Malachi in Citation

Roughly around 445 BC a prophet who has come to be known as Malachi wrote a book for the House of Israel. This book, The Book of Malachi, was eventually placed as the last book in The Old Testament.

The Book of Malachi was written in Hebrew, but at least a century before the birth of Christ the language most Jews in Palestine spoke was Aramaic. For this reason a translation was prepared from Hebrew to Aramaic, maybe in the first century BC, or perhaps even in the late first century AD. This Aramaic translation, known as Targum Jonathan, is not simply a conversion from Hebrew to Aramaic as Targums frequently have textual expansions. I would like to offer six brief but interesting "expansions" from the Targum of Malachi.

Expansion One

KJV

2:12 The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto The LORD of Hosts. 

Targum

2:12 The Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and if he is a priest, he shall not be allowed to offer an offering unto The Lord of Hosts.  

Now, the student of The Old Testament will notice that the Priesthood was needed for a man to offer a sacrifice unto The Lord. What is interesting here is that the translator(s) of this Targum, known as "Jonathan", saw fit to make explicit what was implicit, that the person offering the sacrifice would be a priest. Priests are already addressed in Malachi (1:6, 2:1, 2:7), but this interpolation or insertion increased the references of priests to 4. It is interesting to note that Malachi specifically addresses the corruption of the priests of his day.

Expansion Two

KJV

3:6 For I am The LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Targum

3:6 For I am The Lord, I do not change my covenant which is from eternity; therefore, House of Israel, ye are not consumed.

In the Targum The Lord is quoted as saying that He will not change His eternal covenant, and He addresses the entire House of Israel, which is the name His people received by covenant.

Expansion Three

KJV

3:7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them.

Targum

3:7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine covenants, and have not kept them. 

The Targum deftly shifts the focus onto the covenants, that The Lord does not alter His covenants, but that the House of Israel has consistently broken the covenants.

Expansion Four

KJV

3:12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith The LORD of Hosts.

Targum

3:12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall dwell in the land of the House of my Presence, and shall do my will in it, saith The Lord of Hosts. 

This interpolation is particularly interesting insofar as "being a delightsome land" is clarified to mean "dwelling in the land of the House of my Presence", or the Temple, and doing the will of The LORD in it, which implies having the Priesthood so as to officiate in the Temple.

Expansion Five

KJV

4:4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

Targum

4:4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, to teach covenants and judgments. 

The focus of Malachi in the Targum becomes the covenants of The Lord, covenants Israel had broken, covenants that were taught to Israel by a prophet The Lord raised up.

Expansion Six

KJV

4:6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Targum

4:6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the chidren to their fathers, lest I shall reveal myself and shall find the whole earth with a curse. 

In this passage The Lord states that the binding of hearts of fathers to children is a requirement of His revealing Himself otherwise He shall find the whole earth with a curse.

Question: Why are these six expansions on Malachi from the Aramaic Targum of interest to me? They are of interest because on September 21, 1823, Joseph Smith received a visitation from the Angel Moroni. In this visit Moroni taught Joseph of his upcoming prophetic call. Moroni then quoted passages from Malachi. (Joseph Smith History 1:36, 38-39)

1:36 After telling me these things, [Moroni] commenced quoting the prophecies of The Old Testament. He first quoted part of the third chapter of Malachi; and he quoted the fourth or last chapter of that prophecy, though with a little variation from how it reads in our Bibles. Instead of quoting the first verse as it reads in our books, he quoted it thus. 

1:38 ...Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of The Lord.

1:39 He also quoted the next verse differently: And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming. 

I remember reading this passage for the first time as a recently baptized nineteen-year-old member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joseph Smith's testimony of seeing God The Father and His Son Jesus Christ, both Men standing side by side, radiating powerful light and peace, had reached my heart. I had no doubts as to Joseph Smith's prophetic call. Still, I puzzled over these citations of Malachi, the divergence from the standard Biblical text, in particular to present the concepts of "revealing" the "Priesthood" so that the "promises" made to the fathers would become relevant to the children, otherwise the "whole" earth would be wasted at the coming of our Lord.

So imagine my astonishment at discovering this month, August, 2016, information about the ancient Aramaic translation of Malachi, information that scholars began writing about roughly 70 years after Joseph Smiths' encounter with Moroni, but information which clearly demonstrates that the ancient Jews believed that The Book of Malachi was oriented toward the corrupt priests, pointed to a day of renewal when the Temple of The Lord would be in operation with Priesthood officiation, when covenants ("promises to the fathers") would be renewed, and when there would be a great event of "revealing". Imagine my delight at reading that the ancient Aramaic Targum even added the word "whole" to earth (4:6), verbatim what Moroni did when he visited Joseph Smith.

