I cannot believe how long it took me to figure out that when the Bible is talking about obedience it never mentions that one should obey the prophet or obey the church. The Bible says to obey God and obey God's laws. I eventually realized that the Bible states very clearly that we are to interpret God's teachings for OURSELVES thru prayer and obey GOD'S laws as WE understand them and not just some church organizational laws which are the laws of men. (Does anyone really think that obeying the law to wear a white shirt to church has anything to do with God?????)

So when I started replacing the LDS call to obey with my own understanding that God wanted me to obey HIM and not some dork at the top of some office building or some dork calling himself a bishop or some random dork priesthood holder, it all made so much more sense. Some of these dorks may be good men with good intentions but the god in the Bible wants us to obey HIM and not a bunch of dorks. If you are going to obey a dork, at least make sure it's the right dork. : )

just like each denomination. Same difference.

I'm with you!

Today, Sunday, is Pentecost, the day which celebrates the Holy Ghost appearing as fire and touching 120 people (men and women) in the temple of Jerusalem. Before that day, a prophet of OT times would be touched by a fire and would explain the will of God to the king, to the priests and to the people of Israel. But at Pentecost, that fire touched individuals and gave THEM the spirit of prophecy for themselves. No longer would one prophet be chosen to speak for the Lord.

I don't know WHY the LDS church attempted to go back in time to Old Testament prophets, but Pentecost destroyed that image forever.

First, JS wanted to be a big shot with people hanging on his every word.

Second, Mormonism borrows a lot of things from the OT because JS thought it was way cooler. Prophets, wars, ceremonies, priestcraft... Christianity was bland in comparison, no flare except for some fancy preaching and the occasional tent revival.

Wasn't that convenient for the apostles that a crowd of people saw the "mantle" or "tongues of fire" land on their head, giving them the power to speak for God?

From the first caveman who did a successful raindance, men have been claiming to be that special conduit, that annointed special one, THE powerful power one.

And not you.

Spin the dial and decide which Godpower usurpers you want to follow, or follow God directly by using your own power (that God gave you) to exercise your own spirituality directly.

Anagrammy

Don't feel bad. It took me forever to realize that in the Bible...

1) Christ's entire ministry is dedicated to tearing down a religion. Not establishing a new one. At no point does Christ create a church. He condemns organized religion.

2) All of Christ's lessons are about befriending and not judging the sinner. Or, if you will from a Jew's perspective of the time, a non-member.

3) The Good Samaritan is a story about why non-members will go to heaven before members will. Who was his neighbor? Imagine how insulting this would have been to a Jew.

4) Christ was more of a revolutionary than anything. He was literally a counter-movement to the culture of his time and while I cannot prove he wore tie-dye or had a bong I think it's a fairly safe assumption given the long hair, beard and sandals.

5) Imagine you want to start a new religion. Here's an idea. Take an existing religion, use it's own teachings, and then say that they missed the boat. Jehovah came you stupid Jews. It was this Christ guy. You're no longer God's chosen ones we are. It works with Mormonism too. Oops you screwed up Cahtolicism. You had the truth but you fubared it up so bad God had to restore it though us. So we're going to take your teachings and modify them to fit our agenda.

What I'm getting at here is if you want political power, and you happen to live in a theocracy, creating a new religion seems to be the way to go. Henry VIII knew what I'm talking about.

6) That all said, other historical documents suggest that the stories of Christ may be just that. Stories.

How I missed all that? I wasn't looking.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2011 08:23PM by The Man in Black.

The venture floundered. If it was not for Constantine, their best investor, and enforcer, they would have gone nowhere, and I might have been raised pagan or atheist or humanist.

I embraced the same ideals after exiting the LDS Church and converting to Protestant Reformed Theology.

But here's the thing:

You go to a Christian Church and listen to a pastor teaching from the Bible (interpreting it for you). Like me, you may own an awesome Study Bible but what are those notes doing for you? They are interpreting the Bible. Either way, I don't think anyone is interpreting the Bible on their own. They are always relying on someone else to show them what passages mean and twenty different people can look at the same passage and pull out twenty different interpretations.

Wow. I was just thinking the same thing this morning, but with a little twist.

So that Study Bible with all those interpretations.......

On the other hand thank good ness for all those notes!!! Otherwise I'd have to teach all these kids of mine (gasp) ancient Greek, Hebrew and Latin. GAG. Fate worse than death in my opinion. Thank heavens for folks who've already done the work.

I'm kind of glad we have all those folks so I can teach my kids those 20 different opinions (if we have enough time), then move on to the really fascinating stuff Biology, Chemistry, the Edict of Milan, Algebra, Astronomy, why blood cells are red............

Some cry about the fact we don't teach our kids these ancient languages any more (so they can read the Scriptures on their own and do their own interpretations) since that was what the "Greats" were taught. (Ok, we are force-feeding some Latin but not Latin, Greek and Hebrew!!! Wow, my brain just hurts thinking of it).

But I'm just A-OK letting previous masters (not Joseph Smith) tell me what to think as far as translations are concerned. I mean, I'm not going to go dig up a corpse just to teach my kids about the tendon insertions into bones am I? Nah, we'll probably watch a video or an interactive CD, or even visit a path lab instead.

if you think about it, all religion is about "obedience" otherwise there would be no need for religion.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whale%20Cock%20(Dork)

Wow a light bulb just went onin my head. It is true. The Bible does emphasize obedience TO THE LORD only!

This whole thread is kind of self-contradictory. Every word of the so-called bible was written down, translated, and read by a human being.

How can one obey the "lord" when the "lord" has never revealed itself except supposedly through other humans? In the end, you're still obeying human beings, even if you pretend the words of these human beings came from a supernatural source.

There's no difference between doing what Gordon B Wrinkley says and doing what Saul of Tarsus says. They're both men.