tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Joe Smith just wasn't that original.
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Joe Smith just wasn't that original.
dafydd
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The pseudo-biblical ''style'' of the BOM is very funny for a while, but after a couple of chapters the eyes start to glaze over and you lose the will to live. It would sell more copies if it was sold as a cure for insomnia.
RandFan
Mormon Atheist
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It's history. It's a significant sub culture. I find it fascinating. When I was a child my mother purchased an entire set of illustrated stories from the BOM. I liked those. I thought the stories were interesting. I read the BOM cover to cover twice. Once before I left for my mission and when I was on my mission. Didn't at all care for the prose. IMO: It's a bunch of stories with as much "wisdom" as Gone With the Wind.
Here is something fun to do. Next time you are face to face with a member, ask them if they can sing (if they know the lyrics) "Book of Mormon Stories". Now, ask the member what key lessons can be found in the BOM? Apart from Christ visiting the Americas I dare say most won't know of any. Not that Mormons are particularly dumb when it comes to religion. On the contrary, they score higher than most religious people when it comes to theology in general. Only Jews and atheists/agnostics/non religious score higher.
U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey
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tsig
a carbon based life-form
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tsig
a carbon based life-form
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I wonder how many Mormons have read the BoM?
jsfisher
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I'd guess not as many as they'd like, but probably more than the general Christian population, as a percentage.
Empress
Piggish
IIRC, I was the only one in my Primary (children's Sunday School) class that had read the thing. I was required to read it two or three times as a child, but the other kids only knew what they were taught in church. That said, I know quite a few adult Mormons who have read it cover to cover. One, in fact was my 8th grade American history teacher. Yes, he actually believed (and as far as I know still believes) that the moronic thing was actually historical.
Janadele
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The coming of Jesus Christ, and the purposes of it, was known and determined in the Pre Mortal Existence... and was known by the Book of Mormon Prophets. The Gospel has been Eternal Law since the Beginning of time. Adam possessed the fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ... which he taught his posterity.
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bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Many years ago my sister, who was a student of religion and interested in all sorts of things, actually had a copy of The Book of Mormon. I think I may still have it somewhere in my voluminous book barn. I did, in fact, try to read it, not that I expected to believe it, but I figured it might have some literary merit. Hoo boy. I truly cannot repeat the words or sentiments uttered when I very quickly gave up the effort. It's hard to express politely for sure, except to observe that if by some fantastical stretch of the imagination this stuff turned out to be dictated by some god, we'd have to acknowledge that God is not the grand thing we might have hoped for but a clown.
Foster Zygote
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At least the Book of Armaments was funny.
RandFan
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It works best when you ask someone to their face. Most know the songs but they don't know what doctrine is in there. They know Mormon doctrine they just don't get the connection.
RandFan
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18th century protestant vernacular is the language spoken in the preexistence? Adam spoke in 18th century vernacular?
These ad hoc explanations are not reasonable.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
RandFan
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Janadele
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This is an extensive subject and much can be found on it within LDS Teachings and Doctrines, including in Jesus The Christ by James E. Talmage, from where I have summarised the following:
The date of the future advent of Christ has never been revealed to man. To the inquiring Apostles who laboured with the Master, He said: "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the Angels of heaven, but my Father only." In the present age, a similar declaration has been made by the Father: "I, the Lord God, have spoken it, but the hour and the day no man knoweth, neither the Angels in heaven, nor shall they know until He comes." He says to His Elders: Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; and after your testimony cometh wrath and indignation upon the people if this message is rejected; God will bring judgments upon the world until He has humbled the people to a state where they will be glad to receive it. The judgments of God shall stalk through the earth, decimating the human race, before the great day of the Lord shall come. Wars and rumours of wars, famine and pestilence, the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of tempests, and the voice of the waves of the sea, heaving themselves beyond their bounds. The earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground, and shall not be able to stand. and the sun shall hide his face, and shall refuse to give light, and the moon shall be bathed in blood, and the stars shall become exceeding angry, and shall cast themselves down as a fig that falleth from off a fig tree. All things shall be in commotion; and surely, men's hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people. Fearful indeed will it be to individuals, families, and nations, who have so far sunk into sin as to have forfeited their claim to mercy. The time is not that of the final judgment--when the whole race of mankind shall stand in the resurrected state before the bar of God--nevertheless it shall be a time of unprecedented blessing unto the righteous, and of condemnation and vengeance upon the wicked.
