LDS Mormons Call Them Saving Ordinances
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"Scheme"?
Are you sure you want to use that word here?
Also, what about the bit I noted where I did in fact personally deal with someone who just wanted a no-questions-asked handout? Such folks exist.
In fact, comic creator Michelle Perez is under fire right now for admitting in her autobiography that when she was just getting started she'd go to a local food pantry and lie through her teeth to them so that she could not only get free food but more of it than she'd normally be given (she was single but claimed to have a family so she could get a family-sized portion); adding insult to injury were her comments about how much she hates Christians and what would eventually happen to the Bibles they gave her.
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dzheremi
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I agree. Nobody should be giving the LDS corporation any more money.
Yes, and they got the money for those "other ventures" how, exactly? Did Joseph Smith donate it himself from the fees he charged others to go digging for them? Nope. It was from tithes. The LDS religion receives most of its money from tithes.
To quote the earlier-linked SLT article titled in part "Historian digs into the hidden world of Mormon finances",
Quinn estimates — and estimating is about the best even a top-notch researcher can do — the church took in about $33 billion in tithing in 2010, based on a model of projected growth rates that followed a consistent pattern starting in the 1950s. It earns another $15 billion annually, he says, in returns on its profit-making investments.
Well it would have to be, wouldn't it? You'd have to take it for granted, since they sure as heck are not just going to tell you. Again, they haven't publicly disclosed such information in the United States since 1959, except in the very tightly-controlled, 'faith promoting' fashion that marks the voluntary discussion of such matters earlier this year. Transparency is very much not the name of the game, when it comes to the LDS church and finances.
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dzheremi
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Yes. What's wrong with the noun scheme? It's the verb that implies some underhandedness...but, hey...if that's what you want to assume about your own religion, don't let me stop you.
I never said they didn't. That makes no impact on my point whatsoever. I didn't say that the LDS church stance didn't make some sense (in fact, I'm pretty sure I wrote the exact opposite), only that it is not following the example of Christ, because it isn't.
Yep. Fraud exists. What's your point?
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ArmenianJohn
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No, there are not. You have yet to show any. There are no stipulations.
Wrong. It is based entirely on grace and "not of works lest any man should boast".
Where have you shown this? You haven't. You've stated it and asserted it but you have not shown Biblical support for this.
Works FOLLOW Grace/salvation. You continue to try to flip that equation but you fail to provide Biblical support for it because there is no Biblical support. The only place that notion comes from is the mormon religion.
Nobody is cast into "outer darkness". That is anti-Biblical.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we are saved by grace after all we can do; in fact, that is verbatim in the Book of Mormon which is not scripture.
This verse is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
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ArmenianJohn
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This doesn't answer the question Phoebe Ann asked you, "Are you forgiven?" Why are you dodging the question?
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He is the way
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The LDS Church did not use any tithing money to build and pay for the city creek mall. The LDS Church owns tax paying retail ventures such as the Deseret Industries. Your insinuations and based on hunches. Every tithe payer can find out where their tithing money is used.
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He is the way
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There are no stipulations? Here is one of many:
(New Testament | John 3:5)
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
You said: It is based entirely on grace and "not of works lest any man should boast"
(New Testament | James 2:14 - 20)
14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.
19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
You said: Nobody is cast into "outer darkness". That is anti-Biblical.
(New Testament | Matthew 25:30)
30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Luke 6
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. 30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. 31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. 32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. 33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. 34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. 36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
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Faith received from God always produces works. But salvation precedes those works.
John 15
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
Romans 8
9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
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He is the way
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Why wait until the end?
(New Testament | Matthew 24:13)
13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
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dzheremi
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Do you know this to be the case, or is this speculation of the type that you are accusing me of engaging in, even though I already posted my source, which is a historian writing about LDS finances?
And again: How did it get the money it needed to buy those "tax paying retail ventures" in the first place? Seeing as how in the modern era (2010) it still receives roughly twice as much money in tithes as it does from its retail businesses (and before the 1960s, it was broke; see again the SLT article), it seems more than reasonable to assume that at least some of the money for it $1.5 billion mall project would come from tithes, since they are its largest single source of income. It's not an open-and-shut case by any means (the source says that the numbers are themselves a result of speculation, and I've made no attempt to hide that), but you cannot simply say "It got all its money to pay for this thanks to its for-profit ventures" when the best estimation of an actual researcher who has dedicated himself to precisely this question shows that they money it makes from those ventures would be so woefully inadequate in isolation to use as leverage in realizing the project. We're not talking about a slight discrepancy between the two figures -- one is literally over twice as big as the other.
