Baptisms for the Dead

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[Scotswife]

I don’t agree with the 1700 figure.
2000 years ago, the documentation started with the very first christians, and has been ongoing every since.

[Dan(9698)]

Look at post 688 again. Does the quoted part agree with the Creed?

It quotes schriptures and says:

" Thus in 2 Corinthians 13:13, St. Paul writes: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you all." Here the construction shows that the Apostle is speaking of three distinct Persons.

Nothing about three in one. I understood the Creed to mean the three were not distinct separate beings.

If it doesn't conflict, what is all this discussion about?

[Scotswife]

the doctrine does refer to them as “distinct” - maybe not in the creed itself - but as the council defined the 3 persons - yes, they are distinct.

God the Father - the source, God the Son “eternally begotten of the Father” - God the Holy Spirit - the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and Son He is worshipped and Glorified.

Distinct - but still one-in-being, still one God.

[Dan(9698)]

Distinct - but still one-in-being, still one God.

Ok, if they had more than one thing that needs to be done, can they split up and do it like my wife and I do?

We are also "One Flesh", but often we must go different directions for the day or a few days.

[Scotswife]

It’s a good question - probably it would be better answered by a theologian who knows more than I do.

The only online place I can think of is here....

http://forums.catholic.com

There is an “ask an apologist” forum where you can ask those types of questions to a more knowledgeable person.
Or you can go to the “apologetics” forum where catholics of all shape or form discuss those issues in threads.

I think there is also a section where people of all different faiths are invited to debate and compare their different faiths.

[Dan(9698)]

It’s a good question - probably it would be better answered by a theologian who knows more than I do.

Would you be offended if I believe they can?

If you wouldn't be, what is our disagreement?

[Scotswife]

“Would you be offended if I believe they can?”

I’m not offended...it is a good question.

On the one hand..we see the trinity “together” during Christ’s baptism (the Father in the voice, the Spirit in the dove).
During the transfiguration all 3 are there again - the Father in the voice, Christ with Elijah and Moses, and the Spirit in the fog/mist.
There are many passages of Christ describing his unity and oneness with the Father.

On the other hand, we see Christ on the cross feeling abandoned by the Father - which indicates a separation.

Whether this is a “one time” separation? - I don’t know.

[Dan(9698)]

If they were separate while he was in his mortal life, I don't believe that would mean a one time thing.

I believe that it is similar to my wife and I being "One Flesh" as the scripture says about married people.

When we separate for doing separate things, we rejoin by me coming in the door and saying "Honey, I'm Home".

[Scotswife]

“If they were separate while he was in his mortal life,”

But were they really?

I think this might be an area we speak different languages because our idea of “father” is different.

We don’t believe the Father was once a man with a physical body.
We believe he is spirit - present everywhere.
Creator of the universe and ever-present throughout.

“When we separate for doing separate things, we rejoin by me coming in the door and saying “Honey, I’m Home”.”

but you are also comparing human limititations to the unlimited God.

[greyfoxx39]

1700 or so years ago, a group of good men saw a growing problem in Christianity. They THOUGHT about the problem, and wrote down what they thought was the problem, and how they thought it should be corrected.

ARE YOU SURE they just "thought" about it? Maybe they prayed. Maybe they had personal "revelations". Maybe they studied. What is your source?

Joseph Smith did not have much time to think about correcting the problems in Christianity, he was visited from heaven, and with Jesus’s guidance, he started to correct the problems.

I thought he was visited by two PERSONAGES. WHO SAYS IT WAS JESUS? Please answer the question.

This sounds like a "half-true" lie to me.

[greyfoxx39]

EVERYBODY (almost) uses a FAKE NAME ON FR. LOL!

[Scotswife]

“Maybe they prayed. Maybe they had personal “revelations”. Maybe they studied.”

All of the above.

[Scotswife]

“EVERYBODY (almost) uses a FAKE NAME ON FR. LOL!”

shhhhh!

[1000 silverlings]

You’re kidding!

[Elsie]

You spelled lemming wrong.

[Elsie]

What!!?

