...is that he told people that we all were in a pre-existence we forgot, but amazingly he is the ONLY guy in the world to HAVE THE INFORMATION that we were in a pre-existence we forgot.

I mean there are 100 other things, like inserting himself in the BoM, but why was no other prophet in history given any of this??

And not that Jeremiah quote:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

Isn't it interesting that JS said he didn't bother writing about Christ's Second Coming, etc. because supposedly the Lord told JS He gave that job to John the Beloved. How convenient. What a flimsy excuse to get out of a main responsibility of a prophet, to see and foretell the future. It's evidence JS was a con artist. Big red flag.

The fact that he was persecuted and accused so many times and the charges were always supposedly false.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2017 08:55PM by luckylucas.

One giant red flag is that he couldn't reproduce the lost 116 pages and had god come up with the lamest cover story ever, saying that 2600 years ago god had such astounding wisdom that he had Nephi also take time, energy and produce the materials to record sort of the same story as Lehi just from Nephi's point of view because he knew he, Elohim, would cave to peer pressure and allow those pages to be taken by Martin Harris who would lose them and put Joseph in a bind. Yeah, riiiight.

I always hated that story! Sure it made sense that JS and friends could claim to worry about 'wicked men' altering the missing 116 pages, but that doesn't really make sense. It's not likely that these illusory 'wicked men' would have access to any kind of decent forgery tools, useful to alter the content of the missing pages, or to try forge new pages.

Occam's razor says that JS made up the content of the 116 pages and knew he couldn't do it again. He wasn't afraid of 'wicked men' altering the original 116 pages, rather he was afraid that they might show up to be used to compare with his supposed re-translation of the Book of Lehi.

But instead we had to get all twisted up in ghawd seeing ahead that a back up book would be needed. So ghawd can't control events, he can only plan ahead for work-arounds.

To my understanding the "wicked men" were really Mrs. Harris who burned the pages. It does not make a good story though.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2017 06:02PM by Gd.

The missing 116 pages is why the world has been denied the precious truth of the full lineage of Lehi, Ishmael, and Mulek. Such an important piece of Biblesque information and yet we only have the lineage for the Jaredites.

Seems like Nephi should have recorded the lineages in his similar-but-not-identical retelling of events, but there is no wiggle room in a list of names and begats.

I know Elohim is smarter than your average bear, but it seems wasteful to have Nephi spend *years* preparing a "parallel" history to Lehi's (on gold plates) when it would have been easier all around to tell Joseph it was okay to let Martin show his wife the manuscript, but only after spending a few *days* copying the manuscript (onto ordinary paper) and then letting Mrs. Harris look at the copy. Another idea would be temporarily placing the original and/or another copy with a reliable third party, like a lawyer, judge or sheriff, so that when the evil men altered the copy, Joseph could produce the original and confound the adversary's nefarious scheme. Or how about Joseph taking a day out of his grueling translating to go to the Harris home, show the manuscript to Lucy Harris (smart, smart, smart), and then bring it back the same day?

But I guess Elohim figured it was better to massively inconvenience Nephi than Joseph. He probably calculated that a massive inconvenience to a fictional person was not as important as a minor inconvenience to a real person.

I also wonder why Elohim inspired Nephi to use all that gold to copy passages from Isaiah into his parallel record instead of writing some actual history. Knowing that we would have Isaiah in our modern Bibles, Elohim could have inspired Nephi to write something like, "Hey, you people in the latter days, it's really important that you read chapters 2 through 14 of a book named Isaiah in this thing you call a Bible, with the following minor changes to the text. And now, back to our story...."

His appearance

Probably his age he claimed to see jesus and the main god. Yep they appeared to you yep mmhmm.

That he was a "special" child to his parents - a child saved through his leg injury who entertained them through long, cold evenings with his enchanting stories, and a child who was in tune with the mystic and magic just as they both were. He did not care at all for "hard labor", avoided it, and loved being the necromancer who could make money conning it from others.

This was my first clue as I grew up seeing and hearing of the con game in action. Joseph fit the bill.

What good is a pre-existence if you can't remember it ?

I agree, Dave. It's the same as not having ever happened.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What good is a pre-existence if you can't remember
> it ?

This is also a problem I have when proponents of reincarnation say that we reincarnate to deal with problems that we had in a past life. I think it is a harder to deal with problems if we have no memory of the circumstances that caused them.

Remember the "cool" think about Saturday's Warrior - the love birds who sang "I've seen that smile somewhere before!" OK the blonde was really cute, but still. That is what we all kept hoping would happen, that we'd get that special feeling, and just know we were meant to be together. How many who had that special feeling are now divorced?!

BUT WAIT THERE's MORE. If you call in the next 20 minutes, you get two, that's right 2, dorktastic missionaries who can tell how the entire universe works in just 6 easy discussions <insert small print: and 1,000,000 easy payments of just 10% of your income for life>

Puhleeeese.

The first thing my wife told me about JS was how he translated the plates using Urim and Thummim. My first question was, "Where are the plates now so that their authenticity and translation can be confirmed?" My second question was, "Where are Urim and Thummim now so that we can verify their function and accuracy?"

Color me shocked when my wife told me that JS had turned them over to an angel once the translation was completed.

The only bits of physical evidence that JS could point to as having come from God or his angels were safely, and conveniently, back in Heaven.

My initial incredulity was increased as further questions revealed that the books were seldom present during translation, and that JS had to switch to his seer stone when Urim and Thummim was taken away from him as punishment for losing the original 116 pages he had translated. So, why did he even need the plates? Why did he even need Urim and Thummim? If neither were needed for translation, why did Moroni need to hide them for the specific purpose of translation by JS?

What is more credible; the convoluted explanations offered by TBMs, or the simple suggestion that JS was simply a liar? The former has to ignore or excuse known facts, but the latter acknowledges all known facts without need for explanation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2017 09:00AM by GregS.

An LDS Proclamation to the World: This church is true because we say this church is true. Facts don't matter. Documented history doesn't matter. Doubt your Doubts.

Daniel Peterson (fake smart guy) wrote that the church is ex hypothesi true. I looked it up, and it means "assumed to be."

Guess he doesn't know what happens when you ass-u-me;)

He had a bad memory. If you tell the truth, then you don't need a good memory. He couldn't keep track of his lies.

Both Plato and Origen believed in and wrote about the Pre-Existence. It wasn't a "revelation" to JS. Who knows who shared that info with him. I doubt he read any of their writings.

There are an unseemly amount of things that SHOULD have made me suspicious from the beginning. The first thing that DID make me suspicious was the wifery. I'm no perfect husband but how can any sane dude handle the cognitive dissonance that he must have put up with. Not to mention the inevitable issues between women. Sheesh that raised some flags fast.

Heard it on my mission. I denied it initially. But FAIR confirmed it on a P-Day where I looked it up at the library. It was maybe the first thing I couldn't reconcile something for an extended period of time. Even if I could bring myself to believe the explanations put forth, I couldn't defend him anymore. Not on that point. Not on his morality. Not on his trustworthiness. First major crack, I think.

Guy named Joe Smith talks to God...