LDS and ancient record...

[TexanKnight]

Texan,

There was no need for “dancing”. You cannot show that there was a conviction based on that evidence.

'Bye.

Since that IS evidence of a conviction, your denials do nothing to change that fact.

Parker, I understand your frustration at the facts and need to try to cast doubt on them. I had that same frustration when I was LDS.

My prayers are with you.

 

[Tony888]

Since that IS evidence of a conviction, your denials do nothing to change that fact.

Parker, I understand your frustration at the facts and need to try to cast doubt on them. I had that same frustration when I was LDS.

My prayers are with you.

TK, I have my doubts you are a practicing lawyer

• Isn’t the evidence you presented for a pre-trial hearing?
• I believe he was charged with being “a disorderly person”
• I do understand there was a trial, but the outcome is in doubt, whether he was acquitted or “took leg bail”

I’m also not clear on what point you are trying to make, unless you want to enlighten us on how times were different in 1820’s. I personally was shocked to learn President Lincoln used to hold seances in our beloved White House, when he was president some years later. Couldn’t get away with that now, for sure!

 

[TexanKnight]

TK, I have my doubts you are a practicing lawyer

• Isn’t the evidence you presented for a pre-trial hearing?
• I believe he was charged with being “a disorderly person”
• I do understand there was a trial, but the outcome is in doubt, whether he was acquitted or “took leg bail”

I’m also not clear on what point you are trying to make, unless you want to enlighten us on how times were different in 1820’s. I personally was shocked to learn President Lincoln used to hold seances in our beloved White House, when he was president some years later. Couldn’t get away with that now, for sure!

I am sorry, Tony, that you feel the need to get personal and belittle me. I am sorry that you feel the need to cast doubt on my integrity. I faced that tactic when I left the LDS Church, so maybe that kind of conduct is taught by the LDS Church. Regardless, I forgive you for your conduct and will continue to pray for you.

May you have a very blessed Christmas.

 

[Tony888]

TK,
Do you know what dowsing is?

Did you know it was a Catholic priest (Abbé Alexis Bouly) that founded the Society of Friends of Radiesthesia, a newword he coined for dowsing, an amalgam of a Latin root for ‘radiation’ and a Greek root for 'perception.

Times certainly have changed.

 

[Miriam1947]

TK,
Do you know what dowsing is?

Did you know it was a Catholic priest (Abbé Alexis Bouly) that founded the Society of Friends of Radiesthesia, a newword he coined for dowsing, an amalgam of a Latin root for ‘radiation’ and a Greek root for 'perception.

Times certainly have changed.

Tony just because a Catholic priest founded a society has nothing to do with Joseph Smith and his peep stone. There is a difference between the priest and the con man.

 

[TexanKnight]

Tony, I find it is best for me as a follower of Jesus to not communicate much with those who, when faced with truth, tend to attack and personally insult the poster. You attacked my credibility. You have shown me the LDS “fruits”. I think it is best for you to nbot respond to me. I harbor no ill will and have already forgiven you, but I do not associate with people like the person you showed yourself to be.

May God Bless you and open your eyes and heart.

Marry Christmas

 

[PaulDupre]

There is a scientific basis for dowsing. There is none for peep-stones.

 

[PaulDupre]

I am sorry, Tony, that you feel the need to get personal and belittle me. I am sorry that you feel the need to cast doubt on my integrity. I faced that tactic when I left the LDS Church, so maybe that kind of conduct is taught by the LDS Church.

In fact, character assassination is SOP for how Mormons deal with “apostates”. I experienced it in spades when I left.

Paul (formerly Mormon, now happily Catholic)

 

[Tony888]

Tony just because a Catholic priest founded a society has nothing to do with Joseph Smith and his peep stone. There is a difference between the priest and the con man.

Miriam, stop being manipulative with your word choice.

Regarding the Priest

• Both examples are of dowsing for resources
• By Catholic standards, Joseph would be guilty of the sin of superstition, as would the Priest.

Regarding the Trial

• Joseph was charged with the **misdemeanor **of vagrancy
• TK’s evidence is of internal court costs, for time spent on the case, not of conviction or a fine
• We have no evidence of a conviction on vagrancy

I’m still not clear on what you are trying to prove here, unless you think dowsing or vagrancy should disqualify him from service for the Lord?

