I have never seen this problem mentioned or discussed, even by those very knowledgeable about the problems of the first vision.

Even taking the official version at face value, there are problems:

Smith apparently simply ASSUMED that the person speaking was God the Father. The speaker called the other personage "my beloved son," but any father could call a son that, not just God. Neither personage actually identified himself, so their identities are 100% Smith's assumptions.

If you object that they appeared miraculously in brilliant light, you are unaware of the scriptures; Satan can also do that:

-He can appear as an angel of light. 2 Cor 11:14 (see also D&C 128:20, 129:8)

-He will seem to be like God. 2 Thess 2:4

Smith did not seem to realize any of that. Some prophet!

Even if they identified themselves by name or title, Joseph has no method for such authentication as well. How would he know they are who they claim?

Even if the first vision were true, why did God allow an obvious fraud like the BoM, with its impossible (not just implausible) narratives, to be produced?

To contrast ideas from Lucifer's to learn good ideas from evil ideas. Did you ever realize there is only two salt seas on earth that have fresh water lakes? One is Utah. The other is the Holy Land.

Mormonism is the poster child of Lucifer's ideas so people can examine how Lucifer twists the Bible, just like the Great Salt Lake is in the North, but in the Holy Land, the salt sea is in the South. The evil that is done to honest Mormon's is incredible, isn't it?

anonthegreat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> To contrast ideas from Lucifer's to learn good
> ideas from evil ideas. Did you ever realize there
> is only two salt seas on earth that have fresh
> water lakes? One is Utah. The other is the Holy
> Land.
>
> Mormonism is the poster child of Lucifer's ideas
> so people can examine how Lucifer twists the
> Bible, just like the Great Salt Lake is in the
> North, but in the Holy Land, the salt sea is in
> the South. The evil that is done to honest
> Mormon's is incredible, isn't it?

What are you talking about, the Dead Sea borders both Jordan and Israel and is hardley south in either country.

I realized a couple of months ago that the First Vision, Moroni appearing at Joseph Smith’s bedside, and the angels appearing at the dedication of the Kirtland temple had to be either evil spirits masquerading as angels, or everyone was lying. Many also reported seeing Jesus on a golden road in the Kirtland temple: same thing. That many people reporting those sightings at Kirtland couldn’t have been lying; they saw things all right, but it wasn’t what they thought. People who see dead ancestors in an LDS temple are seeing someone alright; it just is not who they think it is.

valkyriequeen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I realized a couple of months ago that the First
> Vision, Moroni appearing at Joseph Smith’s
> bedside, and the angels appearing at the
> dedication of the Kirtland temple had to be either
> evil spirits masquerading as angels, or everyone
> was lying. Many also reported seeing Jesus on a
> golden road in the Kirtland temple: same thing.
> That many people reporting those sightings at
> Kirtland couldn’t have been lying; they saw
> things all right, but it wasn’t what they
> thought. People who see dead ancestors in an LDS
> temple are seeing someone alright; it just is not
> who they think it is.

My response is embodied in four words! "Figment of the imagination"

Smith was already experimenting with the occult when these things supposedly occurred. Between that and his treasure seeking, he created and invented as he went to suit his purposes.

Weren't there a few versions of the "first vision?" And the first one didn't report his seeing two personages, but an angel he called the Lord. From the http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/2#full-transcript

"​in the 16th year of my age​> a piller of fire light above the brightness of the sun at noon day come down from above and rested upon me and I was filled with the spirit of god and the <​Lord​> opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord16 and he spake unto me saying Joseph <​my son​> thy sins are forgiven thee. go thy <​way​> walk in my statutes and keep my commandments behold I am the Lord of glory I was crucifyed for the world that all those who believe on my name may have Eternal life <​behold​> the world lieth in sin and at this time and none doeth good no not one they have turned asside from the gospel and keep not <​my​> commandments they draw near to me with their lips while their hearts are far from me and mine anger is kindling against the inhabitants of the earth to visit them acording to thir ungodliness and to bring to pass that which <​hath​> been spoken by the mouth of the prophets and Ap[o]stles17 behold and lo I come quickly as it [is?] written of me in the cloud <​clothed​> in the glory of my Father18 and my soul was filled with love and for many days I could rejoice with great Joy and the Lord was with me but could find none that would believe the hevnly vision nevertheless I pondered these things in my heart19 about that time my mother and20 but after many days [p. 3] I fell into ...."

