The Holy Ghost

The Holy Ghost is the third member of the godhead along with God the Father and Jesus Christ. All three of these individuals are separate and distinct beings. The Father and the Son have bodies of flesh and bone, but the spirit doesn’t have a body of flesh and bone, but is a personage of spirit. The three are unified in purpose, perfection, and will. The Holy Spirit differs from the Father and the Son in that, as a spirit, He can be in all places at once. He is the way by which God communicates to us. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we are able to learn anything for ourselves.

The Holy Ghost is also known as the comforter. He is the one who gives us the comfort and help we need when we are weighed down with the cares of the world. He will whisper peace to our hearts and calm our fears. He is the one who provides God’s love for us in this life.

The Holy Spirit can be a sanctifier. As we repent, it is by the power of the Holy Ghost that we are purified and cleansed. The scriptures speak of the baptism by fire. This burning fire is the Holy Ghost’s ability to sanctify us. We can have the desire to do evil and the carnal desires of our hearts taken away by the power of the Holy Ghost.

He is the Testator and as such can bear witness of truth directly to our spirits. In this manner we can come to know truth from falsehood. God would not leave us alone in this mortal existence to guess as to what is right and what is wrong. For this reason we can have this witness born to us by His spirit.

This witness of truth is available to all men and women, and allows us to find the answers to the deep questions about our mortal life, like who we are, why we are here, where we came from, and where we are going when we die. The Holy Ghost can visit us and bear witness of the truth, but all the blessings the Holy Ghost has to offer to mortals are not available to just anyone. In order to experience the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost one must receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands by one who has the priesthood authority of God. This gift will be discussed more thoroughly in a future post.

I know that the Holy Ghost is a member of the godhead whose main role is to testify of Christ and Heavenly Father. He also comforts us, and purifies us. The Holy Ghost has the capacity to be in all places at all times because He is a spiritual being. He has the same goals and desires of Christ and the Father and thus acts in unity and perfection with them.

Jesus Christ: The Only Begotten Son of God

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Like us, He is a spirit Son of our Heavenly Father and as such is our brother. He is the firstborn in the spirit and was able to attain a much higher degree of glory in the premortal existence than anyone else. While we all lived in the premortal existence, Heavenly Father proposed His plan to allow all of His children the opportunity to become perfect like He is. This plan required that we obey every law that He set forth. He knew that we would not be able to live up to this high standard, so He asked for one to go down and be a Savior for the rest of us. Our older brother, Jesus Christ, volunteered to do the job.

He then became the executor of the creation of the earth and of all things that live thereon, including all of mankind. We were all created spiritually and physically in the image of God the Father and His son, Jesus Christ. Adam was the first man and Eve was the first woman on the earth and all mankind are physical descendants of them. Adam and Eve transgressed the law that God had given them and as a consequence they were cast out of the His presence. This fall of Adam brought about spiritual death due to sin and physical death due to being mortal and imperfect.

In God’s great love for us He provided a savior for mankind. This savior was Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. Known as Jehovah in the Old Testament, Christ came down to earth and took a mortal body having a mortal mother in Mary, but retained His divinity by having a literal physical father in God the Eternal Father. With this dual nature, Christ was able to live a perfect and unspotted life and thus was able to appease the demands of justice in the great plan of our Heavenly Father by taking the payment for the sins of all mankind upon His own shoulders. Our Savior did not stop there though, He also took on Himself every pain, affliction, temptation, or trial whether emotional, physical, or spiritual upon Himself. He did this because He loves us and wanted to be able to comfort us in our mortal lives. He has felt every possible feeling and knows what it takes to get through it. He is there to comfort us and help us along the path of life, but we must first seek Him out if we want His help.

In the garden of Gethsemane Christ was able to overcome the spiritual death through accomplishing the great Atonement for sin, and on the cross He died that He might be able to overcome the physical death. Three days after He was crucified and laid to rest, Christ’s spirit once again united with His body and the first resurrection took place. Because Christ was able to overcome death, He has opened the door for all of the descendants of Adam and Eve to do the same. At the right time, all men, whether good or evil will rise again. Our bodies will be made perfect and all of our mortal frailties will be taken away. Our bodies will become immortal, just like our Heavenly Father’s body and our older brother Jesus Christ’s body. This gift of immortality is freely given to all men, but the gift of spiritual life with God, or exaltation, is reserved only for those who have faith in and follow the teachings of the one with power to overcome this death, Jesus Christ.

