Posted by:
enginerd
(
)
Date: July 28, 2014 09:21PM
For the LDS church to be God's One True Church, the following things must be true:
*) God sanctioned (or at least did not in any way reprove or act to curtail) the extensive occult and folk magic practices of the founders of the church. Dowsing rods, magic talismans, astrology, guardian spirits, slippery treasures, animal sacrifices to appease guardian spirits. It was all OK.
*) God sanctioned Joseph Smith's taking a peep stone he found at the bottom of a well and putting his face in a hat along with the stone to find buried treasure and to translate the gold plates. His translation was so perfect that it only required a couple of thousand corrections after God had given Joseph Smith a word for word dictation on special parchment that would appear in his magical hat.
*) Using a dowsing rod is a divinely approved form of revelation. Dowsing for water, minerals, truth, etc with a "rod of nature" (see D&C 7, or even more clearly in the 1830 Book of Commandments, Section VI) must actually work by the power of God, yet this power is somehow independent from the priesthood.
*) Despite the statement in Official Declaration 1 that God will never allow his prophets to lead the church astray, God does in fact allow his prophets to lead people astray. God has allowed this, not only on minor detail and irrelevant mysteries, but even on fundamental doctrinal issues, since Brigham Young taught Adam-God, blood atonement, etc as doctrine, while later prophets such as Spencer W. Kimball rejected such things as false. Similar confusion has be seen over the nature of God (such as whether or not God the Father has a body), the nature of the Holy Ghost (whether or not the Holy Ghost is in fact a distinct personage), whether or not the polygamy of David and Solomon was an abomination or justified, etc, which have all similarly pitted the beliefs and teachings of different prophets and different scriptural passages against one another. God has not intervened to prevent this.
*) God required Joseph Smith to practice polygamy or be destroyed by an angel wielding a flaming sword. Not just once. Not just twice. But repeatedly. Often with just a few hours of warning. Even though he already had dozens of wives when many of the recorded angelic threats were made. When describing these angelic threats to those to whom he was proposing marriage, he did not however mention these additional wives. Neither did he mention love or affection. Neither did he ever financially support any of the additional women he married. Yet this practice was so vitally important to God that he was willing to override the agency of Joseph Smith and override the agency of the women he married in order to institute polygamy.
*) God not only allowed, but required, Joseph Smith (on penalty of death) to engage in sexual relationships with dozens of women, a third of whom were already married to other men and continued living with and having children by their existing husbands. God required this despite their being no basis in scripture for polyandrous relationships, and D&C 132 explicitly authorizing only virgins.
*) God not only allowed, but required, Joseph Smith (on penalty of death) to engage in sexual relationships with dozens of women, a third of whom were young teens (including at least two 14 year old girls). He similarly married mother and daughter, and at least five sets of sisters, both actions that are directly contrary to the requirements for polygamy outlined in the old testament. As part of the restoration of all things Goes apparently did not require the same sort of restraint that he required of the children of Israel.
*) God allowed and sanctioned Joseph Smith's promise of eternal exaltation for the women with whom he practiced polygamy, along with eternal exaltation for their entire family in return for their consent, as apparently polygamy is sufficiently high and holy that it trumps the usual requirements for faith, repentance, various ordinances, etc.
*) God required Joseph Smith to keep his sexual relationships a complete secret from his first wife Emma and from the body of the church. This required frequent lies and sneaking about. Emma none the less seems to have discovered her husband in compromising situations with other women on a number of occasions, which was understandably a source of great pain and anger. There was so much distrust and anger that Emma was frequently enraged and on the verge of leaving him. On several occasions Joseph accused Emma of poisoning him. God required Joseph's secrecy and required the sacrifice of their marital harmony as part of the restoration of all things, despite later prophets advocating that “no success can compensate for failure in the home” and similar family centric ideas.
*) God required Emma Smith to forgive her husband for his trespasses and consent to Joseph Smith's taking additional wives or be destroyed (despite her not even knowing about the vast majority of Joseph's additional wives).
*) Secrecy was so important that God required Joseph to never reveal his practice of polygamy and required him (and his confidants) to create elaborate lies: scripture was written and approved by the church condemning polygamy, placards and broadsides filled with affidavits condemning polygamy (a large number of which were written by people already practicing polygamy), which nearly 400 Elders left their families to distribute. Anyone who exposed or discussed Joseph's actions (such as refused marriage proposals) had their reputations blasted in church talks and church publications, calling them whores, accusing them of all sorts of sin, etc. The resulting confusion eventually lead to thousands leaving the church and the publication of the Mormon Expositor. Suppressing this expose of Joseph's secret practice of polygamy lead directly to Joseph's death. After Joseph's death, confusion over polygamy fractured the church, pitting those that believed Joseph's public statements against those that believed his private statements. God not only allowed, but required, his prophets and apostles in the years after Joseph's death (until 1852) to repeatedly and emphatically lie to the members of the church and to the world about polygamy, because it was the highest and most holy doctrine ever revealed to mankind. God required this despite his knowing that such denials would directly lead to confusion and despite knowing this would again fracture the church in the post-Manifesto years into a large number of factions divided explicitly over whether or not God still required polygamy. And God required all of this despite knowing that He was planning on dropping the polygamy requirement from His church in about 50 years anyway.
