Should Mormons Have A Personal Relationship With Jesus?

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Danzo said:

From the Talk linked in the opening thread.

" Let us then end on the note of testimony and of prayer. I bear record of the divine sonship of him whom we have this day spoken. He is or should be our best Friend through whom we can be reconciled to God"

 

This is a really stupid thread, It is obvious that the intent here is to create controversy and contention where none really exist.

Elder McKonkie was addressing a particular venue with a particular problem. 

I see no evidence that the OP really cares what Elder Faust or Elder Mckonkie has ever said. 

QFT.

Especially the bolded portion.

 

[JLHPROF]

13 minutes ago, Russell C McGregor said:

And your evidence for that accusation is...?

Or is it just that, since Elder McConkie is safely dead, you now feel brave enough to attack him?

Is defaming those who are unable to defend themselves the very pinnacle of your personal and moral courage?

What's the real motivation behind your actions?

 

I don't think the ego explanation is necessary (although some of his discourses and writings feature something close to ego).

Elder McConkie was just wrong on several issues of doctrine.  It happens.

[Russell C McGregor]

5 hours ago, consiglieri said:

Elder McConkie comes across as peeved that a lowly BYU professor is diverting attention away from him.

And even the Book of Mormon will not stand in Elder McConkie's way of putting the professor in his place.

That's an interesting assertion. What does it mean, that he "comes across" that way?

Did Elder McConkie say that he was "peeved that a lowly BYU professor is diverting attention away from him?"

Did he, in fact, say anything at all about who was getting "attention?"

Is there any evidence for that assertion?

No?

But of course, there doesn't need to be. Because you didn't actually assert that he was so "peeved," only that that is how he "comes across."

To whom?

To you. Of course.

It doesn't tell us anything at all about Elder McConkie. But maybe it tells us something about you.

 

[consiglieri]

15 minutes ago, Russell C McGregor said:

That's an interesting assertion. What does it mean, that he "comes across" that way?

Did Elder McConkie say that he was "peeved that a lowly BYU professor is diverting attention away from him?"

Did he, in fact, say anything at all about who was getting "attention?"

Is there any evidence for that assertion?

No?

But of course, there doesn't need to be. Because you didn't actually assert that he was so "peeved," only that that is how he "comes across."

To whom?

To you. Of course.

It doesn't tell us anything at all about Elder McConkie. But maybe it tells us something about you.

 

Actually, it tells us a lot about both of us.

It tells us that Elder McConkie was egotistical.

And it tells us that I am percipient.

(With a little egotism of my own thrown in for good measure.)

[Russell C McGregor]

8 minutes ago, consiglieri said:

Actually, it tells us a lot about both of us.

It tells us that Elder McConkie was egotistical.

No. It does not.

It tells us only that you assume he was egotistical.

Quote

And it tells us that I am percipient.

You misspelled "arrogant."

Also, that you like to find ways to smear others without taking responsibility for your smears.

 

Quote

(With a little egotism of my own thrown in for good measure.)

Not just a little.

[Zakuska]

6 minutes ago, Russell C McGregor said:

You misspelled "arrogant."

***** Red herring fallacy alert! *****

[jwhitlock]

I am not an admirer of Elder McConkie. However, I've learned over time that what I perceive to be faults or mistakes of individual leaders of the church has absolutely nothing to do with the foundational truth claims of the church. It also has absolutely nothing to do with how I interact with Heavenly Father and my Savior, and how I am instructed by the Spirit as part of my activity as a member of the church. Both Godliness and the Spirit are clearly manifest within the church and in the lives of faithful members and leaders of the church.

Indeed, the best measure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is whether it brings people closer to God and Christ and whether the Spirit is manifest in it. The answer is clearly "yes" to both of those measures. In real life where the rubber meets the road, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ within the church is a spiritual anchor in people's lives that has no equal.