You give Joe way too much credit. He never deviated from his story telling and confidence hustles learned in his youth.

Yes, that is true, I believe. This vision did happen, but when it occurred in 1820, he knew it was a fallen son of God. Just one personage, not two. He was deep into the occult with his family that he believe could control the working people and his heavenly fraudulent messengers would catapult him into the Presidency of the United States. He was dead wrong.

I believe he assumed the Creator "Unknown God" that Paul identified the occult and pagans worshipped is Yahweh was not Yahweh, but they didn't and don't know it. The first vision of 1838 was a fabrication to sell his Mormon ideas to Bible believers. He knew he was not worshipping Jesus, and the whole Mormon movement was a fraud from the beginning. He needed a lot of time to get the Bible into his mind so the crystal peep stone and hat would work and give him power from God to create the Book of Mormon from his own mind, about nine years after the first vision of 1820.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2018 09:39PM by anonthegreat.

By the way, when God told Moses that no one can see the face of God and live is because they rejected him at Mt Saini and removed the translation keys through the outer kingdom laws, contradicting the First Vision 1838 fabrication. It did not happen.

It requires immortals (clean) living on earth with mortals (unclean) so the external mind can see the goals. What ever the mind and conceive and believe it can achieve. The entire planet became subject to the god of death rather than the God of the living. The third temple will be build with the help of immortals to start the reincarnation of Abraham and Israel into new mortal bodies and be translated according to the promise God made with Abraham. John the Baptism was the reincarnated Elijah the prophet but he didn't know it. But Jesus knew it. He will be reincarnated again and be translated. Israel will lead the world in the translation process with the third temple.

It is still possible to be translated by entering the inner kingdom of heaven as a mortal, but it is much more difficult to do without an immortal standing right in front of us, because once in the first heaven, one needs to contend the dragon, the beast, the false prophet, and the religious whore, which are all intellectual ideas that exist in the heart of mortals.
It is the straight and narrow path that few achieve without the Law of Moses being administered by immortals. The broad path is death and resurrection of the body, and many go on that path. The third temple will change that paradigm.

That's hilarious

What is more funny?

1. Believing in genetic reengineering to create eternal life of the body with pyramid structures of power and control to decide who lives and who dies by lethal injections? Evil Satan is not removed from us.

2. Removing the irrational ideas of God and increasing 10% of the brain power to 100% by all the people on the planet. We will remove the pyramid structures and work together in communities to overcoming by translation Satan created in us that tempts us to do evil by using Logos Reason?

That's pretty funny too

Satin uses legos ?

anonthegreat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>God told Moses that no one can
> see the face of God and live

Slight correction, if I may. God never said that. Somebody said God said that. There's a difference.

Mistaken placement



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2018 11:50PM by dogblogger.

You can't disprove a "vision".

No one needs to believe in visions, and in fact, the supernatural powers of the occult by God or even the miracles of Jesus can blind Reason. Parables can be twisted however we want to create pyramid religions that take people's money. God prefers that we trust in reasonable ideas than miracles and His powers.

Have you every read where Jesus said that those who trust in miracles do not know Him and He will tell them to go away? He didn't say he was going to throw them in hell-fire, but He does not know them. The atheists know Him better than the believers, but they don't know it because of the irrational theologians. At least the atheist are not self-righteous hypocrites at the bottom. He is Logos Reason, and basing our lives on miracles or visions blinds the mind of reason.

