Mormonism's Exalted Man, More From Cyril Lucaris

Well, greetings. Welcome to the Dividing Line. It is a toasty day in Phoenix, Arizona, as I parked my truck just a few moments ago here in the afternoon at three o 'clock in the afternoon. You know, my truck has digital temperature readouts in front of me, and it was currently reading 117 degrees Fahrenheit, which is still five degrees below the record, but it's definitely toasty here in Phoenix, Arizona.

What are you trying to do? Look, I've already got all these floaters in my eye, and so what he does is he puts the mouse over on the screen over here and moves it around just simply to completely discombobulate me, and that's what you can do when people get old.

Not only is their attention less wrapped, but yeah, this floater stuff is a royal bummer. No two ways about it. Anyway, so it's a little bit warm here in Phoenix right now, but I'm still loving it. It's where I've lived for 52 years coming up the end of this month.

July 31st, 1974, my family arrived here, and nobody had told us it's really stupid to move to Phoenix at the end of July. I mean, that first night we had our first dust storm, and it was like, did we move to another planet?

You don't move from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to a place where you have walls of dust that are 30 ,000 feet high. There are only a few places that actually have that, some in the Middle East and right here in the Sonoran Desert.

Anyway, we have things to get to. Why am I telling you stuff? Because old people tell stories about the past, and we enjoy it. It's fun and stuff like that. All right, got some important stuff to get to here.

Aquinas Kansas City and the Drift Toward Rome

I did repost something on X that I think it's worthwhile looking at. Let me see here. Open image in new tab, and let's move the tab over there and then go like this. And so, Matthew Barrett, good old Dr. Barrett, formerly of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, now some form of extremely Rome-friendly Anglican.

You'll notice he's in a picture there with a priest. Many are asking what it means to flourish as a human being searching for a God who can answer that question. Dominic Legge and I will ask what it means to be human and find happiness in God at the first Aquinas Kansas City Conference.

Oh, Aquinas. Catholic and Protestant alike come to Kansas City in October. Seats are limited to come to this thing where you'll be asked to become a Roman Catholic. Yeah, some of us saw this stuff coming and see more stuff coming, and when you ask the question, searching for a God who can answer that question, there's so many questions to ask.

Does Romans 3 enter into this? And most importantly, what about this little thing called the gospel? But once you get to this point, that gospel thing isn't really a big impediment anymore. We don't have to worry about that anymore, and that's how stuff happens so fast.

So yeah, we keep an eye on these things, and we see that Kansas City has become sort of a central location for this stuff, and there'll be more in the future. Just watch. It can't stay this way. I've been playing around.

AI Music, Scripture, and the Problem of Copyright

I'm going to do this really quickly. This song is a minute and 30 seconds long. Last week, someone in our little private ministry chat channel posted something from Suno where you can make AI music, and I haven't been paying much attention to it, but I'm sitting there going, you know, it'd be really fun to put scripture to music.

Well, you can't do that. Scripture is copyrighted, according to Suno. Well, that's because the ESV is copyrighted, and the LSV is copyrighted, and the NIV is copyrighted, and no, it does not matter if you translate yourself.

I tried that. I wanted to put Psalm 121 to music, and it just, even when I went through it myself and provide my own translation where I was making sure I was rendering things a little bit differently than NIV or ESV, it didn't matter.

It's still too well-known. I did get a pretty good rendition of Isaiah 10, and the axe, and will the axe boast against the one wielding it, and things like that. That compatibility, discussion of the will of man and will of God, sorry, issue, and it worked.

Because who's quoting Isaiah 10? It's just, the filters didn't pick that up. That's not something that people want to necessarily throw out there. So anyway, but if you try popular stuff, it just, it just, you know.

But then I threw out some patristic citations. So I made a couple songs from the Epistle to Diognetus, and then I grabbed this section from the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, or First Clement, or Clement's name is not in the letter.

