I was surprised to discover that the Church of Jesus Christ has no official position on Trinity or Godhead when it comes to the nature of God. What do they believe? Evangelist Josh Gehly gives both official and personal beliefs. Check out our conversation….
Don’t miss our other conversations with Josh: https://gospeltangents.com/people/josh-gehly
transcript to follow
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GT 00:43 All right. So just to finish up then, it sounds like you’ve got a president. He’s got two counselors.
Josh 00:52 Yes, those three are included with nine other apostles.
GT 00:55 Correct. Then you have a single Quorum of Seventy, and your [Seventies] mission, or you’re responsibility is mainly for missionary work and administering to small branches throughout the world.
Josh 01:10 Exactly, just like Matthew 10, the Lord calls Twelve, and they are the apostles. We look at Luke Chapter 10, the Lord calls Seventy, and we believe they are the evangelists. That’s our extrapolation and interpretation of that scripture. So, that’s our source text for it and where we go. So, yeah, we have a Quorum of Seventy Evangelists.
GT 01:33 Okay. And then in the LDS Church, we have multiple Quorums of Seventy. Oh, we haven’t talked about the Doctrine & Covenants, because in the Doctrine and Covenants, it says we can have seven Quorums of Seventy. And I know that William Bickerton, especially, was a big proponent of Joseph Smith’s revelation on the Civil War.
Josh 01:59 Right, yeah. You’ll find that around our branch.
GT 02:02 He kind of liked the baptisms for the dead, but that died out as well.
Josh 02:07 Yeah, hard to track that, really.
GT 02:09 We talked to Daniel Stone about that. But so do you know why your church decided to abandon the Doctrine and Covenants? Besides polygamy, that’s the obvious one.
Josh 02:24 I’m not sure I can speak on behalf of the church of the 1850s and 60s, perfectly. I do have ancestry that goes back that far, but…
GT 02:34 Oh, really?
Josh 02:35 Yeah, I’m six generations deep, thank God.
GT 02:38 Wow.
Josh 02:41 But I would say that, I think, for us, when we interpret Ezekiel 37, about the two sticks, we look at that as the Bible and Book of Mormon. We don’t see a third book being discussed in that moment. And so, there’s a lot of good revelations that are from that time period. There are revelations about the three and eight witnesses. I would, obviously, accept that as being from the Lord. But our church does not canonize any of that. We don’t regard them, necessarily, or have any authoritative stance or position on one versus the other. But for us, when we read Ezekiel 37, we read about two books becoming one in God’s hand, two sticks, becoming the one in God’s hand for the redemption of Israel and the glory of the latter-day work. That’s what we believe we have in the Bible and Book of Mormon, and that’s why we’re a two-book church. We look forward to records to come. The Book of Mormon obviously talks about the brass plates never dimming. The Book of Mormon talks about the sealed portion and the revelation and the gift of the brother Jared. So, through the word of God, we have prophetic promise of more to come. But I don’t read anywhere in the Book of Mormon that says, and there will be a book that comes from the Gentiles or comes from the from this restoration. I don’t read that, necessarily.
GT 04:05 Okay. Yep. And then so I guess we need to go into Pearl of Great Price. You guys have never accepted the Book of Abraham or books of Moses or anything like that, or even the Inspired Version of the Bible.
Josh 04:20 Correct. Yeah, we don’t, even though that was Rigdon and Joseph Smith’s project together. I mean, in tandem they did the bulk of that work, but we don’t accept that or use it.
GT 04:30 Okay. So, in the Pearl of Great Price, we have, of course, Joseph’s 1838 account of the First Vision. Do you guys talk about the First Vision very much or not really?
Josh 04:43 We do. We do. It’s a wonderful vision, beautiful, and it is used around the church. I love using the earliest one. I often use…
GT 04:57 The 1832 vision?
Josh 04:58 Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, I love that version.
GT 04:59 Oh, really? But it’s not canonized or anything?
Josh 05:02 Oh, no, it’s not canon. But do I believe it happened? Yeah, I do.
GT 05:05 Okay.
Josh 05:06 And I’m good with the 1838 version and the 1832 version. It’s not one or the other to me. But I love the 1830, I love the personal revelation of Christ and Joseph Smith seeking forgiveness of sin, and how the Lord gave him that experience. I’m drawn to it. I love it.
