HMMmm..
It appears that you truly ARE 'spirited' alright; but HOW can we prove you're Irish?
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Posted on 02/13/2013 4:44:23 AM PST by spirited irish
The Mormonism Research Ministry is a missionary/apologetics organization organized in 1979 to propagate the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to critically evaluate the differences between Mormonism and biblical Christianity. Of the many crucial differences, the Mormon rejection of the Genesis account of supernatural creation ex nihilo in favor of a naturalistic account is just one of many pressing differences.
MRM reveals that Joseph Smith taught that matter is eternal and the Mormon God Elohim had no power to create out of nothing. Elohim merely reorganized already present elements, which have no beginning or end and cannot be destroyed:
"Since Mormons believe that the elements are eternal, it follows that they deny the ex nihilo creation." (Encyclopedia of Mormonism 1:400).
From this it follows that a mere man can become God, as the great Mormon prophet Joseph Smith explains:
"It is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and suppose that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did... Here then, is eternal life – to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priest to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one. . . . (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345-47
)
The Mormon God is a creature from within creation (nature). In fact, Mormon scripture states that he is merely a physical, exalted man who lives on a planet near the great star Kolob where he and his wives busily procreate millions of spirit children who are sent into this material realm of suffering and evil to live according to the laws of the gospel and thereby earn their own godhood over their own planet:
"The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us." (D&C 310:22, Ed Decker, "The Lesser gods of Mormonism")
In the Genesis account the living, supernatural Triune God created all things ex-nihilo, or out of nothing. He is self-existent, eternal, immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He is the sovereign Lord of the universe. He is the God of all creation. He is the God who stands outside of the space-time dimension, thus creation actually began before time came to be as God spoke life, soul/spirit, matter and all else out of nothing. The living, supernatural God is the First Cause of all things. (Psalm 33:6; John 1:3; Romans 4:17; Hebrews 11:3):
"For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Col. 1:16, 17
In the "Pagan Temptation," Christian scholar Thomas Molnar reports that the idea that matter is eternal is a pattern of thought stretching back to the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks in the West and in the East to the Upanishads:
"Matter is regarded as the opposite of God, equal to him or even greater in power, and thus absolutely evil. All of the great philosophers of Greece believed this....with the exception of Aristotle (and the materialists, of course.)" (P. 26)
In this way of thinking, everything somehow emerged out of either eternally existing matter as the ancients and Joseph Smith taught, or in contemporary terms from out of spontaneously-generated matter.
From the Babylonians forward, primordial matter has gone by many names. For example: divine One Substance, watery abyss, chaos, or void.
The Egyptian Sun-God Ra emerged (created himself) from out of Nu – the divine One Substance (primordial matter) and then as Joseph Smith recounts, became God "by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one:"
"I came into being from primordial matter...I made all the forms under which I appeared by means of (or out of) the god-soul which I raised up out of Nu (i.e., the primeval abyss of water.)" (The Long War Against God, Dr. Henry Morris, p. 243
)
In all pagan systems that speak of pre-existent matter as "spirit," Molnar writes that spirit is not personal. It is neither male nor female. It does not live, think or speak; it merely is. The human soul therefore is not created in the spiritual image of the living God Who exists outside of the time-space dimension (nature) Who Spoke and revealed Himself to man, thus it follows that humans are neither male nor female and that,
"Thought, reflection, and discursive reason entered the world through humanity..." (p. 30)
This is naturalism or materialism, which is the belief – taught by Joseph Smith – that there is neither living supernatural God nor heavenly realm outside of the space-time dimension. There is only the natural dimension.
Materialism is held in common by pantheism and spiritualism and dates back to pagan antiquity and was or is taught by all non-Biblical – but more specifically, non-Genesis account (creation ex nihilo) – thought systems.
At the heart of ancient and contemporary naturalism is monism, which refers to the view that pre-existent or spontaneously generated matter is the Ultimate Substance of which the universe and all life are made, therefore as the ancient Hermetic magic formula decrees, "as above, so below," or all is one.
In his book, "The God of Sex: How Spirituality Defines Your Sexuality," Dr. Peter Jones writes that pagan monism,
"(is) a mystical, unitive experience, a state in which distinctions disappear and opposites are joined. Androgyny, on a sexual level, reflects and confirms such an experience." (ibid, p.79)
Writing during the student revolution of the 1960s, Francis Schaeffer saw a transformation of consciousness permeating and overtaking the Western mindset, moving it away from the Christian ideal to the pagan model:
"Some forms of homosexuality today...are a philosophic expression...a denial of the antithesis. It has led in this case to an obliteration of the distinction between man and woman. So the male and the female as complimentary partners are finished." (The God of Sex: How Spirituality Defines Your Sexuality, Dr. Peter Jones, pp. 78-79)
As male and female distinctions drain into androgyny, the use of toddlers, older children and even babies for the sexual satisfaction of adults will not only be tolerated but prized, hence the pagan sage Xenophon declared:
"I must now speak of pederasty, for it affects education." (The One and the Many, Rousas John Rushdoony, p. 73)
Unresolvable Problem: Origin of Life
"Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me." John 14:
The unresolvable problem for all nature systems, and this includes Mormonism, is the ultimate origin of life and soul/spirit. This is why contemporary naturalists such as SETI researcher Paul Davies and Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule, have rejected abiogenesis, the idea that brute matter spontaneously generated itself from nothing, in favor of panspermia.
