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What I understood as the gospel message didn’t match what we
encountered so often with the people. There was a big gap in so
many ways. Again, my mother’s wisdom helped. She said, “Know
that you know the truth”—she wasn’t a Mormon. She was a Buddhist
until she died—“and others haven’t learned it yet. So just
hold fast and let the rest go.” So that’s what we did. We just held
on and tried to look at the doctrines of the gospel rather than how
people behaved sometimes. . .
. . . When people ask, “How is it that you are able to speak the
way you do?”, I say, “I was given a blessing, that I would speak my
mind.” It was really interesting, because all of our talks had to go
through the First Presidency, and nothing was changed. Nothing
in my talks was changed.
. . . I brought Buddhism
with me. Buddhism teaches love for everybody. The Buddhist values
are not limited just to the people in the Buddhist faith. They
include the whole wide world. When you talk to the Dalai Lama,
you can feel a love that he has for all humankind. He doesn’t
preach, “You must belong to my church.” He preaches, “You must
become better people because of what I am telling you.” Christians,
Muslims, Buddhists go to listen to him, and they become
better Christians, better Muslims, and better Buddhists because
of the values and morals that he teaches. He makes you think, “I
can become a better Christian because of what I heard.” He is a
messenger or a disciple of God, in a different way.
I came to the Church having all these values. The Church didn’t
teach me that.
– Chieko Okazaki “There is Always a Struggle” 2005, interview
http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V45N01_CO.pdf Quote:We just held on and tried to look at the doctrines of the gospel rather than how people behaved sometimes
Brilliant, journeygirl.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks so much. I always lose track of them otherwise. I know he’s not a GA, but he’s close enough. No-one seemed to mind when I used this today at church: Hugh Nibley in Temple and Cosmos
Quote:
There’s no office in the Church that qualifies the holder to give the official interpretation of the Church. We’re to read the scriptures for ourselves, as guided by the Spirit.Joseph Smith himself often disagreed with various of his brethren on different points, yet he never cracked down on them, saying they’d better change this or that, or else. He disagreed with Parley P. Pratt on a number of things, and also with Brigham Young on various things.
Shared by a friend recently: Quote:
O man, what is good, and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Micah 6:6-8
Quote:“We should spend our time and give diligent attention to the training of members of the Church. Teachers who are filled with the spirit of the Lord and who are tried and true, should be called to act in this capacity, and those who are not so tried and proved, should not be called to instruct the members. What do we accomplish if we spend our time and means preaching in the world to make converts to the gospel, if we place instructors before the youth in the stakes and wards who destroy the faith in the hearts of the young people in the divine message intrusted to our care?”
Joseph Fielding Smith
I can’t find an original source:
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/848219-we-should-spend-our-time-and-give-diligent-attention-to Quote:
“[W]hile all members should respect, support, and heed the teachings of the authorities of the church, no one should accept a statement and base his or her testimony upon it, no matter who makes it, until he or she has, under mature examination, found it to be true and worthwhile; then one’s logical deductions may be confirmed by the spirit of revelation to his or her spirit, because real conversion must come from within.”
President Hugh B. Brown, An Abundant Life:The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown
I’ve been looking up ‘universalism’ and ‘progress between kingdoms’ quotes. Apologies that most of these don’t have LDS.org-type sources. Some of these might also be duplicates from earlier in the thread. Quote:“The brethren direct me to say that the Church has never announced a definite doctrine upon this point. Some of the brethren have held the view that it was possible in the course of progression to advance from one glory to another, invoking the principle of eternal progression; others of the brethren have taken the opposite view. But as stated, the Church has never announced a definite doctrine on this point.”
Secretary to the First Presidency in a 1952 letter; and again in 1965Quote:“None would inherit this earth when it became celestial and translated into the presence of God but those who would be crowned as Gods — all others would have to inherit another kingdom — they would eventually have the privilege of proving themselves worthy and advancing to a celestial kingdom but it would be a slow process [progress?].”
-Brigham Young, in Wilford Woodruff Journal, 5 Aug 1855
I especially like this one: Quote:“I am not a strict constructionalist, believing that we seal our eternal progress by what we do here. It is my belief that God will save all of His children that he can: and while, if we live unrighteously here, we shall not go to the other side in the same status, so to speak, as those who lived righteously; nevertheless, the unrighteous will have their chance, and in the eons of the eternities that are to follow, they, too, may climb to the destinies to which they who are righteous and serve God, have climbed to those eternities that are to come.”
