>>”The members are people that can be turned around.”<<
My next question is, “turned around” to what? Another religion, another belief? If the members are happy in their beliefs and their form of worship, why should so many people want them to change?
It is human nature for everyone to have people think the way they do. They feel their beliefs are the only way, e.g., Jesuit priests covering the earth trying to convert tribal natives to believe the way they do, Baptist and Mormon etc. missionaries, same thing. Democrats arguing with Republicans because they think the other is so stupid and naive that they just ‘don't see the light’.
Thanks again for ‘discussing’ this with me, rather than responding with nasty immature remarks, as so many here do. I must admit that I am guilty of firing back when attacked by these bigots. Yes, they are bigots and they know who they are.
I have painfully tried over and over again to try to explain to certain people here at FR that I am not a practicing Mormon and that I only defend them because my family roots can be traced back to the beginning of the church.
My Gr. x3 grandfather left his family to fight for a country that had condoned killing Mormons. After they were burned out in Nauvoo, IL he joined, along with 500 other Mormon men to march with the Mormon Battalion. He actually walked 5000 miles to get back to them in winter quarters where he found them half-starved. They gathered what they could and then walked back to Utah. His story is well celebrated in Mormon history books. He was the “Butcher” that slit a wild bull's throat with a knife in the “Battle of the Bulls”.
Mormons are not a cult, not a sect and do not eat babies. They are good hard working and honest people that just tired of being pushed around by people that didn't agree with their form of worship. I don't understand the hatred that comes from a small group of ‘Mormon-Haters’ that have infiltrated Free Republic. Mormons do love Jesus and God, they are Christians and they live clean lives. I must add at this point that, according to the survey, that they are more well-versed in the teachings of the Bible than other religions. Facts are facts.
I guarantee that someone will clip a couple of my words written here and make a big issue out of it. They will respond to me with quotes and links, ad nauseum.
Take care, my FRiend.....panax
HAPPY?
Is THAT the criteria that is important?
I 'prophecy' that Paul Harvey will be along soon...
Interesting piece of fiction. The LDS departure from Nauvoo was orderly and the only thing 'burned' was the temple by u/i arsonists. Emma and her family and the entire RLDS sect continued to live in Nauvoo in peace until they moved to Plano IL, in 1866.
You want to push Mormonism as Christian, although Christianity is clear that they are not Christian, yet you are annoyed that people here from all of the Christian denominations would speak up against a non-Christian religion that is sending thousands of missionaries out to our hometowns to try and convince Christians that the Joseph Smith cult is Christian too, and that they should join it to become gods and to serve Mormonism.
You are proselytizing as a Mormon, and a member of the non-Christian cult, have you been trained in this practice? Have you been a Priest within the cult, or even a Missionary for them?
Source for this claim? Link?
Explain why the immediate family of Joseph Smith was not "burned out" but stayed and prospered.
“My next question is, “turned around” to what? Another religion, another belief?”
Yes, turned directly to the God of the Bible.
“If the members are happy in their beliefs and their form of worship, why should so many people want them to change?”
To avoid hell. To spend eternity in the presence of God - the Biblical God.
“Yes, they are bigots and they know who they are.”
If by “bigot” you mean someone who thinks their belief is truth, count me in. If I didn’t believe that, I’d go find something that was true. Don’t you fit that definition too? Don’t 50,000 mormonite missionaries travel the earth telling Christians their church is wrong and the mormon cult is the true religion? Yup.
“He actually walked 5000 miles to get back to them in winter quarters where he found them half-starved.”
Did he, um, start in Central America on this walk?
“Mormons are not a cult, not a sect and do not eat babies.”
You would know best about the baby eating, so I’ll leave that to you. Mormonism is a cult, a heresy, a collection of heresies the Christian Church condemned more than a thousand years ago - mixed with the best lies from Satan in the Garden of Eden to the New Age Movement to Hinduism. They have it all.
“They are good hard working and honest people”
I agree that the majority are exactly that.
“that just tired of being pushed around by people that didn’t agree with their form of worship.”
If that’s what you believe is happening, you are wrong.
