Hey guys, how's it going? We're going to talk about cool stuff today
What happened? It was just straight to the point. I shoot straight to the point. I'm a no mess around kind of guy.
Alright so today we're gonna talk about why Mormons only pray to Heavenly Father,
God the Father, instead of straight to Jesus or the Virgin Mary. We're gonna
kind of talk about why we do it the way we do it and a lot of other
Christian religions do it the same way that we do it, which is great -- but first,
if you want to read about -- you want to figure out what
LDS people believe about God, go watch our episode on the Trinity which will be
linked because, you know, what we don't believe in the Trinity so we're not
talking about the Trinity, we're talking about God the Father, Jesus Christ, the
spirit of separate people so if you don't understand that, go watch the
episode and get back to us. Anyway, alright take it away. Yeah.
Understanding our beliefs on the Godhead would be important when understanding
how we pray we pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus because that's what
Jesus told us to do in the scriptures. Yeah. It's basically, when it comes down
to it, there are several accounts in the Bible
and in the Book of Mormon where-- when Jesus was on the earth, he told us that
we pray to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. One example of that is in
John chapter 16 and in verse 23 it says, "Verily, verily I say unto you, whatsoever
ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you." So clearly that's
Jesus talking and he says it right there, we don't pray to anyone but Heavenly
Father because that's what Jesus told us to do in the Bible and in the Book of
Mormon. Yeah. From the Book of Mormon it says here, "And they shall be a scourge
to the people of this land." Hahaha "...and they shall believe in me that I am Jesus
Christ a Son of God and shall pray unto the Father in my name."
We learn from Christ to pray to the Father. It can sometimes be confusing because in the
scriptures, the people sometimes pray to Jesus and we can see
how that can be confusing but they actually only pray to Jesus when he's
there on the earth and they're like praying to him while he's there and
Jesus also always instructs to pray to the Father. So the people might be
praying to Jesus and you could also interpret that, they're just like
praising him as he's there but Jesus always directs to pray to the
Father so that's what we do, but in his name, which is very important because we
believe that Christ is our mediator, not meteor-- he's not a meteor, he is our mediator
between us and the Father which is important and a lot of people will ask
what does that mean? Because it's sort of a complex thing. Here's, here's a way I
like to think of it. If I call someone, right, if I call you David--
Um that never happens but yeah-- to be fair, I don't call anyone. It's okay, I send you
texts. I get texts every once in a while. We text every once in a while. They're both married
like we don't hang out as
much because they're married and they're always like in married Provo, I'm out
partying... But um, so like if I were to call
David-- I'm talking to David, right? But the only way that call is going through is
because of the cellular company which I have, whether it's Sprint or Verizon or
AT&T but I'm calling David, it's only getting there because of that provider
so it's literally happening in the name of, in the process of and the company of
AT&T or Sprint and so when we're praying to the Father, it's happening in the name
of Jesus cuz he's the only reason we know who to pray to, he's
the reason we know how to direct our prayers, it's all done because of Christ so it's done
in his name and not everybody does it that way and a lot of people question
why. For instance, we don't pray to the Virgin Mary or to Saints and obviously
I'm talking about the Catholic Church-- or certain Orthodox churches-- sure, they do.
I don't know any but probably. They do. I'm not a Catholic, I served my mission in
Mexico and had a lot of interaction Catholicism there so as I understand it,
and you can correct me if I'm wrong in the comments, as we believe that Christ
is our mediator to the Father, some other religions believe that the Virgin Mary
or other Saints are their mediator to Christ who is also in turn their
mediator to the Father and so the question is, why don't we pray or go
through the virgin or the Saints to get to Christ to get to God and essentially
just because Christ said to go through him and that's basically where
we stop. It's just not, according to our interpretations, it's not scriptural that
we need to do that. And in their defense, prayer is often translated as
'ask,' right? So they just think, "Okay, well all we're doing is asking Saints
to pray on our behalf." We can totally see where you get the logic from. I mean
it is logical, it kind of makes sense if you're taking that interpretation but I
do like just the, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God" and I just
think it's always written in plain words in the scriptures: Ask God the Father.
I know it's a lot of prayers, I'm not saying like it's like an email where he's
like backed up to 6,000 years. I think God is a Being that is so complex and so
much larger than we can understand, he can get all of our prayers. So we just
want you to pray to God the Father, that's what Jesus directed, that's what
the prophets have directed so that's what we do. I think my personal opinion and
feelings on the matter are that, I mean obviously the Virgin Mary is an extremely
important character in history, the mother of Christ, and there are a whole
plethora of saints but I feel like as important and as great as those people
were, they shouldn't distract us from going to our Heavenly Father as you
mentioned, through Christ. At the end of the day it is God (Heavenly Father) and his
son Jesus Christ. That should be our entire focus. Yeah, the role of the Virgin
Mary really is just more of a role model or an example
type of role, it's not someone who we consider-- we don't consider her deified
or anything like that. I know some churches don't worship her but they just
view her very highly and we do too but I think it's just in a different way.
Definitely. Just a different way. I think that in that topic of Saints, I
think that we're not saying that those people who are made into Saints in
the Catholic Church didn't, you know, have really cool miracles, that they didn't do
amazing things, they did but we're just going by the way Jesus directs.
Think of it this way. If you're with Mormons and they were like, "All right, so
I'm gonna pray to Brigham Young and he's gonna ask Jesus to pray in my behalf,"
you'd go, "That's a little weird," you know, so that's sort of how we look at it,
like we don't, we don't take anyone else, we don't pray to Paul or Oliver Cowdery
or anyone and ask to pray in our behalf, we just go straight to the Father
and I think that's important because it shows that you can have a relationship
with God the Father. I think a lot of people don't really understand what that
means or actually growing up, we're often told like to have a relationship with
God but that was just sort of a saying but what that really means is
getting revelation back after you pray, right? It's not just us exclaiming things or
just saying that we're grateful for things but prayer really is
communication. Having a personal relationship with God comes through
praying to him, not to anyone else, not that you can't have a relationship
with God if you're a Catholic or pray in all these different ways but--
I think to have a true relationship with God that's going to continue to progress
and in the most honest sense, right? So in the restored gospel, the
restored gospel has been given to us by God the Father Jesus Christ and so in
the restored gospel, by them we know who to pray to by their direction but
essentially on this show all we're doing is and sort of inviting you to say, you
know, it's always been this way but there is another option here and I want you to
actually explore and look at what we're saying because there is something here
that you should not ignore. Well said, well said.
I hope that makes more sense to you why Mormons pray to Heavenly Father and we
don't choose to pray to anyone else and hopefully you guys will take our invitation
and try out praying like a Mormon and if you don't already, if you are a
different religion or if you're just investigating the church, we really
encourage you to pray. You start by addressing Heavenly Father and you end
with in the name of Jesus Christ amen. And you just go from there. Pray what's
in your heart and let us know what happens.
Comment below. We're really excited to hear all of your experiences and we love you guys.
You guys laugh at me every time I say that. I love them.
It's a happy laugh, I'm glad you love them. I love you guys too.
We're dudes, we just... we live in a culture of toxic
masculinity, we're not allowed to say love. Be sure to subscribe to our channel on YouTube if you enjoyed this.
Hit the notification bell so you get notified every single time we upload, be sure to comment, like and share
this video as well, as we have other social medias. Click
the notification bell be notified when one of our videos come up. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Do you know there's like competitions? I know someone who has won nationally.
He must be rolling in the dough. It's a woman. She. How dare ya! A mortal mistake!