Posted on 10/16/2012 1:59:50 PM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
Shortly after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney enjoyed cookies and soft drinks with the Rev. Billy Graham and his son Franklin Graham on Thursday at the elder Graham's mountaintop retreat, a reference to Mormonism as a cult was scrubbed from the website of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
In a section of the website called Billy Graham's My Answer there had been the question "What is a cult?"
Answer: "A cult is any group which teaches doctrines or beliefs that deviate from the biblical message of the Christian faith."
"Some of these groups are Jehovah's Witnesess, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spritualists, Scientologists, and others," the site continued.
No longer. On Tuesday, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association confirmed that page has recently been removed from the site.
“Our primary focus at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has always been promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ," Ken Barun, chief of staff for the association, told CNN in a statement. "We removed the information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign."
(Excerpt) Read more at religion.blogs.cnn.com ...
“We removed the information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign.”
Makes good sense
sad
Well, the truth is still the truth, Billy. Politicized or not. This is exactly why we suffer so much, because we never show up to the societal debates in the first place. If nobody is out there representing us how do we expect our beliefs to be represented accurately, if at all?
I have the same question, now, as an adult, about religious folks. Let's just defeat the communists first. We can kill each other later.
Or, as in Islam: Let's just defeat kill the communists Infidels first. We can kill each other later.
“Cult” per se is a modern term. The Christian church of the gospels had it simpler: you’re a believer or you aren’t. They didn’t bother to tag nonbelievers’ or heretics’ religious organizations with a special name.
They seem to be pretty adept at killing everyone at the same time. But, then, they don’t have any real opposition except each other.
Interesting, that given the Mormon church 180-year history of referencing ALL Christian sects as...[see chart below]...why don't posters like yourself be a little more specific and direct such a question to the Mormon church itself????
If you were of a given religion; and if the religion of that candidate specifically condemned you and your religion -- as the Mormon church has done of Christian sects -- would you find that "inspirational" to say "amen" by voting for that representative Mormon candidate?
BTW, many of the references below are Lds sacred "scriptures" -- vs. just some Mormon leader condemning Christians in some tabernacle sermon somewhere...IOW...we're not simply referencing some obscure leader's opinion...we're talking about Lds "sacred scriptures" which can't easily be thrown under the political bus!
Snapshot of Joseph Smith’s Slanderous Invectives vs. Christian Sects |
Mormon Source[Note: Most of these are Mormon ‘scriptures'. In fact, First three rows below are Lds 'scripture' & therefore cannot be rug-swept any more than a Jew might try to take three commandments off of the very tablets of stone Moses brought down from the mountain] |
| “...which of all the sects was right… must join NONE of them, for they were ALL WRONG… those professors were ALL CORRUPT…” | Joseph Smith – History vv. 18-19. – Lds "scripture" Pearl of Great Price |
| ...“which of all the sects was right…ALL their CREEDS were an ABOMINATION in his sight…they teach for doctrines the commandments of MEN…” | Joseph Smith – History vv. 18-19. – Lds "scripture" Pearl of Great Price |
| Mormon church the only ‘Christ-sanctioned’ church on earth: “…the foundation of this [Mormon] church…the ONLY true and living church on the face of the whole earth” [Obvious ‘scorched earth’ implication: All other churches are false and dead] | Lds “scripture” Doctrines & Covenants 1:30 |
| Direct question asked of Joseph Smith: 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons?" Answer from Lds "prophet" Joseph Smith: 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." | Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119 [Not “scripture” – but still publicly spoken by the Mormon ‘living prophet’ and published by a later Mormon ‘living prophet,’ Joseph Fielding Smith – via a publisher owned by the Mormon church – Deseret News Press, 1938] |
| “In 1952…the first official proselyting plan was sent to missionaries throughout the world…It included seven missionary discussions that emphasized…[four topics, one of them being]…THE APOSTASY and Restoration…” [This makes it 60 years that Mormon church missionaries, now numbering 55,000, have formally emphasized in its training & door to door saturation a priority in bashing the worldwide Christian church as “apostates” (100% AWOL)] | Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints p. 116, 1996 |
Actually [[ “Some of these groups are Jehovah’s Witnesess, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spritualists, Scientologists, and others ]]...
These; Are no more weird than the Roman Catholic Church.. visit latin America sometime and you will see..
BUT they all are more logical than the democrat party..
Democracy was, is and always will be Mob Rule by mobsters..
No Democracy has ever yet been democratic or ever will be..
Democracy is a lie.. a scam.. the diseased source of socialism...
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism .-Karl Marx
to wit;—>>
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.~Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has elected to become a "truth-hedger"
-- compromising Biblical and social reality
-- in favor of wielding the sanctioning of ALL of the cults (not just Mormonism)...
...all for the sake of political expediency.
There would be nothing wrong with Billy saying he and Mormons agree to disagree about deep issues of theology. That’s obvious. It’s the relatively modern term “cult” that is the flash point. But to many this concession will make the BGEA look weak. Keeping track of “cults” is a Baptist thing and, God bless the Baptists (I visit one of their churches now, and it is wonderful), they could sometimes use discretion in how they formulate their battles. Not implicitly tagging certain groups of unbelievers as worse avoids having to correct that impression later.
No takers for your THREE MINUTES HATE today, or just a need to dump a little more bile ?
Perhaps the word is modern, but cults have been around forever. Just identifying them in a different way is still appropriate. There are distinct attributes of cults, versus, say, just an unbeliever who isn’t involved with any particular groups at all.
(Thanks for the “hateful” comment...it looks like you only took 90 seconds to post...better double it)
The answer is the indians were never friends with each other to begin with. Tribes were/are historically long-term enemies with each other. this whole idea that they all got along swell and wonderfully until white guys got here (actually came back, dna evidence shows we were here before the asians came over the aleutian bridge), is just bull puckey.
What a lame of lamest compromising cop-outs.
And for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's "next" trick, they will:
(a) Remove all statements promoting one-man, one-woman marriage because they don't want to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized not only during this campaign but 24/7 by homosexual activists...iow...they will remove such statements in perpetuity.
(b) Remove all statements linked to Biblical gender distinctiveness, because they don't want to participate in theological debates about something that has become politicized by Democrats (especially feminists and gender-benders)
I’ve been woondering what the name Colofornian reminded me of, and just now it dawned:
20 years ago there was a particularly unsavory individual out of Chicago who went by the name “Colostomy Bagboy”.
No relation to you, I’m sure. His surname was Paris.
The bible already has a perfectly good word for derived, surface imitations of Christianity that differ deeply enough to matter but are similar enough to be dangerous temptations: heretic.
The official LDS, and Christian Science would qualify. Shinto and Hindu congregations would not.
Scientology would be a wrong religion that would qualify by most modern definitions as a cult, but NOT as heretic. It was never meant to be fake Christianity.
Colofornian had a very hard time in Mormon circles. I’d be disgusted too if I’d had the same experience.
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