It's the church at Rome writing to the church at Corinth, and stuff like that. Anyway, and I threw it at it to see what it would come up with. And so I just wanted to play it for you, just so you have an idea.

You know, there's some people just hate AI music, but that's because you hate the idea of AI, primarily. And I get that there are things to think about, but it's here. Okay, it's here. You're going to be hearing this music all around you, no matter what you do.

You can't stop up your ears, and things like that. But yeah, I threw it out, and here's, this is called Only By His Will. So it's, like I said, it's all of 92 seconds long, because it's not a long quotation.

So I'm sure there are ways of creating verses, and doing repetition, and stuff like that, which is what I should do. But I don't have time right now. Which, by the way, reminds me, real quickly, we pull out on our summer trip, less than a month, but more than three weeks, up to Colorado, Lord willing, as long as the roads are open.

Lots of fires, lots of dry, lots of heat. Some say the biggest drought since 1934. And so we'll see what happens there. But the plan is to pull out next Thursday. And we certainly have churches that we're going to be visiting along the way, on Grand Junction, and Dolores, and Aurora, and down in New Mexico on the way back, as well as in the Colorado Springs.

Yeah, I've just got to keep the route in my service circle. So that means, you know, pouring diesel gas, which thankfully is less than $5 a gallon now, but still considerably more expensive than it was on the last trip, into that big old truck, and paying for those RV slots each night, which aren't as expensive as a hotel room, and in my opinion, much more comfortable than a hotel room.

But the point is, as we head out the road, want to be a blessing to the churches out there, do the dividing line on the road. You know, your support's always extremely helpful. This time of year is not only dry in the West, but it's also dry as far as support and giving to all ministries and not just us.

So just a reminder, if you are thinking about, you have funds, you know, remember us. We don't have a bunch of rich people running around throwing denariuses at us, though we couldn't actually spend denariuses anyways, but maybe in the new Trump economy, you could use denariuses.

I don't know. But your support is always extremely, extremely necessary for doing the things that we're doing. So let's just check this out. This is my, not my, I mean, okay, I used my account, big deal.

This is my translation of, well, it might be. Anyways, this is from either the late first or early second century are the words here. And check them out as I play them for you here.

But by his will, and we also being called by his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by means of ourselves, nor by our own wisdom or understanding or godliness or works, which we have done in holiness of heart.

But by that faith through which the almighty. Yeah, I think that did a pretty good job. And.

The words themselves, I mean, pretty strong stuff. You know, you hear people all the time saying, oh, all that stuff, justification by faith, imputed righteousness, that's just all made up stuff since the Reformation.

And then you show them stuff like this, and their heads explode, and they start the trist explaining, you know, Pope explaining. Yeah, this is early church father explaining. You know, well, but this guy said that.

Yeah, the other guy did say that. I can let them be what they were, and I can let them say what they said. I don't have to turn them into me. You do. So you lose your mind when they say the stuff that I would say.

Well, but you would have disagreed him on that. Yeah, so again, the whole mindset is they have to be just like me. And right now, I may spend some time on the trip putting some of this stuff together.

But on another account that I have on X, my old account I keep just so that people don't grab it and start pretending to be me. I'm not sure how I've done it, but I'm following a lot of traditionalists, Latin mass guys, SSPX.

And really, really quickly, I don't want to spend much time on this, because we'll spend some more time on it later on. But there, last week, there was the big huge excommunication of the SSPX, the Society of St. Pius X.

These are extremely conservative traditionalist Latin mass type Roman Catholics. And we know that Francis detested the Latin mass, and Leo doesn't seem to be much more friendly. And this is all about power.

This is all about organization. But Rome excommunicated the SSPX, millions of people. And so that the SSPX priests, their sacraments are no longer licit, or valid, or whatever terminology they want to use.

And you would not believe the stuff that I'm seeing online. I mean, I have told you that Roman Catholics will often post video of crazy Pentecostal stuff going on, and then the beautiful mass, you know, and this is what the Reformation brought you.

