Posted on 08/02/2012 3:35:51 PM PDT by Colofornian
...Mike Huckabee...candidate for the Republican nomination—was being pressed by a reporter for the New York Times Magazine about the religion of his rival, Willard Mitt Romney, before the 2008 Iowa caucuses. The reporter prodded Huckabee with an all-important question...: Mormonism—cult or religion?
...The Times noted that he asked with an “innocent voice” the following question: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”
...A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said that while Mormons believe “all beings were created by God and are his spirit children,” Jesus Christ was the “only begotten in the flesh”; the “son of God”; and the “savior of mankind.”
SNIP
Theologically, the religion is almost uncategorizeable...They are best described not as polytheists but henotheists, because they seem to believe in more than one god but only worship one of them...Some of their temple-rituals hearken back to the mystery religions of the Roman empire...They reject the Trinity as firmly as they reject predestination.
...Mormons believe the church fell apart very early on, right around the end of the first century. They believe the church was reestablished by divine intervention through the prophecies and presence of Smith...
...it is drilled into them that their actions here on this earth really will affect their heavenly rewards hereafter. Speculation about what form those rewards might take is a perennial subject of mockery by critics of Mormonism. (“They think they’ll become gods! They’ll inherit their own planets!”)...
ROMNEY CAN BE protean and pragmatic when it comes to business and politics, but when the subject is Mormonism, he really believes the stuff...He has baptized the dead by proxy, but not “recently.” Mitt has tithed millions of dollars to the LDS church and spent years of his life volunteering as a missionary, bishop, and stake president.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
(I am a descendent of a Mormon leader and a relative of MANY Lds...I understand it quite well...because I go directly to their leaders' sources...and don't just only take what others have said second-hand about it...As a Catholic, you're not now becoming a Mormon apologist, are you?)
Not exactly sure what ALL the islamic theology is concerning the meteorite embedded in the wall of the building called the Kaaba, but they keep meteorites in reserve to replace it ~ they wear out!
Jesus Christ.
The Apostasy.
The Vatican IS a city-state for GOD’s sake.
And no one has ever turned away from that except for the
Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists....And ON AND ON AND ON.
Tell me one thing you did today that made someone’s life a little better.
Tell me about 50 of them. And I’ll give you an attaboy.
But this one aw sh!+ wipes away those 50 attaboys.
Islam is a totally separate religion.
Catholicism is part of Christianity.
Mormonism is a cultic and satanic perversion of Christianity.
If you were comparing Islam to Christianity...and you described Jihadist Islamic theology vs. the Christmas Jesus as "Peace on earth, goodwill to men"...would you seriously distinguish Jihadist vs. Jesus as Peace Incarnated as "Islam has different beliefs than standard Christianity???"
And would you "write off" huge contradictions in Mormonism as meaningless just because Hinduism and Islam also have huge contradictions?
Wow!
I told the truth about a cult...whereas many non-Mormons on FR have become its converted apologists!
But that's not the point of the parable ~ the first guy coming by had obligations, the second guy coming by had rules of purity, the third guy had none of those things but he had time to take the injured man to aid, and he paid for it himself!
It's really not about the differences between a Samaritan's form of worship and that of, for example, the HIgh Episcopaleans or Roman Catholics.
It's more about prioritizing your ethical code so that charity is first and the other stuff very secondary.
Ok, but there are many American voters who don’t want to have to vote for someone who, in their eyes, believes in an unseen. unheard, based on faith alone being whose only claim to existence are mostly some physically impossible occurances, touted as “miracles” by said believers.
The Good Samaritan was almost certainly a PAGAN!
Yet Jesus held him in high regard.
Jesus was very hard on the “rules and regs” types of his time, Jesus had little patience with the Pharisees, or those that minded the Temple, you are correct.
And those who wished to stone the Adulteress? Jesus said, “You who are without sin, cast the first stone”.
Jesus will be very hard on those who do not understand these passages, in my opinion.
