LDS The 'beginning' of God in Mormonism

[miknik5]

The Book of Mormon explains the Atonement, it is a second witnesses to the Bible.

Not needed

 

[Jane_Doe]

Then add away!

You realize that you are adding to scripture when you say "the Bible says you're not supposed to add to it"....

 

[miknik5]

You realize that you are adding to scripture when you say "the Bible says you're not supposed to add to it"....

Whaaaaat?

 

[withwonderingawe]

Not needed

In today's world where the Bible is being attacked on all sides it does need a second witness.

"...that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established "

 

[miknik5]

What verse particularly.


Written in the Book of Revelation. Not in the Bible or in general. If you claim that the Book of Revelation is a ceasing of writing scripture, then you are saying that every other book in the Bible written after Revelation is an admonition. These books include the Gospel of John, which you are very fond of: it that book an abomination?

There's also something very similar written in Dueteraramy about it's contents. But you in error interrupt that to mean no more scripture (like you are doing with the Revelation verse), you declare vast majority of the Bible to be an abomination.


Now: do you have any actual verses which say an unchanging God decided to cease giving scripture?

Are you kidding me?

You post this and you tell me that I am saying this?!!!!

Please
Let me repeat again

Do not EVER put words in my mouth
That are NOT MY WORDS!

 

[miknik5]

You realize that you are adding to scripture when you say "the Bible says you're not supposed to add to it"....

Again nothing I ever said yet I am to "realize" that I said it!

And yet what is this even saying?

 

[Jane_Doe]

Are you kidding me?

You post this and you tell me that I am saying this?!!!!

Please
Let me repeat again

Do not EVER put words in my mouth
That are NOT MY WORDS!

Chill out. Re-read the post. I said "if you claim". It is a hypothetical.

 

[fatboys]

(staff edit)
Talk to the people it says to talk to

 

[Peter1000]

There are issues with the testimony of the witnesses, to put it politely.

On the three:

And on the eight:

The take-home point of both of these videos is that the published testimonies probably do not match the actual experiences of the people they claim to be from. It's not that the witnesses lied, exactly; more that there's what we are meant to infer from the statements published in the preface to the BOM, and there's what much more likely actually happened, and the two are not the same.

What you think likely happened and what did actually happen are indeed 2 different things. That is not a hard conclussion to come to.

 

[dzheremi]

Basically Dan Vogel does not believe in any type of supernatural experience so it all must be false. He’s an atheist and doesn't believe in Jesus anymore than he believes in Joseph Smith.

His personal belief or lack thereof doesn't matter at all, as he is investigating whether or not the official statements as given in the front matter of the BOM match what the people who they're ostensibly from actually say happened. You don't need to be a believer to look into that any more than Josephus needed to be a Christian to report on the first-century Christians. (He wasn't. He was Jewish. Things do not work that way.)

He then tries to take their accounts and read into them more than what is there, it’s called repackaging. We see it today with all political spinning going on. People have been doing this from the beginning, it’s not new.

I would think that his point is more that the repackaging is done on the Mormon side so as to make the testimony of the witnesses as given in the BOM appear to be something other than it is when you look at the other statements available from those same people, in addition to the various interpretations of the events by Mormon scholars, artists, etc.

Martin Harris was Joseph Smith’s first scribe, but until he saw the Angel he never saw the plates. He was always behind a curtain or they were covered. He did however move them around, he said,

“I hefted the plates many times, and should think they weighed forty or fifty pounds.”

I'd have to go back and re-watch, but I believe that this is dealt with in the video itself, and that whatever he lifted was covered, so it could have been anything, since he did not actually see it.

William Smith Joseph’s youngest brother and 16 at the time never saw them. However he says he felt them through a cloth and they were 60 lb. He said he could feel the leaves and the rings running through the back.

