Joseph Smith: An Apostle of Jesus Christ

LDS.org ^ | Dennis B. Neuenschwander

[T. P. Pole]

I will admit, that seeing ANY JST references instead of POGP surprised me.

Apology accepted.

This is newer than my resignation three years ago, or at least my last purchased copy of LDS scriptures.

Pretty sure this dates back before that. I was using my "mission" scriptures to look up JST examples, which have a copyright date of 1979. I think that is about the time they first included them.

You did not create the website, and I'm sure you didn't check them all any more than I did.

You are correct there. Thanks for not making a big deal about that.

Tell me though, really, how is it possible that they don't use the whole JST ? Seems like a slap in the face to Joseph Smith. He said God told him to do it, and it took him years, why just discard it like that ?

The common explanation is that Joseph never completed them. If you were following reaganaut and my side conversation, there are two published versions (non-LDS official, BTW) of the JST-side-by-side with the KJV, one from the '70s and one in the last few years. The selling point of the more recent one is that they gained access to the RLDS archives and extracted newly-found, non-published additional sections. To me that suggests that the 1970s version was incomplete, and therefore any earlier version was incomplete, too.

A secondary explanation that I have heard is that we choose to use the commonly accepted KJV in order to not alienate non-members. For example, some times someone brings in a non-KJV Bible and reads from it in a Sunday School class. Everyone else in the room is looking at the KJV, and looks puzzled at the non-familiar text. For the record, I enjoy comparing the various translations, to see how various people considered certain words or concepts.

I would suspect the actual answer includes both of these, as well as the animosity between the RLDS and the LDS, preventing easy early adoption.

We also don't use the parts we do have much. It is looked at as a study guide and not a compete text. But this last Sunday in the adult Sunday School class there was a lengthy reading from the JST in the appendix (I think it was from John 1 - we are studying the New Testament this year).

[T Minus Four]

The statement closest to your interpretation was that the title was “insulting”, for those who reject the LDS beliefs

Actually, it was pulled because it was blasphemy.

[reaganaut]

I often ask and am allowed on caucus threads (mostly Catholic and Orthodox) because of my background in both of those faiths and my scholarship areas even though i am not actually a member of either caucus.

And it will probably be a cold day in Hell before I am invited or allowed in an LDS caucus thread.

[Elsie]

 

Nice, I do not condone polygamy. It Is an illegal practice and my religion requires me to obey the laws of the land.

 

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    OFFICIAL DECLARATION—1

To Whom It May Concern:

Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages are still being solemnized and that forty or more such marriages have been contracted in Utah since last June or during the past year, also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuance of the practice of polygamy—

I, therefore, as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice, and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have during that period been solemnized in our Temples or in any other place in the Territory.

One case has been reported, in which the parties allege that the marriage was performed in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake City, in the Spring of 1889, but I have not been able to learn who performed the ceremony; whatever was done in this matter was without my knowledge. In consequence of this alleged occurrence the Endowment House was, by my instructions, taken down without delay.

Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.

There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy; and when any Elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.

WILFORD WOODRUFF
President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

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President Lorenzo Snow offered the following:

“I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing, and which is dated September 24th, 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.”

The vote to sustain the foregoing motion was unanimous.

Salt Lake City, Utah, October 6, 1890.

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EXCERPTS FROM THREE ADDRESSES BY
PRESIDENT WILFORD WOODRUFF
REGARDING THE MANIFESTO

The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty. (Sixty-first Semiannual General Conference of the Church, Monday, October 6, 1890, Salt Lake City, Utah. Reported in Deseret Evening News, October 11, 1890, p. 2.)

It matters not who lives or who dies, or who is called to lead this Church, they have got to lead it by the inspiration of Almighty God. If they do not do it that way, they cannot do it at all. . . .

I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me. Let me bring your minds to what is termed the manifesto. . . .

The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question, and He also told me that if they would listen to what I said to them and answer the question put to them, by the Spirit and power of God, they would all answer alike, and they would all believe alike with regard to this matter.

The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue—to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?

The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. If we had not stopped it, you would have had no use for . . . any of the men in this temple at Logan; for all ordinances would be stopped throughout the land of Zion. Confusion would reign throughout Israel, and many men would be made prisoners. This trouble would have come upon the whole Church, and we should have been compelled to stop the practice. Now, the question is, whether it should be stopped in this manner, or in the way the Lord has manifested to us, and leave our Prophets and Apostles and fathers free men, and the temples in the hands of the people, so that the dead may be redeemed. A large number has already been delivered from the prison house in the spirit world by this people, and shall the work go on or stop? This is the question I lay before the Latter-day Saints. You have to judge for yourselves. I want you to answer it for yourselves. I shall not answer it; but I say to you that that is exactly the condition we as a people would have been in had we not taken the course we have.

. . . I saw exactly what would come to pass if there was not something done. I have had this spirit upon me for a long time. But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write. . . .

I leave this with you, for you to contemplate and consider. The Lord is at work with us.