These SSPX folks, they post all this stuff of the craziness that goes on in the Novus Ordo, the new mass from Vatican II, in the vernacular and stuff like that, rather than the Latin mass. And, you know, priests dancing around.

And I saw one where this guy rode a mountain bike in, and got up on the back tire, and bounced around the altar, and then back down the center aisle. And they're posting all this stuff, and it's exactly what other people do, trying to create the contrast between the reverential mass and supposedly what Protestantism is all about.

But you can do it right back at them quite easily, in fact. Dancing priests, and singing priests, and I saw one yesterday where all these witch doctors and stuff are blessing the Pope. It's just wild, crazy, insane stuff.

You know, we saw Leo, you know, with his block of ice, and there's a lot of that crazy stuff out there. But you do just have to sit here and watch these arguments going on, and watch people quoting the same infallible sources.

And they are ripping each other's lips off. And they interpret the same words in different ways. Oh, no. And, you know, to my Catholic apologist friends, you do realize that the constant arguments you use against solo scriptura, if you just look at your own communion right now, create absolute havoc.

I don't know how you can look at yourself in the mirror. Solo scriptura, blueprint for anarchy. Have you been watching what's going on? Are you watching your own people reverently quoting from the same codes of canon law, and interpreting them differently?

And you realize that the fundamental guy who gets the final word is Tucho Fernandez? I mean, if you don't know who Tucho Fernandez is, look him up. He's the big guy other than Pope Leo right now. He's the head of the Congregation for the Faith, the head of the old Inquisition.

And he's got two left wings. So if you're a Catholic apologist, you're stuck with what that guy says. But that guy drives you crazy, and you know it. But you won't admit it, not publicly. So, yeah, it's, I'm not rejoicing in this.

I'm just simply going, this demonstrates how hypocritical your arguments have been all along. We've pointed this out to you from the beginning. But now you're seeing it, you've got a crisis going on. I mean, you've got a Vatican who isn't getting rid of all of the German bishops that are blessing same-sex marriages, that are preaching that stuff, but they'll get rid of the Latin mass guys who speak against that stuff?

Really? Oh, yeah, that's consistency. Yeah, it's consistency of a movement going left and abandoning so-called apostolic tradition. That's right there in front of you. I don't know how you can miss it.

I just, I don't know how you can miss it. Okay, I want to read some stuff to you here. I think this has been important. This is an important conversation, and it needs to continue, and you need to listen to it, especially if you love the Mormon people, if you recognize, as we do, that the back door of the Mormon church is as large as the front door is today.

If you've ever gone out with us to Salt Lake City, to Mesa, and we've tried to explain and express why we want to see the Mormon people come to know the true God, not the exalted man of Joseph Smith, and yeah, there's all this stuff going on, the neo-Morms are there, and Mormonism is unraveling.

It's coming apart, and where all those people end up going when it finally does come apart, that's a good question. That's a good question. But we need to have compassion for these folks. They've been given a false gospel and a false God, and that God that they've been given keeps them from having a meaningful understanding of the God of Scripture and what the God of Scripture does.

Hayden Carroll, Joseph Smith, and the Exalted Man

So, Hayden Carroll, let's talk with Hayden Carroll on X. As I mentioned last program, Jeff Durbin, last week on Apology Radio, put out a call for he and Jacob Hansen. Jacob Hansen and he have debated together in the past.

Now, I'm not sure if they could do that anymore. It's quite possible that Jacob Hansen's beliefs have changed so much that Hayden Carroll wouldn't be willing to do that. I don't know. I don't know. But I have to leave that to Jeff right now, because I've got the trip upcoming, and I don't know how I'm going to get everything done that I need to get done before then.

But we're trying to get something put together to talk about these issues. But Hayden Carroll, like most Mormons, and like Jacob Hansen, detests Calvinism. I mean, they use a lot of the same type of argumentation that Eastern Orthodox do, Revisionists do.

