You’re welcome.
He did disagree with the teaching, and it being a doctrine, but he finally agreed to it. But the teaching left much to speculation. It is a very complex teaching which the members were not ready to understand. Some of the fundalmentalist still adhere to its teachings, but how they understand it is no different than any other group that goes into apostasy. Brigham Young stated that the only thing he did wrong as the prophet was teach more than the members were ready for.
Code:
I have spent years of discussion with these groups, and have had some of my friends get sucked into its beliefs.....
Great story. I think it happens at one time or another to everyone.
My worst one occurred in jr. high. I grew up in a very racist household and extended family, what they believed was supported by what I was being taught in primary and Sunday school. At that time, the priesthood ban was still in effect, with all the reasoning given behind it in my primary and Sunday school classes. The kind of teachings that you call “opinion”. (Are you getting the theme here yet? Everything you say is anti-Mormon I was taught by Mormons, as a Mormon.)
Anyway, racial slurs around our house were insults that you threw around at your siblings, and strangers who were “ignernt”. So one day in jr. high, I was about 12 years old, I was having a conversation with a friend, we were teasing each other back and forth, having a good time, when I called her the “N” word. She laughed and walked away to class, I turned around, and standing there was the only African American girl in the school. The only African American girl that had ever been in
any school I had gone to. The look on her face, one of anger and hurt, told me clearly that I had said something wrong. I hurried off to class, but to this day, have never used that word again.
At any rate, yes, Adam/God doctrine was taught to me as well as all the racist beliefs surrounding the priesthood ban.
People like you say, it wasn’t doctrine, but it was and still is by many Mormons, BELIEVED. Why, because it what has been taught. You keep trying to create a demarcation between doctrine and belief, but there isn’t one. Belief comes from what you are taught, and what you are taught causes you to believe. Who in the heck cares whether or not you label it doctrine?
When you come to realize that what you are taught should not be believed, then you are on your way to watching Smith & Co.'s house of cards fall. You keep trying to keep every individual card propped up, why? Wouldn’t you think that truth should not need props and it should be able to stand, as a rock, firmly, on its own?
Before I accept it as doctrine it has to go through the process. There are some members of the church who struggle with it. It is really not important to my salvation as to whether I believe it or not. What is the most important is Faith in Jesus Christ, Repenting and doing my best to follow Christ, baptized and covenanting with God to take upon my self the name of Christ, to stand as a witness Christ at all times and in all places, to obey his laws, and to remember him always. And then receive the gift of the Holy Ghost to be my constant companion. That is what is important to my salvation, not the stuff that is in the Journal of Discourses, or any other writtings or talks. It is nice to know but just is not important. And many times it leads to speculations where some people get so focused on that they loose site of what is important. And some start to think that they know more than anyone else. That is when they begin to loose the spirit.
Well then Fatboys, here’s the corner you have painted yourself into. If you strip away all of the oddities of Mormonism, what you say is not essential to your Salvation, what do you have left? NOTHING that needed to be restored, that is for certain. Everything essential to your Salvation is in Christ’s Church, the same Church established by Christ, the same Church that has through the ages been serving her mission to bring people to Christ. For their Salvation.
Smith is superfluous to the event of Christ, his church just one among many that were fired up by people during the second great awakening in the U.S.
Sorry to be so confusing. It is not confusing to me. And again you want to pin down what is doctrine and what is not. As I said it is quite easy, it is in our canon of scriptures.
Show me in this doctrine about doctrine then. Where does it say in your scriptures that your doctrine is only found in scriptures?
