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Posted on 05/08/2008 5:04:47 PM PDT by Grig
I am posting this on behalf of many LDS freepers. They will post their own 'signature' to this in the comments below. --- Some of you have noticed lately a lot of LDS (ie: Mormon) threads here on FR. I'm going to tell you why.
For many years there have been several active LDS freepers here. We post to all the forums on relevant issues, and were happy to have a site where conservative values were so openly welcomed.
Those conservative values include faith in God, and freedom of religion. We fully respect the rights of all posters to express their opinions and views on religious matters, even when people choose to use those rights to express criticism of our own faith. We also support the ideas embodied in FR rules against religion bashing. There is no need for hostility and there should be no room for bigotry on FR. Every religion has it's miracles and mysteries. Every faith has things in it that are not or can not be proven, and things that run contrary to what secular science would have us believe. Someone mature and confident in their own faith generally doesn't feel the need to belittle the faith of others.
We have, to the best of our ability, conducted ourselves with civility and dignity. We do not feel that that respect has been returned by some posters (putting it mildly).
When Mormon missionaries were murdered, the moderators were kept busy pulling jubilant posts off the thread. When Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her home, we contended for months with posters who appeared to be motivated by religious bigotry doing all they could to smear the family and accuse the father. Several posters openly admitted their religious motivation in opposing Mitt Romney and confessed that no matter how conservative any Mormon was, they would never vote for one for President of the USA. When the Pope died, I don't think any Mormon poster posted anything unkind, yet the thread about the passing of our President recently needed many comments removed.
Nearly every thread having any connection with Mormons, or Utah winds up being hijacked by anti-Mormon activists who copy and paste the same false accusations over and over even when it has been clearly and factually pointed out to them on multiple occasions that they are bearing false witness against our faith. Everything possible is done by these activists to make FR a hostile place for Mormons, and for at least some of them, bashing Mormonism is all they do here. Their most recent project is trying to blur the fact that the polygamous FLDS is a separate and distinct religion from ours, just as Lutherans are a separate and distinct religion from Catholicism.
In our opinion, such poster do a great disservice to FR and to their fellow freepers by spreading disinformation and promoting hostility towards a people known for walking the walk of conservative values.
Why the moderators here don't see the behavior of these anti-Mormon activists as religion bashing is a mystery to us, but it is the moderators call to make and we respect their right to do so. That doesn't mean we have to be passive however. We have all spent many hours refuting the accusations leveled at our faith, but these wind up buried deep in a flood of comments, effectively shouting us down.
Recently some of us have decided to take a more proactive approach. Rather than try to wrestle the pig into taking a bath, we are just going to hose it down. We will actively define our faith here rather than just respond to accusations.
So expect to see lots of Mormon threads, now and for as long as we see fit to keep posting them (although probably not as many as there are Catholic threads). They will be about our basic doctrines and responses to common accusations. If you want to know what our faith is about, read the articles we post. We will post them as open threads and I encourage you to compare the difference in tone and spirit between what we post and what our critics say.
YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
:)
Really who?
THe false prophet Joseph Smith shot and killed THREE men with only ONE bullet ???
WOW that’s some fine shootin’
Does Buffalo Bill know about him ???
He could join the Wild West Show ...
Have a real jovb for once...
****
Was Joseph Smith Really a Martyr?
Question: How can Latter-day Saints believe Joseph Smith died as a martyr? All he really did is lose a gun fight at Carthage Jail and killed two men before he died.
Anti-Mormons continue to put unorthodox spins on words such as “Christian,” “trinity,” and now “martyr.” Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “martyr” as a person who chooses to suffer or die rather than give up his faith or his principles, or a person tortured or killed because of his beliefs. There is nothing in this definition to prohibit a martyr from defending himself.
Joseph Smith certainly fits this definition of a martyr. To say differently is to either invent a new definition or to be ignorant of the facts regarding the last few days of the prophet’s life.
