Mormons opening up in an Internet world [& Losing members accordingly]

Richard L. Bushman...wrote in 2005 "Rough Stone Rolling..." "I first became aware of the problems shortly after 'Rough Stone Rolling' came out...I thought I was getting these emails asking for help..."

Then Bushman heard that many other scholars were also being beset with queries from members of the LDS Church who had encountered something on the Internet that had shaken their faith. He began to hear the same thing from ordinary Mormons who had friends or family who were having problems. He also heard from people at BYU how it was a problem there as well. People were encountering things about church history and losing their faith...

"I've been aware that the LDS Church has been concerned about this for quite a while," he said...

Reuters recently wrote about a question and answer session at Utah State University with LDS Church historian Elder Marlin K. Jensen. Jensen acknowledged some people are surprised and troubled by what they read...

He told Reuters there have been more attrition over the last five or ten years..."I think we are at a time of challenge," he told Reuters...

John Dehlin...executive director of the Open Stories Foundation. The foundation conducted a survey that Dehlin said suggests disaffections have trended upward the last three to six years...like Peterson and Bushman, Dehlin said the number of people contacting him about having doubts has "grown exponentially."

Peterson said...that people discover this or that historical fact they had never heard before. They then feel like the church had been hiding the fact and so lose a sense of trust.

Bushman said it is important that people in the church do not reject those who have questions. "That is the problem," Bushman said. "They think nobody in the church thinks about anything..."

But people are stupid, easily lead, misinformed, and just plain simple.

When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

Mark 6:34

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD.

Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people:

‘You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them.

Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the LORD.’”

Jeremiah 23:1-2 ESV

Then the LORD said to me,

“Take again the equipment of a foolish shepherd.

For I am going to raise up a shepherd over the land who will not care for the lost,

or seek the young, or heal the injured, or feed the healthy,

but will eat the meat of the choice sheep, tearing off their hooves.

“Woe to the worthless shepherd,

who deserts the flock!

May the sword strike his arm and his right eye!

May his arm be completely withered,

his right eye totally blinded!”

Zechariah 11:15-17

...with his face stuck in a hat.

"Now the way he translated was he put the urim and thummim into his hat and Darkned his Eyes than he would take a sentance and it would apper in Brite Roman Letters. Then he would tell the writer and he would write it. Then that would go away the next sentance would Come and so on. But if it was not Spelt rite it would not go away till it was rite, so we see it was marvelous. Thus was the hol [whole] translated."

---Joseph Knight's journal.

"In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us."
(History of the RLDS Church, 8 vols.

(Independence, Missouri: Herald House,1951),

"Last Testimony of Sister Emma [Smith Bidamon]," 3:356.

"I, as well as all of my father's family, Smith's wife, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, were present during the translation. . . . He [Joseph Smith] did not use the plates in translation."
---(David Whitmer,

as published in the "Kansas City Journal," June 5, 1881,

and reprinted in the RLDS "Journal of History", vol. 8, (1910), pp. 299-300.

In an 1885 interview, Zenas H. Gurley, then the editor of the RLDS Saints Herald, asked Whitmer if Joseph had used his "Peep stone" to do the translation. Whitmer replied:

"... he used a stone called a "Seers stone," the "Interpreters" having been taken away from him because of transgression. The "Interpreters" were taken from Joseph after he allowed Martin Harris to carry away the 116 pages of Ms [manuscript] of the Book of Mormon as a punishment, but he was allowed to go on and translate by use of a "Seers stone" which he had, and which he placed in a hat into which he buried his face, stating to me and others that the original character appeared upon parchment and under it the translation in English."

"Martin Harris related an incident that occurred during the time that he wrote that portion of the translation of the Book of Mormon which he was favored to write direct from the mouth of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He said that the Prophet possessed a seer stone, by which he was enabled to translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim, and for convenience he then used the seer stone, Martin explained the translation as follows: By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by Martin and when finished he would say 'Written,' and if correctly written that sentence would disappear and another appear in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used."
(Edward Stevenson, "One of the Three Witnesses,"

reprinted from Deseret News, 30 Nov. 1881

in Millennial Star, 44 (6 Feb. 1882): 86-87.)

In 1879, Michael Morse, Emma Smith's brother-in-law, stated:

"When Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon [I] had occasion more than once to go into his immediate presence, and saw him engaged at his work of translation. The mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face, resting his elbows upon his knees, and then dictating word after word, while the scribes Emma, John Whitmer, O. Cowdery, or some other wrote it down."
(W.W. Blair interview with Michael Morse,

Saints Herald, vol. 26, no. 12

June 15, 1879, pp. 190-91.)

