Does the Book of Mormon contain the fullness of the gospel?

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gazelam said:
The link I posted earlier plainly states what LDS mean by “Fulness of the Gospel” in both paragraphs 1 & 5 of the article. How do those paragraphs not answer your question?
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Because that was not my question. My question was, “would you care to explain the nature of God to me only using Book of Mormon references?” I think that’s a fair question, given that Mormons believe that living the precepts of the Book of Mormon will bring you closer to God than any other book. If that is the case, I think that understanding the nature of God is important in getting close to Him. Would you disagree?

So I will respectfully ask again, will YOU explain to me the nature of God using only Book of Mormon references? If you can’t, I understand. I personally think it’s a tall order.
 
De_Maria said:
Hi, Your profile says, “becoming Catholic”. Welcome!
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Thank you. I’ve been all over the place. Most recently, I was Baptist, but that just didn’t feel totally right with me. Since investigating Catholicism, I’ve felt more at home than anywhere else.

I did take the Mormon missionary discussions a little over three years ago. My wife even accepted the baptismal invitation, but then we started reading about who Joseph Smith was. She cancelled her baptism date and we continued our search. Joseph was a downright evil man. Mormon doctrines are pretty screwy, too, in my humble opinion.
 
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TomMartin said:
Joseph Smith of course taught that Moroni, an angel from heaven, preached the true gospel. And in fact, when the Book of Mormon was written, the Church of Christ that was headed by Joseph Smith was quite similar to Protestantism, for example to Baptists, in doctrines, with the main exception being of course the belief in the inspiration of the Book of Mormon.
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To me, it has more in common to Islam. In Islam, we have the case of a purported angel telling a man to write down the contents of a heavenly book. A book which remains in heaven.

In LDS, we have the case of a purported angel telling a man to copy a book which he will take back to heaven as soon as the copying is completed.

No one but the purported prophets see or hear the angel they claim appeared to them in their visions.
 
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gazelam said:
What makes sense to me is 1 Corinthians 1:27

Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong

.Not sure theological school fits as the “weak of the world”
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I agree, and I think that God would choose the weak, but not the evil. There’s a big difference.
 
Lemuel said:
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gazelam:
This statement is incorrect. A correct statement would be that it was translated by one man thousands of years after the Bible.
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Would you describe how he translated the Book of Mormon?
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No. But this link describes the process: Book of Mormon Translation
 
I don’t believe the BoM contains any of the Gospel. There may be similar words and phrases but it is not Gospel in any way.
 
Lemuel said:
I have a lot of Mormon friends and family. They claim that the Book of Mormon contains the fullness of the gospel. They also say that it is the most correct book and that man can get closer to God by abiding by its precepts than any other book. How is this even so?
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I think the question you should be asking is not whether their Gospel is full, but whether or not it’s even the same Gospel.

There are some doctrines that are very hard to reconcile with Catholic theology, besides
other things. Karlo Broussard outlined a few of these Mormon beliefs
  • God the Father had a body, instead of being pure spirit
  • Faithful believers of Mormonism become Gods
  • God was once a man, who became God
  • Baptism of the dead
Founder Joseph Smith having been a Freemason doesn’t help matters for us Catholics. When 2 very well mannered Mormons stopped to speak to me one morning while i was doing my yard. Naturally I didn’t mind speaking with them. However, they wanted to say a prayer first before we began. As politely as possible I told them I only begin prayers by saying : “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” because it’s the most important teaching of my faith(Holy Trinity)

These people are very well mannered. I respect a lot of the way they conduct themselves morally. And I would never demean or act condescending towards them even with the Catholic faith. They must understand though the true errors in their heretical beliefs, and how it can do spiritual harm to others however well meaning they may be.
 
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TomMartin said:
Joseph Smith of course taught that Moroni, an angel from heaven, preached the true gospel.
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I think you meant Nephi, not Moroni. It was the angel Nephi who Joseph said appeared to him on several occasions. The church changed it to Moroni later on. Not sure why.
 
