In the Day Thou Eatest Thereof, Thou Shalt Surely Die

And the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man’s spirit), and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

 

And the Gods planted a garden, eastward in Eden, and there they put the man, whose spirit they had put into the body which they had formed.  And out of the ground made the Gods to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life, also, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

 

And the Gods took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. And the Gods commanded the man, saying: Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,  But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the time that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now I, Abraham, saw that it was after the Lord’s time, which was after the time of Kolob [1]; for as yet the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning. (Abraham 5: 7-13)

 

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

 

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

 

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2: 7-10; 15-17)

 

Many people wonder why God would:

1. Put the tree where they had easy access
2. Tell them not to eat the fruit
3. Banish them from the Garden when they succumbed to temptation which, He knew they would.

Sounds a little Machiavellian of God to create such a no-win scenario.  In order to understand it, you have to go back to the pre-earth Council in Heaven and the two-fold purpose of the creation. The first purpose was to provide a home where God's spirit children could be born and gain mortal bodies.  This part was all done before God created Adam out of the dust;

 

And the Gods planted a garden, eastward in Eden, and there they put the man, whose spirit they had put into the body which they had formed. And out of the ground made the Gods to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life, also, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And the Gods took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. (Abraham 5: 8, 9, 11)

 

 

The second purpose of creation was to prove them herewith, to see if they would do all things whatsoever the Lord, their God, shall command them (Abraham 3:25.) This life is a time of probation; a time to make mistakes; a time to repent; a time to test ourselves with God's will.

 

Therefore: Man had to have a knowledge of good and evil in order to use his agency to make those choices necessary from him to learn and grow.  BUT God would never coerce him.  Man had to make that choice himself and enter into a mortal and fallen world of his own free will.  Hence:

 

(1) the tree was there because it had to be there. 

 

(2) God had to warn Adam of the consequences of partaking of the fruit - mortality and the ability to become a father - and ultimate death.  They had to eat, they had to fall. 

 

(3) Once Adam and his wife, Eve, had fallen, they had to leave the garden for their own protection, for in the Garden were two significant trees: the tree of which we have spoken and the Tree of Life.  Had Adam and Eve partaken of the Tree of Knowledge and become fallen and then partaken of the Tree of Life, they would have lived forever in their sins and the entire purpose of the Creation would have been thwarted.  Banishment was not a punishment: it was a protection, even though it may have felt like a punishment at the time.  But life is like that, right?

 

[1] i.e., 1,000 years

 

© Gebara Education, 2016

On the Seventh Day, God Rested

 

And thus we will finish the heavens and the earth, and all the hosts of them.  And the Gods said among themselves: On the seventh time we will end our work, which we have counseled; and we will rest on the seventh time from all our work which we have counseled.  And the Gods concluded upon the seventh time, because that on the seventh time they would rest from all their works which they (the Gods) counseled among themselves to form; and sanctified it. And thus were their decisions at the time that they counseled among themselves to form the heavens and the earth. (Abraham 5: 1-3)

 

Steven Covey gained international fame with his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  One of those habits was that a man should regularly rest from his normal work/routine, what Covey called "sharpen the saw."  If you don't take time to do that you will soon burn out and become locked into a life that is no longer fulfilling.  Covey didn't invent that idea.  He learned it as a universal truth from God.

 

God later taught Moses that this 7th day was hallowed because He rested on the 7th day.  It is the 4th of the 10 commandments:

 

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

 

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20: 8-11)

 

It is important that we keep this commandment not only because God commanded it but because it is in our best interest to do so.

 

Have a blessed Sabbath everyone!

Created in the Image of the Gods - Dominion

According to Mirriam Webster, dominion means "the right to govern or rule or determine." [1]  We usually equate this to mean the "Power to direct, control, use and dispose of at pleasure; right of possession and use without being accountable;" [2]  I believe this is short sighted and misses the mark of God's intent completely. With power comes great responsibility.

 

 

God taught Abraham that there were levels of intelligences from the least to the greatest, with God, Himself, being the greatest of all.  It is He who holds absolute dominion.  He does not have to be accountable to anyone, for His motives are always loving and focused on providing what is best for His children and all of His creations.  I believe that when the Gods gave mankind "dominion" over the beasts of the earth, it was giving man power and authority to determine and direct, but with accountability.  To whom? To God, of course, whose intelligence and power are the greatest of all.  God oversees man's dominion because mankind does not always exercise dominion from pure and loving motives.  Man has dominion but with a caveat of accountability.  Another word for that is stewardship.

 

Jesus shared many parables regarding the stewardship that accompanies God's gifts (such as the parable of the talents or the Lord of the Vineyard) so it must be an eternal principle from before the world was.  How different would be our attitude toward the earth and all that inhabit her (including plants as well as animals, to say nothing of other human beings) if we understood the dominion of Genesis 1 to really mean stewardship.

 

Both Moses and Abraham spoke of this stewardship of dominion as it relates to the creation.  Note that all three versions state that there was more than one God involved.  The Book of Moses explains that two of those Gods were the Father and the Son, but all three versions imply it.  Abraham tells us that the Gods took counsel one with another in every step of creation.  I am not sure how other Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scholars can miss the implication of the plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26.

