Ask a Mormon....almost anything.

LOL! The MO remains the same....(Oh, dear me, I can't answer questions without a proper format and color scares and confuses me)

I guess my "inconvenient " questions came under you disclaimer, "almost anything"......

But you really did answer all my questions about your religion........ ...so thank you...

 

I refer to the entire gospel. And yes when I use the word "corruption" I mean it as things were taken out that should be in, things were changed to suit the whim's of the people, things mistakenly translated on purpose or otherwise, or simply lost through the ravages of time. Once the apostles died out there was no priesthood authority nor revelatory head to keep the gospel pure and undefiled. And then we enter the foretold apostasy mentioned in the scriptures in various places.

This period of apostasy the world would call the "Dark Ages".

Incomplete/incorrect would work just as well. Because without the whole truth, you're not firing on all cylinders so to speak. As mentioned earlier, without the priesthood authority being on the earth, the gospel sort of "wandered", and it is still wandering to this day under the hands of men with both benevolent desires, and malign.

A lot of priestcraft, which is essentially setting up churches to get gain by means of flattery, has been set up since the death of the apostles. Essentially, if the minister/pastor/bishop/cardinal/imam/iotola/whatever is getting paid to be a minister, it is seen as priestcraft.

An interesting take on it. Particularly the money and currency aspect. Hadn't thought about that being a possibility.

I believe the rest of this to be an interesting take as well. But I think it is more reminiscent of the coming millennium and resurrection associated with it, because revelations more or less describes the end times. And the reference of matthew is the "oh crap!" moment when he arrives to begin it.

 

Wisdom ought be brief, no?

Does there need be more, than to insist that our God is Truth, and the devil is the liar?

- - - Updated - - -

Wisdom ought be brief, no?

Does there need be more, than to insist that our God is Truth, and the devil is the liar?

 

BoM is the Gospel, but also is the Bible. It is just that the Bible is just missing things that should be in there. If the bible had everything in it that was supposed to be in it, I doubt the Book of Mormon would have come forth as anything more than a historical record.

Think of two textbooks, containing the same principles, but with different histories of the people using them. But one of them got run over and is missing a lot of pages and the ink being smeared in some spots. The book that got run over is the Bible. While still very good by itself, is not complete so it requires the "errata" to be published to fill in the gaps.

I guess you could see the BoM as a patch to clean up good software that got a virus. Surely there are millions of adequate analogies, but I don't need to list them.

 

1) How is that claim different from what Mohammed had to say in order to justify the Koran?

2) The Renaissance at the end of the 1000 year reign of just Jesus, all the idols of Rome and Greece destroyed and their myths forgotten returned with the Cultural Revolution that brought them back in Aart and poems and hidden books, etc:




Rev. 20:3 And cast him, (this dragon, the subtle cultural system of exploitative sexual mores, that old serpent, cultural Paganism), into the bottomless pit (of time), and shut him, (Satan), up (1000 years so as to inhibit the culture of libidinal freedom and sexual excess), and set a seal, (THE CROSS), upon him, that he (could not maintain that pagan, astrological/mythological promiscuous religious subculture that) should deceive the nations (in the Western world) no more (with his pagan culture), ...

... till the thousand years (of the Dark Age of Monasticism) should be fulfilled (and the Renaissance of the Beast begin):

and after that, (in The Renaissance), he must be loosed (to open the adolescent subculture of ever increasing sexual permissiveness) a little season (since the end of the singular one Church over all Rome).

 

Believe me, I am no advocate of complexity, and the gospel isn't really that complex, but there is a lot of it.

Simply believing and knowing the devil is a liar, and God speaks the truth is not enough to earn salvation, and when I say "earn" I mean make your self worthy enough to be considered to be saved by grace. Because we are saved by grace, but only after having done all that we can.

He outlines a plan for us that we are to follow if we want to return to him. Much like going to school for a college degree.

