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RebeccaJ
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Thanks for.the laugh!
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iepuras
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Mr. Hord,
I find it amusing that twice you have asked to stay on topic rather than discuss the credibility of Joseph Smith, yet you never once actually addressed the topic of the OP. (Tarquin, please correct me if I am wrong.) You were the one who brought up Joseph Smith, not us.
If you REALLY want to stay on topic, why don’t you address Tarquin’s questions? He wasn’t asking about what the Liahona looked like or what modern device he could have had. He asked why Heavenly Father went from communicating with Lehi through dreams and visions to an object. Did Lehi somehow get “demoted” to a device through faithlessness?
So how did Lehi charge his celestial smart phone in the desert?
I find it amusing that twice you have asked to stay on topic rather than discuss the credibility of Joseph Smith, yet you never once actually addressed the topic of the OP. (Tarquin, please correct me if I am wrong.) You were the one who brought up Joseph Smith, not us.
If you REALLY want to stay on topic, why don’t you address Tarquin’s questions? He wasn’t asking about what the Liahona looked like or what modern device he could have had. He asked why Heavenly Father went from communicating with Lehi through dreams and visions to an object. Did Lehi somehow get “demoted” to a device through faithlessness?
So how did Lehi charge his celestial smart phone in the desert?
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TexanKnight
Guest
He had an app for that…
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Currant bushes.
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iepuras
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TexanKnight
Guest
you can be sure, if js had anything to do with it, the celestial iphone was jailbroke
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mikehord
Guest
According to the text it ran on faith.
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mikehord
Guest
&&&&&&&
The device was meant more for us than them because 2 other expeditions in the book were said to have made the trip without a liahona.
I fail to see how getting a liahona is and down grade. The books purpose is to get to us.
It is literally waving at you, hey look at me!
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Tarquin
Guest
You are willing to use court cases as evidence to Mormon claims!!! ?
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Tarquin
Guest
I regularly ask Mormons I meet for the first time, if they believed in Jesus before they became Mormons. Only one said he did not. I have not personally met any Jew that became Christians because of the Book of Mormon, though I have been told there are some, and I do not doubt there would be. Most of the people to whom I see Mormon missionaries go to proselytize are Christians, not Jews. Most are Christians, not “Gentiles” except of course in the Mormon redefinition of “Gentile” as “non-Mormon.” The Book of Mormon is not used to convince Jews and Gentiles of Christ, but to convince Christians of Joseph Smith.
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Tarquin
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A quick reading of Doctrine and Covenants 17:1 should begin to disabuse you of your appalling ignorance of Mormon history, teachings, and doctrines. But I doubt it.
Did Joseph mislead the witnesses? Did the witnesses lie? Did the witnesses fail to witness? Did the witnesses forget what they were to testify?
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Tarquin
Guest
Then you probably will only be happy
in forums where all the participants have been in the Mormon Church
for ten years or longer,
and no non-Mormons are allowed.
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Tarquin
Guest
Thank you for your applause, Brother Janderich. However, I did not miss point 1. The question in terms of what you propose, converts to “Why two?” In other words, I did not ask whether God could communicate in more ways than one, to a prophet, any single person, or any group of persons. What I asked was I asked,
- “Does his (Lehi’s) need for a tool to guide him and to tell him the Lord’s will suggest spiritual weakness on Lehi’s part? Does God’s need for a physical tool to guide a prophet suggest that God has restricted powers of communication with his chosen prophets?”* If (a) there is no spiritual weakness on Lehi’s part, and (b) no need on God’s part to use a mechanical device to transmit his will, then: there would seem to be no need for that mechanical device at all. If the mechanical device is needed, then either (a) God needs it, or (b) Lehi needs it. Lehi, being a fallen man, would need it if he is not spiritually in tune with God. God, being the supreme power, would need it if his supreme power included a restricted ability to communicate with his prophets.
Because, frankly, the Liahona was pretty much a dud. It only worked part of the time, and even when it did work, it often worked poorly! Why even bother with it! If it is to be equal in quality to an actual, breathing prophet, then prophets successfully transmit God’s message only part of the time, and even then, not very well. When Gordon Hinckley said that although he was familiar with the “deep theology” of the Church’s doctrine on God, but that he “wasn’t sure” about it, God did not give him some mechanical director so he could give a decent testimony and explanation. God just let him speak his own words. Why didn’t God give him a mechanical director? My first thought was, because that is not how God works. He doesn’t give people mechanical devices for the purpose of communicating with him, at least not when he has someone purportedly already speaking his will.
Do Mormons believe that “Everything God does has a purpose”? If so, what is his purpose – not what are the possible explanations, but what is the actual, certain purpose, for God communicating to Lehi in these several ways? Surely, a church with a living prophet could explain clearly and definitively the purpose for God’s chosen methods for communicating with his living prophets. If there were such a church.