Okay. So, yeah, he never saw them. The problems with this should be obvious. When you claim to have a thing that you don't let other people actually see and examine with their eyes, but instead keep hidden away in some fashion, it greatly weakens your claims about said thing. We've seen this recently in areas well outside of the BOM, as with the claimed 1,500-year-old Aramaic 'Bible' claimed by the Turkish authorities to contain devastating evidence against the traditional claims of Christianity, but which in fact, even based on a surface-level analysis of the few pictures the Turks have presented to the world media to substantiate the book's existence, very obviously contains nothing of the kind (in fact, it's probably not actually a Bible at all): The 1,500 year old 'Bible' and Muslim propaganda (Assyrian International News Agency analysis)

The claims of the Turks are destroyed because the appropriate people (in this case, Assyrian people who know their language and history) were able to see pictures of the document in question and say what it actually was based on their background knowledge/expertise (being speakers of the language in which the document is written). This is a much stronger level of evidence than if they had physically lifted up the book while it remained under a sheet. That much should be obvious.

Now if you want to have a real technical explanation you can go here and read Richard Lloyd Anderson answer to Vogal.

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1399&index=4

It is interesting that this piece of apologia chides Vogel for beginning his analysis with 'flat disbelief' when Anderson's own analysis begins with what we might call 'flat belief', with the statement: "An angel showed the Book of Mormon plates to the Three Witnesses, who heard God’s voice declare the translation correct."

Oh. Okay then.

Once again, Mormons on this board (and apparently at BYU) do not distinguish between making a claim and stating a belief. Mr. Anderson takes his own belief as a starting point and then fashions the evidence to suit it. How is this different than what he is characterizing Vogel as doing? (With the crucial difference that Vogel is looking for consistency between the official statements as given in the BOM and other statements of those same witnesses as reported elsewhere, which is not a faith claim to begin with.)

This 'technical explanation' is but a slightly fancier/more wordy version of preaching to the choir, and entirely unmoving.

 

[Peter1000]

Many profess to have god(s) but deny THE SON

GOD in HIS WISDOM by sending HIS SON

TRUE AND HOLY AND PREFECT flesh (THE Son of Man)

TRUE AND HOLY AND PERFECT SPIRIT (THE SON of GOD)

Shut the mouths of every other lying whispering spirit who denies the TRUTH of ONE GOD

that it is only through Christ (born of HIS life giving SPIRIT) that one has access to the FATHER by that ONE SPIRIT

GOD is SPIRIT
No man can see SPIRIT which is invisible

And a SPIRIT can only be made manifest by a visible vessel

CHRIST came to "show us THE FATHER"

And HE has all authority to show/teach/reveal/manifest/declare THE FATHER because HE came forth from GOD

If Jesus truely came forth from God (as you say in your last statement), then look at this example of the King and his Son.

In our English language, if the Son came forth from the King from his castle to battle a foe, it would be understood that the King himself would stay in the castle and the Son would leave the castle and go fight the foe. The language is clear, and by definition, the King and his Son have to be 2 separate and distinct individuals. The King sent, the Son and stayed in castle. The Son came forth from the King and left the King in the castle and went to fight the foe in another location. No question, per the English language.

Per the English language if Jesus came forth from God from heaven to teach us of God and save all mankind from their sins. It will also be understood that God would stay in heaven, (which Jesus and the bible testify is true), and it is also understood that Jesus would leave God in heaven and would go forth to Earth to save mankind from their sins.

The English language is clear and precise that God the Father and Jesus are by definition, 2 separate and distinct individuals.

If you don't think so, then you can not use the verbiage that 'Jesus came forth from the Father'. Otherwise it becomes real confusing.

For example, if you think they are 1 God, then you have to say, they both left heaven and came to Earth, they both were in the baby Jesus, they both were crusified and died, they both went to preach to the spirits in prison, they were both resurrected, they both must be sitting on the right hand of the Father in heaven, and they both have to come a second time to rule and reign on the earth.

This becomes very confusing.

Tell me where I am wrong about the verbiage 'Jesus came forth from the Father'?

 

[dzheremi]

It's probably not a great idea to argue from the secular understanding of what words mean in English, when discussions about procession as it relates to Christianity were historically conducted and decided in Greek, in Christian councils rather than secular dictionaries. No church father ever spoke or wrote in English, let alone modern English of the type that we are using right now.

