Hey, NoName! You're back! I was starting to miss you. :bounce
NoName said:
The BoM is said to be the most correct of any book. Is the D&C rife with errors? How could a book that is the revelations to Joseph Smith from Christ be less correct than a book that is just a translation (albeit an inspired translation)?
Well, this is just my opinion, but I believe the statement on the
Book of Mormon to have been based on the fact that Joseph Smith translated it directly from an original record and not from a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the original record, as was the case when the
Bible was translated. So Joseph wasn't comparing original documents; he was comparing the finished product. It was the potential for error in transcribing and translating that He was referring to. He was also (according to our belief
) divinely inspired in translating it. Since it was written in a language that was unknown in 1829, he didn't need to rely on knowledge received through secular training (which he didn't have anyway). Also, I'm not sure, but I suspect that Joseph Smith's statement (about the
Book of Mormon being the most correct of any book on earth) was made long before the
Doctrine and Covenants was published.
Ether 3:6 says the lord touched the rocks with his finger and they gave forth light. If Jesus was a spirit child of God, like we are, and one of the reasons this earth was created was to give us the opportunity to get a physical body, how did Jesus have a physical body when he wasn't going to come to earth until quite a while later?
He didn't. He had a spirit body. But, if you'll recall (and I think you and I had a discussion about this awhile back on another thread), when Jesus first appeared to His Apostles as a resurrected being (on the first Easter), they were afraid because they thought they were seeing a spirit. We believe that spirit is matter. It is just much more refined matter than matter making up the physical things we can see and feel. If we could see spirits, we would see that they do have a form. A spirit body, then, has a form, but is not corporeal.
Someone sufficiently pure in heart could, with God's permission, conceivably see a spirit boby, which is what happened to the brother of Jared in Ether 3. If you go to verse 9, you will see that Jesus says,
"Because of thy faith thou hast seen that I shall take upon me flesh and blood; and never has man come before me with such exceeding faith as thou hast; for were it not so you could not have seen my finger." He continues, and in verse 16 says,
"Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh."
Once again, you came up with some excellent questions. They show obvious thought on your part and are not simply cut and pasted from anti-Mormon websites. As always, it's a pleasure to be able to answer them!