While I understand the need of enemies of the church to try to use real or perceived missteps of the leaders of the church as some kind of litmus test for the truth of the church itself, in reality those criticisms of leaders are absolutely irrelevant. The only thing such criticisms prove is that the leaders of the church are real, actual human beings who are required to struggle through mortality like the rest of us. In reality, the fact that the church increasingly continues to touch lives through Christ, despite being administered by fallible mortals, is amazing since similar fallible mortals have messed up so many other organizations so badly.

Because of this, a faithful member of the church would probably never consider posing the questions in the OP. It would be ridiculous to do so, since the influence of God is so clearly manifest in the church. We know who we worship and the sophistries of critics will never trump real spiritual experiences.

[The Nehor]

19 hours ago, Zakuska said:

Did you serve a mission?  Are you a member of the church? If so you have performed the office of a "messenger  of  the Lord"  (aka Angel).

Notice these "Angels" who are commanded to worship the son are "in the world".

Also notice the "Eartlhy Ministers" in the next verse.

7 And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.

In that case I will believe it when I become the Human Torch or get a chariot of fire.

[consiglieri]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

In that case I will believe it when I become the Human Torch or get a chariot of fire.

Flame on!!!

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, consiglieri said:

Flame on!!!

I have been trying to start flame wars here for years.

[janderich]

On 12/22/2015 at 3:45 PM, Bobbieaware said:

You are correct. There was a cult of Savior worship (to the neglect of the proper worship of the Father and the Holy Ghost) going on among a certain clique at BYU at the time. ...

On 12/22/2015 at 4:38 PM, Russell C McGregor said:

No.

But claiming that Elder McConkie's talk (teaching against an inappropriate singling out of Jesus for devotion, to the exclusion of the Father and the Holy Ghost) was actually "slamming" the concept of a personal relationship with Christ at all, is dishonest.

And that's not in my opinion. That's just a fact.

Just a point of clarification. We do not worship the Holy Ghost.

Edited December 24, 2015 by janderich

[consiglieri]

2 hours ago, janderich said:

Just a point of clarification. We do not worship the Holy Ghost.

Good point!

Which just goes to highlight the extremes Elder McConkie went to in order to wrest the lime light away from Professor Pace.

And on another note, this is also a good example of how it was in early Christianity that many of the creeds arose not in a vacuum, but directly in response to opposing points of view.

[Stormin' Mormon]

19 hours ago, Teancum said:

Apparently Bruce changed his mind between his BYU talk and the time he penned the hymn... one of my favorite by the way even though I am a vile apostate.

Well, no, not really.  McConkie read the poem (which was later set to music) in General Conference in 1972.  He either changed his mind in 1982 and then changed it back prior to 1985 (when the hymn was first published in the hymn book, with the text the same as it was in 1972), or some people are grossly misreading his 1982 talk at BYU.   

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1972/04/the-testimony-of-jesus?lang=eng

[consiglieri]

1 hour ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

Well, no, not really.  McConkie read the poem (which was later set to music) in General Conference in 1972.  He either changed his mind in 1982 and then changed it back prior to 1985 (when the hymn was first published in the hymn book, with the text the same as it was in 1972), or some people are grossly misreading his 1982 talk at BYU.   

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1972/04/the-testimony-of-jesus?lang=eng

Or maybe his 1982 speech is more about personalities than doctrine.

[Deborah]

As I read the talk by McConkie I could hear his voice in my mind. Consig I think you try too hard to find fault with something written for a different time and place.

I also think that it depends on what is meant by a personal relationship, and I don't think McConkie implied that we shouldn't have some kind of personal relationship with the Godhead. However, when I see "Honk for Jesus" signs on bumpers (mostly in the South and Midwest) I think that is carrying the relationship with Jesus a little too far. Jesus is after all the Creator as well as the great sacrificial lamb. We owe him reverence and love but I would never consider him my "buddy." We pray to the Father but in the name of his Son. Heavenly Father himself has given Christ great reverence when he says "This is my beloved Son, hear him." 

