Sunday, October 1, 2023

Ivan Kent Richards (LDS) Answering Common Objections to Divine Embodiment

  

John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

 

Comment: Taken literally, only spirits can worship God. But God has done everything possible to get man, while physical and mortal, to worship Him. We do not have to be spirits. The Lord uses spirit to spirit communication when communicating with us; that is Holy Ghost to our spirit communication. Notice also and particularly that there is a colon, not a period after ‘Spirit’ in the quoted verse. The thought and meaning continued on past ‘God is a spirit’ and did not end as a final statement that ‘God is a spirit.’ The remaining portion is quite essential to the meaning that John intended.

 

Luke 24:39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

 

Comment: John saw the resurrected Lord, just like the other ten apostles did. They touched him and saw for themselves that Jesus was resurrected and had a body. Jesus does not lay his body aside when he goes to heaven to be with God the Father. They both have glorified tangible bodies and Christ is like the Father. Stephen also bore testimony that he looked into heaven and saw them both standing beside each other. (Ivan Kent Richards, To Find the Path to Eternal Life Ye Must First Seek to Obtain My Word [Xlibris, 2019], 499)

 

Further Reading:


Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment