.
You can say stupid all you want, but many men and women who love each other want to be together with their families for eternity, and there is only 1 church that gives them any hope of such an arrangement.
I don't think anyone here has anything against men and women loving each other and wanting to be with their families (I sure don't). Once again, it is a matter of your conflating satisfying that desire with teaching the truth that is the problem. You agreed in your other reply that things are not true just because they may make people happy. All I'm doing is extending that, which you already believe in, to apply to your religion and its false doctrines.
They are neither gullible nor preyed upon.
I believe they are.
These are God fearing, Jesus loving people with as much intelligence as you have.
It has nothing to do with intelligence, Peter. You don't need to be particularly intelligent to know that marriage ends at death. That's why marriage vows in the West usually include "'til death do us part", and why we have concepts like widow and widower.
There is another notable example way earlier on in the history of Christianity, about the Patriarch of Alexandria who did not believe the doctrine of the Patriarch of Rome or the Patriarch of Constantinople, and decided to take his ball and go home. After many years of trying to reconcile with the Mother Church, the Patriarch of Alexandria and the Patriarch of Antioch were excommunicated from the Church in 451, never, even until today to be reconciled.
Yeaaaah...just like last time you brought this up, this has nothing to do with the topic at hand, and you have no clue what you're talking about.
This schism involved millions of people, who were torn away from the true church and taken into a new church without the blessings of Rome and Constantinople, which were preeminent 1 & 2.
If you suddenly care so much about the supposed "blessings of Rome and Constantinople", and this isn't just a cynical attempt to use history that you don't understand to prove a point you can't make with it (you'd understand that if you actually understood the history behind the event you're now attempting to exploit), why don't you leave Mormonism and become Catholic or Eastern Orthodox? Either of these would be better than Mormonism. They may be wrong with regard to Chalcedon and the Tome from the Oriental Orthodox perspective, but they're still Christian churches, and neither of them believe in the soul-threatening blasphemies of Mormonism.
IOW they were the Mother (true) church and your leader took them out of the true church to a church that he and his bishops devised.
Again, if they're the true Church, why aren't
you in them? Why are you in an untrue 'church' like that of the Latter Day Saints?
If this is what you think of JS, who didn't believe the Mother church, you better look a little closer to home and Dioscorus, who didn't believe the Mother Church, because Dioscorus has affected billions of people by now. Big difference, but the same reason to split.
Not at all, Peter, and I don't have the energy to explain to you
again why this is a very inapt (and
inept) attempt at comparison or equivocation when you clearly didn't bother to listen or learn last time I explained it to you. Suffice it to say that HH Pope St. Dioscorus was not the Joseph Smith of his day (that dishonor would probably go to Montanus and his prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, whose heresy -- Montanism -- existed until the 8th century, long after Chalcedon), and no one on
any side of the Chalcedonian split believes that the Church was therefore 'taken from the earth' or needed to be 'restored' on account of this sad event. So it's really not a comparable situation at all, and does nothing to bolster any ahistorical claim of Mormonism or individual Mormons such as yourself.
It makes as much sense of you calling the restitution of all things, the second coming of Christ.
How do you figure?
If Paul meant the second coming of Christ he would have said, whom the heaven must receive until the second coming of Christ. OR whom the heavens must receive until the millennium of Christ.
Why would he need to put it that way, and why do you assume that the apostles were millennialists? Because
your religion is?
Either way why code it by calling it a restitution? He wouldn't because he knew it was not the second coming, but a restoring of all thing from the Chruch of Jesus Christ of the Adamic dispensation, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Abrahamic dispensation, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Israel, the Church of Jesus Christ of Davidic dispensation, the Church of Jesus Christ of Daniel dispensation, the Church of Jesus Christ of the First Century and finally to restore all things through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to help the world prepare for the second coming of Christ and the millennium of Christ.
Similar to the above, why do you read your own religion's dispensationalism into the New Testament itself? Dispensationalism didn't even exist until after the Protestant Reformation, being codified and systematized quite late after that with the teachings of people like
John Nelson Darby.
Also, the same St. Paul who speaks in Acts of the restitution of all things called
the Church itself to which He belonged "the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16), which would be a pretty weird thing to say if he felt that there was somehow a "Church of Jesus Christ of the Israel" existing in some other time period that was not the one to which he belonged. What's the deal with that?
Besides the sage words of you fathers amount to nothing but saying the scripture, they do not give us an interpretation of what the restitution of all things is, they just state that there will be one as the scripture says. As for Moses saying there will be a prophet like me, that refers to the Christ of the first century, that he would come, which he did.
