Did Jesus Lie to His Brothers?
by Bill Pratt
Patti, a reader of Tough Questions Answered, asked the other day if Jesus lied to his brothers in John 7:8-10. She claims that an atheist pointed these verses out to her.
So, what’s going on here? Must we read these verses in John 7 as Jesus purposely deceiving his brothers? First, let’s look at the passage in question, starting at John 7:1:
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
In these verses, Jesus’ brothers are taunting him. They are urging him to go to the Feast and perform public miracles instead of avoiding Judea, where the Feast would be held. What was Jesus’ response to them?
Therefore Jesus told them, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil. You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.” Having said this, he stayed in Galilee.
Jesus tells his brothers twice that ”the right time has not yet come.” He tells them to go to the Feast without him. What does Jesus do next?
FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW TO CONTINUE READING >>>
Did Jesus Lie to His Brothers? | Tough Questions Answered
Joseph Smith’s King Follet Sermon
God An Exalted Man
I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why He interferes with the affairs of man.
God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.
In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.
These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.
Joseph Smith’s King Follet Sermon
interesting that the idea God is God from Eternity comes from the Book of Mormon as well as the Bible
(As printed in History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 302-317)
An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also, which is a record of the people of Jared, who were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, when they were building a tower to get to heaven—Which is to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever—And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations—And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.
Translated by Joseph Smith, Jun.
2 Nephi 26:12 And as I spake concerning the convincing of the Jews, that Jesus is the very Christ, it must needs be that the Gentiles be convinced also that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God;
3 Nephi 19:18 And behold, they began to pray; and they did pray unto Jesus, calling him their Lord and their God.
Mosiah 5:5 For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases.
Mosiah 5:15 Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all. Amen.
Mormon 9:9
9 For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?
Moroni 7:22 For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent angels to minister unto the children of men, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing.
Moroni 8:18 For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.
Check out the following verses from the Bible
• “For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed,” (Mal. 3:6).
• “Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God,” (Psalm 90:2).
What is sad is that this simple logical proof, and it is a proof that Mormonism is false, will mean basically nothing to those whose spiritual eyes have been blinded by the god of this world.
• “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” (2 Cor. 4:3-4).