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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.
FARMS has been on the LDS payroll since its inception. But then what do I know, I'm involved in all the filthy lucre.
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Yes, that is my understanding as well.
” I love and respect Catholics as Brothers in Christ... and even married a devout Catholic woman and take my kids to Mass frequently. (I was born and raised a fundamentalist Baptist)”
Which fundamentalist baptist church do you belong to?
Since you are a practicing Baptist, how did you come to have such little influence in your home that your wife and your children are Catholics?
The fact that another document was referenced in the bible does not make that document scripture. Joseph Smith fixed all that with the Inspired Version where he replaced all the plain and precious portions. Since he did not reproduce those other referenced documents - at least from mormon theological view - they were not essential to the 'gospel'.
Finally, although present today, mormonism has not canonized any of the books of Enoch, the apocrypha or the multitude of Nag Hammadi codicies. The prophetic voice is silent. Absent mormon canonization - there is little for them to stand upon in this regard.
Apparently, it's not wise to judge spiritual matters using our own earthly faculties. This has gotten me into trouble more than once!
After the Book of Revelation was written by John the Beloved on the Isle of Patmos - another 25 or so books of the Bible were added. The Catholic Bible contains more books of the Bible, for example, the Maccabees which contains the story of how the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah came about.
I have in my possession the “Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuteronocanonical Books” - New Revised Standard Version, published by Oxford University Press, New York. Whew! This Bible contains the books of Tobit, Judith, Esther (the Greek version containing the additional chapters), The Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, The Prayer of Azariah, Susanna (Chapter 13 of the Greek Version of Daniel), Bel and the Dragon (Chapter 14 of the Greek Version of Daniel), 1, 2, 3 & 4 Maccabees, 1 & 2 Esdras, The Prayer of Manasseh.
The aforementioned “Holy Bible” is not the Mormon Bible. It is required Bible for Fresno Pacific University, a Mennonite university.
I'm not sure trying to bop people over the heads with YOUR Bible is all that productive.
Mormons believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. Scriptures of the Restoration also include the Doctrine and Covenants as well as the Pearl of Great Price.
#903 made me LOL. CTR.
Several mormons are currently denigrating the Bible by making claims that it is 'incomplete', 'not translated correctly', been 'edited such that many precious things are missing', 'in need of editing to include works now considered by Orthodox Christianity to be apocrypha and/or gnostic heresies' --as if God is so weak as to be unable to have our Bible to include what God wants for us to reference in this age.
Satan did something quite similar with Eve in the Garden ... by casting doubt upon God's Word, Satan inveigled a way to persuade Eve to disobey that same Word. With mormonism, Satan inveigles doubt 'gaps' into which the fraud of the 'Book of Mormon' and the 'Pearl of Great Price' and 'The LDS Doctrines and Covenants' are tossed to lead an awakening soul astray into mormonism and away from the Grace of God in Christ, substituting 'all that you can do to become worthy of salvation', eventually.
Perhaps Grig would like to grab his hose now? Bwahahaha
I was reading the Bible the other day and read again the disturbing (to me anyway) account of King David stealing the wife of another man - no, I’m not talking about Bathsheba and Uriah - I’m talking about Michal, Saul’s daughter. Michal’s husband was weeping over the loss of his wife. Later Michal “despised” David in her heart.
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That never happened at all...
Michal was promised to David...
Saul gave Michal to another man to spite David while he was gone..
David came back and claimed his rightful wife...
It was the other guy who had stolen David’s wife...
Michal was angry because David danced before the Lord and worshipped Him for the victory over the enemy...
Michal refused to dance herself so she despised David for doing so...
A bit of futher reading reveals how God punished Michal for her sin against God and David..
God shut up her womb and Michal never had any children.
If you wait a mo I’ll look in The Bible and get the sources for you...
No ????
Y’OK
In 1979, John W. Welch, an LDS attorney working in Los Angeles, established the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) as a tax-exempt foundation. Speaking often at firesides, Welch had seen great need for an organization that could coordinate and distribute research on the Book of Mormon.Link
FARMS moved to Provo in 1980 when Welch joined the faculty at Brigham Young University's law school. FARMS was initially understaffed and underfunded, even undervalued. Any one of these concerns would have quashed a lesser cause, but FARMS had a strong sense of purpose, and the shoestring operation forged ahead, sustained by a small but resolute cadre of dedicated scholars and by timely donations of money, labor, and equipment.
