What race will you be in your planet? Can a Mormon answer me this please?

[ibkc]

I’ve never done a study of this particular topic that was as in depth as some others I’ve looked into, so there may be things that LDS leaders have said in the past that I haven’t heard of. But I certainly have never heard THAT one. The worst I ever heard was that some (like Bruce McConkie) thought that they would not receive the priesthood until Christ’s Millennial reign. I would appreciate it if you would dredge up whatever information you have on that.

[Elder MARK E. PETERSON Race Problems – As They Affect The Church
Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level,
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, August 27, 1954.]
“This Negro, who, in the pre-existence lived the type of life which justified the Lord in sending him to the earth in their lineage of Cain with a black skin, and possibly being born in darkest Africa–if that Negro is willing when he hears the gospel to accept it, he may have many of the blessings of the gospel. In spite of all he did in the pre-existent life, the Lord is willing, if the Negro accepts the gospel with real, sincere faith, and is really converted, to give him the blessings of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. If that Negro is faithful all his days, he can and will enter the celestial kingdom. He will go there as a servant, but he will get celestial glory.”

There is more out there, as I am quite sure you know.

 

[BDawg]

[Elder MARK E. PETERSON Race Problems – As They Affect The Church
Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level,
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, August 27, 1954.]
“This Negro, who, in the pre-existence lived the type of life which justified the Lord in sending him to the earth in their lineage of Cain with a black skin, and possibly being born in darkest Africa–if that Negro is willing when he hears the gospel to accept it, he may have many of the blessings of the gospel. In spite of all he did in the pre-existent life, the Lord is willing, if the Negro accepts the gospel with real, sincere faith, and is really converted, to give him the blessings of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. If that Negro is faithful all his days, he can and will enter the celestial kingdom. He will go there as a servant, but he will get celestial glory.”

There is more out there, as I am quite sure you know.
Thanks for posting this–I don’t remember ever hearing it before, and I think the “priesthood after the Millennium” take was far more common. Anyway, I don’t know there is more out there on this, as I explained before.

 

[BDawg]

My Mom, who is 80, pops out with some racist remarks every once in a while, too. I’m glad we’re getting past that.

 

[PaulDupre]

I think I have read enough to give you an idea of what the Negro is after. He is not just seeking the opportunity of sitting down in a cafe where white people eat. He isn’t just trying to ride on the same streetcar or the same Pullman car with white people. It isn’t that he just desires to go to the same theater as the white people. From this, and other interviews I have read, it appears that the Negro seeks absorption with the white race. He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage. That is his objective and we must face it.

• Elder MARK E. PETERSON

Race Problems – As They Affect The Church
Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level,
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, August 27, 1954.

http://sp1.yt-thm-a02.yimg.com/image/25/m2/2463960604
“Where de white women at?”

 

[BDawg]

Did you mean Brigham Young imposed a ban on ordaining blacks because he said blacks were the seed of Cain, not the priesthood?

Yep. Thanks for catching that.

So your blaming Protestantism for Brigham Young’s racism? it sounds like an attempt to shift the blame away from the LDS church.

The question is not “who is to blame,” but where BY’s attitudes came from. He grew up as an American Protestant. The “seed of Cain” explanation of slavery, etc., was quite common in that milieu. Therefore, it seems reasonable to suppose that he might have gotten his attitudes from his upbringing.

So I’ve just gotta ask this question: what good is a prophet if that person is allowed to teach error in matters of the faith as if it’s truth? If you can’t depend on your prophets to teach truth when it comes to your religion, what guarantee do you have that what they teach about the BoM or the D&C or the PoGP is true? I really would like an answer to this one. I mean, Brigham Young clearly taught, as did the prophets after him, that there was something wrong with blacks that made them unworthy of the LDS priesthood. He based this teaching on religious grounds. He publicly taught this as truth to the LDS church membership while he was prophet. The prophets after him supported his teaching for over 100 years, and your church is still suffering the effects today. Many Mormons currently believe that blacks are black because they were less valiant in the pre-existance than whites.

We base our convictions on our personal experiences with God, our reasoning capabilities, and so on. Prophets are more experienced individuals whom God calls to help the rest of us move toward Him and align our wills with Him. If they make mistakes once in a while, because they are humans, that’s nothing to cry over. I got my convictions directly from God, and if God’s prophets sometimes make mistakes, then that makes me feel like maybe God can put up with a doof like me.

