Posted on 09/22/2019 4:04:02 PM PDT by robowombat
Affixing blame for the Mountain Meadows Massacre SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 BY DAN PETERSON
This is not a photo of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. We have none. So I went for a cheerier note. This is a photo (by James Jordan) of director Mark Goodman working just a few days ago with extras in Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, for the “Witnesses” film project.
I note that I’m being accused by a small handful of people of blaming the Mountain Meadows Massacre on “anti-Mormons.”
First, two preliminary observations:
1) When I write anything for the public, at least some people will misread it in the most negative way that they possibly can.
2) The Mountain Meadows Massacre is, for quite manifest reasons, a controversial topic. And, accordingly, it’s one that some people are strongly inclined to exploit for ideological ends.
Of course, I don’t blame the Massacre on “anti-Mormons.” I blame it on the people who did it.
But the perpetrators interest me very particularly because, overwhelmingly, they do not seem to have been conventionally bad people – thugs, murderers, and the like – either before September 1857 or, for the most part, thereafter.
So the question that puzzles me (in this case as in more than a few others) is, What makes ordinary, decent people commit so extraordinarily horrific a crime?
Reading the Oxford book Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by Ron Walker and Rick Turley and Glen Leonard, when it first came out many years ago, I felt as if I were seeing a Greek tragedy unfold. There was a certain inexorable logic to what ultimately happened – a horrible logic, obviously, but one in which it made a certain degree of sense, after one bad step had been taken, to take the next one. I found myself wanting to scream “No! Stop!” while knowing what the outcome was inevitably going to be.
To me, if we see the people who committed the Mountain Meadows Massacre as utterly unlike ourselves, we’re not only falsifying history (and not merely in the sense that they, like me and many of my readers, claimed membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) but refusing to see a lesson (or, more aptly, lessons) in what happened. If they were something of a different species, their cautionary tale can have little if anything to teach us.
In order to understand what they did, we need to understand what factors acted upon them. And, beyond any reasonable dispute, one of the most important of those factors was a prior history of persecution and forced migration.
That doesn’t mean that the Missouri mobs bear legal and moral responsibility for the Mountain Meadows Massacre any more than an abusive father is responsible for the violent acts committed much later by a criminal son. But neither are the two unrelated. Human evils ramify. They do damage, among other things to human psyches.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre certainly isn’t the Restoration’s finest hour. It’s anything but faith-promoting. But it shouldn’t be exploited as a weapon against the Church or against religious belief, either. It’s too complex to be reducible to a self-serving slogan on a partisan bumper sticker.
Hearsay again?
Nephi seems to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son. Christ “witnesseth” obedience unto the Father (2 Nephi 31:7), and keeps the commandments of the Father (2 Nephi 31:7-11). In Jacob’s day, the righteous Nephites worshipped the Father in Christ’s name and saw the story of Father Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his Son Isaac as “a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son” (Jacob 4:5-6), which strongly suggests that they are separate individuals. Other passages describe Jesus as in complete harmony with but still subordinate to his Father (3 Nephi 11:32-36). Jesus prays to the Father (3 Nephi 17:13-18; 19:19-34), is sent by the Father (3 Nephi 27:13), the Father introduces the Son (3 Nephi 11:3-7), the Father commands the Son (3 Nephi 15:16; 16:10), the Son like an advocate for the defense hold the righteous guiltless before his Father at the day of judgement (3 Nephi 27:16). Since the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are all described in the Book of Mormon as separate and distinct individuals, they constitute “one God” or divine government which is unified in purpose, will, doctrine and testimony.
Your turn
Yes .... We believe in the Godhead of The Father, Jesus Christ his son, and the Holy Ghost. We do not believe in the Nicene/Apostolic or Athenasian Creeds.
But as a Creed believer, yourself, .... you believe that God, Christ and the Holy Ghost are merely three ‘persona’ of one individual God.
Consequently, a Creed/Trinitarian Christian believes that Jesus Christ prayed to himself in the Garden of Gethsamane.
Also .... Trinitarians do not like the verse “God created Man in his own image”, since the Human equivalent of the Trinitarian God would be someone with a schizophrenia multiple personality disorder.
