Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history

Washington Post ^ | May 20, 2012

[Colofornian]

“There’s families all scattered in through this area who had ancestors in that, so there is a tinge of anti-Mormonism in this area, a little bit of bias I suppose,” said Republican Roy Ragland...

SNIP

The Mountain Meadows Massacre remains one of the darkest episodes in the history of Mormonism...Romney addressed it during his 2007 presidential campaign in response to a reporter’s question.

“That was a terrible, awful act carried out by members of my faith,” he told the Associated Press. “There are bad people in any church, and it’s true of members of my church, too.”

SNIP

In northwestern Arkansas, at least two monuments commemorate the massacre, including a towering wooden cross erected just six years ago. On it is carved a biblical saying: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the Lord.”

Historians believe the wagon train of 30 families, laden with cattle and other goods, set off in early 1857...

Their journey took them through Utah...

...local Mormon leaders decided to attack the wagon train with the help of a local Native American tribe, on whom they planned to lay the blame. After days of exchanging fire, a Mormon leader approached the camp to offer safe passage. But it was a ruse: The Mormon militia massacred the men and women and many of the children, 120 in all. Seventeen...were spared, and adopted by local families until federal authorities intervened to return them to Arkansas...

Descendants’ groups headquartered here...have...sometimes clashed with, the Mormon Church to create a public memorial at the site...which sits on church property...

“It’s an emotional thing for us,” said Phil Bolinger, president of the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation. “When you come of age, when you mature, things to do with your own blood kin becomes more important and you become passionate about it.”...

[Elsie]

I can understand your concern about ISLAM; but most folks KNOW about it; whereas MORMONism hides under rocks.

---

Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history is the title. It does NOT say...

Barak Obama’s Muslim faith tangles with a quirk of European history

[samtheman]

Every single Mormon, including Romney, is personally responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, just as every single non-black person, including the Colofornian and me, is responsible for slavery (Go, Reparations, Go!), and just as every single non-Native-American is responsible for the massacre of “The Indians” in the 1800s and just as every single European is responsible for smallpox decimating the Native American populations in the 1600s.

It all makes sense to me.

[Colofornian]

Get over it; it happened over a 150 years ago. My own biological father was a real SOB bast##d, that doesn’t make me act like him.

Get over Obama! People can rightly claim he's a real (fill-in-the-blank) POTUS and candidate, that doesn't make it right that we elect a fellow socialist healthcare pioneer (Romney) like him.

[Elsie]

Congress didn't begin addressing laws aimed @ Mormon polygamy until the 1860s thru 1880s.

And the Spineless MORMON leadership in Salt Lake City rolled right over; throwing their GOD under the bus!

---

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]

... the Spineless MORMON leadership in Salt Lake City rolled right over; throwing their GOD under the bus!

But; a whole new generation had come along since:

"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned;

and I will go still further and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that the Lord has given,

and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned.

Brigham Young - JoD 3:266 (July 14, 1855)

[Colofornian]

Answer just one simple question for me:

Name for me exactly when within the 20th century -- and with who -- the cover-up of the MMM finally ended within Mormonism?

[Psalm 144]

Well, that is just a culture of death guy using the ‘mistakes were made’ damage control gambit. Culture of death will do what it does, and these seeds remain in the grooup’s history. If one’s roots are akin to the Manson Family, what will the eventual fruit look like?

[Elsie]

But, FHC, we would REALLY like a man who has at least SOME evidence of being able to discern the truth in office; do we not?

 

 

 

With SO many FACTS about MORMONism are being revealed these days; any person who has actually CHOSEN that religion must be doing so while ignoring the data being presented; almost ALL of it from Official MORMON sources.

 

 

So you've endured the spiel of the fresh faced young men who have come to your home, and told you the well rehearsed story of the Book of MORMON, and they want you to 'pray about it' to see if it is true or not.

 

They most likely will NOT have told you how it came to be...

 

 

 

 

---

"Now the way he translated was he put the urim and thummim into his hat and Darkned his Eyes than he would take a sentance and it would apper in Brite Roman Letters. Then he would tell the writer and he would write it. Then that would go away the next sentance would Come and so on. But if it was not Spelt rite it would not go away till it was rite, so we see it was marvelous. Thus was the hol [whole] translated."

---Joseph Knight's journal.

---

"In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us."
(History of the RLDS Church, 8 vols.

(Independence, Missouri: Herald House,1951),

"Last Testimony of Sister Emma [Smith Bidamon]," 3:356.