 

 

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1: 26-27)

 

And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so. And I, God, said: Let them have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them. (Moses 2: 26-27)

 

And the Gods took counsel among themselves and said: Let us go down and form man in our image, after our likeness; and we will give them dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them. (Abraham 4: 26-27)

 

God trusts us with His every creation.  What will we say when we report our stewardship?

 

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dominion

 

[2] http://av1611.com/kjbp/kjv-dictionary/dominion.html

The Rest of Creation

And the Gods prepared the earth to bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind; and it was so, as they had said.

And the Gods organized the earth to bring forth the beasts after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind; and the Gods saw they would obey.  (Abraham 4: 24-25)

From single cells to multiple cells; from invertebrates to vertebrates; from things with gills to things with lungs; from creeping things to flying things; from eggs to live birth; from things with scales or feathers to things with hair - God filled the earth with the living creatures of the animal kingdom and commanded that they obey, each being fruitful and filling the earth after its own kind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only one thing was missing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be Fruitful and Multiply - Day 5 Continued

This past spring, I had the opportunity to teach our junior high students a unit in cellular biology.  The teacher was nervous to teach it because it dealt with reproduction and heredity.

 

Why is that we seem to have gone crazy on the subject of reproduction?  Is it because we have demeaned the act of human reproduction from a method - both created by God and ordained by Him according to his commandments - into a series of "gymnastic" events driven by the prurient nature of the flesh?  I know that we have because sexual acts outside of the marriage of a man and woman and sexual deviations never ordained - in fact strictly forbidden - by God are thrown in our faces every day from entertainment to advertising.  As a result of the blatant attack on morality, pornography has become a billion dollar a year industry, with an addictive potential to that of heroin and cocaine.

 

Let us return for now to God's plans regarding His creations.  All living things must do seven basic things:

1. Eat (animals) or produce (plants) food
2. Breathe
3. Eliminate waste
4. React to stimuli
5. Move
6. Grow
7. Reproduce

God provided for them all, from the individual cell to the most complex mammals, every living thing must do these seven things in order to live.  God provided us with life and in abundance!

 

The most basic forms of reproduction are asexual via mitosis.  Plants and animals at a cellular level "split" into two parts, each having the exact same genetic make up.  Some multicellular organisms reproduce via such processes as spores or "budding" (think of potato eyes.) 

However, for the variety of organisms to appear on the earth, God introduced sexual reproduction from the male pollen on the female pistil in plants to the complex sexual reproduction of animals via a cellular process called meiosis.  Through this process, each offspring is a genetically unique individual.  That keeps species vibrant and full of variety.

 

This was absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of God's plan for his creations, including His own children, created in His likeness.  Without it, all creation would be for naught.  Thus He taught Abraham and Moses:

 

And the Gods said: We will bless them, and cause them to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas or great waters; and cause the fowl to multiply in the earth.

And it came to pass that it was from evening until morning that they called night; and it came to pass that it was from morning until evening that they called day; and it was the fifth time. (Abraham 4: 22-23)

 

As we study the next day of creation, we will hear this theme repeated: multiply and replenish the earth.  From the grass of the field to the sons and daughters of God, this must have been important to Him, for the commandment was given to every form of life upon the earth.

 

© Gebara Education, 2016

Moving Creatures that Have Life

And the Gods said: Let us prepare the waters to bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life; and the fowl, that they may fly above the earth in the open expanse of heaven.

And the Gods prepared the waters that they might bring forth great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters were to bring forth abundantly after their kind; and every winged fowl after their kind. And the Gods saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan was good.(Abraham 4: 20-21)

 

Many people see a great discrepancy between the theories of evolution and the story of creation.  I don't, insofar as by evolution we mean the order in which things were created upon the earth.  For the most part, these things seem to align quite well.  Where I differ from Darwin is that I believe each creature to have been created to multiply after its own kind.  How God did this technically, I don't know and I feel no need to know.  He said He created it by the power of His Word, even Christ, and that when He said, "Let there be. . .," He was obeyed.  That, once created, creatures can over time be modified within their own species is something I believe.  For example, if you were to allow a population of a variety of exotic pigeons to breed freely over several generations, you would eventually return to a basic brown or grey pigeon.

 

 

God tells us through both Moses and Abraham that He first prepared the waters to receive life.  In 1924, Soviet biologist, Alexander Oparin, proposed the theory that life originated through gradual chemical evolution of particles of carbon.  He called the resulting concoction, "Primordial soup." [1] What Oparin, and later other scientists stumbled upon could have been what God called the preparation of the waters to a condition conducive to the production and support of life.  Whether He did it through carbon compounds or not, I know that He did it.  I believe that God, both the Father and the Son, are the greatest of all biologists and even the best of we humans just infants stumbling in the dark, trying to figure out how They did it.

 

Amongst all the creeping things next in creation included the amphibians;

reptiles;

 

 

insects and other creeping things;

 

and, ultimately, the birds.