We gentiles are agents of Satan, but you guys still believe in One GOD as your three witnesses have told as well as your Book of Mormon
You have to go to sleep at night with your own history nagging at you
Have a nice eternity on level 2
Sorry ....
I believe that Our Lord and Savior in Gethsemane prayed to Almighty God, the Father in Heaven.
Pure and Simple .... just like it says.
In order to believe in the Trinitarian Creeds .... Christ prayed to himself...............
........... I thought only Barak Obama did that!
What Level is he on again?
Oh to be among the minority of Mormons who will finally get to be with the Father there.
To bad for the majority that will only look and say, "...if only..."
Level? Almighty God, is our Father in Heaven, whom all worship. Even the resurrected Jesus Christ, our Savior and the Holy Ghost worships God the Father, and will continue to do so with us for eternity.
There is no multiple personality schizophrenia Dietry level like you believe .... where Jesus Christ pretends to be praying to God but is really praying to himself.
Yes; level.
Are you worthy enough to live with the Father for eternity; or will you be on Level Two; with me??
AFTERLIFE: The Mormon afterlife is divided up into four levels. From the lowest to the highest they are: hell, and then three levels of heaven: the telestial, the terrestrial, and the place where God dwells, the celestial (also called the kingdom of God). The celestial is also divided, the highest level being "exaltation," or becoming a God.
CELESTIAL KINGDOM: See Heaven.
EXALTATION: This is becoming a God in the highest level of the celestial kingdom.
HEAVEN-The Mormon church teaches there are three levels of heaven (three "degrees of glory"):
What I 'believe' mattereth not.
What DOES have consequences is what three witnesses wrote:
And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.An 1830 statement titled "Testimony of Three Witnesses"—one statement signed by three men rather than three separate statements—was published at the end of the first edition of the Book of Mormon.
Touche’ .... Elsie, actually that was a pretty good reply.
But, once again, the term ‘one’ is being used for ‘unity’ as Christ said in John 17:21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
If I can be ‘One’ with God and Christ .... just as Christ and God are ‘One’ ....
....then the Doctrine of the Trinity is ‘Mother of all Fake News!’
If?
Sounds like a short version of: “Did GOD really say?
Tell this to the Three witnesses.
I wonder what level THEY ended up on?
Seems as there was a bit of controversy about them.
Paul Harvey would say; "The REST of the story" of the three witnesses:
Can you be ‘One’ with God, just as Christ is ‘One’ with God?
Remember .... you believe in a mysterious 3-in-1; 1-in-3; God that mysteriously morphs into any combination of the various single or multiple identities instantaneoulsy ....
....are you also Schizophrenic?
Was Adam schizophrenic? .... since God created Man in the Image of God.
Yes, I believe the three witnesses.
And also, yes, I believe that God the Father, Christ his ‘begotten’ son, and the Holy Ghost are one in purpose, goals, vision, motivation .... but are completely separate beings.
News Flash: Jesus Christ mortal body had ‘DNA’. That DNA was comprised of 50% Mary and 50% God the Eternal Father.
Therefore; three gods.
I see.
Do you believe the Heavenly Mother is a GOD as well?
I’m sorry you don’t like the Bible. Everyone prays to God the Father .... even Jesus Christ.
Maybe your better off abandoning the Bible and embracing the Catholic Creeds instead.
Ever read the Bible and notice??? .... God the Father gets prayed to by Jesus Christ?
Jesus Christ does the will of the Father??
The Holy Ghost does the bidding of the Father??
Sounds to me like Almighty God, the Father, is the boss.
....not that co-equal, 1-in-3, 3-in-1, Emperor Constantine dictated/coerced non-biblical creed stuff that you believe in.
It is no wonder that God needed to restore his gospel again to the earth in 1820!
Could you PLEASE just answer a simple question instead of pontificating so much?
False Prophet Smith gave you all the non-biblical stuff YOU believe in.
But if the BoM contained the 'Restored Gospel'; then why the need for all of the confusing and conflicting D&C's??
And Egyptian papyrus; too?
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