[Danzo]

1 hour ago, consiglieri said:

Or maybe his 1982 speech is more about personalities than doctrine.

Were you there?, did what he say offend you? Was brother Pace offended?

Edited December 24, 2015 by Danzo

[Guest]

Proper worship begins with such...as we come to know and understand Christ, he introduces us to the Father. John 1:18 and John 6: 46 (if memory serves). The Apostles are "special witnesses" of Christ. Also 2 Nephi..."We rejoice in Christ, we prophesy of Christ...etc (again from memory so forgive errors). I think what McConkie was warning against is that many in other faiths, pray to Christ, speaking only of him while denying the Father, or believing him to be the Father. By doing so they follow not Christ's (other than lip service) teaching and commands that we are to worship the Father in his name and that he came to glorify the Father. 

[consiglieri]

59 minutes ago, Danzo said:

Were you there?, did what he say offend you? Was brother Pace offended?

Yes, Pace was offended. 

As was his entire family.

Here is what happened in the words of his son, David Pace:
 

Quote

 

After a year at college, when I was called on a mission to mountainless New England, where a Utahn has to climb trees to get his bearings, Dad sent me a copy, hot off the press, of his book, What It Means to Know Christ (Provo, Utah: Council Press, 1981). I was pretty proud of him. I knew that the volume with the sentimental cover of a young woman looking up and reaching out to touch the pierced hand of the risen Lord, contained his story, every meaningful spiritual experience he’d had since he was a nineteen-year-old farm boy reading the Book of Mormon while he irrigated Idaho sugar beets.

And I was in mountainless New England in the fall of 1981 when Bruce McConkie gave his infamous "Keeping Balance" instructions at the leadership session of the BYU fourteen-stake conference. My father, as stake president, was seated on the podium, unsuspecting and unwarned. Ironically, it was Halloween. (Editor’s Note: See accompanying article: " Context and Analysis: ‘You Have Heard True Doctrine Taught.’") He gave a series of examples of what he called religious extremism and denounced efforts to develop a special relationship with Jesus Christ as a "fad."

When I called home at Thanksgiving, Dad told me what had happened and cried. Not that tears were unusual—he had always been expressive—but he was weeping out of a place that was deep and unknown to him. Perhaps if I had been in Utah I would have done something rash, something I would have regretted later. I don’t know.

Exactly what the point of contention was between the two men is unclear, but its effect was devastating to Dad, which is where devastation in the Church usually settles—that is, on the individual. Dad didn’t know what to do and neither did I.

When I spoke with him again over the phone the following March 1982, he didn’t weep. He spoke soberly, numbly. At a BYU devotional, Elder McConkie, in his characteristic brazen style, had continued the corrective, quoting Dad’s book and calling it "pure sectarian nonsense." My father took his book off the market. He was released as stake president. Approximately 50 percent of his class enrollment disappeared as rumors circled BYU like buzzard’s breath. It was whispered that he had even been excommunicated.

In the mission field, bad news from home is an open sore to a young man’s spirit. This pain was my personal wound. It was as though Elder McConkie’s remarks were directed at me, and every aspersion cast on my father afterwards seemed to have been cast at me.

My earlier ambivalence toward my father’s spiritual flamboyance collapsed into blood loyalty. After the second phone call to my father, I avoided turning my missionary flipchart to the photo of the twelve apostles during discussions. I didn’t want to broker an image of Bruce McConkie. "Elder," intoned my mission president as I wept during an interview, hoping for comfort, "no offense, but if your father was disciplined by one of the Brethren, he probably needed disciplining."

In central Maine, a tearful Relief Society president in a tiny branch, not knowing of my connection to the incident, told me that her niece, who was struggling anyway with her new testimony at BYU, had left the Church as a direct result of the insensitive attack. Letters from home continued to come, but they talked mostly about family news. I could tell that my family was spiraling into an agonizing hell. I felt betrayed by the very organization, and particularly by the very men, I sought to represent. It was a real struggle to carry on as a missionary. How, I asked again and again, could something I had a testimony of hurt me this much?

