Well, Paul, I addressed the reason why people become Mormons. It is because the holy ghost testified of its truthfulness. Now of course some join for other reasons but it really is not a church for people who have no testimony. They quickly fall by the wayside. But my claim still stands as to why people join the lds church.
And her is a different wiki:
The word translated as “children” is better translated as “youths”–in Hebrew context, anyone 13-20ish
no it doesn’t seem proper to my human mind, nor does the wiping out of entire populations of canaanites including the animals, or even the destruction of sodom and gomorrah after all they were just living alternate lifestyles that involved the raping of virgins and blood sacrifice of infant children.
with all respect friend you seem unsure about God. still your heart is in the right place for i agree that treating people with respect and love is the thing that Jesus wants most. One problem though is the definition of Love, because as you know there are many, and most of them comingg from human origins are less Love than Lust, less giving than taking. The bible describes God as being Love, and that is where I choose to start my journey. if there are things which make me question that, even things written in teh bible, i just take a deep breath and tr y to remember how stupid I am, pray for some understanding and trust in my Lord and Master to show me his perfect loving way. no guilt trips, just realism.
some time back as a lurker i bought the Bushman book Rough Stone Rolling when whyme was talking about it a lot. Mostly the book is very good, and it has a section on thee kinderhok plates. As I recall it Joseph started down the path but according to Bushman sensed the danger and pulled away from it before swallowing the entire kinderhook. i must re-read that chapter soon.
God is merciful, thanks be to God.
no the catholic chruch does preach the gospel, and in many ways, including door to door in some places. it’s a big world and a big, big church with lots of various ways of doing things. i was talking about the search for itchy ears, which is not something catholics do. WE want people who are coming in with full disclosure and foreknowledge, that is why we train for a year before the sacraments rather than hustle hustel get them in and start tithing.Sounds pretty absurd to me. So that only applies to religions which actively proselytize, and not to those ones that don’t?And you are further telling me that the Catholic Church does not proselytize??
i conclude from it that it is nonbiblical for the Holy Ghost to contradict Himself. it is by your own saying non book of mormanical. Therefore if there are contradictory revealings from a spirit realm then at least one of them is false. the question is, and the one I had asked, and repeat for you here, is how do you know yours is the true one? in the past you have said, you just know. well the bible tells of a girl who had a spirit of divination which Paul cast from her, an event which led to his incarce4ration for depriving some thugs of their livleihood. So we know that such things do exist, and that they can be powerful forces for error.
sorry i cannot remember the exact context of my reporting of that but let’s just say that it proves a few things TO ME one of tehm being that mormon missionaries are not trained to respect the religious beliefs of others but rather to view them as targets, and that they are capable of hounding people over a long period of time hoping to break down thier will in this case by simultaneously going after othr family members one by one. yes i am a witness so don’t tell me that I’m mistaken. still i do not blame all mormons or even the religion itself as we know that individuals often do things that are jmproper.
fine before I spend precious time digging out a quote or three from notable morman leaders are you actaully here and in this place going to deny that Joseph and other mormon leaders as well as lay people such as yourself have taught and believed taht all christian religion is apostate and have used teh word “abomination” among others to describe them?
easy. JS saw an opportunity to further his con. I can easily see where he thought these plates were real and figured no one could translate them so he made something up. just like he did with the mummy scrolls that became the BoA.
So when you preach your religion it is called “preaching,” but when we preach it is called “looking for itchy ears”? And who made you the judge and jury of that?
Good story. The only difference is that Paul had the Apostolic power to rebuke the evil spirit and cast it out, thus demonstrating to all who possessed the true Spirit and who had the false one. If the Catholic Church has the Apostolic authority that Paul and Peter had, as she claims she does, and possesses the true Spirit; and if Mormonism has the evil spirit; then let the Catholic Church exercise her priestly power as Paul did, and cast out the evil spirit allegedly influencing Mormonism, so that the whole world can be convinced. If they can’t, how do you know that the evil spirit does not reside in the opposite camp?
That is rubbish. We don’t “hound” anybody. We go and preach to people after they agree to allow us to visit them. We have no power to “hound” anybody, and we don’t. When somebody joins our Church, they sometimes refer other family member to the missionaries to visit them, because they are excited about what they have discovered, and want their relatives to have the same. But we visit with them if they want us to, not if they don’t.
That is another untruth. We certainly believe that Christianity is apostate, and have nothing to apologize for saying it. But that does not translate into saying that other Christian churches are an “abomination”. I have never said that, nor have any other Mormons I am acquainted with. Quit telling lies about us.
You mean the falsehood you learn about the Mormon religion is improving by the day! You seek your knowledge of Mormonism from the enemies of the Church, which means that you seek only falsehood about Mormonism, not the truth.
That is not true either. We don’t just grab people and dip them in the pool. We do instruct them for several weeks about the basics of our belief. We don’t just ask them to get out their checkbook either. We inform them before they join that that is what is expected of them. They don’t have to join if they don’t want to.
I certainly do. This is a proselytizing religion. We make no bones about that. The Lord has commanded us to preach the gospel to “every creature,” and that is exactly what we do. As Paul did, so do we. He made himself “all things to all men to save some,” and so do we. They preached the gospel to all, in the face of persecution from Jews and Romans and Pagans alike, and so do we. Who cares that you or anybody else doesn’t like it?
Actually, cyberjacques is correct. Some locals in Kinderhook, Illinois had a blacksmith manufacture several bell-shaped plates and engraved them with the same markings that were found on a box of tea. They then presented these forgeries to Smith as discoveries’ and asked him to translate them. Smith fell for the hoax and determined that '… they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth".