They all seem to borrow from one another. If it sounds good and makes Calvinism sound bad, well, I'll just sort of grab it and run with it. So, on July 2nd, Hayden Carroll had posted this on X. He said, your God of Calvin literally predetermined every single abortion that's ever happened, so I'm not sure you want to enter into this conversation.

Now, if you look at his feed, I'm going to go ahead and put this up. I don't know that it's the center one here. So, your God of Calvin literally predetermined every single abortion that's ever happened, so I'm not sure you want to enter into this conversation, was what I saw.

And so, if you go to his feed, he's been on this for a while. He's doing the, if there's a divine decree, we're all just puppets and has no meaning, and da-da-da-da-da-da, just really going at it.

And so, I've been watching this, and in fact, I think, yeah, I do have somewhere, yeah, I remember where I put it now, a screenshot of just post after post after post of this, there can't be a divine decree type of stuff.

So, I responded to him, and here's, I mean, you can read this yourself, but not everybody has an ex count, so I want you to see what has happened here. I said, your God, Hayden, was once a man who lived on another planet and worshiped another God, et cetera, et cetera.

He is not a neomorph. So, he affirms what Joseph Smith taught in the King Follett discourse, in the Sermon on the Grove, and what became the very foundation of LDS orthodoxy for a century and a half. I think it is you, sir, who needs to consider entering this conversation, for your God is the slave of time.

Temporality, progression, he has no decree, has but limited power in a limited context, and hence has limited responsibility. He is not the ground of all being, the definer of truth and objective reality.

He is the product of external forces and actions, just as we all are. So, we cannot have a truly theistic discussion with you about the relationship of a sovereign God to human actions of time, because your God is not in that realm, he is just an exalted man himself.

Now, if you would like to dig into the biblical witness to God's decree and the existence and purpose of evil, let's start with the biblical witness. I'll provide a starting place, we can build up from there.

I believe you would be aware that Jeff Durbin has already called for you and Jacob to engage, he and I, and I haven't heard if you have responded to that as yet, but here's a good chance to do so out in the public.

Here's the starting place in scripture, and then I posted Isaiah chapter 10. Now, I did post it in Hebrew, because it's so cool looking in Hebrew. He didn't respond to that, not to my knowledge. Anyways, a lot of other people did.

In fact, I even made the comment on July 2nd, wow, so far not a single meaningful rational response to this post. Lots of static control talk, but not a single meaningful response. Tells you something about the theological climate on X.

And yeah, I'm telling you, the responses were not even worth the pixels that were dedicated to seeing them. So, I have not seen anything from Hayden Carroll. And his big thing is, hey, let's talk, let's have dialogues, let's do all this.

I want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And Hayden Carroll's thing is hyper-skepticism. It's hyper-skepticism about the Bible, it's hyper-skepticism about church history. It's not hyper-skepticism about Mormonism.

If he applied the same standards to his scriptures he applies to the Bible. If he applied the same standards to his history that he applies to Christian history, then he would have to, of course, abandon Mormonism, but that's the problem.

People don't consistently do things like that. And so, there was my point. My point is, we can't have a meaningful discussion. I mean, one of the frustrating things, talking to provisionists, is supposedly the lengthy discussions of God's immutability, of God's aseity, of God's decree, God's timelessness.

That's supposed to be part of our shared foundation, but it frequently isn't. It frequently gets completely lost. And that's where the frustration is. But when you're talking to a self-professed Mormon who accepts what Joseph Smith taught, we don't have a foundation upon which to have this conversation.

Because the God of Joseph Smith, when Joseph Smith, I've said it I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see, he separated himself and his followers from Christianity for all time.

And also precludes his followers from sitting down at the table to have a meaningful discussion about this subject. Because Isaiah 10, which is what I quoted, shows us so plainly that God's decree and man's responsibility are compatible with one another.

