Ballard visited Ontario in April. From the church newsroom:

President Ballard Says First Vision ‘Most Remarkable’ Event in History

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/in-canada-president-ballard-says-first-vision-most-remarkable-event-in-history

“The most remarkable thing in the history of the world happened in the Sacred Grove in 1820,” he said. “The heavens opened.”

“Our message is the most thrilling and most profound and most exhilarating message that I know of,” says Apostle.

“Speaking of Joseph Smith, President Ballard said, “I love him.” He asked all to carry on “this great work that he brought to pass.”

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And they want to know why mainstream Christians, at least, consider that "Mormons aren't Christian". I know many Mormons feel that opinion is a tremendous insult to them.

But proclaiming Joseph's sacred grove account as the greatest event in human history (as opposed to what mainstream Christians believe) and announcing his love for Joseph just doesn't bring him or Mormon beliefs into the fold.

Maybe they like it that way. They certainly stand apart.

Speaking of loving JS: Ewww.

As for being thrilling, profound and exhilarating - he's got to get out more.

Hmpf.

It is indeed remarkable--- that anyone at all bought it.

Exactly.

I find the worst of the method used to establish Mormonism is still the main problem with religion even today.

The question was "which church to join?" which carries the automatic assumption that one of them was the right church, the true church. This is still the engrained assumption in so many humans today as it was back then. "Which" is a very misleading word in the case as it points to an assumed foregone conclusion.

It was very clever of Joseph to come up with his story. First, when everyone was claiming visions of Angels, he one-upped them with God and Jesus dropping by. (Jesus was edited in later apparently, but, whatever.) Then he asked the "which" question and the answer was NONE instead of picking one of the existing choices. You gotta hand it to Joseph. What he started may not be a great stone rolling, but you can't deny it is a great mish-mash oozing forth still to this day.


The question, rather than which, ought to be, "Why join a church? Why does religion even exist? Why take anyone's word about the notion of a God?"..

Two observations, if I may.

First, the exclusivity of religion--the One True Flavor--is really an Abrahamic one, shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Most other faiths are not exclusive. I remember as a young college student I first encountered Japan and saw data saying that 80% of Japanese are Buddhist, 20% Shinto, 15% Christian, and 10% Other.

Observation the second: JS stole the idea of a divine visitation, too. There were some other religious leaders in frontier America who had prayed for forgiveness and been visited by a God who granted them--guess what?--forgiveness!

Christianity as a whole does lay claim to exclusivity with regard to the only way. Generally denominations within Christianity (RC perhaps the largest exception) do not lay claim to an exclusive truth but accept that the one true church is the body of believers found across all Christian denominations.

Let’s assume the Mormon doctrine is true. The biggest event would be the creation because without that there’s nothing. The second biggest event would be Christ’s atonement. Without it what would be the point of even coming here? Even in Mormon World the First Vision is down on the importance list.

That’s what I was thinking.

I'd have put the invention of the printing press higher in the ranking than the . . . uh . . . which version of Joe's vision is Ballard going with?

The moon landing was pretty cool, too. And I hear there is another one in the works.

Nice!

Wonder if there'll be missions to Mars in my lifetime.

You would think that, being Christian, Nelson would regard Jesus's birth, ministry, and redeeming death to be of greater importance. Whoops!

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You would think that, being Christian, Nelson
> would regard Jesus's birth, ministry, and
> redeeming death to be of greater importance.
> Whoops!

Nelson probably does, but I'm guessing that not all of the LDS apostles are on board with this. (Holy Mackerl! Is there dissension among the Mormon church leadership? Who knew!)

You point out a very important aspect of Mormonism that probably very few Mormons ever think about. In the Mormon narrative, Jesus Christ basically failed at establishing His gospel on the earth. Joseph Smith was required to fix something that Christ couldn't keep on the earth for more than a handful of years.

I once caught a fish this big.

Aren't historical events supposed to have actually happened? Wasn't the war for Middle Earth a bigger event? What about Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star? Korben Dallas and an orange haired alien chick saving Earth? Those are historical events on par with the First Vision.

You'd think that a good Christian would say that the "Most Remarkable Event in Human History" was the crucifixion and Atonement of Christ!

Now an Apostle and official publication of the LDS church is forever stuck with: "Joseph Smith's First Vision" instead.

I know Ballard’s out: events in Jesus’ life are not events in human history. Nice lawyerly evasion.

I can't believe I bought the whole thing.


I know I was just a kid. A kid whose parents and whole town was TBM. Especially my family.

God appears to Joseph with Jesus riding shotgun. Why not?
So why shouldn't this God be popping in to see his beloved children? Makes sense.

And Joseph? The most humble, innocent, boy on the planet! My mom told me so. And uneducated to boot. Perfect qualifications. After two thousand years God finally found somebody who could restore his church. Wow. Just Wow. How lucky was God. Just when he thought it would never happen.

But.

Two Thousand years more or less. Out of billions and millions of people who lived during that time there were none who could have done it? None? Not one. I mean. They were all fooled by Satan. All. If God appeared to me I'd have done it. Anything he wanted. Well short of sleeping with women. The angels with flaming swords would have had a "situation" on their hands had they pulled that stunt.

So out of all the things I swallowed. That two thousand years bit is the one that should have been a red flag. Teaching children not to question seems more like Satan stuff than God stuff now that I think about it. But I didn't think about it. I just regurgitated.

When my Mom first told me all this I just thought, "Wow. How lucky are we."

Think of it this way.

At some point we all said, "Hey wait a minute."

So the positive out of this is that we learned our lesson. When was the last time someone gave you the big opportunity speech that is just around the corner and you said, "Sure lets jump on that bandwagon and throw caution to the wind"?

I think the most remarkable event was the building of the underground parking lot in SLC. I think Hinckley was very proud of it as his accomplishment. I bet it required a real genius to put that together at the conference center.

Which version?
The original version, the only one written by Joseph’s own hand, which only mentions one ‘Lord’ (singular) or the ‘Official version’ which is the 4th, heavily edited, version, written 18yrs later, under great duress, from a jail cell, after all the original witnesses to the Book of Mormon had been excommunicated or left the church and Joseph needed to bolster his extraordinary claims as a result?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2023 04:45PM by schrodingerscat.

What is the scale on which remarkable is judged?

I don't remark on or about the first vision hardly at all so if remarks are the scale, the claim is false.