Despite my anguish, I finished my mission and was released honorably. But when I went home, my faith thinned until it seemed nonexistent. Cynicism swelled unanswerably inside me. No one could tell me that I didn’t have a good reason to question the Church because no one seemed to understand McConkie’s position, which seemed to contradict the direction of so many other Church doctrines. No one had an explanation, and no one was willing to publicly speculate.

There seemed to be nowhere to go with my anger at the Church hierarchy, so I lashed out at my parents, at their docility, their submissiveness. Outwardly, they remained loyal to the Church even though I knew they were full of anguish and confusion. Privately, some General Authorities said comforting things to my father. But I wanted Dad to strike back, to demand a public explanation and/or an apology.

I remember that first year after my mission as the darkest our family had experienced up to that time. I saw my parents as living corpses. My mother became ill. My father lost weight. My brother left for his mission to painful testimonies at a lifeless farewell. I went to church and said family prayers when called on, but these public gestures rapidly became faithless acts, carried out to comfort my parents. Prayer and church attendance contained no comfort for me. I hated the Church. I had devoted my life to it and now wanted nothing more to do with an organization that thought so lightly of the individual, an organization that to save face, to appear unified in its glib goal of attaining Zion, would sacrifice my father, one of its most loyal soldiers.

 

 

http://mormon-alliance.org/casereports/volume2/part2/v2p2c05.htm

 

[theplains]

McConkie said, "True and saving worship is found only among those who know the truth 
about God and the Godhead and who understand the true relationship men should have with 
each member of that Eternal Presidency.

It follows that the devil would rather spread false doctrine about God and the Godhead, and 
induce false feelings with reference to any one of them, than almost any other thing he could 
do. The creeds of Christendom illustrate perfectly what Lucifer wants so-called Christian people 
to believe about Deity in order to be damned."

But it was the LDS Church who taught in the Book of Commandments that the Holy Ghost was 
not a personage in the Godhead.  This was eventually corrected when the Articles on Faith
were removed from the Doctrine and Covenants in 1921.

Regards,
Jim

[consiglieri]

28 minutes ago, theplains said:

 

But it was the LDS Church who taught in the Book of Commandments that the Holy Ghost was 
not a personage in the Godhead.  This was eventually corrected when the Articles on Faith
were removed from the Doctrine and Covenants in 1921.

Regards,
Jim

To me it is a mass of confusion.

[Teancum]

58 minutes ago, theplains said:

McConkie said, "True and saving worship is found only among those who know the truth 
about God and the Godhead and who understand the true relationship men should have with 
each member of that Eternal Presidency.

It follows that the devil would rather spread false doctrine about God and the Godhead, and 
induce false feelings with reference to any one of them, than almost any other thing he could 
do. The creeds of Christendom illustrate perfectly what Lucifer wants so-called Christian people 
to believe about Deity in order to be damned."

But it was the LDS Church who taught in the Book of Commandments that the Holy Ghost was 
not a personage in the Godhead.  This was eventually corrected when the Articles on Faith
were removed from the Doctrine and Covenants in 1921.

Regards,
Jim

I think you mean The Lectures on Faith, not the Articles of Faith.  

[Calm]

9 hours ago, consiglieri said:

Yes, Pace was offended. 

As was his entire family.

Here is what happened in the words of his son, David Pace:
 

 

http://mormon-alliance.org/casereports/volume2/part2/v2p2c05.htm

 

Sometimes when we are extremely emotional about something, we read onto others our own feelings.  While I do not doubt that the family struggled, I wonder if his brother and other family members saw the farewell as "lifeless" as well or if perhaps their experience was significantly different, perhaps even faith promoting instead of destroying.  I have seen such happen many times, one of the best examples being a relative who relates the experience of a family member as a time where God was constantly present in the family's life while the spouse saw the experience as proof God did not exist.