The reader is at liberty to make of these passages what he or she will. As for me, I see linguistic evidence substantiating the veracity of Joseph Smith's angelic visitation and his prophetic ministry. More to the point, I must share this: Question: How did James come upon this find? I was reading Scripture last week and a clear and authoritative thought came to my mind: "James, look at the Targum of Malachi. Compare it to how Moroni quoted Malachi to Joseph Smith." Immediately I knew that The Father had spoken to my understanding, and I knew that there would emerge a further witness of Joseph Smith's prophetic calling.

But however the reader takes this information I ask one thing only: That you remember that the passages, at least, are actually textual.

Then and Now

In our mindset we are Western European. What does it mean that we are Western European in our mindset? It means that we arrange our logic linearly, orderly, from A-Z, formulaically, clearly expressing our points. Being Western European in our mindset we often explicitly state what our points are, and we provide our evidence. This system works wonderfully...for those of us who are of a Western European mindset.

But what about the old Patriarchs, the ancient prophets? They were not without moments of extraordinary clarity that immediately connect to our modern sense of "come out and say what you mean": 

"And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16:16)

"Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (John 3:5)

However, there was another way ancient patriarchs taught: By narrative, arranging carefully selected details where principle was demonstrated rather than being explicitly stated. Both plainness and narrative were employed together. Want to see how? Let us see how both were used.

"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." (Genesis 2:1)

Throughout Genesis, chapters 1-2, God is described commanding that the earth and its atmosphere ("heavens") be formed, and God heeds each command and fashions the earth, placing flora and fauna on the orb, in stages, culminating in the emergence of Adam and Eve. The narrator then states that God had now finished the heavens and earth and all their hosts. This is an example of clarity, direct statement.

Move along the narrative:

"So [God] drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." (Genesis 3:24). 

Well, the garden we know of, the man, "Adam", here defined as husband and wife together as one, and the tree of life, all these we know of, for we were told how they came to be. Cherubims and the flaming sword? Nowhere in the creation account we were told anything about the formation of cherubims or of a flaming sword. We are also told nothing about the formation of the angels, be they Cherubims, Seraphims or any other rank or office, or of the creation of the heavens where God dwells. What are we to conclude? We are to conclude that the angels and such Divine implements as "the flaming sword" existed prior to the formation of the earth.

Want another example of the interweaving of explicit and implicit? I will provide one.

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7)

What do we have here? Moses related to us how The Lord God created Adam and, in relative terms, when The Lord God created Adam--The Lord God created Adam after preparing the earth and its atmosphere to sustain life. This much is explicitly clear in the narrative. Then The Lord God placed into this body that He had just formed "the breath of life", and when this "breath of life" entered the body Adam became a living soul. When did The Lord God create Adam's "breath of life"? 

What is clear are two things: (1) The breath of life existed prior to entering the body that The Lord God created for Adam, and (2) we are not told when The Lord God created this breath of life, but whenever it was that He fashioned the breath of life He fashioned it prior to the creation of the earth and its atmosphere.

This observation on "the breath of life" being older or having come into being prior to the creation of the physical body that houses it, a "premortal life" so to say, is revealed to us at the very beginning of the sacred record. Did the Hebrews follow through with this belief in the premortal nature of the spirit of man? The Hebrews absolutely followed through with this doctrine. I will offer a more precise translation from the Hebrew:

"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto The God who had given it." (Ecclesiastes 12:7)

Nowhere in the creation narrative or after it does Moses (or his successors) discuss when God created the spirits of mankind, but the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that the spirit shall eventually return to The God who had given it. Let us see another example, again, with a more precise translation from the Hebrew:

"At before I had formed thee in the womb I had known thee; and at before thou hadst come forth out of the womb I had sanctified thee, and I had ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:6)

The Hebrew makes very clear, explicitly clear, what is somewhat clouded in most English translations, that The Lord told Jeremiah that He, The Lord, had already known Jeremiah at a time prior to forming Jeremiah's body in the womb. In fact, The Lord even states that at the time before Jeremiah emerged from the womb, was born, The Lord had already sanctified Jeremiah and ordained him a prophet to the nations. Consider this:

"And thou shalt sanctify them [the altar, its vessels, the laver, table, its vessels, the candlestick, incense, tabernacle, etc.], that they may be most holy: whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy." (Exodus 30:29)

This latter point on sanctification is important. Did we notice what we were taught? When the ark of the covenant was made, all its articles were then sanctified. The principle is clear: Sanctification occurs only after the item has come into being, not before. When The Lord told Jeremiah that He, The Lord, had sanctified Jeremiah before the child emerged from the womb and had ordained him, that sanctification and ordination occurred at that previous time when The Lord knew Jeremiah, and that was before physical conception.