That God uses the Assyrians to punish Israel, as he had promised to do, Deuteronomy 28 and 29. And then he punishes the Assyrians for having done so in haughtiness of heart. So you have one action in time, God's perfect holiness being demonstrated, man's sinfulness being demonstrated, and yet God holds the man accountable for what they do in their sinful action.

It's right there. I've honestly never heard anyone even try to give a response to Isaiah 10. I mean, when Chris Day took on Layton Flowers on Genesis 50, which is another one of those big three passages that demonstrate these things, he just collapsed.

It was almost difficult to listen to. Just flailed around, just could not answer any meaningful questions. It was embarrassing. And so I don't know if in the thousands of hours of opining that Layton Flowers has posted on the internet, if he's ever tried to get to Isaiah chapter 10.

I'd be really interested if someone could find out, because that'd be something I'd like to hear. But I don't know that he would ever voluntarily do that. I think he'd have to be forced to engage that, and it would, again, be difficult to listen to.

So I didn't hear a response, because the God of Isaiah 10 is not the God of Joseph Smith. But someone else did, and I found this really, really useful. So here is Lego Joseph Smith. We've played some of his stuff before and responded to some of his stuff before.

And he responds to what I said to Hayden. So that would make me think that Lego Joseph Smith is not a neomorm. I mean, it's sort of hard to tell. It's sort of hard to tell just online who's who, and who's playing on what team.

But he doesn't seem to be a neomorm. So I want you to listen to this, because this is truly fascinating. Here is a Mormon, reads what I just wrote. I read to you what I wrote about, you don't have a seat at the table, you're God's subject of time.

And all of you are sitting there going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Check this out. I think you've completely missed the point. By the way, the only reason I saw this is Micah, Micah Burke, responded to this.

And so it popped into my timeline. It's the only reason I even saw it. So thank you. You seem to think God's greatness comes from the fact that he never had to become anything. Think about that for a second.

You seem to think that God's greatness comes from the fact that he never had to become anything. And if you stop and think, you go, well, that's not where it comes from, but that is definitive of God, because he has eternally been God.

And it's not that he was a lesser God that became a greater God, or something like that. If he's the creator of all things, that is the biblical standard. That is the standard that Scripture uses to demonstrate the true God from all false gods.

If it exists, he created it. So if God can become something greater than he once was, what's the mechanism by which he would do that? Now, we're talking about immutability, we're talking about things like that there, yes, but in Mormonism, God becomes greater by obedience to eternal law that he did not originate.

That eternal law exists outside of himself. And I would argue, while Rich, again, makes me look over at the thing going, what, what, what? I'm sorry? Yeah, you don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah.

See, what was I talking about? I don't know. It was about Mormonism, I think, Mormonism, God, something like that. It's hard for me to remember now, because we obviously have a Mormon spy in the studio that is seeking to distract me and making me stop thinking about things.

God is the ground of all things. He's the creator of all things. And so there can't be a process whereby he could become something because he would be subject to things he did not create. See? So, but have you ever thought of it this way?

Most of us have never thought of it this way. Most of us have never had to try to enter into the mindset of real Mormonism. But here you have it. You seem to think God's greatness comes from the fact that he never had to become anything.

I think God's greatness is shown in who he became. So you have to ask the question, could he become something different in the future? And that's actually a valid debate within Mormonism. Within the non-neo-Morms, that was an argument I've heard Mormons having with each other.

Is it the eternal law of progression or the law of eternal progression? Where you put eternal has meaning. Does God become omniscient? Can he not learn anything more? At what point does it all of a sudden, bingo, I got it all now.

Which could never really happen given that there's many gods in Mormonism. So if you ever asserted that God was omniscient, you'd have to say he was only omniscient over the realms that he has some authority.

How could he be omniscient about what other gods are doing in some other universe? There would be a constant new information that would not be under his control. He'd be the eternal student learning things every day, which would change him.

So I think God's greatness is shown in who he became. You mock the idea that God progressed, but why is that something to mock? Well, I'll go ahead and answer that. Because the prophets would have mocked him.

