Mormons, when did the Apostacy occur?

[PaulDupre]

Allweather-
Actually, I don’t have a problem per se with Mariology. It is a little different, but I do not think the general concept of asking for Mary’s intercession is any different from asking for your Bishop to pray for you. As LDS, we do honor and revere Mary for her special status as the literal Mother of God.

Wow, that’s certainly different from what I heard when I was LDS. My priesthood leaders and the other LDS never missed a chance to explan that Mary was no different than any other woman, except that “Heavenly Father used her” to bring the savior into the world. They were always quick to add that once “Heavenly Father” was finished with her, she reverted to being just like any other woman (which in Mormonism is lower than cattle*).

I have never heard a LDS express reverence for the Blessed Virgin, even though the bible says “all generations shall call me blessed”. The Mormons NEVER call her blessed.

Paul

• LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball said “I think no more of taking another wife than I do of buying another cow.”

 

[Allweather]

John the Baptist baptized Christ by immersion.

How can you say that with complete assurance? My Bible is ambiguous about this. We can see it either way, and don’t think it is particularly important to make a dogmatic claim about it. He was baptized, that is for sure. The method is open to question.

The Catholic.com website gives a very good case for sprinkling, but none of these excuses can make up for the absence of divine authority proclaiming that sprinkling is ok.

First, you say that CA makes a “very good case” for infusion baptism, and then you say that it is an “excuse…(to) make up for the absence of divine authority.” I’m trying to follow you here. Call me thick, but you’re getting a little cloudy. Did you actually read the entire article? How about the part where it mentions situations where immersion would be impossible. Are we to deny baptism to people who desire it, just because they can’t be fully dipped?

As you may recall, John protested that he should be baptized of Jesus, but Jesus responded that it was vital that he be baptized the all rightousness be fulfilled. As the catholic.com website points out, the Dideche (actually, more likely written about ad 120) does give the ok for sprinkling. Makes me think of Paul commenting on ’how fast they were removed from the teachings’.

Whether the Didache dates to the Catholic claim of 70 a.d. or your 120 a.d., it is an ancient document that is only a few years out from the Apostolic era. Therefore, it must be taken authoritatively that the earliest Christians were infusion baptising. That means that their understanding of baptismal methods was like what we have today: Either immersion or infusion, each is suitable in its own way, and neither is to be rejected. How is that “drift”?

 

[Allweather]

I have never heard a LDS express reverence for the Blessed Virgin, even though the bible says “all generations shall call me blessed”. The Mormons NEVER call her blessed.

Paul

• LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball said “I think no more of taking another wife than I do of buying another cow.”

Neither have I, and I was also surprised to read those words from wussup. If he means them, then there is hope for him.

Saint Louis de Montfort wrote in True Devotion To The Blessed Virgin:

““An infallible and unmistakeable sign by which we can distinguish a heretic, a man of false doctrine, an enemy of God, from one of God’s true friends is that the heretic and the hardened sinner show nothing but contempt and indifference for our Lady, and endeavour, by word and example, openly or insidiously - sometimes under specious pretexts - to belittle the love and veneration shown to her.””

 

[wussup]

I have lots of comments to make, but I have been driving since 5 am and will be getting up in 5 hours to drive to get home for my Sweetie’s birthday…Talk to ya’ll later.

 

[JonathanKinsman]

I have lots of comments to make, but I have been driving since 5 am and will be getting up in 5 hours to drive to get home for my Sweetie’s birthday…Talk to ya’ll later.

Forget the comments and throwaway quotes of obscure German philosophers: just answer the direct questions about your religion.

There’s a paltry few “fat and greasy citizens” here that stay put after posting something obscure or obnoxious and take the heat for it.

Don’t run like a hind (thus the Shakespeare allusion for your benefit), belly up to the bar, wassup, and put in writing a direct answer to the original post:

When did the Apostacy occur?

Date, Place and People.

Just the facts, man, forget the hooey.

Pax Christi

 

[rmcmullan]

we didn’t “toss” the apostles anymore than we “tossed” the savior. They were called by Christ. he needed them once just like he needed to die for us once. apostles called bishops and gave them the authority to call other bishops, priests and deacons. What more do we need? Christ revealed the ENTIRE gospel to the apostles. they revealed it to us. other than what God STILL has them doing from heaven, their earthly ministry is complete.

