Mormonism 1:4 - “We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
What It Is:
As the fourth statement provided by Joseph Smith defining the core essence which forms the gospel as they see it. Faith is believing in something you do not currently experience nor have evidence of beyond an inner knowing or feeling, often inferring a conviction in Jesus’s absolute power, intelligence, and love. Trusting the books written about his stories and word for answers, even while we may not comprehend reality as he does.
Repentance starts with a sense of regret for past actions, through a “broken heart and contrite spirit” when they are believed to be in disaccord with God‘s will for us. It often requires a form of confession or retribution, which leads to an alteration of feelings and thoughts about what has been done, releasing it to accepting a new view of oneself, the world, and God.
The form of baptism participated in is by complete immersion in water. When done properly reverses and eliminates the presence of all past actions seen out of accord with God.
It is common to receive blessings from members of the priesthood in order to receive and accept blessings and information. The gift of the Holy Ghost are keys to allowing ourselves the intuitive sensitivity to be comforted, inspired, and hear its guidance.
When It Started
Throughout the scriptures, there are many references to having faith in God, including the importance of directing that faith to Christ. Often emphasizing miracles occurring because of the focus and trust in their power which seems unknown or impossible. A regular suggestion is that one could be protected and receive benefit from simply redirecting their focus and calling upon, or in, their name.
As well as the dire need for repentance in order to be saved from the retribution of sins and receive eternal life. There are multitudes of gruesome descriptions of the suffering which sinners will endure during life, after death, and even for eternity. The deliberate choices of “Heavenly Father” to inflict onto them in retaliation or even simply allow to occur, for their unforgivable choices to act in some way selfishly and disobediently.
To Christians, baptism seems to have a few definitions; however, this church explicitly states the need for full immersion even as Jesus was by John the Baptist in the river Jordan. Doing so by a priesthood holder in the name of Christ, declaring their name and commitment through raising their arm to the square, teaching that it “washes away all sins”, allowing a fresh start under the spiritual authority of Jesus and the prophets and apostles living today.
Even while there are many references to what the Holy Spirit can do and how it manifests in the Bible, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost to allow and feel it is a unique approach very few Christians subscribe to. It can only happen after baptism and the confirmation of the recipient as a member of the church. It is a form of initiation to communicate with the “Holy Spirit” or “Holy Ghost,” which is the representative, as the “Voice for God”.
It is said to give access to certain abilities which transcend personal limitations when necessary, usually only for themselves and those they have spiritual authority over.
According to the church, during the restoration of this gospel through Joseph Smith, he was spiritually visited by virtually every angel and historical being with greater spiritual authority, and they gave him the keys and spiritual advancements which they earned and achieved in their lives. This advanced into the priesthood, which extends the authority beyond one’s family to include the ability to offer baptism, blessings, and to share these keys under their specific jurisdiction. Every priesthood holder in the church has a traceable lineage back to Joseph Smith.
Where We Relate
As revealed through Undefinable and Expansive, we know that absolute faith in “God” has the potential to completely rearrange our experience, trusting beyond what you see and experience is a required key on the journey to “salvation”.
We do agree that our truth rests on “Christ” and that the repentance and remission of “sins” would be necessary to come to know him. We agree that the release from the past initially requires a “broken heart and contrite spirit” and that the refraining of forgiveness and “redemption” causes mental anguish and emotional suffering and a very real experience of “hell”. We concur with the need to confess, reconcile, and forgive in order to be “redeemed” of our “sins”. As well as there being spiritual purification benefits to baptism by immersion in the name of “Christ”, including starting afresh in the “Eyes of God”.
We do agree that absolute trust in the unseen spiritual forces of reality provides benefits in the manifestation of it. We find it important to establish commitments with the “Holy Ghost” in order to recognize its presence and commitment to us. We also recognize what seem like miraculous abilities are available to those open and in tune with the “Holy Spirit”.
We agree that abilities and gifts offered by the “Holy Ghost” can be shared and nearly all limitations can be breached. Also accepting that one can bless and change lives with the “Holy Spirit” abilities, including being visited, blessed, and taught by any and every soul of anyone who has ever existed.