The belief in premortal life continued even into the days of Jesus and His Apostles. There was an occasion when Jesus and His disciples passed by a blind man.

"And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." (John 9:1-3)

What an interesting question. The belief that the parents had committed some sin for which an angry God took vengeance on their child rears its head of falsehood even today. The really curious part of the question was whether the blind man himself had sinned for which sin he was born blind. This is an instance where we can perceive the ancient Israelite belief in a premortal world, a world where we had agency, the ability to choose right from wrong. It was this perspective of the premortal existence of the spirit that, in the mind of the disciples, allowed for the understanding that a man could be punished for his own shortcomings through the condition of his birth. Jesus clarified, mercifully, that no one had sinned (physical shortcomings are not God's punishment), but that by turning to The Healer we would glorify God in our triumphs.

The belief continued through the Apostolic ministry.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." (Ephesians 1:3-4)

What do we see here? We see Paul addressing the Ephesians and touching upon what was a common belief for both Jew and Christian, not only the premortal life of the spirit, but the spirit being chosen and sanctified for a great mortal work in the service of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Sometimes readers are tempted to see in this selection process God's omniscience rather than our antemortal existence. The reader would be counseled to seek definitions in Scripture. Indeed we have such a definition or exemplary instance. We modern folk conceive of being chosen as God merely exercising His omniscience to pick out someone He knows will be true to Him, and then He purposes to make that soul a great servant at some obscure future date. But what do we actually see in Scripture?

"Also I heard the voice of The Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? then said I, Here am I; send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not." (Isaiah 6:8-9)

This powerful example of Isaiah's prophetic call shows us something: That God chooses His prophets in His very presence, in the presence of Father, Son and Holy Ghost ("..who will go for us?"), and that the selection process involves the prophet offering his service and The Lord then "choosing" to use that servant ("Here am I; send me...Go, and tell this people...").

But as the belief in the premortal nature of the spirit was lost in the first centuries after the Apostles had been rejected and therefore held back from the world, The Lord restored that knowledge through direct doctrine, that is, revelation:

"And now, verily I say unto you, I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn;...Ye were also in the beginning with the Father...Man was also in the beginning with God." (Doctrine and Covenants 93:21,23,29)

This precious doctrine on the antemortal or premortal existence of man is affirmed in every book of Scripture: The Old Testament, The New Testament, The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, The Doctrine and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price. This perspective is vital to our spiritual progression. When I believed I came to be in this life I never could reconcile the arbitrariness of my existence and the sacrifices God was calling on me to make. When I trusted The Lord enough to let His Spirit teach me that I had indeed lived before, this life came into greater focus. I now had purpose, a mission, I was and am on a continuum, one that will lead me back to The Father as greater than I was before, because this time I will be embodied, have enormous experience, and firsthand knowledge that it was through the merits of my Redeemer that I was enabled to make mortality a stage of advancement.

The reader is at liberty to make of these citations what he or she will. Always do bear in mind that the passages I cited, at least, are actually textual.

Three Simple Definitions From Hebrew

Among the valuable lessons I learned in linguistics was this: To define words according to their usage.

Whoever first articulated this point was a genius. Consider, you may find an ancient document. You may decode the ancient document. You may read the ancient text. Before long you will ache for a glossary of terms wondering, "What did this word mean to that writer at that time?" However, the definition is right before us because usage is meaning. In addition, the more frequent the usage, the more detailed and nuanced the meaning we are presented with.

Having this in mind I wish to share with readers three simple definitions from Moses and the ancient patriarchs.