No. My suspicions are based on the best guesses of a professional who has actually looked into these things. Your insinuations are based on being an LDS member yourself and not wanting to believe that your church is, in fact, a corporate profit-generating entity which uses the donations of people like yourself and millions of others to do things like buy companies, open shopping malls, and so forth.
What you don't seem to want to face up to is that so can other people, despite the LDS corporation maintaining a stranglehold on where its "tithe payers" (not 'worshipers', not 'believers'? I guess tithe-payers is more accurate, in this context) feel safe getting their information, and their taking advantage of very lax U.S. laws when it comes to reporting of financial accounting, since the LDS are a religious organization.
And when these other people (e.g., me) look into just where the money goes, some of what they find makes it seem like you and all the other true believing Mormons are being duped:
Oct. 12, 2012 - by Peter Henderson (Reuters; hosted at Huffington Post) "LDS Church Makes Money By Mormon Donations":
If the Mormon church were a business, wealthy adherents like Mitt Romney would count as its dominant revenue stream.
Its investment strategy would be viewed as risk-averse.
It would also likely attract corporate gadflies protesting a lack of transparency. They would call for less spending on real estate and more on charitable causes to improve membership growth - the Mormons’ return on investment.
Those are a few of the conclusions that can be drawn from an analysis of the church’s finances by Reuters and University of Tampa sociologist Ryan Cragun.
Relying heavily on church records in countries that require far more disclosure than the United States, Cragun and Reuters estimate that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints brings in some $7 billion annually in tithes and other donations.
It owns about $35 billion worth of temples and meeting houses around the world, and controls farms, ranches, shopping malls and other commercial ventures worth many billions more.
[...]
Church spokesman Michael Purdy declined to comment specifically on the estimates but said that the church was different from a corporation.
“Other projections are speculative and do not reflect an understanding of how the church uses its income to bless the lives of people,” he added, saying the church was financed primarily from member tithing and offerings.
FOCUS ON BUSINESS AND BUILDINGS
Concerned or disgruntled current and former Mormons complain that the church spends too much on real estate and for-profit ventures, neglecting charity work.
The Mormon church has no hospitals and only a handful of primary schools. Its university system is limited to widely respected Brigham Young, which has campuses in Utah, Idaho and Hawaii, and LDS Business College. Seminaries and institutes for high school students and single adults offer religious studies for hundreds of thousands.
It counts more than 55,000 in its missionary forces, primarily youths focused on converting new members but also seniors who volunteer for its non-profits, such as the Polynesian Cultural Center, which bills itself as Hawaii’s No. 1 tourist attraction, and for-profit businesses owned by the church.
The church has plowed resources into a multi-billion-dollar global network of for-profit enterprises: it is the largest rancher in the United States, a church official told Nebraska’s Lincoln Journal Star in 2004, with other ranches and farms in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and Great Britain, according to financial documents reviewed by Reuters.
+++
Hooray! At least if you're a tithe-payer (according to you, HITW), you can see which of the LDS Church's many, many, many for-profit businesses your donations are helping to pay for!
...except you can't, because again, the LDS Church ended its practice of full disclosure back in 1959!
Oh, and there is the little matter of the new tithing slips adopted in 2012 (the link is to LDS Living website, which is a division of Deseret Book, an LDS-owned corporation), which include the newly-placed reminder: "Though reasonable efforts will be made globally to use donations as designated, all donations become the Church's property and will be used at the Church's sole discretion to further the Church's overall mission."
In other words, while they will make 'reasonable efforts' to use the donations as designated, they don't actually have to, and if they don't, you can't say boo about it, because your money is now their money. So what if they use it to build a mall, become the largest single landowner in the state of Florida, operate "largely commercial" tourist locations in Hawaii and so on and never have to tell you a thing about it?
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He is the way
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Yes I know that no tithing money was used to build the city creek mall. Yes the church owns a lot of land and a huge warehouse that is used for welfare to help families in need:
https://www.lds.org/media-library/v...acilities-bishops-central-storehouse?lang=eng
I know that the money that is given to the church is used for correct purposes and not to steal from the poor and give to the rich as is done by some religious organizations:
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-new...llowers-for-54m-for-private-jet-1244915267554
I also believe that the LDS welfare system is managed better than the government welfare system. The government welfare system is helped immensely by the LDS welfare system. The PCC in Hawaii has helped numerous students pay their way through college. My question is why are you trying so hard to make good look evil?
