Praying About the Book of Mormon - Is it Biblical?

[RebeccaJ]

Thanks Rebecca, for sharing this and putting up with the newbie!

What’s there to put up with?

I like the “lead me to you” prayer. I prayed similarly myself. Boy did the answer surprise me!

I didn’t actually pray the “protect me from falsehoods” one, but I think that’s a good one too!

 

[Marie5890]

lol. sure. even if their scriptures say otherwise. and their concept of a “great apostasy” is dependent on saying our are not!

What is the definition of mormon doctrine again?

:hypno:

In all seriousness, I do believe that there is a great deal of cognitive dissonance for many good Mormons for many reasons…

And that cog. diss. can be brutal to look at and deal with…
It’s not a fun place to be at. At least that was my experience.

 

[RebeccaJ]

In all seriousness, I do believe that there is a great deal of cognitive dissonance for many good Mormons for many reasons…

And that cog. diss. can be brutal to look at and deal with…
It’s not a fun place to be at. At least that was my experience.

I agree, I know more than a few people who tried for years to make it make sense.

Then there are those who believe that since God is so screwed up, what is the point of believing in this god? And so we become atheists. It isn’t a good feeling to realize you rejected God entirely for most of your life because you actually believed what you were taught as a mormon.

 

[Annie_B]

Is praying for guidence biblical? Hmmm…YES! Praying for guidence in any situation is biblical. Why would anyone think otherwise? For those who say praying about the BOM is not biblical I don’t understand why. There are way too many situations that we should pray for guidence about in life to mention every single one in the Bible. Suffice it to say we are told to pray for guidence - period. As far as receiving answers to the truthfulness of the BOM, all I can say is that answers come at different times for different people. My answer took many years to come. Some people it takes a lifetime

Annie

 

[RebeccaJ]

Is praying for guidence biblical? Hmmm…YES! Praying for guidence in any situation is biblical. Why would anyone think otherwise? For those who say praying about the BOM is not biblical I don’t understand why. There are way too many situations that we should pray for guidence about in life to mention every single one in the Bible. Suffice it to say we are told to pray for guidence - period. As far as receiving answers to the truthfulness of the BOM, all I can say is that answers come at different times for different people. My answer took many years to come. Some people it takes a lifetime

Annie

Have you prayed about the Koran, the Bhagavad Vita and/or the Kojiki and Nihon shoki?

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

Have you prayed about the Koran, the Bhagavad Vita and/or the Kojiki and Nihon shoki?

I’d like to see the response to this.

 

[Stephen168]

Is praying for guidence biblical? Hmmm…YES! Praying for guidence in any situation is biblical. Why would anyone think otherwise? For those who say praying about the BOM is not biblical I don’t understand why. There are way too many situations that we should pray for guidence about in life to mention every single one in the Bible. Suffice it to say we are told to pray for guidence - period. As far as receiving answers to the truthfulness of the BOM, all I can say is that answers come at different times for different people. My answer took many years to come. Some people it takes a lifetime

Annie

Have you prayed with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, that the Catholic Church is true?

 

[RebeccaJ]

I’d like to see the response to this.

I know an exmormon who sincerely and earnestly prayed about every single religion he investigated, after leaving mormonism. He says he had a burning in the bosom regarding ALL of them.

 

[aspirant]

He says he had a burning in the bosom regarding ALL of them.

This doesn’t surprise me. Fortunately, God provides much better answers to prayer than “burning in the bosom.”

 

[RebeccaJ]

This doesn’t surprise me. Fortunately, God provides much better answers to prayer than “burning in the bosom.”

Yes, but mormons are never taught this, and so he was going by what he had been taught. Eventually he decided that if God couldn’t give him a straight answer, he was best off embracing agnosticism.

 

[aspirant]

Yes, but mormons are never taught this, and so he was going by what he had been taught. Eventually he decided that if God couldn’t give him a straight answer, he was best off embracing agnosticism.

 

[dianaiad]

Jesus, on the Cross, is God speaking to mankind. Jesus, Resurrected, is God speaking to mankind. Jesus ascending into Heaven, is God speaking to mankind. All without literal words, but certainly, Revealing the Perfect Word of God, who IS Jesus Christ.

Absolutely…I agree.

…but…how do we know of Him?

Explain and explore, most certainly, continues today. This is not new, public, Revelation.

