Posted on 09/20/2010 4:23:53 PM PDT by Colofornian
American Fork » Former LDS seminary principal Michael Jay Pratt will spend at least five years in prison for sexually abusing a student 20 years younger than himself.
Fourth District Judge Christine Johnson imposed concurrent sentences of five years to life in prison for first-degree felony forcible sodomy and two object rape charges, and one to 15 years for forcible sexual assault, a second-degree felony. Johnson said it was a sentence that best balanced the needs of justice and mercy in a case that carried heavy religious overtones.
Pratt pleaded guilty to the crimes in June as part of an agreement in which prosecutors dropped 11 other charges.
Pratt’s attorney, Stephen McCaughey, sought to get Pratt two years in the Utah County Jail followed by a lengthy probation. He said Pratt had no prior criminal record, and the case did not involve violence or physical force. McCaughey argued Pratt would likely serve about six years in prison on the charges.
Pratt said he was sorry for what he had done, and was given enough time to hug his wife before he was escorted from the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies.
Johnson said Pratt’s position as a teacher and spiritual adviser at Lone Peak High School placed him in a position of trust which he abused.
The victim and her family also told the court how Pratt had gained their trust as a dedicated, popular teacher and church leader who was helping the victim through a rough spot in life. He then manipulated the victim into going along with his sexual fantasies.
“Justice was served, but it is a tragedy,” the victim’s stepfather said after the hearing.
Have you read these sites; like I suggested?
Since you get really agitated by not official sources......decided I should not read any farther. (Just as a side note the so called antis quote from official lds sources)
So went to some more of the sites.....some don’t work, most are not offical......so come on PD what are you trying to say here?
Seek truth. Find out for yourself.
Very good advice, Paragon.
Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened”
James 1:5 “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him”
I know that if a person will sincerely seek for truth from God in faith, they will find it.
Normandy.
I posted writings from your own organizations highly respected and believed leaders which showed the vast difference between Biblical Christianity and LDS doctrine.
Perhaps you could take time to respond to my post to you back then?
To refresh your memory, here are the money quotes:
I don't think it can be dinied that President Hinckley believes in a different Christ than the one of the Holy Bible.From LDS Church News:
The LDS Church News reported: "In bearing testimony of Jesus Christ, President Hinckley spoke of those outside the Church who say Latter-day Saints 'do not believe in the traditional Christ. No, I don't. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak. For the Christ of whom I speak has been revealed in this the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times'" (June 20, 1998)
Do you agree with him?
The Holy Bible has a completely different account than the one below that is apparantly LDS doctrine:What Joseph Smith taught and Young repeated isn't a doctrine of mainstream Christianity.Wilford Woodruff states “At meeting of school of the prophet, President Young said Adam was Michael, the Archangel and he was the Father of Jesus Christ and is our God and that Joseph taught this principle” (Wilford Woodruff Journal, Dec. 16, 1867)
Different Jesus, different Christ.
If you believe President Young you must have to know that the jesus of the LDS is a different Jesus than the one in the Holy Bible, because the LDS Jesus is the son of Adam who was Michael, the Archangel. Smith taught it and Young passed it on.
Do you believe that Jesus is the son of Adam...who was Michael; an Angel?
I would like to know your thoughts on this.
Thanks.
If you get a straight forward answer will you please ping me. Thanks.
Well, svcw, allow me to cite Ejonesie22, who dusted off the microscope to read the Mormon legal fineprint that can be found on the Web sites PD links to:
Official sites are sites supported by LDS officials unless said official sites are consider unofficial by said officials. At that point such sites are unofficial unless officially referenced for official purposes by officials who can do so officially. This should not be misconstrued as an indication that official sites can be unofficially recognized as official nor should it be implied that unofficial sites cannot contain official information, but are not officially allowed to be offical despite their official contents due the their unofficialness. Official sites will be official and recognized as official by officials of the LDS unless there is an official reason to mark them as unofficial either temporally or permanently, which would make the official content officially unofficial. This is also not to imply that recognized sites, often used here by haters cannot contain official information, it just means that content, despite its official status, is no longer official and should be consider unofficial despite the same information being official on an official site else where. Even then the officialness my be amended due to the use of the unofficial information which may determine the officialness of anything be it official or unofficial depending on how and where it is used officially or unofficially. I hope this clear things up for the lurkers out there. As I said the haters tend to make things complicated and confusing when it is all crystal clear.... Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2573705/posts Post #24
(Thanks Ejones...we need those fine-print navigators out there!)
Well, how often have we seen posts through the years where somebody cites a previous sermon or Journal of Discourses reference by an LDS “prophet” or general authority only to be told, “Ya know, that’s not LDS canon!” or “You can’t hold an LDS “prophet” or “apostle” accountable for every obscure spiritual message he gives in public, can you?”
Whenever a Mormon would offer up such an explanation, well, how befuddled could they leave readers? Here, LDS have lectured us left & right about the need for living revelators & seers via general conference messages, Ensign mag articles, sermons, teachings, writings, etc. (So tell us again why it’s our issue if you consider what any “prophet”—dead or alive—has voiced publicly to be obscure?
