Posted on 12/12/2007 6:04:34 AM PST by libstripper
WASHINGTON - Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks in an upcoming article, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"
The article, to be published in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, says Huckabee asked the question after saying he believes Mormonism is a religion but doesn't know much about it. His rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is a member of the Mormon church, which is known officially as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The authoritative Encyclopedia of Mormonism, published in 1992, does not refer to Jesus and Satan as brothers. It speaks of Jesus as the son of God and of Satan as a fallen angel, which is a Biblical account.
A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Huckabee's question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith rather than clarify doctrine.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Worse, I get the idea the writer doesn't know enough about the Mormons to properly form the questions that were asked ~ in fact, the writer doesn't know the difference between Evangelicals and snakehandlers.
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Phhhht yeah right. We PWN you.
That’s what I told my druid spirit at the old ‘sroom covered stump in the forest.
Thank you for helping make my point. If you look closely at any closely held belief system, someone can say ‘that’s just weird’.
But (chuckling a bit), I’m not about to get involved in a crevo hijack of this thread. We can argue that on a more related thread :-)
Huck is correct the Mormons do believe that Jesus and Satan where brothers.
I think this is valid to point this out.
After all a person who believes that Jesus and Satan are brothers is too stupid to be President of the United States.
Why would I deny it? The bible is quite clear that Lucifer was a son of the morning (one of the firstborn, whether he was #2 or #2022 or 2,000,002 the scriptures do not say). All we know is that Christ was the Firstborn. That he was a brother to number 2022 what exactly does that do? Lucifer was in very high standing before rebellion crept into his heart and he led 1/3 of the heavenly host away.
Amen. And some of us need to decide whether we are voting for a preacher or a President too.
Toss in some impurities and you've got DNA ~ squeezed into existence through universal forces.
Betcha' God can do that kind of thing.
Among other things, Huckabee is starting to seem like a major political opportunist. I don’t vote for major political opportunists who eat their own.
My last set of official Army dog tags listed my religion as Druid. I still have them.
More discussion on this topic:
The “First Vision” story was unknown until 1838, eighteen years after its alleged occurrence and almost ten years after Joseph Smith had begun his missionary efforts. The oldest (but quite different) version of the vision is in Smith’s own handwriting, dating from about 1832 (still at least eleven years afterwards), and says that only one personage, Jesus Christ, appeared to him. It also mentions nothing about a revival.
It also contradicts the later account as to whether Smith had already decided that no church was true. Still a third version of this event is recorded as a recollection in Smith’s diary, fifteen years after the alleged vision, where one unidentified “personage” appeared, then another, with a message implying that neither was the Son.
They were accompanied by many “angels,” which are not mentioned in the official version you have been told about. Which version is correct, if any? Why was this event, now said by the church to be so important, unknown for so long? NOTES
Careful study of the religious history of the locale where Smith lived in 1820 casts doubt on whether there actually was such an extensive revival that year as Smith and his family later described as associated with the “First Vision.” The revivals in 1817 and 1824 better fit what Smith described later. NOTES
In 1828, eight years after he supposedly had been told by God himself to join no church, Smith applied for membership in a local Methodist church. Other members of his family had joined the Presbyterians. NOTES
Contemporaries of Smith consistently described him as something of a confidence man, whose chief source of income was hiring out to local farmers to help them find buried treasure by the use of folk magic and “seer stones.” Smith was actually tried in 1826 on a charge of moneydigging.
It is interesting that none of his critics seemed to be aware of his claim to have been visited by God in 1820, even though in his 1838 account he claimed that he had suffered “great persecution” for telling people of his vision.
The only persons who claimed to have actually seen the gold plates were eleven close friends of Smith (many of them related to each other). Their testimonies are printed in the front of every copy of the Book of Mormon. No disinterested third party was ever allowed to examine them. They were retrieved by the angel at some unrecorded point. Most of the witnesses later abandoned Smith and left his movement. Smith then called them “liars.”
Smith produced most of the “translation” not by reading the plates through the Urim and Thummim (described as a pair of sacred spectacles), but by gazing at the same “seer stone” he had used for treasure hunting. He would place the stone into his hat, and then cover his face with it. For much of the time he was dictating, the gold plates were not even present, but in a hiding place.
The detailed history and civilization described in the Book of Mormon does not correspond to anything found by archaeologists anywhere in the Americas. The Book of Mormon describes a civilization lasting for a thousand years, covering both North and South America, which was familiar with horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat, barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, and other elements of Old World culture. But no trace of any of these supposedly very common things has ever been found in the Americas of that period. Nor does the Book of Mormon mention many of the features of the civilizations which really did exist at that time in the Americas.
The LDS church has spent millions of dollars over many years trying to prove through archaeological research that the Book of Mormon is an accurate historical record, but they have failed to produce any convincing pre-columbian archeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon story. In addition, whereas the Book of Mormon presents the picture of a relatively homogeneous people, with a single language and communication between distant parts of the Americas, the pre-columbian history of the Americas shows the opposite: widely disparate racial types (almost entirely east Asian - definitely not Semitic, as proven by recent DNA studies), and many unrelated native languages, none of which are even remotely related to Hebrew or Egyptian.
The people of the Book of Mormon were supposedly devout Jews observing the Law of Moses, but in the Book of Mormon there is almost no trace of their observance of Mosaic law or even an accurate knowledge of it.
Although Joseph Smith said that God had pronounced the completed translation of the plates as published in 1830 “correct,” many changes have been made in later editions. Besides thousands of corrections of poor grammar and awkward wording in the 1830 edition, other changes have been made to reflect subsequent changes in some of the fundamental doctrine of the church.
For example, an early change in wording modified the 1830 edition’s acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity, thus allowing Smith to introduce his later doctrine of multiple gods. A more recent change (1981) replaced “white” with “pure,” apparently to reflect the change in the church’s stance on the “curse” of the black race.
Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon contained the “fulness of the gospel.” However, its teaching on many doctrinal subjects has been ignored or contradicted by the present LDS church, and many doctrines now said by the church to be essential are not even mentioned there. Examples are the church’s position on the nature of God, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, polygamy, Hell, priesthood, secret organizations, the nature of Heaven and salvation, temples, proxy ordinances for the dead, and many other matters.
Many of the basic historical notions found in the Book of Mormon had appeared in print already in 1825, just two years before Smith began producing the Book of Mormon, in a book called View of the Hebrews, by Ethan Smith (no relation) and published just a few miles from where Joseph Smith lived.
A careful study of this obscure book led one LDS church official (the historian B. H. Roberts, 1857-1933) to confess that the evidence tended to show that the Book of Mormon was not an ancient record, but concocted by Joseph Smith himself, based on ideas he had read in the earlier book.
Although Mormons claim that God is guiding the LDS church through its president (who has the title “prophet, seer and revelator”), the successive “prophets” have repeatedly either led the church into undertakings that were dismal failures or failed to see approaching disaster. To mention only a few: the Kirtland Bank, the United Order, the gathering of Zion to Missouri, the Zion’s Camp expedition, polygamy, the Deseret Alphabet .
A recent example is the successful hoax perpetrated on the church by manuscript dealer Mark Hofmann in the 1980s. He succeeded in selling the church thousands of dollars worth of manuscripts which he had forged. The church and its “prophet, seer and revelator” accepted them as genuine historical documents.
The church leaders learned the truth not from God, through revelation, but from non-Mormon experts and the police, after Hofmann was arrested for two murders he committed to cover up his hoax. This scandal was reported nationwide.
The secret temple ritual (the “endowment”) was introduced by Smith in May, 1842, just two months after he had been initiated into Freemasonry. The LDS temple ritual closely resembles the Masonic ritual of that day. Smith explained that the Masons had corrupted the ancient (God-given) ritual by changing it and removing parts of it, and that he was restoring it to its “pure” and “original” (and complete) form, as revealed to him by God. In the years since, the LDS church has made many fundamental changes in the “pure and original” ritual as “restored” by Smith, mostly by removing major parts of it.
Many doctrines which were once taught by the LDS church, and held to be fundamental, essential and “eternal”, have been abandoned. Whether we feel that the church was correct in abandoning them is not the point; rather, the point is that a church claiming to be the church of God takes one “everlasting” position at one time and the opposite position at another, all the time claiming to be proclaiming the word of God. Some examples are:
- The Adam-God doctrine (Adam is God the Father);
- the United Order (all property of church members is to be held in common, with title in the church);
- Plural Marriage (polygamy; a man must have more than one wife to attain the highest degree of heaven);
- the Curse of Cain (the black race is not entitled to hold God’s priesthood because it is cursed; this doctrine was not abandoned until 1978);
- Blood Atonement (some sins - apostasy, adultery, murder, interracial marriage - must be atoned for by the shedding of the sinner’s blood, preferably by someone appointed to do so by church authorities);
All of these doctrines were proclaimed by the reigning prophet to be the Word of God, “eternal,” “everlasting,” to govern the church “forevermore.” All have been abandoned by the present church.
Joseph Smith’s early revelations were collected and first published in 1833 in the Book of Commandments. God (as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants Sections 1 and 67) supposedly testified by revelation that the revelations as published were true and correct.
Because the Book of Commandments did not receive wide distribution (most copies were destroyed by angry opponents of the Mormons in Missouri, where it was published), they were republished - with additional revelations - as the Doctrine and Covenants in 1835 in Kirtland, Ohio. However, many of the revelations as published in Kirtland differed fundamentally from their versions as originally given. The changes generally gave more power and authority to Smith, and justified changes he was making in church organization and theology. The question naturally arises as to why revelations which God had pronounced correct needed to be revised.
