“Well,” said I, in answer, “I would not like to take that position, because it would leave me with a lot of churches on my hands that I might not then be able to classify.” So far as the Catholic church is concerned, I believe that there is just as much truth, nay, personally I believe it has retained even more truth than other divisions of so-called Christendom; and there is just as much virtue, and I am sure there is more strength in the Roman Catholic church than there is in Protestant Christendom.
I would not like, therefore, to designate the Catholic church as the church of the devil. Neither would I like to designate any one or all of the various divisions and subdivisions of Protestant Christendom combined as such church; nor the Greek Catholic church; nor the Buddhist sects; nor the followers of Confucius; nor the followers of Mohammed; nor would I like to designate even the societies formed by deists and atheists as constituting the church of the devil. The Book of Mormon text ought to be read in connection with its context – with the chapter that precedes it and the remaining portions of the chapter in which it is found – then, I think, those who study it in that manner will be forced to the conclusion that the Prophet here has in mind no particular church, no particular division of Christendom, but he has in mind, as just stated, the whole empire of Satan; and perhaps the thought of the passage would be more nearly expressed if we use the term “the kingdom of evil” as constituting the church of the devil.
(B. H. Roberts, Conference Report, April 1906, p.14, 15)
So BM, how do you resolve that statement with the statements of your early leaders that call Catholics (and other Christian groups) “Whores of Babylon”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5twdLmTxrTo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLTIh3ymD2A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i—yLUWkJZY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Tk7ctoa-4&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtMFdk4hHDI&feature=watch_response
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26-E4y8rbjw&feature=watch_response
“Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the ‘whore of Babylon’ whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent.”
- Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, p. 255