Gospel Teachings About Lying-LDS (OPEN)

Satan's most effective lies are half-truths or lies accompanied by truth. A lie is most effective when it can travel incognito in good company or when it can be so intermarried with the truth that we cannot determine its lineage.

ROFL

An LDS lawyer's finest hour.

Well there it is, plain as day. The tutorial for the practice of milk before meat. It's the lawyer's creedo. The lying lawyer's guide for dirty dealing. The only thing missing is the special tip on tactical timing: engage in a wide-eyed misdirect that hides the hasty offense... Quickly accuse your adversary of the dirty trick you just used, i.e., throw a low blow, then fall on ground screaming "fowl" like a victim. Claim you where just hit below the belt when you were the one that just did it.

<hat's off>

Gary J. Bergera, a BYU grad, wrote this piece about the Secretary to Mormon Senator Reed Smoot, Karl Badger, in https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/037-8-36-41.pdf

Bergera described the agony Badger, who was born of polygamous parents, went through from 1903-1907 in seeing LDS leaders deny the hundreds of additional plural wives LDS men had taken in the post-Manifesto years (1891 on).

Badger wrote: ”We [Mormons] are occupying a cowardly, hypocritical attitude in this matter, and cannot but reap a harvest of humiliation and shame.”

Bergera wrote: Badger could not sanction their [LDS leaders’] devotion and obedience, especially when duplicitous [and showed this via a letter to the LDS “prophet”].

Six weeks later, LDS apostle George Albert Smith responded, sympathetic [to Badger’s concerns], yet unconvinced: "To take hasty action with reference to some men whose names have figured prominently in the investigation, would only add fuel to the flame and would gratify the sensation-monger unnecessarily. The Church will not do anything simply to curry favor, but will handle its affairs in its own way and not at the dictation of the rabble. It will do what is right because it is right and not because it is forced: consequently it will take its own time in its own affairs.” [2/8/1905 letter to Badger from G.A. Smith]. Badger, however, was appalled. "This is a contemptible attitude for us to be in," he wrote home [4 days later]. We have said that certain things do not exist, they are proved to exist; we say that if they are proved to exist that the guilty will be punished, and now they are going to wait to see if we mean what we say....There is no use quibbling about whether we made a "compact" or a "covenant," no one doubts but what the country, which had been fighting us on this issue for a quarter of a century, understood that polygamy had gone, and we allowed them to have such an impression,--encouraged them in it for our own ends, and we are now estopped to say that we made no agreement. Where is our honor on this matter. It makes me angry. Well, the end is not yet.

On June 22, 1906, Badger wrote: I believe our honor is more to us than anything on earth; and we must keep our word sacred. If as a people we had strictly observed the Manifesto, I believe that our example would have challenged the admiration of the world; but we have thought that there is something higher than honesty, and behold our confusion…those [plural marriages] that have occured are to our discredit…

"Lyin' for the Lord" is a well-"honored" Mormon tradition.

Joseph Smith did it with his false prophecies. His nephew, Joseph F. Smith, continued doing it as "prophet" of the church. And in fact, prevaricated openly on the record in Senate testimony for the Mormon Senator Reed Smoot hearings.

Greg Call summed it up well in Times and Seasons (see http://www.timesandseasons.org/?p=1715)

Perhaps most difficult for the faith of the Saints was that in the face of heated cross-examination from the Senate committee investigating the Smoot issue, President Joseph F. Smith was perceived to have publicly dissembled, if not to have outright lied, about his knowledge of post-Manifesto polygamy. Even more disillusioning for some Saints was President Smith’s testimony to the Senate committee that “I have never pretended to nor do I profess to have received revelations. I never said I had a revelation except so far as God has shown to me that so-called Mormonism is God’s divine truth; that is all."

President Joseph F. Smith was perceived to have publicly dissembled, if not to have outright lied, about his knowledge of post-Manifesto polygamy

Amazing the effect that Section 132 has had on the mormon church leaders since it was "canonized".

"54 And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law."

Sure was handy for Smith to have had the "power of revelation" whenever it served his purposes.

I have to wonder what "revelation" will be forthcoming in the future regarding polygamy, since gay marriage seems to be in the cards for the nation...can polygamous marriages be far behind?

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