Joseph Smith's brother William also testified to the "face in the hat" version:

"The manner in which this was done was by looking into the Urim and Thummim, which was placed in a hat to exclude the light, (the plates lying near by covered up), and reading off the translation, which appeared in the stone by the power of God"

("A New Witness for Christ in America,"

Francis W. Kirkham, 2:417.)

"The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret was the same manner as when he looked for the money-diggers, with the stone in his hat, while the book of plates were at the same time hid in the woods."

---Isaac Hale (Emma Smith's father's) affidavit, 1834.

Again you Hateful BIGOTs MOCK our great founder!

Posting a photo of one of Joseph Smith's seer stones, owned by the LDS Church and held in a LDS museum, isn't mocking anybody. Smith had many seer stones; the LDS church admits that he was involved in the use of seer stones between 1820 and 1830 and it has several of his in its possession.

There was a magical worldview in that era that isn't prevalent today.

From LDS President Joseph Fielding Smith:

"The statement has been made that the Urim and Thummim was on the altar in the Manti Temple when that building was dedicated. The Urim and Thummim so spoken of, however, was the seer stone which was in the possession of the Prophet Joseph Smith in early days. This seer stone is now in the possession of the Church."

Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 3, p. 225.

Early LDS leader George Q. Cannon:

"One of Joseph's aids in searching out the truths of the [Book of Mormon] was a peculiar pebble or rock which he called a seer stone, and which was sometimes used by him in lieu of the Urim and Thummim."

Life of Joseph, 1888, p. 56.

LDS Historian B.H. Roberts:

"The seer stone referred to here was a chocolate-colored, somewhat egg-shaped stone which the Prophet found while digging a well in company with his brother Hyrum, for a Mr. Clark Chase, near Palmyra, N.Y. It possessed the qualities of Urim and Thummim, since by means of it as well as by means of the Interpreters found with the Nephite record, Joseph was able to translate the characters engraven on the plates."

Comprehensive History of the Church, Vol. 1, p. 129.

There are dozens of other quotes from other LDS leaders, Smith himself, Smith's family, and LDS historians, about the Urim and Thummim, Smith's various different seer stones, how they were used to translated the gold plates, and where the various seer stones are today. The records are printed by then-official or now-official LDS sources.

The LDS apologetic site, fairLDS.org, discusses Joseph Smith's seer stones and speculates on how many he owned. It discusses: a brown, baby's foot-shaped stone; a white one (found in 1822 by using the brown one); the Urim and Thummim (found by using the white stone); and at least two more stones. FAIR describes the Urim and Thummim, and says that witnesses to the BOM saw Smith use both the white stone and the brown stone in his hat to translate the plates.

FAIR also has a page in which it gives its explanation as to why God would allow Smith to use his money-digging brown stone to translate the BOM. The two pages (on Smith's multiple seer stones and why God would permit the seer stones to be used on plate of the Urim and Thummin) are these:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Seer_stones

http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Seer_stones/%22Rock_in_hat%22_used_for_Book_of_Mormon_translation

Here's another one of Smith's seer stones. This is apparently the one given to Smith in the 1820's by Jack Belcher in Pennsylvania. This made it's way into the possession of Elder Philo Dibble, an early LDS member who was with Smith in an an upper room of the John Johnson farm in Hiram, Ohio, when Smith had his first vision of the three degrees of glory.

Came across this thread while doing a Google search on the names from the Book of Abraham, and you people are incredibly ignorant. All these words are completely legitimate. Kolob is likely a mis-transliteration of the Hebrew word קורוב (Korob) meaning "Near," hence "the name of the great one is Kolob (Korob), because it is NEAR unto me." Kli-Flos-Is-Es is fairly straightforward: כלי (kly) means "Vessel", פלש (fls) means "to invade", and יש אש (is es) means "there is fire." Hah-ko-kau-beam is a phonetic rendering of the Hebrew term "ה כוכבי" (ha kokabim) meaning "the stars." All of the other names are legitimate Hebrew, such as Oliblish "אה לב לשה" (al leb lishah) meaning "Heart of the Lamb," Kae-e-vanrash "חיי א בן ראש" (kha e ven rosh) meaning "Life at the New Year" (likely a reference to Sirius, whose annual heliacal rising marked the start of the Egyptian year and the flooding of the Nile, without which the rich black soil that made growing crops possible would not be deposited, bringing death to all of Egypt.) Romney's a NWO tool, and the religion seems silly to you (but then many of you probably believe in an invisible, intangible being without "body, parts, or passions" who lives in a heaven which is everywhere and nowhere at once, and who talked to Himself at His baptism and makes people drink wine which is magically transformed into His literal blood, so y'all are massive hypocrites), but the names are solid.

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