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TexanKnight
Guest
Oh…and I do not need to pout words in Joe’s mouth. The ones he said are more fun and provide PLENTY of ammunition to prove him a false prophet…
but you prolly ignore the stuff from him you do not like, too
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but you prolly ignore the stuff from him you do not like, too
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mathonihah
Guest
There are no contradictions. If you saw a car accident, and told the story (often orally) to ten different people at ten different times, over a period of twenty years, with different amounts of detail; and some of those stories were written down by those who heard them many years afterwards; do you think all the accounts would be identical? I don’t think so. The following site has a harmony of the different accounts, showing that there are no significant disagreements between them:
eldenwatson.net/harmony.htm
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Porknpie
Guest
This is not factually true. The contradictions are clear. Which story do you want to believe?
a) The Lord
b) Angels
c) Two Personages and (many) Angels
d) Two Personages that looked alike
e) Two Personages that did not look alike (implied by one having light skin & blue eyes)
Your example above is a great reason to believe in the Catholic Church. Conflicting with your premise is that the twelve apostles preached the same one faith wherever that they went geographically and this same one faith was handed down from them to their descendants. As an example, everywhere that they went, they taught the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
We can read the early Church writings which are consistent with each other. Keep in mind that St Ignatius was a disciple of St. John, who was taught by Christ himself.
"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to Smyrnaeans, 7,1 (c. A.D. 110).
“For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have **we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” **Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66 (c. A.D. 110-165).
So in the first case we have many contradictions in JS’s first version
In the second case, we have a Church believing the same One Faith as the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist shows (no where did the apostles teach it was only symbolic).
As Joseph Smith can not be trusted on his first vision, neither can he be trusted in anything else, much less the belief that there was a great apostasy in the Church …which no one can say where and how it happened. The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, taught by the apostles would be an example of the contradiction of JS…and there never being an apostasy.
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TexanKnight
Guest
lol…nice try. But, if you are not lyting, you might miss a little detail or so, but the main facts would be the same. You would not have different years, different people involved and what was said different.
That only happens if you are lying…like Joe did
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twopekinguys
Guest
No contradictions? Really?
Simply look at who was supposedly there. He can’t figure out if it was 2 (who looked exactly alike, but different), or many angels.
The number of people/personages should not be a variable number. Either you have 2, or you don’t. You either have a large number of angels, or you don’t.
The only way to explain that simple contradiction away is to ignore it.
If you can’t have a simple foundation for your story, the rest simply fails on that alone.
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pablope
Guest
Really? For a vision of paramount importance, it should be clear from the get go…no different versions.
The vision should be clear, for someone tasked with a momumental task to restore a church.
And one other question, why was Joseph’s name not changed for the task given to him, following the usual protocol of God in changing names when given such tasks…like Abram to Abraham and Simon to Peter?
And why in a secret grove or in secret? why not in the open?
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Smith wasn’t a bystander, as in witnessing a car accident, but a participant.
I was in a car accident over 20 years ago and I can tell you who was there, to this day. I have no memory loss that would make me relate one story where there are a host of people (a large group), or another story where there is one driver and no one else but that one driver.
There were two men in a flatbed truck, carrying roofing shingles (which had fallen onto the highway), another car with one man, and myself, alone. Lots of cars driving by on I-80. In the courtroom, the two drivers of the flatbed truck were there, with their lawyer. They wanted to plea that they had not really lost the load. Apparently, they were hoping I wouldn’t show up. But I did. And as soon as I did they entered a guilty plea. I never had to testify.
So your excuse for Smith falls flat, again.
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pablope
Guest
I suggest you look into the history and story of the Syro Malabar Church of India, founded by St. Thomas the Apostle.
For several hundred years, they got isolated from the rest of Christianity.
When they were rediscovered by European missionaries sometime in the 1400s or so…they were surprised to find Christians, with the same mass, the same teachings, the same sacraments.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit, you can see it evident in that they did not loose their catholicity.
Compare this with that of Joseph Smith and the LDS ever changing doctrines and teachings.
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Z_Ninja
Guest
I can recount a car crash I witnessed about 8 years ago.
It was 2am My wife and I were heading home from a friend’s house and while at a stop light, a pick up truck slams into an SUV making a left turn. Additional details, the pickup trucks rear tires were shredded off, and there were sparks coming from the bottom where the rims were contacting the road. the pickup then flipped and rolled an additional 30 yards further down the road while the SUV spun and stopped blocking the intersection. I can recall more, but it was quite gruesome.
Besides. I’m sorry, but if God, Jesus or even angels appeared to me, I doubt I would forget the exact incident.
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Same for the Maronites in Lebanon.I suggest you look into the history and story of the Syro Malabar Church of India, founded by St. Thomas the Apostle.
For several hundred years, they got isolated from the rest of Christianity.
When they were rediscovered by European missionaries sometime in the 1400s or so…they were surprised to find Christians, with the same mass, the same teachings, the same sacraments.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit, you can see it evident in that they did not loose their catholicity.
Compare this with that of Joseph Smith and the LDS ever changing doctrines and teachings.
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Nicea325
Guest
Blind as a bat you are in day time! Tell me something:
May you please name one OT prophet who gave many versions of their visions?
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TexanKnight
Guest
what? you don;t mention different years? You don’t mention varying numbers and types of people present? You don;t mention vastly different things that were said?
How can that be?
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mathonihah
Guest
The official version is the canonized version, published as part of the “Joseph Smith—History” (JS–H) in the Pearl of Great Price. Here is the relevant extract (verses 11 to 20):
11 While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
12 Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.
13 At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture.
14 So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.
15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.
16 But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.
17 It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!
18 My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.
19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”
20 He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time. When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven. When the light had departed, I had no strength; but soon recovering in some degree, I went home. And as I leaned up to the fireplace, mother inquired what the matter was. I replied, “Never mind, all is well—I am well enough off.” I then said to my mother, “I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true.” …
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Z_Ninja
Guest
maybe it was 7 years ago, and my brother was in the car with me. but not my brother, it was several cousins. there wasn’t a car crash, traffic was moving smoothly in a secret intersection at the back of the neighborhood.
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TexanKnight
Guest
lol…the great thing about having so many versions is you can pick which one you like best and go with it.
Absolutely hysterical
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TexanKnight
Guest
Ah…Mormons would by both versions and call it a new church
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mathonihah
Guest
That does not alter the fact that if you tell the same story to different people at different times, and with different amounts of detail, they are going to look different, though not necessarily contradictory; especially if you tell it orally, and those who hear it don’t retell or write down what you had told them until several years later, relying on their memory. That is how those accounts came to be. Joseph never told anyone the full story of everything that transpired in that event; and even the official account that is canonized does not claim to tell the full story. See verse 20 in the quote I gave above: “and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time”. It was a sacred experience for him the full story of which could not be told at that time to anyone.
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mathonihah
Guest
Nobody claims that he forgot anything. Read my previous posts.
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mathonihah
Guest
Read my previous posts before replying. You have the canonized versions of their visions. You have a story of the vision of Isaiah in the book of Isaiah for example; but you don’t know if he didn’t tell that story to his son, his neighbor, his servant, and his friend at different times with varying amounts of detail, which never found their way in the canon. Today we have the canonized version of Joseph’s vision; but we also have surviving accounts of informal recordings of his vision which you could not expect to have for Moses, Isaiah, or Daniel.
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Nicea325
Guest
Nope! You are side stepping, so please answer me:
May you please name one OT prophet who gave **many versions **of their visions?
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