Wanting to understand Mormon Belief.

[paul_barlow]

this is were you are making your mistake he is not just another human being. as i said what he was before he was god does not effect our worship of our God. I believe in this you believe in your trinity. Just worship him and follow his teachings if your wrong and have done all you believe you can i am sure you will be ok. the same will apply to me. if i or you are wrong let our God inform us of our mistake.

 

[catholic-rcia]

paul barlow:

this is were you are making your mistake he is not just another human being. as i said what he was before he was god does not effect our worship of our God. I believe in this you believe in your trinity. Just worship him and follow his teachings if your wrong and have done all you believe you can i am sure you will be ok. the same will apply to me. if i or you are wrong let our God inform us of our mistake.

Yes, only God can inform us of heresy, and why it is important not to go down that road. Why it is important to our well being to ask to be forgiven when each of us do. Paul I posted this on another thread but it is slipping down with no reply. I would like to revive it.

As one of the LDS faith, how would you interpret the following Scripture? What is your meditation on this? What is the Spirit telling you? I am not an expert on this Scripture, this is just part of the up and coming Sunday Scriptures. Catholics around the world will be hearing it on Sunday and thinking about it.

usccb.org/nab/

usccb.org/nab/120405.htm

I learned a bit about it at our Bible Study tonight using historical background. We happen to have an ex Mormon in our group that knows a lot more about the Historical background of the Old and New testament than many of us Catholics. I am not trying to bait you or one up you here. I think you will be surprised. Maybe I will be surprised in you, who knows? You can go to your king James and read it all in context or use the links above, probably good to do that. Do what we do for a few moments, read it and ask God for assistance, then just listen to His promptings.

Reading I
Is 40:1-5

Comfort, give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service is at an end,
her guilt is expiated;
indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
double for all her sins.

 

[flameburns623]

At the risk of overwhelming you with information, here’s a reading list:

By non-LDS:

Mormon America: Power and Promise, Richard K. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Harper, 1999. Very impartial, much better than some explicitly anti-Mormon books or even most books by investigative journalists–the latter tend mainly to be irreligious/secular and miss a lot because of their biases against relgion in general.

Joseph Smith’s Response to Skepticism, Robert N. Hullinger, Signature Books, 1992

Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism, Dan Vogel, Signature Books, 1989.

Two which I recommend only for the evidence which their research uncovered, NOT for the interpretations and ‘spin’ which the Tanners put on that evidence:

The Changing World of Mormonism, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Moody Press, 1980.

Mormonism–Shadow or Reality?, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Modern Microfilm Company, 1972.

Several from LDS sources. I really advise people NOT to spend too much time only reading anti-LDS stuff–it is difficult to find material which doesn’t include at least some mistakes or which is tainted by the author’s biases against the LDS Church. If you read anti-LDS material–try to read at least two books by Mormons on the same subject for every ONE book by an ‘Anti’–it will help you keep perspective. Not every pro-LDS book has to be apologetic in nature, but it should help you gain a better grasp of how the same ideas look from ‘inside the head’ of practicing LDS, which is always a help in dialoguing with members of other faith-traditions. :

The Articles of Faith by James Talmage

Jesus the Christ, by James Talmage

**A Marvelous Work and a Wonder **by LeGrand Richards

The House of the Lord by James Talmage (Talmage is a classic LDS writer, greatly revered).

You May Claim the Blessings of The Holy Temple, (alternative title: The Holy Temple), Boyd K. Packer, Bookcraft, 1980

**Church History in the Fulness of Times **distributed by the LDS Church (Church Distribution)

Gospel Principles Church Distribution

An Approach to the Book of Mormon by Hugh Nibley

The Mormon Doctrine of Deity by B.H Roberts (another much-revered classic LDS apologist–who is rumored to have suffered doubts about his Mormon faith in his declining years, btw).

Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, Robert L. Bushman, University of Illinois Press, 1984

Encylopedia of Mormonism (Not suggesting anyone read the whole set but selected articles as needed)

**The Work and the Glory **Gerald Lund (9-volume fictional account of Joseph Smith–good intro to LDS history).

Church magazines:

Ensign: Also available for reading on-line at: lds.org/gospellibrary/pdfmagazine/0,7779,592-6-1,00.html

Meridian Magazine: An on-line magazine and excellent way to stay current on happenings in the LDS Church. NOT an official LDS-sponsored magazine to my knowledge but very conservative and faith-affirming. See the following URL: meridianmagazine.com/

Videos (for those who prefer to learn by watching and listening rather than by reading–all of these are basically LDS-church sponsored so will be faith-affirming, not controversial or challenging):

The Work and the Glory: Video retelling of Lund’s series of novels.

The Mountain of the Lord: Very enjoyable if rather heavy-handed acount of the building of the SLC temple. Told as if through the eyes of the presiding LDS prophet at the time the temple was completed, Wilford Woodruff.

Come Unto Me: Touches on some central LDS doctrines and themes. Not one video but several, and of varying quality.

How Rare a Possession: On the Book of Mormon. Also a compendium of several short videos.

