Posted on 06/20/2012 12:17:00 PM PDT by Colofornian
...When Sean replaced his temple garments — the sacred underwear he’d promised to wear day and night — with boxers, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much betrayal. I called up a neighbor with a husband like mine and cried. But instead of empathy, she offered questions that stunned me into silence. Was Sean addicted to pornography? Watching R-rated movies? What sin had brought him to this terrible place?
...Her questions were so off-base...She was sincere, and trying to help, but she believed what the Church teaches — that a man would only leave because he’s disobeying the commandments. She couldn’t understand this was a rational inquiry. She saw everything as the result of sin.
...The Church was wrong about him. What else might they be wrong about?...
...I often found him hunched over his iPad reading everything he could find on Mormon origins...“I’m sorry, but I just have to tell you. Did you know that…” and then he’d tell me...About how Joseph Smith mistranslated some Egyptian hieroglyphics that are part of our canonized scripture. About how he translated the Book of Mormon while looking at a stone inside of a hat.
I listened half-heartedly...though I wasn’t about to go looking at them myself...until one night it was about polygamy, my archnemesis.
“Did you know that Joseph Smith married a 14-year-old girl against her will? Did you know that he’d send men on missions and marry their wives in secret when they were gone?” ...he kept talking, a horror growing in my gut. I knew that if Sean was right, then Joseph Smith was a fraud. I saw no difference between his acts and the modern-day acts of Warren Jeffs, whom I abhorred. And if Joseph Smith was a fraud — then what did that make the Church?
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
If that were true, wouldn’t Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid have identical voting records?
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On somethings they do, the things that the prophet tells them how to vote on.
Bob Bennett admitted it as have other LDS congress critters.
Try sharing with Mormons Eph 2:8. I did this once at work and they (both a Mormon and a JW tried to to argue with me). They believe in works based salvation. Which is impossible.
Moderate George Romney
forgot about him...
yes he was a mormon who ran for POTUS in 1964 and 1968...
In 1964 he only got 41 votes at the convention to Conservative Barry Goldwaters 800+
so he stomped out of the convention young Willie Mitty in tow and went and helped Johnson win...
I'm sorry you persist in seeing it that way. Their story is truthful and sad at the same time. As another poster commented, they threw the baby (God) out with the bathwater (mormonism) because of what they were taught by mormonism.
I am not aware of any other mainstream denomination that has such a high percentage of folks leaving a denomination and becoming atheist. Many choose another or become Jewish. Few abandon God altogether.
The fact remains though, this family's journey is one that is an all too familiar one for mormons who leave the church. They abandon God entirely and become atheists.
Then many ex-mormons are subsequently abandoned by their family, friends and co-workers.
I wonder, who "hates" who?
“Did you know that Joseph Smith married a 14-year-old girl against her will?"
"Did you know that he’d send men on missions and marry their wives in secret when they were gone?”
Worth repeating. Joseph Smith was a deceiver, a fraud and a horndog.
Thanks!
I read this article with great interest, partly because it reflected my journey to a degree.
And I’m always looking for new techniques to try in my attempts to show my wife and son how mormonism isn’t Christian.
Well, since you won’t be on the ballot....
Well, unlike both Obama and Romney, I believe in the Judeo-Christian God. And I will be voting for someone who at least believes in the same God, which means neither Obama or Romney.
I will not throw away my faith for political gain, it is too precious to me, to hard earned in a way very similar to the actual article posted.
Well who is anybody to know the exact relationship with God a given person has...???
But I can say with certainty that the given god of the Mormons is NOT the same God of the Bible.
How do we know this?
Let's look at who Mormons say their "god" is:
Lds "apostle" Bruce R. McConkie:
"According to [Mormon] revelation...
...he is a...
personal Being
a holy and exalted Man
a glorified, resurrected Personage [news flash: The Mormon god they pray "Our Father" to died at some point before the Mormon Jesus became his son]
having a tangible body of flesh and bones [I guess the apostle John was wrong, eh, about God being Spirit -- see John 4:23-24]
an ANTHROPOMORPHIC ENTITY,
the personal Father of the spirits of all men [this last means there's a mom-god @ Kolob w/whom this God had sex with to yield your spirit before you came to earth]
Source: Mormon Doctrine, 1966, p. 250
I mean, come now: Who wants an anthropomorphic entity --a man-made religion about a man who made his godhood level by landing the "god job" -- whose divinity didn't precede His anthro aspects?