Sorry Majick, you’re usually a pretty sensible fellow and very knowledgable but this is just total bs. I’m going to have to even out the score

Majick275:1
rmcmullan: 1

 

[majick275]

i’m not sure what you are claiming. DO you see the “office” of apostle as being required in perpetuity? and if so how do you reconcile that with the biblical requirement that they be one who saw Christ in person and witnessed his resurrection?

 

[MrS]

i’m not sure what you are claiming. DO you see the “office” of apostle as being required in perpetuity? and if so how do you reconcile that with the biblical requirement that they be one who saw Christ in person and witnessed his resurrection?

This is quite true…even St Paul did not “qualifiy” to fill the seat of the original 12… only two were qualified (Acts 1).

Thus the binding/loosing, the Feed-My-sheep etc, were all instructions to provide those who would succeed the Apostles as bishops of the individual churches (each under a bishop/angel)… and the unity would be preserved as long as those individual bishops were in unison with the first-among-equals… the Vicar of Christ, now the Bishop of Rome.

 

[majick275]

They are apostles and make this claim. However, this is a very sacred event and they never talk about it. (Casting pearls to the swine thing, lets see how much **** is commented on it here to get an example). Note that others have also had a personal witness of Christ, not just the Apostles. This I also know as fact. My Mission President was J. Richard Clark (GA member of the Bishopric etc…), He confirmed this is the case to me personally.

once again you refer to some unverifiable personal communication you had as the only evidence to support your assertion. Where can we find documented evidence of this claim. I never heard this in all of my LDS years including conversations with Boyd K. Packer. LDs apostles claim to be special witnesses of jesus christ and have never publicly defined that like you are saying. I want to see where an LDS apostle claimed that ALL Lds apostles see Jesus in person. there is a big difference between having a personal witness of Christ (I have that) and meeting Christ in person like the real apostles did.

 

[majick275]

the earliest writings we have form the ECFs confirm what we read in the Bible that baptism can be in any number of forms including but not limited to immersion. They also tell us about the real presence being doctrine from day one. Read the didache, read clement of Rome and polycarp. read the gospel of john.

 

[zerinus]

wassup, regardless of how you’re going to define “apostasy,” the fact remains that Mormons believe that divine authority was taken away from the Christian Church at some point. At least, this is what Zerinus has said, several times. I believe that this is the actual crux of the matter. If divine authority, ie that which was vested in the Apostles by Jesus, was actually removed, then the Church, surely, would have died. Perhaps not immediately, but it surely could not have survived, hierarchically intact, for 2000 years and still going. There’ve been too, too many stressful events to pass the Church’s way during those centuries. I mean, you take the corrupt popes of the Renaissance as just one in particular. How is it that the Church could’ve had that succession of bad popes and not lost the kernal of the Gospel? Unless God were taking care of things?

It survived because there were people in it that had genuine faith in Christ. This is made clear in the Book of Mormon:

3 Nephi 16:

6 And blessed are the Gentiles, because of their belief in me, in and of the Holy Ghost, which witnesses unto them of me and of the Father.

7 Behold, because of their belief in me, saith the Father, and because of the unbelief of you, O house of Israel, in the latter day shall the truth come unto the Gentiles, that the fulness of these things shall be made known unto them.

In other words, in the last days the Restoration is going to take place to the Gentiles rather than to the house of Israel, because the Gentiles believe in Him, and the Jews, or the house of Israel, don’t.

zerinus

 

[zerinus]

So you’re saying that all the LDS apostles have personally seen the resurrected Jesus? Do they even make this claim? Or is this Mormon folklore?

They don’t publicly make that claim. But the question is, how do you know that they haven’t? You are the ones that are saying that to be Apostles they have to be personal witnesses of Jesus Christ. My answer to that would be, how do you know that they are not? They are officially designated in the Church as “special witnesses of Jesus Christ”. That is their official title. So how “special” is special? I happen to have known some of them, and I believe that many of them, if not all, have see Jesus, or are able to see Him if they decide they need to. But the state of unbelief in the world is such that it makes it impossible to publicly declare it.

zerinus

 

[MrS]

It survived because there were people in it that had genuine faith in Christ. This is made clear in the Book of Mormon:

3 Nephi 16:

6 And blessed are the Gentiles, because of their belief in me, in and of the Holy Ghost, which witnesses unto them of me and of the Father.