You are being very confusing. The Word of God, as understood by Christians, is an unceasing Revelation. My conversion to Christianity, most certainly, is this Revelation being made known, by the Holy Spirit, to yet another sinner, in the span of time.

Man’s journey through time, in relationship to this Revelation, is experienced in different ways. God gifts us with insights, clarity, understanding. This does not change the Word of God. This is not new Revelation.

It’s ‘new’ to us…but you are conflating the two concepts here, of personal confirmation of truth, and the sort of public revelation that the early Christian apostles recieved from Christ. While they are both revelation, they aren’t both the same kind…and my point is simple;

There is no reason…none at all…to assume that because it ceased it was supposed to cease. After all, there are only two reasons such a thing WOULD cease, put plainly; either He stopped talking or we stopped listening. If it is that He stopped talking, it would seem that there would be SOME indication of ‘fini…’ in there. A "the end’ statement, or '‘y’all are pretty much on your own now…I’m not going to talk through prophets any more.’ sort of notification.

However, there isn’t anything like that. In fact, the verse that y’all love to use to claim that there IS such a statement is absolutely disproof that it means what y’all think it does.

Catholics are aware of heresies and apostasies from the teachings they espoused. Y’all have been doing nasty and not so nasty things to heretics for a very, very long time. We simply contend that the heresies began one step before you claim they did.

…so we go with option #2; people stopped listening.

 

[dianaiad]

Curious statement, I have honestly never heard a Catholic say this before.

Personally I was under the impression that he was Jewish.

So was Jesus, come to think of it…

 

[spn82756]

Absolutely…I agree.

…but…how do we know of Him?

It’s ‘new’ to us…but you are conflating the two concepts here, of personal confirmation of truth, and the sort of public revelation that the early Christian apostles recieved from Christ. While they are both revelation, they aren’t both the same kind…and my point is simple;

There is no reason…none at all…to assume that because it ceased it was supposed to cease. After all, there are only two reasons such a thing WOULD cease, put plainly; either He stopped talking or we stopped listening. If it is that He stopped talking, it would seem that there would be SOME indication of ‘fini…’ in there. A "the end’ statement, or '‘y’all are pretty much on your own now…I’m not going to talk through prophets any more.’ sort of notification.

However, there isn’t anything like that. In fact, the verse that y’all love to use to claim that there IS such a statement is absolutely disproof that it means what y’all think it does.

Catholics are aware of heresies and apostasies from the teachings they espoused. Y’all have been doing nasty and not so nasty things to heretics for a very, very long time. We simply contend that the heresies began one step before you claim they did.

…so we go with option #2; people stopped listening.

I would say that to consider LDS a Christian Church is a considerable misnomer. Jesus was not created. He was the Word from the beginning. And the Word was with God… and the Word was God.

There was no creation of Jesus. He always was…is and will be.

 

[dianaiad]

That is not what I said. You focus on the sin of individuals. Catholics can see even in the worst of times, when individual Catholics (or groups) were sinful, the Holy Spirit brings the Church through in spite of them.

Rebecca, those things I mentioned were authorized and begun by Popes, and made official through Papal declarations, and were the official policies of the church AS A WHOLE.

It is, after all, not possible for just anybody to absolve an entire army from their sins as an incentive for them to 'attack the infidels" (meaning…go get black slaves from Africa).

If you want to call that the ‘sin of individuals,’ and separate that out from the policies and doctrine of the church as a whole, I suppose you can.

Of course, I will remind you of that the next time you decide that the Mormon Church believes or does this thing or that thing because one of our leaders made a statement you can make hay of.

 

[dianaiad]

In other words, we understand the continuity of Christ’s Church is dependent on Jesus, not on humans.

…and when the church, composed as it is on this earth entirely OF humans, goes off the rails, it is up to Jesus to fix it.

We, of course, contend that this is precisely what He did.

 

[dianaiad]

Actually, you’re the only one in the board who doesn’t seem to fully understand the context of St. Paul’s beliefs, or at the very least refuse to address it from a scriptural standpoint.

You argue that St. Paul received revelation from God…what was the nature of this revelation, and what was it? You speak as if St. Paul received the Book of Mormon or something in addition to the apostles. In fact, that is not at all what he is talking about.