I think of quite a few saints did things much worse than Dowsing.
You should not pre-judge who our Lord will use and for what purpose.

 

[Tony888]

TK,
Please answer my questions.
I think you’ve failed to prove he was convicted of vagrancy
I think you’ve failed to prove the significance of this misdemeanor conviction, if it happend.

• Isn’t the evidence you presented for a pre-trial hearing?
• I believe he was charged with being “a disorderly person”
• I do understand there was a trial, but the outcome is in doubt, whether he was acquitted or “took leg bail”

 

[PaulDupre]

Miriam, stop being manipulative with your word choice.

Regarding the Priest

• Both examples are of dowsing for resources
• By Catholic standards, Joseph would be guilty of the sin of superstition, as would the Priest.

Wow, talk about manipulating words! Joseph was not dowsing. He was scrying - using a peep stone to find buried treasure. Dowsing is a completely different thing.

Regarding the Trial

• Joseph was charged with the **misdemeanor **of vagrancy

Again, wrong. read the case. He was charged with being a disorderly person, as was required under New York law of the time for anyone engaged in “glass-looking” (using a peep-stone or other scrying technique claiming to find treasure, summon the dead, receive messages from the beyond, etc.) He was named in the court transcript as “Joseph Smith the glass-looker”, not Joseph the vagrant.

Look up the word “scrying”.

Tony, do your own research, don’t just blindly drink the kool-aid your church gives you.

 

[Miriam1947]

Miriam, stop being manipulative with your word choice.

I was not being manipulative with my word choice. Just because you do not believe that Joseph Smith was a con man does not mean he was not.

"The Truth is still the Truth, even if nobody believes it, and a lie is still a lie, even if everybody believes it."

Bishop Fulton Sheen.

 

[Telstar]

There is a scientific basis for dowsing. There is none for peep-stones.

My Dad used to dowse for water. It was something he learned when he was a young man living in Vermont (very early 1900s). Apparently, the farmers up there were amazed at his skill, even when others couldn’t find any water. He was very good at it, but he didn’t like to brag about it. In fact, he didn’t like to do it much as he got older. I remember several times, people came to our house to ask him to find water so they could dig wells. (But, he never asked anyone for money to do it, even though we were dirt poor.)

He even showed me how to do it, and I seemed to have a knack for it, too. But, I’ve never done it for someone looking to dig a well. It’s a very freaky thing to try and hold the point of the willow branch straight, when it wants to pull down. It will practically pull right out of your hands, or even break the branch!

 

[TexanKnight]

Paul, it is no secret he was a treasure hunter who used peep stones to help him. It is no secret he was convicted.

You mentioned scrying. Scrying is a magic practice that that involves using things like stones or crystals to have visions or divination.

Deuteronomy 18:10-11 forbids that. God forbids the very thing Joseph did that got him convicted AND allegedly translate the Book of Mormon.

So, not only did Joseph violate local laws, he was violating God’s laws.

 

[Tony888]

I was not being manipulative with my word choice. Just because you do not believe that Joseph Smith was a con man does not mean he was not.

"The Truth is still the Truth, even if nobody believes it, and a lie is still a lie, even if everybody believes it."

Bishop Fulton Sheen.

But you were referring to his being charged for a misdemeanor of vagrancy, not as a con man.

I’d think ‘divining’ for resources was pretty strange too, but my uncle was a successful water dowser Yup, he was guilty of the sin of supersition, just like the young Joseph and that Catholic Priest I mentioned. In fact, I’ve known of several Catholic priests who practiced diving for water. Are they all ‘Con men’?

 

[Tony888]

Wow, talk about manipulating words! Joseph was not dowsing. He was scrying - using a peep stone to find buried treasure. Dowsing is a completely different thing.

Again, wrong. read the case. He was charged with being a disorderly person, as was required under New York law of the time for anyone engaged in “glass-looking” (using a peep-stone or other scrying technique claiming to find treasure, summon the dead, receive messages from the beyond, etc.) He was named in the court transcript as “Joseph Smith the glass-looker”, not Joseph the vagrant.