In 1984, FARMS teamed up with Deseret Book to begin publishing the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. John Sorenson's landmark book, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, appeared in 1985, followed by other key volumes that also helped to establish FARMS as a producer of weighty books of sound scholarship.
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. As FARMS took on important projects that depended more and more on BYU resources, the relationship between the two became increasingly complex. Something needed to be done to clarify their mutual relationship. On 10 September 1997, President Hinckley proposed that FARMS be invited into the university.
In extending the invitation, 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. . . . I see a bright future for this effort now through the university."
When the university decided to separate traditional FARMS activities from the manuscript preservation and archiving work of the Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts (CPART), it was also decided to bring BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI) under the same umbrella. BYU needed to contain these three separate areas in an administrational organization, and so the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts (ISPART) was established. The Research Technology Group, which developed the WordCruncher program, was also incorporated. In 2006, the BYU Board of Trustees renamed ISPART the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. "By renaming ISPART, BYU honors the memory and life's work of Elder Maxwell," said BYU President Cecil O. Samuelson. "This change firmly sets the future direction of the institute, which is to promote profound scholarship supporting the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ—something Elder Maxwell cared about deeply." With the change of name, BYU Studies, the signature publication of the University, was invited to join the Maxwell Institute
The word “Trinity” is not found in the Holy Bible, by the way.
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Q-Nor is the word “mormon” or “polygamy”
A-There is a lot of dancing around the this subject in the last 30 years but at one time was know just not properly understood.
But the Lord tells David when David takes it upon himself and not wait upon the Lord for instructions was rebuked and fell from grace for failing to listen to the Spirit of the Lord.
In verse 8 the Lord said all that he would bless David with yet in verses 9-13 the Lord rebukes David for not waiting on the Lord.
2 Samuel 12
7 ¶ And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;
8 And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.
9 Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.
10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.
11 Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.
12 For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.
13 And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.
Q-Nor is the need for a future “restoration” of the church...
A- 19 ¶ Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;
20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you:
21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
22 For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.
23 And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.
24 Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days.
25 Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.
26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.
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Jesus said if you loved Him you would believe Him and obey Him...
And yet mormons add things, saying that The Bible is not complete..
The Bible seems to witness and clarify these things better than man.
I’m not sure trying to bop people over the heads with YOUR Bible is all that productive.
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It’s not...
Everty time a mormon tries to bop me or shove that book of mormon writtemn by that sex crazed false prophet Joseph smith down my lily white Christian throat, the Holy Spirit spits it out for me...
If God denounces it, why would i want to reAD IT ???
I’m not sure trying to bop people over the heads with YOUR Bible is all that productive.
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It’s not...
Every time a mormon tries to bop me or shove that book of mormon written by that sex crazed false prophet Joseph smith down my lily white Christian throat, the Holy Spirit spits it out for me...
If God denounces it, why would I want to read it ????
And it is still the best selling book today, in the entire world.
Oh, about $185,000 a year. But they won't pay our travel expenses.
How much are you guys getting?
But the Lord tells David when David takes it upon himself and not wait upon the Lord for instructions was rebuked and fell from grace for failing to listen to the Spirit of the Lord.
In verse 8 the Lord said all that he would bless David with yet in verses 9-13 the Lord rebukes David for not waiting on the Lord.
2 Samuel 12
7 ¶ And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;
8 And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.
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Resty, in verse 8, Nathan said that God HAD blessed David and that He would have given him more...
That verse and passage is not a commandment to wait for anything...
David had already received all those blessings..
David was not punished for not “waiting on the Lord”
There was nothing to “wait” for...
David was punished for stealing another man’s wife, (adultery) and for killing Uriah to cover up his sin when Bathsheba got pregnant..
$185,000 a year
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I’ve been swindled
My checks from the Kirkland Bank are way less than that...
You remind me of something I can’t think of. You don’t know when to let go.
I’m not “coming after” you, unless responding to your opinions is “coming after” you.
You don’t have to defend anything to me, because I am not God, and therefore, I am not your judge.
You will never see the day when I am “enraged” at anti-Mormon rhetoric. Rage, anger, jealousy, and anything of their ilk are wasted emotions. Your opinons aren’t worth my anger.
Once again, your opinion is wrong: I AM laughing, and I will continue to laugh at your attempts to get a rise out of me. Better men than you have tried with just as little success.
As far as I’m concerned, we’re Friends. You keep moving the pig in between us, so I’ll just keep laughing until such time as you see the futility of trying to figure me out.
Good luck with THAT!
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