Posted on 01/20/2006 10:28:11 AM PST by TFFKAMM
There is a probably apocryphal tale about Porter Rockwell ( Joseph Smith's bodyguard and crack shot, among other things). When there was an assassination attempt on Boggs, Rockwell was accused. When asked if it was he who shot at Boggs, Rockwell replied, "He's still alive, ain't he?"
>>Did you get past the first line of this article
No. Never got to that article, the first line of the web site was enough for me. But I will answer your questions without reading it.
Your Quote points out that Mormon’s believe that God has ordained Plural Marriage (polygamy is the vulgar term) for Man, and that God the father is The literal father of Jesus Christ. We do believe both of these, but the quotes are taken out of context to minimize understanding, so I shall take them in turn.
1. This earth is both a “Type” and a “Shadow” of the gospel, indeed all things testify of Christ. Plural Marriage as practiced by David, Solomon, Abraham, and many other patriarchs. God approved this practice.
2. Just because God is the literal father of Jesus Christ is no reason to assume anything vulgar happened. God and Mary are, or should be, above reproach. There are many ways that we know today for Mary to Conceive and be a virgin, which makes it no less a miracle then. Mormons believe in a virgin birth, and in the “Immaculate Conception” as far as that goes. (I.E. Mary was a Virgin when Christ was born.)
In your second Paragraph, You assert that we believe that Christ was the first born of the Father, which is true. While the birth was a natural occurrence, the conception was not.
John, I love John, I re-read chapter one, of course, my interpretation is different, because my perspective is different. Let’s go to John 17:21 Where Christ himself draws a simile of his and the fathers oneness with that of the Disciples: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
Colossians 1:2 and 3 Support my perspective, While 15 References the Holy ghost, 16 References Jesus Christ (The Creator of this World (see John 1), it’s very logical, but you do not have to believe, to understand.
I agree, the Bible gives a truthful view, but what do we make of that view? When I look at a tree, I will see it differently than you do. I will describe this tree differently than you. Does that make my observation of the tree any less valid? Am I no longer observing a tree, but a rock? And who are you to tell me my view of reality is less valid than your own?
I will not condemn one who I see as a true believer as far as he understands. Instead, I will commend you to your faith, and if you have the interest I will invite you to learn of my perspective of Christ that you may grow and understand more than your own view. I ask not that you believe what I say, just that I am sincere in believing it, and saying it.
I scincerly hope you will be saved in the book of the lamb, and agree about the need for belief in the Christ Jesus of the Bible.
>>Yeah, that's the ticket. If you want to find out about Chevy's ask Chevrolet...of
>>course they will tell you the truth...all the good and BAD.< /sarcasm>
Don’t be facetious; we have the bad posted all over this article, Let’s get both perspectives.
>>Maybe you should check out the ultimate guidebook for automobile owners
>>or the ultimate guidebook for humanity, THE BIBLE.
Agreed, but since God did not stop writing scripture with the bible, why should I stop reading there? Check out the site, and then give me feedback.
Oh, have a nice day, and God bless (If I can say that without offending you).
Delphi I was a Mormon before you were a twinkle in your daddy's eye.
The Church lies to you. Why do you want to believe anything they tell you?
http://home.teleport.com/~packham/lying.htm
This is recent and it is relevant. Only you Delphi will understand the extent of the lies. I did, and that is why I left.
Here is an excerpt:
Gordon B. Hinckley's Lies
Gordon B. Hinckley became head of the church in 1995, thus officially holding the titles "president, prophet, seer, revelator and translator" (D&C 107:91-92). Now (2001) in his nineties, he has spent a long life working on behalf of the church, much of it in the church public relations effort. In the years since he became head of the church, his administration has made special effort to present the church to the world in a favorable light. He has traveled all over the world and been interviewed extensively by reporters and television talk-show hosts.
Unfortunately, in his efforts to make the church look good, Hinckley often bends the truth.
The Lie:
Don Lattin (religion editor, interviewing Gordon B. Hinckley, San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1997, p 3/Z1)
Q: There are some significant differences in your beliefs [from other Christian churches]. For instance, don't Mormons believe that God was once a man?
Hinckley: I wouldn't say that. There was a little couplet coined, "As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become." Now that's more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don't know very much about. [emphasis added]
Gordon B. Hinckley, as quoted in Time Magazine, Aug 4, 1997:
"On whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man, [Hinckley] sounded uncertain, `I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it... I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don't know a lot about it, and I don't think others know a lot about it.'" [emphasis added]
A spokesman for Hinckley, when questioned about the accuracy of the Time quotation, asserted that Hinckley's words were taken out of context, and that Hinckley was thus misquoted. The Time reporter, however, has made available the pertinent part of the transcript of his interview with Hinckley. Here is the relevant excerpt from President Hinckley's interview with Time:
Q: Just another related question that comes up is the statements in the King Follett discourse by the Prophet.
Hinckley: Yeah
Q: ... about that, God the Father was once a man as we were. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing. Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?