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that mad made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. [Gal 1:11-12; NIV; emphasis mine]

It was the gospel that Paul received by revelation - the teachings of Christ which He bestowed upon His church, a church which He promised “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” (Matt 16:18). This is the Gospel of God, synonymous with the Gospel of the Son (see Rom 1:1 and 1:9), which is the revelation granted to not only Paul but all the apostles. Paul says to the Corinthians that the apostles “speak of God’s secret wisdom” (1 Cor 2:7) revealed to them “by his Spirit” (1 Cor 2:10). What is this secret wisdom? The preaching of Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:23), which is a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.

This preaching is the foundation - there is no longer a need for anything else. It is the ultimatum. As St. Paul later adds to the Corinthians:

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. [1 Cor 3:10-11; NIV]

Jesus Christ is that foundation. There is no other. So there is no contradiction between what we interpret from Hebrews 1:1-2 and Paul’s theology, for Paul believed Christ was the foundation of the Church and there was no further need of revelation. You say he had a revelation - well, yes, but it was that which already existed: Christ Jesus and His gospel. Paul would have chosen nothing more. In fact, he warned against adding anything else:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! [Gal 1:8-9; NIV]

Again, you have simply confirmed the irony. What Paul recieved was, in terms of his life and times, certainly as different as the Book of Mormon is in THESE times; He recieved the gospel, yes…but who ELSE had it? Paul got knocked in the head on the road to Damascus, and went on to learn more of Christ, and to get more specific revelation ABOUT Christ and FROM Him over his lifetime—and he wrote of that and taught of that.

In fact, he served as a very traditional prophet in the OT sense; he recieved the Word of God and he told the people around him what it was. That’s what prophets DO. That’s what they all do. All you have done here in this post is confirm that this is what he did.

The gospel is not Paul. Paul was not the gospel…he was a prophet teaching the gospel. Paul was not referring to prophets in that first verse at all, or to the means by which the gospel is taught. He is referring to the fact that Jesus is the Divine final word, and HE is the final and only GIVER of revelation.

He was not in any way claiming that no further revelation would be given. Nor was he claiming, in that last verse, that any prophets after Paul would be "eternally condemned.’ He said that any prophet who taught a ‘different gospel’ would be…and, m’friend, if he were warning us against the idea of any prophet coming along because he was the last of 'em, then that’s what he would have said. He didn’t. He warned against FALSE prophets who preached a ‘different gospel.’

Which rather screams the idea that there would be TRUE ones.

As to who is teaching a 'different gospel…" well…I’m quite aware that you think we are. We, quite sincerely and faithfully, think that the ‘different gospel’ is coming from you. If either one of us felt differently about it, we’d leave the faiths we belong to and go find the faith we thought DID teach the right one.

 

[dianaiad]

The size of these other groups doesn’t matter. According to the rules of logic:

Argumentum ad Numeram:

• A fallacy that asserts that the more people who support or believe a proposition then the more likely that that proposition is correct; it equates mass support with correctness.*

Therefore, just because the CoJCoLDS is the largest group that views the BoM as scripture doesn’t make it the “right” or “True” one. To be fair, this also applies to the Catholic Church as well, claiming that the CC is it true based on the number of adherents is a logical fallacy.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in logic, but to me, the statement “the BoM is true, therefore the CoJCoLDS is the True Church” appears to be a non sequitur.

Non-Sequitur:
An argument in which the conclusion is not a necessary consequence of the premises. Another way of putting this is: A conclusion drawn from premises that provide no logical connection to it.

This is one of the issues I had when I was considering the LDS thing. Because using Moroni’s challenge, I could have concluded that one of these other groups was the True Church. Believing the BoM doesn’t appear, at least not to my mind, to point uniquely to the CoJCoLDS.

I would also add that I can see another possibility here: someone could consider the BoM to be true, yet not think ANY of the faith groups that use it was necessarily the One True Church. One might just think that JS had a very significant religious experience. Now, why God would do is a whole other can of worms , one for which I don’t even pretend to have an answer.

(grin) Now there’s a truth that sometimes has Mormons (of any of the groups) sputtering. Of course, I know which one is true. (ducking…)

 

[spn82756]

It’s comforting when a critical post is ignored by the group it is intended for. LDS…not Christian. :tsktsk:

 

[dianaiad]

God bless you again, Dianaiad.

You are incorrect about Papal infallibility.

The Holy Spirit will prevent the Pope from making an erroneous infallible teaching about faith and morals, how The Holy Spirit will do that is not known.

It may be possible for the Pope to think and attempt to teach error, but he will be prevented by the Holy Spirit somehow.

Hmnm That statement does seem to be a distinction without a difference.