Mitt Romney is a direct descendent of Parley P. Pratt, a Mormon "apostle." Mitt Romney's ancestor taught:
"Gods, angels, and men are all of
one species,
one race,
one great family,
widely diffused among the planetary systems as colonies, kingdoms, nations, etc.
Source: The Key to the Science of Theology, 1978, p. 21
So what? Why should Romney be linked to what his ancestors taught? Well, because Romney himself provided such a linkage!
Mitt Romney, Dec, 2007, speaking @ the George Bush Presidential Library: "I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs.
Mormon "theology" that essentially says the Mormon man-gods & man-angels bounce around the universe and thereby arrive on planet earth as essentially aliens. And Mitt "confesses" and "professes" this as the "faith...of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs."
Lds "apostle" John Widtsoe originally published in 1915 called Rational Theology.
Widtsoe in that book slandered God, reducing him to be of slime and then mortal origins:
"God and man are of the same race..." (Widtsoe, p. 61)
Eph 2:8-9 is a great verse to share with LDS. They usually counter with James 2:14-17 saying works are required (faith without works is dead), but if you can get them to look at the context of James, he isn’t teaching salvation by works at all. That stumps them.
The fact remains though, this family’s journey is one that is an all too familiar one for mormons who leave the church. They abandon God entirely and become atheists.
Then many ex-mormons are subsequently abandoned by their family, friends and co-workers.
I wonder, who “hates” who?
- - - - - -
Amen, we have both been on the side of that ‘hate’.
Are they willing to do a family bible study? One girl I know who just left Mormonism had her eyes opened by a study of the Gospel of John.
Showing them the bible in context (even if you use a nonLDS KJV) often does a lot.
You were the one who asked who had the better relationship with God. The answer is neither of them.
What answer were you expecting?
How else can we tell that the Mormon god is distinct from THE God of the Bible?
(1) LDS "Apostle" Bruce McConkie wrote, "The Father is a glorified, perfected resurrected, exalted man who worked out his own salvation by obedience to the same laws he has given to us so that we may do the same" (A New Witness for the Articles of Faith, pg. 64).
As somebody once pointed out...Notice McConkie's use of the word "resurrected" and the phrase, "worked out his salvation." Only those who die can be resurrected, and only those who are lost need salvation.
Bottom-line here:
Mormon leaders have taught that Heavenly Father needed "salvation!" And, since death came due to sin (either your own, or in Jesus' case, someone else's), whose sin caused Heavenly Father to die, Mormons? Whose sin was around that prompted his death? His own?
Also, please note another aspect of this Lds "apostle's" claim: He said Heavenly Father is a "perfected...exalted man." Interesting. Why did He say "perfected" -- vs. "perfect? This Lds "apostle" claimed Heavenly Father needed a spiritual makeover and needed to be perfectED!!!
(I guess that shows you what kind of sinner-saved god Mormons REALLY embrace!!!)
(2) What other Lds general authority comment supports the notion that Lds worship a sinner-saved god?
Well, after B.H. Roberts, the next "deep theologian" to fill the ranks of Mormonism was Lds "apostle" James E. Talmage.
Here's how Talmage weighed in on this: "...but though the Son is glorified with the glory of the Father, you can't change the fact that He is the Son of that Father,
and that Father,
the Eternal Father,
the Father of Jesus Christ,
the Father of His spirit
and the Father of His body,
was once a Man,
and has progressed,
not by any favor but by the right of CONQUEST OVER SIN,
and over death,
to His present position of priesthood and power,
of Godship and Godliness,
as the Supreme Being whom we all profess to worship"
(James E. Talmage, Conference Reports, April 1915, p. 123).