Definitions: "Image and Likeness" and God

When Elohim, translated as "God", saw Creation gloriously wrought according to His Word, Elohim pronounced a commandment. However, unlike the previous commands where He, Elohim, had commanded His Son to forge an earth in various stages, with each intermediate degree having flora and fauna placed here that would not only thrive but, through their cycles, prepare the biosphere to sustain a higher order of life, the culmination of the process being the biosphere's ability to sustain Human life, this crowning command that Elohim pronounced just when the earth had now reached its ultimate aim involved the direct participation of Himself:

Let-Us-make Adam in-image-of-Us, as-shape-of-Us, and let them rule over fish of the sea, over bird of the heavens, and over livestock, and over all the earth, and over all the crawler crawling along the ground. Elohim created the Adam in-image-of-Him, in-image of Elohim He-had-created him, male and female He-had-created them. (Genesis 1:26-27, from the Hebrew)

The word that gets translated "image" is "Tselem". Tselem can mean the shadow cast from something, but it often means "idol". Why idol? As the idol is meant to be a physical representation on earth of Him who dwells in Heaven, so Adam, "man", was declared to be God's representation on earth of Him, the God of Heaven. We are told that Adam was made by Elohim Himself, though not Alone, "Let-Us-make", and that Elohim made Adam in His image. That word "in" for Hebrews denotes more than "being inside". As in English, "in" denotes "by means of", for example, "Blessed are the poor in spirit". Elohim declared that They were to make Adam "by their own image"; Adam or man is in character, we might say our noblest character, a reflection or representation of what God is like: Equipped with ranges of thought and ranges of feelings.

The word that often gets translated "likeness" is "Dmut" and it means 'shape'. Now, scarcely could a better word have been chosen. When God made Adam, every physical aspect of the body of Adam was in the shape of the body of Elohim, the body of God. Though subsequent generations strayed from God's prophetic word and came to believe that God has no body or form, HE, Elohim, declared that He does indeed have a body, and our body is shaped, as He stated, "as His Body is shaped."

These two terms, "image" and "shape", were Elohim's objective in creating Adam or mankind. To be more specific, Elohim set out to make a mankind that would resemble Him, that is, we might say, resemble in character and attributes, but Elohim also determined that mankind would be "shaped" like Him.

The Name Elohim vs. The Name God

Why, you might ask, am I consistently writing "Elohim" rather than God? In English "God" is singular, and in our usage "God" is Male. In Hebrew, the Hebrew of the patriarchs, "Elohim" is plural, which for them denoted Three or more. God made Adam, 'Man', in His own image and shape/likeness, and declared that "Adam" subsumes male and female together on earth as a representation of how "Elohim" subsumes Male and Female Together in heaven.

"How or where did God say that man and woman on earth are a direct representation of Man and Woman in Heaven?", you may ask. When He said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion...over all the earth" and "In the image of God created He him: male and female created He them."  This is how God was able to create Adam in His own image and shape/likeness and claim that He, Elohim, had created male and female. Did we actually see what the Hebrew told us? That when Elohim made Adam in His own Godly image and shape/likeness, there stood man and woman, because the making of the Adam was the product of Man and Woman Together?

I hear it said, I see it written, "Why should God be a Man? Why not a Woman?", "Why doesn't the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints modernize speech and write 'Heavenly Parents' in place of Heavenly Father?'" Actually, the need, as I see it, is not for the Brethren to fix Scriptural language to the English speech of the early 21st century, but for me (and others) to rely on God and study His Word through His Spirit, receiving from God the understanding of what His words meant and mean. The Father and The Mother are One, United, just as God declared Adam and Eve, them, to be "Adam", one. Never was there a father without a mother, and we were made in the glorious image and likeness of God, Elohim. That mankind is a direct representation of Elohim is something to ponder and, more to the point, live to, today and going forward.

Some may be tempted to conclude that "Heavenly Mother" is "hidden in plain sight" or "encoded" in Scripture. I believe that God does not hide things from me, but that my sight is not purely physical but also mental. To the extent that I do not understand something, I do not perceive it when I see it. But The Father can lift my understanding and open my eyes wider to perceive His Truth, as long as I keep trying to do His will and rely on the Atonement of His Son, which Sacrifice The Father prepared so that I, and others, could draw closer to Him and eventually return to Him, in His image, as His likeness.

The reader is at liberty to consider or discard what I have keyed in; as always, please remember that the passages and words cited herein are, in the very least, actually textual. Have a blessed Sabbath Day, The Lord's Day!

Why I Chose. Why I Stay.

I have thought long and hard about sharing this. This is personal, but alternative messages are having such sway that I want the Truth to triumph. Only sharing will accomplish this.