 

What gaps are missing in the message that Truth is the one word which sums the meaning of a "Christ" in our life???

How more clear can the thousands of words in the dogmas of the churches, and the text of the Koran, and now the thick BoM be than just the one word, Truth = Lord????

It seems more likely that the devil is at work in compiling long volumes of other words which by explanation assure nothing is too clear.

 

My knowledge of the Koran is abysmal at best. I started reading parts of it, but shortly after I found it truly repulsive to my eyes. The whole thing just fell wrong to me.

The 1000 year reign of Jesus you speak of we believe is the apostasy which continued for a long time obviously. Because of the evident turmoil during the time period. We believe that when Christ comes again in 'glory and power', it won't exactly be a secret, he will personally rule and reign here on earth.

But after this thousand years, during which satan will be bound as listed below(minus the commentary), and afterwards he will be loosed again for the final battle of Gog and Magog.

Really, this hinges on differing interpretations of the existing scriptures. Whereas you are only referencing the bible, we also consult the book of mormon. I suppose you could read them both and do a side by side comparison of the doctrines taught, and then pray for guidance on the topics which differ in the prospective accounts.

 

Not really.

It is about this Jesus who said, "I am the Truth, the way, and the Life and NO man," morman or otherwise, "comes to the Father except by that Truth."

The Gospels merely tell us of what happened during those years when men chose the lies of religion and the dogmas of their "churches' and the long arguments of their rabbi over that single word, Truth is the messiah.

Now, today, we have more words and more teachers and more prophets who had been predicted to come.
They all collect money and power and adherents with additions to the simple idea that Truth is lord for mankind.

 

Misunderstood I guess. I suspect that God gives commands appropriate for the times. There are times and places for certain things in their prospective seasons. Polygamy is one such thing that makes sense at certain times, and at others not.

God's reasons? I could only speculate there.

See previous remarks. But God directs the church not the other way around. Just as the brain is not servant to the foot.

 

See this link. It more or less explains what wandered off.

But here the important parts of it-

That ought to explain the big differences. The bold parts are the key missing bits.

Think we're going in a circle now. Peruse the link, it explains what I've been saying, it isn't that long.

Not so much compiling long volumes, but changing or removing the contents of his dislike. Anything he can do to cause suffering and contention, he will do. The devil is kind of a tool like that.

 

Correct, Christ is the gatekeeper, and he either will let you in or he won't.

And you are keen to see the blatant uses of the gospel to set up churches of self gain. As I recall it, Jesus didn't charge a fee for anything spiritual.

 

So far so good. People are extraordinarily capable of rationalizing what they wish to believe. As Dawkins wrote, "there is no sensible limit to what the human mind is capable of believing, against any amount of contrary evidence." When you find yourself dismissing evidence, rationalizing it beyond recognition, or just not bothering to look at it, this is a red flag.

Yes, it did. And basically it said "since we KNOW this happened, therefore it DID happen, and therefore the evidence must be MADE to fit what we KNOW happened, however much inconsistent reinterpretation and special pleading is required." And as I said, this is not persuasive to someone who isn't already committed to that.

I guess you're saying, some of it vanished and some of it morphed. And I was attempting to point out that such a supposition requires wholesale dollops of pure faith. What happened to all traces of the necessary DNA? What happened to all traces of the animals and plants? All traces of the technology? In the archaeological process, what's been uncovered is a remarkably detailed history, lifestyle, culture, language, right down to the crops, the meals, the clothing etc. NONE of which is even mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

So we have two problems to solve here. One is that what the BoM describes cannot be found when it should be ubiquitous, and the other is that the BoM makes no mention of what IS found, and WAS ubiquitous. My reading is, both of these problems get larger, not smaller, the more archaeology is done. Not a good sign. One would be strongly tempted to suspect that Smith included all the plants and animals of HIS daily life because he knew about them, and omitted all of the plants and animals of the daily life of civilizations he'd never heard of, because he'd never heard of them. Ya think?

