Nominal Christian, .... You call yourself a Christian also, but just because you call yourself one, why should I accept it as being the truth. You, in your great humility and righteousness, have reserved yourself and others like you the right to determine who is and who isn’t Christian.
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Nominal Christian as in those who call themselves Christian but only in a cultural/social/ancestral way. It also covers people who do not have a personal relationship with Christ but are ‘religious’ instead.
The LDS keep trying to make themselves the arbiter of who is Christian. The LDS worship a different Christ than the Bible teaches, we can’t both be right, and I am a Christian based upon the Bible, not Joseph Smith.
Hey, I get to use this one:
In 1958, McConkie wrote:
In the pre-existent eternity various degrees of valiance and devotion to the truth were exhibited by different groups of our Father’s spirit offspring. One-third of the spirit hosts of heaven came out in open rebellion and were cast out without bodies, becoming the devil and his angels. The other two-thirds stood affirmatively for Christ: there were no neutrals. To stand neutral in the midst of war is a philosophical impossibility.
Of the two-thirds who followed Christ, however, some were more valiant than others. Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed upon them during mortality are known to us as the negroes.
Negroes in this life are denied the priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty.
The present status of the negro rests purely and simply on the foundation of pre-existence. Along with all races and peoples he is receiving here what he merits as a result of the long pre-mortal probation in the presence of the Lord. The principle is the same as will apply when all men are judged according to their mortal works and are awarded varying statuses in the life hereafter.
To compound the hypocrisy of LDS and their contrived conveniences:
On June 1, 1978, McConkie was present in the Salt Lake Temple when a revelation was received by the First Presidency and the Twelve “that the time had now come to extend the gospel and all its blessings and all its obligations, including the priesthood and the blessings of the house of the Lord, to those of every nation, culture and race, including the black race.”[6] This revelation was announced to the world on June 8, 1978.
McConkie’s earlier statements on the topic, like those of other other church leaders, implied or overtly stated that the priesthood restriction would never be lifted. To this, McConkie stated:
There are statements in our literature by the early Brethren that we have interpreted to mean that the Negroes would not receive the priesthood in mortality. I have said the same things, and people write me letters and say, “You said such and such, and how is it now that we do such and such?” All I can say is that it is time disbelieving people repented and got in line and believed in a living, modern prophet. Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or George Q. Cannon or whoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.
It doesn’t make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June 1978. It is a new day and a new arrangement, and the Lord has now given the revelation that sheds light out into the world on this subject. As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them. We now do what meridian Israel did when the Lord said the gospel should go to the Gentiles. We forget all the statements that limited the gospel to the house of Israel, and we start going to the Gentiles.
I will note that this came about as the Church was directed by the courts, under the cloud of a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination and denying ordination of blacks into the priesthood.
Further, black were denied endowment ritual and temple marriages and family sealings.
Instead of complying with the courts demand, they had a “New Revelation” and settled out of court.
Now I ask:
Is God the God all people and did he not make us all equal in his eyes when he declared “For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God”.
He doesn’t equivocate and doesn’t single anyone out for special rights of ascension to heaven and yet here is LDS in doctrine singling out at least half the world as spiritually defective by nature of their so called progenitors.
How could God call into doctrine this belief and then suddenly change his mind or reveal a new time once Frederick Douglas had passed into the history books, Brown vs board or the 1964 civil rights act?
Why would he wait until then to reveal he is the God of all and all should enjoy the same privileges of the church. Well, with the exception of restricted celestial covenants, equality of celestial marriage or that their earthly Priesthood would not carry into the celestial kingdom?