Question
Dear Gramps,
How can Heavenly Father be omnipresent? I’ve read by his “Spirit” but how is this? Is this like him being with us, but his body is in heaven? What is meant by “spirit” or “influence” that I hear so much about? Would this apply to the Holy Ghost too?
Tanya
Answer
Dear Tanya,
The characteristics of being a god are beyond the understanding of mortals. We are told in the scriptures that God knows everything—
O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it (2 Nephi 9:20).
And all things are continually before him—
The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth;
But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord (D&C 130:6-7).
We do not understand how that can be. But this we do know—
The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also (D&C 130:22).
So we would tend to suggest that his physical body could be in only one place at one time. But that statement invokes the concept of time, which leads to immediate problems when considering the characteristics of God. Time is a temporary constraint to reality, imposed on mortals during the seven thousand years of the earth’s temporal existence. At the end of the seven thousand years the concept of time will cease to exist—
The seventh angel shall sound his trump; and he shall stand forth upon the land and upon the sea, and swear in the name of him who sitteth upon the throne, that there shall be time no longer (D&C 88:110).
So it impossible for us to project into eternity the concepts with which we are familiar in mortality. Thus we may not be able to explain in terms that are consistent with our mortal environment the environment or the abilities or the characteristics of God. We are left only with the scriptural record, and we must have full faith in that record and trust in the word of God. When He tells us things, the mechanism of which we can’t understand, it becomes something that we must accept of faith, because God said it. And whatever God says is true and will come to pass—
What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same (D&C 1:38)
Gramps