With Christ shall come those who have already been resurrected; and His approach shall be the means of inaugurating a general resurrection of the righteous dead, while the pure and just who are still in the flesh shall be instantaneously changed from the mortal to the immortal state and shall be caught up with the newly resurrected to meet the Lord and His celestial company, and shall descend with Him. The coming of Christ in the last days, accompanied by the apostles of old and by the resurrected saints, is to mark the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. The faithful apostles who were with Jesus in His earthly ministry are to be enthroned as judges of the whole house of Israel; they will judge the Nephite Twelve, who in turn will be empowered to judge the descendants of Lehi, or that branch of the Israelitish nation which was established upon the western continent. The Kingdom of God is the Church established by divine authority upon the earth; this institution asserts no claim to temporal rule over nations; its sceptre of power is that of the Holy Priesthood, to be used in the preaching of the Gospel and in administering its ordinances for the salvation of mankind living and dead. The Kingdom of Heaven is the divinely ordained system of government and dominion in all matters, temporal and spiritual; this will be established on earth only when its rightful Head, the King of kings, Jesus the Christ, comes to reign. His administration will be one of order, operated through the agency of His commissioned representatives invested with the Holy Priesthood. When Christ appears in His glory, and not before, will be realised a complete fulfilment of the supplication: "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." The Kingdom of God has been established among men to prepare them for the Kingdom of Heaven which shall come; and in the blessed reign of Christ the King shall the two be made one. The keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth, and from thence shall the Gospel roll forth unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands until it has filled the whole earth; that the inhabitants thereof may receive it, and be prepared for the days to come, in the which the Son of man shall come down in heaven, clothed in the brightness of his glory, to meet the kingdom of God which is set up on the earth; Wherefore may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come.
Janadele
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Answer continued from my previous post:
The God we worship is just and merciful. He never brings upon the earth any judgment but He sends first a warning message to prepare the people for its coming. This is our warning to-day—that the Gospel of the kingdom is being preached unto all nations as a witness, and then the hour of God's judgment, or the predicted end of the world shall come. This is the message we bring, the olive branch that we extend to the world... God does not punish except to save, He never chastens except to purify. In sweeping the antediluvian races from the earth, it was an act of mercy to them, that they might not add sin to sin and heap up iniquity until they could not have been pardoned. He swept them off when their cup was full, and imprisoned their spirits while their bodies mouldered in the grave. Jesus, however, while His body was lying in the tomb, went and preached to the spirits in prison; those who rejected the message that was offered to them by Noah, and were swept away by the flood.
It is that the world may escape these terrible judgments and plagues that will desolate the wicked, that we put our lives and liberties in jeopardy in preaching that which is unpopular, and which brings upon us the wrath and hatred of the world. We desire, as much as men can desire, the salvation of our fellow-men. Our mission is to save, not to condemn. This is the Gospel of salvation, not a Gospel of damnation. Damnation follows as a necessary alternative of the rejection of the truth. Men who reject the truth damn themselves. The man who will shut the door in his own face keeps himself out from the Kingdom: it is nobody's fault but his own. The waters of life are free; come and partake of them, without money and without price! If you will not partake of them, how can you blame any one but yourself if you die of thirst in the desert? If you put out the light by persecuting the Saints of God, how can you blame anybody but yourself if you are left in darkness? If condemnation follows the rejection of the Gospel, God cannot help it, His servants cannot help it. If we invite men to come out into the sunlight and they prefer to stay in the shade, who is to blame but themselves?. They have their choice. Light has burst forth in the midst of darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not. Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Responsibility rests like a mountain upon those who hear the truth and then reject it to their condemnation. http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Anti-Mormon
Empress
Piggish
So to summarize: " I ain't got a clue, but my church says so, and I try not to think about it too hard for fear I'll finally realize I've spent a good portion of my life being fleeced by an obvious 19th century con-job."
Mashuna
Ovis ex Machina
Janadele, from your quotes can I assume you also believe in a global flood, and that we are all descended from Adam and Eve? Are you also a young earth creationist, and is this standard for Mormons?
Yes, but this misses the point entirely. Of course someone can be a Tolkien scholar, because Tolkien and his works are real things.
What someone cannot be is a scholar of Tolkien's elves. The subject matter doesn't exist. The best you could do is become a scholar of what Tolkien said about elves, not the elves themselves.
Similarly, one may become the world's foremost expert on unicorn legends and myths, but one cannot become an expert on unicorns.
The analogy to religion is clear. One may be a Bible scholar, but not theologian.
Rincewind
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