Because Jesus would have mocked him. Because scripture mocked him. That's not Yahweh. Yahweh is not getting better. Yahweh is not going to be a better God tomorrow than he was today. There are systems of theology, there's something called process theology, that posits a version of this.

It's a highly philosophical version that really wouldn't fit Mormonism, but it has similar characteristics to it. But I mock it because it means that we're no longer talking about the God of scripture at all.

In fact, it means we have no God. One of the things that people like Jacob Hansen, you know, Jacob Hansen said to Blake Ostler, you freed me from having to believe in infinite regress. Because the human mind recognizes if there's an increasing number of gods today, if you go back in time, then there's a decreasing number of gods, and you keep going back in time eventually, what do you get to?

You get to the first God. And what is the first God before he's a god? He's a man. And he has to progress to godhood, and the laws of eternal progression, priesthood, procreation, have to pre-exist him.

Where do they come from? Mormonism can't say. Not the Mormonism of Joseph Smith. Which again, is why I insist again, if the Masons hadn't killed Joseph Smith in 1844, there would be no Mormonism today.

Because what does still exist today doesn't make any sense. It's indefensible philosophically. And that's why people like Blake Ostler are abandoning the core tenets of Joseph Smith's theology for something else.

What that something else is, no one's ever believed. Has no historical pedigree. No one has ever believed what Blake Ostler believes before Blake Ostler. So either he has to claim prophethood and revelation, or just admit, I'm making it up as I go along, and you get to make up anything you want to make up as you go along.

There you go. Those are your choices. Those are your options. But why is that something to mock? We don't praise courage unless someone could have run away. We don't praise honesty unless someone could have lied.

We don't praise sacrifice unless someone could have chosen themselves instead. So why would I praise goodness if it was never something God actually chose? Do you hear? This is important. You're not going to tune in to almost any other webcast today where you're going to be challenged to think about what's being said here.

At least on this level. You're really not. This is Mormonism. This is Joseph Smith Mormonism. This is King Follett Mormonism. And you need to hear it, because this is what happens when your God is just a jumbo-sized version of you.

Because that's what God is in Mormonism. God-men and angels are all the same species, just at different levels of exaltation. And so when you think of it in that way, what you're hearing from Lego Joseph Smith here is, I can really respect God because he chose to do, well, what we look at guys on the battlefield that choose to give their lives for others, and we give them the Medal of Honor.

And so that's what we're going to do with God. Because he's just, he's one of us. And so that's one of the reasons why, you know, one of the things we've learned for a long, long time, when we present biblical truths of man's deadness and sin, of God's sovereignty and salvation to Mormons, they are dumbfounded.

It's not just because their temple ceremonies present this kind of stuff as the teachings of Satan. It's not just because in their theology that's what Lucifer thought. It's because they have no category for God.

The only category they have is an exalted man, a bigger version of themselves. And so, you know, we don't praise honesty unless someone could have lied. God cannot lie, right? That's the definition. You see, they don't have a God who is the objective standard of truth.

You realize why Mormonism is dying from the inside is because the only reason it survived for as long as it did is it was insulated in Intermountain, Utah. And Mormons all went to school in Intermountain, Utah.

They all went to BYU, or maybe the U of U once in a while. Because philosophically, the God of Joseph Smith is incapable of providing any meaningful grounding for epistemology, objective truth, the Hawaiian yarn, outside of just blunt force authority because the prophet said so.

But there's nothing in the system itself to explain how objective truth can even exist. So you see this, and what you're seeing is here's a man who goes, I can really respect God for being better than he could have been because he's just me.

I'll respect the guy who gave his life for his compatriots on Omaha Beach on D-Day. And for the Mormon, that's the best they can do because that's all they've got. That's the only God they possess, the only God they've been taught.

To me, you've taken away the very thing that makes goodness admirable. So notice, admirable as in amongst men. I admire that trait in someone. They don't understand that in Isaiah 6 where it says, kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, holiness is not just moral purity, it's otherness.

