Ozzy

There is a price that must be paid for breaking the laws of God. Since God is just, justice demands the price be paid. But since God is merciful as well, He wants to give mercy to those who ask. The only way to appease justice and to also be merciful was to have a mediator. Someone who could pay the price to fulfill the demands of justice, but also to extend mercy to those who are penitent. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, was the one chosen for this role. That is why He is called the Christ, or the Messiah. He is the chosen one, the anointed one, chosen from before the foundation of the world to atone for our sins. He lived a perfect, sinless life on Earth, thus becoming the only one that justice had no grasp on. Being spotless and blameless before God, He could offer his blood and life to pay the price for us. In the garden of Gethsemane He prayed and pleaded for us. He suffered beyond imagination anguish of both body and soul, so much so that His sweat turned to great drops of blood. Asking the Father if there was any other way, He knew that there was not. He had to drink the dregs of the cup of the wrath of God, He had to descend below all things, He had to feel the pains of hell and damnation, and feel the complete withdrawal from the Father and His spirit. He had to suffer what we would suffer if no intercession had been made for us. He had to know our pains and our infirmities. He had to pay the price for all of the children of the Father. After that anguish, He was taken and beaten, stripped of His clothes and pummeled, spit on, accused falsely, and hung on a cross. He fulfilled His mission by suffering death and being resurrected. After all this, all He asks of us is that we repent and keep His commandments. We learn of the gospel and what was done for us, we decide we want to be better, so we repent by asking God for forgiveness, we try to correct what we have done wrong, we move forward in faith in trying to keep His commandments to the best of our ability, becoming better and better every day. The animal sacrifices that you speak of in the Old Testament was to point their minds forward to the time when the Lamb of God would atone for their sins and pay the price. Today we look backwards and remember what He has done for us. This is why we take the bread and the wine often, so that we REMEMBER Him and keep our minds fastened on the atonement and that we should have a repentant heart and keep His commandments always. It should be kept in mind that we are preparing ourselves to enter the presence of God. Our life has become a probationary life where we can learn from experience, by trial and error, why we want to be good and keep God's commands. As we taste the pain that breaking the laws most assuredly brings; as we have sorrow and regret for our actions and misdeeds, we have the great promises of our Lord and Savior that we can and will be forgiven if we repent and try our best. If we do this, we will stand before God to be judged and the Savior will be on our side and mercy will be extended. That is how the atonement works.

Search for "lost books of the Bible" and you'll get a real eye opener to how much was excluded from the canon for political reasons.

Everything that is good and holy is being treated as evil. The family unit is being broken up. The gays want their debauchery to be normal. Killing your unborn children is not only okay, but others should pay for it. Adultery and divorce are normal. Almost every sexual perversion that can be thought of it done and shown to others by mass acceptance of pornography. Truth is pulled out of our schools and our societies. Everything that is good is now treated as though it is evil.

It was very near to Paul's time and continuing from there and is still taking place today. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries were terrible times for the Christian religion. Heavy persecution mixed with infiltration of pagan doctrines, followed by Rome taking over the religion and mixing it with it's ideas. The truth was slowly disregarded and men's lies became a part of the religion. Many false doctrines became normal and still serve as a foundational doctrines of today. Most are still living those lies, until the Messiah shall correct them.

The Mormons? Aren't those the weird bearded men in the mountains of Utah? No, I said the church of Jesus Christ. I'm still looking for it myself. I don't want to join the church of Luther, or the church of the Catholics, or the church of King Henry VIII, or the church of whoever decides to throw one up somewhere, or the church of the non-denominational...... I want to join the church of Jesus Christ. If you find it, let me know so I can investigate it please.

All of Isaiah 53. There are a few others, but the OT as we have it today is missing a lot of them. Do a search for lost books of the Bible and you'll see the many, many books that have been pulled out or simply been lost to history.

Join the church of Jesus Christ.

How sad. It seems everyone has gotten married just to get divorced.

The law of sacrifice has always been apart of the law of the gospel. It is important to note that it was not instituted with the Law of Moses. Remember that way before Moses was around, people like Abraham were offering up sacrifices. It probably goes back all the way to Adam and Eve after they got expelled from the garden. They were most likely taught the law of sacrifice to point their hearts to the Savior, who would be that sacrifice. It seems almost all civilizations and people had some form of sacrifice, even though it was corrupted by their false priests. Sacrifice seems to be in our nature. Anyway, when after Jesus accomplished His sacrifice, the way we remember it is by the bread and wine. At some point, when the sons of Levi return to the gospel, receive their temple ordinances, and are purified in order to perform those ancient sacrifices, they will again do so and it will be a sweet savor unto the Lord.

Jesus is God because His Father chose and ordained Him as such. He became the anointed one, the chosen one, the Messiah, to come atone for our sins and help us to be clean to go live with the Father. Jesus overcame the world and inherited all that His Father has, eternal life. He inherited all the attributes and powers that His Father has. He was an heir to all of this, and we, if we are faithful, will be joint-heirs with Christ of all that the Father has. Now whether or not that has anything to do with a "soul" is just semantics.