So there ya go! Talmage says the Mormon god "progressed...to His present position of...Godship". He got the "godship" job! And how did he manage that? Well he won via a "Conquest over sin"!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and death)
Hmmm...the Mormon elohim was a sinner!!!! (says a prominent Lds "apostle" still repeatedly cited by the Mormon church and by Mormon leaders)
Per the Mormon Journal of Discourses: "God our Heavenly Father was perhaps once a child, and mortal like we are, and rose step by step in the scale of progress, in the school of advancement; has moved forward and overcome, until He has arrived at the point where He now is" (Lds "apostle" Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses 1:123).
So. Mormon leaders have stated that Elohim (God the Father), as a mortal on some distant planet similar to Earth, went through the same struggles as present-day humans in order to obtain his Godhood. In the words of LDS Apostle Orson Hyde, "God our Heavenly Father was perhaps once a child, and mortal like we are," HYDE is claiming GOD (our Heavenly Father) was mortal like we are. To be consistent, HYDE is claiming mortality for GOD, so it would have to include "a sinful nature".
Well, again, we know from history that mortality was provoked by things having to do with a tree. In the book of Genesis, it was rebellion (sin) by picking fruit from a forbidden tree. And for Jesus, it was donning a tree (the cross) to pay for the fruit of Adam & Eve's sin passed down throughout mankind. So sin was linked to mortality somehow -- either thru direct sin or indirectly taking on the sin of others.
So, again, if the Mormon elohim was mortal, why? Was it his sin -- or that of another?
Other Lds leaders even elaborated a bit beyond that: "The doctrine that God was once a man and has progressed to become a God is unique to this Church. How do you feel, knowing that God, through His own experience, 'knows all that we know regarding the toils [and] sufferings' of mortality?" (Brigham Young, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, p. 34, brackets in original)
So Brigham claimed the Mormon god knows all about the "toils & sufferings" of mortality from firsthand experience!!!
And another Lds "apostle," Orson Whitney, emphasized that "Mormonism teaches that God was once just like ourselves; that the eternal part of Him was enshrined in mortal flesh, subject to mortal ills and earthly pains and toils." (Orson F. Whitney, May 6, 1892, Collected Discourses 3:45)
So perhaps the "best" way for us to describe the Mormon god, per their "apostles," is to first ask Mormons to describe themselves, since Whitney says he "was once JUST LIKE OURSELVES!" That not only includes mortal flesh, but mortal ills. (And guess what prompted mortal ills?) That's right, sin.
(3) Finally, consider what two other Lds "apostles" claimed:
"God and man are of the same race, differing only in their degress of advancement" (John A. Witdsoe, Rational Theololgy, 1915, p. 61)
Wow!!!
And: "Gods, angels, and men are all of one species, one race, one great family, widely diffused among the planetary systems as colonies, kingdoms, nations, etc." (Parley P. Pratt, The Key to the Science of Theology, 1978, p. 21)
"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." Romans 12:9"Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph." Amos 5:15
"To fear the LORD is to hate evil..." Proverbs 8:13
"Let those who love the LORD hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked." Psalm 97:10
Looks like maybe you missed your Sunday School class a few times...
The official current Lds church leadership republished an older book in 1987 by a well-respected (internally well-respected) Lds "apostle" named James Talmage...
This "apostle" -- and by extension the current Mormon church which republishes his books as "official doctrine" -- rules out the God of the Bible as non-existent if he does not have body parts:
"We affirm that to deny the materiality of God's person is to deny God; for a thing without parts has no whole, and an immaterial body cannot exist. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims against the incomprehensible God, devoid of 'body, parts, or passions,' as a thing impossible of existence..."
The Articles of Faith, p. 48 James Talmage published by The Church of JC of Latter-day Saints, 1987
I must have missed Romney being mentioned in the article, would you please point it out.
You are correct. The "bellies" are something of a gourmet version, and much more time-consuming to make. A couple of weeks, is it? (I saw a tv segment about it, but am hazy on the details).
Found the photo using "jelly belly reagan" as search terms. It was near the top of the 1st page.
Yes. I think the Mormon's theology is doubtful, too. But they also seem to be hard-working, self-reliant folks who created thriving communities across the country.
Results matter.
I don't get the anti-Mormonism on this board -- against people who would otherwise be held up as examples of conservatism.
I read a book on the BOM and it claims that the church paid lip service to the BOM until the 1980's. The BOM was only cited 12% of the time in Scriptural justification prior to President Benson(?).
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