New book explores similarities between Mormons, Masons

From the article: “...Salt Lake Temple back when they were celebrating the 200th anniversary of it.”

200th anniversary? What?

(Well, doncha know, lds are known for revising history...)

Example #1: I mean you thought your beginnings were inside of your mother's womb...
Per Lds, nope...
...Mormons went in & changed that...
...some Mormons rewrite that to be the "pre-existence" in glory...
...other Mormons recognize us as somehow being eternal from eternity past...

Example 2: Mormons like to point out how, historically, polygamy supposedly "ended" in 1890...
...and the gullible people fall for it...
...but the Lds leaders "plural unioned" several hundred more relationships between 1890-1910...
...and then on top of that, they ignore all the polygamous families which existed on during that time (they didn't break up most of those families) -- so, mainstream Mormon plural families were around into the early 1960s!!!

Example 3: Adam in Lds history went from the first man to God and then on to a "nobody" -- lesser than Eve, even! For over 25 years, Brigham Young taught that Adam was God. Now, for some reason, Lds curricula & Lds publications leave out this teaching from their "prophet." Now, how would you feel if your were Adam?

You're Adam: For 25 years, the Mormons recognize you as "God."
They sing to you.
They worship you.
They pray to you.
They hail you.
And then, suddenly, you're the god who's swept under the rug!

Now, Eve gets more praise from Mormons than Adam does -- and oddly enough, Eve gets it for sinning!

Lds apostle Dallin Oaks wrote: "Some Christians condemn Eve for her act, concluding that she and her daughters are somehow flawed by it. Not the Latter-day Saints! Informed by revelation, we celebrate Eve's act and honor her with wisdom and courage in the great episode called the Fall." ("The Choice that Began Mortality" Liahona, 2002)

Uh, OK, Dallin...You "celebrate" Eve's direct rebellion and disobedience of God that brought death for billions into the world...and has had wide-ranging consequences. And you "honor" this as a wise choice. Tell us, Dallin, how it is any Mormon parent dares to discipline their teen daughters going astray when her comeback could be: "Hey, you celebrated Eve's 'free agency' as a 'wise' choice, why can't you similarly 'honor' my drinking binges, drugs, and promiscuity?"

There is only one Savior of the world, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. I think you know this, and are throwing out whatever you can to discredit those who you disagree with. I for one won’t bother to answer these little bait bombs in the future.

Rip, you're on the right biblical track that there's only one Savior of the world -- And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be THE Savior of the world. (1 John 4:14; cf. John 4:42).

On the other hand, Rip, I guess, Lds "prophets" John Taylor & Joseph Fielding Smith didn't get your "revise Mormon history & historical theology memo"...please resend it to them...perhaps they could scrub out the following plural references to saviors from history somehow:

...we are the only people that know how to save our progenitors, how to save ourselves, and how to save our posterity in the celestial kingdom of God;...we in fact are the saviours of the world..." (Lds "prophet" John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, vol.6, p.163).

"... mortals have to be saviors on Mount Zion, acting by proxy for the dead." (LDS "prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection, p. 325)

"We know something about our progenitors, and God has taught us how to be saviors for them by being baptized for them in the flesh, that they may live according to God in the Spirit." (LDS "prophet" John Taylor, March 20,1870, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 14, 3/20/1870)

(Oh, and Rip, if you didn't previously this, I think you know this by now...and owe TN an apology for your off-base lecture)

And in light of Reaganaut's posting of the Dec. 12, 2005 photo on post #32, in which Smith's birthday is Dec. 23, and in which the BYU administrators made sure it was captioned as follows:

"We are the beneficiaries of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, a work which had its earthly commencement with the birth of the Prophet Joseph Smith, in the hills of Vermont on a December day in 1805. As we commemorate the birth of the baby in Bethlehem, the Savior of the world, may we also remember his messenger, Joseph Smith, and rejoice in his life and sacrifice."

You'll note the photo scene isn't a manger in Bethelehem. (It's a "log cabin" in Vermont).
You'll note the photo scene isn't a manger for animals; nope, it's a crib for babies.
You'll note that the "swaddling clothes" isn't for the UNNAMED "baby in Bethlehem" barely even referenced in the caption; nope, it's for the "work...birth...messenger...[and] rejoic[ing] in his [Smith's] life and sacrifice."

