Obsessed with Smith=bad
Mormons are not our problem.
Muslims are our problem.
One question: if you could eliminate Mohammed or Smith from history, which would you pick in order to save millions of lives?
“by adding the Book of Mormon to the Bibleand that makes it much less than Christianity as well. Nevertheless, the fact that Mormonism adds to the traditional Christian story
does not necessarily mean that it detracts from Christianity to the point of denying it altogether.”
OH YES IT DOES!
Revelation 22:
18 For[i] I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add[j] to him the plagues that are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away[k] his part from the Book[l] of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
“Mocking Mormonism” is “verbal lawlessness”? Wow. You normally don’t see that kind of pomposity outside of hollywood.
“The mormon court has found you guilty of verbal lawlessness. Your sentence is to listen to two mormon missionaries for an hour.”
“I beg for mercy! Please execute me instead!”
Mormons are less obsessed with worshiping Christ than becoming Christ.
“verbal lawlessness”. No 1st Amendment for You!
History tells us that various civilizations explain God in varying ways, each explanation varying from others in various ways; and humans fight over said variations
in varying ways.
Personally, I think that some power exists out there that is beyond mans comprehension, and that humans fighting over said power is not in that powers interests.
Deo gratias
I’m old enough to remember a time that it was considered equally chic and fashionable to hate Roman Catholics. It is basically the same crowd with a different target.
Mormons are so materialistic that they insist that the same unchanging laws govern both the natural and the supernatural. They also deny the virgin birth, since their materialism leads them to speculate that Jesus is literally begotten by the immortal Father rather than conceived by the Holy Spirit.
It is a different Christ, a false Christ. Jesus Christ and the Father are one. Not one in purpose, but one God, not different gods, as the Mormons teach. Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16), not a god manifest in the flesh, as Joseph Smith revealed. Jesus Christ is not an exalted man (neither is God the Father an exalted man), but very God, God from everlasting, the Creator, not a creature, not a created being.
Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was not God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the LORD, and beside me their is no saviour. (Isaiah 43:10,11)And:
Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be on his shoulder: and his name shall be Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)
No need to read between the lines to see that Isaiah is revealing the Godhead here.
Without very Christ, Mormons do not have God. (1 John 2:23). And this fact shows in Joseph Smith's authorizing vision where he says he sees the Son and the Father. He says God the Father spoke to him. Jesus Christ himself says
"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." (John 1:18)And Paul writes:
"In whom we have redemption in his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." (1 Colossians 1:15)
The author's hyper-intellectual philosophical analyses aside, the question remains who did Joseph Smith see and hear. It wasn't God the Father, for he is invisible and a Spirit, not corporal: "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24). The Mormon Christ is a false Christ, and the deceiver wants to take as many souls with him to hell as he can. What better way than to offer a counterfeit, dress it up in the trappings of Christianity.
I'm researching why Mormon's detest the cross! They've gone to great lengths to pervert the atonement account, claiming that Christ's suffering and bleeding in the garden in Gesthemane is what atoned for our sin. (re: Luke 22:44 -- He didn't "bleed"--it's a simile). Game over so soon? Not quite. The sacrificial victim must die first before his blood is used for the purging. (Remember how we are enjoined not to consume the blood of animals, but the life is in the blood?) The Bible says in stark contrast:
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:" (Galatians 3:13)It is no small difference that Jesus was sacrificed "outside the camp" (not within the city gates -- i.e. Gesthemane).
Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gates. (Hebrews 13:12)
Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
The blood smattered image of Christ is the only true portrait. The other is a fake. (Must end here).
I’m disappointed to see an article like this in First Things. I was a subscriber from the first issue, but I dropped it a year or two after the current editor took over, because regretably it just wasn’t the same.
Mormons are the only religion mocked and scorned by Christians and atheists alike, and there are no objections from the politically correct? Surely the editor must know that the religion most scorned by Christians, atheists, and the politically correct is Catholicism? Not all Christians, of course, but as we see here in the forum there are plenty of Christians who make it a primary business to attack the Church. And as we saw at the recent Grammy show, it’s not Mormons that Hollywood most likes to attack.
The article also is curious because it does a constant shuffle dance. Mormons love Christ. But their Christ is not the same as the Christian Christ. Well, yes.
So what is the point? No, the LDS is not the same kind of problem as Islam, obviously. But it is not Christian. And it shares with Islam a habit of changing the basic facts of the Bible and of history. I hope that Christians can get along with Mormons and work with them against some of the crimes of the secular culture. But we need to recognize our differences, to do so.
Mormons claim to be the "restored church" but look how they dismiss Christ's sacrifice and replace it with personal atonement.
I have hesitate to weigh in on the Mormonism issue, and I won’t really do it here. I recommend that we all step back from our own beliefs for a moment and understand how we get to where are in terms of religious faith.
My views, briefly stated:
God is God. He made us; we did not make Him.
What I believe, I believe by faith; I cannot prove it, even to myself, except through the eyes of faith.
Everyone else who believes in God is subject to the same limitations as I am.
I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Moses, and I believe in His only Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who died for the sins of all who will believe in Him.
My faith in Christ is bolstered by the faith of His Apostles and many who lived with Him, who, in the face of unspeakabel tortures and deaths, clung to their beliefs.
Others do not believe as I do; some do not believe at all. A proper response by those who do not believe as I do is: “I don’t believe as you do.” I may try to persuade them, and they may try to persuade me to change their/my beliefs.
Mormons (and Muslims, as well) truly believe what they believe. As long as they respect my beliefs, or at least do not interfere with my right to live and believe as I do, I can tolerate them also.
Steve; BABY!!
Get over your persecution complex and deal with the FACTS about MORMONism!!
Hint: "What GOES around; COMES around!"
The writer says that Smith and Mormonism understood as concrete and material things that other Christians considered metaphorical or metaphysical. So God's body had to be physical and material. Heaven had to be a place with a spacial location or locations in our universe. "Holy garments" had to have an actual material equivalent. Religious community, authority, and responsibilities had to be more concretely described and instituted than they were in most other denominations.
I don't know how accurate he is, but it does explain many of the features of Mormonism that strike others as "strange" or "weird." Of course, 19th century Christians did tend to understand the Bible in a more literal sense than later Christians did.
Mormons are obsessed not only with Jeshua bar Joseph, that you call Christ, which was not his name, but with Jews in general.
“February 14, 2012 - Mormon church leaders have apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were baptized posthumously in a Mormon temple ritual last month.
Salt Lake City researcher Helen Radkey found documentation of the baptism while conducting regular checks of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints genealogical database last week.
Mormons believe posthumous baptism by proxy rites allow deceased persons to receive the Gospel in the afterlife.
The baptism of Holocaust victims was supposed to be barred by a 1995 agreement between the church and Jews, although some submissions continue by church members.
Church officials say the person who entered the names into the database has been disciplined.
The California-based Wiesenthal Center expressed outrage and called the rite insensitive.”
http://www.newsmax.com/US/Mormon-baptize-holocaust-Wiesenthal/2012/02/14/id/429412