Panspermia is the vain idea that life on earth was accidentally seeded by meteorites containing the essential building blocks of life or perhaps by highly evolved extraterrestrials from deep space who for billions of years have been guiding the evolution of man. The extraterrestrial idea was favored by Arthur C. Clarke in his book, "Childhood's End" and a variation on this theme has recently been advanced by Davies, Crick, and Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Crick however admits that panspermia only pushes the unresolvable problem out into deep space:
"This scenario still leaves open the question of who designed the designer [aliens] – how did life originally originate?" (Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, 1981)
Creation Ex Nihilo, the Incarnation: Repugnant to Nature Sages
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14
The revolutionary impact of the Christian teaching about creation ex nihilo and the Incarnation was nothing less than a scandal for pagan sages just as it is for 'new' pagan evolutionary materialists (i.e., Karl Marx, Freud), evolutionary pantheists like Hegel, Blavatsky, and Luciferian Theosophists, as well as for both pre-Christian and Christian-era Gnostic's and Mormon prophet Joseph Smith.
Molnar writes that it is inconceivable to nature sages that God,
"...the spiritual being par excellence, should assume materiality – a thought as distasteful to their contemporaries as the idea of creation ex nihilo, which meant that matter too was God's creation and did not preexist creation as a separate and evil principle." (pp. 26-27)
In company with pagan sages, Mormonism rejects creation ex nihilo and the Incarnation. While faithful Christians adhere to the fact that Christ's birth was the result of a miraculous conception, that Mary was a virgin yet still conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18), according to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism,
"Jesus Christ is not the Father of the spirits who have taken or yet shall take bodies upon this earth, for He is one of them. He is The Son, as they are sons and daughters of Elohim." (4:1676; Mormonism Research Ministry)
The LDS Church manual Gospel Principles makes clear that all men and women are children of the man-god Elohim:
"All men and women are literally sons and daughters of Deity." (2009, p. 9; ibid)
This includes the Mormon Jesus, who according to Sixth LDS President Joseph F. Smith was,
"Among the spirit children of Elohim, the first-born was and is Jehovah, or Jesus Christ, to whom all others are juniors" (Gospel Doctrine, p.70; ibid).
So both Jesus (Jehovah) and his spirit-brother Lucifer were birthed by the man-god Elohim who lives near the great star Kolob. Twelfth President Spencer W. Kimball comments,
"Long before you were born a program was developed by your creators ... The principal personalities in this great drama were a Father Elohim, perfect in wisdom, judgment, and person, and two sons, Lucifer and Jehovah." (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, pp. 32-33; Mormonism Research Ministry).
Putting all of this together, the Mormon man-god Elohim emerged (created himself) out of eternally existing matter much like the ancient Egyptian's self-created Sun-God Ra. And as with all ancient nature origin accounts, the Mormon man-god cannot account for either the ultimate origin of life or man's soul/spirit:
"The essence of the human is not the body, but the soul. It is the soul alone that God made in his own image and the soul that he loves....For the sake of the soul...the Son of God came into the world...." (Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 25, Ancient Christian Devotional, Oden and Crosby, p. 153)
Nor can it ultimately account for the two created sexes, male and female, since all things – including the Mormon man-god Elohim – somehow emerged out of genderless spirit (pre-existing matter). Thus like their ancient counterparts, Mormonism is fated to give way before the demands of gender-neutral homosexuality.
Capitulation is already underway:
"Attorneys for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are in quiet discussions with leaders of Utah's gay and lesbian community, trying to hammer out language for a statewide ban on housing and employment discrimination that the church could support. Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, opened a bill file on Thursday – the last day to request attorneys draft legislation – titled Housing and Employment Amendments and will sponsor the legislation should an agreement be reached." (Mormon Church Working on Bill to Protect Gays From Discrimination, hypervocal.com)
And while LDS attorneys hammer out tolerance policies with the gay and lesbian community, the Boy Scouts meanwhile, have put off deciding whether to reverse its long-standing policy regarding open homosexuality. The BSA's indecision is hailed by some as a strong stand, by 'gay' supporters as intolerant and bigoted. (Boy Scouts Stand Strong, Delay Potential Policy Reversal, Walker & Messner, heritage.org, 2/7/2013)
By whatever label – homosexual, gay, man-boy-lover, transgender, drag queen, bi-sexual – androgyny and nature systems go together like a hand and glove. Prior to Jesus Christ's earthly ministry pagan sages generally taught and practiced some form of gender-neutrality in keeping with their belief that pre-existent matter is the gender-free "one substance" out of which all things emerged. But when Jesus Christ – fully man-fully God – walked this earth, nature sages came face to face with the awful truth that God really exists, and further, that He really did create just two distinct sexes, male and female.