He healed people privately and told them to go their way and not tell anyone. The people did just the opposite. They wanted to make Him a king, and he walked away from them because he had not interest in pyramid structures! He was not trying to impress anyone with His power and miracles, but the people wanted to make miracles and visions the focus, rather than his intelligent ideas of Logos Reason, completely misunderstanding His intensions.

The idea came into my mind today, that the pure atheist maybe attacks the Bible theologians and religions and not God because he has nowhere is to go to use his mind with reason. They are really Anti-Bible against theologians and Biblical religions not and not Anti-God. Being anti-Bible ideas is am excellent place to learn how the mind works to illuminate stupid ideas.

The pure atheists, therefore, can get closer to God than a Bible believer. This is a new assumption to believe based on the idea you presented. I created the idea from this post in thinking about your reasoning and what the Bible actually says. See? My paradigm is that Israel rejected Yahweh who spoke in plain language at Mt. Sinai to the people with power, but the occultist took control and caused the people to emotionally fear Yahweh's power instead of using reason to hear what He said. He had no intension to kill them.

He could have appeared without the power like He did with the 70 Elders of Israel, but he didn't because He wanted Moses to step in as a middle man and do what happened to teach the world that focusing on the power and not the ideas leads to death. So he hid his face from Moses because he took away reason and plain speech to call prophets to speak in parables so they would need to think with reason rather than focus on His power and miracles. He even uses the false prophet Joseph Smith with occult powers of God to make us really think hard to get out of Mormonism.

Our purpose on earth is to know good and devil, I assume, and it explains why good and evil existes on earth that will end when everyone starts thinking with Logos Reason and removes the bad ideas on planet. The atheists are helping us achieve the goal by seeing reason is far more important than God's supernational powers.

He demonstrates his miracle of life all around us. We don't need any more miracles. The birth of a baby or the perfect ecosystem without man tampering with it is plenty of miracles. We don't need visions or supernatural powers. We only need what God has given everyone--our brains.

There is a story in the Bible when Mariam confronted Moses, and God said she was actually cursed because Moses spoke with plain speech to reveal the Ten Commandments, but they rejected the plain speech and chose Moses instead of Him. So He gave the people prophets that spoke in riddles and parables and "dark sayings" so the people would need to think and reason the out with better assumptions to know how Logos Reason works to understand Jesus with sincerity and no hypocrisy.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2018 11:29AM by anonthegreat.

pure bunk

The atheistic mind of reason is closer to the truth than those who put belief before reason. Atheists choose not to think about the unknowable and waste their time, except, attacking the irrational ideas from the Bible is productive to removed dumb ideas from the planet. Amen to that work.

If you think that was funny, you haven't seen nothing yet from the occult powers coming from the Bosnia pyramids that were buried by the flood of Noah:

https://www.youtube.com/ocwatch?v=vDM8bYxygy0



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2018 12:46AM by anonthegreat.

Hee hee

Seriously now, we are discussing the real reason for the Cosmic War that has been going on since the beginning of mortality. The Bosnia pyramids can be argued is the scientific proof that there was Noah's flood, and this earth is probably about 200,000 old, and Adam and Eve were sent because Lucifer's time is up to prove Yahweh is a criminal liar.

Eventually, everyone will see the lies of Lucifer and by freewill and no force, they will walk away from genetic reengineering experimenting that is common knowledge that scientists are working on today. How long have they been working on it? 150,000 years. Times up. The Cosmic War is about to end soon in peace, according to the Bible and not the irrational ideas of the theologians.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2018 01:43AM by anonthegreat.

"Eventually, everyone will see..." is a phrase commonly used by the delusional.

Seriously ???

