The righteous have many promises. The most surpassing of them all is a five-word infinity: All That The Father Hath. Spend some time with this concept and you begin to see why it so torments the sectarians. What God has is merely eternity, space, time, worlds without end. To fulfill that promise one must either unrighteously diminish God or blasphemously exalt man, and . . .
Yep, It’s the latter.
And yes, we’ve thought through all the logical consequences of that position, and yes, we find it just as incomprehensible as you do. But now do you see why it’s so much fun to be a Mormon?
Such conversations are useless, because they elicit responses based on inexpressible convictions, borne deep in most of God’s children. Most people have always believed, desperately, in the distance between Him and us, unsure how to explain their insistence on the point. The lesson of Babel has always been misread in this way.
In truth, the people were cursed and their language confounded not because they wanted to be like God, but because they thought they could do so easily. It is good to attempt entry to his palace, but only via the strait gate and narrow way; those who try by the stairs of some high-rising ziggurat would hate the place even if they got there. The truth is that the distance between myself and divinity is simply the width of my unwillingness to take the Lord’s road there.
But what is waiting for us there in God’s kingdom? “Thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths. . . ” Someone today in Sunday School surmised that this meant a rulership over some part of God’s great universe. I appreciate his metaphor, drawing from the common meaning of ‘hath’ as speaking of possessions, but I think it misses the point. If we think of All That The Father Hath in terms of the space and kingdoms he possesses, we can never have it all. You and I and every other saint will take divided portions of his possession; my portion, even though an infinite fraction of His larger infinity, will still not be everything he hath. Surely, the promise must be speaking of something else.
What is it that the Father hath, that he can give to each of us, wholly? Who He is. The state of His Being is the key to all his thrones and principalities and unspeakable glories. What is His name? I Am. With this name He communicates that He is the fulness of being, complete in present tense existence beyond our imagination. This is All That The Father Hath, and it is our birthright.
The most valuable commodity in the universe is God’s perfection. If we attain it, we attain everything else. All other glories will automatically attend us, and kindgoms will become ours that were never His. Before He had all glory and power, He had His nature- He was potential fulfilled, He was virtue incarnate, He Was. His Being is what makes Him God. And if Being is the pearl of greatest worth, Becoming is the most lucrative endeavor.
Hence the road on which we presently travel; A dull path full of dust and achy complaints. This is the right road to Heaven, because this road will force us to deserve it by the time we get there.
If the greatest possible blessing was literally a piece of property or a fiefdom in some corner of the universe, no matter how vast, He could hand it to us today, no questions asked. His own power and glory could sponsor us, and our authority grow from His. How hard can it be for God to give us things, even infinite things, and support us in maintaining them?
But All That The Father Hath is not a possession or a place, it is simply the state of Being what He is. And this cannot be given, even by the Great I Am. The one thing the Great Creator cannot create by himself is a Being equal to himself. To gain the ultimate blessing, we must allow ourselves to Become; All That The Father Hath goes to those who are All That the Father Is. There is no other way.
Update: For some better but slightly different expressions of the above ideas see the following:
Dallin H. Oaks, The Challenge to Become, October 2000 General Conference
Jim Faulconer Comment, here