Posted on 02/01/2012 4:50:21 AM PST by Colofornian
...A religious studies class late last year at Utah State University...was unusual for two reasons. The small group of students, faculty and faithful there to hear Mormon Elder Marlin Jensen were openly troubled about the future...asking hard questions. And Jensen was uncharacteristically frank...
Did the leaders...know that members are "leaving in droves?" a woman asked.
"We are aware," said Jensen, according to a tape recording of his unscripted remarks. "And I'm speaking of the 15 men that are above me in the hierarchy of the church."...
"My own daughter," he then added, "has come to me and said, 'Dad, why didn't you ever tell me that Joseph Smith was a polygamist?'..."Everything's out there for them to consume if they want to Google it."...
SNIP
...census data from some foreign countries...show that the retention rate for their converts is as low as 25 percent. In the U.S., only about half of Mormons are active members of the church...
SNIP
...the Web has intensified debate over...the history the church teaches.
Not since...the 1837 failure of a church bank in Kirtland, Ohio, have so many left the church, Jensen said.
"Maybe since Kirtland, we've never had a period of - I'll call it apostasy, like we're having now," he told the group in Logan.
SNIP
...a non-practicing Mormon...for years filed away on a mental "shelf" concerns about the historical veracity of the religion's central text..."It came to a point where the shelf was too heavy," he said. He quit attending ..."Ok, I'm done."
SNIP
"There have been discussions at LDS church headquarters about...Romney's presidential bid," a person briefed on the talks said. "One concern is that Romney's campaign could further energize evangelical antipathy toward the church..."
..."having a Mormon president could raise the church's profile and legitimize it in other countries."
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
Can you tell me where the DOW and NASDAQ will be next week?
If you could be more specific...I'd like to know where JOY, COP, HP, and XOM will close on Feb. 7th
Thanks-
From the article, “Many evangelicals say they do not consider the LDS church to be Christian.”
Always that same line, over and over, it is a media mantra, we know that all churches agree on Mormonism as not being Christian, but do Evangelicals stand up alone to the liberal culture?
Where are those who should be standing next to the Evangelicals, why don’t they get themselves included in the category of Christians who resist Mormonism, where is their outrage at the media leaving out their churches?
Um, are you upset by my question to the original poster or something?
Christians will never rationalize mormonISM.
I sure hope you were being sarcastic.
Gee, that was it?
I’m not a writer, in my haste I used “all”, do you really think in context of the wide media culture that I was addressing, that I or anyone reading it thought I meant literally “all”?
Weird. I kept pursuing a response from you because I sensed a passive aggressive baiting, a dangling, teasing non-response from you, and I wanted to follow it to it’s end to verify my instinct.
Hewitt, Medved, now Prager, those aren’t “predictions”, it is already well started.
Simply...I will say this...
Words mean things.
I've no interest in having a pissing contest with you. Never did.
You were the one that pushed it.
I simply disagree...with your "predictions".
FRegards-
Well, post, after post, after meaningless post, until we got to a minor point about the word all and something about the Dow.
I had a gut feeling how this would go, I just wanted to keep participating to make sure.
We both know, though, that one of the reasons we're in so many messes in this country is the lack of bold leadership.
Too many Christians have either been re-educated by the multi-culturalists in charge of most campuses...
...or, they're afraid to make a stand & suffer any consequences either from other Christians or the media...
...(who wants to publicly be called a "bigot" and the like -- just for detailing what Mormons believe?)
Not at all, I was commenting on it. And I tried to be humorous. Do we feel more secure?
Of all people, I can hardly believe that you just typed those words. RF violation! hehe...
-the RF lurker.
It's always a hoot to hang with others like me.
Should have been, "I've been an idiot many times".....
HA!!
Agreed....
Totally
HEY!!
This sounds like the RNC!
It works for santa!
[I sure hope you were being sarcastic.]
Even worse, I was quoting another Freeper who was stating the truth, Republicans will be sucked into making excuses for Mormonism. That’s what Romney’s entire candidacy is about.
"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. 1881in 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. 12June 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.
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