What critics don't understand about testimony (REAL Mormon / LDS)

Mormon Times ^ | Michael R. Ash

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

We are in Christ’s only fully true Church.

What vile blasphemy. Repent lest you be judged.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Ooh! My bosoms are burnin’ Placemarker!

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

There you go, unable to give an answer for yourself again. Always the same old predictable fallback.

FAIL.

[Godzilla]

You need to look here. You are being misled as is obvious by your worn out propaganda.

[Godzilla]

[CommerceComet]

I'm not sure but I think that you might need a roster. You seemed to have gotten the players mixed up.

FWIW, I had a young Muslim man from Saudi Arabia over for dinner a while back. I wasn't trying to convert him to the Jesus Christ of Joseph Smith's or Paragon Defender's imagination.

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

Unless you believe the anti-Mormon regurgitated propaganda

Yeah, that stuff about the Book of Abraham really being an Egyptian book of the Dead is just propaganda. Those stupid Egyptologists, they just gotta be wrong. They must be biased against mormons or something.

And that annoying archeology record. It still hasn't produced any proof of mormonism yet. What's taking it so long? It must be hiding things on purpose. The mean old archeological record just hates mormons. That's gotta be it.

And there's gotta be something wrong with all the native americans too. None of them seem to have any semetic blood. I just bet they are hiding it. It is a vast conspiracy! Everyone and everything is biased against mormonism!

[Tenacious 1]

LMAO!!!!!!!!! Funniest thin on FR Today if you’ve been following this confounded articulation of diatribical vitriol.

In this corner....bound for celestial glory.....armed with thousands of LDS quotes....

[Aleya2Fairlie]

I do apologize, CommerceComet. My comment wasn’t for you but for ParagonDefender.

[SZonian]

I noticed the author and others referenced in the article failed to mention a little thing that happened in the Acts of the Apostles. An example we are to follow when we hear something that contradicts the written Word.

Test what they “feel” and “hear” against the Word of God.

http://www.creationists.org/how-to-test-the-spirits.html

http://www.bible.ca/ef/expository-acts-17-11.htm

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+17%3A11&version=NIV

http://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Bible.show/sVerseID/27535/eVerseID/27535

http://mormonchurch.info/ldsd.htm

Oh, btw, your lds.org link was useless in my research on this topic. There is only a D&C reference that is unbiblical.

If it does not come from the Bible, it is not of God.

[BlueMoose]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FxWlx-JDWo

[BlueMoose]

http://lds.org/ensign/1988/03/comparing-lds-beliefs-with-first-century-christianity?lang=eng&query=Christian#footnote5

[Scoutmaster]

I have found that the vast majority of the “issues” brought up in the anti-Mormon propaganda can be found and addressed at [and other websites].

Paragon Defender, I respectfully disagree that the Mormon-related 'issues' that are so frequently discussed on Free Republic are addressed appropriately at the websites you always post. I also question your use of the term 'propaganda' when describing any discussion that includes unflattering quotes from LDS leaders, LDS publications, or historical events.

This is only my third post on an LDS-related FR thread. The first concerned the difference between LDS Scouting, under its Green Book as permitted by the BSA and the 1913 agreement between the BSA and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and traditional Scouting, a topic on which I am well-versed.

The second occurred on a recent rainy Saturday or Sunday and went unnoticed by the normal posters on similar topics, including those who perhaps show excess glee in pointing out elements of LDS doctrine and history that they find offensive or humorous.

I am an agnostic (which is permitted in the BSA, as I believe in a Supreme Being). I did not try to convert you.

I mentioned that I have read the Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, Doctrines & Covenants, and other LDS writings, including sermons in the Deseret News. I've also spend most of two days in the home of Mormon apostates Gerald and Sandra Tanner in the late 1980s, to learn about the Mountain Meadows Massacre (I lost a relative there, was working on my family history in Salt Lake City, and went to visit them; they are . . . interesting). I've also studied history of the early church as written by LDS-historians and non-LDS-historians, both religious and secular.