They have no other. Their God is an exalted man. And if they really believe that they themselves are going to become a God and be worshipped by their offspring, that cements it, right? I mean, there it is.

That's what they're going to be. You keep talking about God's metaphysical status, whether he has a beginning, whether he's outside of time, whether he's the ground of being, I'm talking about his character.

And when you think about it, I'm sure that's what he thinks. But he doesn't realize because he's, you know, the Bible's teaching has nothing to do with what this guy believes. Even when Mormons read the Bible, they read it through the lens of their own scriptures, so they don't see it.

I remember talking to a former Mormon once who said, you know, here's the Bible I carried on my mission. You look at every page, I mark stuff all over the place. I read it now. I missed everything. Everything that could have told me I was wrong.

I just didn't even see it because I read the Bible through the lens of the Book of Mormon, the teachings of Joseph Smith, the Doctrine and Covenants, etc. I was blind to this stuff. They're blind to this.

They don't see that when the scripture speaks of God's character, God's character becomes the ground of everyone else's standard of character because he's the creator of all things. That metaphysical stuff isn't just over there on a shelf someplace.

It's what makes God worthy of being the standard because he created all things. Their God did not create all things. They deny Keraushiox and Hilo. They deny that he is the ground and origin of all things.

That's fundamental to LDS theology. A being isn't worthy of worship just because he's eternal, but he is worthy of worship if he is the eternal God who created all things. And everything that he makes owes to him every breath, every beat of the heart, and all of existence.

So in his mind, you're worthy of worship because of what you've done. So the Medal of Honor winner is worthy of the applause because of what they did, and that's as far as his God can go. That's as far as the God of Mormonism can go.

They don't have a transcendent God who is worthy of worship simply because he is the source and origin of all things. If all you can tell me is that God has always been that way by necessity, I'm honestly not sure why you think that's more impressive than a God whose perfect character is worthy of becoming like.

Now, this again raises another issue. If this man thinks he's going to become a God, then the God of whatever planet or universe, wherever you want to put it, that he's going to be is God who was once a sinner, and he's gotten better.

So some Mormons like to say, well, we don't know one way or the other whether God the Father was a sinner, we just don't know. He might have been the Savior figure on another planet. So the idea being that Jesus might become God the Father of his own planet, and that was a part of speculation, too.

There was a lot of confusion in Utah. How did Jesus become a God if he hadn't gone through the temple, if he hadn't gotten married? And that's why some of the early Mormon leaders thought that Jesus did get married and have children.

So, yeah, long before Dan Brown. So these are extremely troubling questions that are definitely something to be thought of from the Mormon perspective, but I'm honestly not sure why you think that's more impressive than a God whose perfect character is worthy of becoming.

He has no concept of a God that is anything other than a human, just at a different level of exaltation. Now, it's the same attitude that motivated that Mormon that night in Mesa years ago, where he reached over my Bible and tapped on Ephesians 1 .11, where it's God predestines all things, glory to the council as well.

He taps on that and says, that's wrong, and I feel good saying that. Same motivation, same spirit, in fact. That's the difference between us. You're impressed by what God is, I'm impressed by who God is.

Now, that's well written. I mean, that has rhetorical flourish. It has no substance whatsoever, because he has divided God's being from God's character, and he doesn't begin to understand that in Scripture, that division never takes place.

God is who he is because of what he is, and so his holiness is on a completely different level. It's much fuller. It's not just moral. It is moral. It is purity, but it is otherness, and he has no other.

There is no otherness in his Mormon theology because he has no God. He has an exalted man. That's not the God of Scripture. That's not something that anybody dreamed up until Joseph Smith dreamed it up, at least in this form.

So I thought that was pretty fascinating, and I hope to remember when I get back to the house tonight after picking up my wife at the airport here in a while. I haven't seen her in a while, so looking forward to getting her home, and the kiddies will be happy about that, too.