There ya go, contemporary idolatry at the highest Mormon educational campus made complete.

"Merry Smithmas" Rip!

By the way, can you point me to some evidence about Adam worship among Mormons in the mid-19th century?

Well, Lds didn't exactly pray, "Our Adam, who wert on earth, hallowed be thy name..." They simply inserted Adam into the God role...and frankly, many Mormons had trouble stomaching Young's teaching even after he taught it for 20 years (in 1873, the Deseret News noted Young saying "How much unbelief exists in the minds of the Latter-day Saints in regard to one particular doctrine which I revealed to them, and which God revealed to me--namely that Adam is our Father and God...).

He had been teaching Adam worship since the early 1850s: "Now, if it should happen that we have to pay TRIBUTE to Father Adam, what a humiliating circumstance it would be! Just wait till you pass Joseph Smith, and after Joseph lets you pass him, you will find Peter..." (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p. 331, 1857)

Our Father Adam is the man who stands at the gate and holds the keys of everlasting life and salvation to all his children who have or who ever will come upon the earth. I have been found fault with by the ministers of religion because I have said that they were ignoratn. But I could not find any man on the earth who could tell me this, although it is one of the simplest things in the world, until I met and talked with Joseph Smith. (Brigham Young, Deseret News, June 8, 1873)

Now that was Brigham Young later in life...26 years AFTER he arrived in Utah. From the get-go of the mass-volumed "Journal of Discourses" -- from vol. 1 in the early 1850s -- Brigham Young was teaching that Adam "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." (vol. 1, JoD, p. 50)

Now, what's really interesting, in light of us celebrating Christmas in less than two weeks, is what Young went on to say in this same message:

When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family; and when he took a tabernacle, it was begotten by his Father in heaven..."

So, Young is saying that Adam is our God, who was begotten by his "father-God"...and that Jesus was likewise physically begotten not by the Holy Ghost (as the Bible teaches), but by Adam! Young was saying that Adam had sex with the virgin Mary!!!!

In that same message he said: What a learned idea! Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven. Now, let all who may hear these doctrines pause before they make light of them, or tract them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation....remember from this time forth, and for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. (Vol. 1, JoD, p. 51)

So, not only do we have "Merry Smithmas"
-- but I guess we have to change Christmas hymns like "Of the Father's love begotten"
-- which has a line, "O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace, By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Savior of our race
-- to "Of the Adam's physical love begotten"????

I mean, after all, look at what the Mormons have done.
#1 You're the leading Mormon & teach that Adam was God -- "the only God with whom we have to do"
#2 -- and that he fathered Jesus, not the Holy Ghost.
#3 And that both Young and later Lds apostle Bruce McConkie clearly taught that was a literal physical conception.
And look what happens? Why, you get their most prestigious educational campus named after you!

BTW, not only did the BYU Administration building construct their own 2005 "Joseph Smith nativity scene," but if you look at today's Mormon Times -- BYU's newest idea of presenting another Jesus-free Nativity scene involves an elephant & a white rhino.

(Boy that sounds suspiciously like Mitt Romney in only "slight" disguise to me...'twas the "white rhino" aspect that gives him away...and they only have the elephant present to add to the pretense of him being Republican...boy, he'll do almost anything to draw the masses his way!!!)

Think I'm making this up? Go to: NativityAtBYU'sLifeScienceMuseum

Here's the Mormon Times excerpt says: The Nativity at the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at Brigham Young University includes an elephant, a white rhino and many other animals. "This Nativity is a 300-square-foot presentation that features about 30 different animal species," said Patty Jones, administrative assistant at the museum. "We started this tradition 25 years ago to simply remind our patrons that all things testify of the creator."

Yup. Anything at a BYU nativity except Jesus! (If not Joey Smith, then a white rhino undoubtedly named Willard)

And note the "nativity" timing & naming here. (Does this mean that Willard's being deemed as the new "white rhino savior" to save us from another political false messiah?)

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