This postThe other day I was thinking about how we say we have the fulness of the gospel. I completely believe that that’s true, certainly, but what exactly does it mean? It can’t mean that we know everything. We don’t. And we believe in continuing revelation — if having the fulness meant knowing everything there is to know, then we’d have absolutely no need for a prophet. None! We might need someone to remind us of what’s already been said, but scholars could do that just fine. Prophets prophesy, and that means revelation, which means revealing something that hasn’t yet been revealed.
What I think it means by fulness is something a little different. It’s like a painting: you start out with broad swashes of color, getting the composition of the piece down, putting the basic elements into place, and then you start adding in more and more details. And eventually you end up with a finished painting.
When we say the fulness of the gospel, I believe we’re talking about those big paintstrokes. We’ve got the overall picture, the outline, the skeleton — the plan of salvation. And that’s something that nobody else really has, honestly. The core elements — who we are, why we’re here, where we’re going, how God communicates with us, how we represent God here on earth, and so on — are all there.
But what we don’t have yet are all the details. We have some, yes, and in some areas we even have quite a good picture (we think), but I wouldn’t be too surprised to get to the next life and find that we’ve been working with a simplified model here on earth, and that the real thing is even more amazing than we ever realized. (Which isn’t to say that what we’ve been given thus far is any less true, by the way. It’s just milk before meat.)
I suppose it bothers some people that we don’t know everything yet. If this really is the true and living church of Jesus Christ on the earth, then how can God leave us in the dark, right? If there are things we don’t yet know, questions we don’t have answers for, then…well, doesn’t that mean the Church isn’t true after all?
Not for me. I like having a living church. A changing church. But one changed by God, not by men, and that’s a big difference. :) And this is just me, but in all honesty I love not having all the answers. In some ways life is a big cliffhanger, and that’s exciting because it means there’s a resolution coming in the next act. It’ll be good. :) (I think we do have the answers we need to deal with life, though. We may not understand everything that happens, but we know that we can rely on Christ, and we know that the Spirit will tell us what we should do. That’s enough for me.)