Look up the word “scrying”.

Tony, do your own research, don’t just blindly drink the kool-aid your church gives you.

Paul so maybe you can answer the questions then.

• We know there were charges, but where is the evidence he was convicted of the misdemeanor of (vagrency / disorderly person)?
• People thought he had a divining skill, like your relative did for water. Was your relative a con man if he was payed to dowse?
• Does the Catholic sin of superstition preclude you from being used by God?

 

[RebeccaJ]

If you have a neighbor who takes your money, with a claim they can use a magic rock to find buried treasure, well, that neighbor is a con man. If you don’t believe this please PM me and I’ll come on over to your house because I just know you have buried treasure and I’m sure I can find a magic rock. I think $200 is a fair price, because you know, that treasure that is buried in your back yard may be worth 1000X that.

I look forward to your PM. :yup:

 

[Denise1957]

I found a website which states that Joseph Smith used a magic “seer stone” years prior to the publication of the Book of Mormon.

Link to website:

irr.org/mit/divination.html

Joseph Smith and his seer stone have absolutely no correlation with anything that Jesus or His Apostles did or believed. Even if we were to set aside, for a moment, the other issues related to Mormonism, such as polygamy, it’s obvious that what Joesph Smith was involved in has nothing to do with Christian revelation. It is simply not possible that Joseph Smith had anything to do with “restoring” Christianity, since what he was involved in wasn’t even remotely Christian.

 

[Telstar]

Paul so maybe you can answer the questions then.

• We know there were charges, but where is the evidence he was convicted of the misdemeanor of (vagrency / disorderly person)?
• People thought he had a divining skill, like your relative did for water. Was your relative a con man if he was payed to dowse?
• Does the Catholic sin of superstition preclude you from being used by God?

Paul was not the one that had a relative that was a water dowser. That was my Dad. If you really bothered to read all that I wrote (Reading Comprehension 101), you would already know that he never asked for any payment for doing it. He only did it as a favor for those that needed to dig a well for drinking water. He never used his skill for any other purposes. He was certainly not a conman. The reason he was more reluctant to use his skill in later years, was because he converted to Catholicism so he could marry my mother, and the Church considered it to be a sin. So, he would only do it after saying a prayer for help. That’s also why he never asked for any kind of payment.

There is absolutely no correlation between what my Dad did, and what Joseph Smith did.

 

[TarkanAttila]

Basically, the problem we have, Tony et al Mormons, is that Mormonism is based primarily on the private revelation of one man, with few or no witnesses to verify his statements.

Christianity proper is based on the very public historical events of Christ’s crucifixion, Resurrection, and wandering about Palestine for 40 days after His Resurrection. Thousands saw Him wander the hills of Israel after His Death and Rising. They saw His wounds. They saw His miracles. It was more than one or two family members; it was all eleven of His Apostles, His Mother, and the whole bloody city of Jerusalem - which was even more packed with people because it was Passover.

Jesus’s Death and Resurrection is too public, and at the time was too well-known, to be a sham. The Apostles would have been laughed out of Jerusalem, and/or stoned to death.

While we are not so strict with heretics anymore, Joseph Smith’s “revelations” were not at all public. At best he had one, maybe two family members to testify to his “visions” and “miracles” (correct me if I am wrong). Whatever the case, there is almost no way to know if Joseph Smith’s visions actually happened.

But, fictitious or not, we can know if Smith’s accounts contradict Christ’s Gospel (upon which Mormonism is built): First, Joseph Smith and early Mormons preached total apostasy - that, according to Jesus, all the other churches were errant and not the True Church.

But this contradicts with Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 28:20 (any other Scriptures? Help me out, guys!), where Christ says that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, and He will be with us to the end of time. How can Christ be in a Church where heresy exists? One lost thread unravels the whole blanket (eventually). If all churches before Smith were heretical, then Christ was not with us (at least not completely), and Hell did prevail against Christ’s Church.

Also, if every Church was in heresy, why does Smith 1) use the Protestant canon of Scripture (aside from the BoM, the PoGP, etc) , and not his own, and 2) claim apostolic descent? Of what value is apostolic descent if their church did not even survive?