DeepShadow
White Crow
It makes some sense. I went to a pancake breakfast at a Methodist church once. Next time I might just bring a waffle iron.
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Joseph Smith - Prophet of God
- Thread starter Polaris
- Start date
It makes some sense. I went to a pancake breakfast at a Methodist church once. Next time I might just bring a waffle iron.
DeepShadow
White Crow
I'm sorry if I was unclear: I thought very highly of your first seven points. That's why I said your post started out so well: these elements pointed out the sheer staggering volume of the claim, and the difficulty in swallowing it.
If you think it's unfair to use a blanket compliment for things I have no argument for, I'm sorry. I said these were good points, what do you want from me?
No, I didn't have anything to dispute them. That's why I paid you the compliment for the great arguments, and then harped on you for the poor ones.
I said long ago in this thread that the fruit of Joseph's work was a mixed bag, taken from a reasoning standpoint. I even said I disagreed with the OP in that regard, coming as it seemed to from a "Joseph only brought good things" point of view.
The problem isn't that one side is cherry-picking, though. It's both sides. Your post, for all its appeal to reason, is still showing only the rotten cherries.
The problem is that the portion later translated by Egyptologists was not the portion translated by Joseph Smith. The portions translated by Joseph were destroyed in a fire. Non-LDS witnesses confirmed the two parts of the record were in different color ink, one black and one red.
DeepShadow
White Crow
Why does someone have to believe in Christ to receive truth from God? Everyone follows whatever portion of the Truth they receive. My portion is no more or less special than theirs.
DeepShadow
White Crow
How so?
Let me ask you some questions to establish my premise, I may discover that my premise is wrong.
Do you agree with this?
"The Light of Christ is the divine energy, power, or influence that proceeds from God through Christ and gives life and light to all things. The Light of Christ influences people for good and prepares them to receive the Holy Ghost. One manifestation of the Light of Christ is what we call a conscience."
LDS.org - Topic Definition____If you agree with that lets move on. Do you agree with this?
The Gift of the Holy Ghost
All honest seekers of the truth can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost, leading them to Jesus Christ and His gospel. However, the fulness of the blessings given through the Holy Ghost are available only to those who receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and remain worthy.
LDS.org - Topic Definition____All honest seekers of the truth can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost, leading them to Jesus Christ and His gospel. However, the fulness of the blessings given through the Holy Ghost are available only to those who receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and remain worthy.
If you agree with that lets move on. Do you believe you have been given the Gift of the Holy Ghost?
If you do believe you have been given the gift of the holy ghost lets move on.
I think your earlier statement is misleading because you don't acknowledge the distinction you make between what you claim to recieve vs. what you believe others in practice receive (the ones that won't join your church).
Melissa G
Non Veritas Verba Amanda
I didn't say it was in a objective sense. What you believe, you believe. Only didn't Christ say. ' no one can come to the Father except through me' ? So by inference, you can't know a God which is alien to other religion's Gods. Jesus as far as I'm aware, didn't endorse other Gods. Christianity, and Judaism are exclusive.
Anyways, this is getting off topic,
melissa g
Meli
DeepShadow
White Crow
Yes, I agree with that.
Yes, I agree with this, and I have (I believe) been given the Gift of the Holy Ghost.
I think I see what you mean, and in light of these definitions, I can see why you'd think I'm being deceptive. The problem is that the Gift of the Holy Ghost is not the only manifestation of the Holy Ghost. Someone can be moved by it without the Gift--in fact, it's necessary that they be, or they cannot actually accept baptism!
So when someone feels a genuine religious experience, that's not their conscience (the Light of Christ), but rather the Holy Ghost. So my religious experiences are the same as theirs, coming from the same place via the same means.
But don't I have more religous "value," because I have the Gift? Not necessarily. It's strictly a matter of what you do with it. For someone who is rebelling against the Truth, the Gift of the Holy Ghost only give them more Truth to rebel against...which is a bad thing.
God doesn't judge a person against the percentage of All Truth that they acquired in life, but by how faithful they were to that portion that they acquired. Thus, someone who has 50% of the truth but is faithful 10% of the time is a lot worse off than someone who has 2% of the truth but is 90% faithful to it.
Moreover, you are making a critical assumption at the end of your post, when you say:
.
I honestly don't know what others in practice receive. It's not my place. For all I know, God is leading them to other Truths that have not been revealed to us yet. That's part of the reality of an open canon, we must be open to the possibility of new truths. It only stands to reason what we allow others the same privilege.
DeepShadow
White Crow
Sure. But did he say they had to worship Him, or even speak His name. When people are saved, they are saved through Christ, whether they realize it or not.
To get it back on topic, this is the gospel that Joseph Smith preached. He said that heaven would be full of people who were faithful to the gospel, in whatever form they understood it. That's why we do ordinances for the dead, so they can be judged by their works, not by their church membership.
Yeah, I think you are just playing games. Your own scriptures make a distinction between the gift of the holy ghost, the constant companion, etc. Earlier you said that "My portion is no more or less special than theirs" and this is where you are misleading. I could dig up quote after quote by your prophets that make the distinction on how your "portion" is special. Just own it DS, why the funky spin?
DeepShadow
White Crow
Our prophets talk about what makes our part special, yes. I know of nowhere in the LDS Standard Works that says that we have the ONLY special part of the gospel. On the contrary, the 13 Articles of Faith make it clear that there is more Truth to be added someday.
I'm sorry you think I'm playing games, Bathsheba, but this is what I've been taught.