 

The reference to the whale in both the Abrahamic account and the Mosaic account certainly did not represent modern whales or dolphins, which are mammals and came later on the "creation ladder."  The writers could have been referencing very large fish using the only wording they had to represent such things.  The Book of Jonah tells us that Jonah was swallowed by a "big fish" which is often retold to mean a whale.  However, many scientists who study the Bible have come to believe that Jonah may have been swallowed by a whale shark, a truly big fish indeed.  The picture on the left illustrates the size of a modern-day whale shark alongside a modern diver for size comparison.

 

The "war" between science and religion is one we have created in our own minds due to lack of faith.  God told the early saints to "seek learning even by study and also by faith."  God wants us to seek out answers, but with prayer, faith, and inspiration.  Joseph Smith once said that there is no conflict between true science and true religion.  When there appears to be, one of them - either the science or the religion - is not true.

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primordial_soup

 

 © Gebara Education, 2016

 

The Fourth Day of Creation

I am back up and running and settled into my new home.  I hope to reinstate a regular schedule of blog posts.  I'm aiming for 100 plus!

 

 

I am picking back up where I left off in the story of the creation from the Books of Abraham and Moses in the Pearl of Great Price.

 

And the Gods organized the lights in the expanse of the heaven, and caused them to divide the day from the night; and organized them to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years, and organized them to be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so. (Abraham 4: 14, 15)

 

There are many fundamental believers who take the story of creation literally and believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six 24-hour earth days.  I will not argue with them and support their right to so believe.  I, however, believe that God was referring to six creative periods the length of which we do not know.

 

In the beginning of the fourth such creative period, God "organized the lights in the expanse of the heaven."  To my understanding, this means that God did not place earth and the other planets in their orbits around the sun until halfway through the creative eons.  This would mean that there would be no 24 hour earth day in place before then.  Even after this point, it may have taken additional expanses of time for these orbits to regulate themselves into what we know enjoy: 24 clock hours in one rotation of the Earth; 365.25 day year based on one revolution around the sun, and roughly a 28 day lunar month based on the revolution of the moon around the earth.  This idea of creative periods comfortably allows for a 2.5 billion year age for our earth.

And the Gods organized the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; with the lesser light they set the stars also;

And the Gods set them in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to cause to divide the light from the darkness.

 

And the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed.

And it came to pass that it was from evening until morning that it was night; and it came to pass that it was from morning until evening that it was day; and it was the fourth time.  (Abraham 4: 16-19)

 

In verse 16 of Moses 2 and Genesis 1, God states that the stars also were made even according to my word.

 

And all of these things were created to set the times and the seasons and for signs in the heavens, such as the star that guided the Magi and foretold Jesus' birth to the Nephites.

 

"I am commanded: therefore, I am."

 

Only the Book of Abraham tells us that God waited to see that he was obeyed after he commands the elements to do His bidding.  Professor George S. Tate, speaking at Brigham Young University in 1995, stated: The kernel of the idea came to me some time ago when I was thumbing through a book by the remarkable Jewish thinker Abraham Heschel, entitled Who Is Man? Toward the end of the book, I came upon a subheading that jarred me. It read: I am commanded—therefore I am. (Emphasis added)

 

 

He goes on to say: These passages caused me to notice, as I had not really done before, how central the idea of obedience is to creation, especially in the account given in the book of Abraham. Over and again, at each stage of creation, the text says, “And the Gods saw that they were obeyed” (Abraham 4:10, 12). At the creation of the sun and the moon, we can almost see the outstretched, ordering hand as we read, “And the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed”(Abraham 4:18; emphasis added). In the biblical account, God pronounces the work of each day “good” (Genesis 1:10, etc.); in the book of Abraham, this goodness is equated with obedience. For example, as the fishes and birds are created, we read, “And the Gods saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan was good (Abraham 4:21, cf. 25; emphasis added). In Genesis, God pronounces the work of the sixth and last day “very good” (Genesis 1 :31); in the book of Abraham we read, “And the Gods said: We will do everything that we have said, and organize them; and behold, they shall be very obedient”(Abraham 4:31; emphasis added). Very good and very obedient are one and the same. The goodness of creation depends upon obedience.

 

All of creation - the elements, molecules, and atoms - are required by divine law to obey God's command.  It is this irrevocable law that keeps harmony and order in the universe.  Without it, all would be chaos.  That is why when Jesus said, "Peace, be still," the storm immediately abated.  It "heard" the voice of its creator.

 

Only man, through his divine agency, is given the choice to obey or not to obey.  Nothing else in creation has that luxury, as it were.  And yet the law of obedience shows us there millennium of examples that disobedience brings disharmony. We can choose our actions, but we cannot choose a consequence inconsistent with our action.  Wickedness never was happiness. 

 

Perhaps we should learn from our Navajo neighbors to seek for hozho, that harmony that comes through being at one with our creator.  If we could obey as the storm obeyed, we could say to our lives, "Peace, be still."  Let us walk in beauty.  Let us walk in obedience.

 

 © Gebara Education, 2016