---

"I, as well as all of my father's family, Smith's wife, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, were present during the translation. . . . He [Joseph Smith] did not use the plates in translation."
---(David Whitmer,

as published in the "Kansas City Journal," June 5, 1881,

and reprinted in the RLDS "Journal of History", vol. 8, (1910), pp. 299-300.

---

In an 1885 interview, Zenas H. Gurley, then the editor of the RLDS Saints Herald, asked Whitmer if Joseph had used his "Peep stone" to do the translation. Whitmer replied:

"... he used a stone called a "Seers stone," the "Interpreters" having been taken away from him because of transgression. The "Interpreters" were taken from Joseph after he allowed Martin Harris to carry away the 116 pages of Ms [manuscript] of the Book of Mormon as a punishment, but he was allowed to go on and translate by use of a "Seers stone" which he had, and which he placed in a hat into which he buried his face, stating to me and others that the original character appeared upon parchment and under it the translation in English."

---

"Martin Harris related an incident that occurred during the time that he wrote that portion of the translation of the Book of Mormon which he was favored to write direct from the mouth of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He said that the Prophet possessed a seer stone, by which he was enabled to translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim, and for convenience he then used the seer stone, Martin explained the translation as follows: By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by Martin and when finished he would say 'Written,' and if correctly written that sentence would disappear and another appear in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used."
(Edward Stevenson, "One of the Three Witnesses,"

reprinted from Deseret News, 30 Nov. 1881

in Millennial Star, 44 (6 Feb. 1882): 86-87.)

---

In 1879, Michael Morse, Emma Smith's brother-in-law, stated:

 

 "When Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon [I] had occasion more than once to go into his immediate presence, and saw him engaged at his work of translation. The mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face, resting his elbows upon his knees, and then dictating word after word, while the scribes Emma, John Whitmer, O. Cowdery, or some other wrote it down."
(W.W. Blair interview with Michael Morse,

Saints Herald, vol. 26, no. 12

June 15, 1879,  pp. 190-91.)

---

Joseph Smith's brother William also testified to the "face in the hat" version:

 

"The manner in which this was done was by looking into the Urim and Thummim, which was placed in a hat to exclude the light, (the plates lying near by covered up), and reading off the translation, which appeared in the stone by the power of God"

("A New Witness for Christ in America,"

Francis W. Kirkham, 2:417.)

---

"The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret was the same manner as when he looked for the money-diggers, with the stone in his hat, while the book of plates were at the same time hid in the woods."

---Isaac Hale (Emma Smith's father's) affidavit, 1834.

---

---

[Elsie]

...ignoring the data being presented...

The following are the LYING images that MORMONism has produced, KNOWING that they represent something FALSE!!

 

 

   

[Elsie]

Romney must be a really good man.

I know your reply was sarcasm, but the FACT remains that there are two ways of describing Mitt:

Either as a DECIEVED Mormon or as a DECEIVING Mormon.

I do not want either one to lead MY country.

I'll stick with the devil I know.

[Elsie]

Romney addressed it during his 2007 presidential campaign in response to a reporter’s question.

   “That was a terrible, awful ACT [singular] carried out by members of my faith,”

     he told the Associated Press.

 

 

But he flubbed the OFFICIAL story of only ONE man being responsible: that rapid shooting, fast reloading, John D. Lee!

 

---

---

 

 

"I am a true believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ, I do not believe everything that is now being taught and practiced by Brigham Young.

 I do not care who hears it. It is my last word - it is so.

 I believe he is lead­ing the people astray, downward to destruction.

 But I believe in the gospel that was taught in its purity by Joseph Smith, in former days.

 I have my reasons for it.

 

"I studied to make this man's [Brigham Young] will my pleasure for thirty years.

See, now, what I have come to this day!

 

"I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner." (Lee enun­ciated this sentence with marked emphasis.)

 

 

Excerpted from -->  http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mountainmeadows/leeexecution.html

[Elsie]

If we want to hold people accountable for the actions of their ancestors, I can assure you none of our hands are clean.

Nope!

We want them ACCOUNTABLE for staying a member of a false religion that teaches a false 'christ' and a false 'salvation'.

[Elsie]

Mormons were the target of a massacre that was never prosecuted and an extermination order by a governor of Missouri in 1838. Mormonism's founder was lynched by Protestants. I'd say there was plenty of sectarian violence to go around, back in the day.

I see you have been given some FALSE information.

One, JS did NOT get 'lynched'.
He had a GUN smuggled in to his cell in jail, and he died from bullet wounds while using that gun to shoot at folks.

