“I don’t think God hides from anyone ... the Lord has hidden both His existence and right to rule from unbelievers.”
Would you care to explain this contradiction?
By “hide” I mean more of an evasive attempt to remain concealed. By “hidden” I mean concealed but able to be found. God does not hide from anyone who seeks Him; however, he has made some things hidden so as to reveal them to those He deems worthy. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” He states. But it requires that one open the door. Certainly, He could walk right through it from a metaphoric standpoint and enter whether people chose to let Him or not. He could force us all to worship Him and be arbitrary about it; however, in doing so He would cease to be who He is.
For our own good, He also has chosen to hide some things from us at this stage of our development. And in those things He will be purposely evasive to ensure our free agency. Such things include His foreknowledge of our future lives and decisions, the right ones and wrong ones. Other things he will reveal to us, but they’re hidden. These include His nature, His will, things as they were, are and will be.
Didn’t God send prophets? Jesus actually walked the earth, isn’t that undisputed fact?
Actually, some people think God continues to send prophets. Sadly, that is something almost every organized Christian and Jewish religion doesn’t believe in anymore. But everything is open for challenge and no fact is so entrenched that it can’t be disputed. When God “hides” something, it requires “revelation” to reveal it — thus the term. By assuring people they’re able to ferret out hidden things by themselves, the creators of organized religions find they need no revelatory gifts.
Consider the 40 days following Jesus’ resurrection (see Acts 1:3). Not one traditional Christian religion today has any idea what Jesus taught during those days. Everything modern professors teach can be traced to other parts of the Bible as a basis; however, Jesus’ teachings during that time aren’t recorded anywhere. The scripture simply records that the Lord spoke “of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”
LDS scholar Dr. Kent Brown put it this way:
Luke states that during the 40-day ministry the Savior spoke “of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God,” but there are only vague hints in other New Testament writings as to the nature and content of these teachings. The preaching of Jesus to the spirits in prison (see 1 Pet. 3:19 and 4:6) and the doctrine of baptism for the dead (see 1 Cor. 15:29) are two examples of teachings that best fit the context of Acts 1:3. Although few, if any, works pertaining to the 40-day ministry of Acts 1:3 were known a century ago, modern discoveries have produced a virtual library of such writings. Many claim to be authored by such apostles as Peter, John, Philip, Thomas, and James, while others, for example, are simply entitled “The Accounts of the Great Ministry,” “Concerning the Resurrection,” and “Dialogue of the Redeemer.” Many of these documents provide a time reference to the 40-day ministry when they claim to contain teachings of the Living Jesus. In this literature the word “living” is often a technical term that refers to the resurrected and glorified Christ.
Nowhere in the scriptures does Jesus speak about preaching to the spirits of the dead, or whether people could be baptized in behalf of those who have died. There’s also nothing in the Old Testament that speaks of the Messiah preaching to the dead (though Isaiah seems to have referenced it when he wrote: “ And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. ” 24:21-22)
Ancient Christianity was a revealed religion. It could not have been projected using only the Old Testament. In the same way, I don’t think it’s possible to project an organized religion from a revealed religion, though many have tried. Martin Luther, who said he sought nothing but reforming the church so it would be in conformity with the scriptures; John Calvin, Alexander Campbell and Sidney Rigdon, William Miller, Charles T. Russell and Joseph Rutherford and so on until Herbert W. Armstrong and others. Many just assumed they were God’s agents and clearly expected their movements to be God’s sole work.
Brown goes on to say regarding the plethora of strange documents uncovered fairly recently:
...most scholars have tacitly adopted the following standard for determining the value of such documents: if they correspond to something already known to “orthodox” Christianity they are assumed to have been derived from Christianity; if they do not correspond to “orthodox” Christianity they were probably not Christian in origin. The difficulty with this standard is agreeing on a definition of “orthodox Christianity.” Although scholars differ on such a definition, they are generally agreed that most of what is contained in the 40-day literature is not fully Christian.
Bottom line, many of these things are hidden and must be revealed in light of God’s power. But He’s not going to force anything on anybody.
