Rodney Meldrum's Book of Mormon tours

[BartBurk]

This guy seems to be making money on Mormonism – he has DVD’s and Book of Mormon tours of the Eastern United States. He is convinced the mound builders were the ancient Nephites and claims their DNA matches Israelite DNA haplogroup X. I guess his claims are more plausible than the claims of the “scholars” at Brigham Young University:

bookofmormonevidence.org/index.php

 

[Annie_B]

I did not follow the link, but I DO think that it is wrong wrong wrong to make money off of any religion - true or not. The things of God are not there for us to make money off of, but rther to lead us towards God and His saving grace…

Annie

 

[Publisher]

Are pilgrimages to the Holy Land provided by Catholic sponsors done “not for profit”?

 

[ralphinal]

Are pilgrimages to the Holy Land provided by Catholic sponsors done “not for profit”?

Some are, most are not. It has been my experience that one through a Catholic service is less costly and since it is more focused on the Catholic faith, it tends to be more spiritually helpful for Catholics.

 

[Publisher]

Some are, most are not. It has been my experience that one through a Catholic service is less costly and since it is more focused on the Catholic faith, it tends to be more spiritually helpful for Catholics.

Thanks…“most are not” but some are for profit. Making a profit by offering a service is not wrong…even if the service is of a religious nature.

My point was simply because a Mormon was making a living by offering “religious tours” does not make it a bad thing…even Catholics do things similar…so do Quakers…I want to one day take the Quaker Tour through England and Ireland…Friends open their homes for lodging…it’s not free but it is much more inexpensive than a tour from others.

 

[ralphinal]

Thanks…“most are not” but some are for profit. Making a profit by offering a service is not wrong…even if the service is of a religious nature.

My point was simply because a Mormon was making a living by offering “religious tours” does not make it a bad thing…even Catholics do things similar…so do Quakers…I want to one day take the Quaker Tour through England and Ireland…Friends open their homes for lodging…it’s not free but it is much more inexpensive than a tour from others.

To me, and this is my opinion, it is wrong to prophet off of religion in three cases. First, if you know that your target audience cannot afford what you are asking but you do it anyway. This is the prototypical televangelist asking retirees for money. The second is if what you are asking price-wise is a premium BECAUSE it is religious. Third is if you are profetting on the actual faith requirments or items of a holy nature (simony).

 

[Publisher]

To me, and this is my opinion, it is wrong to prophet off of religion in three cases. First, if you know that your target audience cannot afford what you are asking but you do it anyway. This is the prototypical televangelist asking retirees for money. The second is if what you are asking price-wise is a premium BECAUSE it is religious. Third is if you are profetting on the actual faith requirments or items of a holy nature (simony).

Agreed, but there is no indication that this gentleman is bilking people out of their money by offering a tour geared for Mormons…it is not wrong to make a living giving Mormon tours simply because one is a Mormon…

Those groups which employ a “pastoral system” and utilize a paid clergy usually can’t be accused of making money off of doing God’s work…they are being supported by their faith communities…making a living by offering religious tours or services typically isn’t wrong…as I thought the previous poster was indicating…if I mis-read I apologize.

 

[RebeccaJ]

It’s a double-edged sword.

I worked for a LDS Church-owned business for many years. When marketing, it was approached in how to promote the Church and increase the the faith of the customers (members) AND make a profit while doing it. They were equal goals.

Most of the time, people believed they were “doing God’s work”, truly, and completely. Other times, the things people said? I’d be nearly blue with trying to keep my big mouth shut.

From the outside, there were customers (members) who saw the business as a valuable service and they gushed over everything as so special and wonderful and spirit lifting. Other customers (members) criticized the business as making a profit on people’s beliefs.



I saw both sides, at different times.

