I brought the popcorn!
Posted on 10/29/2007 8:28:33 AM PDT by Invisigoth
The Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Mormons and a few other faiths have three things in common – they believe in Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God and that He died and was resurrected for our sins.
So what’s the problem?
The political pundits continue to try and make Mitt Romney’s religious beliefs a big issue as he runs for the Republican presidential nomination. Different denominations of Christianity are just that – different denominations – which means different worship practices of the same fundamental Christian beliefs.
Some people have commented that they cannot support Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon. When they are pressed to explain why that is objectionable, they stutter. Still others are skeptical of Mitt Romney based solely on hearsay or lack of knowledge about Mormons.
(Excerpt) Read more at northstarwriters.com ...
The following chart was generated from WWW.FAMILYSEARCH.ORG (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City).
| Wife | Date | Age | Husband* |
| Emma Hale Fanny Alger Lucinda Morgan Harris Louisa Beaman Zina Huntington Jacobs Presendia Huntington Buell Agnes Coolbrith Sylvia Sessions Lyon Mary Rollins Lightner Patty Bartlett Sessions Marinda Johnson Hyde Elizabeth Davis Durfee Sarah Kingsley Cleveland Delcena Johnson Eliza R. Snow Sarah Ann Whitney Martha McBride Knight Ruth Vose Sayers Flora Ann Woodworth Emily Dow Partridge Eliza Maria Partridge Almera Johnson Lucy Walker Sarah Lawrence Maria Lawrence Helen Mar Kimball Hanna Ells Elvira Cowles Holmes Rhoda Richards Desdemona Fullmer Olive Frost Melissa Lott Nancy Winchester Fanny Young |
Jan 1827 1833 1838 Apr 1841 Oct 1841 Dec 1841 Jan 1842 Feb 1842 Feb 1842 Mar 1842 Apr 1842 Jun 1842 Jun 1842 Jul 1842 Jun 1842 Jul 1842 Aug 1842 Feb 1843 Spring 1843 Mar 1843 Mar 1843 Apr 1843 May 1843 May 1843 May 1843 May 1843 Mid 1843 Jun 1843 Jun 1843 Jul 1843 Mid 1843 Sep 1843 1843 Nov 1843 |
22 16 37 26 20 31 33 23 23 47 27 50 53 37 38 17 37 33 16 19 22 30 17 17 19 14 29 29 58 32 27 19 14 56 |
NONE NONE George W. Harris NONE Henry Jacobs Norman Buell NONE Windsor Lyon Adam Lightner David Sessions Orson Hyde Jabez Durfee John Cleveland NONE NONE NONE NONE Edward Sayers NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE Jonathan Holmes NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE |
| * Living Husband at the time of Marriage to Joseph Smith |
References |
And you can take time out of your busy day to think of US? Why, Bless your little heart. (It's a southern expression, I'm told.)
"I will be to this generation a second Muhammed, whose motto in treating for peace was "the Alcoran (Koran) or the sword. So shall it eventually be with us, Joseph Smith or the sword!"--SO, DOES THIS SOUND TO YOU LIKE THE BIBLICAL JESUS?
Thanks for the ping.
I’ll take this opportunity to change my tagline....
It's not my Bible, it was my Mother's and it's in KJV. And, it says to love God, love your neighbor; Oh yeah, there's that Way... stuff. Christ, her family and her church came first for Mom. Works for me too. And thanks for the complement.
Naw, what you gave me was a bibliography from an LDS website article with the foreign sources redacted! I found the article.
You quote Irenaeus but you have not read him! Read him outside of LDS selected quotes.
Here is Augustine on the creation of Angels (since earlier you asked about this and have also mentioned Augustine):
Chapter 1.—Of the Creation of Angels and Men.
As we promised in the immediately preceeding book, this, the last of the whole work, shall contain a discussion of the eternal blessedness of the city of God. This blessedness is named eternal, not because it shall endure for many ages, though at last it shall come to an end, but because, according to the words of the gospel, “of His kingdom there shall be no end.” Luke 1:33 Neither shall it enjoy the mere appearance of perpetuity which is maintained by the rise of fresh generations to occupy the place of those that have died out, as in an evergreen the same freshness seems to continue permanently, and the same appearance of dense foliage is preserved by the growth of fresh leaves in the room of those that have withered and fallen; but in that city all the citizens shall be immortal, men now for the first time enjoying what the holy angels have never lost. And this shall be accomplished by God, the most almighty Founder of the city. For He has promised it, and cannot lie, and has already performed many of His promises, and has done many unpromised kindnesses to those whom He now asks to believe that He will do this also.
