Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 2 Timothy 3:7
Today we’re looking at 7 key comments (aka lies) from a talk Dale Renlund gave at the April 2022 General Conference. To read his talk in full see link below.
General Conference, ‘Your Divine Nature and Destiny’, April 2022
1.“…we have heavenly parents, a father and a mother. ….”
This is a lie. We have One Heavenly Parent, not two.
2.The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother comes by revelation and is a distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints. …
This is also a lie. The LDS Church is NOT the only religion who believes they have a heavenly mother. See GotQuestions.org for more info.
3.President Dallin H. Oaks explained the importance of this truth: “Our theology begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.”
Another lie. A believer’s focus is to have eternal life through knowing Him. John 17:3 reads — “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
4.Very little has been revealed about Mother in Heaven, but what we do know is summarized in a gospel topic found in our Gospel Library application. Once you have read what is there, you will know everything that I know about the subject.
I wish I knew more. You too may still have questions and want to find more answers. Seeking greater understanding is an important part of our spiritual development, but please be cautious. Reason cannot replace revelation. [emp. added]
Wrong! Reason better replace revelation when the ‘revelation’ is false!
Furthermore, why are they talking about this and at the same time telling members not to and why didn’t he just tell the audience what was in the Gospel Topics section? Because he wouldn’t give out the info, we will – here’s the link for Heavenly Parents.
5.Speculation will not lead to greater spiritual knowledge, but it can lead us to deception or divert our focus from what has been revealed.
This is yet another lie. Speculation can lead to greater knowledge. It’s nothing more than a ruse to confuse.
6.We follow this pattern and direct our worship to our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ and do not pray to Heavenly Mother. …
One has to wonder why. If this so-called heavenly parent is worthy of mention, why not acknowledge it/her? Furthermore, they do NOT direct their worship toward the God of the Bible. They’re worshiping a false god.
7.This covenant path is the way we come unto Christ and is based on absolute truth and eternal, unchanging law.
This is a lie as well. We don’t come into a covenant relationship with Jesus through the means this guy has claimed. Romans 10:9 says that if we confess with our mouth we shall be saved. Besides all that, how would members know it’s the absolute truth if they don’t have all the info?
Sadly, our list above didn’t include all the lies in this man’s talk. We’ll have to reserve his other ungodly insights for another day. In the meantime, please, pray for those who listened to this man’s lies and for Jesus to remind them of His truth!
With Love in Christ —
Michelle
[…] General Conference Quote: Don’t Pray to Heavenly Mother […]
Check your link to “Heavenly Parent”– nothing but a blank page came up.
Will do – thanks for the heads up! 🙂
As a follow-up. I checked the link on my end & it was good. I then erased the link and put it in again so hopefully it’ll work for you! 🙂
Apparently it’s a iMac Safari browser issue. I found it now working with Google chrome. Safari doesn’t like it.
Welp, glad to hear it’s not me! 🙂
What infuriates me the most is the insulting attitude they have toward God. He has said a thing in the Bible. He has never mentioned a heavenly mother nor a pre-existance. That means, she is like Mary Poppins, a fictional character dreamed up by very bad men to keep people in line or confused or something. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit and don’t insult the God of all creation.
AMEN!!!
Well, um, we don’t actually have an insulting attitude toward God. Jesus referred to his Father as his father. Many, many times. Paul said (Act 17:28) that we are his offspring. Paui, or the author of Hebrews if it wasn’t Paul, wrote (Heb. 12:9) that “we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” This idea of the Father being a literal father is found over and over.
It is inherent in the word and concept of “father” that there is also a mother. Think about it. There are zero examples in any language of a literal father where there is not also a literal mother. So, please, don’t tell us that we insult our Father when we see that for us to be his children, there must also be a Mother. If that didn’t get mentioned in scripture, maybe that’s because the Lord assumes that we can connect dots?
We learn in Proverbs 25:2 that ‘the chief glory of God is His mysteriousness. The more we search into these matters, the more complete we find our ignorance to be; finite faculties are utterly unable to comprehend infinite; they can merely embrace what God chooses to reveal.’ I didn’t write this..I’m quoting someone else. I was born and raised mormon. Now I am born again. I will not decide things about God that He never said by using human reasoning.
