Posted on 12/16/2009 7:38:57 AM PST by PanzerKardinal
To avoid all doubt, these are the two assertions that aren’t necessarily so, just because you say so:
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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
And the mormons are not Christians just because they say so...
See how it works, kid ?????
I can see you hardly bothered to read my post. The only thing important to you is the label on the bottle, ‘eh? Slapping a Roll Royce emblem on a Yugo doesn’t make that a Rolls. However, in your book, it might.
NO, Christ provided to us these definitions in the Bible and commanded us to identify posers.
RE: Grace, better take some time to research the fact that mormonism redefines the term contrary to Christianity.
(Well so did Mary Baker Eddy -- believing in a "christ" -- and working that "christ" into the title of her new religion, "Christian Science" -- neither Christian nor Scientific!)
No, I weigh in on one of Godzilla's notes:
Who is God? Mormonism believes that the universe is populated by an uncountable number of Gods, each tending to their own planet and making spirit children with their multiple wives. Christianity is monotheistic trinitarinism - One God, three Persons who share the same - for a lack of a better word - essence that is God.
Otherwise, we have a "pick your Christian brand":
Choice A: One God
Choice B: Three gods (might include some non-temple Mormons)
Choice C: Thousands or millions of gods (includes more temple Mormons -- who aspire to godhood)
I'm sorry, but a gymnastic pretense of "polytheistic monotheism" tends to yield such damage to sheer language that we need to use a common autowreck phrase to describe it: "It was totaled."
Or perhaps epic failure
Wow. Offensive beyond belief.
Only if one has boughtten into the LIE that somehow the FATHER impregnated Mary - the normal way.
Says you, but says Christ? [DieHard the Hunter]
Yes, says Jesus...he told one church in the book of Revelation that he preferred them either hot or cold -- not lukewarm -- something about being "spewable" I might add.
Did He not say to his disciples “...Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.”? (Luke 9:50) How does that square with what you’ve just said? [DieHard the Hunter to TalonDJ]
Well, rather than say "vaguely related to Christ" as TalonDJ phrased it -- and which I covered above with Revelation passage -- I think the MAJOR issue with cultists like JWs, Lds, & others is that they are related to a "vague" christ...what the apostle Paul described as "another Christ" (2 Cor. 11:4).
In the Bible, a name is identity. The Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, say that Jesus is a son of God -- not the Son of God -- and that this Jesus is an angel, a human being, and a sort of "semi-god." I'm sorry, but to attach the identity of a semi-god to Jesus is not elevating "His Name".
It's like "relating" to someone online who you think is one thing ID-wise, and then to find out you never really knew them at all because they were so different from their online personality. In those cases, no matter how much you think you are relating to that individual, you really haven't.
The context, Diehard, for Luke 9 is v. 49 -- a man who drove out demons in Jesus' name. He was doing this action in the identity of Jesus...Jesus said nothing that this man was distorting who Jesus' own identity was...unlike the JWs & Mormons (Mormons say Jesus is the elder brother of Lucifer -- and did not create Lucifer).
This philosophy is very close to The Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s philosophy, who has called the philosophy of individual salvation through the belief in Jesus Christ “the great Western heresy”,
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Wow. Not sure how I missed THAT quote.
I seriously doubt the "pastor" has even read the book of Luke, the book which contains the birth narrative being referred to here. In the introduction, Luke specifically states this book is a well researched historical narrative based on eyewitness testimony and written as an "orderly account". To call the magnificat and birth narritive "symbolic" is to disregard the plain words of the text and abandon every well established rule of Biblical hermeneutics. These people have an agenda and it isn't Christian salvation.
No, TN wasn't referencing that.
Is the blasphemy in the double-entendre? Only if one has a dirty mind. Which we, as Christians, naturally should not have. So, if you find blasphemy in the double-entendre, and imagine the literally-true text in the billboard to mean other than what it literally means, perhaps this indicates that you have something important to do on Sunday before you take communion.