 

[BartBurk]

So what do you Mormons think? Did the Book of Mormon take place in the Great Lakes area or Mesoamerica? This is the great debate among many Mormons today. My bias is that the setting for the Book of Mormon is the Great Lakes/Eastern U.S. area as Meldrum proposes. The people of Joseph Smith’s day knew all about the mound builders and saw great earthen works as described in the Book of Mormon. And there are always Vern Holley’s maps:

sidneyrigdon.com/vern/Holley1.JPG

sidneyrigdon.com/vern/Holley2.JPG

To read the whole chapter, go here:

sidneyrigdon.com/vern/vernP3.htm#pg54

 

[Publisher]

I have some Community of Christ friends(formerly RLDS) who believe the story of the Book of Mormon also took place in the Great Lakes area, not because of its “historicity” but because many of the existing cities and towns were appropriated as locations by Joseph Smith when he wrote the Book of Mormon. They do not believe the Book of Mormon is an historical document at all…but is more of a link to their religious past as a couple of them are multigenerational LDS/RLDS.

 

[William_M]

Brother BartBurk:

Are you up to something here?

Is a Great Lakes/Eastern United States location, as opposed to a Mesoamerican location, supportive of the Spalding-Rigdon authorship hypothesis which interests you?

In any case, I will give you my answer. The events of the Book of Mormon took place somewhere in the western hemisphere. The various analyses of more specific locations each support a theory of where the events COULD have taken place–and nothing more–and so have no real utility.

 

[Jerusha]

The Spalding-Rigdon authorship “hypothesis” CONFIRMS a Great Lakes/East Coast location. And that is why many LDS are so obsessed with the MesoAmerican hypothesis.

 

[dianaiad]

The Spalding-Rigdon authorship “hypothesis” CONFIRMS a Great Lakes/East Coast location. And that is why many LDS are so obsessed with the MesoAmerican hypothesis.

You realize that the “Spaulding-Rigdon” ‘theory’ has been well and truly debunked, right?

We do have the manuscript of the "Manuscript Story’ from which Rigdon is supposed to have stolen the Book of Mormon. If you can see a single common thread, incident or theme between the two works, you are better at literary analysis (or worse, actually) than any English professor I have ever come across.

Here is where you can read the Spaulding “Manuscript Story.” If you can stay awake through the first paragraph…

solomonspalding.com/docs/lds1886.htm

 

[ibkc]

It’s no different from the Creation Museum, ley-lines tours or any other junk-science tourist trap. shrug

 

[BartBurk]

You realize that the “Spaulding-Rigdon” ‘theory’ has been well and truly debunked, right?

We do have the manuscript of the "Manuscript Story’ from which Rigdon is supposed to have stolen the Book of Mormon. If you can see a single common thread, incident or theme between the two works, you are better at literary analysis (or worse, actually) than any English professor I have ever come across.

Here is where you can read the Spaulding “Manuscript Story.” If you can stay awake through the first paragraph…

solomonspalding.com/docs/lds1886.htm

It’s only been debunked in the minds of the LDS. It is likely there were two manuscripts and we’ve only found one of them. The other one would likely have been destroyed by Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith. There are too many witnesses who claim to have heard Spalding read a manuscript with Book of Mormon names to believe this was the only manuscript Spalding wrote. Here’s the best summary I’ve seen:

mormonstudies.com/criddle/rigdon.htm

And there is an entire book entitled “Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon” that you might want to try reading if you have an open mind:

amazon.com/Who-Really-Wrote-Book-Mormon/dp/0758605277/ref=pd_sim_b_1/185-0543500-8158017

 

[dianaiad]

It’s only been debunked in the minds of the LDS. It is likely there were two manuscripts and we’ve only found one of them. The other one would likely have been destroyed by Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith. There are too many witnesses who claim to have heard Spalding read a manuscript with Book of Mormon names to believe this was the only manuscript Spalding wrote. Here’s the best summary I’ve seen:

mormonstudies.com/criddle/rigdon.htm

And there is an entire book entitled “Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon” that you might want to try reading if you have an open mind:

amazon.com/Who-Really-Wrote-Book-Mormon/dp/0758605277/ref=pd_sim_b_1/185-0543500-8158017

that’s a whole lot of ‘likely’s there. I mean, what else could you say? We have this guy who claims that Spaulding’'s “Manuscript Found” is the basis for the Book of Mormon. He writes exactly that in “Mormonism Unvailed,” but when we find this story, and it turns out to be pretty obviously not the basis of the Book of Mormon, what is said then? Not a reasonable 'oops, we were wrong," but “well, it’s obviously this OTHER manuscript written by Spaulding also called 'a Manuscript Found” that we don’t know about and is lost, of course Rigdon would have burned it."

