Am I the only one who is tired of hearing about Mormon claims of possessing the only true restored gospel on the face of the earth? Unlike the BofM, the New Testament is based on written manuscripts, and many copies were made,so any alterations or deletions would stick out like a sore thumb. I think Mormon leaders should be held to account for their claims of a complete Christian apostasy, as such claims are largely myth. There may have been an apostasy, but what is the basis of a COMPLETE apostacy? Even Mormonism had an apostacy, but it was’t a complete apostacy. Christ said, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” So, either Christ was a complete failure, or a 19th century con-man was lying. Even the relative recent discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which largely support the Bible, contain nothing close to Mormon Doctrines. These loud-mouth Mormons should be required to put-up, or shut-up, concerning these claims.

Considering that the BoM agrees with the bible in most theology, and of course is *composed* of large chunks of the KJV, mistakes and all, but then is contradicted by JS' revelations & teachings (which also contradict other ancient scriptural religious writings), but then AGAIN is different in some wording in the JST, and it's no wonder that TBM's fall back on "testimony" when all this factual info' is pointed out to them.

"If you can't be certain of the truth, at least be certain of your testimony!"
- - Elder Judic West, while presiding as a DL, at a District Meeting, in Comemierda, Mexico, June, 1966

It infuriates me too. There was NO "restoration" of original Christianity. The early Apostles of the NT were given instructions to teach on HOW to live, (repentance, forgiveness, love, etc), and the only ordinance was water baptism. The Temple and animal sacrifice was to be eliminated with the atonement of Christ.

NO Priesthood was given to the original Apostles, in either the Bible or the extra-Biblical texts. And the "Aaronic Priesthood" was reserved exclusively for the Levites of the OT FOREVER.

Early Christianity was loosely organized with numerous factions, each emphasizing their own select aspects of Christ's teachings. For the Church to claim they have "Restored" this original Christianity is to be completely dishonest, because it wasn't organized to the degree they claim.

I HATE the Church's dishonesty. They DO need to be held accountable for the falsehoods they teach.

Thanks ‘y’all. I rest my case.

nolongercounted Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Unlike the BofM,
> the New Testament is based on written manuscripts,
> and many copies were made,so any alterations or
> deletions would stick out like a sore thumb.

Well, sure.
Except we don't have any originals of those "written manuscripts." And though there are many, many copies, the oldest ones (that are even close to being complete) date to many centuries after any originals would have been written. And comparison of the various copies at various times show literally thousands of changes -- some minor, some major. Deletions, additions of huge blocks of text, etc.

I'd recommend Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus."
It does a pretty good job of covering the "stick out like a sore thumb" alterations, deletions, and additions in NT manuscripts over the years.

https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506964699&sr=1-3&keywords=bart+ehrman

Thanks. I read the review...I’ll purchase a copy.

Great, it's a good read.

What I wrote above, of course, shouldn't be interpreted to mean that I give the BoM "manuscript" (the printer's manuscript is the first one that exists) any credence, of course. :)

And one thing the first BoM "manuscript" does it put the lie to the claims of "divine translation," especially as the "translation" story is told (where Smith would look at the rock in his hat, English words would magically appear, the scribe would write them down, and they wouldn't disappear until the scribe had written them perfectly). It's chock full of many thousands of grammar, spelling, and "theological" errors that were later "corrected."

Grab this too:

https://www.amazon.com/Rebuttal-Bart-Ehrmans-Misquoting-Jesus-ebook/dp/B00FPMJN7O/

Um, sure -- if mormon-like apologetics is your thing.
Otherwise...skip it :)

But, hey, it's free...might be a good lesson in bad logic!

God has a whole planet through which he runs billions of people through it like a burst dam, and yet one time in thousands of years he sends his Christ son to tell a few select people the plan. This was not well thought out.

Somehow this happening sparked a religion and it kept going even if it was a little all over the place like a malted milk in a hurricane.

A full two thousand years and billions of people later--sorry, "beloved children" later---God decides to give his religion a booster shot and appears to Joseph Smith the glass looking, treasure hunting, story telling, convicted con, who is the only person in the last two millennia to be worthy enough to restore the said God's church.

Yes. This makes so much sense.

My thoughts on claims of a restoration of Christianity as it originally was:

While one could probably "restore" certain practices of some early Christians in a broad sense, I don't think that any complete restoration of early Christianity in a narrower sense is possible. (By "narrower sense" I mean a restoration of the complete original theology, practice, and cosmology of the earliest Christians.)

I've bought into the notion that there was much variety in the theology and practices of early Christians, which can even be seen among the different writers of documents preserved in the New Testament. And since these documents were written some time after Jesus' lifetime, we don't have the kind of detailed historical information necessary to do an accurate restoration. And finally, we live with very different cultural and cosmological assumptions than those of the earliest Christians. Certainly some of their viewpoints would have been informed by those assumptions that would be hard to duplicate today.

When I wrote earlier in the post about a "broad" restoration of certain practices being possible, an example might be the priesthood blessings of the Mormon Church. There is indication in the New Testament that some Christians practiced spiritual healing through laying on of hands and anointing with oil. So Mormons doing that might be restoring something in a broad sense. But we have no way of knowing if all early Christians did that. And I'm not aware of any solid evidence that the ones who did connected it specifically with an authority of a priesthood.

So one could conceivably be a member of a church that one feels has broadly restored some of the aspects of early Christianity.

The impulse towards restoration seems to be a strong one among certain people. There are a number of Christian denominations that have attempted to regain the "purity" of original Christianity. And we can see this impulse at work today in Mormonism, as seen in polygamists, as well as in Mormons who follow such figures as Denver Snuffer and Rock Waterman. The underlying notion seems to be that the mainstream LDS Church has gotten further and further away from the pure early teachings and practices, and a restoration is in order!

according to my research there have been 3913 changes to the text of the most perfect book.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2017 06:44PM by desertman.

The Tanners sold (and probably still sell) a photocopy of the first edition of the Book of Mormon in which these changes have been marked. I used to visit their bookstore in Salt Lake City from time to time and enjoyed interesting conversations with Sandra. Anyway, on one of my visits there I purchased this book and found it interesting to see how the Book of Mormon has been altered over the years. At that time I knew a young Mormon father who already had kids and financial problems, and his wife suffered from depression. One day I showed him the book I'd purchased from the Tanners and he looked through it carefully. A couple of days later I saw the missionaries and one of them said, "Brother Gentile, you sure shook Brother [young Mormon father] up by showing him that book and he is having doubts! How could you do such a thing, knowing how difficult things are in his family? This just adds to the turmoil they are experiencing!" I've felt bad about that ever since. It seems there can be less than ideal times to introduce Mormons to certain things about their history.

At any rate, from what I've read about the stone in the hat method of "translating" the Book of Mormon, the words would appear in the hat and Joseph couldn't get the next lines until his scribe had copied the words down perfectly. Not sure how that fits with all the changes that were made in the book after its publication. [Edited to note that Brother Kolob made the same point above.]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2017 07:37PM by commongentile.

How would the young father's difficulties been impacted if he had 10% more of his income to aid in dealing with said difficulties? Who knows, you may have helped the guy out.

Good point, elderolddog, I hadn't thought of it like that.

Mormons dont even know what the gospel is, believe me i have asked.