Mormon discussion - Why don't we need revelation?

[Strawberriness]

I had a discussion with a Mormon today and I was asked a question that I didn’t know a good answer to. He said,

“Why wouldn’t Jesus leave us with revelation or a Prophet? …the old testament had them all the way until Christ?”

I mentioned that Peter received the keys and that we believe that the Pope is infallible in regards to doctrine. Which enables the Church to interpret scripture.

I still don’t feel like I answered his question though.

Where do I go from here?

Thanks

Rob

 

[zach_dunn]

I had a discussion with a Mormon today and I was asked a question that I didn’t know a good answer to. He said,

“Why wouldn’t Jesus leave us with revelation or a Prophet? …the old testament had them all the way until Christ?”

I mentioned that Peter received the keys and that we believe that the Pope is infallible in regards to doctrine. Which enables the Church to interpret scripture.

I still don’t feel like I answered his question though.

Where do I go from here?

Thanks

Rob

The answer to his/her question is that Christ is God’s revelation, His whole revelation. Christ passed on all of the knowledge God wished us to know to His Apostles and so we (Catholics) say that revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle: John. Here is the Catechism teaching on it:

III. CHRIST JESUS – “MEDIATOR AND FULLNESS OF ALL REVELATION”[sup]25[/sup]

God has said everything in his Word

65 “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.”[sup]26[/sup] Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St. John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1:1-2:
In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word - and he has no more to say. . . because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.[sup]27[/sup]
There will be no further Revelation

66 “The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[sup]28[/sup] Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.

67 Throughout the ages, there have been so-called “private” revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.

Christian faith cannot accept “revelations” that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such “revelations”.

…

73 God has revealed himself fully by sending his own Son, in whom he has established his covenant for ever. The Son is his Father’s definitive Word; so there will be no further Revelation after him.

…

25 DV 2.
26 Heb 1:1-2.
27 St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel 2,22,3-5 in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, tr. K. Kavanaugh, OCD, and O. Rodriguez, OCD (Washington DC:Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979),179-180:LH, OR Advent, week 2, Mon.
28 DV 4; cf. 1 Tim 6:14; Titus 2:13.

 

[Apollos]

“Why wouldn’t Jesus leave us with revelation or a Prophet? …the old testament had them all the way until Christ?” I mentioned that Peter received the keys and that we believe that the Pope is infallible in regards to doctrine. Which enables the Church to interpret scripture. I still don’t feel like I answered his question though. Where do I go from here?

You were right. You could also add that Jesus left the Holy Spirit behind to lead us into all truth. There’s really nothing more to add with regard to the deposit of faith; all that’s left is to unfold it and discover things that were already implicit in it, like the Immaculate Conception and so on. God did a good enough job revealing everything necessary and useful for salvation that after the time of the apostles there was no need for anything new to be revealed.

 

[Returning_Home]

I had a discussion with a Mormon today and I was asked a question that I didn’t know a good answer to. He said,

“Why wouldn’t Jesus leave us with revelation or a Prophet? …the old testament had them all the way until Christ?”

I mentioned that Peter received the keys and that we believe that the Pope is infallible in regards to doctrine. Which enables the Church to interpret scripture.

My advice is this: even if you are a strong Christian, do not engage a Mormon without having at least a passing familiarity with Mormonism. Why? Because since they use the same terms we do, they will use that to confuse you and leave you thinking that they believe much as we do. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Just because the Bible doesn’t tell us everything we want to know doesn’t mean that it doesn’t tell us what we *need *to know.

I would recommend reading two very good books on the subject: Mormonism: Changes, Contradictions, and Errors and Mormons Answered Verse by Verse both by John Farkas and David Reed. One was a Mormon and the other a Jehovah’s Witness.

The topic is entirely too broad to defeat in a few paragraphs, but if a Mormon asked me that same question, I would turn it back on him and ask him the reason that no Mormon prophet has ever any correct prophecy or revelation. They might mention the Civil War prophecy or some such nonsense, but those are easily refuted.

Joseph Smith had a perfect 0% accuracy rate for his prophecies so their standards for being a prophet are obviously pretty low.

 

[Returning_Home]

Why don’t we need revelation? I think the more appropriate question is why don’t Mormon prophets give modern revelation?

If anyone has noticed, the prophecies and revelations of substance in the LDS church have really gotten sparce over the last hundred years or so. Why doesn’t God make any more groundbreaking announcements? Isn’t that what Mormon apologists try to argue so as to make room for their interpretation of scripture?

 

[zach_dunn]

Just to add on a little, I’m sure you could give them this verse from Jude:

Jude 3
Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

This verse explicitly states that the faith has been given once for all, not to be changed or added to in the future by “prophets”. I have used this verse a few times to answer this same question for Mormons and I’ve never received an adequate comeback.

 

[Returning_Home]

Just to add on a little, I’m sure you could give them this verse from Jude:

Jude 3
Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

This verse explicitly states that the faith has been given once for all, not to be changed or added to in the future by “prophets”. I have used this verse a few times to answer this same question for Mormons and I’ve never received an adequate comeback.

Excellent point, Zach. I agree with you but while the argument seems airtight to us, this is the point where Mormons apologists will slip in something from 1 Nephi 13 because between verses 26 and 42, it says seven times that the Bible is missing many ‘plain and precious things.’ They’ve opened the door for the tiniest bit of doubt that the Bible might’ve been tampered with so to other Mormons and Christians not strong in their faith and the facts about it, this might sound plausible or even likely. This is what I call the *keeping-the-door-open *fallacy because it’s an excellent example of what Adolf Hitler once said: “The easiest way to get the public to swallow a lie is to put it between two truths.”

If we apply common sense to this argument, it stands to reason that if God were going to have his word recorded for his creations to read and try to understand, why would he allow it to be corrupted and thus lead people astray, to join the church founded by the devil, as the BOM states (1 Nephi chapter 14 heading)? That’s the god that would need to ‘restore’ his gospel at some point in the future. That god (small g) is a weakling, a liar, and a moron but thankfully, that’s not our God (capital G).

 

[Cashue]

I had a discussion with a Mormon today and I was asked a question that I didn’t know a good answer to. He said,

“Why wouldn’t Jesus leave us with revelation or a Prophet? …the old testament had them all the way until Christ?”

I mentioned that Peter received the keys and that we believe that the Pope is infallible in regards to doctrine. Which enables the Church to interpret scripture.

I still don’t feel like I answered his question though.

Where do I go from here?

Thanks

Rob

The mormons are wrong - they believe that God continued to speak through humans. God did not continue to reveal anything through humans he continued to reveal through the popes and the holy men and women of the church.

God hasn’t sent anyone to earth to perform miracles - he only sent visions to appear to the our saints like Bernadette.

So you see - when they say there are latter day saints they are wrong, there are only saints declared by the holy church its quite different.

Hope that helps.