Catholicos said:
These people are very well mannered. I respect a lot of the way they conduct themselves morally. And I would never demean or act condescending towards them even with the Catholic faith. They must understand though the true errors in their heretical beliefs, and how it can do spiritual harm to others however well meaning they may be.
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I agree that they are well mannered. When my wife and I took the lessons a few years ago they were totally nice. I liked them. But the problem with them that I didn’t like is that like most Mormons, they act funny when you start asking questions. They don’t like anything outside of the script. And their default to not being able to answer questions is to bear their testimony to you. Either that or they say stuff about milk before meat, which is just another way of avoiding answering the questions.
 
The biggest problem with Mormonism is Joseph Smith’s complete lack of credibility. None of the supposed artifacts were ever verified by anyone but him. We don’t see one example of someone beside Joseph Smith seeing or handling the golden plates, we’re just supposed to take his word for it. He claimed to translate Egyptian papyri into some “Book of Abraham”, only now that people can actually translate Egyptian papyri, we find that Smith horribly mistranslated them. There is also the claim of some epic battle that took place in Central America between the “Nephites” and “Lemanites” which killed hundreds of thousands. However modern archaeology completely obliterates this story. There is absolutely zero evidence that such people even existed, let alone that such a battle took place. Zero. We have made archeological discoveries of things that date back literally tens of thousands of years, yet we have no evidence of some biblical battle that apparently took place barely 1600 years ago. Furthermore, his teaching is predicated on the assumption that Christendom suffered a “great apostasy” in it’s infancy. Not only does this contradict Christ’s explicit promise that His church would never go out of existence (Matthew 16, 21). It also contradicts the mindset of Church Fathers. Sts. Ignatius, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, etc. mention nothing of a great apostasy.

Everything about Joseph Smith wreaks of a confidence trickster, not a prophet.
 
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No, it doesn’t. What offends me, and I mean REALLY offends me, is that they refer to the Book of Mormon as “another testament of Jesus Christ.” It isn’t. I couldn’t get past the first page the first time I read it. There are words I use to describe the BOM, none profane but still may not be allowed here on CAF. So let’s just say that the Holy Bible, every version of the Catholic Bible, contains the fullness of truth. None of our books are left out.
 
Don’t forget their teaching that Lucifer is the brother of Jesus. That one is well hidden on their official website. But a friend found it and after it was brought to light, all of the Mormons who had denied that they teach this, had to admit that yes, they do still teach it rather than what they are trying to sell people on (Jesus and Lucifer being “spirit brothers”).

To claim that Jesus and Lucifer/Satan are brothers elevates Lucifer to being God (like Jesus) or Jesus being a fallen angel (like Lucifer/Satan). Both are unacceptable.
 
One thing I noticed in my discussions with Mormons is the way they misunderstand Scripture.
 
adamhovey1988 said:
Could you ask how it is the most correct of any book? I’m just curious how they would answer.
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That’s a good question. Especially when you consider the thousands of corrections that have been made to the most correct book. I asked the missionaries about this and they told me that these were grammatical and spelling errors but I since have learned that there have been a lot of doctrinal changes as well.
 
It’s exactly what it sounds like. The Mormons claim that Jesus commissioned the Apostles, and they did their best. Their successors did alright, but soon after that there was some random and rapid abandonment of the deposit of faith by the Christians of AD 150-200. They say it’s likely due to “Romanism” and all that tired regurgitated anti-Catholic stuff. This is obviously ridiculous because the Church Fathers of that age are rabidly orthodox and were extremely Catholic in their practices. If there was even a hint of the makings of an apostasy, they sure weren’t aware of it. The Fathers were notorious for fighting heresy —It’s what they were known for. The fact that there is sublime continuity of teaching from the Apostles to their successors and the early Church Fathers shows that there was no “apostasy”

If you’d like more information on this topic I suggest you read the book “The Apostasy That Wasn’t” by Peter Kreeft. And Jimmy Akin’s book “The Fathers Know Best”

-Owen Riley
 
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Let’s get this straight to begin with. Mormons are NOT Christians.
This false cult was founded by Joseph Smith who was a known occultist and drug taker.
Its a real shame so many people have been duped by him.
 
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