We agree that the “Holy Spirit” guides and inspires by sensations, visions, and various signs. Also that it desires for us to let go of our past mistakes and inhibitions and to come to know “God”, agreeing that it is the representative for “God” on earth, that it works through others and assists us to liberate each other.
Recognizing that authority is given by the governed and can only influence those recognizing and accepting of their authority's position. Agreeing that there are prophets, seers, and revelators living today.
Why It Seems
The mind is a far more powerful thing than the world could ever give it credit for. In fact, it could never demonstrate how much power it actually has. That’s to say it is impossible to experience a world beyond what it believes is possible. One purpose for religion is to inspire the expansion of comprehension of what is possible, to in turn expand the manifestation of experience. That literally means that the way you experience the world is directly related to what you believe is possible and it cannot force a state upon you that you have not already chosen. It seemed like coming into this world was a drastic change, but the limits that you reached are as far as you were willing to go with it. Miracle workers have had faith in their ability to go further, and it doesn’t stop there.
“Christ” was the awareness that became light, and brought about all dimensions of creation; therefore your success throughout it all rests on it. It can tolerate your pain, suffering, and death, waiting on you to acknowledge it and surrender your life to it, for it does not fear death nor relate to suffering. It remains steadfast in its truth and leaves your freedom up to you, ready to respond whenever you are ready to let the past go.
It is willing to come through any way you honestly desire for it; when you call its name, it is prepared to take anything and everything from you. It knows you are more capable than where you have placed yourself, and it knows your limitations are only where you choose not to surpass. It knows all your weaknesses and where you hate to show your face, it knows all your intolerable relations and all your lustful desires, and every last detail of your mind and why you insist we are not perfect. It knows exactly what you would say your differences are from its own, and what you say makes you a sinner.
This is not only because of it creating you, this is because it is living as you. You, as a human, are developed for an experience and in total; for nearly an eternity of existence. While it eventually wants you to be “saved,” it deliberately made you so it can be lost. So it can know you and believe you as its own self. Of course, it can and will always return to its perfect state for it remains pure forever even while it believes, like you do, that it doesn’t deserve glory. The glory you are giving “God” is the experience of not being glorified, so when you compare to its reality, it is glorious.
With An Open-mind
While you have a brain that processes your experience around you and relates it with past memories, your real mind is far more expansive. As hard as it is to believe, your mind has made universes upon universes of experiences and it has done so for nearly forever. From time to time, it develops ideas which it finds worth more attention, and this human physicality has been one of them, requiring all the truth to be distorted in order to make it seem possible.
Because of this, all truth is a little mixed up from what it actually is. Not to say it is all lies, but that it appears to be something it is not or says something which it didn’t. Even as the presence of bodies does seem very real when you believe yourself one of them, so do the doings which inflict pain on other bodies seem just as real and just as wrong. This is why when “sin” is thought of, it always pertains to your actions dealing with other bodies or your own body, emphasizing your independence from everyone else, and your wills have clashed.
The reality of the “world” before it was physical was of an energetic or “spiritual” nature, what most Abrahamic religions call the “Holy Spirit” or “Ghost” which we call the Wholly Spiritual Universe. It remains to be this energy and appears to be more when presenting and sharing experience. Its representation seems to be any variation the mind can think of, altering itself to be any manifestation. This is why if it were to say “wash away your sins” you believe it is referring to your bodies’ actions and the belief washing can only be done by water, it can make that work, in the same way, it can be possible to be saved.
The actuality of this entity is not a separate being; everything is made up of the Wholly Spiritual Universe and it can and will appear to be whatever you are open to experiencing. It can be dull and boring, or thrilling and exciting, but it definitely cannot be either without you choosing for it to be so. It follows your choices, and mostly from what you can call your subconscious. This is where habits reside, and when they are present, they are relentless.
“Sins” are choices that have become habits, and the Spirit manifests them. This is why being “saved” refers to entering “Heavenly Father's” presence again, something you cannot do if you have a habit of thinking which distorts the reality you have never left into painful and dying, independent bodies. You cannot experience entering “heaven” if you do not think in correspondence to what manifests as “heaven”. Believing you are a limited physical body is not a celestial belief. Only those who believe in mystical things perceive mystical things manifest by this Spirit.
