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...I really do need to give up the summer cottage in Babylon!

ALL: When a Mormon like Restornu references us as Babylon, here's a good Q&A "backgrounder" so that you know the history of how Mormon leaders utilize this term, "Babylon":

Q 1: What did Lds “apostles” John Taylor and Orson Pratt have to say about Catholics & Protestants?
* "'The present Christian world exists and continues by division. The MYSTERY of Babylon the great, is mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, and it needs no prophetic vision, to unravel such mysteries. The old church is the mother, and the protestants are the lewd daughters. Alas! alas! what doctrine, what principle, or what scheme, in all, what prayers, what devotion, or what faith, `since the fathers have fallen asleep,' has opened the heavens; has brought men into the presence of God; and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to an innumerable company of angels? The answer is, not any: "There is none in all christendom that doeth good; no, not one."' (Lds “Apostle” John Taylor, Times and Seasons, Vol.6, No.1, p.811, Feb. 15, 1845...Taylor would later emerge as an Lds “prophet” in the late 1870s upon the death of Brigham Young...he did “jail time” with Joseph Smith over the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor newspaper]

* "Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent" (The Seer, p. 255).

"But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be ...But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance, and they are represented in the revelations of St. John as a woman sitting upon a scarlet colored beast, having a golden cup in her hand, full of filthiness and abominations, full of the wine of the wrath of her fornication; that in her forehead there was a name written - `Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots' " (Journal of Discourses 18:172).

"We have already proved in the previous numbers of this series that immediately after the first century the whole earth became corrupted by the great "Mother of Harlots," that apostasy and wickedness succeeded Christianity, that for the want of new revelation, all legal succession to the apostleship was discontinued that the gifts and powers of the Holy Spirit ceased and that the Church was no longer to be found on the earth: this being the case, all nations must have been destitute of the everlasting gospel for many generations - not destitute of its history as it was once preached and enjoyed but destitute of its blessings, of its powers, of its gifts, of its priesthood, of its ordinances administered by legal authority" (Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon, No.6 (1851), pg.82).

Q 2: Now did Orson Pratt did come up with applying these labels to the Church himself, or did he get it from LDS “Scripture?”

A Pratt derived this from the Book of Mormon, especially the following verses:
* "abominable church...whore of all the earth" (2 Nephi 28:18);
* "whore of all the earth" (2 Nephi 10:16)
* ”And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth. And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the whore of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.” (1 Nephi 14:10-11)
* ”...their dominions upon the face of the earth were small because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw.” (1 Nephi 14:12)
* “And it came to pass that I beheld that the great mother of abominations did gather together multitudes upon the face of all the earth, among all the nations of the Gentiles, to fight against the Lamb of God.” (1 Nephi 14:13)
”And it came to pass that I beheld that the wrath of God was poured out upon that great and abominable church, insomuch that there were wars and rumors of wars among all the nations and kindreds of the earth. And as there began to be wars and rumors of wars among all the nations which belonged to the mother of abominations, the angel spake unto me, saying: Behold, the wrath of God is upon the mother of harlots; and behold, thou seest all these things.” (1 Nephi 14:15-16)
* ”And when the day cometh that the wrath of God is poured out upon the mother of harlots, which is the great and abominable church of all the earth, whose founder is the devil, then, at that day, the work of the Father shall commence, in preparing the way for the fulfilling of his covenants, which he hath made to his people who are of the house of Israel.” (1 Nephi 14:17)
* “And the blood of that great and abominable church, which is the whore of all the earth, shall turn upon their own heads; for they shall war among themselves, and the sword of their own hands shall fall upon their own heads, and they shall be drunken with their own blood.” (1 Nephi 22:13)

* ”And every nation which shall war against thee, O house of Israel, shall be turned one against another, and they shall fall into the pit which they digged to ensnare the people of the Lord. And all that fight against Zion shall be destroyed, and that great whore, who hath perverted the right ways of the Lord, yea, that great and abominable church, shall tumble to the dust and great shall be the fall of it.” (1 Nephi 22:14)

Q 3: Where did Orson Pratt derive his concept that the “great whore” of supposed “B.C. Prophecies” in the Book of Mormon had a contemporary application to the Catholic church – and that it would be one who would give birth to "harlot daughters" (the Protestant church)?

A From Joseph Smith himself, as found in LDS "scripture" (& elsewhere). I refer the reader, for example, to "that great church, the mother of abominations" (LDS “Scripture”—Doctrine & Covenants, 88:94).

Q 4: Now did Pratt just happen to pounce upon gobs of passages from a few Nephi books in the Mormon “scriptures” and take them out of proportion, or was Mormon “scripture” rife with this need to pronounce the church-at-large as an “abomination” before God that was sourced in the devil?

A 1 Nephi 13, 1 Nephi 14, and 1 Nephi 22 uses the term “abomination” or “abominable” at least eight times! As previously shown, 1 Nephi 14:9-10 says there are only two churches: The church of the Lamb & the Church of the Devil. In the opinion of Mormon leaders, the church of the devil ("abominable church...whose foundation is the devil"-- 1 Nephi 14:9) – is the great non-Mormon church that branched out into Protestantism.

The King James-era word "abomination" is used repetitively to describe this non-Mormon church. 1 Nephi 13:6 & 2 Nephi 6:12 both call it a "great & abominable church." D&C 29:21 references it as an "abominable church" & D&C 88:94 calls it a "great church, the mother of abominations" (D&C 88:94). [Also, see references above to "whore...of all the earth."] 1 Nephi 13:32 accuses this church of censorship: "parts of the gospel kept back by that abominable church” (1 Nephi 13:32).

Also, the most important “abomination” Joseph Smith reference is to describe every single creed believed by Catholics and Protestants. LDS decided to enshrine Joseph Smith’s First Vision in LDS “scripture” – which means it’s binding as authoritative as LDS canon (not speculation; not commentary; not an opinion piece) upon the beliefs & consciences on ALL true-believing Mormons: "they [“Christian sects”] were ALL wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that their ALL creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were ALL corrupt" (from Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith-History 1:19).

Q 5: What leading Mormon general authorities were the next to carry the mantle for portraying Christian churches as linked to Babylon?

A: That fell to Lds president George Q. Cannon. Cannon was the only member of the First Presidency to serve four separate Lds “prophets” as one of the two closest counselors to the Lds “prophet” (Young, Taylor, Woodruff, and Snow). * Cannon said: "After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon" (Gospel Truth, p.324).