Normally I wouldn't make this kind of argument, as of course our faith is translatable by virtue of the fact that you don't have to be Greek to understand it even though the NT was written in Greek, but as this concerns the particulars of what it means to 'proceed' from the Father, it should be pointed out that this particular verb has been the subject of extensive and ongoing conflict between the Greek-speaking/writing East, which has one understanding of it, and the Latin-speaking West, which has another. So there's actually tons and tons of material out there on this very question, dating back to at least the 6th century Council of Toledo (which codified the Latin understanding in the Western Church) up to today. I have not read it myself, but I have heard good things about A. Edward Siecienski's book The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, which was published some years ago by Oxford as a part of their Studies in Historical Theology series.

 

[miknik5]

If Jesus truely came forth from God (as you say in your last statement), then look at this example of the King and his Son.

In our English language, if the Son came forth from the King from his castle to battle a foe, it would be understood that the King himself would stay in the castle and the Son would leave the castle and go fight the foe. The language is clear, and by definition, the King and his Son have to be 2 separate and distinct individuals. The King sent, the Son and stayed in castle. The Son came forth from the King and left the King in the castle and went to fight the foe in another location. No question, per the English language.

Per the English language if Jesus came forth from God from heaven to teach us of God and save all mankind from their sins. It will also be understood that God would stay in heaven, (which Jesus and the bible testify is true), and it is also understood that Jesus would leave God in heaven and would go forth to Earth to save mankind from their sins.

The English language is clear and precise that God the Father and Jesus are by definition, 2 separate and distinct individuals.

If you don't think so, then you can not use the verbiage that 'Jesus came forth from the Father'. Otherwise it becomes real confusing.

For example, if you think they are 1 God, then you have to say, they both left heaven and came to Earth, they both were in the baby Jesus, they both were crusified and died, they both went to preach to the spirits in prison, they were both resurrected, they both must be sitting on the right hand of the Father in heaven, and they both have to come a second time to rule and reign on the earth.

This becomes very confusing.

Tell me where I am wrong about the verbiage 'Jesus came forth from the Father'?

In our language it means exactly what is said.


And it is THE SPIRIT who testifies

And it is according to the WORD OF TRUTH what has made us clean

(John 17:8)

 

[Peter1000]

(staff edit)
Actually, the BOM is not adding to the bible because the BOM is it's own separate book and can stand on it's own.

It exists, however, to confirm, and to support the Bible and to give a second witness to the atonement of Jesus Christ.

If you have a second, or third, or fourth witness, why is that not good?

Has God stifled himself and limited himself just to 1 witness? Why would He do that?

Why would God say there is not going to be anything more written about the Atonement of my Son?

 

[miknik5]

Actually, the BOM is not adding to the bible because the BOM is it's own separate book and can stand on it's own.

It exists, however, to confirm, and to support the Bible and to give a second witness to the atonement of Jesus Christ.

If you have a second, or third, or fourth witness, why is that not good?

Has God stifled himself and limited himself just to 1 witness? Why would He do that?

Why would God say there is not going to be anything more written about the Atonement of my Son?

It is adding to the WORD of GOD.
'And is not needed.

It is yeast added to the PURE BREAD which GOD has provided which does not contradict HIS VOICE and SPIRIT.

GOD's WORD is TRUTH and it is the SPIRIT who testifies.

For no one can know the hidden things of GOD that can only be known by HIS SPIRIT.
And GOD has given us all that is needed and needful in HIS SON.

Those born of GOD are truly born of and led by THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT of the ONE who laid down the flesh so as to take it up again so as to be the ONE and ONLY SHEPHERD over THE SHEEP, leading them back by HIS LIFE-GIVING WATER unto the presence of THE FATHER.

For no man can come to THE FATHER except....through....THE SON.

And no man needs a middle man between his relationship with the FATHER in, by and through THE SON...

THE SON is SUFFICIENT.
And it is sufficient to listen to HIM.

For today, GOD speaks to us by HIS SON...

 

[Peter1000]

In our language it means exactly what is said.