Melissa G
Non Veritas Verba Amanda
Not that I'm aware of, Christ never asked for people to worship him. He appears to me, to have been a man of the people, against authority. Religous Leaders whom he saw as Corrupt and Hypocritical.
I understand that JS said a great many things, but basically your saying that all non-christians are dammed ?
melissa g
DeepShadow
White Crow
On the contrary, we believe that people will be judged according to their works, and many non-Christians will therefore go to Heaven. Seriously, it's in our Doctrine and Covenants...which, to keep this marginally on-topic, are revelations given to Joseph Smith.
DeepShadow
White Crow
How could a point of doctrine be anything other than a belief?! We believe you will go to Heaven, at least as far as you want to; there are many levels.
Humph, I thought we were talking about the quality of knowledge God gives you vs. what another seeker gets from God. What the dooce, haven't you thought of the implications of your "testimony"? What you claim as "true" contradicts other truth claims. Your testimony, which you claim comes from God, cannot be true if it contradicts another truth claim from God. It is so simple, why are you playing this game (bathsheba scratch's head, what is up with DS, normally he is so cogent, I must be missing something, this must be a function of the medium, what the dooce!).
Mormon truth claim, you gotta have priesthood authority from god to baptize somebody. If a Catholic performs a baptism they do so without authority from god. You believe this because of the info you got from god, but the catholic got different info from god. CLEARLY, your info is just a little bit more special, you believe the catholic has it wrong. Dude, I can't wait for you to dress this up ... hold on, I gotta nuke some popcorn for this show
DeepShadow
White Crow
Perhaps an analogy is in order:
Numbers are cool. If you have the whole set of digits, you can do base 10 math. Suppose each of these is compared to some portion of the whole Truth, so that if you have all 10, you have all Truth (Pythagoras would be proud!). For the sake of this analogy, we will assume that LDS doctrine as currently expressed is accurate.
1 is a conscience. It's the self and the responsibility of the self to the community. Who has this truth? Everyone, assuming they have not rejected it. This is the Light of Christ.
2 is a belief in some kind of Supreme Being. Monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, whatever.
3 is a belief in Jehovah/Yahweh/Allah. Who has this? Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. (Yes, I know I skipped over many other organized religions; I've only got ten digits, and I'm not prepared to do fractions).
4 is a belief in Jesus Christ as Savior. This is pretty much exclusive to Christians.
5 is the belief in modern prophets. We're getting pretty close to exclusively LDS now.
6 is the belief in Gordon B. Hinkley as the current and only prophet.
7, 8, 9 are yet to be revealed in this life. 0 can't be revealed in this life; our heads would explode.
Now, perhaps a Muslim only has 1, 2 and 3, they are still better off than an LDS person who has 4, 5 and 6 but has lost touch with the first three. Likewise, individuals are entitled to personal revelations that are too advanced for the rest of us: perhaps a Buddhist has learned 8 or 9 or even 0 (!!!) who am I to say these things were not given by God?
Numbers are cool. If you have the whole set of digits, you can do base 10 math. Suppose each of these is compared to some portion of the whole Truth, so that if you have all 10, you have all Truth (Pythagoras would be proud!). For the sake of this analogy, we will assume that LDS doctrine as currently expressed is accurate.
1 is a conscience. It's the self and the responsibility of the self to the community. Who has this truth? Everyone, assuming they have not rejected it. This is the Light of Christ.
2 is a belief in some kind of Supreme Being. Monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, whatever.
3 is a belief in Jehovah/Yahweh/Allah. Who has this? Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. (Yes, I know I skipped over many other organized religions; I've only got ten digits, and I'm not prepared to do fractions).
4 is a belief in Jesus Christ as Savior. This is pretty much exclusive to Christians.
5 is the belief in modern prophets. We're getting pretty close to exclusively LDS now.
6 is the belief in Gordon B. Hinkley as the current and only prophet.
7, 8, 9 are yet to be revealed in this life. 0 can't be revealed in this life; our heads would explode.
Now, perhaps a Muslim only has 1, 2 and 3, they are still better off than an LDS person who has 4, 5 and 6 but has lost touch with the first three. Likewise, individuals are entitled to personal revelations that are too advanced for the rest of us: perhaps a Buddhist has learned 8 or 9 or even 0 (!!!) who am I to say these things were not given by God?
DeepShadow
White Crow
I've had personal revelations that have contradicted other personal revelations. It gets complicated even before you add other people!
Seriously, we believe that there is truth in all religions. We also believe that we are incomplete in our own truth. In both cases, the gaps are filled in by assumptions and traditions, and that's usually where the contradictions form.
My testimony, in a nutshell, says the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the best place for me, right now. It says nothing about the best place for anyone else. If someone else is led to Catholicism by their testimony, I have no room to contradict that.
To reuse the old analogy about the blind men and the elephant, I'm holding the tail, a Catholic is holding the trunk, and I think we can do better than argue about which one has the snake.
I like that word, dooce! Dooce, dooce, dooce!
I also appreciate the compliment, and in honor of your contrariness, I refrain from frubaling you...because I can't yet.
Seriously, I think a lot of it is a function of the medium--language. I think language--any language--is too limited for a lot of this.
This is not to say that Catholics (or Catholicism) have nothing special from God.
And in other areas, I have it wrong, and the Catholics have it right.
LDS doctrine is incomplete, and proudly so. It's in a constant state of clarification. In the early days of Joseph Smith (keeping this barely on topic) we were teaching that the Holy Ghost was not a member of the Godhead! We also taught that people needed to be sealed not to their parents, but to a church leader!
These things were corrected. Others may yet be in need of correction. It's not only possible, but likely, that some of these corrections and clarifications will come from other systems of belief.