Mormon Musings

The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him. Nahum 1:7

"This I count one of the greatest blessings that God has given to the children of men, to have the plain truth pointed out to them. You look at the religions of the day, and see their confusion and the mystery that hangs around them: you may present the truth to them as plainly as you can, and so simply that an intelligent child might understand, and still they cannot comprehend it. You ask a man among them about the character of God, and about his attributes, and what can he tell you? They will preach about God, about the Son, and the Holy Ghost, long sermons, to prove that those three personages are one; and when they get through, they know nothing about it, and conclude it is a great mystery. Where is the man or woman that comprehended anything about God or about eternity until Joseph Smith revealed the fulness of the Gospel? I could read of those things in the Bible which we now believe in and receive; but I was surrounded by the traditions of the world and could not comprehen...

  28  Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,  that  the   everlasting  God, the  Lord , the  Creator  of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?  There is  no searching  of His understanding.   29  He giveth power to the faint; and to  them that have  no might He increaseth strength.   30  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:   31  But they that  wait  upon the  Lord  shall  renew   their   strength ; they shall mount up with wings as  eagles ; they shall  run , and not be weary;  and  they shall walk, and not faint. Isaiah 40:28-31

13  Who  hath  directed  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord ,  or  being  His  counsellor  hath  taught  Him?   14  With  whom  took  He  counsel ,  and  who  instructed  Him,  and  taught  Him  in  the  path  of  judgment ,  and  taught  Him  knowledge,  and  shewed  to  Him  the  way  of  understanding?   15  Behold,  the  nations   are  as  a  drop  of  a  bucket,  and  are  counted  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance:  behold,  He  taketh  up  the  isles  as  a  very  little  thing.   16  And  Lebanon  is  not  sufficient  to  burn,  nor  the  beas...

“The difference between God and the devil is that God creates and organizes, while the whole study of the devil is to destroy."                        Brigham Young ( Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe [1954], 69. )

“As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.” President Lorenzo Snow - Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow,  83

"If any of us could now see the God we are striving to serve—if we could see our Father who dwells in the heavens, we should learn that we are as well acquainted with him as we are with our earthly father; and he would be as familiar to us in the expression of his countenance, and we should be ready to embrace him and fall upon his neck and kiss him, if we had the privilege. And still we, unless the vision of the Spirit is opened to us, know nothing about God. You know much about him, if you did but realize it. And there is no other one item that will so much astound you, when your eyes are opened in eternity, as to think that you were so stupid in the body." President Brigham Young J.D. 8:30

The Prophet Joseph Smith taught in the  Lectures on Faith  that it was necessary to have "an acquaintance" (that's his phrase) with the divine attributes of the Father and the Son in order to have faith in them. Specifically he said that unless we believe Christ to be "merciful and gracious, slow to anger, long-suffering and full of goodness," that unless we can rely on these unchanging attributes, we would never have the faith necessary to claim the blessings of heaven. If we could not count on "the excellency of . . . character" (that is also his phrase) maintained by the Savior and his willingness and ability to "forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin," we would be, he said, "in constant doubt of salvation." But because the Father and the Son are unchangeably "full of goodness" then, in the words of the Prophet, such knowledge "does away [with] doubt, and makes faith exceedingly strong" ( Lectures on Faith  ...