I have been following posts on this site regarding the church changing the doctrines quite closely. I was having a conversation with an excommunicated mormon friend last night and asked "why does the church change its doctrines? Why change their mind about poligomy?" the response....."because people werent ready for it, we're not ready to live it"

Similar response to black people holding the priesthood.

How do you respond to that?!?!?!?!?

Yes it's always their response. Just like when you mention that the god in OT was pretty mean to the people of then and they answer that it was because people back then were a very 'hard head or hard heart' people.

How courageous of the Mormons to change "The New and Everlasting Covenant" with God, when the Federal Government threatened to seize their assets.

Kind of like when they contradicted Brigham Young's statement that, "The descendants of Cain will not receive the priesthood until all the sons of Abel have received it." when they gave the priesthood to blacks back in 1978, under threat of losing their tax exempt status if they didn't.

Kind of like when they removed the suicidal oaths from the endowment in 1996, after insisting those suicidal oaths were necessary for our exaltation. Why did they do that if they were essential to our exaltation?

But don't mess around with those questions. You'll never get a straight answer and they're easy for Mormons to brush off.

The question that's impossible for Mormons to answer honestly is this, "How do you reconcile what your God has to say in D&C 132:61 about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's practice of having sex with other men's wives?"

Don't let them off the hook with any kind of a cliche, standard Mormon answer. There is no answer, other than to conclude they were adulterers.

There are times I honestly think a pie in the face would be appropriate.

Yes, so do I.

"Well, that's kind of a convenient answer, don't you think? I thought god says he's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow? Why would god say blacks were unworthy in one generation and then simply follow the social trends of the day generations later? Gosh, I'd think god would be leading instead of following... Hmmmmm."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2012 04:28PM by Queen of Denial.

God IS the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow silly.

Yesterday, he couldn't make up his mind.

Today he can't make up his mind.

And.. you guessed it...Tomorrow he's going to be even more confused than ever, especially with all that tap dancing the Big 15 are going to be doing to stomp out the leakage of the inconvenient truth.

The only constant is inconsistency.

Apparently they weren't ready for living in a communist order either, though God must have thought they were otherwise He wouldn't have revealed it. Same goes for using their own alphabet and their own bank notes. Seems God is continually overestimating the abilities of his chosen children.

...which, without a hint of irony, is how it was once explained to me why there are no more revelations. We aren't ready for any more revelations because we aren't living the ones we already have!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2012 04:30PM by freeman.

Wait wait wait, what weren't they ready for? They weren't ready for monogamy, so God commanded them to live polygamy until the time was ripe? They weren't ready for the awesomeness of blacks, so God told them to be racist until such a time as they were ready?

Were they not ready for polygamy, so God commanded them to live it and then said "whoops, my bad, hold on?" Did God command them to deny the priesthood to blacks, and then 150 years later decided they weren't ready any more? Is the church moving backwards in readiness?

Your friend's answer needs some clarification, because it's not making any sense to me.

Ask your friend how long it will be before God thinks the mormons are ready for gay marriage.

Around 20 years after same sex marriage is legal in all 50 states. Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary had a routine in which the line was, "The French don't care what you do, actually, as long as you pronounce it correctly." The bigMo doesn't care what you do as long as it's 20 years behind the times.For example music, dance steps and fashion.

You're more optimistic than I - I'm thinking more like 75 years after.

There is pretty strong biblical evidence that homosexuality is evil.

Of course that's true of divorce and many other things the Mormon church has not problem with...

No, there is not.

Ignorant people have taken various inaccurate translations of specific passages to mean what they wish them to mean, which is emphatically NOT the same thing.

New testament or old testament?

I think you'd have a pretty hard time arguing that the old testament isn't pretty strongly against homosexuality. The punishment being death and all.

In the new testament I would agree that the Mormon intrepretation to references of "unnatural affection" being interpreted as homosexuality is pretty weak.

Of course I may have a different viewpoint than you do - I think the Bible is as much a load of BS as the Book of Mormon so I see no need to defend it.

The points being:

1) There are lots of things that the Bible says are evil that Mormons as well as Christians of all demoninations have very little problem ignoring (e.g. divorce, honoring the Sabbath, etc.)

2) The current LDS interpretation of the Bible is that it strongly decries homosexuality so it will take more than 25 years for the Mormon culture to change this interpretation and be able to accept it as OK.