In 2011 I hit a low point. You see, I am gay. I am homosexual. I am a Latter-day Saint. I love The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I could no longer expend the colossal force needed to deny my own feelings, to suppress my very nature, to continue starving my own needs. This was a dark time. I had made mistakes. I was suffering the consequences. The people who were charged with assisting me were in actual fact botching my case up. My shepherds, with one beautiful exception, were driving me away. I was now not only gay, but gay and having to bear the added burdens of others' disapproval, disdain, distaste. And in the midst of these afflictions, my passions burned for release.

It was a rainy early fall night. I was driving home. It had taken all of my energy not to pursue same sex liaison, and as I drove I pondered how my resolve to remain in The Church, in the Covenant, had dropped from a solid 100% to 51% stay vs. 49% leave. As I pondered, my resolve balanced precariously at 50/50. I had to confess to myself that by the morning my resolve to depart would exceed the 50% mark. I considered the physical ecstasy that would be mine within hours, except for one thing. I thought to myself with a mix of concern and consternation:

"What about all the people, in particular the young people, I had always told to be faithful, to rely on The Lord, that He would help them no matter what? What would I say when they saw my example? Would I want them to follow my example? But how could I justify caving in to homosexual temptation and yet insist that they resist heterosexual temptation? Also, what would I say to the one shepherd who had been putting such trust in me, who was responding to that invisible Hand of guidance, to help me, unbeknownst to anyone else?"

In this moment, as I drove along the wet streets, lights glistening on the pavement, I heard a voice. I heard this voice not with my ears, but with my mind. Yet, this was the clearest sound I had ever heard. In fact, I felt my eardrums relax even as this voice came over my mind with incredible clarity. I could still hear the peeling sound of rubber tires over wet pavement, my turn signal, other cars passing by, but this voice came across with amazing clarity, and tenderness, such sweet tenderness.

Immediately I recognized Who it was that was speaking to me: It was Heavenly Father. Later, as I pondered how it was that I recognized a voice I had never heard, I realized how--from reading the Scriptures. Somehow by reading them with earnest I had come to know the voice of God. He spoke tenderly, with great concern:

"James, what's the matter?"

I responded with words weighed down by grief:

"Father, I'm not doing too well."

Heavenly Father responded with enormous tenderness, His syllables lengthening somewhat in His concern:

"Tell me why?" 

But here I soured. I realized that all my life I had been running scared. All my life I had been terrified to admit that everything that I had been taught about God and gays was that He hated fags, that He gloried only in destroying them, and that I was one of them. I had tried so hard for decades to suppress myself, to change myself, to transform into someone else, a heterosexual me. But all of this had failed. I had failed. I was less than a good member of my Church, and I was teetering in my resolve. So I spoke:

"You wanna know why? I'll tell you why!"

And I told. I do not ever remember making a list of every sexual sin I wanted to enjoy, but apparently I had, because I started rattling the list off. I caught myself out even as I continued speaking: "Dude, what are you doing? You're telling God the most un-Godly things." But as I thought I considered how it was that I was going to get rejected on Judgment Day anyway because I could not do the one thing God expected of me: To stop being gay. So, I reasoned, every box on the list of requirements for my departure has been checked except for the last one, "Rejected of God". I will force His hand now. I will shock God with the revelation of what is in my heart, and when He booms His rejection at me, I will depart, slipping away onto the plane of the night, joining the darkness, becoming the being I was born to be: Wanton, lascivious and free.

When I finished the very explicit list of gay sexual acts I was burning to experience, I gripped my steering wheel, confident of the crack of thunder or explosive outrage of an offended God. I was certain I knew what He would say, for I had run it through my mind on many occasions: "I am God. Man of Holiness is my name. And you come to me with these filthy, disgusting, repugnant acts. You're a returned missionary, Temple married no less. I have told you such things about the Scriptures, and you come to me with this!"

The only thing I could never fathom was what the actual words of severance would be. As I braced myself for His peal of wrath, I told myself not to cry as He cut me off, but I knew I would cry. 

Here Heavenly Father spoke. He said two words, two softly spoken words. I was struck by the words, by their simplicity, but also by the tone in which He spoke them. At the same time an image was coming to my mind, mind you, I did not see anything except what was before me: Wet pavement, roadside lamps, the customary lights of night traffic. Yet somehow His words evoked an image in my mind. The image was of His face. He had a tender expression: His eyes were half closed, moist, and He had a thin smile, curling slightly to the side. There was kindness in His expression, and a patient tone, though with a soft sense of melancholy:

"I know."

