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.
That deception will not wash, teppe. The Mormons tricked the wagon train into believing they were being taken hostage, then the Mormons murdered them all execution style, up close and personal. The only survivors of the wagom train were children so young they could not tell the truth of what happened.
Passions ran high in Mormon culture back then. Brigham Young had two guys, Hickman and Rockwell, who would disappear anyone who made Brigham unhappy.
Then Brigham drew a map of the Mountain West and declared a great big chunk of it a separate and sovereign country. The Feds sent the army out to abort that venture.
So along comes a wagon train of gentiles headed west and the locals saw it as an opportunity to get some revenge.
The definition of a Christian is a believer in the Christ, the Messiah, the second Person of the triune God, Emmanuel -—GOD with us, as revealed in the Holy Bible. The book of Mormon has some lovely passages in it, some of which are true, but anything in it that contradicts The Holy Bible, is a lie from the pit of Hell. If you recall, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, spoke just enough truth to beguile Eve. That’s one of his specialties -— perverting the WORD of God. I don’t know if you are an adult convert, or were born into the Mormon church (in which case you have been indoctrinated from birth). In such a case, one could almost not blame you for your beliefs, but since the Holy Bible is readily available to you, and I assume you’ve read it, you are without excuse. Your eyes have been blinded, but if you diligently seek Him, through the Holy Bible, He will be found!
Are you acquainted with the Lorenzo Snow couplet? Is that god you are so close to, the one who was a man and had to earn godhood?
Look up The Hawn’s Mill Massacre and other ‘Christian’ acts toward Mormons before you speek about what early Saints went through.
Mountain Meadows was wrong, but your rendition of reasons is worse..
You’re not even a Christian, teppe, so how would you recognize one? Your Momron god had to earn godhoos Your false religion teaches that men can attain godhood, also and have their own planet and sire billions of children with their spirit wives. The Truth is not in you teppe.
There’s no such thing as a ‘ Genious ‘, dolt. And you’ve spelled it that way twice so far that I have seen. want to go for a third, genius?
… Captain Comstock, who previously had assured the Mormons at the mill of their safety, had returned the next day attacking them, saying he had received an order from Governor Boggs via Coronal Ashley
(Snip)
Shortly before the massacre, anti-Mormon raiders confiscated gun and weapons from Mormon settlers and immigrants.[9] Some of those living in the surrounding area gathered to Hawn’s Mill for safety.
(Snip)
On October 30 at approximately 4 p.m., the militia rode into the community. David Evans, a leader in the community, ran towards the militia, waving his hat and calling for peace. Alerted to the militia’s approach, most of the Latter-day Saint women and children fled into the woods to the south, while most of the men headed to the blacksmith shop. Unfortunately, the building was a particularly vulnerable structure as the widely spaced logs made it easy for the attackers to fire inside. The shop became a deathtrap, since the militia gave no quarter, discharging about 100 rifles into the building.[10] Grand River Township Justice of the Peace Thomas McBride, wounded while escaping the blacksmith shop, surrendered his gun to Jacob S Rogers Jr. who shot him, then hacked his body with a corn knife (scythe blade). According to their own account they fired seven rounds making upwards of 1,600 shots during the attack of Hawn’s Mill.[22] The attack lasted 30 to 60 minutes. The sun set at 5:16 p.m.[23]
(Snip)
Members of the militia entered the shop and found 10-year-old Sardius Smith, 7-year-old Alma Smith (sons of Amanda Barnes Smith), and 9-year-old Charles Merrick hiding under the blacksmith’s bellows. Alma and Charles were shot (Charles later died), and a militia man known as “Glaze, of Carroll county”, killed Sardius when he “put his musket against Sardius’s skull and blew off the top of his head.”[24] 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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haun%27s_Mill_massacre
Ping
I spelled it purposefully that way to demonstrate that you are incapable of by-passing your religious-bigotry to looking beyond the obvious!
My case proven, you dolt!
News Flash! If I believe in Christ and you say I am not a Christian .... then .... neither are you!!!
Mathew 7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
Your just a ‘Pharisee in Christian Clothing’!
Tell me, proy, how does the evil committed by the persecutors of the Mormons at Hawn’s Mill make okay the evil perpetrated against innocent wagon train travelers? Why would you try to make the comparison unless you are seeking to ease the evil at MMM? That is the tactic of moose limb murderers apologists!
LOL, so all your typos and spelling mistakes are little traps by your clever soul? LOL, typical ‘Momron’ apologetics.
There is no requirement that a Christian believe in Emperor Costantines dictated ‘homousis’ triune God.
Neither Origin nor Tertullian believed in the later concept of the Trinity (although Tertullian likely coined the term, he did not use it in a homousis manner) and both were Christian.
In-fact even Christ himself did not believe in the Trinity as evident in the bulk of biblical passages.
Yes, I also believe that there is much that God has not told mankind about himself or what has transpired. Why throw pearls before swine? Could you conceive of God having truths that you currently are not in possession of? I suppose that your religious-bigotry would not allow you to entertain that concept.
teppe, the god of your religion had to earn godhood. His son was sired by sexual intercourse. No, you are not believing and following Christ, you are following the fables from Joe Smith. IF you were a Christian you would awaken to the truth of the religion you’re defending and the lies and blasphemies therein. IF you were a born again member in God’s family He would not leave you in such heresy. Claiming to be a Christian with the Holy spirit seal upon your human spirit but really serving an antichrist religion is a sin against the Holy Spirit, taking the Lord’s name in vaine, teppe. It is heresy.
Deception? You mean suggesting that the simultaneous U.S. invasion on Utah may have something to do with a sense of panic by its people, and may have pushed some over the edge???
How brilliant of an analysis in not recognizing external factors due to extreme religious bigotry.
You really are a pharisee in Christian clothing!
Mormon men did it to take women
It’s not a new concepts
Massacre and take breeding stock
That’s how Mormonism spread so fast
Multiple wives and breed em
It worked
Utah has a plethora of good looking women
And what is essentially a state church
Just one man’s opinion
Other than Mormonism I like Mormons ....a lot actually
Mormonism I find troubling if I’m honest with myself
Doesn’t mean I can’t just accept that peacefully
It’s not to late for you to repent either since you also believe in the lie that Jesus Christ was speaking to himself on the cross when he stated ‘Father why has thou forsaken me’.
If you believe in God and sincerely ask Him to reveal himself to you, H will. Through his word and the power of the Holy Ghost.
Our God does not have a three-way personality crisis! Jesus Christ is the literal Son of the Almighty God! Repent of the Heresy that became the non-biblical creeds!
Believe in the Word of God....reject the Creeds of Man!
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