GOD HAS NO GRANDCHILDREN

Many years ago when I was driving from Las Vegas back to BYU in Provo, of necessity, on a Sunday, I was listening to any radio station I could get. A program came on with a Minister, whom I assume was Protestant, whose name I didn't know.  But the topic of his sermon intrigued me.  It was the title I have given this blog - "God has no grandchildren."

If you are a student of the scriptures, you will know that there are hundreds of references in all four standard works referring to the Children of God; Children of the Lord; or Children of Christ.  In most cases, the referenced material talks about individuals' conversions - their coming to Christ, repenting, being born again, being baptized into His Church, etc. There are no scriptures that I could find that refer to the Grandchildren of God. This minister of so many years ago pointed out that conversion is an individual experience and not something that can be passed down through the genes like red hair or freckles.  God has no grandchildren because, as each person reach the age of accountability, he or she must, on his or her own, make a personal commitment to Christ and experience his or her own conversion and rebirth.  The parents can share their testimonies with the children, but they can't give their testimonies to their children.  Each generation must come to God on its own or, as my Grandmother Palfreyman used to stay, "Every tub must stand on its own bottom." (I never knew what that meant exactly, but spiritual self-reliance seems to fit!)

The people who had been present at King Benjamin's sermon and who had all felt the converting power of the Holy Ghost were now all dead. The rising generation did not personally experience Benjamin's teachings and, even though his words had been written down, somehow reading them instead of hearing them spoken didn't have the same impact.  In Mosiah 26, we read 

• Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of King Benjamin.
• Liken: Are their times when we don't completely understand what the scriptures are saying?  Understanding books like Isaiah, Daniel, or Revelation are not understood by simply reading.  It takes great prayer and consistent study to even begin to make sense of some of it.
  
• They did not believe the traditions of their fathers.
• Liken: Apparently, many parents tried to pass on these gospel lessons to their children, but their children did not believe them, particularly in their adolescence when they are smarter (in their own pride) than their fathers.  (I was amazed to see how brilliant my mother grew as I had my own children!)
  
• Because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened. (Mosiah 26: 1-3) They would not.
• Liken: This is a different could not from the first.  In the beginning, they couldn't understand the meaning of what they were hearing.  In this instance, they couldn't understand because they wouldn't understand.  They had hardened their hearts (and their heads!) so that nothing got it.

Because they had, essentially, lost the Spirit with which they could have understood.  As a result, they made foolish, shortsighted, and even sinful choices.  They chose not to be baptized.  They refused to accept Christ.  They did not believe that He would come to redeem them.  That would have been bad enough, but the truism of today was true then: people can leave the church (and the faith of their fathers) but they cannot leave the church alone.  To rationalize (and thus excuse in their own minds) their many sins, they chose not to repent, but, rather, to alter the value system by attacking everything their elders had taught them. I don't need to believe in some savior because they things I do are my personal life choices and who are you to say they are sins? Therefore, if I'm not sinning, I don't require a savior anyway.

In the beginning, the believers outnumbered the dissenters. But as time passed, the dissenters grew in numbers and noisiness.  For they did deceive many with their flattering words, who were in the church, and did cause them to commit sins. . . (Mosiah 25:6) Not content to wallow in their own sins, they set out to convert others to their way of thinking so they could all sin together.

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Can you think of groups today who are not content to live in their own sins,  but seek to proselytize for others to first, accept them; second, agree that they are blameless (it's not sin, its a lifestyle choice!); and then, sin with them.

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Alma, as the high priest, had to hold Church courts for many taken in such sins and it broke his heart.  What broke him the most was the fact that his own son was one of the worst.  I'm sure that Alma had taught him about his own bondage to sin, King Noah, and finally Lamanite bondage; and of how God delivered them.  But Alma was having none of it.  His riotous living was screaming so loudly, he could not hear the still, small voice of the Spirit.

Perhaps the Spirit needed to speak a little bit louder?!

Why did the angel speak with a "voice of thunder?"


"No charge in the kingdom is more important than to build faith in youth.  Each child in each generation chooses faith or disbelief.  Faith is not an inheritance; it is a choice." Henry B. Eyring 2001

© May 2020 Dr. Kathleen Rawlings Buntin Danielson