I would therefore need to hear from Brother Pace himself to find out how he saw his experiences and felt about it.  A secondhand report, even rrom a devoted child...just not trustworthy for me in such a volatile experience.  Not saying his son lied.  Just that he may have superimposed his ownexperience on his father unintentionally.

Edited December 25, 2015 by Calm

[Calm]

Never mind.  Ipad or the board went mental on me, but appears to have corrected itself.

Edited December 25, 2015 by Calm

[PeterPear]

On December 22, 2015 at 10:51 AM, consiglieri said:

Elder Bruce R. McConkie gave a resounding “No” to this question in a 1982 BYU speech, where he condemned the idea of Mormons having a “personal relationship with Christ.”

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie_relationship-lord/

So that should settle the issue, right?

Not so fast.

Six-years before this, Elder Faust gave a talk in General Conference in which he advocated that members should have a personal relationship with Christ.  The title of his talk? 

“A Personal Relationship with the Savior.”

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/11/a-personal-relationship-with-the-savior?lang=eng

In the opening of his 1976 talk, Elder Faust quoted approvingly the words of a missionary: One wisely responded: "Is not the greatest need in all of the world for every person to have a personal, ongoing, daily, continuing relationship with the Savior?"

 Elder Faust continued his theme, also saying: My witness is that we will be called upon to prove our spiritual stamina, for the days ahead will be filled with affliction and difficulty.  But with the assuring comfort of a personal relationship with the Savior, we will be given a calming courage.

To recap:  In 1976, Elder Faust gave a GC talk saying a “personal relationship with the Savior” was “the greatest need in all the world,” and bearing his “witness” that such a relationship with the Savior would provide “calming courage” in the days ahead.

Then in 1982, Elder McConkie comes out and slams the idea of having a “personal relationship with Christ.”

So my questions are these:

1. Is it important to my eternal salvation whether I have a personal relationship with Jesus?

2. If so, should I have such a personal relationship or should I not?

3. Whom should I believe on this issue?  Elder Faust or Elder McConkie?

 

Sort of splitting hairs here.

A "personal relationship" with the Savior isn't going to happen, in the definition that few will have in mortality a personal visit or appearance of the Savior. I once was assigned to home teach a less-active member who was all caught up in the need to personally have a visit by the Savior - to the point he quit doing the things he needed to do - he quit attending Church and thus didn't partake of the Sacrament. Like that will help!!

Elder McConkie is just pointing out that we have a "relationship" with the third member of the Godhead, The Holy Ghost - through the Gift of the Holy Ghost that we were commanded to receive when confirmed members of the Church. It's the Holy Ghost who testifies of and speak the words of and leads one to Christ, so if one can have a "personal relationship" with the Holy Ghost then in essence you have a relationship with Christ to which Pres. Faust is referring.

To try to play one apostle off of the other is silly.

[bdouglas]

20 minutes ago, Calm said:

I would therefore need to hear from Brother Pace himself to find out how he saw his experiences and felt about it. 

He's still around, I think — at least he was a couple of years ago. I know someone who talked to him about this experience. The impression I got was that Bro. Pace thought of it as a "testing", a testing he passed.

It's a mistake to take these two talks of BRM's, delivered at BYU, and make sense of them, doctrinally and otherwise, without looking at it in the context of what was happening at BYU (as other posters have noted in this thread). I was quite young at the time, but I remember very clearly going to a fireside in which Bro. Pace was the speaker, and I remember his recounting the story of Enos in the BOM, and asking how many of us (all young adults) had prayed all night and all day like Enos, and then challenging us to do so — to pray all night and then into the day. I didn't make much of the talk at the time (as I said, I was quite young), but all of these years later it seems to me very bad advice to give to young adults.

This was what BRM was trying to put down — not so much false doctrine as pop Mormonism running amok among many young and very impressionable BYU students.