Posted on 06/08/2012 8:21:53 PM PDT by Colofornian
“There’s families all scattered in through this area who had ancestors in that, so there is a tinge of anti-Mormonism in this area, a little bit of bias I suppose,” said Republican Roy Ragland...
SNIP
The Mountain Meadows Massacre remains one of the darkest episodes in the history of Mormonism...Romney addressed it during his 2007 presidential campaign in response to a reporter’s question.
“That was a terrible, awful act carried out by members of my faith,” he told the Associated Press. “There are bad people in any church, and it’s true of members of my church, too.”
SNIP
In northwestern Arkansas, at least two monuments commemorate the massacre, including a towering wooden cross erected just six years ago. On it is carved a biblical saying: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the Lord.”
Historians believe the wagon train of 30 families, laden with cattle and other goods, set off in early 1857...
Their journey took them through Utah...
...local Mormon leaders decided to attack the wagon train with the help of a local Native American tribe, on whom they planned to lay the blame. After days of exchanging fire, a Mormon leader approached the camp to offer safe passage. But it was a ruse: The Mormon militia massacred the men and women and many of the children, 120 in all. Seventeen...were spared, and adopted by local families until federal authorities intervened to return them to Arkansas...
Descendants’ groups headquartered here...have...sometimes clashed with, the Mormon Church to create a public memorial at the site...which sits on church property...
“It’s an emotional thing for us,” said Phil Bolinger, president of the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation. “When you come of age, when you mature, things to do with your own blood kin becomes more important and you become passionate about it.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I never called you that Scoutmaster. Instead I have no problem whatsoever in talking the truth about what heppened there. Yes, they had guns. They knew that the Carthage Grays were out for their blood and would most likely attack them...Governor’s pledge for safety or no...and they did...and they defended themselves and died doing so.
See post #112, the real history, not a re-write.
Pined you Scoutmaster, since I referred to your post.
I never denied that.
I know the real history and have recited it to you.
Nothing I said contradicts what Scoutmaster posted in 112. In fact, when he was being accused, I came to that thread and supported him. The Smiths did have guns and they had them to defend themselves from the attacks they anticpated from the Carthage Grays, which materialized and cost them their lives.
There was not a shootout because they were trying to escape. There was a shootout because a mob came there to kill them...which they succeeded in doing.
Poor kids. I have been in a few T meetings like that. Not only phoney but really demeaning.
Additional history from a variety of sources:
Law began to suspect Smith of making improper proposals to his wife Jane. When he confronted her about his suspicions, she admitted that Smith had “asked her to give him half her love; she was at liberty to keep the other half for her husband.” As a result, Law broke with Smith and left the church. On June 7, 1944, Law and several associates published the first edition of a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor. The paper contained the accusation that Smith and other church leaders were practicing polygamy (spiritual wifery).
An affidavit by Austin Cowles was published which accused Smith of secretly teaching “the doctrine of a plurality of wives, or marrying virgins; that “David and Solomon had many wives, yet in this they sinned not save in the matter of Uriah.” The paper threatened to publish additional evidence that would document the polygamous activities of Smith and other church leaders.
Smith had been continuously denying his involvement with polygamy. His final public denial came just a few months before his death in 1844 when, speaking to a group of loyal followers, he protested the unjust accusation of having multiple wives when he had only one (History of the Church, 6:411). Despite his emphatic declaration of innocence, Smith had at least thirty-three plural wives at the time of the speech (Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness 4-7).
Threatened with exposure, Smith used his position as Mayor to urge destruction of the press. The Nauvoo City Council complied: “The Council passed an ordinance declaring the Nauvoo Expositor a nuisance, and also issued an order to me to abate the said nuisance. I immediately ordered the Marshal to destroy it without delay.... About 8 p.m., the Marshal returned and reported that he had removed the press, type, printed paper, and fixtures into the street, and destroyed them” (History of the Church, vol. 6, p.432).