GT 05:0 Okay. So that just popped into my head, because there are people who argue. As a missionary, we would often point to the 1838 account, which is in our Pearl of Great Price, where God and Jesus, two separate percentages, appear to Joseph. The 1832 account sounds like it was just one personage.
Josh 05:54 Yeah.
GT 05:56 And there are those who will argue that the later evolution of Godhead–I guess you guys would be more Trinitarian. Is that right?
Josh 06:07 We are not Trinitarian, as a church.
GT 06:10 That’s interesting.
Josh 06:12 But we believe in a very simple form of Godhead, that is God the Father, His Son, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. But we would be closer and this is–what I’m going to say is Josh Gehly’s opinion and interpretation.
GT 06:27 This is not as an official representative of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Josh 06:31 I know I’m here and I know I’m representing the church. But, to me, the way I interpret our faith and doctrine, which is very simply written, do we have Trinitarians that are in our church? Yes. I know them. Are they welcome in my pews? Yes, absolutely. It’s okay. God is pretty darn big. And one day, we’re going to experience him and however we’ve tried to define him in words, in a few sentences, it’s going to fail and fall short, and we are going to realize the weight of eternal glory, as C.S. Lewis would have described it, beyond expression. So, with that said, I interpret us as being much more Binitarian.
GT 07:17 Okay.
Josh 07:18 So we believe in God, the Father being a personage of glory. That’s a direct quote from our faith and doctrine. By the way, the early lectures of faith would look very similar.
GT 07:31 That used to be canonized in our church, but we got rid of it.
Josh 07:33 Okay, well, here I am bringing out something that was never canon and saying, ‘Hey, we’re pretty close.’ Some of the early writings on Oliver Cowdery, too, on the articles of faith, like the first version that was never actually even ever canonized, even by the early church, when we read that I’m like, yeah, I believe that. That’s what I believe. So our view of Godhead very closely resembles the early Christian church, before the creed’s came in, and before a lot of those later things were added. And so, it’s a view of God, the Father being a percentage of glory, Jesus Christ being the express image of the Father and being, obviously, a resurrected personage of glory. What connects the two?
GT 08:21 The Holy Ghost.
Josh 08:22 Amen.
GT 08:23 Okay
Josh 08:24 And the Holy Ghost–it’s either, I think it’s 2nd Corinthians, I always mix this up, Rick. You’re killing me. It’s either 2nd Corinthians 2:16, or 1st Corinthians 2:16. Paul goes on this expose of the Holy Ghost for eight or 10 verses. At the end he says, “We have the mind of Christ.”7 That’s what connects the Godhead. The Holy Spirit is what makes him omnipresent. It what makes him omnipotent. It’s what makes him everywhere, across all time. It’s what connects the Father and the Son, through a common mind, through the Holy Spirit. And that’s the gift that gets given unto us through the laying on of hands, and that’s how Paul describes it. And so we cleave to that and say, yea and amen.
GT 09:08 Okay.
Josh 09:09 So, that that is a little distinction from Trinitarian traditional views, which would say, the Holy Spirit is a personage. We would not say that because, frankly, it’s not biblical, although it can appear in any form.
GT 09:25 Okay, so the official, is this the official church position or is this the Josh Gehly position?
Josh 09:30 This is the Josh Gehly [position.] if you want the official church position, we have a very small article of faith that says, “We believe in God the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and these three are the great and matchless power that rules all things,” and there’s a lot of ways you can fully break that down. Yeah.
GT 09:52 Okay, so, a church member could be Trinitarian. A church member could be Binitarian.
Josh 09:59 Yes.
GT 10:00 And a Binitarian, just to make sure, you’re saying that God and Jesus are separate beings.
Josh 10:03 Correct.
GT 10:03 And the Holy Ghost ties them together.
Josh 10:05 Exactly right.
GT 10:06 Okay. So you don’t really have an official position on Trinity versus Godhead, I guess.
Josh 10:15 Well, we as a church, we don’t accept the Trinity.
GT 10:18 You don’t accept the Trinity.
Josh 10:19 Yeah, we don’t. As a church, we do not accept the Trinity. These are little words that get used in…
GT 10:25 Well, it sounds like the church is Binitarian, but you’re saying that’s not true, either?
Josh 10:28 Well, our faith doesn’t define it that narrowly, that tightly. So, that’s where I think– this is where I read our faith and doctrine, and I go, yeah, that looks real Binitarian to me. If I was to make it a one-word statement. But we really don’t have an official one-word statement on it.