(Cache Stake Conference, Logan, Utah, Sunday, November 1, 1891. Reported in Deseret Weekly, November 14, 1891.)

 

 

 

Now I will tell you what was manifested to me and what the Son of God performed in this thing. . . . All these things would have come to pass, as God Almighty lives, had not that Manifesto been given. Therefore, the Son of God felt disposed to have that thing presented to the Church and to the world for purposes in his own mind. The Lord had decreed the establishment of Zion. He had decreed the finishing of this temple. He had decreed that the salvation of the living and the dead should be given in these valleys of the mountains. And Almighty God decreed that the Devil should not thwart it. If you can understand that, that is a key to it.

 

(From a discourse at the sixth session of the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, April 1893. Typescript of Dedicatory Services, Archives, Church Historical Department, Salt Lake City, Utah.)

 

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What kind of  'Leadership' is THIS???

 

compared to...

 

 

 

 

Hebrews 11:35-40
 35.  Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.
 36.  Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.
 37.  They were stoned ; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated--
 38.  the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 
 

 

or compared to...

 

Acts 4:19.  But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God.

 

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So much for an 'Everlasting Covenant' that thundered out of Heaven!!!

 

Well; it DID last about 47 years!

 

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Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriage...

I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws..."

~ Wilford Woodruff, 4th LDS President

 

[Elsie]

For God fearing men God's word not law determines morality.

HA ha ha!

POLYGAMY is STILL on the books!

MORMONism's book, anyway.

Just WHY don't you folks follow what GOD told you to do in D&C 132 instead of what the GOV'T tells you not to do?

[SENTINEL]

My head might explode trying to keep track of it all. He butchered the bible.

[reaganaut]

I agree with Erasmus: “If I have a little money, I buy books. If I have any left over, I buy food and clothing”.

I also have large wish lists of books on amazon that I ask for for Christmas/Birthdays. lol

Wait another year or two and you should be able to pick up a used copy.

[DelphiUser]

Just a side question: What makes you believe the bible is true? This is a serious question, open to any LDS person:
I am told that you pray to discover that the Book of Mormon is true, and than if it is, you get a "burning in your bosom".
What gauge do you use to determine if the bible is true?

I can't speak for everyone, the "Burning in your bosom" is a biblical quotation about the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and how the Lord spoke to them and they didn't know it was him and later when they found out, they said they should have know because they had a burning in their bosom.

As for witnesses, some people have the burning bosom, some people have visions, some people have other experiences. God know what is the perfect communication for you and that is what he'll use. For me it was very specific, and undeniable, God knows that I know what he told me.

I used the same test on both, and I talk about it on my page at FR, I also have posted My Testimony on my page at FR.

Delph

[reaganaut]

Good point, that. I may give it a try anyway.

[T Minus Four]

I don’t understand why people would willingly choose to read the caucus thread of a religion they think is a joke.

It's not a joke, it's a deadly deception.

Besides, it rarely takes long to scan an LDS caucus thread. There's the post, a couple of high-fives, sometimes a few pulled posts from people who wandered in.

Thirty seconds tops.

[greyfoxx39]

So many Mormons are like a boxer who dresses up, heads into the ring, goes to someone on the other side of the rope, tries to bash their head in, and then as soon as somebody starts to head into the ring, the Mormon boxer says: "Now don't be contentious here!"

I LOVE it!

[Elsie]

This is a dot com and the Church sites are dot org

HAve you reseached PD's infamous List-o-Links?

It might have TWO orgs on it...

[reaganaut]

.I have never been in a Mormon Temple....

- - - - - -
Nor would you be allowed. The LDS temples are only for the select few who are deemed ‘worthy’ by obeying legalistic rules and paying a full tithe.

[T Minus Four]

Thanks, but I didn’t ask for a definition of “burning in the bosom”. I asked what brought you to believe that the bible is true.

[T Minus Four]

The stop snarking about him to the fourth wall.

[TaraP]

Just don’t teeter on looking like those of the Westboro Baptist Church...

[DelphiUser]

Delphi, this is the fourth time now I will ask you infront of all those that will read this thread. You continue to ignore the most simple of questions.

Which bible do you use, the one "retranslated" by the man you claimed "communed with God face to face....Or the KJV as commanded by Brigham Young after he declared the Joseph Smith Translation a fraud ?

Your slience on this matter is deafening.

Don't bother with a bunch of links to spin sites...One word will do.

Which bible do you use, JST, or KJV ?

This is the fourth time I'm answering your question... KJV.

What, are you hoping I'll change my answer? Are you just hyper and don't realize this is not "real time" Maybe your just not aware that other people are posting to me as well as yourself? Either way, get a grip!

Delph

[colorcountry]

I was booted from caucus threads while I was still officially a member of the LDS Church. That’s when I knew I had to officially resign. It was the Mormons here on FR that helped me understand it was time to cut the strings once and for all.

Questions and disagreement just aren’t allowed within Mormonism.

[reaganaut]

If the Bible is true, Mormonism is false. If Mormonism is true then the Bible is false.

real simple there.

[ejonesie22]

I have my moments...