I asked a single question in respectful terms: why does the official website of the LDS church, www.lds.org indicate that Joseph Smith had only one wife, when he practiced polygamy? You pointed me to a two- or three-sentence description of the history of polygamy on the website which said, essentially, that God had revealed the doctrine of polygamy to Smith around 1831, but it was controversial, so it wasn't fully revealed to anyone except a few church leaders nor widely practiced until the Mormons moved west.

I responded that it didn't seem to be a particularly complete answer. Polygamy was a major factor in the LDS church moving west and in the unrest between the LDS church and non-LDS residents in Missouri and Illinois. Historians believe Smith had 40 wives or more, which makes polygamy like a wide practice before Utah - at least for Smith (others LDS leaders had multiple wives, too), and that Smith took as wives the wives of married men, or sent LDS men on missions and took their wives as men (some of the women wrote diaries or books about being taken as Smith's wife when they were already married), and that destruction of the printing press that published an editorial about Smith's polygamy is what led to Smith's imprisonment and death. Members of the church, including witnesses to the Book of Mormon, had left the church over polygamy. Anti-polygamy was preached at a time when polygamy was praciced. These are simply facts. It seemed as though leaving out so much information made the official website explanation of polygamy and the biography of Smith having only one wife incomplete at best and at worst misleading. The Mormons headed west so they could practice their religion in peace, and ONE of things they wanted to be able to practice in peace was polygamy. It was a factor in heading west.

Your response was swift.

You called me a propagandist.

There was no discussion of whether my facts were true. You made no attempt to lead me to historical sources to dispute what I understood. It was simply a case that if I was going to state historical facts that raised any questions about the purity of Joseph Smith or shined a light on the confusion regarding even one issue in the church's past - then I was a propagandist.

Asking questions about facts isn't propaganda.

I was offended.

If there's any propaganda going on, its the LDS website doing things like publishing an official biography of Joseph Smith that lists him as having only one wife, or brushing by polygamy in two or three sentences. It's propaganda by omission.

The term "McCarthyite" is misused - a slur created by the left, because there were communists in the State Department and everywhere McCarthy said they existed. Always screaming "Propaganda" and "Propagandist" appear to be like screaming "McCarthyite!" If somebody dares point out an inconvenient part of the LDS church history, or the writings or quotes of its leaders, or a part of LDS doctrine that may seem odd to Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, etc., directing them to websites that offer carefully written and incomplete answers (particularly ones that use the same words that are used by other faiths, without disclosing that those words have different definitions than used by those other faiths), and then screaming "propaganda" if they dare post quotes by LDS leaders that don't mesh with the LDS church's current "hey there, buddy, we're just like you" stance, is getting old.

Even for those of us who aren't trying to convert you. Or any Mormon.

[Scoutmaster]

Moderator?

If you would please delete my post above.

I am frustrated at the continued posting of websites that do not offer thorough answers and I am angered at being called a propagandist for asking polite questions.

However, I don't want to add fuel to what is already a raging continual fire of the LDS topic on FR, and the tone of my post was less polite than I would prefer it to be. Thanks and thanks for the time you put in on FR.

[fulltlt]

PD,

Please read the following and give us your thoughts on it.

http://www.watchman.org/lds/heart.htm

Is that how it works?

[svcw]

From you r post: "The church exhorts all people to approach the gospel not only intellectually but with the intellect and the spirit, a process in which reason and faith work together.”

I have and God said flee, lds is not My church.

[svcw]

From your post: What’s ironic about the “feelings/emotions” charge made by critics is that they often base their rejection of the restored gospel on emotions or non-intellectual reasons (as we will see in next week’s installment).

Nonintellectual reasons - what a hoot. What is lds trying to say, that nine versions of the first vision is not an issue, that no reputable archaeologist or anthropologist has ever found any evidence of the claims in the BoM, that lds changes its foundation at the whim of government pressure - there is no intellect in lds only feelings IE burning in the bosom.

[svcw]

Amen brother.
The lds jesus in not the Jesus of the Bible.

[svcw]

Do you actually believe that PD even knows what lds teach?
I don’t otherwise he would at a min try and defend rather than post links.

[Paragon Defender]

Your comebacks are lame.

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Your attacks are lame.

They are old and tired, worn out and regurgitated propaganda. All addressed at the links provided for all to see. Nothing new. Never is.