And it is THE SPIRIT who testifies

And it is according to the WORD OF TRUTH what has made us clean

(John 17:8)

The WORD OF TRUTH witnesses that John 17:8 is a pure witness that God the Father and Jesus Christ are 2 separate and distinct individuals, just on the clear understanding that when someone sends another person, they both don't go, and they are seriously separated from each other.

John 17:8King James Version (KJV)
8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

When I read this I envision 2 separate and distinct individuals. Which harmonizes all of the scirptures and all is understood properly.

X cannot come out from Y, if X and Y are 1 in the same God. X cannot send Y, if X and Y are 1 in the same God.

X can come out of Y if X and Y are 2 separate and distinct individuals. X can send Y if X and Y are 2 separate and distinct individuals.

John 17:8 proves my point.

 

[Peter1000]

It is adding to the WORD of GOD.
'And is not needed.

It is yeast added to the PURE BREAD which GOD has provided which does not contradict HIS VOICE and SPIRIT.

GOD's WORD is TRUTH and it is the SPIRIT who testifies.

For no one can know the hidden things of GOD that can only be known by HIS SPIRIT.
And GOD has given us all that is needed and needful in HIS SON.

Those born of GOD are truly born of and led by THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT of the ONE who laid down the flesh so as to take it up again so as to be the ONE and ONLY SHEPHERD over THE SHEEP, leading them back by HIS LIFE-GIVING WATER unto the presence of THE FATHER.

For no man can come to THE FATHER except....through....THE SON.

And no man needs a middle man between his relationship with the FATHER in, by and through THE SON...

THE SON is SUFFICIENT.
And it is sufficient to listen to HIM.

For today, GOD speaks to us by HIS SON...

God and His Son visited JS and sent their angel to JS to bring to light a book that had been hid for centuries that testifies that Jesus is God's Son and that Jesus died for the sins of all mankind.

It is by the Word of the Son that the BOM came about.
It is by the Word of the Son that the Mormon church was brought forth.

The Son is sufficient. We listen to all of his Words. Not to just a few words recorded in the Bible. They are important words of Jesus, but they are not all the words of Jesus.

 

[miknik5]

The WORD OF TRUTH witnesses that John 17:8 is a pure witness that God the Father and Jesus Christ are 2 separate and distinct individuals, just on the clear understanding that when someone sends another person, they both don't go, and they are seriously separated from each other.

John 17:8King James Version (KJV)
8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

When I read this I envision 2 separate and distinct individuals. Which harmonizes all of the scirptures and all is understood properly.

X cannot come out from Y, if X and Y are 1 in the same God. X cannot send Y, if X and Y are 1 in the same God.

X can come out of Y if X and Y are 2 separate and distinct individuals. X can send Y if X and Y are 2 separate and distinct individuals.

John 17:8 proves my point.

It had to be that way in order for the WORD to fulfill all the requirements of the law

The testimony of two or three were needed to affirm a TRUTH

Though THE SON of GOD who came forth from
GOD and into the world who declared HIMSELF the BREAD which came down from Heaven could testify of HIMSELF HE understood according to the law two st least weee needed which is why HE pointed to John as a human witness that a man might believe

But THE SON pointed to HIS FATHER and those who had the WORD and law were confused and offended and asked again and again "who is your FATHER?" (John 8)

Showing that they did not believe HIS TESTIMONY


And in fact John's TESTIMONY was weightier than what you have mentioned

John knew this was the ONE who is from above who speaks of what HE has seen though no man believes HIS TESTIMONY (John 3:30 and John 3:31)

 

[miknik5]

[

God and His Son visited JS and sent their angel to JS to bring to light a book that had been hid for centuries that testifies that Jesus is God's Son and that Jesus died for the sins of all mankind.

It is by the Word of the Son that the BOM came about.
It is by the Word of the Son that the Mormon church was brought forth.

The Son is sufficient. We listen to all of his Words. Not to just a few words recorded in the Bible. They are important words of Jesus, but they are not all the words of Jesus.

LOL

 

[fatboys]

No

LOL

You claim we are being rude by laughing at an appearance by God the Father and his son Jesus Christ to a fourteen year old boy? If what we are saying is true you would be in judgement of God.