For it is He who in the beginning created the world full of all visible and intelligible beings, among which He created nothing better than those spirits whom He endowed with intelligence, and made capable of contemplating and enjoying Him, and united in our society, which we call the holy and heavenly city, and in which the material of their sustenance and blessedness is God Himself, as it were their common food and nourishment. It is He who gave to this intellectual nature free-will of such a kind, that if he wished to forsake God, i.e., his blessedness, misery should forthwith result. It is He who, when He foreknew that certain angels would in their pride desire to suffice for their own blessedness, and would forsake their great good, did not deprive them of this power, deeming it to be more befitting His power and goodness to bring good out of evil than to prevent the evil from coming into existence. And indeed evil had never been, had not the mutable nature—mutable, though good, and created by the most high God and immutable Good, who created all things good—brought evil upon itself by sin. And this its sin is itself proof that its nature was originally good. For had it not been very good, though not equal to its Creator, the desertion of God as its light could not have been an evil to it. For as blindness is a vice of the eye, and this very fact indicates that the eye was created to see the light, and as, consequently, vice itself proves that the eye is more excellent than the other members, because it is capable of light (for on no other supposition would it be a vice of the eye to want light), so the nature which once enjoyed God teaches, even by its very vice, that it was created the best of all, since it is now miserable because it does not enjoy God. It is he who with very just punishment doomed the angels who voluntarily fell to everlasting misery, and rewarded those who continued in their attachment to the supreme good with the assurance of endless stability as the meed of their fidelity. It is He who made also man himself upright, with the same freedom of will,—an earthly animal, indeed, but fit for heaven if he remained faithful to his Creator, but destined to the misery appropriate to such a nature if he forsook Him. It is He who when He foreknew that man would in his turn sin by abandoning God and breaking His law, did not deprive him of the power of free-will, because He at the same time foresaw what good He Himself would bring out of the evil, and how from this mortal race, deservedly and justly condemned, He would by His grace collect, as now He does, a people so numerous, that He thus fills up and repairs the blank made by the fallen angels, and that thus that beloved and heavenly city is not defrauded of the full number of its citizens, but perhaps may even rejoice in a still more overflowing population.
From The City of God. Cool, huh?
I will be posting some links detailing Mighty Mitt's ACTUAL record on abortion below. Needless to say, it's quite different from the anti-abortion crusader you seem to be trying to portray him as, which means your opinion of Mitt is based on either ignorance or dishonesty. That makes you a shill.
I have not been silent about Romney's record. I guess, by the definition you're using for being "silent" about it, you've also been silent as you've failed to back up your assertions that Romney's record is pro-abortion. You simply give nebulous statements saying that he's not trustworthy on the abortion issue while saying that his actual record is the most important determining factor.
Fine, let's talk about Mitt's record on abortion.
Human Events Magazine in 2005 listed Mitt #8 among the Top Ten RINO's in the country, they note that he was quoted as saying, "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country". His support for strict gun control and "civil unions" for gays was also noted.
There's also a whole gaggle of revealing quotes from various Massachusetts newspapers about Romney's positions on abortion, and social/moral issues in general. Among these quotes, we have:
Mitt's record on abortion is that he was pro-choice until he realised, around the middle of 2005, that being pro-choice would hurt his chances of winning the GOP nomination.
I've falsely portrayed nothing. Are you implying that Dr. Jack Willke is also falsely portraying Romney's record? Is Dr. Willke a "shill" now because he disagrees with your assessment of Romney's record? This man has dedicated his life to the pro-life cause and is now staking his invaluable reputation on Romney yet you're going to disregard it and call Dr. Willke a "shill!!?"
Since Dr. Willke appears to be either ignorant of or deliberately obfuscating Mitt's pro-choice record, then yes, Dr. Willke is a shill for Romney (though it should be noted that Dr. Willke's choice was apparently made because he suffers from UFOH (Unfounded Fear of Hillary) Syndrome.
For one, your link here in this thread does not point to what you think it points to. Second, some of the links in the post where you think that you disproved something are expired and don't point to anything. But, most importantly, you were wrong in that post (which I did find through a little searching) because Roll Call #369, to which I was referring, WAS another vote on keeping FEHB funds from paying for abortions. It was a Committee vote to strip lines 10-17 from page 76 of the legislation, which would have removed that language allowing payment for abortion services. If you would actually read the Congressional Record on the matter you would see that. Your claims that you disproved anything are what is verifiably false.