This habit is what has been referred to as the “knowledge of good and evil” though it involves far more layers than a simple thought. When it is used to process your existence, it seems as if “redemption” is surely needed and undeniably possible. Often when we think of images we form around the concept, we assume the “evil” was present before the knowledge and it merely opened our eyes to it. However, this is not the case; there was no evil in existence previously. Even the “serpent” was innocent in the questions it asked Eve.
This “knowledge” projects all its distortions on to all it perceives, present and past, distorting all history and everything that seemed to already exist. It does so with this story, and the receiving of it by Moses. It is a mental insistence of what is possible and what is not, which is why it seems hard, and outlandish to have such spiritual gifts that the “Holy Spirit” provides, seemingly keeping it only for the blessed, the special, or the elite. And when anyone else discovers it by other means, they are deemed “evil”.
The Wholly Spiritual Universe is available to everyone willing to perceive beyond the usual, defined reality. Always willing to offer the sensation of any ability or the lack of them, because it is not distressed about your salvation, its only concern is to be with you, and when you're open to it, inspire you to grow.
How We Unite
Recalling how to use the “knowledge of eternal life” does seem like a surrendering of the perceived opposition to focus on the presence of a single source, where the deliberate choice to “believe” in “God” is required. At first, it will seem as if your “faith” is in something invisible, unacquired, or imaginary. Where it often stays, however, to experience the transparent and illuminating “heaven” your perception must be unified, not doubled.
“Good & evil” is a concept requiring bodies to be defined, always about what bodies have done to other bodies. The “knowledge of eternal life” does not work in the manifestation of oppositions, like bodies do. No one’s awareness can return to “heaven” with a knowledge that distorts it right back into opposing concepts. For even when you do, you cast yourself out by seeing the same place as it is not. “God” does not know of your “sin,” when it is a form of thinking which distorts everything into physicality, and that’s why you know not of “God”.
“Forgiveness” is this process of returning to the experience beyond physicality. Considered a “salvation” from “evil,” it is the letting go of opposition concepts in order to recognize your sinlessness. For an eternal celestial being is not disturbed by physical concerns; therefore, “sins” present no threat.
How Its True
Many decisions had to be made if the development of “free-will” was to be possible and believing you are always supported by your guardian does not make that so. “Free-will” could not be established if the being is not ingrained with the recognition that they make different decisions and choices than others. If you recalled your strongest memories, they are those accompanied by emotions, and probably rather intense ones. This is because you were being taught how to think independently and in order for “free-will” to be implanted. This means disobedience was required and guilt is mandatory. You could never feel like you were independent if all your decisions appeared to be the same as your guardian. The “God” in the garden wanted them to do what he asked of them to not do.
It might be difficult to win the favor of a judgmental dictator, whose plans you destroyed by using the free-will it gave you, but surely it would not be difficult to win over a loving creator which remembers why it made you that way and gave you the ability to choose differently, readily available. It has a purpose set forth into existence, which the human perspective has been designed deliberately to be unaware of, enforcing creative interpretation in place of the ability to comprehend. Such things as what a “sin” are cannot be understood when you also choose to perceive existence as a human. Even when the concept is explained simply, the “knowledge” distorts their perception, insisting that concepts and ideas associate with an action or some sort of structure.
Therefore, it is helpful to deliver necessary truths through stories and imagery which involve actions among structures and creatures. While it remains the message is often misunderstood, the context is conveyed. “Salvation” is not why Jesus was said to have bled and died; “sin” is. It is the resurrection that was about “salvation.” These images were made when the concept was received but distorted into bodies. The reality is that “Christ” bleeds and dies as often as humans do. Right now it sacrifices its reality for each of us to exist, and it has always been responsible for all the “sins” of the world for it lives as us. The story is the Spirit speaking through your symbolism, but the interpretation depends on which “knowledge” you use to comprehend it.
“Why They Are Right” (book series)
By Rev. Devan Jesse Byrne
~
The author of The Statutes Of The Divinely Realized the essence of Undefinable and Expansive, here to coach spiritual people to discover their multidimensional reality beyond the veil.
~