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Who was Joseph Smith to you?

cardero

cardero

Citizen Mod
FFH said:
Funny...FFH makes note of this for future use...
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I apologize for that, it's just that is an interesting question (a timely one for me) and I didn't want it to get ugly or locked up for review before everyone had a chance to comment.
 
yuvgotmel

yuvgotmel

Well-Known Member
Comprehend said:
Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1-4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow (New York: Macmillan, 1992),, p.131

The doctrines of the Church affirm that the Atonement wrought by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is efficacious for the sins of all who believe, repent, are baptized by one having authority, and receive the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. However, if a person thereafter commits a grievous sin such as the shedding of innocent blood, the Savior's sacrifice alone will not absolve the person of the consequences of the sin.
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What you just described is blood atonement through human sacrifice.

However, what you cut and pasted above, goes on to describe not just human sacrifice but also that it is a one-time offer, as if to say "only 1 coupon per person."

No matter how you cut it, what you cut and pasted, if it be true, is blood atonement via human sacrifice.
 
S

standing_alone

Well-Known Member
beckysoup61 said:
  • "Nothing much. Founder of LDS"
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This one'd be me.

I responded the way I did because all he is to me is the founder of the LDS Church. Not believing that any god exists, I can't think of him as being a prophet who heard from angels or God or any such thing. So all he is, to me, is a founder of a church, and since I do not follow a religious/spiritual path, I have no reason to give him much thought. Pretty much, I don't really think about the guy.
 
lilithu

lilithu

The Devil's Advocate
lunamoth said:
I kind of agree with Lilithu in that I think JS was inspired, but not as revelation direct from God. Some people can be dramatically moved by the Holy Spirit and then they express that through their own filters, so we get stuff from the Holy Spirit mixed with the usual human bias and baggage.
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Beautifully stated. :yes:


lunamoth said:
How do we tell the difference between the work of the Spirit and the human baggage? Always a tough question but my answer is 'by their fruits.' There is good fruit in the LDS religion, and we see a lot of this loving spirit from our LDS members here, but the same good fruit is found in simple traditional Christianity.

Obviously I think that my own religion captures the essential good fruit best.
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Obviously you do, otherwise you probably wouldn't be Christian. :)


Victor said:
Well, we have a strict and loose view of both inspiration and revelation. Essentially that means we can believe certain others (like Mohammed, Baha u llah, Joseph Smith, etc.) are inspired in a very loose sense. We also have people within our own Church that are inspired and have had revelations in a very loose sense. The more strict definitions of inspiration and revelation are restricted to within the walls of our own ideologies. In laymen terms that just means we believe others have it right in certain areas, but only we have the totality of it (sorry Lilithu, I realize that's blasphemous to you....:p ).
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Hmmm... tries to picture what UU blasphemy looks like. :p

btw Victor, I had to go look up the difference between blasphemy and heresy. Now I'm not sure that I used it correctly?
 
Bishka

Bishka

Veteran Member
standing_alone said:
This one'd be me.

I responded the way I did because all he is to me is the founder of the LDS Church. Not believing that any god exists, I can't think of him as being a prophet who heard from angels or God or any such thing. So all he is, to me, is a founder of a church, and since I do not follow a religious/spiritual path, I have no reason to give him much thought. Pretty much, I don't really think about the guy.
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That I totally understand. It's the people that somewhat consider Muhammad to be of some importance and then totally say the oppositie about Joseph Smith or vice versa with Anton LeVay.....It sort of is strange to me.
 
Bishka

Bishka

Veteran Member
cardero said:
I'm still waiting for the sequel thread "Who was Bringham Young To You?"
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Why? Brigham Young wasn't the founder of our faith. Yes, he was a Prophet, but not the founder. I'm not sure why there is so much animosity towards Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.
 
Bishka

Bishka

Veteran Member
jonny said:
I'd say that 99.9% of the answers would be "Who's that?"
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Probably. Most people seem to think we had two prophets at the beginning, no one in the middle and then all of a sudden we have a prophet again.
 
cardero

cardero

Citizen Mod
beckysoup61 said:
Why? Brigham Young wasn't the founder of our faith. Yes, he was a Prophet, but not the founder.
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If I am not mistaken, Bringham Young was the next president to the Saints after Joseph Smith’s death. The difference between character and leadership should make for interesting conversation.
beckysoup6 writes: I'm not sure why there is so much animosity towards Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.
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You won’t receive any animosity from me. I’ve never met ether one of them but have only read about them. This is not enough to hang a judgment on them but it is enough to recognize the significant impact that each men had on the evolvement of the Saints in those early years.
 
FFH

FFH

Veteran Member
cardero said:
I apologize for that, it's just that is an interesting question (a timely one for me) and I didn't want it to get ugly or locked up for review before everyone had a chance to comment.
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No need to apologize I thought it was a very clever, civil and humorous way to calm things down a bit...
 
J

jonny

Well-Known Member
cardero said:
If I am not mistaken, Bringham Young was the next president to the Saints after Joseph Smith’s death. The difference between character and leadership should make for interesting conversation.

You won’t receive any animosity from me. I’ve never met ether one of them but have only read about them. This is not enough to hang a judgment on them but it is enough to recognize the significant impact that each men had on the evolvement of the Saints in those early years.
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Brigham Young was an amazing man. There was a great talk about his life in General Conference yesterday. I don't think that history has been able to judge the influence that he had on American History yet. As with most historical figures, he was also a controversal figure.

Here is the audio from the talk given yesterday (it's about 10 minutes). They will have the text available in a few days:

http://broadcast.lds.org/genconf/2007/04/20/GC_2007_04_22_TingeyEC__01907_eng_.mp3
 
FFH

FFH

Veteran Member
Joseph Smith seemed to lay the "spiritual" ground work for the firm establishment of Zion throughout the world and Brigham Young seemed to lay the permanent "physical" foundation of Zion, which has also spread throughout the world, beginning with his leadership in Salt Lake.
 
Katzpur

Katzpur

Not your average Mormon
Hey, we could start a thread on "Who were Joseph Smith, Sr., Joseph Smith, Jr., Joseph F. Smith and Joseph Fielding Smith?" Would that blow everybody's mind or what?

Or maybe "Was Wilford Woodruff related to Woodrow Wilson?"
 
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