https://www.quora.com/What-do-Protestants-and-Catholics-think-of-Mormons/answer/James-Hough-1

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SunshineGrandma said:
-Explain how Joseph Smith came to know that God the man had sexual relations with Mary and other women (?) and had many children including Jesus and Lucifer.
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Latter-day Saints do NOT believe God the Father had sexual relations with Mary.
 
Stephen168 said:
In 1830, Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon which contained Trinitarian language.
Book of Mormon page 25:
And he said unto me, Behold, the virgin whom thou seest, is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh. … And the angel said unto me, behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father!
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Clearly God and Christ are one.
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This is not Trinitarian language! The Trinity is defined something like this:
  1. There is one God.
  2. The Father is God.
  3. The Son is God.
  4. The Holy Spirit is God
  5. The Father is not the Son.
  6. The Father is not the Holy Spirit.
  7. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.
  8. The Son is both fully divine and fully human.
(The may be more but this is all that’s in my non-Trinitarian brain.)

The phrase “behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father!” violates #5 above. From a Latter-day Saint perspective this statement is saying that Christ is the Father of Salvation in the sense that we are born again through Him), not that Christ is God the Father. I hope this helps…
 
I never said the 1830 version of the Book of Mormon defined the trinity, but it did contain trinitarian language as I quoted it.

Last April, I told you the problems with your definition, so you should know why “behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father” is trinitarian language.
 
Stephen168 said:
In the 1832, version of the first vision, Joseph Smith said he was 16 and saw the Lord [Jesus Christ].

In 1834, the Mormon leadership, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams wrote Lectures on Faith which were included in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants (Mormon scripture).
Lectures on Faith-1834:
There are two personages who constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things—by whom all things were created and made, that are created and made, whether visible or invisible: whether in heaven, on earth, or in the earth, under the earth, or throughout the immensity of space—They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power: possessing all perfection and fulness: The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made, or fashioned like unto man, … And he being the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fulness of the glory of the Father—possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit, that bears record of the Father and the Son, and these three are one, or in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things:
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Clearly the Father is a spirit, and the Father and Son and maybe the Holy Spirit are one.
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Very early historical accounts show that Latter-day Saints believed that God the Father is a physical being.

Truman Coe, a Presbyterian minister who had for four years lived among the Mormons in Kirtland, published the following regarding the beliefs of the Latter-day Saints in the August 11 1836 Ohio Observer: They contend that the God worshipped by the Presbyterians and all other sectarians is no better than a wooden God. They believe that the true God is a material being, composed of body and parts; and that when the Creator formed Adam in His own image, He made him about the size and shape of God himself. (“Truman Coe’s description of Mormonism,” 347, 354)

Joseph’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith, also noted that other Christian denominations took issue with the new Church because of its teachings about God, noting that in 1830:

the different denominations are very much opposed to us… The Methodists also come, and they rage, for they worship a God without body or parts, and they know that our faith comes in contact with this principle. (Lucy Mack Smith, The History of Joseph Smith By His Mother Lucy Mack Smith , edited by Preston Nibley, (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1956), 161)
 
SunshineGrandma said:
The LDS definition of the Great Apostasy varies quite a bit.

What years do you think it began and ended?

Okay, let’s say some truths can still be taught. Who passed them down through the centuries? (That’s quite a few people). Were they baptized? Were they part of the Christian Church that existed at the time?
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My personal opinion is that it happened early on.

Eusebius, quoting Hegesippus on the subject of false teachers and referring to the condition of the Church about the close of the first century:

The Church continued until then as a pure and uncorrupt virgin, whilst if there were any at all that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving Gospel, they were yet skulking in dark retreats: but when the sacred choir of Apostles became extinct, and the generation of those that had been privileged to hear their inspired wisdom had passed away, then also the combinations of impious errors arose by the fraud and delusions of false teachers. These also, as there were none of the Apostles left, henceforth attempted without shame, to preach their false doctrine against the gospel of truth. (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History, bk. 3, ch. 32)

Eusebius referring to his own day wrote:
We [sank] into negligence and sloth, One in being and reviling another in different ways, and we were almost, as it were, on the point of taking up arms against each other, and where is sailing each other with words as with darts and Spears, prelates inveighing against prelates, and people rising up against people, and hypocrisy and dissimulation had arisen to the greatest height of malignity; … we added one wickedness in misery to another. But some that appeared to be our pastors, deserting the law of piety, were inflamed against each other with mutual strides, only accumulating quarrels and threats, rivalship, hostility and hatred to each other. (Eusebius, ecclesiastical history, 8:318)

Tertullian observed "The gospel was wrong we preached; men wrongly believed; so many thousands were wrongly baptized… so many priestly functions, so many ministries were wrongly executed." (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 3:256)

Two pertinent Ignatius quotes…

Apart from these [the bishops, deacons, and presbyters], there is no Church. Ignatius, Trallians 3, in ANF 1:67.]