There are lots of good scriptural writings out there that are good for faith. A lot of things just didn't get added by the politicians and they try to force you to think that you can't have any more. There are apocryphal writings of Peter, James, and Paul. I love reading those! They look at feel more like the book of Revelation does. Peter really slams hard on the false doctrine of infant baptism, which is why it was excluded from the 4th century compilation. By the way, a historian working on ancient documents that are held at the Vatican found a journal of a guy who was journeying throughout Israel. He records his eye witness account of a miracle that Jesus did. Search for "Newly found document holds eyewitness account of miracle of Jesus". Enjoy!

Remember that the story of Adam and Eve and their 900+ years of life are contained into just about 10 pages! We ABSOLUTELY do not know everything there is to know about them. One assumption most people make is that Cain and Abel were the first two children born. There are merely the first two mentioned because of the major plot of Cain and Satan to kill Abel. But one thing to note is that after that event when God is banishing Cain, he is afraid that ALL the other people around are going to kill him. What other people? If Cain and Abel were the only two around, who would be there to kill him? It seems evident that Adam and Eve had already been having children, probably as soon as they left the garden, and there were lots of sons and daughters, who also had been reproducing. Then the next great notable event was the birth of Seth, who was a righteous man.

Remember to keep in mind the ultimate goal for having a temple. The goal is to symbolically represent fallen mankind preparing to enter the presence of God by ritual sacrifice, washings, anointings, clothing, and gaining heavenly instruction as the person symbolically travels from a fallen state to a state of perfection in the presence of God. So, any decorations, designs, and symbols on the temple are geared to reinforce in the mind of the person of the path they are taking. As you enter the outer court, you would have offered a sacrifice in the similitude of the Only Begotten Son of God. You were still outside of the temple proper, you were presented before the priest where he made the sacrifice for you, sprinkled the blood on the altar, and then escorted to the laver, or washing basin. You would then receiving a washing of water and anointing of oil, been clothed and prepared to enter into the actual building, or the holy place. There you would have walked through those doors, leaving the world behind and would be remind of the peace and holiness that you were going into. I think your interpretation of the doors is perfect. Your mind would have been turned to heavenly things as you left the profane world behind. You would have been instructed inside of the ways of God, and then presented before the veil to gain entrance into the holy of holies, or the presence of the Lord. This would signify, symbolically, the journey we all take from our fallen state to a state of being able to be in God's presence and have eternal life. Unfortunately, the children of Israel were a disobedient and rebellious people. When the temple instructions were given to Moses on Mount Sinai, each and every Israelite would have gone through this process when they appeared at the temple. But when Moses came down from the mountain and found them in their gross sin of sexual fornication and idolatry, the Lord altered the temple ceremony. Only the tribe of Levi would have any temple priesthood to perform the ceremony and only the High Priest would be allowed to take that journey all the way through to the holy of holies, or presence of God. The High Priest acted as a proxy for the individuals, who were not yet ready to do it for themselves. So yes, all of it is symbolic of this journey. There would be items reminding you of the Garden of Eden, of the fall of Adam and Eve, of Lucifer's plan to ruin us, of the redemption made through Christ, etc. These symbols were all around.

Yes, the commandment is still in force. Everyone who is married by the power of God is giving that instruction. Now does that mean to constantly have sex and have many children as possible, probably not. But, should you say that you are only going to have 2 kids and then stop because one more would be a burden? It's probably a personal thing that we all should consult with the Lord about. But remember that one of the greatest blessings ever given to Abraham was the blessing of having a great posterity as innumerable as the sands of the sea or the stars. Since we are adopted into the seed of Abraham and are apart of that seed, we too can have that blessing, or partake of it with him. Also, those Old Testament guys who had dozens and dozens of kids, they did it through polygamy. They had numerous wives, and in some cases concubines, that bore children, so don't think one wife has to do all of it herself! The whole house of Israel is from polygamist relationships and many great blessings came and will continue to come from that blessed and chosen line.

The sin is the sin of fornication for unmarried people to take part in sexual acts. Paul described a lot of the sexual sins in Romans, where he warns against masturbation, petting, homosexuality, etc. So, any sexual act outside of marriage is forbidden, but I think your question is more along the lines of should unmarried people be kissing and becoming somewhat intimate with each other. I think kissing in and of itself is not a sexual act. We kiss our mothers, our family, our friends, we hug and comfort each other. But of course there is more intimate kissing, French kissing, etc. that are done to arouse the sexual passions that we all have. If a young man and woman sit on a couch and engage in lots of kissing for great lengths of time, all that does it stir the passions and greatly tempt them to perform the forbidden acts. So, some light kissing to get to know each other I think is fine, but that may lead to heavy kissing with problems arising from not being able to stop. I think the term dating has changed over the years. We see young people, even as early as junior high, wanting to EXCLUSIVELY date one person for a long time. By this point they have watched years worth of movies telling them there is one true love or soul mate out there, that once the love feeling happens you should focus on that one person. We all know that isn't true, that we would be compatible with lots of people, but our kids are growing up with that distorted image. So they meet someone they like at school and feel they need to be exclusive with them. They act like it is a marriage type relationship, try to spend all their time with that person, and act wholly devoted to them. This leads to increased intimacy, and with a constant barrage of media and music telling them to have sex, they end up doing it. So, that is the kind of dating that should be avoided. The kind of dating that is good is to go out on dates with many different people. Do not become exclusive, but hang out and see what attributes you like and what you don't. As young people learn these things, they will be prepared when they are adults to find the kind of person they know they like.