I think it’s downright disingenuous to hype up tone & content-wise to…
IN ONE BREATH…
“We’re the only church on earth that has a living prophet who speaks for God on all things”…
AND THEN IN THE NEXT BREATH TELL US…
“Yeah, we know all about that ‘speaking for God’ thing but you know…
…”Nobody’s perfect…”
(b) …”these guys engage in countless public speculations…”
(c) …”we were hoping you wouldn’t notice all that much of what they’ve had to say ‘cause we assigned much of it to that round file over there we call the ‘obscurity bucket…’
(d) …”and, besides, nobody knows for certain if what they say has been recorded accurately…these are things that were just reported to have been said at one time or another…I mean, come on, they’re only God’s living prophet, president, revelator, seer & representative on earth…What? Do you expect us to have an accurate stenographer on hand to at least 100% accurately report what they’ve said in sermons & general conferences?”
Clarification here: Whereas Lds, Inc. uses its billions to attack Christianity...
online,
via multi-media venues,
curricula,
book publishing,
two general conferences each year,
missionary messenging
and peculiar Mormon scriptual reproduction in hundreds of languages...
...indeed representing a single source...
...the "group" that PD tries to reduce us to doesn't formally exist other than an informal network of posters.
We don't have campaign HQs. Or a "war room." We don't have these in-person holy huddles; though, a few have occasionally gotten together for some social visiting.
And, yes, some of us have made light of the label given by another FR poster ("the Flying Inmans"). As Szonian mentioned, we wind up flying "over the target" frequently.
Why do I mention this?
Because Paragon Defender would love to reduce the source of opposition re: the teachings of the Mormon church to just a "single group." Sorry, PD, we're quite diverse in our multi-varied voices...
...different denominational representation...
...some ex-Mormon,
...some ex-Mormon family,
...some w/present Mormon family,
...some concerned & burdened with the need to reach Mormons with truth,
...and some who come back again & again because every time they visit one of these threads they see Mormon obfuscation, Mormon escapism -- often a direct refusal to address the questions & concerns raised...
I know Lds apologists love to present us as the "church of Satan" incarnate (1 Nephi 14:9,10, Book of Mormon) -- as these verses only recognize two "official" churches -- theirs, & the rest that fall under Satan. And I know some Lds apologists "love" to imply we're the "Legion" of demonic agents possessing Free Republic -- and that we need to be exorcised from it.
But lurker, dial up discernment. Right next to me lies a book compiled by a relative of Joseph Smith. The book, published 72 years ago by the Deseret News Press, is owned by the Mormon church. When you flip open the book & turn to page 99, there's an "interesting" quote there from Mr. Smith:
In the mid-1830s, Smith said at one point: "We also would notice one of the modern sons of Sceva, who would fain have made people believe that he could cast out devils...We would reply to this gentleman, Paul we know, and Christ we know, but who are ye?" (p. 99)
Freeper, Mormon-lurker & non-Mormon lurker, do we comprehend the staggering comparison here? 'Cause Joseph Smith answered EXACTLY the same as one the demons who challenged the sons of Sceva in Acts 19:14ff!!! ...the evil spirit answered them, "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?" (Acts 19:15)
We know which spirit was speaking through Joseph; and he wasn't a holy one.
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I'm STILL waiting for my pony I 'asked' for back in the fifth grade!
The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman's body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab."You'll notice here that he was not saying that God becoming human was like or equivalent to man becoming a slug. He was talking about what God had to give up to assume humanity (this was right after he spoke about a tin soldier having his nature taken away and resenting it if you made him into a tiny human).
It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless 'spiritual' life, has been done for us.Furthermore, in the Bible, unredeemed man is not "constantly referenced" as "barbaric [sic] animals." Besides, about the only way "barbaric" could refer to an animal is if you're talking about a particular animal raised primarily by barbarians.
Apparently; asking for KNOWLEDGE doesn't seem to work to swell.
'Wisdom' is the application of knowledge one already has.
Kinda like Moses told to look in his hand and use the staff he carried.
We don’t got no steekin’ STATUES; either!
WHY do QUOTED MORMON writings get MORMONs all in a twitter?
They don’t. Not in the slightest.
The twistings, mis-representations and straw man arguments following them are a bit annoying though. Of course the highly disrespectful attitude doesn’t really help much either.
THX 1138
As you are perhaps aware, Mormonism teaches as gospel fact that we all had a pre-existence when we were pure spirit beings, then we were condemned to a biological being, so we could become once again a spirit being. As you may also be aware, Momronism teaches that Jesus sweating in the garden was the moment of our atonement and that His death on the cross is subordinate to that period of 'sweating as it were great drops of blood'. Perhaps you are also aware that Mormonism teaches Jesus and Lucifer were created spirit brothers who attended a grand council, where Lucifer offered one means to get all the spirit children out of those 'froggish' bodies on earth and back into spiritual status but the council of 'gods' chose the means Lucifer's brother, Jesus, offered, instead. And you might even have become acquainted with the blasphemous assertion at the foundation of Mormonism that the christianity of the world from 2AD until the advent of the peepstone self-proclaimed prophet, Joseph Smith, well, that Christianity was totally apostate and was restored in these latter days by God using Joseph Smith the sexual predator to re-establish the 'proper' form of Christinaity and have baptisms for all the poor souls who lived and died during that sixteen centuries when they could not have salvation because there was no org of Christianity in the world.
I seem to recall that you are a Catholic. Do the above assertions of Mormonism agree with your beliefs?
So now you plead for respect for the demonic heresies of your peepstone sexual predator prophet? Astonishing that
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother?s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother?s eye.
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