Posted on 08/21/2009 2:50:13 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
There was definitely a "general" influence going on that inspired both camps. Palmyra, New York - where Joseph Smith's "First Vision" took place and the golden plates were reportedly found - is in a region which used to be called the "burned over district". Unitarianism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-Day Adventism, Restorationism (the Cambellite "churches of Christ"), and a number of other movements (including Charles Finney's "Second Great Awakening" revivals) all sprang up or hit that area over and over again, all within a span of just a few decades. Finney himself coined the phrase "burned over districts", evoking the image of forest fires scorching an area clean of any flammable material, because it's inhabitants grew resistant to his repeated revival tours. Coincidence? Probably not.
This part of western New York became famous after the Erie Canal for its history of revivalism, radicalism, communitarian experiments. It was fertile ground for new ideas to take root and spread to other parts of the country. It became a "psychic highway" for New Englanders who left the East and headed West in search of new ways of life
- from The Burned Over District
Because it was meant to crash :-P
He took the concept of British-Israelism, which the English had put together in the 17th century to try and give themselves justification and prestige (as, pretty much until the 15th century the English were just considered another Germanic nation) -- Smith took that and made it American-Israeliism. Then there wer the new discoveries in Egypt (or rather re-discoveries of the old). They did not know much about this, only had awe about what was accomplished.
Smith took this and put little pieces together with a fantastic story
Plus in the 1800s there was the craze for buried gold and also the Religious revivalism. Smith put all of this together and came up with a piece of fiction that was for its time and audience, but is still bad fictional history as it puts things that are provably wrong (Semites in pre-Columbus America) unlike say the Scientologists who posit something unprovable (Xenu!)
A Scientologist-Mormon marriage of ideas may be interesting!
Burned-over district ping
Erik VD is imagination-challenged. What makes him think an advanced extra-terrestrial civilization would have books? Hell, we earthlings have just recently begun getting over books, and we are far from interstellar capable!
Indeed!
Movable type has proven to be the instrument of getting information out to the masses in quantity; even though the quality may be lacking in lots of places.
Electronic distribution of information has proved to be just as revolutionary.
And will remain that way until the powers that be manage to finally get control of it.
Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.
....... The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further. The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify. In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building. As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames. What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence. |
Remember to backup your files!
Welcome to Upstate NY.
Those of us from the area are aware of its ...um... spiritual heritage, shall we say.
Wanna guess the predominate religion in this area now???
The more things change...the more they stay the same
No need to guess.
I KNOW.
:)
you can too.
This region is just predisposed to cults and bondage to a single prophet and extra biblical practices...
BTW on pets going to heaven..John Paul believed it as did Francis ...to me the question is will Catholics go to heaven??
When you get there, you’ll notice immediately that it is Christians who are there with The Lord, and they won’t be labeled Catholics or Presbyterians, or Methodists, blacks, yellows, or even Buddhist or Taoists, they will all be Christians. It is His image, The Christ, Whom God chooses to see instead of us sinners with our man-made labels. Trusting in Christ is the only ‘brand’ you’ll find.
It will be those that realized they can do nothing to add to the work of Christ...seeing them selves as sinners that need to repent their sins and self efforts and turn to Christ..
“Junkies?” Bill asked.
“Yeah, Michael said. Their pupils were huge.”
____________
Well, “junkies” usually denote heoin users in ehich the pupils are very constricted when dosed. LSD, speed, etc have the opposite effect.
Amazing what one learns in life.
Pretty sure that — however your particular cult is not going to heaven as it prefers to believe in a Hindu-type caste-system. Your cult does not believe in a Christian god, but in a Hindu caste-system.
And, rnmomof7 — your cult believes furthermore that God creates evil and that God in fact makes people do evil. That is not Christian — your cult will not be in heaven as it does not believe in the Christian God that has mercy as well as justice
And like every other caste system, those who believe that they are on the top tier feel and act superior to all those who are not. That in the pseudo Christian pantheon extends to the belief in personal salvation.
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