"Mingling with Gods, he can plan for his brethren"

[Anonymous]

Joni wrote:

‘Mingling with Gods, he can plan for his brethren.’ What do we think that means?)

Mainly, I think it means Phelps didn’t really think the lyrics through all that much. You’ve got an omniscient, omnipotent, timeless Heavenly Father in charge; what’s left to plan? Planning implies a future, which is meaningless once one becomes timeless; if the entirety of time is simultaneous, future, past and present are irrelevant.

Also, planning, like economics, implies that there’s some scarcity present; if you have infinite funds, there’s no need to budget, and if you have infinite time and all other resources, there’s really no need to plan anything.

[Anonymous]

I also wonder what Phelps meant by “earth must atone for the blood of that man.” Does that have something to do with blood atonement? Because that was more BY’s thing than JS’.

In our ward, the Primary sang the first verse, we shipped the second verse, the men in the congregation stood and sang the third verse (they wanted the men to sing it because it talks about the priesthood), and then everyone sang the fourth verse. That was really weird, but at least it meant that I wasn’t expected to sing the line “great is his glory and endless his priesthood.”

[Author]

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