They mentioned that we didn't know until recently that there are more planets in the universe than all the grains of sand on the earth. It hit me that the pearl of great price says that exact thing. Is there a way Joseph could have gotten that info from the bible? It doesn't seem like it was common knowledge back then. Any ideas? I'm stumped on this one.

The "more than the grains of sand" metaphor is rather old and not unique to JS and the PoGP.

Huh, I did some research and I had no idea how many times the analogy is used in the bible. That makes more sense, thanks! :)

"like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives"?


Sorry...what was that? I was watching TV.

The 19th century didn't have Hubble, but people had the idea of other worlds.

Before Christ the Roman poet Lucretius wrote that there were countless other worlds. Bruno advocated other worlds too. The idea became very popular after it was accepted that the earth was not the center of the universe.

There is really nothing new or rare in the Pearl of Great Price about other worlds. Like everything Joe did, he used things that represented the ideas of the time.

It was this line of thinking that made me realize the church was not true. I was taught that Elohim created millions of worlds but OUR planet was the most wicked and the only one that would kill our saviour. So, doing the simple math: if 1/1000 planets had life then that meant that 1 billion possibilities for life in our own galaxy. Multiply that by 400 million and that gives the chance for life in our universe.

So...400 Million times a Billion gives the chance that the saviour of the universe would come to our planet.

The chance of winning the california state lottery is only 175 million. So the idea that the christ came to OUR planet would be like winning the California State lottery several hundred times in a row....??.....hmmm.

The odds that the church is not true are a lot better.

All a person (from any era) has to do is look out into the night sky. You get the sense of countless mysterious stars. That's all it would take.

Of course JS would see the sky and make up things about it. He made up stories when he ran across a bone (Zelph). He made up a tale when he saw a pile of rocks (an alter). I'm surprised he didn't point to star and claim it was Kolob.

These modern days of city lights have robbed us of the sensory overload of seeing the milky way galaxy in all it's massiveness.

It's no wonder humanity of old could have came up with the idea of more worlds then grains of sand.

This thought may have become a popular quote and original idea among holy men of the old days. But not from the pedophile, liar, con-man, scum of the earth Joseph Smith.

There were, generally, two "ancient" kinds of thinking on what stars were.
One way was the "7 heavens" kind of idea, where the stars were little lights that a "god" or "gods" put on domes above the flat earth, that moved to mark seasons, signs, etc. That's essentially the "biblical" way (which, of course, the Hebrews got from the Sumerians, Babylonians, and other fertile crescent cultures).

The other way was the more or less Greek way (also expressed in some far-eastern early concepts), of a huge "space" in which there were lots of places like our own home.

Neither one, at least until some Greeks around 300 BCE or so, had any idea we lived on a "planet," that it orbited a star, or that other places where beings lived were also "planets," though.

It's the first way that mainly got infused into our culture through christianity, though bits of the Greek way persisted. But those had to be overcome when actual science started to figure out our actual place in our solar system, galaxy, and universe (and that there were such things). Before that, it was all guesses. :)

Genesis 22:17 says--

"17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will
multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand
which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate
of his enemies;"


So Genesis says that Abraham's seed will be "as the stars of the
heaven. and as the sand which is upon the sea shore." That
kinda says that the stars of the heavens are like the sand on
the sea shore.

JS didn't make it up---he rearranged it from Genesis.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2015 03:46PM by baura.

Although Elohim's creations are eternal and like the grains of sand, Jesus is only Savior and Lord of 12 other planets (plus the moon, sun and earth.

What? Is this Glen Larson "Battlestar Galactica" heresay? Not at all. D&C 88:41-61 "41, All kingdoms are governed by law; 42–45, God has given a law unto all things; 46–50, Man will comprehend even God; 51–61, The parable of the man sending his servants into the field and visiting them in turn;"
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/88?lang=eng

& BoA--Facsimile 2: #5 "Is called in Egyptian Enish-go-on-dosh; this is one of the governing planets also, and is said by the Egyptians to be the Sun, and to borrow its light from Kolob through the medium of Kae-e-vanrash, which is the grand Key, or, in other words, the governing power, which governs fifteen other fixed planets or stars, as also Floeese or the Moon, the Earth and the Sun in their annual revolutions. This planet receives its power through the medium of Kli-flos-is-es, or Hah-ko-kau-beam, the stars represented by numbers 22 and 23, receiving light from the revolutions of Kolob. " https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng

Joseph Smith never originated anything. Every thing he ever "brought forth" came from another source. One would expect that someone who claimed to speak directly with God would have come up with at least one original idea. Even his "inspired" Book of Mormon is nothing more than a rehash of bible verses and frontier revivalism. If there is an original thought among all the "and it came to pass" repetitions ad nauseam I'd sure like to know what it is as I personally have not been able to find a single one.

I thought that Sandra Tanner said it best when she explained to me that she thought of Joseph Smith as a sponge that picked up everything with which he came in contact and then included in his developing religion.

"In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth type planets..."

"Balance of Terror," Star Trek: TOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp0ROZuRjJI#t=38m3s

Well now scientists are hypothesizing there are multi-verses, not just one universe, but parallel ones. Where our clones may live, identical to ourselves, in other lives and places.

That seems bizaree to comprehend, and yet in the realm of science it is a possibility.