The only dead link in my previous post was the one that was supposed to go to the THOMAS list of amendments to H.R.2020 provided with the bill. Apparently THOMAS doesn't like such links, and allows them to expire. One can easily go to either of the other links (the two pro-life votes by FDT) and click on the bill number itself, then click on "Amendments" and see the list for themselves. The amendment you describe doesn't even APPEAR on that list, however. In fact, I've searched the Congressional Record and cannot find the language nor lines which you describe. Can you kindly provide a link to the text which contains the page and line numbers for verification (since the bill text, either HTML or PDF, seems to be unpaginated)?
And I was NEVER asserting that Fred Thompson was anything other than a pro-life candidate.
That's good, because unlike with Mitt, such an assertion would be blatantly false.
What I've been asserting and will continue to assert is that he doesn't have a 100%, perfect pro-life in the Senate. People here want to demand that he does, but they're wrong.
I don't demand that, and in fact, I would be highly surprised if he actually did have a 100% pro-life record from 1994-2001. Why? Because FDT does indeed appear to have gradually changed his position on this issue towards the pro-life side (as have MILLIONS OF OTHER AMERICANS, btw). The difference between FDT and Romney is that FDT seems to have changed his position over a number of years, while he was already elected and thus didn't have an "uh oh" reason for evolving on this issue. Mitt, on the other hand, appears to have suddenly (mid-2005) realised that he'd better get with the program if he wants to get nominated as the GOP presidential candidate. The former is a reasonable process of development, the latter is a crass political manueovre.
I back up my assertions with the solid facts that the premiere pro-life organization in America - the National Right to Life Committee - did NOT give him a 100% rating
Which is because they grade on other issues besides just abortion and "life issues". If you look at the actual NRTL scorecards for 1997-1998, 1999-2000, and 2001-2002, we see that each session, the only things they dinged FDT on was his campaign finance "reform" votes (which, admittedly, were very bad decisions). As far as actual, real, true-to-life abortion votes, he is 100%, per the votes they listed each session.
AND I did find one amendment on which he did not vote the pro-life position. Instead he voted with all but 5 of the Democrats and a bunch of RINOs like Jeffords, Spector, etc. There may be others, but I'm sure that it is an extremely rare occurrence.
I have yet to see that you've actually "found" anything here. And even if you did, as you pointed out, it is an "extremely rare occurrence", which manifestly CANNOT be said for Mitt Romney, at least prior to the middle of 2005.
Continuing to demand that Thompson has a perfect, 100% pro-life record - despite seeing the facts that he doesn't - meets your own definition of being a "shill".
I don't "demand" anything. I am extremely unconvinced that he doesn't have such, but I don't DEMAND that he have one. For reasons that have been previously discussed on threads on FR, there are any number of good reasons why a person might vote procedurally for a bad amendment - it's often a way of manipulating the timing of a vote so that a bad bill will be killed or an amendment stopped before it has sufficient momentum to pass. Such votes, even if made for a good procedural purpose, will still "look" bad on a scorecard.
Does Mitt Romney have a 100% pro-life record? No. Does Fred Thompson? No. Did Mitt Romney answer some pro-choice groups' questionnaires in a manner which did not assert a pro-life position? Yes. Did Fred Thompson do the same? Yes. Neither candidate is perfect on the issue. That's all I've been trying to claim, your false claims, aspersions and namecalling notwithstanding.
You are comparing apples with oranges. Mitt's public record, up until mid-2005, seems stridently pro-choice, and then he makes a sudden about face. It's not just that he "doesn't have a 100% pro-life voting record" or that he answered some questionnaire questions pro-choice. The point is that he CONSISTENTLY was pro-choice, until quite recently, and his about face appears to be politically motivated by the necessities of Republican primary politics. This cannot be truthfully said of FDT.
Oh, if I could answer that question, I could be rich and/or powerful. Christ, of course has the answer. It's in His teachings.
To the extent the creeds are used in that way, they ARE an abomination.
Salt Lake Tribune
Published: 12/13/97
Page: C1
BY VERN ANDERSON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A year's celebration of the Mormon pioneer experience is ending with publication of a book on the ``tragic ambiguity'' of polygamy as experienced by 33 plural wives of church founder Joseph Smith.
