Elder Cook pointed out that scholars have the common teachings of many Protestant churches with respect to hell were incorrect. He said the Anglican Church leader and classic scholar, Frederick Farrar, gave lectures at Westminster Abbey and taught that the definition of hell of endless torment and everlasting damnation were wrong because of translation errors from Hebrew and Greek to English in the King James Version of the Bible.
Why bother evangelizing anybody, then?
There is absolutely no support in the Bible for this conclusion.
There is really no reason to be good but be good for goodness sake?
This is all too complicated for me.
Since the 8th grade, I have been trying to figure out how Father Spink kept his glasses from falling off... he had only one ear. He loved my smile, but he never knew why.
About those water filled balloons I dropped onto a Nun cluster in the 8th grade, I am sorry, that was just too much fun to be sorry about. Sorry, I just can’t help it. Eight balloons, 8 hits from the 3rd story, and not getting caught.. how good is THAT?! Nobody has ever done that before, nobody’s that good. I sure hope that wasn’t how Father Spint lost his ear.
I am also trying to figure out if God has a sense of humor, because if he doesn’t, I am in real big trouble.
Does God laugh? I sure hope so.
Will I go to hell for the dirty jokes I told when I was a child? I mean, I wasn’t sorry for them then and it’s been so many years that I no longer remember the details, so if I said I was sorry now, it would be disingenuous.
Honest, if I could remember the jokes today, I’d tell them again, just so that I could say I’m sorry and really mean it.
Why are there so many LDS threads on this board??
Mormons do believe that most will not go to hell (or Outer Darkness as they call it - which is the ultimate deep freeze), which shows the influence of Universalism on early LDS theology.
However, those of us who are “apostates” are going to be the ones going to hell/outer darkness if anyone is.
HEY!!
SOMEone trying to take my TAGLINE??
Of COURSE!!!
How can they top what the Gloriuos Founder had already said???
But...
That didn't stop some of them from trying!!!
Joseph Smith stated that God told him: "they [other churches] were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt" (from Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith-History 1:19).Joseph Smith continues: "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, Joseph Smith-History 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).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).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).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).
Actually, God DOES have a plan of salvation that is “applicable to all mankind, including those who do not hear of Christ in this life, children who die before the age of accountability and those who have no understanding.” That isn’t LDS, that is the Bible.
Folks, this is STRAIGHT from Satan's mouth to our ears. This is EXACTLY what the Enemy wants us to believe. Disbelief, doubt of his existence, is his best weapon for harvesting souls to join him in damnation.