Hinckley: I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don't know a lot about it and I don't know that others know a lot about it. [emphasis added]
The Truth:
Joseph Smith ("King Follett Discourse," Journal of Discourses 6:3-4, also in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 342-345):
"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know...that he was once a man like us.... Here, then, is eternal life - to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves,... the same as all Gods have done before you..." [emphasis added]
Brigham Young, successor to Joseph Smith (Journal of Discourses 7:333):
"He [God] is our Father - the Father of our spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted being." [emphasis added]
Milton R. Hunter, Mormon apostle and theologian (The Gospel Through the Ages, p 104):
"Mormon prophets have continuously taught the sublime truth that God the Eternal Father was once a mortal man who passed through a school of earth life similar that through which we are now passing. He became God - an exalted being - through obedience to the same eternal Gospel truths that we are given opportunity today to obey." [emphasis added]
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon apostle and theologian (Mormon Doctrine, 1966 ed p 250):
"...God...is a personal Being, a holy and exalted man..."
Joseph Fielding Smith, Mormon apostle and theologian, later President of the church (Doctrines of Salvation 1:10):
"God is an exalted man. Some people are troubled over the statements of the Prophet Joseph Smith ... that our Father in heaven at one time passed through a life and death and is an exalted man..."
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young (published by the church as an official lesson manual 1997 [text "approved 10/95"], p. 29):
"President Brigham Young taught ... that God the Father was once a man on another planet who 'passed the ordeals we are now passing through...'"
Notice that Hinckley specifically said "I don't know that we teach it" at the same time the church was publishing a lesson manual teaching it. Either Hinckley was lying, or he was woefully ignorant of what is being taught by his church.
The Lie:
Larry King (whose present wife is Mormon) interviewed Gordon B. Hinckley on his nationally broadcast television show Larry King Live on September 8, 1998. He asked Hinckely about polygamy:
KING: You condemn it [polygamy].
HINCKLEY: I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law. [emphasis added]
The Truth:
The Doctrine and Covenants, a collection of doctrine and revelations of equal importance to the Book of Mormon, still contains Section 132, as it has for about 150 years. This is the famous revelation on plural marriage. Pertinent passages are [emphasis added]:
1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines--
2 Behold, and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer thee as touching this matter.
3 Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same.
4 For behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory....
29 Abraham received all things, whatsoever he received, by revelation and commandment, by my word, saith the Lord, and hath entered into his exaltation and sitteth upon his throne.
...
30 Abraham received promises concerning his seed, and of the fruit of his loins-.... both in the world and out of the world should they continue as innumerable as the stars; or, if ye were to count the sand upon the seashore ye could not number them.
31 This promise is yours also, because ye are of Abraham, and the promise was made unto Abraham; and by this law is the continuation of the works of my Father, wherein he glorifieth himself.
32 Go ye, therefore, and do the works of Abraham; enter ye into my law and ye shall be saved.
33 But if ye enter not into my law ye cannot receive the promise of my Father, which he made unto Abraham.
34 God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because this was the law; and from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises.
35 Was Abraham, therefore, under condemnation? Verily I say unto you, Nay; for I, the Lord, commanded it.
...
37 Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness, because they were given unto him, and he abode in my law; as Isaac also and Jacob did none other things than that which they were commanded; and because they did none other things than that which they were commanded, they have entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods.
...
61 And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood--if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.
62 And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.
Joseph F. Smith, the sixth president of the church, emphasized the doctrinal necessity of practicing polygamy ("plural marriage"):
Some people have supposed that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity, or non-essential to the salvation of mankind. In other words, some of the Saints have said, and believe that a man with one wife, sealed to him by the authority of the Priesthood for time and eternity, will receive an exaltation as great and glorious, if he is faithful, as he possibly could with more than one. I want here to enter my protest against this idea, for I know that it is false. ... Therefore, whoever has imagined that he could obtain the fullness of the blessings pertaining to this celestial law, by complying with only a portion of its conditions, has deceived himself. He cannot do it. ... I understand the law of celestial marriage to mean that every man in this church, who has the ability to obey and practice it in righteousness and will not, shall be damned, I say I understand it to mean this and nothing less, and I testify in the name of Jesus that it does mean that. (Journal of Discourses 20:28-31.)
Hinckley would have been correct if he had said that the present church does not actually practice polygamy, even though it is still an official doctrine of the church. But that would have made the church look bad. So he lied.
Actually, a form of polygamy is still practiced by the church under very limited circumstances: if a man and woman are "sealed" together on earth to be husband and wife in eternity, and the wife dies, the man can remarry, and then have his second wife "sealed" to him, so that in heaven he will be a polygamist. For example, Joseph Fielding Smith, who was president of the church from 1970 until his death in 1972, was technically a monogamist. But he was sealed for eternity to three successive wives, each of whom left him a widower. Thus, he is now a polygamist, supposedly living in the Celestial Kingdom with his three wives.
The Lie:
In the same interview with Larry King, Hinckley said the following about the early practice of polygamy:
HINCKLEY: When our people came west they permitted it [polygamy] on a restricted scale.
The Truth:
The Mormons "came west" in 1847, after abandoning their headquarters in Nauvoo, Illinois. Polygamy had been practiced secretly by Joseph Smith since about 1835, when he "married" his first "plural wife," Fanny Alger. Alger is listed by official Mormon sources as Joseph Smith's first plural wife.