GT 10:50 So you’re fine with the 1838 account where God and Jesus are, basically, I mean, our artwork is they’re standing side-by-side above Joseph’s head. You’d be totally fine with that.
Josh 11:00 Totally fine. Yeah. Well, Steven looks into heaven.
GT 11:05 Right.
Josh 11:05 He sees God sitting on his throne and Christ at his right hand. So, I see New Testament sources that support that, so I’m very comfortable with it. How would you deal with Stephen otherwise, looking up and seeing two personages in heaven.
GT 11:22 As a missionary, we would pull that one out all the time.
Josh 11:25 Yeah, there we go. Pass me the nametag at the end of the interview. (Both chuckling)
GT 11:32 Well, cool. So, you’ve got a president, apostles, seventies. Now in the LDS Church, we would have group of about four to usually 12-ish congregations that we would refer to as a stake. I guess the Catholics would refer to that as a diocese. Community of Christ refers to that, I think they have more like 30 in what they would call Mission Center. Do you have a similar structure in your church?
Josh 12:06 We have regions. We used to call them districts. This is very flexible. The general church could change this, the ministry could change that structure.
GT 12:15 Okay.
Josh 12:16 We do break apart the domestic church into regions and international church are usually broken down into countries and areas and are overseen by the evangelists. But, overall..
GT 12:31 So, evangelists would be what we would call a regional president or a stake president kind of a thing?
Josh 12:36 Well, regional presidents can be any minister, and even elders, our ministry or pastors or elders, it’s all the same. That’s synonymous phrases, really. The official office title is elder for our ministry, for our ministers. An elder can oversee an international work, as well. But typically, the evangelists are overseeing a lot of that, most of that. Even if it’s an elder overseeing that country, they’re reporting under the Q Seventy.
GT 13:08 Okay, do you call it a Quorum of Seventy?
Josh 13:10 Yeah, Quorum of 70 evangelists.
GT 13:12 And so that was another question because we would pull that out of our Doctrine and Covenants, but you had a biblical reference.
Josh 13:18 Just Luke Chapter 10, the Lord called 70. That’s our scriptural reference.
GT 13:24 And so you wouldn’t go beyond those 70, you wouldn’t have seven Quorums of Seventy, for example.
Josh 13:28 Not today, no, not today.
GT 13:32 In the future, you could as well.
Josh 13:33 You could look at it this way, I guess. There were 12 at Bountiful, that the Lord called and there were 12 in Jerusalem. So, there were 24.
GT 13:45 Oh, I see.
Josh 13:46 At the same time; Our structure today is one quorum of 12 apostles, one quorum of 70 evangelists. I don’t see that changing. But I do see what the Lord did at Bountiful and Jerusalem.
GT 14:04 Okay. I’m trying to think of what else there is. Anything else that I’m missing?
Josh 14:08 I don’t know. It’s a lot of turf.
GT 14:13 This whole idea of speaking in tongues, being still active in your church is really interesting to me.
Josh 14:20 Yeah, we have that throughout the church. It’s not an every meeting thing.
GT 14:27 I know. I was very disappointed.
Josh 14:28 Keep coming. This is our way to get you back, Rick. (Both chuckling) Keep coming.
GT 14:33 All right.
Josh 14:35 When you come, I’ll be like, don’t speak in tongues. We want Rick to come back. I’m kidding. It’s never planned. So, it’s one of the gifts of the Spirit talked about by Paul. He talks about prophesying in tongues. It’s one of the gifts of the spirit throughout the Word of God. So, for us, it’s an active part of our church. It’s one of the gifts of the Spirit. Not everybody speaks in tongues. Some Christian churches, in certain denominations within evangelical would say, “You don’t have the Holy Ghost unless you speak in tongues.” We don’t do that. That’s not how we feel. Have hands been laid on people and they’ve spoken in tongues when they’ve been had the gift of the Holy Ghost? Sure, yes. That’s happened. But it’s not a requirement. It’s not even probably common, but it has happened. And so, we accept the gift. We seek interpretation, as Paul recommended, and really strongly desired to be in the church, to eliminate confusion and to allow clarity of the spirit to shine through. And so you will see brothers and sisters in that gift used throughout the church, and it happens. It’s not an every branch thing. It’s not an every location thing, but it is prevalent around the world.
Josh 15:57 Okay. Very good.
{End of Part 5}
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