Myriad:
Elder Parley P. Pratt wrote in the Millennial Star, in 1841: " We are nowhere to understand that all the stars will fall or even many of them: but only 'as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken by a mighty wind.' The stars which will fall to the earth, are fragments, which have been broken off from the earth from time to time, in the mighty convulsions of nature. Some in the days of Enoch, some perhaps in the days of Peleg, some with the ten tribes, and some at the crucifixion of the Messiah. These must all be restored again at the 'times of restitution of all things.' This will restore the ten tribes of Israel; and also bring again Zion, even Enoch's city... When these fragments, (some of which are vastly larger than the present earth) are brought back and joined to this earth, it will cause a convulsion of all nature; the graves of the Saints will be opened, and rise from the dead; while the mountains will flow down, the valleys rise, the sea retire to its own place, the islands and continents will be removed, and earth be rolled together as a scroll. The earth will be many times larger than it is now. 'If I have told you of earthly things and ye believe not; what would you think if you were to be told of heavenly things.'"
Elder Orson Pratt: "The Prophet Joseph once in my hearing advanced his opinion that the Ten Tribes were separated from the Earth; or a portion of the Earth was by a miracle broken off, and that the Ten Tribes were taken away with it, and that in the latter days it would be restored to the Earth or be let down in the Polar regions."
Janadele, thank you for answering. For the record, I have no objection to your citing passages you agree with in lieu of explanations in your own words, as long as the passages are properly attributed. To continue with the discussion, it is necessary for me to assume that you do in fact agree with the passages you cite unless you state otherwise, so I do ask that wherever this is not the case, you make that clear.
I also appreciate that you took some time to find an answer. Patience is a virtue, and there is no need for hurry.
The question I have to follow up with is, what does it mean when an Elder and Apostle of the Church of LDS (specifically, Elder Parley Pratt), publishes text in a periodical (specifically, the Millennial Star)? Are such writings considered to have any divine authority? Or are they the interpretations and opinions of the writer himself?
The reason I ask is that the passage disagrees with what we have been able to observe of Creation since Pratt's time. No fragments are broken off from the Earth and launched permanently into the sky as a result of convulsions of nature. We've observed and studied the results of earthquakes, tornados, volcanos, wildfires, and explosions. Any solid material these convulsions launch into the air quickly falls back to earth. Liquid material either falls back to earth or evaporates in the air.
Besides our own rockets, the only phenomenon that has a chance to launch any debris from earth into orbit or beyond is a large asteroid impact. But the nature of the earth, including its mass and atmosphere, makes even that unlikely, except in an impact large enough to destroy all land life across entire continents. No such impacts are recounted in the Bible. (If Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction was from asteroid impacts, those must have been much smaller impacts than needed to launch pieces of the earth into orbit, or else the rest of the known world at the time would have been destroyed too.)
We have also searched the heavens to find what is actually up there. We have seen numerous planets, moons, comets, and asteroids, including many that are much smaller than the earth. We also know that they are made of different mixes of materials than the materials that make up the earth. If there were broken off pieces of the earth
vastly larger than the earth itself anywhere in the solar system, we'd be able to see them. Even if they were dark or hidden, they would have gravitational effects on the bodies we do see, and we could find them that way. So for such pieces to exist, God would have to have moved them great distances outside the Solar System, and will have to move them back to return them to earth. In that case, their being former pieces of the earth becomes irrelevant; God could more easily send moons, asteroids, comets, and other materials to earth instead.
And in any case, the effect of doing so, of returning even one earth-sized mass to the earth's surface, no matter how gently, would be to melt the surfaces of both bodies completely, destroying all life. If that problem were miraculously circumvented, the new much larger earth would have much greater surface gravity, and we would be unable to move around well enough to survive.
And even if another miracle makes that problem go away too, the original question remains unanswered: why do the passages you quoted call these broken off and returned pieces of earth
stars? That is not what stars are.
In short, Parley Pratt's explanation is shown to be false when we compare it to the actual Creation before us. The only way to make it seem possibly true is to ignore God's Creation in favor of that one man's opinion, and even that opinion still contradicts scripture as well, by claiming "stars" doesn't mean stars.
I believe doing that is not only erroneous, it's sinful. We should be humbled by Creation, not, in our eagerness to explain the mysteries of scripture and our pride in thinking ourselves able to do so, disregarding Creation in favor of stories made up by people like Paley.
How much data is in the Bible and the Book of Mormon combined? It takes a few megabytes of computer memory to contain both in full. (The BoM from the LDS site in PDF format is 9 megabytes, but that includes a lot of arbitrary formatting that pads out the file size considerably. The actual text is a fraction of that.) Fifty megabytes is easily enough to contain all the scriptures of LDS.
Fifty megabytes, though, is not nearly enough to contain a complete description of the structure and workings of a single pine needle, or a single orange seed, or a single bacterium parasitizing a single mite on a single feather of a single bird. Creation is a vastly greater communication from God than scripture is. And unlike scripture, Creation is not subject to the limits or errors of human language.
It is Creation itself (not "science" which is only the act of looking at Creation with care) that told us that the earth orbits around the sun. It is Creation itself that told us that the stars are not held up by a transparent dome in the sky. It is Creation itself that told us the earth is billions of years old. It is Creation itself that told us life on earth has evolved, and in that evolving, formed ourselves.
If someone gave you a marvelous and infinitely precious gift, you would not cherish the wrapping paper it was wrapped in, and ignore the gift itself. That's what you're doing, though, when you hold men's interpretations of scripture as a higher authority than the real universe around us, which is Creation itself.
Respectfully,
Myriad
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These are the words of my favourite Hymn.