Give me a break, DieHard. The picture isn't depicting "Poor Joseph" in a parental role, picking up James, Jesus' brother -- as if God the Father was the "hard act to follow" -- parentally. As far as I know, a bed is usually utilized only for resting/sleeping & sex -- and there's nothing to indicate the comment applies to God resting/sleeping. IOW, there's no "double-entrendre" about it--it's point-blank.
(Wake up & smell the coffee)
No - that would be Mormonism. [Alex Murphy]
Beat me to it [Gamecock]
Not putting up basphemeous billboards about His mother and His birth...Mormonism teaches that “god” came down and had sex with Mary...But not Christianity... [Tennessee Nana]
It is clearly your opinion that Mormons are not Christian -- that's fine, you're entitled to that. Mormons believe that they *are* Christian. I believe that they are, too. As to how Mary became impregnated, how do you suppose it happened? I suppose it happened precisely the way the Bible said it did in Luke 1:35: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Pretty straightforward, I should have thought, without being overly graphic. The Holy Ghost made Mary pregnant. *How* this happened, in graphic detail, is left to our fertile (and sometimes filthy) imaginations because it is unimportant. [DieHard the Hunter]
Well, if you want to know why Alex Murphy & Gamecock & TN said what they did, keep reading...you can see for yourselves what the Lds "prophets" & "apostles" have declared through the years.
This isn't the first time that the Mormons have been rather “imposing” shall we say as they “superimpose” their own version of the “Mormon Mary” upon a true Biblical vision of who she really is!
In fact, I would say that if someone showed the following to every ex-Catholic Mormon, or every Catholic being visited by a Mormon for proselytism purposes, they would sprint away from all LDS!
Example: Some LDS leaders have tried to play it both ways re: describing Mary as a virgin (for example, LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie). Some clearly implied that she wasn’t (Brigham Young)
Example of LDS saying Mary was a virgin: "Modernistic teachings denying the virgin birth are utterly and completely apostate and false." (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, page 822. [A CARM writer’s comment to this was: Let them proclaim it. But quite honestly, I fail to see how the Mormon people can assert that Mary remained a virgin in light of this evidence from their prophets and apostles. I see them saying two different things and backpedaling trying to sound Christian.]
Let’s deal with each of those descriptions separately, shall we?
”Literal”:
”The birth of the Savior was a natural occurrence unattended with any degree of mysticism, and the Father God was the literal parent of Jesus in the flesh as well as in the spirit." (Lds "prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith, Religious Truths Defined, p. 44)
“…Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, for he is the Son of God, and that designation means what it says. (McConkie Mormon Doctrine, p. 742, 1966)
Did ya'll catch the conception part here being discussed as part of a “normal and natural course of events” process? Was McConkie just making that up out of thin air? No. He was simply repeating what earlier LDS “prophets” have said about this “natural process”:
...same physical sense that any other man begets a child...:
Brigham Young:
“God…created man [as spirit children], as we create our children: for there is no other process of creation in heaven, on the earth, in the earth, or under the earth, or in all eternities, that is, that were, or that ever will be.” Journal of Discourses (JoD), vol. 11, p. 122
(OK, Young's quote here = absolute statement that God only has one means of creation, and that the spirit, Jesus, was first “created” in heaven through the same process “as we create our children”).
“The birth of the Savior was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood—was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.” (JoD vol. 8, p. 115)
(Of course, if any poster wants to tell us that they were begotten of their fathers in some other manner that their fathers who ”partook of flesh and blood”--anything other than what Young called a “natural action”--we’ve got listening ears)
“When the time came that His first-born, the Saviour, should come into the world and take a tabernacle, the Father came Himself and favoured that spirit with a tabernacle instead of letting any other man do it.” (JoD, vol. 4, p. 218, 1857)
What was Brigham meaning? “When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family; and when he took a tabernacle, it was begotten by his Father in heaven.” (JoD vol. 1, p. 50, April 9, 1852)
What did Brigham mean by "who is the Father?...first of the human family?”
”Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven. Now, let all who may hear these doctrines, pause before they make light of them, or treat them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation…Now remember from this time forth, and for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost.” (Millennial Star, Vol. 15, p. 770, 1853)
What other LDS “prophets” embraced Brigham’s “natural process” of begottening?
“…As the horse, the ox, the sheep, and every living creature, including man, propogates its own species & perpetuates its own kind, so does God perpetuate His.” (Lds "prophet" John Taylor, Mediation & Atonement, 1882, p. 165 )
What about other LDS apostles? What did they say about this natural process?
"In relation to the way in which I look upon the works of God and his creatures, I will say that I was naturally begotten; so was my father, and also my saviour Jesus Christ. According to the Scriptures, he is the first begotten of his father in the flesh, and there was nothing unnatural about it." (LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, v. 8, p. 211)
"Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers" (LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1966, p. 547.)
Now I’ve cited McConkie twice, and a lot of folks have seen one or both of those quotes, but not nearly as many have seen this following McConkie excerpt…where McConkie makes sure we otherstand the literalness of what’s he talking about:
“We have spoke PLAINLY of our Lord’s conception in the womb of Mary. I am the son of my father and the father of my sons. They are my sons because they were begotten by me, were conceived by their mother, and came forth from her womb to breathe the breath of mortal life, to dwell for a time and a season among other mortal men. And so it is with the Eternal Father and the mortal birth of the Eternal Son. The Father is a Father is a Father…And the Son is a Son is a Son…a literal, living offspring from an actual Father. God is the Father; Christ is the Son. The one begat the other. Mary provided the womb from which the Spirit Jehovah came forth, tabernacled in clay, as all men are, to dwell among his fellow spirits whose births were brought to pass in like manner. There is no need to spiritualize away the plain meaning of the scriptures. There is nothing figurative or hidden or beyond comprehension in our Lord’s coming into mortality. He is the Son of God in the same sense and way that we are the sons of mortal fathers. It is that simple. Christ was born of Mary. He is the Son of God—the Only Begotten of the Father. (McConkie, The Promised Messiah, pp. 467-468, 1978 )
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. There was no “sperm” involved. God is not a biological male or a penis in the sky. God has gender but not sex.
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Well, the Mormon “God” does, but the True and Living God of the Bible does not.
You chr*stians read your bibles all out of order. First you read the “new testament,” then you read the Prophets, and finally you read that “low” and boring Torah.
Which, for a Christian, is a perfectly valid way to read it, because Christians believe that the Old Testament was fulfilled by Christ, and that what Christ wants his followers to do is defined intact in the New Testament.
Then, since your chr*stianity isn't based on the teachings of the Bible but rather because you assume it a priori, how do you know it is true?
Did you know they're looking for him now?
Of course. But they, unlike many first century Jews, overshot by a couple of millennia.
How do you know this?
I'm still trying to figure out why a literal six day creation that concluded just 5769+ years ago is any more irrational than a virgin birth.
FWIW, you're right.
I know. It's simple logic.
Thank you.
The fact that this is the year 5770 from creation is not merely a tradition, but according to the late Lubavitcher Rebbe (zt"l) a halakhah as well. That's as authoritative as it can get.
This 5770 year calendar began when Adam first spoke after being created on the Sixth Day. Only then did the world begin to "function," so nothing prior to that time can truly be said to have any age at all.
Oral Torah also gives the exact time of the first new moon in history, as well as the time of a theoretical new moon a year earlier than this--a year that never actually occurred but existed only in the Mind of G-d as an archtype. This time is encoded in the opening passage of Genesis at equidistant letter sequences.
Thanks for the ping, but I have no idea whatsoever why you included me.
whereby the male God embraced humanity only after being satiated by Jesus’ innocent blood.
This is typical of liberal churches, they look at God as a cosmic child abuser,
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Sounds like they got God confused with Molech.
The Mormon god is not God. Mormons are bascially pagans and polytheists.
If a few of these "choice Mormon quotes" were placed in countries & communities where the Lds has been heavily proselytizing within the Catholic community, the uproar would be significant.
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