The 788-page group biography casts a stark light on the peculiar practice that made the Mormons pariahs in the Midwest and compelled their epic migration to the Salt Lake Valley 150 years ago.
In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith vividly documents the faith, hardship and heroism that were the focus this year of the Mormon Church's successfully orchestrated sesquicentennial celebration.
But in this first comprehensive examination of the lives of the women Smith married and widowed, author Todd Compton also tracks the isolation and heartbreak that were a significant part of the Mormon female experience with polygamy.
``Most were pioneers, sometimes throughout their lives, moving from New England to Ohio, then to Missouri, to different parts of Missouri, to Nauvoo, to Winter Quarters, and on to Utah. Houses were built, then abandoned, with nearly every move,'' Compton writes in the introduction.
And while most polygamists were sincere, intensely religious people of good will, ``my central thesis is that Mormon polygamy was characterized by a tragic ambiguity.''
On one hand it was ``the new and everlasting covenant,'' restored by prophesy from the patriarchal milieu of the Old Testament and taught by Smith as an essential ingredient of eternal exaltation.
``On the other hand, day-to-day practical polygamous living, for many women, was less than monogamous marriage -- it was a social system that simply did not work in 19th-century America.
``Polygamous wives often experienced what was essentially acute neglect. Despite the husband's sincere efforts, he could only give a specific wife a fraction of his time and means,'' Compton adds, and polygamy's ``practical result, for the woman, was solitude.''
In identifying 33 well-documented wives of Smith -- other researchers have placed the figure as high as 48 -- Compton found that in the case of 11 women, Smith's polygamy was polyandrous. That is, the women were married and cohabiting with their husbands, who mostly were faithful Mormons, when Smith married them.
Yet not one divorced her ``first husband'' when Smith was alive. Indeed, they continued to live with their civil spouses while married to Smith.
``If one superimposes a chronological perspective, one sees that of Smith's first 12 wives, nine were polyandrous. So in this early period polyandry was the norm, not the anomaly,'' he writes.
Compton, a practicing Mormon living in Santa Monica, Calif., has a doctorate in classics from UCLA but spent much of the 1990s combing pioneer records, diaries and reminiscences.
He cites strong evidence that Smith experimented with polygamy in the 1830s in Ohio and Missouri, but added wives in large numbers only in the final two years of his life in Nauvoo, Ill. Curiously, Smith took no new wives in the eight months before his assassination by a mob, at age 38, in 1844.
Eleven of Smith's wives were between ages 14 and 20, nine were in their 20s, eight were in Smith's own peer group of 31 to 40, two were in their 40s and three in their 50s.
``I knew that Joseph Smith had married younger women,'' Compton said in an interview. ``But when I read all of the sources, the composite history is very troubling, striking, especially from the viewpoint of the young women.''
In Smith's theology, Compton writes, ``a fullness of salvation depended on the quantity of family members sealed to a person in this life. . . . This doctrine also makes it clear that, though Joseph's marriages undoubtedly had a sexual dimension, theological concepts also drove his polygamy. . . .''
After Smith's death, his successor as church president, Brigham Young, married between seven and nine of Smith's widows. Young's counselor, Heber C. Kimball, married 11 more.
Compton is aware that relatively few of the world's 10 million Mormons know many particulars of the polygamy practiced by their antecedents. Since abandoning the practice in 1890, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has striven for the place in the American mainstream that it was denied in the 19th century, largely because of polygamy, he said.
But Compton isn't comfortable with Mormon discomfort with the past, or with attempts to minimize polygamy or ``sweep it under the carpet because it was an oddity.''
He pointed out that the three pioneer women featured in ``Legacy,'' the church-produced movie about the Mormon migration shown to Temple Square visitors, were all polygamous wives -- a fact not mentioned in the film.
``Those who would portray Mormon history as carried on by superhuman men and women, without flaws, would turn them into inhuman automatons, which in fact betrays a deep disrespect for the real humanity of our foremothers and forefathers,'' he writes.
Compton finds humanity aplenty in some of the Smith wives' stories.
Emily Dow Partridge recounted how in 1843 as a frightened 19-year-old she was approached by the Mormon prophet, who said ``the Lord had commanded (him) to enter into plural marriage and had given me to him. . . .''
So secret was the practice that neither Emily nor Eliza Partridge, a 22-year-old sister married by Smith four days later, initially knew they shared a common spouse.
Later, the two sister-wives were ordered out of the Smith home by Emma, Smith's first wife, with her husband's anguished acquiescence.
