#1 The “heart” of mormonism is the atonement of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
#2 the history of religion is a history of men damning others to hell for believing diffrently, quite often, while killing them.
IMHO your statements are innocent of both a knowledge of history, and the actual teachings of my religion. This is an old argument between you and I, you seem to insist you know what my religion believes, and that I don’t.
There comes a point in an argument like this when the other side makes you laugh. This is funny.
Delph
Joseph Smith is the heart: “It is because the Lord called Joseph Smith that salvation is again available to mortal men. If it had not been for Joseph Smith and the restoration, there would be no salvation,” ( Mormon Doctrine, p. 396, 670)
Anti-Christian: “What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world”
- Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 270
Anti-Christian: “Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the ‘whore of Babylon’ whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent.”
- Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, p. 255
So when you state that the lds jesus is the heart of mormonISM, whom are you speaking of?
As the devil knows, the most effective deception is based upon truth, and thus, like Joe Smith, he quoted the Scriptures in seeking to deceive.
And while Mormonic doctrine invokes God and the atonement, the God they point to was once a man who evolved into God, contra Ps. 90:2 (cf. Jn. 4:24) and that the heavens and earth were created by a council of Gods, while the Son was a product of God's conception thru Eve, one of his many wives, making Jesus a spirit brother to Lucifer, and whose plan for mans progression was rejected in favor of Christ's.
And which is only the beginning of Mormonic unScriptural fantasy but which they damn all outside her ranks, and then complain when their claims are exposed and reproved in the light of Scripture.
#2 the history of religion is a history of men damning others to hell for believing diffrently, quite often, while killing them.
And which the LDs is guilty of, and if it was not restrained from following the course its accommodation (of Smith's desire) theology set it on then more would have followed, and we would not be allowed to criticize it, which the LDS sought to prevent in Salt Lake city.
Hey there DU!
I see your wounds are healing up after the debacle of Mitt’s performance a few weeks ago!
And, when the other side REALLY needs to have some EVIDENCE other than laughing and/or name calling.
If it was, then Joseph Smith would have said: “The greatest responsibility in this world that God has placed upon us is to proclaim Christ's atonement.”
But Joseph Smith didn't say something like that, did he?
No, the "gospel" of Mormonism is not as you claim.
So, let's "hit" the rewind button, and see what Joseph Smith did say what THE most important component of Mormonism was, shall we?
Now, knowing that OTHER Lds apologists have been quite slippery at times...with their first impulse to try to say, "Well, that's not from the 'standard works' of Lds 'scriptures,'"...let's see what one of the Lds general authorities said just over a year ago at its General Conference...shall we?
Per LDS Church News (see 'They are not forgotten' — Family history brings stake together [Mormons obsess with the dead]): In the October 2011 general conference, Elder David A. Bednar reiterated the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith who said: "The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead."
Of course, Bednar was quoting those same words as found in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 356.
How have other Lds "prophets" reinforced this (highly ritualistic-occultic) centrality of Mormonism?
Smith's great-nephew, Lds "prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith, further stated: “But greater than all this, so far as our individual responsibilities are concerned, the greatest is to become SAVIORS, in our lesser degree which is assigned us, for the dead who have died without a knowledge of the Gospel. Joseph Smith said, ‘The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us, is to seek after our dead’…It will suffice here to say that the Lord has placed upon us this responsibility of seeing that our dead receive the blessings of the Gospel. Said Joseph Smith: ‘Those saints who neglect it, in behalf of their deceased relatives, do it at the peril of their own salvation.’” (The Way to Perfection, pp. 153-154)
Now...how do we know that Joseph Smith had in mind for Mormons to BAPTIZE every deceased person?
“No man can enter into the Kingdom of God but by the door and through the means that Jesus Christ has offered to the children of men. …NOT A SOUL that has ever lived and died from off the face of this earth shall escape a chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they receive it and obey it, the ordinances of the gospel will be performed for and in their behalf, by their kindred, or their posterity in some generation of time after them, so that every law and every requirement of the gospel of Jesus Christ shall be carried out, and the promises and requirements fulfilled for the salvation of the living and also for the salvation of the dead.” (Teachings of Presidents: Joseph F. Smith, p. 307, 1998; original source “Latter-day Saints Follow Teachings of the Savior,” Scrap Book of Mormon Literature, 2 vols. 2:561-562).
So...Mormons are simply doing what they're DIRECTED to do by their leadership!
And that is to obsess with the dead: “There is hardly any principle the Lord has revealed that I have rejoiced more in than in the redemption of our dead…” (Teachings of Presidents: Wilford Woodruff, pp. 192-193)
For more on this, see: Are Mormon people LITERAL saviors of dead Jews, others? (The OTHER World Series: Vanity)
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You see, DU! I suppose your time in Taiwan would have been better spent dredging up deceased names for proxy baptisms back home. (At least then you would have been "fulfilling" your "greatest responsibility" as a Mormon)...
So DU...a question for you: Why are you seeking the dead here on FRee Republic among us living in Christ?