Bridge of Reason

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have recently released several short videos which all begin with the question ‘How Can It Not Be True?’ These videos cover the subjects: Who is God?; Evidence of God’s Existence; The Miracle of Humankind; Jesus Christ as the Son of God; Agency and the Promises of Obedience; The Witness of the Spirit; Joseph Smith; and The Book of Mormon. Over the next few weeks, I will review these videos and consider if what they teach can or cannot be true. These videos are, as always, beautifully produced, and very easy on the eye. The Mormons, realising that many people will not watch or listen to a video like this beyond a couple of minutes, have made them short and to the point. Their hope, perhaps, is that these videos will arouse enough interest that the watcher visit their website or one of their churches. Let’s begin with: How Can It Not Be True – Who is God? The first claim made by the video is that God is always available for us. We would ...

  William Wordsworth wrote: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! Wordsworth is lamenting the fast withering connection between people and nature because of the all-embracing industrial society of his time, a great theme of his day . I find people are often aware they are somehow disconnected from something bigger than themselves. I sense their longing for they don’t know what, their frustration at an inexplicable sense of fragmentation . Believers can experience this frustration, when ‘the world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending.’ T hat sense we have laid waste our powers, given our hearts away while distracted by the demands of life . Like Esau, we can feel we have traded our new-birthright ‘for a mess of pottage.’ Genesis 25:29-33 ‘The world is too much with us, late and soon,’ and l ittle we see in sp...

  May the Force be with You The Watchtower Society defines the Holy Spirit in the following way: The invisible energizing force that God puts into action to accomplish his will. It is holy because it comes from Jehovah, who is clean and righteous to the highest degree, and because it is God’s means to accomplish what is holy. ​— Lu 1:35; Ac 1:8 . [1] With this definition in mind, it is easy to see why, in all their literature, the Watchtower Society always write holy spirit in the lower case. They believe and teach that the Holy Spirit is an ‘it’, rather than a ‘who’. Active Force Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to the Holy Spirit as God’s ‘active force’ and, as can be seen from the quote above, they believe that ‘it’ is an energizing force which flows from Jehovah to accomplish his will. Their understanding of the Holy Spirit is a far cry from that believed upon and taught by historic Christianity. Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is not just a force, but rather a personal being...