Affixing blame for the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Patheos ^ | SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 | DAN PETERSON

[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.

[Elsie]

If that were true you would take the time to learn why what you sait was not only untrue, it is insulting.

HUH?

Why? What would you expect from WHORES???

---

"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  Orson Pratt )     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Pratt

[Elsie]

You DO believe the above; right??

[Elsie]

...but true religious bigotry only attacks, never seeks to understand.

I see...

---

Questions put to Joseph Smith:

 

"'Do you believe the Bible?' [Smith:]'If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do'. When asked 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons'? [Smith replied] 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119). 

Found in section 3 --> http://www.boap.org/LDS/Joseph-Smith/Teachings/T3.html  (search for 119)

 

 

"for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (from Pearl of Great Price 1:12).

Found here --->  https://books.google.com/books?id=PkNOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=different+sects+understood+the+same+passages&source=bl&ots=17G4-8kYsz&sig=ACfU3U0v-r6iFwZgZnOdUB1_ivzkhFiirQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq0YqUpajlAhUGUK0KHbHxDNUQ6AEwCXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=different%20sects%20understood%20the%20same%20passages&f=false

 

"What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.270).

Found in section 5 --> http://www.boap.org/LDS/Joseph-Smith/Teachings/T3.html  (search for 270)

 

 

---

Brigham Young stated this repeatedly:

 

"When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness" (Journal of Discourses Section 5 page 73);

"The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God" (Journal of Discourses  Section  8 page 171);

"With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world" (Journal of Discourses Section  8 page 199);

"Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity" (Journal of Discourses Section 10  page 230).

"And who is there that acknowledges [God's] hand? ...You may wander east, west, north, and south, and you cannot find it in any church or government on the earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Journal of Discourses Section  6 page 24);

You DO agree with the Prophets; right??

[Elsie]

So what is your response to post #32?

That could be asked of many posts addressed to him that never get a response.

[Elsie]

It’s a Millet to Missionary teaching...

[Elsie]

For some reason there are people who only know how to put others down to build themselves up.

Well!

You've FINALLY noticed!!

[Elsie]

The Mormons were in Utah because they were driven out of Missouri and Ohio.

Driven?

The ones who stayed behind PROSPERED and were NEVER subjected to EXTERMINATION.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Horndog Prophet Placemarker

[Elsie]

Stay behind and live longer!

 

 

Bashore worked with a team of actuarial scientists at Brigham Young University to analyze 56,000 pioneer records from 1847-1868. Of these 56,000, there were an estimated 1,900 people who died either on the plains or within the calendar year of their arrival. That is about a 3.5 percent mortality rate, whereas a national comparison group in 1850 experienced an annual mortality rate between 2.5 percent and 2.9 percent.

 

 

https://news.byu.edu/news/death-trek-study-mormon-pioneer-mortality

[Elsie]

What are your answers to the questions you asked me?

YOU are supposed to waste your time looking them up.

It's an ENLIGHTENING thing.

[Elsie]

... as a Christian you might what to learn what is real and what is not true at these ‘Mormon Roasts’

Honey; I'm doing the best I can to give the Mormon MEAT to the Investigators. Surely by now they are weaned from the milk SLC sells.

[READINABLUESTATE]

“Didnt this happen like two hundred years ago?”

Shouldn’t this be in breaking news?

[Elsie]

... how do I know which one of you is teaching “true Christianity”?

This very same question has been answered in the first book found in your QUAD.

---

Acts 17 King James Version (KJV)

17 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews:

² And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,

³ Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.

⁴ And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.

⁵ But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

⁶ And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;

⁷ Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.

⁸ And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things.

⁹ And when they had taken security of Jason, and of the other, they let them go.

¹⁰ And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews.

¹¹ These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

¹² Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.

¹³ But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also, and stirred up the people.

[Elsie]

Later, a William Reynolds would justify the killing by saying, “Nits will make lice, and if he had lived he would have become a Mormon.

 Seems that was a saying that would perculate through society...

At dawn on November 29th, 1864, he and 700 men reached the edge of Black Kettle's camp on the banks of Sand Creek. Many of them were drunk from the whiskey they had swallowed to warm them during an icy all-night ride. One of William Bent's sons, Robert, was riding with Chivington, commandeered at gunpoint to show the way to the Cheyenne camp. Bent's other children -- Charles, Julia and George -- were all inside the camp.

Some regular army officers protested that to attack the peaceable village would betray the army's pledge of safety. Chivington ignored them. "Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians," he said. "Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." He ordered the attack.

[Elsie]

The home of ‘true’ Mormonism

[Elsie]

YOU are constantly telling others that their religions are ‘bogus’.

Yup; and I use the Bible versus their teaching to do it!

---

Jesus knew there would be FALSE Prophets that would arise, and the disciples were tasked with denouncing false teachings.

So; if that is my albatross, I'll wear it and bear the stench.

[Jamestown1630]

I think I just entered a time warp...

[Elsie]

...it is strictly you opinion on whether We belong to the Christian family or not.

Repeating this LDS teaching will never make it so.

---

I refer to the CELESTIAL level of heaven where a minority of even MORMONs will get to enter; versus the second level where the REST of the Mormons and the 'whores of Babylon' will end up.

---

It is not that I that have excluded you guys from 'Christianity' but your own additions and teachings that have removed your selves.

[Elsie]

...it is strictly you opinion on whether We belong to the Christian family or not.

Repeating this LDS teaching will never make it so.

---

I refer to the CELESTIAL level of heaven where a minority of even MORMONs will get to enter; versus the second level where the REST of the Mormons and the 'whores of Babylon' will end up.

---

It is not that have excluded you guys from 'Christianity' but your own additions and teachings that have removed your selves.

[Elsie]

The quote is “It is wrong to criticize...” I don’t see that as a prohibition

Oh?

How did you see THIS??

"Any Latter-day Saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or otherwise, any plan or doctrine advocated by the 'prophets, seers, and revelators' of the Church is cultivating the spirit of apostacy..."