Remember in your prayers the Church in Syria {i.e. his own church at Antioch}, which now has God for its shepherd, instead of me. Jesus Christ alone will oversee it… (Ignatius, Romans 9, in ANF 1:77)

Much later Pope Adrian VI stated in 1522:

"We know well that for many years things deserving abhorrence have gathered round the Holy See. Sacred things have been misused, ordinances transgressed, so that in everything there has been a change for the worse." (Pastor, History of the Popes , 14:134, as quoted in Durant and Durant, The Age of Faith , 381)
 
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gazelam said:
Very early historical accounts show that Latter-day Saints believed that God the Father is a physical being.

Truman Coe, a Presbyterian minister who had for four years lived among the Mormons in Kirtland, published the following regarding the beliefs of the Latter-day Saints in the August 11 1836 Ohio Observer: They contend that the God worshipped by the Presbyterians and all other sectarians is no better than a wooden God. They believe that the true God is a material being, composed of body and parts; and that when the Creator formed Adam in His own image, He made him about the size and shape of God himself. (“Truman Coe’s description of Mormonism,” 347, 354)

Joseph’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith, also noted that other Christian denominations took issue with the new Church because of its teachings about God, noting that in 1830:

the different denominations are very much opposed to us… The Methodists also come, and they rage, for they worship a God without body or parts, and they know that our faith comes in contact with this principle . (Lucy Mack Smith, The History of Joseph Smith By His Mother Lucy Mack Smith , edited by Preston Nibley, (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1956), 161)
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I used Mormon scripture to show that Mormonism taught that God was close to Christian orthodoxy at its beginning. I used Mormon scripture to show how Mormonism had rejected orthodoxy by 1835.

Truman Coe published in 1836 and Lucy Smith published in 1853.
 
I didn’t ask if you have ever heard it, I asked if LDS have ever taught it.
 
SunshineGrandma said:
I didn’t ask if you have ever heard it, I asked if LDS have ever taught it.
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I have never heard it taught by Latter-day Saint leaders to the Latter-day Saint membership. I have only heard the concept from those attempting to discredit The Church of Jesus Christ.
 
The Deseret News, Dec. 23, 1923 “Mary told the story most beautifully…Referring to the event, she said: “God hath done wonderful things unto me.” And the Holy Ghost came upon her, is the story, and she came into the presence of the highest. No man or woman can live in mortality and survive the presence of the Highest except by the sustaining power of the Holy Ghost. So it came upon her to prepare her for admittance into the divine presence, and the power of the Highest, who is the Father, was present, and overshadowed her, and that holy child that was born of her was called the Son of God…The power of creation…It is the most sacred and holy and divine function with which God has endowed man. Made holy, it is retained by the Father of us all, and in his exercise of that great and marvelous creative power and function he did not debase himself, nor debauch his daughter. Thus Christ became the literal Son of a divine Father, and no one else was worthy to be his father.” – Melvin J. Ballard
 
The birth of the Savior was as natural as the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood‑‑was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.
Brigham Young Journal of Discourses 8:115
 
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Ezekiel 37:16-19

16 Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:
17 And join them one to another into one stick, and they shall become one in thine hand.
18 And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?
19 Say unto them, Thus saith the LORD God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in my hand.

Does the “Joseph” in this verse refer to Joseph Smith?

If not, who else could they be referring to?
 
Joseph, one of the tribes of Israel

Jacob, who was renamed Israel, had 12 sons. One of them was called Joseph. Joseph who was sold into Egypt. “Coat of many colors” Joseph. That Joseph
 
That makes sense. I think it does say that the tribe of Judah was estranged from the other tribes of Israel at one point, so that would explain the separate stick for the people of Judah.
 
lokisuperfan said:
Does the “Joseph” in this verse refer to Joseph Smith?
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There is no reference to Joseph Smith in the bible because there is nothing in the bible about the LDS. No matter how they twist it and turn it, the LDS is not a biblical religion.
 
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