Nature philosophers and high priests had exchanged the truth about God for a lie (Romans 1:25-27). Writing in agreement, early Church Father Athanasius reveals that pride preceded man's fall into nature worship. A haughty spirit led them to disregard the higher things of God and seek in preference lower things here in the natural dimension.
The truth as to evil said Athanasius,
"...is that it originates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul "which, materialized by forgetting God," and engrossed in lower things (i.e. matter, chemicals, DNA) "makes them into gods" and thereby "descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition" whereby "they ceased to think that anything existed beyond what is seen (naturalism)....so turning away and forgetting that she was made in the image of the good God...sees no longer the Word after whose likeness she is made...." (Against the Heathen, New Advent)
Ideas have consequences. For Mormonism – as with evolutionary materialism, its secular derivatives and occult 'green' pantheist New Age spirituality – the predisposing corruption resides in foundational ideations. Thus in the rejection of the supernatural Triune God of Revelation together with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo resides the inability to account for the origin of life, of man's soul/spirit (reason, will, conscience), immutable truth, moral absolutes, fixed meaning, and purpose (Psalm 115:4-8).
And with the rejection of the Incarnation (the historical Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity), comes the inability to logically account for and defend the two sexes. Thus the fate of Mormonism together with evolutionary materialism and occult pantheism is to not only fall into moral relativism and superstition but to eventually give way to the demands of unrestrained libido – including the use of children for the sexual gratification of adults. And these are the crimes against nature said Augustine,
"(which are the) crimes of the men of Sodom (and if) all nations in the world committed them they would all stand guilty of the same crime against the Law of God, which did not design men so that they should use each other this way." (Confessions of St. Augustine, p. 49)
Thank you so much for this engaging essay, dear spirited irish!
That LDs and/or Mormonism is in fact a very cleverly disguised nature religion outwardly dressed in Biblical language is definitively revealed in its’ embrace of pre-existent matter together with its’ rejection of creation ex nihilo.
In Romans Paul distinguishes nature systems from supernatural Christian theism when he points out that there are only two ultimate sources for all religious and philosophical beliefs around the world and over time. Paul differentiates these two when he says that men will either worship and serve creation (which includes the cosmos and the planet on which the LDs deity supposedly exists) or they will worship and serve the supernatural God of creation.
LDs then is a nature religion while Marx’s dialectical materialism is a nature system. Communism is heaven brought to earth, making it a nature ideology. Darwinism is grounded on philosophical materialism, hence it too is a nature system.
You sure blather a lot in trying to bash the ONLY true Christian religion now on planet Earth!
--MormonDude(When would be a good time for a couple of our well trained young folks to stop by your home and more fully explain to you and your loving family the Restored Gospel©?)
You sure blather a lot in trying to bash the ONLY true Christian religion now on planet Earth!”
Spirited: According to the simple-minded, the ignorant, the unstable and desolate, such “blathering” is the work of hateful, backward, anti-scientific, narrow-minded bigots. By this reckoning, you are the greater “blatherer” (in this thread) than I :-)
HMMmm..
It appears that you truly ARE 'spirited' alright; but HOW can we prove you're Irish?
.
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
If she gets that wrong why trust what else she says?
If she gets that wrong why trust what else she says?
Spirited: If she got that wrong, hence cannot be trusted, then the early Church Fathers got it wrong, as did Moses who received it as revelation from God, thus none of them-—including God-—can be trusted. Since you presume to know why ex nihilo is wrong then perhaps you will tell us why you believe it is wrong and what you believe is right?
Good luck with that. Our friend is one of the stunt Mormns, poster who is Mormon but likes to play games and not say they are LDS.
Ha!
I've been accused of that myself; but none of your Hateful BIGOTS has EVER been able to lay a glove on me!
--MormonDude(Maybe THIS year I'll finally get my TR!)
Dunham would be NOTHIN' without ME!
I am certain that you are sincere, but you’re just as wrong and your posse is as ignorant as they come. They actually think to know - blind leading the blind and all that.
The Church Fathers didn’t say what you think they said. Read them yourself. I have, but more importantly read your Bible.