It was the rampant but secret practice of polygamy which led some prominent Mormons in Nauvoo, who believed the practice to be false, to publish in 1844 a newspaper (the Nauvoo Expositor) exposing and denouncing it. Smith's illegal destruction of the newspaper's offices and press led directly to the state of civil war between the Mormons and the non-Mormons, to Smith's arrest and death, and the exodus to Utah.
Thus, Hinckley's implication that it was not practiced until the Mormon arrival in Utah is false.
The Lie:
The King interview continued, discussing polygamy:
KING: You could have a certain amount of...
HINCKLEY: The figures I have are from -- between two percent and five percent of our people were involved in it [polygamy]. It was a very limited practice;...
The Truth:
It was limited to the leaders at first simply because it was a secret doctrine, and only the leaders knew of it. But among the leadership it was not at all a "limited practice": D. Michael Quinn, in his book The Mormon Hierarchy: [Volume 1] Origins of Power, Appendix 6, gives biographical sketches of all the men who were the leaders of the Mormon church between 1830 and 1847. He lists 51 men of leading importance in the church during that period. Twenty-nine of them were polygamists. Of the other 22 (monogamists) about a dozen either had left the church before the 1840s (when polygamy became widespread among the intimate associates of Smith), or were among those who actively opposed polygamy and apostatized or were excommunicated for that opposition. Thus, a more accurate figure of the number of men who practiced it even before the exodus to Utah is 75% of those in the leadership of the church who actually were aware of the doctrine.
Hinckley also neglects to mention that until 1890, the leaders of the church urged all good Mormons to practice it (see the quotation from Joseph F. Smith above, which is typical of sermons of the day). If it was not practiced by all Mormons, it was not because the church was trying to limit the practice, as Hinckley falsely implies.
In fact, every president of the Mormon church from Joseph Smith was polygamous through Heber J. Grant (who died in 1945, and who gave it up when he was 52 years old). The first monogamous president of the church was George Albert Smith, who succeeded Grant in 1945.
It's hard to say just what the facts are with Porter Rockwell, so much sensationalism was built up around him. He was actually arrested for the attempt on Bogg's life, put in jail, but "allowed" to escape. They may have realized their "evidence" wasn't all that good. (Odd, that never seemed to bother them all the times they arrested Joseph Smith on trumped up charges).
The comment I heard Rockwell made was "...I'm just sorry I missed..."
A heavily researched biography of Rockwell has him in another jail on trumped up charges at the time of the assassination attempt, assuming the records are accurate.
Drat, Left to google on my own!
>>Delphi I was a Mormon before you were a twinkle in your daddy's eye.
Colorcountry, I was a twinkle… Nope, not going there :-)
How do you know how old I am? (And how do I know how old you are, I know I’ll pretend to be Methuselah, That’s it.)
>>The Church lies to you. Why do you want to believe anything they tell you?
Colorcountry, have you ever lied?
The Chinese say, “In questioning deity, any answer is significant”. I have received an answer, and I dare not deny.
This is interesting every time you post some negative thing it is from someone who don't believe FOTFL
How I Became an Atheist: Richard Packham
http://home.teleport.com/~packham/lying.htm
Does the LDS church say that about Joseph Fielding Smith?
I have never on any thread seen a member of the church state that polygamy is a sin.
My Mother and Father were married in the temple. My father died and my mother remarried a widower in the temple in a civil ceremony. She dearly loved her second husband and he loved her. He wanted to marry her in the Temple so they would be sealed together for all eternity, but it wasn't allowed since my mom was already sealed to my father. He husband however COULD have more women sealed to him than just his first wife. This is the doctrine of the Church to this present day.
Men will have polygamous marriages in heaven....women will share their husbands with other women.
What do you expect me to post negative things from true believers?
Once you know the truth...you simply don't believe anymore. It's that simple.
at least you are keeping in the tradition of an X mo
to try to say an atheist is not a true believer! LOL
How I Became an Atheist: Richard Packham
Yes Delphi, I have lied.
I tried very, very hard to be perfect even as our father in Heaven is perfect.....but try as I might, I was a sinner. I used to wonder how I was ever going to become a Goddess. Now again, I never professed to be a Prophet of the lord. Nope, I was just a simple little, God-believing Mormon girl, trying to be perfect.
You know what? I'll never be perfect...neither will you. That's why we need a Savior. One who came and gave his life as a sacrifice unto God...He cleansed the stench of our sin from God's nostrils, so He could bear our presence. We are perfect through the atonement of Jesus Christ....only He can make us perfect.
You're absolutley right an Atheist is not a true believer. I don't understand where you're coming from.
I don't understand where you're coming from.
Murphy the DNA guy is an agnostic humanist!
You seem to always use those who are athiest or agnostic for your post
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1561715/posts?page=346#346
This guy is an atheist
Oh I see, then I'll post from some Christian site if it makes more sense.
Here is a Christian site:http://www.contenderministries.org/mormonism.php
Questions all Mormons should ask themselves
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.