I was taken aback. I could hardly string two words together: 

"Wait, you? 

Wait, God knows. 

Wait, what does? 

Wait, I mean." 

What I was trying to say, but could not put out coherently was more like this: 

"You know? 

And you're not angry? 

What does this mean? 

I thought you hated these acts, 

hated those who performed them, 

and yet you're not angry?

What does this mean?" 

I had said many times, "God knows everything, even the thoughts of our heart," but I had only paid lip service to that idea. In reality I had thought that my inner temptations and thoughts, and even many of my acts, had been secret, so it astonished me to hear from The Father that He actually knew what I had been going through, what I had been thinking. 

When He resumed speaking His voice took on a twinge of an emotion that surprised me as I had never imagined that I would hear it in Deity: Vulnerability. I do not know how else to describe the sound other than to say that it reminded me of the situation where, for example, a young schoolboy--nerdy, shy--is in love with a beautiful girl. He has to declare his love to her; he cannot not tell her, and yet he knows she'll reject him. And still he is hopeful against all odds that she might reciprocate. Still, facing reality his voice begins to crack, and his face takes on a silly sort of smile, the look and texture of which immediately precede heartbreak, or rather, accompany the first splitting tensions of heartbreak. It was in this manner that The Father spoke two words to me, it was this expression His image had as it came to my mind. He said two words, and these two words so stunned me that my mind went immediately blank from astonishment. He said:

"Choose Me." 

I was silent. No thoughts. No response. I was absolutely astonished and left speechless. Then He spoke again, and the twinge of vulnerability swelled to tearfulness:

"I will be your Man."

In reality the word He used that I recorded here and have reported as "Man" was some other word, some word I immediately understood, did not actually know, but seemed to recall upon hearing it. The word was not from English, it seemed. The word raced across my mind leaving a trace of understanding but an inability to utter, repeat or convey. Maybe He said "Adam" from Hebrew, or some other word, but I understood the word more or less to be "Man", though it would have been hard even in the moment to explain in English. My impression was that I did not have power to utter it. 

Word aside, the statement was so astonishing that I was shocked back into speech, and I gasped: 

"What?!"

Before I could continue, He spoke again, and this time He was so choking back tears that His voice was audibly breaking up. The Father, God Almighty, El Shaddai, Elohim, His voice was hoarsely faltering as He choked through tears to plead with me, saying:

"I will fill you."

I realized immediately that His heart was breaking, and the rupture was caused by the actions I was about to undertake. More to the point, I was shocked. For decades, literally for decades, I had feared being rejected by God. Now God had turned the tables on me: It was I who was rejecting Him, casting Him away by actions I was contemplating, was on the verge of committing. His plea seemed at once laughable, as how could choosing God compete with let alone resolve the physical ecstasy I was about to enjoy? But the tears He was choking back touched my heart, and I did not have the heart to break His heart. With that lightning-fast rapidity with which the mind is capable of processing, as I began to speak, I knew I was giving it all up: I would never know gay sex, gay love, gay relationships, my gay promised land. I was giving all of that up for Him because He asked it of me. I shuffled these words out:

"Okay. Okay. Okay."

Silence ensued. Suddenly horrifying clarity came over me. My situation, my life, my actions, every detail that had not seemed so bad as I raced out of the Gospel, now that I had executed an unanticipated 180 degree about-face immediately took on a different appearance. Things were worse than ever before, and I was scared. In fear I spoke up again:

"Father, I'm in trouble, and I don't know what to do."

The Father spoke to me again, and this time His voice was strong, magisterial, the voice of a Man who would command and would be neither disobeyed nor delayed. He said:

"Thou hast chosen Me, 
so rely on Me. 
I will resolve this. 
I will resolve this, 
and it will be between Me and you. 
Thou hast chosen Me,
so rely on Me.
I will resolve this."

I was somewhat relieved, but fear still coursed though me. I shuffled out my speech again:

"Okay. Okay. Okay."