The teachings of Christ are clear and easy to understand. He was the master teacher and provides a clear path for us to follow. The basic steps are first, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, second, repentance, third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and fourth, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. If we do these things and faithfully endure to the end of our mortal lives, we are promised to be saved from our spiritual death or separation from God. Christ taught these things to Adam and Eve, He taught them to Moses, He taught them to his disciples in Jerusalem, and He has taught them to us in our day through a living prophet. Christ loves us just as much as anyone who has lived and continues to provide the same blessings as He always has. Every man woman or child who has lived or ever will live will have the opportunity to learn of the gospel of Jesus Christ and accept it or reject it according to their own agency. Christ has established His church upon the earth in our day and provided the way for us to learn of His gospel. We live in a time when the entire and full gospel has been given and are entitled to a fullness of the blessings that go with following that gospel.

I know that Christ is the literal Son of God and that He has power to do all that He said He could do. I know that He took upon himself the sins of the entire world and overcame death by being resurrected. I know that He lives today and speaks to man just as he always has. I know that if we choose to listen intently to his word with a desire to know if they are true and right, He will let us know. If we do this we can develop the faith necessary to bring us to change through the process of repentance that has been given to us because of the Atonement. If we do this and make the sacred covenants with God that Christ has asked us to make, we can return to live with our Heavenly Father and our brother, Jesus Christ.

Who is God The Eternal Father?

God, the Supreme Creator of all things is a perfect being who knows all things did not achieve His exalted state without great effort. He progressed line upon line and little by little was able to attain his glorious perfected state. He was and is obedient to all the laws and principles of the gospel and He is subject to all the laws that govern the universe. He had to study, work, and learn just as we are doing right now on this earth. As a perfected being He is able to progress eternally through His spiritually created offspring. We are these spirit children that He has begotten, and as such, He is our Spiritual Father. He is also the Literal and physical father of Jesus Christ.

As any mortal father can attest, fatherhood brings love. We are imperfect and still feel this overwhelming love for our children so the magnitude of love a perfected Father in Heaven must feel for us, His children, is incomprehensible. As a perfected being, He feels perfect joy and desires nothing more for His children than for us to become perfect as He is and feel the same joy He feels. Since He has already made the journey to perfection, He perfectly knows what it requires and has provided a plan for all of His children to attain the same state that He has. His plan is perfectly just yet merciful too. It provides us with our agency so we can progress without being forced and grow in knowledge and wisdom with each time we exercise this agency. God will never take our agency from us. We can know that this plan is perfect because God is perfect and cannot lie or He would cease to be perfect. We can trust that our loving Heavenly Father will do nothing that would not lead to our eternal happiness and joy.

Part of the plan Heavenly Father has for us to become like Him is to physically become like Him. He has a perfect and immortal physical body of flesh and bone. We were created first as spirits, but we now have bodies of flesh and blood. Our bodies will one day become perfect like our Father’s body. The other part of the plan was to become like our Heavenly Father in glory. The way we do that is by obeying the commandments and laws that He has given to us. These laws are many and will be discussed later. We also know that our Heavenly Father is no respecter of persons and holds all of His children to the exact same standard of excellence. He will not judge one more harshly than another and we will all be blessed equally for being obedient. We also know that He is personally involved in helping us reach these lofty goals. Although we are not in His presence, we are allowed access to Him through prayer and are guaranteed that He will hear and answer our prayers. The answer may not come when or in the form we desire, but it will come. He knows each one of us personally and by name. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses and He will give us what He knows will allow us to be happy. Does this mean life will be easy? Not at all, but it does mean that if we are obedient all of our experiences here on earth will be for our benefit and will help us become more like God.

God is the ruler of the universe and is aware of the most minute particle. We are His children and as such have the opportunity to become as He is. The plan of salvation has been given to us by our Heavenly Father in order to accomplish this perfection. We can’t do it alone, but we can do it if we are obedient to the laws of the plan. Undoubtedly, God loves each one of us more than we can currently comprehend. He wants us to succeed and He wants us to be happy. We just have to have the faith to believe Him and follow what He teaches us to do.