I just didn't look at one video about the Bosnia pyramids, but I spent two weeks burying my mind into both sides of the argument, but finally, I reasoned, the mountain looks a pyramid, and there is plenty of evidence to support the theory, so I believe it is true. The video shows the supposed occult powers and they were presumably buried by Noah's flood, but evidence suggest there may have been another flood. There are many more buried pyramids on earth the scientist have found. Noah's flood can explain it. It is just a rational theory to explain the evidence science has found. Evidence suggests the UFOs have been around for a long time to do the genetic reengineering to figure out the death codes. They failed. Time is up.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2018 02:34PM by anonthegreat.

How does one self-check one's reasoning? Without an answer sheet it's just you and your ego correcting the exam. Most of us tend to agree with our egos when it tells us how bitchin we are.

Whenever someone offers me a "truth" that has to be taken on faith, I excuse myself and either go play golf or turn on YouTube TV and watch old American Dad episodes.

The devil always trying to be god. When will he ever learn.

Just trying to get around a golf course in a suitable manner takes up all the psychic energy I have.

If there are angels, devils, and ghawds, they gotta give me a lot of strokes!!

I would have given the first vision some credence if Jesus had offered Joseph Sniff a Diet 7-Up. Then we would have known he was the real deal.

Lucifer shows himself in the form of a gopher. Don’t be fooled by the little black apron.

Are you trying to get me laugh about the black apron? lol

Sorry Mr. Packham. Your thread got crack-potted.


That was an interesting observation folks are not going to hear at Sunday School.


Maybe God, who we know from the Bible has shown to be quite an unpredictable character himself, has posed as Satan for fun!


When you have stories being made up as they went along and invisible super-personages, just think of all the possibilities they could do to test our faith!

Yes!

Thanks for this. Over the years I have pointed this out to various forums but it has fallen flat.

Even if we accept everything they claim, if you slow down and analyze those claims there are enough glaring contradictions to disprove their beliefs.

It can be disarming to them to say you accept a story as true, but you still don't see a connection to TSCC being true, good, or worthwhile.

When I was younger I didn't have the resources such as the Tanners, Brodie, etc. I didn't even know they existed. Not being religious and living in Mesa, AZ I did't even know Mormonism was controversial. I only had my relentlessly logical mind and the tracts and literature my TBM sibling gave me.

So..... JS mistook Krampus for Santa... OR, he knew but lied.
Hilarious

Brigham Young was a close associate and confidant of Joseph Smith throughout the same years that the First Vision story had been published and promoted by Joseph Smith.

Brigham Young taught the entire Church, based on what he had learned from Joseph Smith, that Adam/Michael is "our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom WE have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later."

So even if the brilliantly illuminated personages in the grove are assumed to be the "good guy" top deities, and not demonic impostors, your point is still valid...since, apparently, neither Joseph Smith nor Brigham Young knew god from Adam...literally...even after Joseph had had a personal visitation!

Who were they? Here they are appearing directly to the founder of the Mormon church and they don't even bother to clearly identify themselves? They leave so much open to question that, Joseph and Brigham thought one of them was Adam, but, according to later prophets and apostles (such as Spencer W. Kimball, Bruce R. McConkie...and, well, just about everyone after Brigham Young) Brigham Young (the prophet to whom they trace their own authority as successor prophets) was confused throughout his entire lifetime about the identity of the God that Mormons worship.

If, in Brigham's lifetime, a substantial percentage of Mormons, when they pray to "our father in heaven" are thinking that they're praying to Adam/Michael, but Adam/Michael really isn't that guy (according to more modern Church leaders), what are we to make of that?

I mean how far off do you have to be before the prayers don't really count for anything? If you intend to file a petition to the local district court judge, George Willmer, but you address it by mistake to his nephew, Norbert Fishbein, does it count? What if you address it to the wrong George Willmer--another George Willmer who manages a Pizza Hut? Is that close enough?

Another problem, closely related to the Corinthians passage about Satan being able to appear as "an angel of light," is that Joseph Smith later got his own revelation about how you're supposed to test beings who appear to you with the intent to deceive. D&C 129 provides a somewhat comical and childish "handshake" test that can be used to determine whether the messenger in question is from god or is a demonic impostor. However, in none of the conflicting First Vision accounts is there any indication that Joseph Smith did anything to determine who these incandescent apparitions really were. (In the earliest First Vision draft, they were actually only referred to as angels.)