Helen Mar Kimball, 14-year-old daughter of Heber C. Kimball, wrote that after initially refusing when her father proposed marriage on Smith's behalf, she finally relented.
``I knew that he loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure, virtuous and exalting in its tendencies; and no one else could have . . . brought me to accept of a doctrine so utterly repugnant and so contrary to all of our former ideas and traditions,'' she wrote.
Toward the end of Smith's life, knowledge of his secret marriages began to leak out. William Law, Smith's second counselor in the church's First Presidency and an ardent polygamy foe, filed suit against the church leader for living ``in an open state of adultery'' with 19-year-old Maria Lawrence.
In a speech a month before his death, Smith responded by flatly denying polygamy, which was illegal under federal law. ``What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one,'' he said.
Linda King Newell, who co-authored a 1984 biography of Emma Smith, said Compton's focus on Smith's wives gives the book ``a ground-breaking impact because we tend to look at polygamy from a male point of view.
``He didn't sensationalize,'' Newell said, ``which tends to be the case when people get going on polygamy.''
Only if there is a gay Zoroastrian running mate out there for her that is cute enough for Bill.
Well, nobody who's in politics a while stays static. There are going to be both some changes for the better & some for the worse.
So you're right in one sense. Politicians change. Politicians flip flop. (And the same is true w/us humans spiritually, relationally, emotionally, etc.)
But there's gotta be some big dividing line between public policy wayward outbursts and just plain double-mindedness as one big pattern.
Of the list I gave you on Romney's "gumbility," the three or so things that convinced me of his double-mindedness were..
(a) coming out with a pro-Boy Scouts and anti-Boy Scouts statement in the same breath...back to back sentences...in 1994; and...
(b) undergoing a supposed "pro-life" conversion in Nov. 04 only to say he was fully "pro-choice" in late May 05; and...
(c) telling a Fox interviewer in Aug 07 that in his mind he always thought of himself as being "pro-life"--not "pro-choice."
You can also include his being against civil unions, and then being for them. (Moving leftward).
It just seems that social policy wise I don't see the LDS erecting social policy stances or theological stances based upon an everlasting, universal absolute foundational basis. I mean, if polygamy was God's "Everlasting Covenant" for all peoples in all times--as LDS "Scripture" still contends (see D&C 130)--then the LDS god would not be strong-armed by some peasily little earthly government residing in some peasily little district called, "Columbia." Nor would such a god be a respecter of slave owners that He would be afraid of giving the gospel or baptizing slaves, as D&C 134:12 contends.
LDS know they have a god who not only does about-faces, but is two-faced. "god-liness" = becoming like the god you worship and admire.
To end on a more "upbeat" acknowledgment of LDS moving rightward on some things, it's nice to know that the LDS church has been trying to protect marriage for a number of years now...but when I think about how they were the ones militating against it for 55 years...it makes me think, "What happens if the Mormon god changes his mind again on a key social policy?"
Now for YOU to contend that the LDS god won't do that--or that theology doesn't overlap with public policy--then you just don't know enough about 19th-century history and what our government had to do to kick polygamy into a few southwest desert communities.
From Iraneaus — since you quote him alleging support that you can become a god! Pay particular attention to “4.” where he rejects worlds without limit and gods without number! Rejected, by the man you quote to show that the early Christians believed men become gods.
Adversus Haereses (Book II, Chapter 1)
There is but one God: the impossibility of its being otherwise.
1. It is proper, then, that I should begin with the first and most important head, that is, God the Creator, who made the heaven and the earth, and all things that are therein (whom these men blasphemously style the fruit of a defect), and to demonstrate that there is nothing either above Him or after Him; nor that, influenced by any one, but of His own free will, He created all things, since He is the only God, the only Lord, the only Creator, the only Father, alone containing all things, and Himself commanding all things into existence.
2. For how can there be any other Fulness, or Principle, or Power, or God, above Him, since it is matter of necessity that God, the Pleroma (Fulness) of all these, should contain all things in His immensity, and should be contained by no one? But if there is anything beyond Him, He is not then the Pleroma of all, nor does He contain all. For that which they declare to be beyond Him will be wanting to the Pleroma, or, [in other words,] to that God who is above all things. But that which is wanting, and falls in any way short, is not the Pleroma of all things. In such a case, He would have both beginning, middle, and end, with respect to those who are beyond Him. And if He has an end in regard to those things which are below, He has also a beginning with respect to those things which are above. In like manner, there is an absolute necessity that He should experience the very same thing at all other points, and should be held in, bounded, and enclosed by those existences that are outside of Him. For that being who is the end downwards, necessarily circumscribes and surrounds him who finds his end in it. And thus, according to them, the Father of all (that is, He whom they call Proön and Proarche), with their Pleroma, and the good God of Marcion, is established and enclosed in some other, and is surrounded from without by another mighty Being, who must of necessity be greater, inasmuch as that which contains is greater than that which is contained. But then that which is greater is also stronger, and in a greater degree Lord; and that which is greater, and stronger, and in a greater degree Lord—must be God.