J. Reuben Clark, Church News, 23 April 1960, p. 3Quote:“It is reasonable to believe, in the absence of direct revelation by which alone absolute knowledge of the matter could be acquired, that, in accordance with God’s plan of eternal progression, advancement from grade to grade within any kingdom, and from kingdom to kingdom, will be provided for. But if the recipients of a lower glory be enabled to advance, surely the intelligences of higher rank will not be stopped in their progress; and thus we may conclude, that degrees and grades will ever characterize the kingdoms of our God. Eternity is progressive; perfection is relative; the essential feature of God’s living purpose is its associated power of eternal increase.”
James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith [1899 edition] pp. 420-421Quote:You that are mourning about your children straying away will have your sons and your daughters. If you succeed in passing through these trials and afflictions and receive a resurrection, you will, by the power of the Priesthood, work and labor, as the Son of God has, until you get all your sons and daughters in the path of exaltation and glory. This is just as sure as that the sun rose this morning over yonder mountains. Therefore, mourn not because all your sons and daughters do not follow in the path that you have marked out to them, or give heed to your counsels. Inasmuch as we succeed in securing eternal glory, and stand as saviors, and as kings and priests to our God, we will save our posterity. When Jesus went through that terrible torture on the cross, He saw what would be accomplished by it; He saw that His brethren and sisters the sons and daughters of God would be gathered in, with but few exceptions those who committed the unpardonable sin. That sacrifice of the divine Being was effectual to destroy the powers of Satan. I believe that every man and woman who comes into this life and passes through it, that life will be a success in the end. It may not be in this life. It was not with the antedeluvians. They passed through troubles and afflictions; 2,500 years after that, when Jesus went to preach to them, the dead heard the voice of the Son of God and they lived. They found after all that it was a very good thing that they had conformed to the will of God in leaving the spiritual life and passing through this world.
Lorenzo Snow, MS 56:49-53; Collected Discourses 3:364-65.
Quote:The question of advancement within the great divisions of glory celestial, terrestrial, and telestial; as also the question of advancement from one sphere of glory to another remains to be considered. In the revelation from which we have summarized what has been written here, in respect to the different degrees of glory, it is said that those of the terrestrial glory will be ministered unto by those of the celestial; and those of the telestial will be ministered unto by those of the terrestrial”that is, those of the higher glory minister to those of a lesser glory. I can conceive of no reason for all this administration of the higher to the lower, unless it be for the purpose of advancing our Father’s children along the lines of eternal progression. Whether or not in the great future, full of so many possibilities now hidden from us, they of the lesser glories after education and advancement within those spheres may at last emerge from them and make their way to the higher degrees of glory until at last they attain to the highest, is not revealed in the revelations of God, and any statement made on the subject must partake more or less of the nature of conjecture. But if it be granted that such a thing is possible, they who at the first entered into the celestial glory”having before them the privilege also of eternal progress”have been moving onward, so that the relative distance between them and those who have fought their way up from the lesser glories may be as great when the latter have come into the degrees of celestial glory in which the righteous at first stood, as it was at the commencement. Thus: Those whose faith and works are such only as to enable them to inherit a telestial glory, may arrive at last where those whose works in this life were such as to enable them to entrance into the celestial kingdom”they may arrive where these were, but never where they are.”
B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God 1:391-392.
Quote:Some years ago I was in Washington, D.C., with President Harold B. Lee. Early one morning he called me to come into his hotel room. He was sitting in his robe reading Gospel Doctrine, by President Joseph F. Smith, and he said, “Listen to this!”
“Jesus had not finished his work when his body was slain, neither did he finish it after his resurrection from the dead; although he had accomplished the purpose for which he then came to the earth, he had not fulfilled all his work. And when will he? Not until he has redeemed and saved every son and daughter of our father Adam that have been or ever will be born upon this earth to the end of time, except the sons of perdition. That is his mission. We will not finish our work until we have saved ourselves, and then not until we shall have saved all depending upon us; for we are to become saviors upon Mount Zion, as well as Christ. We are called to this mission.”
“There is never a time,” the Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “when the spirit is too old to approach God. All are within the reach of pardoning mercy, who have not committed the unpardonable sin.”
Boyd K. Packer, “The Brilliant Morning of Forgiveness,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 18https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1995/10/the-brilliant-morning-of-forgiveness?lang=eng Original JFS quote here:
https://www.lds.org/manual/teachings-joseph-f-smith/chapter-46?lang=eng Jeffrey R Holland being asked about the priesthood ban: Quote:
One clear-cut position is that the folklore must never be perpetuated. … I have to concede to my earlier colleagues. … They, I’m sure, in their own way, were doing the best they knew to give shape to [the policy], to give context for it, to give even history to it. All I can say is however well intended the explanations were, I think almost all of them were inadequate and/or wrong.
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