Smith was arrested for the illegal destruction of private property. While he was being held in the Carthage , Illinois jail a mob stormed the building and Smith was murdered.
between 1842 and 1844, he:
a. Proclaimed himself “King of Zion”, which he claimed held dominion over the United States
b. Appointed Brigham Young as the new Mormon “President of the United States”
c. Appointed other church leaders in his secret “Council of Fifty” as Governors of the various states and territories
d. Began forming his “Nauvoo Legion”, which he claimed would be a “100,000 man militia” to be used to overthrow the US Government with military force (this is where all of the resurgent Mormon militias of the 80’s and 90’s came from, like the Viper Militia and the Michigan Militia)
e. Inducted himself into the US military as “Lieutenant General” even though he had no prior military experience, and began wearing a fake military uniform
f. Began legitimizing polygamy by formally announcing his “doctrine of polygamy”
g. Formally announced his “Doctrine of the Constitution Versus the Law”, which taught that Mormonism was the law of the land, which superseded America Law (same concept as “Sharia Law” of Islam, which is where he also borrowed his newly “legitimized” version of Polygamy from)
h. Formally created his new “Melchizedek Priesthood”, which made all Mormons superior to “Christians” and made them “not-subject” to the man-made Judeo-Christian laws of America, or the Laws of Moses (10-commandements). Smith’s new superior priesthood (superior to the older “Aaronic Priesthood”), made all Mormon males “man-Gods” in their own right who now “held the keys” to circumvent the Christian laws of Moses and the Judeo-Christian laws of America
i. Announced he would run for President of the United States as a means of gaining “legitimate” control of the Federal Government
j. Formed a Masonic lodge in Nauvoo, had all of the members of the Mormon religion’s hierarchy become Freemasons and then stole all of the rights, rituals, annointings and symbolism of the Freemasons, bastardized it and made them the rights, rituals, annointings and symbolism of his Mormon religion, which prior to Smith theft of Freemasonry didn’t have such a body of ritualism.
Joseph and Hyrum were killed.
_______________________________________
Joey shot his brother Hyrum in the back...
Hyrum had a bullet in his back and only Joey was behind him to do that...
Plus Joey shot first and murdered at least 2 men so the friends of the men shot back to defend themselves...
Joey was drunk as they had been drinking booze for a while before he started shooting...
His wild shooting could have included his own brother...
There was no other way that Hyrum could have got that bullet in his back...
He was facing the FreeMasons outside...
From them he got a bullet in his eye..
The Freemasons were outside and angry at Joey Smith brcaise he had betrayed them and misused their own secret rituals in his boys only 1830 style PlayBoy sex club...
To the FreeMasons those blood oaths not to tell that Joey had takenm meant that life and death...
Joey Smith acknowledged they were there when he ran to the window and gave the FreeMason distress call to them so they woulod not kill him...
He knew they were there for revenge when he called out..
“Is there no help for the widows son ?”
Sorry Charlie Joe...
No...
Die you coward...
Ok. Jeff. You beleive what you want, you can apparently continue to make excuses for Smith, that is your right.
It is my right to see him as he was not what has been revised about him.
If the leaders of your church -- up to 100+ yrs or more -- were covering that up as being God-honoring, then, yes, accountability goes beyond the initial generations doing that.
The dividing line there is: Are you part of a problem? -- do you side with the perps -- Or were/are you a part of the solution...did/do you side with the victims?
Jeff, we agree that their guards left the scene; but we don't know why. We can guess why...and you might be right in that guess...but guess what...there's a few other "guesses" that fit the scenario.
Here are (3) guesses:
(a) The mob had it "in" for the Lds leaders; and the guards conveniently left the scene.
(b) The mob had it "in" for the Lds leaders; and the guards in no way wanted to be part of the shoot-out -- finding out that some guns had been smuggled in.
(c) The mob had it "in" for the Lds leaders + the guards found out that the prisoners had ILLEGALLY smuggled in weapons (contraband) into their possession...and...rather than confront the prisoners and risk their own lives, when the time came they left it up to the mob to do the confrontation re: the illegal weapons.
Either way...what all sides did was ILLEGAL.
Bottom-line, tho, Jeff, ya know when a prisoner dies in a shoot-out -- after firing six bullets with brother Hyrum having been shot in the back (impossible shot from anybody OUTSIDE since they were on the 2nd floor)...people tend to not call such prisoners "martyrs."
