# Come

Explore the Mormon Transhumanist vision of “Come”—an invitation to engage with faith, technology, and humanity’s transcendent potential.

[Image: Biblical Hebrew describes coming as purposeful movement toward a person or a place—entering a city, approaching a threshold, or meeting someone halfway all fit that description.]

To come is to move toward a person or a place. Biblical Hebrew expresses the idea with two verbs. *Bo'* describes entering or arriving, as when a traveler reaches a city or a guest crosses a threshold. The imperative *lekhu*, from *halakh*, "to walk," appears in the Lord's appeal to Israel: "Come now, and let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18). The Lord asks his people to walk toward a shared deliberation.

New Testament Greek uses *erchomai* for arrival and *deute*, "come here," for a summons among companions; the word Jesus chooses when he calls the weary to himself. The Christian Bible closes on the same verb. In the final chapter of Revelation, the Spirit says *erchou*, "come," to humanity, and John answers by asking Christ to come. Scripture treats coming as movement, and the motion runs in both directions.

## An Open Invitation

[Image: In the Gospel of John, two seekers of truth are offered time with Jesus before they receive a fuller explanation of His ministry.]

In scripture, "come" is almost always an invitation. An invitation assumes the one invited may decline, which places agency at the center of the relationship between God and humanity.

In the Gospel of John, two disciples of John the Baptist ask Jesus where he is staying. He answers, "Come and see" (John 1:39). He offers them his company before he offers any explanation, and their understanding grows from the time they spend with him. The same pattern appears at Bountiful. The risen Christ tells the Nephite multitude to come forward and feel the prints of the nails in his hands and feet, "that ye may know that I am the God of Israel" (3 Nephi 11:14).

## Come and Be Perfected

[Image: In 3 Nephi, the invitation to come includes embodied knowledge: the account describes people approaching the risen Christ one by one.]

Moroni closes the Book of Mormon by joining the invitation to its purpose: "come unto Christ, and be perfected in him" (Moroni 10:32). The corresponding New Testament term, teleios, means complete or mature, and implies a process with an end. Lincoln Cannon reads that end as participation in Christ's own work. He understands Jesus to have invited everyone to join him in Christ, and he finds the invitation strengthened by Joseph Smith's revelation that humans share Christ's origin and potential.

Cannon extends this reading to the Second Coming. In [Return of Christ,](https://www.transfigurism.org/community-voices/opinion/2019-04-05-lincoln-cannon-return-of-christ?srsltid=AU7gw4WG3Jl2PyyVtaP7lqe5H0-3SAOseaAeL7xAz9rAOohccbM0lJWK) he notes that the Hebrew mashiach and the Greek christos both designate someone anointed, and that the Bible applies the title to David, Saul, Solomon, the priests, and the Persian king Cyrus. Given that precedent, he interprets Jesus's references to the "Son of Man" coming in glory as references to humanity joined to Christ. 

Critics argue that giving humans a role in Christ's coming diminishes grace. The structure of invitation supplies an answer. A guest cannot issue their own invitation; the initiative belongs to the host, and the guest's response remains free. Mormon Transhumanism situates human effort within that relationship, as the response of those who have been called.

## The Invited Become Inviters

The Book of Revelation's closing invitation passes from one speaker to the next: "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come" (Revelation 22:17). Those who hear the word are told to repeat it, and the verse ends by offering the water of life to anyone who thirsts. Missionary work rests on this logic. Mormon Transhumanists apply it to the wider labor of healing and redemption, in which each person who comes to Christ takes up the call and extends it to others.