“What good are they”? Give me a break. I don’t believe my doctor is “infallible,” but I figure it would be stupid of me 99% of the time to go against his advice.

Let me give you a counterexample. Catholics believe the Pope can make “infallible” pronouncements under certain circumstances, but sometimes it takes a canon lawyer to figure out when those circumstances are. I asked a Catholic expert why the Papal Bull, Ad Extirpanda (which authorized the torture of heretics to get them to confess) was not considered infallible, being a Papal Bull and covering a “moral” issue. The answer? Because the bull didn’t talk about a general moral issue, but rather a particular set of circumstances. So I ask you, what good is Papal infallibility if, in difficult circumstances, he can give flagrantly and nauseatingly bad counsel about what the “moral” thing to do is? (I asked this once before on this forum, and one or two Catholics actually defended the torture. I’m waiting, now, with bated breath.)

 

[BDawg]

Hi Paul,

Is there anyone besides Mark Peterson who said the kind of thing that ibkc quoted above? I get the idea that he had some racist ideas.

 

[ibkc]

Hi Paul,

Is there anyone besides Mark Peterson who said the kind of thing that ibkc quoted above? I get the idea that he had some racist ideas.

Brigham Young and other leaders taught that black people were put here by God to be the eternal servants of white people. This was a widely believed teaching for much of the LDS church’s history, as I am sure you are aware. See this book for the tale of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, who was denied repeated attempts to be sealed to her husband, but who finally managed to be sealed to Joseph Smith as his servant.

 

[PaulDupre]

Anti-black racism has pervaded all of Mormon thought.

Bruce McConkie, in his book Mormon Doctrine (the closest Mormonism ever got to a catechism):

“In the pre-existent eternity various degrees of valiance and devotion to the truth were exhibited by different groups of our Father’s spirit offspring, some were more valiant than others. Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed upon them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God and his murder of Abel being a black skin… Negroes in this life are denied the priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty. The present status of the negro rests purely and simply on the foundation of pre-existence. The negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, particularly the priesthood and the temple blessings that flow therefrom, but this inequality is not of man’s origin. It is the Lord’s doing, is based on his eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate.”

At the time the devil was cast out of heaven, there were some spirits that did not know who had authority, whether God or the devil. They consequently did not take a very active part on either side, but rather thought the devil had been abused, . . . These spirits were not considered bad enough to be cast down to hell, and never have bodies; neither were they considered worthy of an honourable body on this earth: . . . But those spirits in heaven that rather lent an influence to the devil, thinking he had a little the best right to govern, but did not take a very active part any way were required to come into the world and take bodies in the accursed lineage of Canaan; and hence the Negro or African race.

• (Speech of Apostle Orson Hyde, delivered before the High Priests’ Quorum, in Nauvoo, April 27, 1845, printed by John Taylor, p. 30).

Note: John Taylor was the 3rd President (Prophet) of the LDS Church

Brigham Young declared:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 110).

Preaching in 1882, John Taylor, the third president of the LDS Church, taught that blacks were representatives of Satan:

Why is it, in fact, that we should have a devil? Why did not the Lord kill him long ago? . . . He needed the devil and great many of those who do his bidding just to keep . . . our dependence upon God, . . . When he destroyed the inhabitants of the antediluvian world, he suffered a descendant of Cain to come through the flood in order that he [the devil] might be properly represented upon the earth (Journal of Discourses, vol. 23, p. 336).

This is what was taught and believed when I was LDS. I know they are “de-emphasizing” those teachings now, but they have never been disavowed by the LDS leadership.

There is plenty more. Do you want me to post them?

Paul

 

[zaffiroborant]

My Mom, who is 80, pops out with some racist remarks every once in a while, too. I’m glad we’re getting past that.

I find this insulting to the elderly members of my family and my husbands family. Not to mention a couple of my late neighbors and others I’ve encountered in my life. Old people are racist and young people aren’t??? Maybe in your world but not mine.

 

[BDawg]

I find this insulting to the elderly members of my family and my husbands family. Not to mention a couple of my late neighbors and others I’ve encountered in my life. Old people are racist and young people aren’t??? Maybe in your world but not mine.

Calm down. I was referring to the fact that she is an older Mormon, raised at a time when racist attitudes were more common among Mormons (and others). Please try not to read so much into everything I say.

