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]

I guess THIS is the end of my morning ELSIEthon!

Time for breakfast.

[Elsie]

I think I just entered a time warp...

It's Halloween. Think...

It LIVES!!!!

[Jamestown1630]

It’s...it’s....a Brain in a Jar!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat#/media/File:Brainthatwouldntdie_film_poster.jpg

[Elsie]

Many of these people are latter-day pharisees who never learned the Christ-like virtues of being a Christian.

 

 

 

In LDS theology the voice of warning has four components:

(1) deity, who originates the message; (2) the message, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ; (3) an authorized messenger, who delivers the message; and (4) mankind, to whom the message is delivered.

"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned; and I will go still further and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that the Lord has given, and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned. Brigham Young - JoD 3:266 (July 14, 1855)

 

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Voice_of_Warning

[Elsie]

Ol' Young musta missed the following stuff:

---

The Book of MORMON:

---

 

THE BOOK OF JACOB
THE BROTHER OF NEPHI

CHAPTER 2

 

24 Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.
25 Wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph.
26 Wherefore, I the Lord God will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old.
27 Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none;
28 For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts.
29 Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes.
30 For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.
31 For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.
32 And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.

---

Doctrines and Covenants:

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 49:16 Wherefore, it is lawful that he should have one ^awife, and they twain shall be ^bone flesh, and all this that the ^cearth might answer the end of its creation;
 

---

The BIBLE:

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1 Timothy 3:2-3

2. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
3. not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

 

1 Timothy 3:12
A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well.

 

Titus 1:6
An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.

[Elsie]

Also this other fella that started the mess...

---

Section 132

Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Nauvoo,

Illinois, recorded 12 July 1843, relating to the new and

everlasting covenant, including the eternity of the marriage

covenant, and also the plurality of wives (see History of the

Church, 5:501–7). Although the revelation was recorded in 1843,

 it is evident from the historical records that the doctrines and

principles involved in this revelation had been known by the

Prophet since 1831.

 

 

http://lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132?lang=eng

 

 

 

(Straight from the horses mouth; so to speak...)

[teppe]

Christ also wanted his disciples to be one with him and God

John 17: 20-24.(...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 they may be one as we are one...

So .... If God and Christ are one .... and Christ wants you to be one with him and God ....

...how come you have not left this earth and merged your personna with God???

[teppe]

So if Jesus Christ prays to himself (as God the Father) does he communicate in any other way to himself?

Can he do self talk or does the God the Father side of him only hear when he as Jesus Christ prays?

Also Mark 13:32” But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.”

So how much info Does the God the Father part of the Trinity entity keep from Christ the Savior part of the Trinity entity? How do they comparmentalize information so that the other part doesn’t know?

Also Mathew 47:46 “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Does “God the Father” part of the Trinity entity often forsake “Christ the Savior” part of the Trinity entity?

There is probably some excellent medication as well as psychiatric counseling that your God could benefit from.

My God; however, Almighty God, the Father of my Savior Jesus Christ, has no identity confusion that yours apparently does; nor does he keep information from himself as your apparently does .... nor does he abandon himself as yours apparently does.

[Elsie]

JS should have changed those verses in the JST

He must have gotten an ok from god

It’s just hard to figure out which one.

Even the BoM says One God; doesn’t it.

[teppe]

Nope .... Sorry Elsie that you don’t like those scriptures that disprove the Trinity baloney, but alas they are in the scriptures.

You must also hate the beginning of Genesis “God created man in his own image” ... not to mention that God fathered Jesus Christ..... kind of puts a dent in the whole god is spirit with a three-way schizophrenia disorder called the ‘Trinity’

[Elsie]

Sorry you cannot accept Testimony of three witnesses about ONE god it makes you susceptible to a spirit of apostasy

Beware!

[Elsie]

Let US make man in OUR image

At least TWO of something

‘‘Tis either God’s or 2/3 of a trinity

[Elsie]

. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.

[fproy2222]

We can become joint hairs with Jesus Christ.

What does that mean to you?

[fproy2222]

For got you. Let Else answer it first. I bet he will not answer because that is his historical way.

[teppe]

So .... in your “Trinitarian” view of Christ ....

.......Jesus prays to himself?

Can he also communicate to himself when he talks/thinks ..... or does it have to be prayer?

Does he know that there are excellent medications available for his scizophrenia?

[Zionist Conspirator]

I just finished rereading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, “A Study In Scarlet”. It was forty years since I first read Sherlock Holmes. It mentions the Mormon Avenging Angels. Conan Doyle clearly didn’t like them.

It's true that Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes story cast the mormons as the villains. However, years later he changed his mind, saying he had been misinformed, and even spoke once at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.

This is not an apologia for mormonism, merely a historical fact.

[fproy2222]

Hi, If i may join your conversation.
I wish I could remember where, a bunch of years ago i read of a western novel where the heroin had to jump out of the window of the Salt Lake temple into the great salt lake. Then she swam out to a passing freighter and cought a ride back to England.

Just more of the accuracy in print about Mormons.

[Elsie]

Not MY view
But Your three witnesses

Deal with that historical fact

[Elsie]

It means either a typo or poor proofreading skills