Some problems with that "logic":

1) The church is often very slow to adopt change. Many times it is clear that the church changed things long after the people were ready for it.

2) Right is right and wrong is wrong according to god. Racism was never right. Even if god has a reason for no priesthood to blacks the underlying racism that was taught and practised in parallel could never be acceptable to a moral god.

3) It's a ridiculous premise really. So god doesn't base his commandments based on right or wrong? He bases them on the current culture of the world?

At the end of the day you can't win the arguement. People can twist logic to find a way to believe whatever they want to believe.

For anyone who actually knows how those changes came about that logic is laughable.

With polygamy the Church was loathe to give it up and nearly tore itself apart trying to keep it. Weren't ready to live it? Besides GBH has since said it's not doctrinal on national TV.


And it was the priesthood ban itself that kept and is keeping racism in the Church longer than it needed to be. The secular world with the civil rights movement had been moving towards a more pluralistic and equal society long before God's true Church. Why? Because LDS were taught that God thought blacks were inferior and less valiant. That sentiment has never been clearly rejected and the idea of dark skin as a mark of a curse never clearly refuted. The ban was only lifted.

That's how I respond.

So....further conversation with excom TBM this evening!!

I asked again why the doctrine on polygamy was changed...same response, however, i pressed further, spurred on by your comments, and said "if God made the rules in the first place and you HAVE to stick to them, why would he then go change them?" "to test the people" was the response....unbelievable!

Pressed further on the polygamy aspect, following the scripture advice from josephsmyth in this post "jacob says you're only allowed one wife, and D&C says you can have more than one, why?" response "because God gave a revelation to Smith" pressed further (feeling brave) "so...in that revalation, it says you can have more than one wife IF they are virgins and not already married to someone else, I'm sure i remember reading/hearing somewhere that Smith married women who were already married to someone else" response "maybe he did if they're husbands died in war etc etc"

You can see where this is going
Me: so if theyve already been married to someone else theyre not virgins and have already been given to someone else"
Excom TBM: well im sure there must be another revalation that allows it then, maybe one that said youre allowed to marry widows"
Me: really? Because 132 is quite late and there are only 138 revalations in D&C
Excom TBM: are you sure its 132?

Lots of scripture checking on mobile app.....

Excom TBM: hummm.... Well, if you look at the date of tge last revalation (its 1918)then there hasnt been any revalations for a while and a big gap between 137 and 138, so im sure there must have been other revalations in between and since that are not in D&C
ME: oh....well, how do i find out?
Excom TBM: im sure itll be in the church history
Me: do you have one?
Excom TBM: no, do you want me to get you one?

ERR....YEAH!!!!!!!!

Jospeh Smith married 11 women while they were still married to their living husbands...

He gives commandments and then, oops, he has to take them back because the people weren't ready. I thought the point was for the people to accept whatever God requires, like it or not. Otherwise the people end up controlling God.

If current members were to rise up and say, "We're not ready to live the Law of Tithing, or that Law of Consecration thing either," would Elohim suspend those commandments? If so, Mormons are missing a fantastic opportunity to make their lives easier. "Oh, and God, the garment thing. And the word of wisdom... not ready. We'll get back to you when we are."

Why wouldn't the One True Church, with all of God's power, knowledge, revelation, and authority be LEADING all of these crusades instead of actively fighting against them only to secede in the end?

Why wouldn't the One True God be using his divine powers to lead the Civil Rights Movement? The Equal Rights Movement? Mormons love to be a "peculiar people," why not put that to good use and be society's leaders instead of culturally and intelligently decades behind?

It's those sort of responses to my questions that got me very concerned. Nothing the church cult leaders had done or said seem to concern anyone, or atleast they were good at not showing it.


You would think that for all the church supposedly stands for that members would be alarmed that Smith was lying to his wife and secretly marrying his housemaids and also 14 year olds and other mens wives.

Instead they come out with he was commanded excuse and the Dynastic Sealing excuse for the marrying of married women.

But Joseph Smith marrying Apostle Orson Hydes wife while he was away on a mission is difficult to make an excuse for.

Also The Helen Marr Kimball marriage. If Smith was only looking for a dynastic tie up then he could have married Helens mother Violate, he was after all marrying other mens wives for the supposed dynastic sealings according to TBM's.

I always respond that Smith (whether or not there is any evidence he was already having sex with Helen) that he was grooming her for it's eventuality when the opportunity arose.