What I believe--2006

I found among my writings this expression of my newborn beliefs from 2006 or some months earlier. It starts perhaps a little funny, but it expresses many aspects of my deepest faith perhaps as well as I could ever hope to do.

What I believe

Owing to the many reports which have reached my ears from well-disposed and loving persons in relation to the peculiarity and progress of my life, all of which convey great wonder and concern about my character as a person and my progress in the Gospel--I have been induced to write this letter, to disabuse the family mind, and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts, so far as I have such facts in my possession.

Life and Death

-I believe I am a Child of a Father in heaven who is Love, the greatest of all. And that you are too.
-I believe I died into this world to glorify my Father. And that you did too.
-I believe that when this death is over I will become, to the extent I am personally filled with Love and Light in this death, again alive and fully aware of the heavenly world and one with my Father, to His glory.
-I believe this death is a distracting, tempting experience designed to test and increase the strength and brightness of my Light and Love.
-I believe the great tests of this death are the World and the Flesh.
-I believe When I paused on the brink of this death, my resolution, prayer, and hope were that I might, if once ensnared, escape the Flesh and the World and thus come to life while even yet in death.
-I believe that when I return to life I will view my earlier resolution and hope, and in the pure and holy presence of all the Holy angels I will have eternal torment, regret, rejoicing, and peace when I see my walk for what it was, at times wayward and at times heavenward.
-I believe that while yet in this death I can by degrees view my walk for what it is, turn it lifeward, and purify the book of my soul so that the torment spoken of has no power over me.

The World

-I believe that there are millions of revelations of the Father each year to the 6 billion of his children now in the world. I believe that the earth is full of the knowledge of the Father as the waters cover the sea.
-I believe that there has been no greater revelation of the Father to this world than the death and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.
-I believe that the Father works in each child to bring him/her to Light and Love, and that thus there are different beliefs and teachings to edify different children. By the workings of the Father through his Holy Spirit, these teachings in their diversity are dispensed side by side in the same stories, books, families, cultures, and traditions, and that which edifies each child is of the Father to that child.
-I believe that every child is further enlightened who confesses before men and seeks to do according to the truth he receives from the Father, and that every child who fears men and denies and seeks not to do according to the truth he receives from the Father disrupts the flow of light.