God says: “You are my son, this day I have begotten you.” (Psalms 2:7) When that occurred, it was enough to make a man a son of God. I don’t know if we even believe that possible now.
Today we assume if it is to happen at all it will be in the afterlife. To the ancients, the person to whom this promise was made was instantly a son of God, even though he may have to live out a life in mortality before entering into the kingdom promised him.
The “king-making ceremonies” of the Egyptians, for example, made the Pharaoh a son of Horus and a God. He was a God on earth even though everyone knew that he needed to eat and breathe to survive. He would eventually die and be buried. He was a mortal – but he was a God. The promise was everything. The words of the ceremony, the effect of the anointing, the commitment to the man was enough to make him a God.
This concept of man becoming God hails from a different culture and time. One untainted by the “head of gold, arms of silver, belly of brass, etc.” It is from a time when the Eastern mind, (words are eternal, everything here is temporary and an illusion) was in place among those who are talking with God.
Christ took the Father’s words so seriously that Christ became the literal embodiment of God the Father’s words. He, Christ, was known as the “Word of God” because He remained true to every word spoken by the Father. If you want to know what the Father said, look to Christ.
So believing/accepting the words of God are critical to getting the true reality of what this life is all about.
Hugh Nibley in his book “One Eternal Round” make some interesting observations about the ancient alchemists (p488ff)….kind of the ‘cooks’ of their day.
Most know that the alchemists wanted to make gold from other metals. The making of gold was merely a demonstration to prove that the harder problem was solvable….the harder problem = “the most difficult and exhausting thing in the world is the uniting of spirit and body and their fusion, so that the spirit would remain eternally in the body and could never suffer the effects of fire.”
Among the alchemist conclusions (according to Nibley): There had to be something mediating between spirit and body so that they fuse together and never again separate from each other.–and that is the revival of the dead at the resurrection.
We are often reminded (Nibley continues) of that by the alchemist–it is the “higher goal, the spiritual goal” which they are after. Such being the problem, all the learned men in the world came together by prior arrangement in a grand convention to discuss the question from every angle.
The whole thing seems to be a demonstration to settle once and for all the problem of an afterlife!…. They also concluded that the solution would have to come by revelation!
The alchemist can change an object to gold, but the height of this achievement is to create a golem, the beginnings of a human being. For that, body and soud must be joined as an integral whole. The go-between is the Holy Ghost.
Other things they concluded: the first prerequisite to effecting the unity was the absolute purity of the elements in question. Impurities in dealing with metals can spoil everything. The alchemist himself must be free of any spot or uncleanness in body or mind, and if he ever makes gold it is for the poor, even as his medical art is meant to heal the sick…..
Nibley further observes that the alchemist and their attempts to solve the harder problem…..learned that everything depends on how much of each ingredient is used, and on exactly how long it is to be cooked, cooled, slaked, pounded, etc., the alchemist, not having measuring instruments of great refinement, had to repeat the same experiment over and over again until he might accidentally hit on just the right proportions–something that could go on forever…..none were successful…..some finally decided the whole thing takes place “between doubt and belief” and that the changing of physical substances is a spiritual, not a practical operation.
Among other things Hugh Nibley has given me another perspective about regular temple attendance and the meaning of becoming sanctified.
“One Eternal Round”….wonderful book.