“I don’t understand the hatred that comes from a small group of ‘Mormon-Haters’ that have infiltrated Free Republic.”
Point out one and quote a hate statement. You can’t.
“Mormons do love Jesus and God, they are Christians and they live clean lives.”
You would probably know best how clean they are, but the Jesus they love is a created spirit being who became a god. God the father (mormon version) used to be a fallen man who has his own god to worship. THAT ain’t Chrisian.
“Facts are facts.”
Facts have nothing to do with mormonism. Feelings, yes.
>>If the members are happy in their beliefs and their form of worship, why should so many people want them to change?<<
I’ll put it this way:
The bible is about two things: Man’s relationship with man and man’s relationship with his Creator. You can even see it in the ten commandments. All of them fall into one of those categories.
Now, as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, it is mans lot to eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of his labor and it is a good thing. However, that is all about man’s relationship with man.
And like an animal, one can live a happy life if one follows the rules as laid down in the bible. And I think the mormons nail that one pretty well with only minor exceptions (especially for men). But where they are completely lacking, as is your statement, is in their teaching about man’s relationship with his Creator.
This is a serious problem because this is actually the REAL issue. Life is mindbogglingly short compared to eternity. It is also only a shadow of what an eternal relationship with your creator is.
In my opinion, the only difference between a devout mormon and a street bum or islamic suicide bomber is that the mormon lives a happier life. They all go to the same place - annihilation. And that is the exact thing that Christs death and resurrection is to save us from.
It is a pretty important thing.
What I say above comes from a context of my believing the general conclusion made by the author here:
HELL: Eternal Torment or Complete Annihilation?
http://www.jeremyandchristine.com/articles/eternal.php
>>They feel their beliefs are the only way...<<
I am that way with some core beliefs. The rest, I dunno. I’m a strong mid-tribulationist. My salvation does not depend on it nor do I think pre-tribulationists, etc. are wrong. I think we will all find out.
However, I do think 2+2=4 and a person that swears it equals 22 is just wrong. On core beliefs I DO feel pretty strongly.
What a cowardly methodology you follow. And you're wrong, yet you cannot seem to see where you're wrong: the adherents to Christianity do not define Christ. Mormonism seeks to define themselves as Christians because of their behavior patterns yet they affirm as truth what is false proclamation, proclamations which contradict the Bible.
You are quick to call someone a bigot because they oppose this false methodology of a proven liar, peepstone diviner, sexual predator defining Christ rather than letting Christ define Himself through the Word He has left for us! And you want to be allowed to spittle that falsehood without being opposed, so you accuse in cowardly fashion, inveigling others by thanking them for not being like those who oppose your errors. THAT is very mormonesque, and perhaps it is that behavior which confused me into thinking you are a Mormonism apologist.
For the record, I completely disagree with your assertion that one cannot hate a religion without hating the followers of that religion. The lost are not to be hated, they are to be striven for ... if hating the Ism was the same as hating Mormons, you would have your wish, they would have no opposition on FR threads and be ignored as bound for Hell and good riddance for being the same as their Ism. But that is NOT how many of us deal with this problem of the heresies in Mormonism, because these heresies will lead too many to damnation believing they have done all that they can do to be owed Salvation.
Hey, I wanted to ask you, have you ever read the book “Mamma, Mormonism and Me”?
I almost became a mormon in the late 70’s but it just seemed weird. I became a Christian a couple of years later. I continued to study mormonism ever since because it fascinated me how many people could glom onto something like that with no historical support for its claims whatsoever. The same is true for various other cults and islam but those depend on ignorance and a Lemming culture.
I did discover the answer though. I think it has to do with giving people an opportunity to actively participate in something greater than themselves and really hit the “man’s relationship with man” part of Christianity via FHE and other stuff.
On a side note, one of my friends, after watching “The God Makers” said the movie answered her question about why her mormon neighbor killed herself after her mormon husband divorced her.
He actually walked 5000 miles to get back to them in winter quarters where he found them half-starved.
__________________________________________________
Whose fault was that ???
CRICKETS
The mormon leader Briggy Young was the one who had left them to starve...