Seeing as how my point was to show how the early Church itself read the passage in question and to not go beyond that (as your religion does), I'm comfortable following their example and not yours.
I had hoped to avoid a more in-depth coverage of this issue, as it takes up a lot of space and I don't doubt you're just going to wave it off anyway since it doesn't fit your LDS-warped interpretation of the scriptures, but to really understand what "restitution" means in both the immediate context of the verses you are fixated on and soteriologically, you need to read the entire chapter from the beginning, so let's do that up through the quoted portion. Here it is, from the NKJV:
Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms from those who entered the temple; who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked for alms. And fixing his eyes on him, with John, Peter said, "Look at us." So he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. Then Peter said, "Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them--walking, leaping, and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed.
So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: "Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said to the fathers, 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear in all things, whatever He says to you.
+++
As you can tell from reading it from the beginning and not just quote mining, this portion comes after the healing of a lame man, and by this event the apostles connect his restoration at which the people all marveled to the
restitution of all things which comes with the sending of Christ and His eventual return (it is particularly poignant in this context, as they rightly point out that people now look at them with amazement for having done what they have done, while those same people thought nothing of crucifying the One in Whose name they now perform miracles). It is obviously not about the restoration of a church, or lost things from the scriptures, or anything else LDS try to make it be about. After all, following your logic, if he had meant those things, why would he not have said "the restoration of the Church" or similar? Something tells me you'll suddenly have plenty of objections to this type of reasoning, as is right.
Christ will indeed come a second time to rule and reign for 1,000 years
Nope! Wrong! "Whose kingdom shall have
NO END."
but before that happens there had to be a restitution/restoration of all things.
Mhm. He is coming again in His glory to judge the living and the dead. That's when it will happen, on the last day.
JS, through the instructions of Jesus Christ accomplished that restitution and that restitution is still happening even today as the prophets of Jesus Christ continue to receive instruction from him.
I know you really believe in this stuff, so I'm going to try to not be too harsh about it, but this is very obviously not what that passage is about, and very obviously not what the entire Bible and all of salvation history is about. Joseph Smith didn't restore anything because nothing was lost/needing to be restored in the first place, just like there are no prophets needed today because the Holy Spirit has come, and it is the Holy Spirit (not any prophet) Who is promised by Jesus Christ our Lord and God to lead us into
all truth (John 16:13). Since the Holy Spirit descended upon the gathered believers at Pentecost in 33 AD, as recorded in the Bible itself, we can count that as accomplished.
I can understand your lack of knowledge about this subject, you have never heard it this way
I prefer to think of it as not being dictated to in Biblical interpretation by a non-Christian attempting to propagate his non-Christian religion on a Christian forum, but hey...tomato/tomahto.
but I ask you again, when was there an event that took place, where there was a restitution of all things? None, so your default around it must be that it will not happen until Jesus comes a second time. But I will tell you it has already happened and things are well on their way and we look forward to the second coming of Christ.
See, here's the problem with this, Peter: I keep telling you it is a foretelling of the return of Christ, which has yet to happen according to Christianity (my religion), and because you are a Mormon and believe it already signifies something else that has already occurred in your religion, you simply ignore what I've told you already and ask the question again, and presume that I have no answer for it even though I've answered it several times.
This is not only sort of disrespectful (I'm sure it's not intentionally so, but it makes it very clear that you are not paying attention to my answers, which makes me wonder why I'm even bothering to interact with you; I'm not asking you to accept my answers as true if you don't want to, but at least recognize that they've been given already, please), it also guarantees that we will talk in circles. I'm not interested in that.
I have quoted you many scriptures from the bible about the apostasy and the restitution, so yes the bible does support JS in this effort.
No, Peter. You have quoted me several scriptural passages that in the Mormon reading of the scriptures supposedly support the Mormon doctrine of 'the great apostasy', but since the early Church itself never interpreted them that way, and they don't actually say anything of the sort (some apostasizing ≠ 'the Great Apostasy', or else Mormonism and all forms of restorationism in themselves would be proof of it), I must continue to disagree. The Bible does not support JS in anything. Mormon mangling of scripture to try to make it fit with their distinctive beliefs does, but you guys didn't write the Bible, nor can you interpret it correctly. Stick to interpreting the things you did write, like the BOM, PGP, and D&C. The Bible is the work and property of the Christian Church.[/QUOTE]
