LDS restoration

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exiled1

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Can someone within the LDS faith please explain to me the church Jesus Christ established and the church Joseph Smith established?
If they are the same church, originally established and then restored after a great apostasy, doesn’t that mean that Joseph Smith did a better job picking the successors, teaching the Gospel, etc. than Jesus Christ did?
The church Jesus established failed, no? But Smith’s has lasted 200 years, so far.
It seems to me that if Smith can be credited with doing anything better than Jesus, then the entirety of Smith’s credibility falls flat.
Is this a logical conclusion, or am I missing something?
 
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I think they’ll tell you there was a “remnant” left somewhere that survived. Typical of anyone wanting to bypass the Catholic church.
 
Oh my! How did I manage to put this in the parenting forum? Sorry!
 
No problem. Sometimes the website acts up when we’re trying to make a thread.
You’ll get better answers in Non-Catholic Religions, that’s where you’re most likely to find people who know about your topic 🙂
 
This was a question I asked some LDS missionaries the last time they came to my house. They gave the small remnant answer and I was unsatisfied with it.
 
Pretty good question, never thought of it that way. I look forward to a response.

God bless
 
exiled1 said:
Can someone within the LDS faith please explain to me the church Jesus Christ established and the church Joseph Smith established?
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Bona fide Latter-day Saint here - I’ll take a crack your questions. This first question assumes that Joseph Smith was acting on his own. He was called by Jesus Christ to restore the Church that had fallen away centuries earlier. So, a better wording of this question would be “Can someone within the LDS faith please explain to me the church Jesus Christ established anciently and the church Jesus Christ reestablished through Joseph Smith?”
exiled1 said:
If they are the same church, originally established and then restored after a great apostasy, doesn’t that mean that Joseph Smith did a better job picking the successors, teaching the Gospel, etc. than Jesus Christ did?
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When Christ reestablished His church He also selected the successors, not Joseph Smith.
exiled1 said:
The church Jesus established failed, no? But Smith’s has lasted 200 years, so far.
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The Bible contains prophesy indicating that the ancient church would fall away and then be later restored. A couple of verses will suffice for now.

2 Thessalonians 2:2, 3
not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand.

3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition,

Acts 20:29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock.

Acts 3:21 whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.

For the record, the restored Church of Jesus Church is approaching 190 years.
exiled1 said:
It seems to me that if Smith can be credited with doing anything better than Jesus, then the entirety of Smith’s credibility falls flat.
Is this a logical conclusion, or am I missing something?
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John 14:12 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

I hope this helps…
 
…so can you put the 2 Thessalonians scripture in any sort of of historical or at least theological context. It seems awfully vague.
 
I will look at those Scripture passages later, but at first glance they certainly do not seem to me to indicate a falling away in manner of total apostasy.
But your answer doesn’t quite seem to address the original question: did Joseph Smith do a better job than Jesus Christ in setting up the one, true church?
 
“Lo, I will be with you always, even unto the end of the age”. “The Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth”. These statements from the mouth of Jesus don’t seem to support the contention that there can be so long a time of total apostasy stretching from the death of the last apostle until the 1800s. I cannot see God writing off more than 1500 years of humanity, abandoning them without any access to truth, without any means of finding the true God. I just cannot believe God would allow total apostasy of that great a time span, especially in light of these statements Jesus made. Jesus ushered in the era of the Holy Spirit, when we would all have the opportunity to have God within us, as living temples. God is love. He does not play hard to get.
 
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To say that a great apostasy happened which took a millennia to fix is to level an accusation against the Holy Spirit; that the Holy Spirit had failed to protect the early church against apostasy.

This is to also accuse Jesus of not keeping his promise to the early church and to the apostles.
 
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Gazelam,

I admire you for taking on a difficult position on this kind of forum.
 
gazelam said:
2 Thessalonians 2:2, 3
not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand .

3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition,
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Quite a different statement when put into context.
Christ and the Lawless One. 1 We ask you, brothers, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him, 2 not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god—5 do you not recall that while I was still with you I told you these things?
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And once again quite a different statement when taken in context.
gazelam said:
Acts 20:29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock .
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28 Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood. 29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock. 30 And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them. 31 So be vigilant and remember that for three years, night and day, I unceasingly admonished each of you with tears.
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cont…
 
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And again.
Peter’s Speech. 11 As he clung to Peter and John, all the people hurried in amazement toward them in the portico called “Solomon’s Portico.” 12 When Peter saw this, he addressed the people, “You Israelites, why are you amazed at this, and why do you look so intently at us as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety? 13 The God of Abraham, [the God] of Isaac, and [the God] of Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has glorified his servant Jesus whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence, when he had decided to release him. 14 You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses. 16 And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect health, in the presence of all of you. 17 Now I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did; 18 but God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. 19 Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, 20 and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment and send you the Messiah already appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.
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In these three examples we can actually read the warnings against those who claim to “restore” a Church God promised would not fail.
 
“I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.”

Joseph Smith, Jr.
 
He was certainly not a humble guy. His council of 50 declared him king of the earth. Between being king of the earth and king of the bedroom, he had a lot going for himself.
 
This is a topic that my extended family loves to discuss. The great apostasy and the restoration. And they always do it with great disdain for the Catholic Church and ALWAYS make it clear to me that there could in no way have been a succession of priesthood keys passed down in an unbroken chain from Peter to Pope Francis because our popes are vile and corrupt. Joseph Smith taught that God told him when he appeared to him that our church is wrong, is abominable and that our ministers are corrupt and teach the teachings of men and not of God, and believe me, I hear it pounded into my head over and over again from family members who want to rescue me from the great evils of Catholicism, the great and abominable church, the mother of harlots, the whore of the earth, the church of the devil, the church who took the “plain and precious” truths from the Bible. And since about a month ago, they have turned up the heat to high, sending me books and trying to show me, no holds barred, how incredibly evil the Catholic Church is. Nothing good has come of this. It is just putting a bigger wedge between me and my extended family. So, I have been tirelessly studying Mormonism history and it has done nothing but open my eyes as to where the real evil is.
 
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