Knowledge concerning God's attributes essential to intelligent worship—The relationship of Jesus Christ to God the Eternal Father, spiritually and bodily—Relationship of mankind to Deity.

In common with my brethren and sisters who make up these assembled thousands of modern Israel, I have been fed with good food and made glad in each meeting of this conference. I have felt that the Spirit of the Lord has been present with us great abundance. We have heard much concerning our temporal duties, and much relating to our spiritual welfare. It has been made plain unto us that these two classes of things differ in degree rather that in kind, and that we cannot serve God acceptably by devoting ourselves wholly to scripture study, for there are many things pertaining to temporalities which enter into our duties and our appointed experiences here upon the earth. On the other hand, we have been assured, not for the first time, by any means, that we cannot please the Lord by wholly devoting ourselves to temporal affairs, to the exclusion of the consideration of the great spiritual principles and truths that have been given us.

We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ, and much has been said concerning His proprietorship, His mastership, in the Church, the Church that bears His name. I take it to be a plain and simple principle that we cannot worship intelligently, and therefore acceptably unto the Lord, unless we know something of the attributes and of the will of Him whom we profess to worship. The relationship of the Christ to the Eternal Father has been set forth in such plainness that I do not think any wayfaring man amongst us can fail to understand. We recognize in Jesus Christ the Son of the Eternal Father, both in spirit and in body. There is no other meaning to attach to that expression, as used by the Eternal Father Himself—"Mine Only Begotten Son." Christ combined within His own person and nature the attributes of His mortal mother, and just as truly the attributes of His immortal Sire. By that fixed and inexorable law of nature, that every living organism shall follow after his kind, Jesus the Christ had the power to die, for He was the offspring of a mortal woman; and He had the power to withstand death indefinitely, for He was the son of an immortal Father. This simplicity of doctrine has shocked many, but the truth is frequently shocking just because of its simplicity and consequent grandeur. We must know something of the attributes of the Eternal Father, that we may the more fully comprehend His relationship to His Only Begotten Son.

Did not Christ declare again and again that He possessed in His own person such power over life that no man could take His life from Him—in plain words, that no one could kill Him--until He would voluntarily surrender Himself, and permit mortal and infernal powers to prevail for the time being? How could it be otherwise for the Son of an immortal Father, who inherited the power to keep death in abeyance? Death could not touch Him until He willed and permitted so. Did He not say also, not once but many a time, that He did what He had seen His Father do? Did He not declare that He did only what He had seen His Father do, or what His Father had done? And did He not make it plain that He was following in the footsteps of His immortal Father, the very Eternal Father to whom we pray in the name of His Son? It necessarily follows that the Eternal Father once passed through experiences analogous to those which His Son, the Lord Jesus, afterward passed through, and through which we are now passing. The Eternal, Father, therefore, is a Being who has had experiences incident to the mortal state. He is a resurrected Being; He conquered death; and He gave power unto His Son to conquer death, through whom power shall be given unto the Saints, yea, unto all who will accept the boon of eternal life, to be redeemed from death.

On an early occasion in the earthly ministry of Christ, when He first met Nathaniel, Jesus recognized in the man at once an Israelite in whom was no guile. In His conversation with Nathaniel Jesus the Christ called Himself for the first time, as far as our scripture records show, The Son of Man (John 1:51). Then, in an interview with Nicodemus, that renowned teacher in Israel and learned doctor of the law, Jesus called Himself again The Son of Man (John 3:13); and you will find the same expression used in the four gospels approximately eighty times. Eliminating all parallel passages, or sayings that are reported by more than one of the writers, there are approximately forty separate instances in which Jesus Christ called Himself The Son of Man; hut nowhere in the four gospels do you find the title used by any other than the Christ, nor applied by the Christ to any other than Himself.

It may he remarked, in passing, that you will find a somewhat similar expression used in the Old Testament, in the form of address; and in these instances it is plainly used in its literal and ordinary or common meaning the son—of a mortal man. It is so used approximately ninety times in the Book of Ezekiel; in each instance, however, Jehovah applies it to His prophet, addressing him as "Son of man," as the context of the several passages plainly shows, to impress upon Ezekiel the fact that though he was permitted to voice and write the very words of Jehovah, he was nevertheless but a man. So also in the Book of Moses you will find that Satan blasphemously assumed to establish, or to make it appear that there existed, a similar difference between him and Moses, when he said "Moses, son of man, worship me". (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1:12).

