Jesus never told his followers to go out and physically expel people from a land and take it over, and he explicitly rejected an earthly kingdom.
Joseph Smith did believe in territorial domination and his kingdom was very earthly. And it got even more earthly when he had the “revelation” about polygamy.
In any case, I hope you’re not equating your “prophet,” Joseph Smith, with Jesus, the Son of God. Joseph Smith himself did, with his doctrine that he and all of us become gods. Well, actually, not all of us, only the white men. Although I believe that black men now get in on it, after the revelation of the head Mormon some years ago permitting black males to be considered priests.
I suspect you are probably one of the Mormons who is attempting to come back to a good evangelical-style Protestant Christianity, and I think this is a wonderful thing. I wish you all the best, but I think there needs to be some honesty about Mormon beliefs first, and then perhaps Mormons can be reconciled with Christianity.
An excellent book that I read some time ago was Krakauer’s Under the Skies of Heaven, about Mormon fundamentalists.
I have always been interested in this because about 30 years ago, purely by accident, I happened to camp at the place where the Mountain Meadows massacre occurred. I did a lot of reading about it at the time, and unfortunately for the good Mormons, I think this movie is pretty accurate.
Your post was too long and rambled quite a bit about things I didn't bring up, so I only read the first paragraph. As for expelling people, which was your original point, the LDS did none of that. Noone was living in the Wasatch valley when Brigham Young settled Utah. The Saints only developed into an autonomous people because intolerant people such as yourself would not allow them to practice their religion. So get your facts straight.
Everyone agrees that the Massacre should never have happened, so to come here and attack the church for something that has never been proven to have happened is troubling and disruptive. Please take your religion-bating elsewhere.
Under the Banner of Heaven, is the perfect illustration of an odd phenomenon that happens with Mormonism. Basically some otherwise good conservatives turn off their liberal warning sirens alert and believe any old trash they read.
Don’t want to sound like I am defending the MMM murderers. they should be drawn and quartered and executed like all murderers. However, Krakauer and his book are crap. I read it when I found out a liberal atheist professor was teaching out of it on the local college campus. He was using it of course to show how Reason is better than faith.
In her book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism” Pages 16-17 Ann Coulter writes “In the book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer wrotes of the Bush administration, “This, after all, is a country led by aborn-again Christian.... who characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil. The highest officer in the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft, is a dyed-in-the-wool follower of a fundamentalist Christian sect- The Pentecostal Assemblies of God of America... and subscribes to a vividly apocalyptic worldview that has much in common with key millenarian beliefs held by the Lafferty brothers and the residents of Colorado City”.
So is it Ok for Krakauer to slam “Mormons” but does he go too far in including Pentecostals?
He’s a Godless Humanist Secularist Liberal teacher of “Anti-Christ” messages. And he's not a historian either. The facts in his other books about mountain climbing have been called "lies" by his co- climbers.
Here are more of Krakauer’s own words.
“I don’t know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact I don’t know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.”
“Faith is the very antithesis of reason...,”
His book bashes religious fundamentalism in general. I would say he is not an unbiased source. Hence the lavish prasie by the MSM.
Official Church response to Under the Banner of Heaven.
His book came out in 2003 and joins in the liberal chorus that Fundamental religion is bad. In other words he is part of the larger movement to try to discredit and bash religion. You shouldn’t be promoting stuff like this on FR. in his own words.
“There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied,” he posits in the prologue. “As a means of motivating people to be cruel and inhumane—as a means of motivating people to be evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout—there may in fact be nothing more effective than religion.” Referring to the “Islamic fundamentalism” that resulted in the killings of 11 September 2001, he goes on to say that “men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions.” He finds that “history has not lacked” for Muslims, “Christians, Jews, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Faith-based violence was present long before Osama bin Laden, and it will be with us long after his demise”
Soon after 9/11 liberals and their ilk started blaming fundemental religion and then progressivly bit by bit Christian Funadementalism for such things as 9/11. The message the MSM promoted was a hit on Christians not on Muslims. This book fits into that larger political context of what is going on post 9/11.
The author picks two murderers (fundamentalists) to bash mormon fundamentalism. But he doesn't stop there like the MSM and liberals he uses the beliefs of a small group to try to bash the larger church. Just as the MSM uses Christian fundamentalists to bash the larger group. He tries to link the murders in 1984 to the Lee Murder in 1877. He’s digging deep. For his thesis to prove that mormon fundamentalists are murderers he comes up with a few examples in the course of over 100 years. Not much of a trend.
he also talks about “relgious extremism” Of course all religious people are extremists in the Liberal worldview. Which he treis to prove also. using a few murderes to prove all mormons are “extremists” Its all BS. Most of your politically related comments on FR are truly conservative. So why the blind spot when it comes to mormonism?
THE MSM did this earlier also with Timothy Mcveigh and the OKC bombing. Even though he claimed to be an atheist the media soon labeled him the “Christian Terrorist”. they still refer to him as such as a way to bash Christians.
“Jesus never told his followers to go out and physically expel people from a land and take it over, and he explicitly rejected an earthly kingdom.
Joseph Smith did believe in territorial domination and his kingdom was very earthly. And it got even more earthly when he had the “revelation” about polygamy.
In any case, I hope you’re not equating your “prophet,” Joseph Smith, with Jesus, the Son of God. Joseph Smith himself did, with his doctrine that he and all of us become gods. Well, actually, not all of us, only the white men. Although I believe that black men now get in on it, after the revelation of the head Mormon some years ago permitting black males to be considered priests.
I suspect you are probably one of the Mormons who is attempting to come back to a good evangelical-style Protestant Christianity, and I think this is a wonderful thing. I wish you all the best, but I think there needs to be some honesty about Mormon beliefs first, and then perhaps Mormons can be reconciled with Christianity.
An excellent book that I read some time ago was Krakauer’s Under the Skies of Heaven, about Mormon fundamentalists.
I have always been interested in this because about 30 years ago, purely by accident, I happened to camp at the place where the Mountain Meadows massacre occurred. I did a lot of reading about it at the time, and unfortunately for the good Mormons, I think this movie is pretty accurate.”