Joseph Smith claimed to be a “translator” by the power of God. In addition to the Book of Mormon, he made several other “translations”:
- The Book of Abraham, from Egyptian papyrus scrolls which came into his possession in 1835. He stated that the scrolls were written by the biblical Abraham “by his own hand.” Smith’s translation is now accepted as scripture by the LDS church, as part of its Pearl of Great Price. Smith also produced an “Egyptian Grammar” based on his translation. Modern scholars of ancient Egyptian agree that the scrolls are common Egyptian funeral scrolls, entirely pagan in nature, having nothing to do with Abraham, and from a period 2000 years later than Abraham. The “Grammar” has been said by Egyptologists to prove that Smith had no notion of the Egyptian language. It is pure fantasy: he made it up.
- The “Inspired Revision” of the King James Bible. Smith was commanded by God to retranslate the Bible because the existing translations contained errors. He completed his translation in 1833, but the church still uses the King James Version.
- The “Kinderhook Plates,” a group of six metal plates with strange engraved characters, unearthed in 1843 near Kinderhook, Illinois, and examined by Smith, who began a “translation” of them. He never completed the translation, but he identified the plates as an “ancient record,” and translated enough to identify the author as a descendant of Pharaoh. Local farmers later confessed that they had manufactured, engraved and buried the plates themselves as a hoax. They had apparently copied the characters from a Chinese tea box.
Joseph Smith claimed to be a “prophet.” He frequently prophesied future events “by the power of God.” Many of these prophecies are recorded in the LDS scripture Doctrine and Covenants. Almost none have been fulfilled, and many cannot now be fulfilled because the deeds to be done by the persons named were never done and those persons are now dead. Many prophecies included dates for their fulfillment, and those dates are now long past, the events never having occurred.
Joseph Smith died not as a martyr, but in a gun battle in which he fired a number of shots. He was in jail at the time, under arrest for having ordered the destruction of a Nauvoo newspaper which dared to print an exposure (which was true) of his secret sexual liaisons. At that time he had announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, set up a secret government, and secretly had himself crowned “King of the Kingdom of God.”
Since the founding of the church down to the present day the church leaders have not hesitated to lie, to falsify documents, to rewrite or suppress history, or to do whatever is necessary to protect the image of the church. Many Mormon historians have been excommunicated from the church for publishing their findings on the truth of Mormon history.
Mormonism includes many other unusual doctrines which you will probably not be told about until you have been in the church for a long time. These doctrines are not revealed to investigators or new converts because those people are not yet considered ready to have more than “milk” as doctrine. The Mormons also probably realize that if investigators knew of these unusual teachings they would not join the church. In addition to those mentioned elsewhere in this article, the following are noteworthy:
God was once a man like us.
God has a tangible body of flesh and bone.
God lives on a planet near the star Kolob.
God (”Heavenly Father”) has at least one wife, our “Mother in Heaven,” but she is so holy that we are not to discuss her nor pray to her.
We can become like God and rule over our own universe.
There are many gods, ruling over their own worlds.
Jesus and Satan (”Lucifer”) are brothers, and they are our brothers - we are all spirit children of Heavenly Father
Jesus Christ was conceived by God the Father by having sex with Mary, who was temporarily his wife.
We should not pray to Jesus, nor try to feel a personal relationship with him.
“God” (”Jehovah”) in the Old Testament is the being named Jesus in the New Testament.
In the the highest degree of the celestial kingdom some men will have more than one wife.
Before coming to this earth we lived as spirits in a “pre-existence”, during which we were tested; our position in this life (whether born to Mormons or savages, or in America or Africa) is our reward or punishment for our obedience in that life.
Dark skin is a curse from God, the result of our sin, or the sin of our ancestors. If sufficiently righteous, a dark-skinned person will become light-skinned.
The Garden of Eden was in Missouri. All humanity before the Great Flood lived in the western hemisphere. The Ark transported Noah and the other survivors to the eastern hemisphere.
So if you do not deny that this is your belief, then what is the problem here?
Why the defensive comment from the official: “ A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Huckabee’s question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith” ???
But (chuckling a bit), I’m not about to get involved in a crevo hijack of this thread. We can argue that on a more related thread :-)
Oh, I'm not trying to hijack the thread, I'm merely making the point that you understood.
The TOE does not address an origin.
I am a staunch activist Conservative... values voter... Social Conservative... and I will not vote for rootie, mitt or huckster. Don’t count us all out.
LLS
Who are southern, gun owning, daisy dukes wearing, pick up driving, Marine Corps joining, whiskey drinking and on half a day Sunday, bible banging southrons supposed to have an affinity to? A double Harvard Massachusetts financialist, whom yes is also a Mormon?
I
don’t
think
so.
And it’s been my experience that telling the above folks that they are ignorant, stupid, error prone that should just trust their Yankee betters...doesn’t work.
Maybe Mitt can eat a bag of pork rinds, a la GHW Bush, or something.
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with the wisdom of human words, lest the cross of Christ be made ineffectual.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and confound the intelligence of the intelligent."
1 Corinthians 1:17-1
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