3. Now, since there exists, according to them, also something else which they declare to be outside of the Pleroma, into which they further hold there descended that higher power who went astray, it is in every way necessary that the Pleroma either contains that which is beyond, yet is contained (for otherwise, it will not be beyond the Pleroma; for if there is anything beyond the Pleroma, there will be a Pleroma within this very Pleroma which they declare to be outside of the Pleroma, and the Pleroma will be contained by that which is beyond: and with the Pleroma is understood also the first God); or, again, they must be an infinite distance separated from each other —the Pleroma [I mean], and that which is beyond it. But if they maintain this, there will then be a third kind of existence, which separates by immensity the Pleroma and that which is beyond it. This third kind of existence will therefore bound and contain both the others, and will be greater both than the Pleroma, and than that which is beyond it, inasmuch as it contains both in its bosom. In this way, talk might go on for ever concerning those things which are contained, and those which contain. For if this third existence has its beginning above, and its end beneath, there is an absolute necessity that it be also bounded on the sides, either beginning or ceasing at certain other points, [where new existences begin.] These, again, and others which are above and below, will have their beginnings at certain other points, and so on ad infinitum; so that their thoughts would never rest in one God, but, in consequence of seeking after more than exists, would wander away to that which has no existence, and depart from the true God.
4. These remarks are, in like manner, applicable against the followers of Marcion. For his two gods will also be contained and circumscribed by an immense interval which separates them from one another. But then there is a necessity to suppose a multitude of gods separated by an immense distance from each other on every side, beginning with one another, and ending in one another. Thus, by that very process of reasoning on which they depend for teaching that there is a certain Pleroma or God above the Creator of heaven and earth, any one who chooses to employ it may maintain that there is another Pleroma above the Pleroma, above that again another, and above Bythus another ocean of Deity, while in like manner the same successions hold with respect to the sides; and thus, their doctrine flowing out into immensity, there will always be a necessity to conceive of other Pleroma, and other Bythi, so as never at any time to stop, but always to continue seeking for others besides those already mentioned. Moreover, it will be uncertain whether these which we conceive of are below, or are, in fact, themselves the things which are above; and, in like manner, [it will be doubtful] respecting those things which are said by them to be above, whether they are really above or below; and thus our opinions will have no fixed conclusion or certainty, but will of necessity wander forth after worlds without limits, and gods that cannot be numbered.
5. These things, then, being so, each deity will be contented with his own possessions, and will not be moved with any curiosity respecting the affairs of others; otherwise he would be unjust, and rapacious, and would cease to be what God is. Each creation, too, will glorify its own maker, and will be contented with him, not knowing any other; otherwise it would most justly be deemed an apostate by all the others, and would receive a richly-deserved punishment. For it must be either that there is one Being who contains all things, and formed in His own territory all those things which have been created, according to His own will; or, again, that there are numerous unlimited creators and gods, who begin from each other, and end in each other on every side; and it will then be necessary to allow that all the rest are contained from without by some one who is greater, and that they are each of them shut up within their own territory, and remain in it. No one of them all, therefore, is God. For there will be [much] wanting to every one of them, possessing [as he will do] only a very small part when compared with all the rest. The name of the Omnipotent will thus be brought to an end, and such an opinion will of necessity fall to impiety.
Apparently, Smith was no stranger to lying........
What did Invisigoth do to you greyfoxx39 it is a Michigan a local paper you got something wrong with Michigan now?
Many Michigan folks don’t take the Detroit News or Freepress and any more they are corrupt, so the Local do a better job!
Which one of those are you saying was under age for marriage at the time?
As for any misconduct he may or may not have committed, we all know that he will have to answer to Heavenly Father, as we all shall.
...more sci fi flatulence from the brain of MHGinTN!
See post 174 in response to this (I tied it to the wrong post).
I brought the popcorn!
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