**Legacy: **At one time, this was shown in LDS Visitor’s Centers and is very well done. Is a ‘composite’ of several people but mainly the life of one early LDS woman.

You’ll find many of these in a public library or available there via inter-library loan. A local LDS Ward library may also lend you some of them as well. (A ‘Ward’ is roughly equivalent to a Catholic parish). And offer to lend you gobs of others. No need to buy them all nor to read them all: you simply want to gain real insight into the mind and spirituality of Mormonism. These, plus the LDS ‘Standard Works’ (Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, along with the King James Bible) will give you plenty of grasp of basic Mormonism.

 

[flameburns623]

To begin with: The official name is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is often abbreviated LDS, or by it’s nickname, Mormonism. The leadership of the LDS Church has discouraged this to some extent, urging that the LDS Church be referred to by it’s full name. For this reason some Mormons, especially, will also use the very awkward abbreviation CofJCofLDS. If you see this, don’t be confused. I will use LDS or Mormon or dervivatives thereof for simplicity’s sake.

The LDS Church has it’s roots in an early American religious movement known as ‘Restorationism’. The starting assumption of Restorationism was that the simpicity of the Gospel of Christ had been totally distorted over the centuries and would have to be restored. Moderate Restorationists suggested this could be done by a very careful study of the order of the Church as found in the New Testament. Radical Restorationists believed that the Gospel could only be restored by a miraculous move of God.

In the midst of this movement, a young boy, largely uneducated, named Joseph Smith, was in turmoil over which of a number of competing churches in his neighborhood he should join. Based upon a text in James, Joseph Smith went into the woods near his home to pray about the issue, and claimed to have received a vision in which he was instructed to join none of the existing churches but to await for further instructions from God. He was told during this vision that he would be given the keys to restoring the church in his time.

Some time later, Joseph Smith received a message from an angel named Moroni about where to search for certain plates of gold, buried in a hillside near his home. These plates purportedly were the record of ancient settlements of refugees, most notably of the Israelites of the era of the prophet Jeremiah, who had fled to the American continent by the power of God. Joseph Smith followed the instructions of the Angel Moroni, found the plates, and, as directed, kept them hidden in place for several years, while Smith revisited the angel annually to receive spiritual guidance and instruction. Evenutually, Smith receive full custody of the plates, along with certain devices known as the Urim and Thummim, by which he was able to miraculously translate the plates into English. The translation of the plates was to become known as The Book of Mormon, after one of the central characters of the book. This Book of Mormon has since become part of the received Scripture of the LDS Church. It is sometimes abbreviated BofM.

The Book of Mormon, essentially, is a history of three great peoples: the Jaredites, the Nephites, and the Lamanites. The Jaredites are the most ancient group, but are discussed at length in only one section of the Book of Mormon, known as the Book of Ether. The Jaredites were descendents of some who participated in the builidng of the Tower of Bable; after God caused the confusion of tongues among those people, Jared and his family were led by the Lord to build boatlike structures on which they travelled by water to the Americas. They established a colony but were plagued for centuries with wars. Ultimately they destroyed themselves through continual civil war. One of their generals survived, along with the record of his people, to be discovered by the Nephites.

 

[flameburns623]

The Nephites, one of the other two central groups, were descendents of Nephi, the son of Lehi. One of Nephi’s brothers, Laman, gave his name to the other group featured prominently in the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites. Lehi was purpotedly a prophet of God, living in Jerusalem at the time of King Zedekiah, shortly before the Babylonians invaded and destroyed the city and carried away the Israelites. Lehi received a warning from God of the impending doom of Jerusalem and took his family into the wilderness to safely. Laman and Lemuel, the oldest of Lehi’s sons, disbelieved their father’s prophecies and greatly resented being removed away from their people; Nephi, Sam, and Benjamin, Lehi’s younger sons, were more acquiescent, and Nephi was particularly devout and visionary. By command of God, Nephi constructed a boat, by which the whole family of Lehi crossed the waters into what we now call the Americas.

Thoughout this time, Nephi and his older brothers were continually in conflict. Once landfall was achieved, Laman and Lemuel separated entirely from the rest of the family. They and their wives and children established the Lamanite nations. The Lamanites lapsed quickly into paganism and idolatry and behaved cruelly and wickedly. Nephi and his brothers became the Nephites. Nephi was warned by God that if his people were obedient, they would be blessed and prosper; if they became disobedient, the Lamanites would be God’s scourge by which He would either bring the Nephites back into line, or by which He would destroy them. God also promised through Nephi that the Nephites would receive special signs of the coming of the Christ, the Messiah.

Over the next centuries, the Nephites waxed and waned in sactity, whilst the Lamanites generally stagnated in wickedness; the two groups were almost continually at war. Prophets rose among the Nephites summoning them to return to God, and filling in the details of God’s plan of salvation. As the time of the birth of Christ approached, the Nephites did indeed see a great star; on the night of the birth of Christ, the sun set and the stars came out, but there was no darkness. Some decades later, at the crucifixion of Christ, a terrible darkness so thick it could be felt covered the land, and whole Nephite cities were destroyed by natural disasters. This provoked a great cry of repentance among the Nephites, who had lapsed into one of their phases of wickedness. As Nephites cried and repented, the darkness lifted and Jesus Christ appeared among them, teaching them many of the same things He had taught among the Israelites in Judea. Most of the Nephites and even many of the Lamanites were converted by this visit from the Savior, and peace and prosperity reigned for several centuries.