Nobody has ever seen it. Nobody has ever read it. We have absolutely no reason to believe it exists—but of course it must, because, well, it has to in order to keep the Spaulding/Rigdon theory in play.

…and these folks have the nerve to criticize Joseph Smith for his story of golden plates. At least we have witnesses to them, however, unbelievable you might find those witnesses, and we do have evidence that people actually did keep records on metal plates.

Give me one, just one, reason to suppose that this Spaulding manuscript (which isn’t the one everybody claims it was) actually exists?

And I have read those publications that you sent me to. Thank you.

 

[ibkc]

Nobody has ever seen it. Nobody has ever read it. We have absolutely no reason to believe it exists—

Funny, that’s exactly how I feel about Joseph’s gold plates.

 

[dianaiad]

Funny, that’s exactly how I feel about Joseph’s gold plates.

(grin)

Well, with the gold plates, we at least have some people who claim to have seen them, or held them.

We don’t even have that with Spauldings ‘real’ manuscript.’

A better analogy/double standard would be the problem with the Pearl of Great Price.

Y’see, we have some (not by any means all) of the papyrus that contained it. The critics claim that since the bits we HAVE have been translated, and are simply a burial scroll, then obviously the Po GP is a fake.

We say that yeah, the bits we have don’t have the PofGP on it, but look at all the bits that are missing—that’s where it is.

And we get laughed at for the claim.

It is these SAME folks that make this claim about the Spaulding manuscript–that since “Manuscript Found” isn’t the basis for the Book of Mormon, why then there must be another manuscript by Spaulding with the same name that IS the basis for the Book of Mormon, and Rigdon must have destroyed it.

Never mind that with the P of GP papyrus we can at least show that there is obviously missing stuff–and have descriptions of the original that prove a: that what we have is part of the original, and b; that there used to be a lot more of it.

Nevermind that with the gold plates we have people who swore that they saw/felt the plates themselves. Flimsy as you might find these things, at least it’s something.

With the Spaulding thing, though, the only evidence we have that there was such a manuscript is that “Manuscript Found” by Solomon Spaulding–can’t possibly be the origin of the Book of Mormon.

(grin) People can be very funny.

 

[Jerusha]

Just go along believing what you believe, and let us alone to our beliefs. I pray that one day you will be enlightened.

The manuscript we have access to does show his writing style, and was an attempt to explain cultural parallels through shipwrecked Roman Christian soldiers. He abandoned it with the coming of the war of 1812, and through careful examination of the speeches of the people of the Shawnee alliance. THAT shows vividly in the text.

Perhaps you might want to contemplate— Rigdon presented JS with the Spalding manuscript, with his changes, for JS’s entertainment. JS then dictated it to family and friends and passed it off as his own. Therefore, both sets of witnesses were saying what they saw and heard, except “metal plates” were either printer’s plates, or a paper copy. Then Rigdon chased Mormonism wherever it went, hoping to take over and hoping to claim the BOM and its profits for himself.

Spalding had the knowlege and resources and cultural background to write it as a satire of racist American low-church “Christianity”, and the Jewish origins theory in particular.

In actuality, cultural parallels between Native culture and religion, and European and Christian culture can be explained almost completely by the Viking Invasion. And this formed the underlying plot.

If you are capable of considering this, maybe there is some hope for you.

 

[VinnyDee78]

Funny, that’s exactly how I feel about Joseph’s gold plates.

I guess you also feel that way about the tablets which held the ten commandments. No need to believe the content because the physical evidence wasn’t there.

Is your name Thomas?