On June 23, 1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were on the Iowa side of the river on their way to the Great Basin. Orrin P. Rockwell and Reynolds Cahoon carried a message from Emma requesting that Joseph return to Nauvoo (History of the Church, Vol.6, p.549). Joseph Smith replied to their requests with, “If my life is of no value to my friends it is of none to myself’ (p.549).
Before returning to Nauvoo later that sarne evening, he made a statement that he would repeat several times in the next few days. He declared that if he and Hyrum returned “we shall be butchered” (p. 550). Yet regardless of his foreknowledge of his pending death, that afternoon he, Hyrum and others started back. While some of the party were in a hurry to return to Nauvoo, Joseph said, “It is of no use to hurry, for we are going back to be slaughtered” p.551). Obviously the prophet knew the fate that was awaiting him, yet he chose to “he killed because of his beliefs” rather than to escape death, which he could have easily done.
The next morning a reported 200 people were at Joseph’s home in Nauvoo, wanting to see the prophet one more time and to give him their support before he left for Carthage. His mother is reported to have asked him to promise her that he would return, as he had promised during other times of trial. There was no such assurance from the prophet on this occasion.
On the way to Carthage later in the day, the party stopped at the farm of Albert G. Fellow, four miles west of Carthage, where Joseph Smith uttered these fateful words:
I am going like a lamb to the slaughter, but I am calm as a summer’s morning. I have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward all men. If they take my life I shall die an innocent man, and my blood shall cry from the ground for vengeance, and it shall be said of me ‘He was murdered in cold blood!’ (p.555).
June 27th found the prophet, his brother Hyrum, John Taylor, and Willard Richards in jail without the protection Governor Ford had promised. At a little after 5 p.m., a mob stormed up the stairs, forced the cell door open and began firing into the room as others fired in the window. Mter Hyrum fell a “dead man” and as John Taylor was hit several times with flying bullets, Joseph Smith discharged his six shooter into the stairway. His bullets struck three men. Here the historical account is cloudy; some accounts say two men later died, but this conclusion is not certain.
We do know that Joseph Smith and his elder brother Hyrum were killed and John Taylor was seriously wounded, having been shot four times. Willard Richards, eyewitness to the event, remained unharmed. He told of the dreadful incident.
If a martyr is a person who chooses to suffer or die rather than give up his faith or his principles, Joseph Smith fits this definition as well as any other person who has ever been slain.
He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people, and like most of the Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood-and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated (p.630).
HA! You always do that!
How about the ones who DID have a testimony? Did you accept their testimony if it didn't agree with yours? Or did you try to convince them their testimony was wrong. You wouldn't accept MY testimony.
I didn't see anything wrong with the answerbag quote...and I don't seen anything wrong with parents writing off the money.
It just seems a little penurious of the LDS church to make members pay for their own missions when the mormon church is one of the richest corporations going. Many individual churches, (mine for example) have a mission fund that is supported by the general membership to support their missionaries. There is no hardship on the individual members.
And as I noted, I suspect that the LDS church includes the payment of these funds (raised from members) in their "statistics" when quoting the amount of giving to charity in their PR releases.
In MY opinion, the "Pasha of Pontification" is one of the major annoyances on FR on thread after thread after thread.
And your claim is to want to persuade, not alienate PONTFICATE.
You are SOOOOoooo easy to please! ;)
per·suader n.
Synonyms: persuade, induce, prevail, convince These verbs mean to succeed in causing a person to do or consent to something. Persuade means to win someone over, as by reasoning or personal forcefulness: Nothing could persuade her to change her mind.
To induce is to lead, as to a course of action, by means of influence or persuasion: "Pray what could induce him to commit so rash an action?" Oliver Goldsmith.
One prevails on somebody who resists: "He had prevailed upon the king to spare them" Daniel Defoe.
To convince is to persuade by the use of argument or evidence: The sales clerk convinced me that the car was worth the price.
http://www.answers.com/topic/persuade HMMMMMMMMM
See #107
1007 and FM.