Two, if their really WAS an 'extermination order', then perhaps you could explain why so many MORMONs CHOSE to stay in Missouri and NOT flee to the West with BY?

They actually PROSPERED there and were heir to all of the property that the other Mormons left behind.

[Elsie]

Come on Colo...you have added to the title with the “[1st 9/11 terrorism was Lds]” which is another deliberate attempt to equate the LDS Church with our nation’s enemies.

Jeff; the LDS Church is our GOD’s enemy.

---

---

Questions put to Joseph Smith: "'Do you believe the Bible?' [Smith:]'If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do'. When asked 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons'? [Smith replied] 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119).

Joseph Smith: "for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (from Pearl of Great Price 1:12). "What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.270).

 

 

 

Brigham Young stated this repeatedly: "When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness" (Journal of Discourses 5:73); "The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God" (Journal of Discourses 8:171); "With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world" (Journal of Discourses 8:199); "And who is there that acknowledges [God's] hand? ...You may wander east, west, north, and south, and you cannot find it in any church or government on the earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.24); "Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity" (Journal of Discourses 10:230).

 

 

 

Orson Pratt proclaimed: "Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent" (The Seer, p. 255).

 

 

 

Orson Pratt also said: "This great apostasy commenced about the close of the first century of the Christian era, and it has been waxing worse and worse from then until now" (Journal of Discourses

, vol.18, p.44) and: "But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be ...But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance" (Journal of Discourses , 18:172).

 

 

President John Taylor stated: "Christianity...is a perfect pack of nonsense...the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century." (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.167); "Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom." (Journal of Discourses , 10:127).

 

 

 

James Talmage said: "A self-suggesting interpretation of history indicates that there has been a great departure from the way of salvation as laid down by the Savior, a universal apostasy from the Church of Christ". (A Study of the Articles of Faith, p.182).

 

 

 

President Joseph Fielding Smith said: "Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness." (Doctrines of Salvation, p.266). "For hundreds of years the world was wrapped in a veil of spiritual darkness, until there was not one fundamental truth belonging to the place of salvation ...Joseph Smith declared that in the year 1820 the Lord revealed to him that all the 'Christian' churches were in error, teaching for commandments the doctrines of men" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p.282).

 

 

 

More recent statements by apostle Bruce McConkie are also very clear: "Apostasy was universal...And this darkness still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol 3, p.265); "Thus the signs of the times include the prevailing apostate darkness in the sects of Christendom and in the religious world in general" (The Millennial Messiah, p.403); "a perverted Christianity holds sway among the so-called Christians of apostate Christendom" (Mormon Doctrine, p.132); "virtually all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ whom they vainly suppose to be a spirit essence who is incorporeal uncreated, immaterial and three-in-one with the Father and Holy Spirit" (Mormon Doctrine, p.269); "Gnosticism is one of the great pagan philosophies which antedated Christ and the Christian Era and which was later commingled with pure Christianity to form the apostate religion that has prevailed in the world since the early days of that era." (Mormon Doctrine, p.316).

 

 

 

President George Q. Cannon said: "After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon" (Gospel Truth, p.324).

 

 

President Wilford Woodruff stated: "the Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel, I would rather prefer the Gospel of the dark ages, so called" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 2, p.196).

[Utah Binger]

I’m going to head back to Missouri and reclaim the Binger property that mt GG grandfather lost.

Reparations brother!

[Elsie]

And God bless and rest those LDS people who were massacred and killed in Missouri and Illinois 15-20 years earlier when the LDS were brutally persecuted and pushed out into the Intermountain West to the Great Basin.

Massacred? For WHAT? WHAT have you CONVENIENTLY left out of the story?

"brutally persecuted"???

Perhaps Captain Hyperbole can explain the RLDS church...

[Elsie]

Hey! If you can’t prove your religion is true, criticize the others!

Yet; that is exactly what YOU are trying to do.

TCOJSOLDS makes claims about the Book of MORMON; that it CONTAINS the 'fullness of the gospel'.

I daresay that NO mormon can show just where that is located...

[Elsie]

It is a strange event when the psychotic obama followers join forces with they psychotic religious nutcases.

LM; usually if a person has some evidence to prove their point, they present it.

You, however, have chosen to act cute and make up names to call folks.

[Elsie]

My attempted point was merely that the WashPost is a very biased newspaper today.

Have you read Deseret News lately?

[Elsie]

At that time it was a US Army that was coming to the LDS settlements around the Great Salt Lake...

Oh?

WHY?