Eventually however, the Nephites apostatised wholly and without repentance, and the Lamanites were given power to annhilated them. Only one God-fearing Nephite remained, the greatest of the Nephite generals, named Mormon. He realised that the Nephites could not win and were on the point of destruction. He, and his son Moroni after him, abridged the history of the Nephite peoples onto plates of gold. Mormon was killed in battle and Moroni hid the plates of gold in the earth; it was this same Moroni, as a glorified spiritual personage, who showed the whereabouts of the plates to Joseph Smith.

The story of the Book of Mormon is important because the Book of Mormon is understood by Mormons to be ‘another Testament of Jesus Christ’. The book is filled with references to the Bible and imitates the language of the King James Version of Scripture. Mormons receive it as Scripture, and copies of the Book of Mormon are given to ‘investigators’ by LDS Missionaries. It is important to realize that the account of the Book of Mormon is NOT considered historical by non-LDS scholars: there is no solid evidence connecting the various known peoples of the New World with the people of the Book of Mormon, and genetic information tends to indicate that none of the indigenous people of the Americas share common ancestry with the Jewish people.

 

[flameburns623]

NO other solid evidence for the Book of Mormon exists. The gold plates given to Joseph Smith by Moroni were seen by a handful of people but then taken away by Moroni when the translation was completed and the Book of Mormon was published. Evidence suggests that Joseph Smith, and his whole family, were seen as somewhat less than sterling people. Joseph himself was convicted as a teenager for the fraudulent practice of ‘money digging’ (using occult powers to divine for valuable metals, lost money, or other valuables). Throughout his adult life, Smith received a number of personal ‘revelations’ which appear to the unbiased observer to be self-serving. One should receive the Book of Mormon aware of these charges against the founder of the LDS Church.

After the publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith continued to receive direct revelation from God. One of the earliest of these were several manifestations of Biblical characters, including John the Baptist and the Apostles Peter, James, and John. Through the ministrations of these glorified personages (a popular LDS way of speaking of angels), Joseph Smith and several followers received the ‘keys of the everlasting priesthood’. Essentially this means they were given the power to restore the Christian Church in it’s purity. In April of 1830, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was officially established. Over the next 15 years, the church would grow exponentially, even though it faced several episodes of fierce persecution.

Smith’s revelations were written down and collected into another book of LDS Scripture known as the Doctrine and Covenants. Smith continued to claim the power to translate ancent tongues and eventually translated some Egyptian papyri as the Book of Abraham. This, plus an attempted 'restoration of portions of the book of Genesis, along with Smith’s account of his first vision, comprise the Pearl of Great Price. So the canon of LDS Scripture is made up of 5 books: The Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.

In 1845, a mob murdered Joseph Smith; following his demise, Brigham Young ascended to the leadership of the LDS Church. Under him, the church members migrated to the area of the Great Salt Lake and established themselves there. Young was less inclined than Joseph Smith to visions and revelations, but he was a great administrator and he set the LDS Church on firm footing. It grew through the immigration of thousands of European converts. Young placed great emphasis however on the practice of Plural Marriage (polygamy) and this led to the last great dispute between the Mormon Church and the outside world. The United States government actually sent troops to Utah to attempt to abolish the practice, and jailed numbers of the Mormon leaders. Finally, one of Young’s successors published in 1890 a Manifesto effectively forbidding the practice of plural marriage.

For the next sixty years or so, the LDS Church remained rather small and obscure. Although they continued to grow and sent misionaries throughout world, they were basically in a period of retrenchment. In the 1950’s, the LDS Church began a deliberate period of outreach and growth which continues to this day. In the past 50 years they have spread throughout the world and have grown to approximately 12 to 15 million members. With this growth has come increased criticism: the LDS Church teaches and has always taught doctrines understood by mainstream Christians to be heretical. Many critics charge that in it’s outreach and missionary programs, the Mormon Church is dishonest about it’s history and it’s doctrines, playing a game of ‘bait-and-switch’ on prospective converts. That is, the prospect is encouraged to see the LDS Church as just another Christian denomination, with perhaps a few quirks; but only after being received into the Church do they learn of some of the past-and-present more-bizarre interpretations and teachings of Mormonism.

 

[Warrior4Truth]

“I will let him choose which topic to pursue first”

If he does not return I would love to speak about who the Christ is, the nature of God.

God Bless
www.catholic-rcia.com

Sorry it has been a few days since I have been able to post. I started this thread as a way for people to come and learn about the Mormon belief from Mormons…I do not get to get on very often so I have no problem pursuing this subject as long as Dee Ann has no objections. Als I have been rumaging through my books and noticed that I have a book called," THE ARTICLES OF FAITH" I have read a few pages so far and will read more about it. I will still be on this forum and will still post on this thread, but bear with me I am a little slow in understanding these things and I do not get on very often.