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TexanKnight
Guest
since the witnesses, according to Martin Harris, only saw with their “spiritual eyes” and since the witnesses did not write or sign the affidavit, I am saying it is ALL a lie
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TexanKnight
Guest
I am not LDS now, but do I qualify?
Returned missionary
Member of EQ Presidency
Member of bishopric
Stake Missionary
President of the Latter Day Saints Student Association in my Law School
Priesthood Teacher
Have visited Palmyra three times
Have visited Nauvoo twice
Have prayed in the Sacred Grove
Have visited Liberty Jail
Have visited Kirtland Temple
Have attended 8 or 9 temples and done temple work in them
Hmmm? Do I qualify?
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Tarquin
Guest
**Cessation of communication was not my concern (in this thread).
Imperfect, incomplete, unreliable communication was my concern (in this thread). **
If the Lord communicated with Lehi according to the Book of Mormon, sometimes he did it in dreams or visions, and sometimes through a crystal ball (made of brass). What I have heard Mormons say, essentially, is “He did it because He did it.” I have not yet seen an attempt to provide a reasoned explanation for this out-of-character method of communicating with prophets. I should say, I do not believe this story, mostly because it is unreasonable in several particulars. My hope is that if there is no reasonable explanation, Mormons would admit so, and say, “It is not reasonable. I’m going to keep believing it anyway, but it is not reasonable.” Better yet, they would say, “It is unreasonable for God to behave that way, therefore I do not believe it.” But if Lehi was a great prophet, given all the great prophecies he gave that came true, - and that were first published, I note, only after they had come true; then let us continue and state what great prophecies that he gave, have come true since 1830, the date of publication of the Book of Mormon. And were any of them through the Liahona? Could Lehi, let alone Joseph Smith, see beyond 1830?
By the way, neither do I believe your contention that “The Lord never ceased to communicate with Lehi.” In 1 Nephi 7:22, for example, the Lord did not communicate with Lehi. If He had, He certainly would have told him his family was performing unauthorized sacrifices.
In Alma 37:40-43, you read that only “if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go” did the spindles actually point the way. When they failed to exercise “faith and diilgence,” that miracle ceased “and they did not progress in their journey.” In other words, when the Liahona failed, there was no effective alternative communication through Lehi either.
They committed worse transgressions. So that when we consider how horribly Lehi’s family treated each other in the beginning, and when we consider the fate of even the more righteous segment of his descendants (“Nephites”), in fact their utter and total destruction, as well as the more wicked segment of his descendants (“Lamanites”), we cannot help but wonder why God bothered to lead them out of His ordained punishment of captivity at all.
The Israelites were warned they would be taken into captivity, but were also assured of their eventual release. Lehi’s family went into the wilderness, and never returned. If I were Jewish, I should have preferred to stay in Israel, where there was real hope, and God’s blessings bore fruit, not in the Americas, where God’s word was ignored, where God’s word died, where hope was lost, his people exterminated (unlike the restoration and salvation of Israel in the Old World) until finally Christians came, bringing spiritual benefits to the savage, culturally frozen if not actually recidivist Americans. And today, still, the Bible is opening the eyes of more Native Americans (“Indians,” “Lamanites”) to the reality of God, and of Jesus, and to the ideals of Christian principles of forgiveness, love, and service, literally millions more, than the comparatively ineffective Book of Mormon. Greater numbers have been “coming to Christ” via the Bible than the total number of Mormons that have been baptized since the publication of the Book of Mormon.
In 1 Nephi 16:25-26, the Lord purportedly does speak to Lehi, but not to deliver any communication pertinent to his “murmuring against the Lord” (fickle prophet), but to tell him to go do look at his ball.
So one can argue that the Lord communicated, but unfortunately that communication communicated that he would not communicate! Contrary to your assertion, the Book of Mormon indicates that the Lord did cease to communicate with Lehi (directly, as implied by your two references in 2 Nephi 3).
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mikehord
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I was a nazarene, baptist. I knew that there was more scripture than only the Bible. Some people I think were just meant to be Mormons. If you were then you will ,if not then you wont. I like catholics. They have the strongest and only argument for being Catholic. Either it is the church or it is not. Mormons are the only church with the same arguement. This comes from a Catholic, I forget his name.
Ive heard that jehovahs witnesses have more luck with catholics.
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Tarquin
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I like you more and more, and I bow low and humbly to your unexcelled experience and knowledge about Mormonism. Most of the time, when I read one of your posts, I just shut my mouth in awe.
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mikehord
Guest
Sounds like you are angry. Glad you are where you are though if it makes you happy.
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Tarquin
Guest
Nazrenes and Baptists are Christians. Are you saying you were a Jew? Or a Gentile? Or are you implying that as a Nazarene or Baptist, you did not believe in Christ until you became Mormon? That’s a stretch.
“Some people I think were just meant to be Mormons.” - predestination? Who might not be meant to be Mormons? Those who were less valiant in the war in Heaven?
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