*) God allowed his prophets and apostles to teach on numerous occasions in general conference (in their capacity as prophets and apostles) that polygamy would never be taken from the earth and that by doing so the church would forever lose the priesthood, etc. Yet a mere 50 years after it began (and within the same year as the last such official declaration that polygamy could never be taken from the church), and despite all these statements from apostles and prophets speaking in general conference in their capacity as Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, God required his prophets to drop polygamy so that the church could be reincorporated, get back all of its assets (which had been confiscated), and so that Utah could become a state.
*) Except for the fact that they didn't actually stop practicing polygamy in 1890, and continued to perform polygamous marriages. They not only continued to sanction new polygamous marriages, but under their direction they founded polygamous colonies in Mexico and Canada, they continued to cohabit with and father children with their polygamous wives, and continued to perform polygamous marriages in secret in Utah and in international waters. All while telling the world they had stopped. God sanctioned (or at least did not stop) his prophets, apostles, and many members of the church from continuing living in polygamy, and engaging in new polygamous marriages until at least the 1904 second manifesto. All this despite God knowing that the polygamous colonies in Mexico and Canada begun under the direction of church leaders to preserve the practice of plural marriage would eventually turn into the FLDS and similar polygamous splinter sects.
*) God allowed his prophets to practice institutional racism for roughly 150 years before revealing to his prophets that they were in fact wrong about that little detail all along, despite the fact that racism (that the seed of Cain can never hold the priesthood) is to this day explicitly stated in the Book of Abraham. God has never required his prophets to recant the hateful teachings of his earlier prophets and apostles about the blacks and their lackluster pre-mortal valiance.
*) God gives his leaders the gift of discernment. For example in Acts 5:3, through the power of discernment the Apostle Peter instantly detected Ananias and Sapphira when they tried to deceive the church about a financial transaction. This promise of discernment is repeated in many places in modern LDS scripture, most emphatically in D&C 46:27 for example. For the church to be true, God must sometimes choose to turn off this power, allowing his church to be lead astray and to lead members astray. For example, Mark Hoffman created numerous forgeries allegedly written by many of Mormonism's founders. Several of these forgeries literally re-wrote the history of Mormonism. LDS Church leaders under the direction of acting church president Gordon B. Hinckley, bought or traded for hundreds of items from Mark Hoffman in the early 1980's, many of which were forgeries. These forgeries were accepted by the church as real, were purchased with tithing money, and were incorporated into talks and beliefs by church leaders, as evidenced by Dallin H. Oaks famous talk about how it is understandable that the angel Moroni could be a salamander. Mark Hoffman eventually killed two people in an effort to conceal his crimes, before being caught and convicted of murder. Less than 12 hours after killing two members of the church (including a Bishop), Mark Hoffman personally met with Apostle Dallin H. Oaks and General Authority Hugh Pinnock and discussed the murders. Through all of this, the brethren were unable to discern the thoughts and intentions of Hoffman's evil and murderous heart. God allowed this for some reason.
*) Revelations that are the "word of God" can be changed, dramatically even, years after they are received (many examples of this are in the D&C, but this also occurs in the Book of Mormon).
*) William Clayton was lying when he wrote that Joseph had started his translation of the fraudlent Kinderhook Plates and that they were a history of the descendants of Ham... but was telling the truth when he penned other foundational stories of the restoration such as the official first vision story.
*) The Book of Abraham was an inspired revelation, not a translation. Despite Joseph's claims that it was a translation and the obvious effort that went into his developing his Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, and despite the fact that Egyptologists looking at the Joseph Smith papyrus and canonized Figures 1, 2, and 3 declaring them to have nothing whatsoever to do with Abraham but in fact are excerpts from the Book of the Dead and the Book of Breathings, and despite the script used on the Joseph Smith papyrus dating to roughly the time of Christ (roughly 1500 to 2000 years after Abraham). Despite all this, God inspired Joseph with a revelation, which we now have as the Book of Abraham.
*) Masonic rituals (known to date to the early 1700s) are inspired of God, or at least they are derived from something that was inspired of God.
*) God cares about the type of underwear people wear.
*) God revealed his nature to Joseph Smith gradually, and with a few missteps. Joseph Smith's understanding of the Godhead changed radically over the years. Despite allegedly seeing God the Father and Jesus Christ as a 14 year old boy, he failed to understand the true nature of the godhead till years later. For example the 1835 D&C declared that God the Father is a spirit, and the Holy Ghost is not in fact a personage, but is the collective mind of the Father and the Son. This remained in the D&C as the official doctrine of the church until 1921. D&C 130, which teaches that God has a body and that the Holy Ghost is in fact a personage, was added to the D&C in 1876, based on a single account (others present did not record that God has a body). God did not choose to clarify this during his lifetime, nor did he ask Joseph to correct his earlier mistaken teachings and scriptures.