7 Behold, because of their belief in me, saith the Father, and because of the unbelief of you, O house of Israel, in the latter day shall the truth come unto the Gentiles, that the fulness of these things shall be made known unto them.
In other words, in the last days the Restoration is going to take place to the Gentiles rather than to the house of Israel, because the Gentiles believe in Him, and the Jews, or the house of Israel, don’t.

zerinus

Oxymoron #1
Genuine Faith??? Does that mean that there is a faith that is not genuine… Of course not… Even our separated brethren have faith… genuine, but misguided.

Oxymoron #2
Made clear in the book of Mormon… Sorry, but you know that won’t hold water on a Catholic website, or on ANY Christian site either. It is a man-made, errant piece of work… discredited by its own verses and lacking reason and credibility. You may be offended by what I say, but charity demands that the truth be spoken.

Oxymoron #3
Neither gentiles(non Jews) nor Jews believe (obey) in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Once they do,
they are Christians if they believe Jesus is Lord, and
Catholic if they believe all that He said - either with some real (genuine) understanding or with some real (genuine) faith.

 

[PaulDupre]

You are the ones that are saying that to be Apostles they have to be personal witnesses of Jesus Christ.

It was the apostle Simon Peter who said it:

20 For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.

21 Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,

22 Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.

• Acts 1:20-22

Note several things here:

1. That the 12 apostles were primarily bishops. It was the office of bishop which was given to Matthias that day (see verse 20). The apostolic authority of the twelve was handed down to the bishops that these 12 original bishops ordained and is carried by the Catholic and Orthodox bishops today.
2. The only men eligible to replace Judas as one of the 12 were those who were with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry until his ascencion into heaven (see verses 21-22).
3. The 12 were not just “special witnesses of Christ”. They were specifically “witnesses of his resurrection” (see verse 22), because they walked and talked and ate with him and were taught by him after he rose from the dead. No others are qualified. Certainly the men in SLC who pretend to be apostles do not qualify.

Paul

 

[Chris-WA]

They don’t publicly make that claim. But the question is, how do you know that they haven’t? You are the ones that are saying that to be Apostles they have to be personal witnesses of Jesus Christ. My answer to that would be, how do you know that they are not? They are officially designated in the Church as “special witnesses of Jesus Christ”. That is their official title. So how “special” is special? I happen to have known some of them, and I believe that many of them, if not all, have see Jesus, or are able to see Him if they decide they need to.

O.k., now I see where this is going. You don’t make the claim that your apostles have seen Christ because they’ve witnessed to the church that they’ve seen him. You make the claim that they’ve seen Christ because they hold the title “apostle.” You are assuming that they have seen Christ, but you don’t really know that because they don’t even make that claim for themselves. Tell you what, the next time you are around one of them ask them personally if they have seen the resurrected Christ.

But the state of unbelief in the world is such that it makes it impossible to publicly declare it.

That is utter nonsense. The state of unbelief in the world makes it all the more necessary for someone who has personally seen the resurrected Christ to declare it out loud from the rooftops to anyone and everyone who will listen. If your apostles have seen him, then they should witness to that just like the original twelve did. If they have seen him but think that “the state of unbelief in the world is such that it makes it impossible to publicly declare it,” then shame on them! What’s the worst thing that could happen? They might face some ridicule, but certainly not face martyrdom like the original twelve and so many of the early Christians. That’s not much of being a good witness, is it?

 

[MrS]

. Tell you what, the next time you are around one of them ask them personally if they have seen the resurrected Christ.