Also, if it was really God-da-Fatha (not Adam) and Jesus/Jehovah appearing to young Joseph just to tell him not to join the Baptists, Methodists, etc., why didn't they also handle the more important things that came later, like...uhmm...the restoration of the One True Church?

Why do everything through much lower-ranking entities? Moroni? Who ever heard of Moroni until Moroni showed up and made claims to Joseph about being somebody important? Wouldn't it have been better For God and God, Jr. to directly handle these things so that there wouldn't be any messy questions about who they were and what authority they had? Were they too busy? (With what?) And why couldn't they appear to Martin Harris's wife and give her a "tsk-tsk" warning to keep her from destroying the only extant translation of a huge section of the Golden Plates?

Then to top it off, we find out that Joseph Smith has huge discernment problems. We learn this from none other than David Whitmer, who tell us this:

"Well, we were all in great trouble; and we asked Joseph how it was that he had received a revelation from the Lord for some brethren to go to Toronto and sell the copyright, and the brethren had utterly failed in their undertaking. Joseph did not know how it was, so he enquired of the Lord about it, and behold the following revelation came through the stone: 'Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of men: and some revelations are of the devil.' So we see that the revelation to go to Toronto and sell the copyright was not of God, but was of the devil or of the heart of man."

So...even after the First Vision experience...even after meetings with many angels...even after getting the priesthood and all of its powers...Joseph Smith still couldn't tell the difference between (1) a revelation from God (whoever that may be); (2) a brain fart of no significance; and (3) a revelation from the DEVIL. Say what????

Why do people here debate about different accounts of the first vision, or about Angels, Lucifer, or about whether or not God in Joseph's supposed vision was really God? It's a whole lot simpler than that. Joseph Smith made it all up. End of story. There is nothing to debate. Time to move past that ridiculous story.

...that have made this conclusion so clear and obvious.

Of course he made it all up...

...just like he had "practiced" polygamy for years BEFORE he got around to making up a "revelation" from god telling him that all that practicing was good because, as it turned out, polygamy was an eternal principle, law and commandment. Joseph unknowingly had been following God's commandment all those years previously, feeling kind of worried because most people thought it was just plain evil adultery. Just imagine how relieved Joseph must have felt when God revealed to him that all the sleeping around was what God wanted him to be doing all along. Just needed to add some priesthood authorized words and rituals to make it all legit.

Of course he was making it all up.

Unfortunately, most of us here have friends and family members who still believe in it all...and some of us are still finding ourselves waking up in the middle of the night every now and then smacking our foreheads wondering why we ever could have believed in such nonsense.

For me it's therapeutic to talk about the details that show exactly how illogical, irrational and deranged so many of these "sacred" beliefs in Mormonism really are. And there's some hope that occasionally there are Mormons struggling to think their way out of the mess who will read such details and be able to start connecting the dots that will make it possible for them one day to also be able to see clearly the underlying truth of it all: He made it all up.

True, but made up stories about these invisible sky-authorities unfortunately (or fortunately depending on perspective) impact our culture and laws.

This same dynamic happens with most versions of gods. Mormonism just makes what happens more obvious. People debate what parts of the god tale is true, what was made up, and continue to impose their views of what the god wants everyone to be doing.

Why can't we move past those ridiculous stories? That's the question. We moved past Thor and Zeus but replaced them with other god myths. Mormons are amateurs! Like Terry Pratchett said in the hilarious book Small Gods, "There's no point in believing in thing that exist!"

Well, if the book of mormon is true, then it all is true. How many times have I heard that association fallacy. He made it all up... some people saw that and made their own stuff up.
I normally follow "never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by incompetence" but it strongly appears that they are all just liars.

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