As I recall, this was on a Thursday night. By Saturday I was battling gay passion and fearful I could fall. I knelt and asked The Father for a sign, not a sign for consuming my lusts on, but a confirmation, something to relieve my battle, something to give me hope. The next day, Sunday, I met with the Bishop, and He told me that this situation I was in had gone on long enough. He was going to move for its speedy end. He spoke with determination. For months I had been trying everything possible to make my predicament budge, and yet my obstacles stood like the monoliths arranged in Stonehenge. I had bloodied my limbs trying to budge them, and had made no progress. This failure had led to my despair, and despair had played a huge part in my looming departure from the Church. Now, before my eyes, I saw a monolith start lurching forward, and in a slow and heavy crest it fell into another monolith, and like a domino effect, one obstacle after another fell until I was renewed, restored, reborn. 

I have had my ups and downs. Seldom is a life struggle all victories from one point on. But I had begun winning key battles, still losing others, almost losing some, but through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I have come back each time. And I can look the mortal shepherd whom my Eternal Shepherd sent me in the eye and say, "I have tried, in Jesus I have tried, and through and with Jesus, I have overcome." I imagine that is what Judgement Day will be like too.

So when people ask me, why,  "Why do you remain Mormon if you are gay? Why do you stay in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Why do you believe?", I tell them the truth:

Because God lives. 

The Father really honestly and truly lives.

He hears prayers.

He answers prayers.

He loves me.

He loves us.
He loves everybody.

He is real.

He is not a figment of imagination.

He is not a myth retold and resold.

He is real.

God actually really exists,

and He is so loving, so tender, so sweet.

He really actually knows the thoughts of our hearts.

He really actually sees each and every one of us.

We can confide anything in Him, and He does not get angry.

And He really does care.

And Jesus really is His Son.

And all my shortcomings notwithstanding--all of them before this encounter, during the encounter, and since the encounter notwithstanding--He loves me, blesses me, and gives me the chance to wash, and wash, and wash again in the blood of His Son through the miracle of repentance, and the miracle of His encouragement to try again to do better. And now that I have put this experience down in writing, I can actually say that my experience is actually textual.

May God bless you for reading this. 

May you bless yourselves by turning to Him. 

A Woman of Faith

I will tell, briefly, the story of my great-great-grandmother. As a young girl, impoverished, she sought employment as a maid at about the age of 14 or 15, which was and is common in Central America (and other parts of Latin America). The employers, however, often look at these maidens as little more than ploys for pleasures. Her employer raped her. She then left his employment only to discover that she was carrying a child by him. She chose to keep her baby. Because of her choice, for the rest of her life she bore the snickers, sneers, whispers and suspicions of what had transpired. The ruminations lingered for decades and even in a foreign land long after her mortal remains were laid to rest.

I speak of her and what she did on her path in life. This is not political. This is family. My great-great-grandmother kept her child, a baby girl, my great-grandmother, and raised her daughter to love Jesus, to love God, to strive to keep His commandments. In a country where the dominant Christian church enjoyed exclusive privilege and sanction, my great-great-grandmother chose Evangelical Christianity, with heavy emphasis on loving and living by the Word of God contained in The Holy Bible.

Her daughter grew to marry a man who became a trial of her faith; he was manic depressive, alcoholic, abusive, obtuse, yet she chose to stay, and pray. Gradually he softened, and though it may be said that he, my great-grandfather, seldom if ever lived fully worthy of her love and devotion, his shortcomings never had the lasting effect on their children the way her faith did, my great-grandmother's. My great-grandmother, the child of rape, adored her Savior, and she instilled faith in Him and in His word in all of her children. My grandmother, one of her daughters, likewise found only domestic trials, but when facing raising her children sans any paternal assistance, she chose to rely on The Lord and come to America. She eventually brought my father here, and though my father, in some regards, played out the manic states of his grandfather, my father's heart was eventually softened and comforted by his undying love of The Lord and His Word, a love taught to him by his mother, my grandmother, a love taught to her by her mother, my great-grandmother, a love taught to her by her mother, my great-great-grandmother.

This love of The Lord is the great inheritance of my family. It is a love of The Lord coupled with a love of His word. It is a love that sees us through our seas of often self-inflicted affliction, eventually bringing us to safer shores and peaceful rest.

Someday I will see my great-great-grandmother, and I will hail her as Matriarch of Honor. She, I am certain, now glories in her decision to have her child and love her. And as she, my great-great-grandmother, is joined by descendants filled with the light of the love of their Lord, I am certain she is exalted in the choices she made.

Our world says "women are exalted by their choices." Indeed. woman is exalted by her choices. Let

us choose well remembering that our choices live on, both in this world and beyond.

(Pictured below is my great-grand-mother, the child my great-great-grandmother chose to have, love, and raise unto The Lord.)