 

[majick275]

Calm down. I was referring to the fact that she is an older Mormon, raised at a time when racist attitudes were more common among Mormons (and others). Please try not to read so much into everything I say.

here is what i find problematic, this is a good example of the mormon “culture” that prevailed earlier and how did it come about? it was taught as doctrine for years by a church claiming to be led by direct revelation. self proclaimed prophets and apostles taught this for many years. was it wrong? if so then how can these men claim to lead by revelation? (ad please show me where it was denounced as wrong by LDs authorities)

 

[BDawg]

here is what i find problematic, this is a good example of the mormon “culture” that prevailed earlier and how did it come about? it was taught as doctrine for years by a church claiming to be led by direct revelation. self proclaimed prophets and apostles taught this for many years. was it wrong? if so then how can these men claim to lead by revelation? (ad please show me where it was denounced as wrong by LDs authorities)

Hi Majick,

Let’s compare with the Bible. William Barnes, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at the Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, notes that “the relationship between the divine and human ‘authors’ of scripture has never been easily delineated.” He goes on, “Today all but the most extreme Jewish and Christian fundamentalists recognize the complicated and heterogeneous origins of the Bible and that it contains statements that in any other literary work would be considered erroneous.” (William H. Barnes, “Inspiration and Inerrancy,” The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, 304.)

So there’s the thing. We’re not “extreme fundamentalists,” or any other kind of fundamentalist. Plenty of LDS engage in the kind of “black-and-white” thinking that gets them into trouble when anomalies like this come up, but the fact is that we don’t believe in prophetic infallibility. Period.

And no general authority has “denounced as wrong” the various explanations for the ban, but Bruce McConkie did say that he was wrong about some of the things he had said. Lots of us do think the whole thing was a human invention, but the fact is that God put a ban on anyone outside Aaron’s descendents from holding the Aaronic priesthood before Christ’s advent. God put a ban on Moabites and Ammonites from EVER joining the congregation of God. Same with eunuchs and bastards.

He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever: Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee. (Deut. 23:1-4)

The prohibition against Moabites and Ammonites was even enforced when the Jews came back from Babylon, and rejected some Israelites who had not gone to Babylon, but had stayed and mixed with the other locals (see Nehemiah 12-13). These people were all excited to help rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, but got the boot.

So if we don’t know for sure what the background of the priesthood ban was, and we can see in the Bible that prophets did some very similar things, how could the general authorities come out and give a blanket condemnation of it without a specific revelation from God?

And furthermore, what do YOU do with stuff like that in the Bible? Personally, I don’t get too worked up about it, BECAUSE I’M NOT A FUNDAMENTALIST.

 

[ibkc]

BDawg, that was an elegant strawman you just built and it was very impressive to see you tear it down. However, what is under discussion here is not what is in some places in the Old Testament. We’re talking about things that your “Prophets” taught as doctrine for many years, then attempted to bury like it never meant anything or wasn’t somehow still in force among the members of the church.

I appreciate the reasons for your attempts to deflect the conversation onto the alleged defects of the Bible because these doctrines have to be extremely embarrassing for you, but honestly, your use of the “answer the question they should have asked” tactic is increasingly transparent. And it’s getting old.
ETA: And I have to say that having no kind of confidence that your Prophets are ever speaking the truth at any time would be amply enough for me to leave a religion.

 

[QuietTimes]

BDawg, that was an elegant strawman you just built and it was very impressive to see you tear it down. However, what is under discussion here is not what is in some places in the Old Testament. We’re talking about things that your “Prophets” taught as doctrine for many years, then attempted to bury like it never meant anything or wasn’t somehow still in force among the members of the church.

I appreciate the reasons for your attempts to deflect the conversation onto the alleged defects of the Bible because these doctrines have to be extremely embarrassing for you, but honestly, your use of the “answer the question they should have asked” tactic is increasingly transparent. And it’s getting old.
ETA: And I have to say that having no kind of confidence that your Prophets are ever speaking the truth at any time would be amply enough for me to leave a religion.

Thanks IbKC, I could not have put it better.
I asked a question and it really did not get answered to well by their own LDS members and then I was blamed in a PM for believing garbage on the LDS.
Come to find out it is in writing that this has been apparently true!!!
Sorry bdawg but your explanation on the “white and brite” sounds like your reaching for straws, and you were, are you a prophet!!! I think it was changed by the “prophets” because times were changing and it was not acceptable to be racist it was politically incorrect, it was not good for their business and that is what LDS is. Now that is nauseating!! And what do you mean by American protestant? That is like saying,look at that person, what person are you looking at in a crowd of thousands.