I don't think this is exactly what I was trying to say. When we attempt to reconstruct the past, of course some speculation is involved. So archaeologists tend to use a rule of thumb, which says that their proposed explanation should be the simplest and most straightforward explanation that explains ALL the evidence, but does not REQUIRE a whole bunch of stuff not in evidence. In the case of the Roman Empire (a civilizaton smaller and shorter than the BoM describes), the sheer weight of all evidence taken together permits a remarkably comprehensive and consistent reconstruction. In the case of the BoM, nothing fits unless it is decreed to fit, arbitrarily. We expect Lamanites, we find Olmecs, therefore Olmecs must have been Lamanites. Even though the Olmecs we find spoke the wrong language, wore the wrong clothes, raised the wrong crops, had the wrong livestock, and came from the wrong part of the world! Hopefully you see the issue here.

Well, I've been trying to avoid the direct injection of theology here, to focus on the archaeology as much as possible. For me, that's the evidence on the ground that ought to be evaluated. Otherwise, I can say that I believe in flying pigs, and hand-wave away all objections with "the Lord can make pigs fly if He wishes, so I can't be wrong." Which is NOT particularly responsive to the physical question of whether pigs fly.

I confess I don't know what this means. Very nearly everyone lives according to a set of strongly held personal values, even those unfamiliar with every nominal source of values ever written anywhere.

OK. My own experience is that people vary widely in this respect, and that the variation I've seen doesn't correlate with any particular religious faith.

No question about it. And again, it's interesting that although the sense of the unexplainable seems to be true of people everywhere, those people see their particular experiences through the filter of their own religion. For some, it's only possible through Christ. For others, only through Vishnu, or through Buddha, etc. I asked one devout Christian whether he might have assimilated the views and values of the Hindu culture had he been born into that tradition. He said, Oh No! He'd have converted to Christianity right away, since that is the One True Faith and the only possible explanation for his experiences and understandings!

Personally, I anticipate that a great deal of what currently surpasses our understanding will eventually yield to continued research of all sorts. And while one generation will dismiss the research in favor of a comfortable set of religious doctrines, the next generation will be more open to the science.

Above, I spoke of the dual problems raised by New World archaeololgy - that if the BoM were factual, the evidence on the ground would be enormous, ubiquitous, incontrovertible. Yet there is none. AND that what has been found, in greater depth and detail all the time, somehow escapes mention in the BoM even though this was the very substance of an entire culture's nature, beliefs, history, daily life, etc.

So I suggested one alternative analogous to creationists apologizing Noah's Flood: That the BoM is all true (a priori, of course), but was divinely miracled to exist, to have occurred over thousands of years as described, and then not only miracled all away without a trace, but another entirely different history got miracled into its place over the same time period in the same locales. Complete with miraculous plants and animals and DNA and language and architecture and so on and on and on.

Now, most non-creationists see the tales of Noah as being moral parables derived from similar stories in other cultures (nearly all cultures have flood myths, because floods have been the bane of human civilization since before recorded history). But SOME biblical literalists insist that the flood was a real historical event, which prettry much requires thousands of miracles affecting genetics, mutations, extinctions, transportation, geology, geography. Miracles to prepare for the event, the miraculous event itself, and miracles upon miracles upon miracles cleaning up afterwards so as to create precisely all indications, in detail that such a flood never happened.

So my question was, would you find this approach acceptable in the case of the BoM, that the serious (and worsening) mismatch between tale and evidence be rectified with ever-greater miracles?

 

Those Old Testament subject matters seem unrelated to the Gospel that Truth is our messiah.

It also ignores the historical fact that the gospel preached over all the world ended with the Universal Christianity which until 1054Ad reign over all the Western world as Jesus had said THAT gospel would so do.

Matthew 24:14
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come, (with Universal Christianity replacing paganism over all the Roman world).