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Remember what I said earlier about the church producing much of the material in the welfare system?
Where do you think it comes from?
Hence all the farms and ranches. They do enough to be commercially viable on their own, with a chunk of the excess, both cash and food produced, going into the welfare system.
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dzheremi
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Based on what? LDS newsroom press releases?
Are you trying to claim that they attempted to become the largest landowner in Florida in order to build the large warehouse in that video? Because, no, that is demonstrably false. The plan in that case is to open up massive tracts of land for raising cattle and alligators (are the storehouses to be stocked with beef and alligator meat from Deseret Ranch, Fl.?), and also build housing developments which will generate more profit for the LDS Church. It's not some kind altruistic, humanitarian move, and it is not without controversy for the potential impact it could have, both environmentally and in other ways.
And your source for that is...?
Absolutely irrelevant. We are not talking about televangelists, but if we were the argument could be made that at least the televangelist is open about what they want the money for, rather than the LDS Church approach of making 'reasonable attempts' to spend the money as requested, but giving themselves a massive out should something more lucrative appear, as I've already shown by reference to LDS websites concerning the change to the tithing slips.
I frankly don't care about what you believe; I care about what you can show.
Yeah...at BYU, where they will learn to be good tithe-paying Mormons and all about how Joseph Smith's supposed Egyptian translations are in line with Egyptological studies, and all kind of other LDS-conforming lies which make them unfit to do anything in the real world outside of the Mormon bubble. Did you miss the bit in the Reuters story from 2012 where it points out the LDS Church doesn't really have an education system to sustain outside of its three BYU campuses and the LDS Business College? Or the bit in the Wikipedia link about how 70% of the employees at PCC are BYU Hawaii students?
"Evil" is definitely a bit more dramatic than I would put it, but since you've asked, it should be pointed out that it is a closed system where the situation does not warrant it being so outside of the LDS Church's advantage created by providing a kind of cradle-to-grave dependency on the part of its members, which naturally discourages them from leaving or even questioning, and hence helps to ensure that the tithes will continue to flow in for the foreseeable future: "Come work at an LDS business, and then you can go to LDS college using the scholarship that the LDS Church has given you for working at its business, and then when you get out of your LDS education and find that you can't actually get a job in the real world with your degree in pseudo-scientific baloney, you can come to the LDS Bishop's Storehouse and get some LDS handouts, so long as you allow the LDS Church to look over your finances, to make sure that you're being responsible with the money that you're supposed to be giving to the LDS Church to keep it all going!"
It's like the old Tennessee Ford hit "16 Tons"...do you know it? "St. Peter, don'tcha call me, I can't go! I owe my soul to the LDS store!" (and university...and housing development that I live in...)
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You do realize that non-Mormons actively attend college through the BYU system, right?
The whole "private" bit is in large part so that the church can subsidize the college system's operating expenses, thereby driving tuition down.
Back before "Business Week" magazine got bought out by Bloomberg, BYU Provo's Marriott School of Business had a permanent spot on their list of top 40 B-schools in the US. This was because, they said, the Marriott School offered Ivy League-level education for the cost of a much cheaper institution.
Yeah - BYU is on par with, if not cheaper than, some state colleges throughout the nation.
BYU's nursing, law, and animation programs also frequently get regional and national attention, something that keeps attracting folks from all over.
Did that article talk about the church's home-school, distance-learning, and correspondence programs? Thanks to programs like Pathways, you can get an associate's from BYU practically without having to set foot on a campus. There are regional representatives you meet with weekly for courses to ensure that you're a real person, but beyond that it's self-paced study at home.
That's why it was founded in the first place.
BYU Hawaii was created to establish a college in the Pacific Islands. Problem was, the cost of travel meant that every summer, most students would have to head home so that they could work in order to pay the cost of not only college but being away from home and even getting there in the first place.
Thus, the Polynesian Culture Center: it's a place where the college students can work that's near the campus and so permits them to attend summer classes if they choose.
Did you really just say that?
BTW, most peeps don't work for the church or go to BYU. There are other jobs and colleges.
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