Who is Heavenly Father?
Part 1.
I feel like there is a lot of confusion inside and outside The Church about Heavenly Father, his nature, his work, and what we as Latter-Day Saints, Brigham-ites, Mormons, whatever you wanna classify us as, really believe in concerning “God”.
I guess the first thing that is probably strange to a lot of people, is that we call God our, “Heavenly Father.” To the majority of the world he is usually stated as, “God the Father”, but we as Latter-Day Saints always refer to him as our Heavenly Father, The Literal Father of our Spirits. While it’s a respectful term used by us to avoid using the name-title, God, it holds some unique belief to The Latter-Day Saint Church. Our very first Article of Faith states that, “We believe in God, The Eternal Father...”1 This statement alone shows that we do believe in God, That Heavenly Father is that God omnipotent. I think the first thing that really separates us as Mormons, is that we have a belief that a.) God is his own distinct character. b.) He is The father, not the Son, or the Holy Ghost.
God is his own distinct character. In The Book of Genesis it states how God created the Heavens and The Earth, and placed all life in it, and created man in his own image.2 Right now I am going to focus on God creating man in his own image, because here is where we grab our divine identity as the literal children of God. For me, and countless others in this religion it has always made me happy to know that I am a child of God, the creator of this universe, and it’s a big security blanket for me. If nothing else is going right in my day, at least I can go to sleep knowing that I am an actual child from God.
Like I have said before, some people, including various Christians, have found that kind of strange, and they really want to know the basis to our claim. I am going to paraphrase the Scriptures here, in the seventeenth chapter of The Acts of The Apostles, it tells how Paul (formerly known as Saul), goes to Athens where a bunch of the population of Athens (The Atheninans?) are paying their tributes, sacrifices, whatever you want to call them to their respectful Gods, on Mars Hill. He stays there for a while to observe the people (Athenians, right? Am I wrong here?) and then begins preaching about the Gospel. This makes the people upset, and they begin to question Paul. Paul then makes reference to the altar of: THE UNKNOWN GOD, and then begins to teach everyone that this God, whom they so ignorantly pay tribute to, is the only God they should be worshipping. He then goes on to explain that the inhabitants of this Earth are the, “... offspring of God...”3
There are other various scriptures to back up this claim, but that would just get really boring and make you go back to Twitter, or Facebook, and I really want to teach you something, and that is you and I are the actual Children of God. This knowledge and understanding makes me filled to the brim with joy, and is why you find that we believe we can communicate with God through prayer, and he actually listens to us. It also makes me well aware he understands who I am, my specific needs, struggles and things I enjoy. It’s probably not like this, but I can imagine Heavenly Father on his Golden Throne with an, “All About Darnel,” book that he goes over. It’s filled with my trials and challenges, but it’s also filled with my favorite ice cream, favorite kind of music, and favorite basketball team (All though knowing my book, it just has a Kobe Bryant is Darnel’s favorite team).
That very same book, because we’re gonna stick with that analogy, is written for you, and your parents, your siblings (but in my case I made it to the” favorite section” of Heavenly Father’s children and my younger brother and sister didn’t), [it’s a tragedy really, and I pray that one day they can join me on that shelf], your significant other, your teachers, and everyone who has inhabited this Earth! He knows and understands each and everyone of us, and to me that is an example of his love for all of us, no matter what situation we may be in. This knowledge allows me access to happiness, but we also can grow closer to my Father in Heaven, by communicating with him in Prayer and by Reading the Scripture.
I’ve heard a quote recently that goes, “If you want God to draw closer to you, pray daily, but if you want to draw closer to God, study the scriptures daily.” Joseph Fielding Smith once stated that the Holy Scriptures Show Personality of God and that, “ This all important truth staggered the world... The Apostles clearly understood the distinct entities of the Father...”4 So my invitation to close this article is to you to understand you Father in Heaven by reading the scriptures, and praying to understand your divine identity.
Knowing that I didn’t cover everything about Heavenly Father, I am breaking up this subject into different parts. I hope you all enjoyed your time, you can now go back to your Facebook and Twitter, but if you wanna make the favorite section in Heavenly Father’s library share this with you friends and family on your feeds!
You can read the next blog post here: Who is Heavenly Father? Part 2.
You can read the next blog post here: Who is Heavenly Father? Part 2.
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Awesome post. I loved it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Nel:)
ReplyDelete