?

and if they claim they have, and are still Mormon…run like hell

 

[Allweather]

It survived because there were people in it that had genuine faith in Christ. This is made clear in the Book of Mormon:

Of COURSE there were people in it who had genuine faith in Christ. There are thousands, probably even millions, of people in the Protestant sects and even in Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well among the Jim Jones’s and the Warren Jeffs, who have genuine faith in Christ. I am NOT arguing this; far from it. What I am arguing, is that the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church could NOT have survived, intact, for 2k years and still going strong, if the divine authority that Jesus vested in the Apostles, and which they then handed down to the bishops, were not there for any reason. When you look at these Protestant sects, you find disunity of authority. In Mormonism, you find disunity of authority. Sure, there are people with genuine faith, but they are disunified, and that is something that Jesus surely finds objectionable, based on what we know of things he said as recorded in Scripture. As the sects split apart from the authority of the Apostles (the Popes) they went on a fracturing rampage that has lasted for 500 years and is still going strong. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church reformed itself after the Reformation, and got stronger.

 

[Allweather]

They don’t publicly make that claim. But the question is, how do you know that they haven’t? You are the ones that are saying that to be Apostles they have to be personal witnesses of Jesus Christ. My answer to that would be, how do you know that they are not? They are officially designated in the Church as “special witnesses of Jesus Christ”. That is their official title. So how “special” is special? I happen to have known some of them, and I believe that many of them, if not all, have see Jesus, or are able to see Him if they decide they need to. But the state of unbelief in the world is such that it makes it impossible to publicly declare it.

zerinus

I just don’t understand any reluctance to speak of having “seen” the resurrected Lord. The Bible Apostles certainly had no shyness in this regard. They preached Jesus, crucified and resurrected, with power and with authority, in the face of relentless persecutions that led to their martyrdom. How COULD a man see the resurrected, living, breathing Jesus, and not just be gushing over with joy, and the love of speaking about it to mankind? Doesn’t figure.

 

[artist3189]

I just don’t understand any reluctance to speak of having “seen” the resurrected Lord. The Bible Apostles certainly had no shyness in this regard. They preached Jesus, crucified and resurrected, with power and with authority, in the face of relentless persecutions that led to their martyrdom. How COULD a man see the resurrected, living, breathing Jesus, and not just be gushing over with joy, and the love of speaking about it to mankind? Doesn’t figure.

That’s exactly right…anything other reaction is questionable.

 

[zerinus]

O.k., now I see where this is going.

Actually, you don’t.

You don’t make the claim that your apostles have seen Christ because they’ve witnessed to the church that they’ve seen him. You make the claim that they’ve seen Christ because they hold the title “apostle.”

I am not making the claim that they have seen Him at all. What I do claim is that from what I know of them, they are capable of seeing Him needed to.

You are assuming that they have seen Christ, but you don’t really know that because they don’t even make that claim for themselves.

I am making no such assumption.

Tell you what, the next time you are around one of them ask them personally if they have seen the resurrected Christ.

I would do no such thing. It would be highly presumptions of me to ask them such a thing. If they wanted to tell me that of their own volition, that would be their privilege; but it would be highly improper for me to ask them. And for your information, I know of at least one that has said in a private gathering of church members that he has seen Him. I was not myself present at that gathering, but it was reported to me by those who were. The person I am referring to me is no longer alive today. But he has lived in my lifetime, and I had personally met him.

That is utter nonsense. The state of unbelief in the world makes it all the more necessary for someone who has personally seen the resurrected Christ to declare it out loud from the rooftops to anyone and everyone who will listen. If your apostles have seen him, then they should witness to that just like the original twelve did. If they have seen him but think that “the state of unbelief in the world is such that it makes it impossible to publicly declare it,” then shame on them! What’s the worst thing that could happen? They might face some ridicule, but certainly not face martyrdom like the original twelve and so many of the early Christians. That’s not much of being a good witness, is it?

The nonsense and the wickedness and the blasphemies always seem to originate form you; and the shame of it will always rest on you, evil man. You don’t know how to do yourself any favors, do you. The modern prophets and Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ constantly and boldly testify to all the world that they know Him, and they know that He lives; and that they are His chosen messengers, representatives, prophets, and Apostles today. If they wanted to lie about seeing Him, that would be an easy thing to do. Jesus only performed miracles according to the faith of the people. When they had little faith or no faith, He performed little or no miracles among them. Having seen God is a sacred experience that cannot be shared with just anyone irrespective of their state of belief.

zerinus