*) God can and has punished the wicked by changing their DNA to give them dark skin. God will again change the DNA of those who are righteously valiant.
*) John the Beloved has been granted the power to never die and preach the Gospel until the second coming. John is still wandering the earth doing missionary work. He does not seem to be very good at missionary work however, since he was unable to keep the early Christian church from complete apostasy, since nobody believed in the true gospel until the immortalized John wandered over to North America and visited Joseph Smith to help restore the priesthood (along with Peter and James who unlike John had died and must therefore have been resurrected).
*) The 3 Nephites were similarly granted the power to never die and instead preach the Gospel until the second coming. These three are still wandering the earth doing missionary work, but (just like John the Beloved) they must be very very bad at it since nobody believed in the true gospel until Joseph Smith restored the Church of Christ in 1830.
*) God decided that the priesthood needed to be restored to Joseph Smith by Peter, James, and John, despite the 3 Nephites being every bit as much apostles, already being immortalized, and already living relatively nearby somewhere here in the Americas.
*) Peter was given authority to be the Prophet and leader of Christ's church. And this authority (unlike the authority granted by a driver's license) allowed him to give bestow the same authority on others.
*) After Christ granted his authority to Peter and proclaimed that the gates of Hell would not prevail, the gates of Hell did in fact prevail over his church. The leaders of the church changed crucial doctrines, corrupted the scriptures, and changed the saving gospel ordinances thus creating the Great Apostasy.
*) There really was a prophet named Nephi:
1. He was a prophet
2. He was a warrior
3. God really spoke to him and commanded him to kill a defenseless man who was so drunk he was passed out in a gutter and commanded him to steal this man's brass plates.
4. He obtained the “brass plates” which had a copy of the canonical books old testament up to the time of the Babylonian exile. Apparently however he also had a copy of the entire Book of Isaiah including Isaiah chapters 40-66, despite their being written during and after the Babylonian exile (i.e. well after Nephi left Jerusalem) since these are quoted in 1Ne:20-21, Mosiah14, 3Ne:20, 3Ne:22, with various snippets sprinkled generously throughout.
5. He was the first to use/develop reformed Egyptian. He also spoke and wrote regular Egyptian (enabling him to develop reformed Egyptian) and he spoke and wrote regular Hebrew (which he considered verbose for using on the plates). He was a linguist and a scholar.
6. He was a master metalsmith. He developed fine spring steel roughly 2000 years before anyone else. He was a master goldsmith, coppersmith, and weapon smith.
7. He was a pioneer ship builder and naval explorer, despite Israelites not being seafarers.
8. He was a hunter
9. He was a master miner, able to locate, mine, and refine copper, tin, zinc, gold, and silver
10. He was a master builder. He and his tiny band replicated the temple of Solomon-- an act that took 163300 workmen and seven years for Solomon to build... save it were for the gold and precious things since they were not to be found (2Ne5:16) except that it said these things were found in great abundance one verse earlier (2Ne5:15).
11. He was a terrifically successful farmer. He must have been in order to spend so much time making charcoal, forging fine steel, building temples and ships and gold plates and writing and prophesying and governing his people. Clearly the effort of homesteading a new land and subsistence farming could have occupied only a trifle of his time.
12. He was a younger (but not the youngest), but better brother.
13. He was the stable force when his father wavered.
14. He was large in stature (Nephi Swartzenegger)
I've heard that many think JS had himself in mind when he modeled Nephi
Did I miss anything about Nephi?
*) When Jesus stated on multiple occasions that in the resurrection there is no marrying or giving in marriage, he in fact meant to convey the exact opposite meaning -- that the new and everlasting covenant of marriage for time and all eternity allows families to be together forever.
*) The Lord allowed the Doctrine and Covenants to incorrectly describe the nature of the Godhead from 1835 until 1921. The Lectures on Faith (which is the "Doctrine" part of the Doctrine and Covenants), describes the nature of the Godhead in great detail: that God the Father is a spirit, that Jesus Christ is a personage of tabernacle, and the Holy Ghost is not a personage at all but the collective mind of the Father and the Son. The Lectures on Faith further describes in Lecture 3 that true faith can only be built upon a correct understanding of the Godhead. God, for reasons unknown, allowed Joseph Smith to include this in the Doctrine and Covenants, allowed his chosen church to canonize this false doctrine as scripture, and did not feel it necessary to instruct his living modern Prophets correct this fundamental doctrinal error for over 86 years.
*) That the ancient church become apostate because it began teaching false doctrines but the modern church did not when it followed Brigham Young ‘s apostate views.
*) To fully understand the true nature of a person you should ONLY read the faith promoting histories of those that personally knew the person...because you can only truly know a person from his best friends, not his enemies.
*) Feelings are a legitimate way to recognize truth.