonstrated a superior intelligence, but because we all sustained him/her as such. Satan demanded God’s honor, which is his power. God’s power comes as much from our faith and support as from his/her ability to marshal, command, and channel that faith and support.
We are really much more powerful beings than we give ourselves credit for. And the path to full godhood is as much learning how to become a god as it is to unlearn that which us prevents us from being a god.
Joseph Smith said that “man will be punished for his own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression”.
93:38 Every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again, in their infant state, innocent before God.
93:39 And that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers.
If we find ourselves out of the presence of God, as Adam and Eve were, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We have an awful lot to unlearn, and churches do us no favor by forcing us to conform and avoid sin, rather than taking responsibility for it, learning from it, as we are supposed to do. Your church that preaches against damnation is actually damning or condemning you by holding back your progress.
But the course of God is one eternal round, and I don’t mean “God” in the sense that most religious people think of it. In fact, I can’t find an English word or words the corresponds to what I mean. I guess the closest I could come is the concept of god, not as a being, but as a principle, a pattern, or an order which is repeated throughout eternity.
We we say “in the beginning”, or we talk about God surrounded by intelligences, we are taking the ring of eternity that Joseph Smith spoke of, and cutting it at an arbitrary point, for the same of explaining an eternal principle to finite minds. In the book Dune, Herbert had in mind a huge back story leading up to the Saga of Paul. This is why he said, and why the historian Irulan said “beginnings are such delicate times”. Where to begin? Where to begin?
Just think about it and see if it doesn’t make more sense to you.
John144 