No, this thread has nothing to do with Mitt Romney.
Welcome home, Mr. Sherlock.
I have never understood how Mormons can keep a straight face when talking about Mormon beliefs. They range from the crackpot ( the 12 tribes in their cork submarines and how Momon men get their own planets after they die) to the offensive (their beliefs about the nature of God).
I think that there are a lot of Mormons who would really just like to be Evangelical Christians, only with a bit more structure. Smith was a sort of quack who dabbled in get rich quick schemes and looked for gold through a crystal in his “magic hat,” but he had been brought up in what was called the Burnt Over District, an area of Upstate New York and bordering states that had had so many wandering preachers and ecstatic revivals that there was nobody left to revive anymore. The nature of Evangelical Christianity is anti-institutional, so there was no way to make the results of the revivals last; people had no church to join, so it would all wear off.
Joseph Smith, who saw himself as a “second Mohammed,” essentially took a combination of formless emotional Arianized Christianity (where Jesus is not the Son of God, but essentially a very important prophet, just as in Islam), his own totally nutty cosmology and some self-serving beliefs, such as his right to several wives, and adopted a structure for them - one that was also present in his 19th century rural world, that of Masonry. Mormon rituals and even a lot of their internal structures are based on Masonry and the secret society model (lodges and secret societies were very popular in the unrooted, isolated world of 19th century and frontier America). Brigham Young, who was even more organizationally minded, consolidated all this.
Eventually, I guess they’ll have to make a choice. It will be either to go whole hog with their nuttiness (the reason they can’t really reject the “primitive” Mormons who practice polygamy and live on welfare in the desert is that these people actually are following pure Mormon beliefs) or their “Presiding Bishop” will have a dream and announce that God sent Joseph Smith just to shake people up and put them on the right footing, and that now the time for his beliefs are over and the Mormon church will make a profession of faith in the Nicene Creed.
He has yet to make one more saving step to make, beyond the "universal church" concept, and into the Company of the Committed (as suggested by Elton Trueblood. another philosopher and prolific writer) by the Blood of The Christ, through the Veil, and into the Most Holy Place to which Peter, and Paul, and John, and Silas, and Timothy, and Mark, and, yes Mary and her children Jacob (James, that is) and Jude, and Cleopas, and his wife Mary, and Cornelius, and Lydia, and Aquila, and Priscilla, and Stephen, and Ananius of Damascus, and many other true confreres of the 120 that gathered together in Jerusalem for the first Pentecost after His Resurrection/Ascension.
Until he makes that step of total committed persistent trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and in The Faith of Him of which He is the embodiment in the flesh, not leaning on reasonings, or traditions, or humanoid experiences, Sherlock is still poised for judgment at the final Great White Throne.
So far, all the so-titled Smithite "Elders" appearing on my doorstep have refused instruction regarding it and their culpability. They have insisted that they will stand in that judgment as to their works and final eternal disposition, and that it will be beneficial to themselves. They do not claim, as do I in faith, to have been judged on the Cross, freed of guilt, and of the penalty and power of Sin as a master. What a shame it will be for them.
Sherlock needs to step in faith back past the inception of what is termed catholic, past its Platonic-based philosophy, past its allegories, syllogisms, reasonings, and supererogatic works, and join the company of the humble and meek truly regenerated believer-disciple bondslave-followers of The Anointed One, into the kingdom of His priests, every one, whose assignment is glorifying Him forever.
Sherlock has, so far, missed the main point. He is still blinded. And set to perish. I pray God to save him yet,
IMVHO
bflr
Yes, do the math. For about every 500,000 Catholics who join the LDS Church, about one converts the other way, to Catholocism. The latter example really IS news!
God bless him for being open enough to see the truth of Catholicism.
“I have come to Rome as a pilgrim” ...
Jesus is not found only in Rome. FWIW.
“The other fundamental Mormon teaching that I cannot accept is the absence of an existential distinction between God and man. In an 1844 sermon, Joseph Smith made a claim that profoundly shapes the way Mormons see the world: “God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man.”
If you follow many leaders of the so-called “faith” movement, there have been many among them who believe this also. Hmmmmm.
Maybe his mom was Jewish and his dad a Mormon. This makes me wonder how “Mormon” was his so-called “raised Mormon” was.
Anyway,....I am pleased that he has found the church to which God has called him.