As a catholic when their is a doctrine that is misunderstood we can trace and go into the bible to prove or disprove it.

 

[RebeccaJ]

I know a couple of the people listed on the “About Us” page, and I happen to know that they started the site on their own. I have no idea whether subsequently the LDS Church gave them any kind of “official nod,” but I know they are on good terms with the Church.

Yeah, I was confusing them with the Genesis Group…that one, is an LDS ministry. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[RebeccaJ]

The prohibition against Moabites and Ammonites was even enforced when the Jews came back from Babylon, and rejected some Israelites who had not gone to Babylon, but had stayed and mixed with the other locals (see Nehemiah 12-13). These people were all excited to help rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, but got the boot.

Bdawg, though I agree you have a straw man going here, I do think it is important to address this point.

First, the OT is about God’s work with His covenant people. Which were designated by tribes. The Moabites and Ammonties were tribes that were rejected by the Hebrews as unclean, outside of the covenant with God.

When Christ came, He first taught the Jews, the covenant people of God, and instructed the Apostles to teach the gentiles after His death

Christ is the fulfillment of the old covenant, the promise made to the chosen people of a messiah. He IS the New Covenant, which excludes NO ONE.

Mormon prophets were taking racism (which is a 18th century human invention) and ascribing this evil hatred to God Himself. Declaring, very clearly, that they were speaking for God in their capacity of prophet. False prophets, we are warned to beware of them.

 

[Ruthie]

Well said, Rebecca. I would definitely call racism a bad fruit.

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. ****You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? ****So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. ****A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. ****Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ****Thus you will know them by their fruits. Matt 7:15-20 (RSV)

Ruthie

 

[BDawg]

Well, anyway, I’ve tried my best to be honest about the history of LDS thought on the subject, and to answer the original question. If you guys don’t see the relevance of what Old Testament prophets did and said to the question of what prophets can do and say, there’s not much more I can do here.

I hope some things were clarified for you, QuietTimes.

 

[majick275]

Hi Majick,

Let’s compare with the Bible. William Barnes, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at the Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, notes that “the relationship between the divine and human ‘authors’ of scripture has never been easily delineated.” He goes on, “Today all but the most extreme Jewish and Christian fundamentalists recognize the complicated and heterogeneous origins of the Bible and that it contains statements that in any other literary work would be considered erroneous.” (William H. Barnes, “Inspiration and Inerrancy,” The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, 304.)

you choose a holiness seminary instructor as evidence?

So there’s the thing. We’re not “extreme fundamentalists,” or any other kind of fundamentalist. Plenty of LDS engage in the kind of “black-and-white” thinking that gets them into trouble when anomalies like this come up, but the fact is that we don’t believe in prophetic infallibility. Period.

amazing. someone can claim that God showed them the exact words to write a s scripture, claim face to face meetings with direct answers to specific questions and yet it’s fallible?

And no general authority has “denounced as wrong” the various explanations for the ban, but Bruce McConkie did say that he was wrong about some of the things he had said. Lots of us do think the whole thing was a human invention,

in teh face of propehts and apostles claiming God revealed it to ethem?

but the fact is that God put a ban on anyone outside Aaron’s descendents from holding the Aaronic priesthood before Christ’s advent. God put a ban on Moabites and Ammonites from EVER joining the congregation of God. Same with eunuchs and bastards.

The prohibition against Moabites and Ammonites was even enforced when the Jews came back from Babylon, and rejected some Israelites who had not gone to Babylon, but had stayed and mixed with the other locals (see Nehemiah 12-13). These people were all excited to help rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, but got the boot.

So if we don’t know for sure what the background of the priesthood ban was, and we can see in the Bible that prophets did some very similar things, how could the general authorities come out and give a blanket condemnation of it without a specific revelation from God?

And furthermore, what do YOU do with stuff like that in the Bible? Personally, I don’t get too worked up about it, BECAUSE I’M NOT A FUNDAMENTALIST.

i accept it as the word of God. it was OT though which means it was changed by JESUS. He showed us by example that eunuchs could be welcomed into the kingdom of God in great detail. He also showed us that biological lineage was no guarantee of anything and that the kingdom of GOd was now for all.

 

[estesbob]

This talk of planets is another example of false information on the internet and otherwise about life after death for a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Again, refer to www.mormon.org or ask myself for accurate information.

It appears this is where we go to get the “milk”, Where do we go to get the “meat”?