In humanity, you can be in one place at one time.

In deity, you can be everywhere present.

So who can be both?

Not you. 

Only Jesus.  Please look at this again and anew in John’s Gospel.

It goes against your reason, doesn’t it.  Eliza Snow wrote the words to this hymn:

O My Father, Hymn No. 2921.

O my Father, thou that dwellest In the high and glorious place, When shall I regain thy presence And again behold thy face? In thy holy habitation, Did my spirit once reside? In my first primeval childhood, Was I nurtured near thy side?

2. For a wise and glorious purpose Thou hast placed me here on earth And withheld the recollection Of my former friends and birth; Yet ofttimes a secret something Whispered,”You’re a stranger here,” And I felt that I had wandered From a more exalted sphere.

3. I had learned to call thee Father, Thru thy Spirit from on high, But, until the key of knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.

4. When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by, Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high? Then, at length, when I’ve completed All you sent me forth to do, With your mutual approbation Let me come and dwell with you.

In July, David publicly praised Heavenly Mother through a historical look at the imagery of the goddess.

But we just can’t roll our eyes in denial or debunk with a higher critical skepticism the last words of Yahweh given via the prophet Jeremiah to the people in Jeremiah 44.

The terror is this.  When the community of God accepts in their hearts the queen, the true reality behind the name of the King is erased.  Right?  Isn’t that the natural consequence stated in the chapter?

It is sad.  All so sad.  I want to sing the mournful dirge of Lamentations right now.

So what about the remnant in exile – those dragged in chains 200 miles up to Riblah and then another 400 miles to Babylon.  In Babylon, they would be greeted and confronted with 180 open shrines to Ishtar.  Hymns and prayers to the goddess sounded everywhere.

But it was there – in the midst of the queen’s populism, her exotic domain – that the sovereign God demonstrated with glory a universal fact (the positive and negative):  Yahweh is the unique Most High; and the Queen is the common sense vanity promoted by creaturely, sinful women.

1.  LDS are discussing the KJV . . .

2.  And evangelicals are setting their sights on a revised NIV . . .

Kate emailed me the link to her article, today.

(1) Monson Calls for Modesty, Tab Collars

(2) Questions about the Nature of God

I couldn’t resist clicking on both.

Lo and behold, I am surfing the internet, and I discover this Baptist pastor on the internet.

And then to top it off friends, I am reading The Standard (July 22, 1899); and I discover within this newspaper article, “The Relation of Sidney Rigdon to the Book of Mormon” by W. A. Stanton, D.D.

Whooaaa!  This guy, Sidney, started his “ministry” as a “Baptist” mess. (more…)

One man from Meadow, Wash. back in 1899 tries to answer Geistweit’s question . . . (more…)

In The Standard newspaper (Chicago, April 1, 1899), W. H. Geistweit writes a stinging attack on his encounter with two Mormon missionaries. (more…)

As I am reading The Standard  (the first American Baptist weekly, established in 1853, out of Chicago), I am deeply caught up in the historical tension between Baptists and Mormons back in 1899. (more…)