Take a look at Luke 10:18. It shows Satan was once part of the heavenly hosts before he was cast out of heaven having become perdition. Revelation 12:8 says the same thing. If all who were in heaven were not created by God, then who were they created by? Space aliens? So in as much as that’s true, then sure I guess Jesus and Satan have a familial connection as we all do—one long ago shattered when Satan rebelled and was cast out. That’s where any kind of relationship or comparison between the two ends. Christ is the personification of all that’s good and right. Satan is the personification of all that’s wrong and evil. Saying they were brothers, not really an official teaching of the church other than in a tangential way from the teaching of all being children of the same God, doesn’t mean Christ and Satan are at all comparable. And it doesn’t mean Mormons worship the devil. Kind of a silly and desperate thing to dredge up, don’t you think? It’s like saying if you believe in the brotherhood of all mankind and that we’re all children of God as I think most Christians do, that somehow you must believe Hitler and Jesus have something in common. It’s pretty much an intellectually deficient cheap-shot broadside in both instances.
I suggest you have a selective reading of the totality of the Bible’s teaching about false religions. You may try reading Peter and Paul, as well as reading of how Jesus treated those in the Temple who were defiling it... [AMPU]
Per this Catholicdefense Web site, which as a caveat, I am not endorsing overall...merely am quoting their historical quotes for easy access purposes: ...the Sadducees accepted only the first five Books of the Bible, the Torah, also known as the Law of Moses. We can know this from a number of early Church Fathers. St. Hippolytus of Rome (170-235 A.D.) said that the Sadducees “do not, however, devote attention to prophets, but neither do they to any other sages, except to the law of Moses only, in regard of which, however, they frame no interpretations.” Likewise, Origen (184-253) said that “although the Samaritans and Sadducees, who receive the books of Moses alone, would say that there were contained in them predictions regarding Christ, yet certainly not in Jerusalem, which is not even mentioned in the times of Moses, was the prophecy uttered.”
Theologically, the Samaritans -- whom you, Kansas58 reference -- were probably closest to the Sadducees (as Origen above references).
Even Jesus condemned the Sadducees at one point:
And to the Sadducees: Jesus replied, “You are IN ERROR because you DO NOT KNOW THE SCRIPTURES OR THE POWER OF GOD. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you... (Matt. 22:29-31)
To be consistent, then, Kansas re: your comment that "you are not living up to what Jesus had to say" -- you would have to likewise condemn Jesus for not living up to the "Kansas" version of "Jesus."
Kansas, are you guilty of trying to both outnice Jesus -- as well as condemning the historical Jesus for what He said in Matthew 22:29-31???
Again, NOT an endorsement of this site...just referenced it for easy access to a few historical quotes.
The Constitution prohibit religious tests for holding public office. Mitt can belong to any freakish religion he chooses.
Truth is in the eye of the beholder. One must beware of a log blocking ones eyesight.
My point, still, is that Jesus taught us to be tolerant of other faiths.
Who's denying miltie his right to run?
I can apply any test I choose in picking a candidate. Are you gonna rat me out to the po po?
No he didn’t.
Nice people, but it’s a business and not a religion.
Well, #1 Kansas, Jesus complimented the actions of ONE Samaritan -- just like Jesus complimented the outward actions of the Pharisees (at one point).
#2...Have you ever read it -- very carefully -- Matthew 5:20???
Here is Jesus giving a great compliment to the outward "assets" of legalistic Pharisees...telling people that unless their righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees & the teachers of the law, "you will certainly NOT enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:20).
So, does Jesus' compliment of the Pharisees in Matthew 5:20 = some wild interpretation (like YOU have come up with, Kansas), that it somehow precluded Jesus from EVER publicly critiquing the Pharisaic view of God????
Did Jesus take your seeming advice there, Kansas???? Did Jesus not "attack" the decent Jewish religion of the Pharisees?
Matthew 23, Jesus said:
25"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
In fact, that whole 23rd chapter of Matthew is one long dissing of the Pharisees by Jesus.
In John 8, Jesus call the legalistic Pharisees "children of the devil."
I'll even "help" your Biblical discernment by citing all the other ways Jesus must have "failed" in your eyes...re: what he said to the Pharisees...next post...
It has no bearing on individual choice.
What's most interesting about that clause is it was devised to STOP the Quakers in Pennsylvania from imposing a test on people running for Congress. The laws there required you to be a Quaker to run for office.
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