Mormon 9

Now, about those who don’t believe in the Anointed One at all.

You will.

When? When the earth rolls up like a scroll and the elements all fuse together in the last atomic blaze. You will ascend like ashes into the roof of heaven. And Jesus will pick you like lint and hold you up to the light that radiates from him. Do you think you’ll have the temerity then to ask if there’s a God?

The problem is, you’ll finally know the host but still won’t be invited to the party. And even if you were, you don’t have the right clothing for it. You’d be ashamed just having your name called at the door.

You’d be more miserable in heaven than in hell. Because you’d be utterly out of place and spend eternity trying to skew your identity into something it can never be. Hell would be a piece of cake. (I was tempted to say “devil’s food,” but I forebear.)

Embarrassment is a kind of hell, anyway. It burns in your face—what we’d call blushing when you were on earth. Now your soul would blush. Because it’s finally naked and everyone who’s ever lived will see it.

So turn yourself to God, face him dead on, sob out your penitence with Jesus’ name on your lips, that in time you will be bathed in his mercy, as shown by the blood he spilt for you.

Now for those who believe in a limited way, accepting God in a remote, arcane way, but blocking your mind from accepting the contemporary miraculous: you don’t understand the founding documents of this faith.

All those spiritual gifts we’ve talked about—healing, prophecy, even glossolalia, to name a few—must permeate the life of a Christian community.

God doesn’t change, that’s certain. How we perceive him may, the shapes he brings into our experience may mutate. But his middle name is Constancy.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are our earthly trinity, our three intertwined founding fathers. They bowed to the same God we do. He made everything of which we are conscious, and implausibly more than we can imagine.

He made Adam and Eve, of course, which kicked off this whole cycle of tragedy and redemption. And he created Jesus, who cuts all of the knotted cords that wrapped around us for hundreds of years. In so doing, he effects the Great Reconciliation, which includes resurrection, the return to embodiment after a period of the body and mind being split. Something like sleep, if that helps give a picture. An angelic trumpet will blow reveille to start the mass reawakening. Death as we know it will die.

That trumpet call also summons us to God’s courthouse. He’ll seem brusque, at first at least. Once filthy = always filthy. Once happy = happy still. And so on.

Nothing really changes all that much. That’s how he sees it. And if he changed, why would he ditch the best, most appealing things about him?

And miracles? Please. Start with the invention of planet earth. That was a big one. Oh yeah, before that the creation of the whole universe in which this planet hangs. And what about making up man and woman? Pretty big miracle.

Jesus did some great small-scale ones himself. His disciples did too.

Unless God resigned his God-ness, he has to do miracles to keep his card active. Or, if he doesn’t do them anymore, it’s because we don’t believe enough to merit them. If we did, we’d get them all the time, I think. Whoever trusts Christ completely and asks God for something with that in mind, he should expect it. This is universal, not just for priestly class. (Or Israelites, though that’s a thornier topic.)

Jesus told people to preach the good news about his coming to every living being, though we can safely limit that to humans. Believe and get baptized, bingo, saved. Don’t believe = get damned.

Now people who believe get stacks of calling cards. These consist of miraculous (mostly public) happenings: they can exorcise people, places, or things; survive poisoning; live through snakebites; those sorts of showy and sometimes bizarre things.

Whoever trusts me, he says, with no doubt at all, I’ll show him more.

Now some rhetorical questions—a classic Hebrew ploy.

—Who can oppose God’s actions?

—Who will arm wrestle him?

—Who can hate God’s craftsmanhip?

—Who can chase away true Christians?

Okay, no simple thread of continuity here. I just wonder about some of them some of the time.

Maybe it’s time for everyone to stop asking so many questions and start acting well. That includes having faith that Jesus will supply and that we have to work out our own salvation with his credentials.

Pay attention to prophets, dead or alive. You’ve got other issues too: impure motives even when you do good deeds, for example. Once you’ve really learned how to pray, you will find yourselves transformed Finally, make sure that no one gets baptized without running him-or herself through some checklists of aptness for the life that goes with this ritual. Beyond that, we all should have our own.

Reading this is eerie, no? I’ve been dead for centuries and yet I’m talking in your head.

Don’t condemn me or others like me (including my dad) just because we weren’t perfect. Just be thankful God lets you see your own imperfections so you can work on those.

We’ve all written on these plates in a Reformed Egyptian. It’s our own dialect. I doubt it’s anywhere else. Now, if these plates were bigger we could have written in Hebrew, though we’ve got our own brand of that language too. Hebrew’s better for the finer points, no doubt.

Now because no one will know our language when this book comes to light, God will have to figure out a method of translation. In any case, we’ve only written to clear us of future sins by our children, et al. As for the big picture we’ve described, God has to show that to whomever will appreciate it. And may God be generous, as he’s promised.

May you have all your prayers answered in a way that will convince you and comfort you. May God remember us all, despite the disappointment we’ve become to him May Jesus Christ grant you your hearts’ best desires. We’ll all be much happier if he does. Amen.