Genesis 1:1 - http://bible.cc/genesis/1-1.htm
Genesis 1:2 - http://bible.cc/genesis/1-2.htm
No mention of creation ex nihilo. That’s utter nonsense read into the text by godless men who thought to know the mind of God. The Near Eastern peoples considered a God who tamed chaos to be greater than a god who created something from nothing. Verse one tells you what will happen, verse two tells you the current state, and the action starts in verse three.
There is nothing in the creation story to indicate that the Earth is unique, solitary, the only one of its kind, nor does the text indicate what was there beforehand. For the most part the Bible is silent on any even prior to Gen. 1:1.
The writer is ignorant, apparently intentionally and she wants to drag you with her. Don’t go.
From your link, the very first sentence of the Holy Bible.
No “arranged, fixed, organized, rebuilt, repaired,” it says CREATED.”
So please explain to this ignorant godless posse member how created becomes tamed the chaos. And for bonus points where did the raw materials come from and who or what created that if God just waltz up and reorganized things.
Oh and the “Earth is not unique” it is actually, but that does not mean there are not similar worlds as science is showing us even now. God CREATED the HEAVENS and the Earth.
I await the non LDS LDS answer.
Your comprehension skills are very sorely lacking. “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” means that “before” God created,
“God was all that there was - there was no empty space or a dark void or non-existence, and he himself is both “pure and eternal existence and the source of all other existence, which is derived from and dependent on his existence.” (”Is Creatio Ex Nihilo A Post-Biblical Invention? An Examination Of Gerhard May’s Proposal,” Paul Copan, Trinity Journal 17.1; Spring 1996)
With Irenaeus, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was well established. He also argued that the world (matter) was not coeternal with God:
“But the things established are distinct from Him who has established them, and what [things] have been made from Him who has made them. For He is Himself uncreated, both without beginning and end, and lacking nothing. He is Himself sufficient for this very thing, existence; but the things which have been made by Him have received a beginning... He indeed who made all things can alone, together with His Word, properly be termed God and Lord; but the things which have been made cannot have this term applied to them, neither should they justly assume that appellation which belongs to the Creator.”
The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 formally declared:
“We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God ... the Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal; who from the very beginning of time by His omnipotent power created out of nothing [de nihilo condidit] both the spiritual beings and the corporeal.” (ibid, Copan)
The Westminister Confession of Faith (1646) asserts that,
“It pleased God ... in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein” (IV.I; ibid)
Whether you are sincere or not, in your presumptuous ignorance you are blindly leading however many souls you have influence over, right into the pit.
Correct, but it doesn’t say created from “nothing”. See here:http://biblesuite.com/hebrew/1254.htm
There is nothing to indicate creation from “nothing”. That’s my point. You’re imposing a philosophy on the Scriptures where the words don’t say what you are saying they say. You also cannot make a statement as to events prior to Gen. 1:1. It simply isn’t in the Bible.
I don’t think you’re godless. I believe you are sincere, but ignorant. Ignorance can be cured through reading the Bible and discussing it like we’re doing now. I believe you want godliness and dislike its absence. The path is through the Bible.
The second error is misinterpreting the word “beginning”. At the beginning of what? God’s beginning? The earth’s beginning? This eons beginning? There is no reason to believe that this creation is singular or unique. The verses in Genesis simply don’t state that at all. That again is eisegesis.
Now be careful, those are all Godless men by LDS standards.
Let’s stick to the Bible. I don’t accept the beliefs of men whether many or few or in councils or out. Why would I accept what they say over the near eastern philosophy of creation from chaos as being greater than creation from nothing? You cannot start with a hypothesis and then force the Bible to support it. A plain reading will help:
Here’s the word written “in the beginning”: http://biblesuite.com/hebrew/7225.htm
So the entire purpose of Gen. 1:1 is to simply state that here’s what is about to happen at the start. Nothing has happened yet. It is an introductory statement used to focus the mind on the verses following. It states that at the start God created (http://biblesuite.com/hebrew/1254.htm with the sense being fashioned/formed like an artist would stone or clay, etc.) the heavens and the earth. Nothing has yet occured in the narrative.
Next is Gen 1:2 and that describes the first state: http://bible.cc/genesis/1-2.htm namely that until the Spirit of God moved or acted the earth was void/formless/empty - later we see that this means without life. From the reading H2O exists and is perhaps separated by a pangeaic form of land. It’s not certain. Then 1:3 statement on light which is open to interpretation. The action begins.
Ex nihilo is eisegesis and not something you take away from the actual document or writing. The Bible is plain. Back away from your preconceived notions and you’ll see.
There is nothing in the Biblical text to state that the earth in its void/formless/empty state is now brought into existance or was there to be worked on already. It is presumptuous to state so or to believe that such existance undermines the power, authority or majesty of God.
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