But the distinctive title "The Son of Man" as applied to Jesus Christ occurs only once in the Old Testament. It is in the seventh chapter of Daniel, wherein is given an account of a wonderful manifestation from God, in which Daniel saw, in the vision of the night, the scenes that shall take place in a time yet future, when the Ancient of Days, Adam, who is the patriarch of the race, shall sit to judge his posterity, and they shall come before him, or as Daniel saw it, they came before him, in their order; and among them there came one like unto The Son of Man who appeared in the clouds of heaven; and when He came all power and dominion were given unto Him, and His kingdom was declared to be an all-embracing and an everlasting kingdom. Thus is shown the superiority of the Son of Man over the Ancient of Days, or in other words, the supremacy of Jesus the Christ over Adam, the patriarch of the race (see Daniel 7:9-14).

Now, in the New Testament, outside the four gospels, you will find the title "The Son of Man" occurring about three times, and in each instance it is applied to the Christ, in His then glorified state (see Acts 7:56: Revelation 1:13. and 14:14). When Stephen stood before his unrighteous judges, the heavens were opened to him, and he could not keep within his soul what he saw. He said, "Behold I see The Son of Man, standing on the right hand of God"; and for that testimony they took Stephen out and stoned him, as for the testimony of the Father they had before crucified the Christ.

God has glorified His Son; but though the Son is glorified with the glory of the Father, you can't change the fact that He is the Son of that Father, and that Father, the Eternal Father, the Father of Jesus Christ, the Father of His spirit and the Father of His body, was once a Man, and has progressed, not by any favor but by the right of conquest over sin, and over death, to His present position of priesthood and power, of Godship and Godliness, as the Supreme Being whom we all profess to worship. We are all spirit sons and daughters of God; but Jesus Christ was and is The Son of God in a superlative and distinctive sense, God the Eternal Father being His Father both in spirit and in flesh.

We believe in the more than imperial status of the human race. We believe that our spirits are the offspring of Deity, and we hold that when Christ said to His apostles, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," He was not talking of a merely idealistic yet impossible achievement; but that on the contrary He meant that it was possible for men to advance until they shall become like unto the Gods in their powers and in their attainments, through righteousness.

According to the spirit of the revealed word, perfection is rather relative than absolute. Though a man become perfect in his mortal sphere of activity, he is by no means perfect as gauged by the standard prevailing in heaven. As the Prophet Joseph said to the Church in early days, so now says the Church unto the world—if the heavens could be rent, and you could see the Eternal Father sitting upon His throne, you would see Him like a man in form. That the Eternal Father has called Himself a Man is plainly apparent in the testimony of Enoch the Seer; and in the same scripture Jesus Christ is designated "The Son of Man" even before the time of the flood; "For in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is His name, and the name of His Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ", (Moses 6:57; compare 7:24, 47 and 54). In a certain revelation to Enoch, the Eternal Father thus spake: "Behold, I am God; Man of Holiness is my name. Man of Counsel is my name; and Endless and Eternal is my name, also." (Moses 7:35). Thus does the light of modern revelation illuminate the dark passages of old.

The doctrine of the relationship between God and men, as made plain through the word of revelation, is today as it was of old, though in the light of later scripture we are enabled to read the meaning more clearly. It is provided that we, the sons and daughters of God, may advance until we become like unto our Eternal Father and our Eternal Mother, in that we may become perfect in our spheres as they are in theirs. That grand truth, taught by the Prophet Joseph and ridiculed for the time, has now gripped the minds of the thinkers and philosophers of the age. You will find it hinted at and timidly expressed in the writings of many recent and learned publications in the theological field. That great truth is finding its way into the literature of the world. It was crystallized into what we may call an aphorism, by President Lorenzo Snow: "As man is God once was; as God is man may be". We know that Christ is God, and that He lived upon the earth as a Man. In the sense in which Christ was perfect in His sphere, we may become perfect in ours. We may progress, not to become each one a savior of the world in the particular sense in which Christ was the Savior of the world, but we may follow Him to eternal glory, and to eternal life, which may our Father grant, in the name of Jesus. Amen.