(To clarify: The shot that killed Hyrum came from the front as we was near or at the door...but it doesn't negate that he was either simultaneously or near simultaneously shot from the back...my guess being Joseph Smith attempting to shoot the mob coming in)
Exactly right.
(And it's not always the Mormon posters who make such responses -- altho the Lds PR machine has prompted their knee-jerk response)
Christians have been persecuted FAR more and FAR worse for 2,000 years. Yet NOTHING done to Christians could EVER justify a SEPARATE group of Christians from committing mass murder vs. innocent victims some 13-24 years later.
Yet when we Christians listen to the Constant Mormon narrative put out there -- and oft repeated by the mass media and non-Mormons -- mass-murder is somehow "understood" within some alleged "context" that some Mormon got elbowed in a roller-derby game in Missouri in 1833...or 1838.
Now I'm intentionally being facetious/reductionistic re: what happened in Missouri; obviously, some of what happened there were REAL battles...some was oppression...but the main MMM perps in Utah weren't REAL victims in either Missouri or Utah. There was no tit-for-tat there.
And the Utah victims were from Arkansas, not MO or IL.
So those who try to provide a false "context" for the MMM have both weak reasoning skills and, worse, are STILL engaging in a cover-up of the MMM. They read into the motivations for mass murder. And frankly, if they are somehow "right" that this was all "tit-for-tat" -- it just seems to confirm that Brigham Young was in on the planning, after all. Because no grassroots Mormon would take on murdering people in the triple-figures due to "revenge" unless it involved leaders from Illinois who wanted "revenge." And Brigham Young was such a Mormon leader in Illinois!
(Jeff, shouldn't this be WTOD are you talking about? -- if you want proper emphasis that is? Mormon "hell" is just a temp spirit prison; Outer Darkness, otoh, is serious business)... :)
I think this is why the leaders in SLC aren't very interested in finding out what really happened in the MMM. They're probably afraid of where this might lead. While a totally-discredited Brigham Young wouldn't destroy all of Mormonism, it would be devastating to the Utah faction.
You remind me of a certain servant in the book of Acts:
16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. (Acts 16)
Now...for your "spirit" to be consistent with what you've been sarcastically saying, you would likewise need to subtly ridicule Jesus when Jesus said:
10 But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. 13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. (Luke 10)
The "you" Jesus is speaking of here is all "plural"; Jesus held entire communities accountable. So, yes, as you've been saying -- albeit sarcastically so -- there is such a thing as corporate guilt. (Otherwise, there was no way to hold Germany accountable for its deathcamps)
But with your sarcastic comments, you apparently would also "agree" with Jesus -- all while sarcastically labeling Him a "servant of the Most High."
In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, may that sarcastic spirit come out of you...for good!
Its three most prominent campuses (BYU-Provo; BYU-Idaho; BYU-Hawaii) -- are ALL named after Young.
And imagine if you've got your degree with "Young" as your "spiritual ed-tattoo"???
Imagine if the full truth came out 'bout Brigham Young how many people would suddenly try to scrub their resumes' ... BYU would be the national notorious "taint" that some of us already know it to be...
Jeff, I'd ask that you review the thread and your Freemail. My memory (and I've checked) is that your support came a few weeks later in a gracious Freemail and not during the thread.
As we chatted, I expressed disappointment that neither you nor any of the other LDS Freepers who knew the truth were willing to state it publicly while I was being called a liar.
I fully support your right to your theological beliefs. I simply didn't enjoy being called a liar for stating history - history straight from the LDS Official History of the Church and church CES sources - as I answered a question that another Freeper had asked.
Once again, I agree with you. Colofornian and Elsie — just like Jesus — should not be the targets of sarcasm.
Colofornian, Elsie... and Jesus. All on an equal footing.
Thank you for making that clear. (And please notice, I am agreeing with you.)
No, Jeff, you never called me any of those things.
You remained silent in the thread as did others as I was called those things.
You apologized for that a few weeks later and I appreciate it.
(you forgot the apostle Paul...tho Paul put up with it for a bit before directing that spirit within that girl)
And just WHAT 'people' would that be?
Just like Trayvon?
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