You mean you are NOT 39 yo??

and you are NOT a FOX??

And you aint GRAY!!??!!??

Who knew!!

(But.... whatz yer GENDER???)

[greyfoxx39]

SHHHHHhhhhhh! I’m a GIRL JUST LIKE YOU! ;)

[fortheDeclaration]

[That should have read three persons with one essence.]

What part is hard to understand about POLYtheism????

The Godhead is not composed of three seperate gods, it is composed of one God in three persons.

All three share the same essence making them one, yet they are each distinct persons.

Thus, they are a compound unity, a Tri-unity.

[fproy2222]

Joseph Smith did not have much time to think about correcting the problems in Christianity, he was visited from heaven, and with Jesus’s guidance, he started to correct the problems.

I thought he was visited by two PERSONAGES. WHO SAYS IT WAS JESUS? Please answer the question.

This sounds like a “half-true” lie to me

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Very poor try at making my post look bad. You do know there was more then one visit, And Jesus was guiding them.
His visitors even followed 1 John 4:2-3 and spoke of how Christ had come in the flesh. It proves that they were at least not false messengers.

[greyfoxx39]

Very poor try at making my post look bad.

Why Fred, do you mean what I said is similar to your favorite line, "making your lie look like the truth, and the truth look like a lie?"

You do know there was more then one visit, And Jesus was guiding them.
His visitors even followed 1 John 4:2-3 and spoke of how Christ had come in the flesh. It proves that they were at least not false messengers.

You mean there was more than one VERSION.

An Ever-Changing Story

In about 1832, Joseph Smith, began an account of the origin of the Mormon Church (the only one written in his own hand) that is considerably different from the official First Vision story he dictated some six years later. This 1832 account, which has been referred to as Joseph's strange account, was never finished and for many years remained inaccessible to the public. It was published in BYU Studies, Spring 1969, pp. 278ff, and is also included in Dean C. Jessee's The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1984, pp. 14ff).

In this version Joseph presented himself as a boy who, between the ages of twelve and fifteen, was a committed and perceptive reader of the Bible. He claimed that it was his study of the Scriptures which led him to understand that all the denominations were wrong. He wrote:

by searching the Scriptures I found that mankind did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatized from the true and living faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament (Personal Writings, p. 5).

Six years later, when Joseph set forth his official First Vision account, he changed his story and no longer claimed his personal Bible study led him to the conclusion that all churches were wrong. Instead, he said that the Father and the Son told him that all the churches were wrong and he must join none of them. (Ironically, Mormon historians have documented the fact that Joseph Smith joined a Methodist church class in 1828, which would seem to constitute a direct violation of the claimed divine command "to join none of them." He claimed to be surprised by this announcement, for he added parenthetically, "at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong." Yet, in stating this, Joseph contradicted himself, for a few paragraphs earlier in this same account he recorded: "I often said to myself . . . Who of all these parties are right; or are they all wrong together?" The statement — "it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong" — appears in the original manuscript (see BYU Studies cited previously, p. 290), and in the first (1851) edition of the Pearl of Great Price. This phrase, which contradicts Joseph's earlier statement, was edited out of later editions of LDS scriptures until sometime after 1980, when it was inserted back into English language editions of the PGP. It was also omitted from some foreign language editions, including Spanish and Portuguese, until sometime after 1989 when it was inserted in those as well.

Even without this contradiction the 1838 official account conflicts with the 1832 version. In the 1832 account it is Joseph's Bible reading that stirs him to seek God, while in the 1838 story it is a (non-existent 1820) Palmyra-area revival that motivates him.

In the 1832 version Joseph only mentions the appearance of Christ, while in the 1838 rendition he claims both the Father and the Son appeared. In the 1832 account he already knows all the churches are wrong, while in the 1838 story he says it never occurred to him that all were wrong until the two deities informed him of this fact.