Why is it suddenly and belatedly not the real gospel which Mohammed and Smith would have us ignore or add to?
If "this gospel" was that which fulfilled the prophecy of a 1000 years of only Jesus, why would the BoM need add to it now?

Furthermore, as currently used, the BoM is preached as The Gospel and the New Tetament has been set aside, not added to, but replaced.

 

Truth is the gate keeper into the kingdom...

 

It wasn't the complete gospel because it was missing parts. Also, I highly doubt that the entire world had this gospel as well given the time period. The pacific rim comes to mind, as do parts of asia. But they are receiving it now days.

Not ignore, but add to and restore. It was the gospel when Christ was doing the teaching. But after the death of the apostles things started to get a little wonky without the priesthood authority to keep it going straight. Apostles had to keep things straight back then as people tend to slightly alter stories they hear when they tell them.

Because that prophecy has yet to be fulfilled. He is supposed to arrive again at the second coming and personally reign for the millennium. That is what we believe.

Not true at all, we use all of them in tandem. Were it not so, we wouldn't bother with the use of the new testament, nor the old testament. While the book of mormon is fantastic, even it doesn't contain everything - which is why the other scriptures are still used in tandem with it. They are all bricks of the same tower. Some bricks are more intact than others though.

But I think we're bible bashing over interpretations at this point. What other questions do you have?

 

So you deny the history, that Jesus reigned for 1000 years starting with the generation of his own time until 1054AD, with the Great Greek Schism of the one singular church called Christianity, the same one that canonized the Gospels you would change?

 

Isn't your own mantra, above, a testimony to the forgotten stone which is that brick of Truth,i.e.; the one word sum of the whole gospel story?

 

Not really, I just thought it was catchy at the time.

 

Then your mormonism denies Christ as Truth, personified in the flesh???

John 4:24
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Jesus saith unto him, I am the truth, the way, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Jn 14:6

 

Not denying that history occurred, but I am disputing the Reign of Jesus has yet to occur. His gospel, and Himself are two different things entirely. And his gospel got a little wonky after the apostles died out and the priesthood authority went away with it. The thousand years you refer to is a period of the apostasy, or the dark ages.

His thousand year reign has yet to occur - people would have known about it on a massive scale and zero doubt would be had on the topic.

 

Hardly. But Christ was his own person, his name wasn't "Truth", he is representative of all truth and righteousness. I think you believe him to be truth literally. I would wager it is more a symbolic thing. Because his name is Jesus. We do not pray to God in the name of truth, but in the name of Jesus.

Not exactly sure where you're going with this one.

There is an addendum to this verse in the Joseph Smith Translation:

God very much has both a body and a spirit.

Using the KJV Bible of John 14:6 there is a subtle difference:

This is only a tiny difference really, and of very little consequence but it does show a difference. But the meaning is largely unchanged. Now for the meaning, I can only speculate at this point. Because people may interpret this verse in many ways.

When he says "I am the way..." and so on, I believe he refers to his gospel and the way he made, which is pure truth, and without the path he laid down for us there is no way back to the Father.

 

Your brother is a man and hardly a good example of the subserviant status of women that we were discussing.
Interesting, though, as it was one of your earlier points that it was the education and exposure that were components of making one a proper Mormon. I presume your brother had the same exposure to those that you did, and yet...

 

...and yet it proves that we all have the power of choice and can choose out own destiny. Even the best of parents can the worst of children, and vice versa.

 

Please use the whole quote. You took out half of it, and changed the meaning of it altogether. Here is the whole quote:

The whole statement is needed in order for it to convey the meaning I intended. It is just sophistry to try to twist it by taking away half of the quote.

My point is that given a choice between people with no control of their behavior or people who moderate their behavior due to fear, I'd rather have the people who moderate their behavior. Admittedly, the best choice is people who moderate their behavior of their own volition, but in the real world, those people are rare.