Hmmm, I wonder if vinegar would work? If it doesn’t, at least my lawn will smell like a salad...smile.
That and a little oil, a few carrots....no wait...hold the carrots. That might invite the bunnies...
*sigh*
All of my good ideas are bad. :oþ
Well, dear one, you just keep trying...
Well, All I can say is that folks are going to be “saved” in spite of what they do!
A religion board? I thought it was a smorgasbord? I mean, there are so many things here to choose from....
As long as we tone down the anti-whatever rhetoric, I don’t mind it a bit! After all, we’re all God’s Children!
Someone told me earlier I WAS trying. Only, I don’t think it was meant as a compliment. ;o]
From wiki- Churches of Christ are a movement of autonomous Christian congregations associated with one another through common beliefs and practices. They seek to model their congregations as closely as possible to their understanding of how New Testament Churches operated.
Historically, Churches of Christ in the United states were recognized as a distinct movement by the U.S. Religious census of 1906. Prior to that they had been reported in the religious census as part of the Movement that had its roots in the Second Great Awakening under the leadership of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott, and Barton W. Stone. Those leaders had declared their independence from their Presbyterian roots, seeking a fresh start to restore the New Testament church, abandoning man made creeds and interpretations. The names Church of Christ, Christian Church and Disciples of Christ were adopted by the movement because they believed that these terms were found in the Bible. Other names the movement did not believe to be biblical were rejected, such as Campbellite, Stoneite, Campbell-Stone movement, and even Restoration Movement. Even so, the rejected terms were used by those outside the movement to identify it.[citation needed]....
Which you equate to people working there for free. Nope, only means mormons can write off any donations to them to get more money back for themselves.
Speaking often at firesides, Welch had seen great need for an organization that could coordinate and distribute research on the Book of Mormon.
So he was on a speaking tour – lots of folk make a lot of money that way too.
In the 1990s, FARMS enjoyed rapid growth, fueled by donations that considerably increased its yearly operating budget. During the mid-1990s, the BYU administration became interested in the prospect of incorporating FARMS into the university.
Budget – I thought they were working for free to keep away from all that filthy lucre stuff.
President Hinckley said: "FARMS represents the efforts of sincere and dedicated scholars. It has grown to provide strong support and defense of the Church on a professional basis. . . .
Incase you havn’t figured it out, when you hire people on a professional basis, they are being paid for what they do. They came under BYU for funding – aka money from the mormon church.
Embarrassed? You should be.
Nope, as usual your own citation show that :
1. Welch did speaking engagements
2. They paid for staff to work there and an increasing operations budget – in the range of $2 million in the 1990’s – what is is now? Some have hinted at $20 million but they don’t publish it openly.
3. They are now designated professionals and are funded under BYU and the mormon church.
Didn’t disprove anything. Fact is here is something to chew on on one budgetary item:
But it really started to grow in the early 1990s when we started hiring professionals and staff to help them. We quickly expanded from a yearly operating budget of about $100,000 in 1989/90 to about $2 million by 1994/95. We became more serious about fundraising and were fortunate to receive a very large donation. That single contribution proved to be an essential element of FARMS's success through the late 1990s as fundraising came to a halt during the period of merger negotiations with the university.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display-print.php?table=insights&id=97
And here
Now to fund-raising: FARMS is an income-consuming entity with an operating budget that is only partially covered by revenue derived from FARMS membership fees and product sales and financial support from BYU.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display-print.php?table=insights&id=102
Wow, imagine that DU, they take money from the people to write the stuff they do about Christianity and obfuscate for mormonism. Multimillion dollar operation and you don’t think people there DON’T get paid a wage, and you say I should be embarrassed. – Sniff, sniff – smells like filthy lucre to me….
Just out of curiosity, how much does it pay to be a professional anti Mormon, I could get a job doing what you do and in the evenings refute what I had said during the day, now that's job security!
I wouldn’t know since I don’t get paid to do this.
My last reality check from Kirkland bank bounced....
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