Joseph's mother, likewise, knew nothing of a vision of the Father and the Son in the Sacred Grove. In her unpublished account she traces the origin of Mormonism to a bedroom visit by an angel. Joseph at the time had been pondering which of all the churches were the true one. The angel told him "there is not a true church on Earth, No, not one" (First draft of Lucy Smith's History, p. 46, LDS Church Archives).

Still another version of the First Vision was published in 1834-35 in the periodical, Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate (Vol. 1, pp. 42, 78). This account was written by LDS leader Oliver Cowdery with the help of Joseph Smith. It tells how a revival in 1823 caused 17-year-old Joseph Smith to be stirred up on the subject of religion. According to Cowdery, Joseph desired to know for himself of the certainty and reality of pure and holy religion (p. 78). He also prayed if a Supreme being did exist, to have an assurance that he was accepted of him and a manifestation in some way that his sins were forgiven (Ibid., 78, 79). According to this account, an angel (not a deity) appeared in Joseph's bedroom to tell him his sins were forgiven.

The conflicts produced by this account are numerous. First, the date of the revival is given as 1823, instead of 1820. Second, if Joseph had already had a vision of the Father and the Son in 1820, why did he need to pray in 1823 about whether or not a Supreme being existed? Third, when the revival prompts him to pray, the personage that appears is an angel, not the Father or Son. Fourth, the message of the angel is one of forgiveness of sins, rather than an announcement that all the churches were wrong.

These widely divergent accounts raise serious questions about the authenticity of Joseph Smith's First Vision story. Different people may have varying views of the same event, but when one person tells contradictory stories about the same event, we are justified in questioning both the person and the truthfulness of the story.

Persecution Or Acceptance?

Today's First Vision story not only runs into trouble with the historically verified date of the Palmyra, New York revival and with Joseph's earlier accounts of the event, it also conflicts with what we know about his early years in Palmyra. In his official version Joseph Smith claims he was persecuted by all the churches in his area "because I continued to affirm that I had seen a vision." However, this is contradicted by one of Joseph's associates at the time. Orsamus Turner, an apprentice printer in Palmyra until 1822, was in a juvenile debating club with Joseph Smith. He recalled that Joseph, "after catching a spark of Methodism . . . became a very passable exhorter in evening meetings" (History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, 1851, p. 214). Thus, instead of being opposed and persecuted as his 1838 account claims, young Joseph was welcomed and allowed to exhort during the Methodist's evening preaching. This point is supported by Brigham Young University historian and LDS bishop, James B. Allen. Allen found virtually nothing to support Joseph's claim that he told the First Vision story immediately after it happened in 1820, and suffered persecution as a result, or even that Joseph was telling the story ten years later:

There is little if any evidence, however, that by the early 1830s Joseph Smith was telling the story in public. At least if he were telling it, no one seemed to consider it important enough to have recorded it at the time, and no one was criticizing him for it. Not even in his own history did Joseph Smith mention being criticized in this period for telling the story of the First Vision ("The Significance of Joseph Smith's First Vision in Mormon Thought", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Autumn 1966, p. 30).

Conclusion

From all available lines of evidence, therefore, Joseph's 1838 official rendition of his First Vision story appears to be myth not history:

• There was no revival anywhere in the Palmyra-Manchester, New York area in 1820.
   
• The events as told by Joseph Smith will not fit into the time period between the 1824 revival and the 1830 publication of the Book of Mormon.
   
• Joseph was welcomed, not persecuted by the Methodists.
   
• In his 1832 account Joseph said it was by personal Bible study that he determined all the churches were apostate, while in his 1838 account he said it "never entered into my heart that all were wrong."
   
• In his 1832 version Joseph claimed to see only a vision of Christ and in his 1835 version Joseph told of the visit of an angel, while in the 1838 story the message came from the Father and the Son.
   
• No one knew of today's version of the First Vision until after Joseph dictated it in 1838, and no published source mentions it until 1842 (Ibid., pp. 30ff).

The conflicts and contradictions brought to light by the preceding historical evidence demonstrate that the First Vision story, as presented by the Mormon church today, must be regarded as the invention of Joseph Smith's highly imaginative mind. The historical facts and Joseph's own words discredit it

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