Sandra, I am interested in your complete misuse here of Prov. 25:2. “Bereans” don’t distort the text like that. That’s called “eisegesis,” and is much, much different from valid exegesis. But to your point about not “decid[ing] things about God that He never said by using human reasoning,” it is good to know that you reject the human invented doctrine of the Trinity, which is purely the product of (attempted) reasoning as 4th and 5th Century theologians tried to harmonize a (misunderstood) monotheism of the Old Testament with the teaching of the New Testament that Jesus (the Word) was “with” God from the beginning. (John 1:1.) You cannot in consistency reject the use of theological reasoning from scripture in one instance while affirming it in another.
By the way, when you engage in eisegesis, as here, you are using human reasoning to decide things that the scripture didn’t explicitly “say.” So, again, you contradict yourself.
But, to review, it is impossible to have a literal father without also having a literal mother. Impossible, Sandra. Gender is inherent in the concept of a father. If the “father of our spirits” (Heb. 12:9) were genderless, we would not refer to him as “him” or as a “father,” but rather as a genderless progenitor (with the pronoun “it”). That would be horrific, right? Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” You should not DENY scriptural truth by pretending otherwise.
Your whole effort here is to impose on the scriptures a theology that is of human invention, not found in scripture. Yes, it is claimed to be the product of reasoning ABOUT scripture, but (i) it is not explicitly found in scripture (which you say is required), and (ii) the reasoning doesn’t actually hold up. A Berean would be willing to engage with that criticism; you’re not.
I’m glad you mention you were “born and raised mormon.” I was born and raised in evangelical churches, and have been a born-again Christian from an early age. So, we’re both born again! My attitude, though, is that I am willing to learn what the Lord desires to teach, and don’t try to limit God by falsely reasoning (as you now do) that he (not “it”) stopped speaking to his children through prophets and apostles (Eph. 4:11-14) or that he ever intended to limit our potential as his children (1 Cor. 2:9; Rom. 8:16-18). We should never try to impose our own invented limits on God’s power and goodness, and we certainly should never assume that he intended his children to be of stunted potential. That’s not a loving God.
1. Your statement is logically impossible. There are zero examples of fathers without the existence of a mother as well.
2. The link you provide demonstrates the accuracy of the statement that you brand as a lie. The Latter-day Saint teaching regarding heavenly parents is not only distinctive (the statement actually made) but nothing at all like Ahn Sahng-Hong. That comparison was very strange and in any event, the teaching is distinctive.
3. Your reference to John 17:3 (describing eternal life) is not the only such reference in scripture and ignores, for example, Rom. 8:16-18.
4. Your point is that reason replaces revelation? At least when the revelation is false. Well, no one wants to follow false revelation – it is only true revelation that we should follow. True revelation DOES replace human reasoning. 1 Cor. 2:14.
5. You claim that this statement (“Speculation will not lead to greater spiritual knowledge, but it can lead us to deception or divert our focus from what has been revealed”) is “yet another lie.” Yet, you then say, “Speculation can lead to greater knowledge,” without explaining how or when, while asserting that speculation about matters that have not been revealed is “nothing more than a ruse to confuse.” This seems to agree that speculation “can lead us to deception or divert our focus from what has been revealed.” (I’m not sure that you really thought through this one.)
6. The answer to your question (“One has to wonder why”) is that the scriptures teach that prayer is to be directed to “our Father who Art in heaven.” Luke 11:2. One has to wonder why this wasn’t obvious to you.
7. You also claim that this is a lie: “This covenant path is the way we come unto Christ and is based on absolute truth and eternal, unchanging law.” But Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:6. If you don’t think that is a covenant relationship, it is you, not we, who misunderstands scripture.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Only in the false LDS church is their god-man a literal father who had sex with Mary, as well as obviously with many spiritual women. In the Christian faith the true God (who is a spirit being vs a human being) as our father is an analogy, a metaphor, in that we are his spiritual children if we are believers in the person and work of Jesus Christ. There is no ‘heavenly mother’ because God is not our literal father.
Mormons have a literal father because their man-god has had eternal sex to bear spiritual children. A bizarre polygamous man-god who has to be having sex 24/7 to provide spirits for all those babies who have come to earth since the beginning of time.
It is YOUR twisting of scriptures to justify your illogical science-fiction religious beliefs.
Let’s agree to disagree. Today, I am praising the Name of the LORD for His death on the cross for sinners.
Happy Mother’s day Heavenly Mother.
And your card was a Deseret Bookstore purchase?
Is there any other, Sandra?😃