LDS The Claim

[mmksparbud]

They are seen, heard and doing the work of God. They just are not recognized.

By whom? Not by any humans. How then, do you know what they are doing?

 

[chevyontheriver]

I believe the priesthood was taken away.

When? In what year? Based on what documents?

 

[Hrairoo]

They were NOT men they are translated beings like Elijah and can not be killed. Neither are they resurrected beings, but they will be once they are changed in the twinkling of an eye. The priesthood power was taken away from MAN not translated beings.

This doesn't make sense. You do realize that?

And it doesn't really refute what I said, either. So, all this time, since Christ's resurrection, these four beings were on the Earth and they let the world fall into apostasy. They were just eternal missionaries, going around doing little "good deeds" for folks but then watched as those people went to evil churches and had misguided beliefs about their Saviour. They were given the dictate to bring more people to Christ. They failed and the church became so corrupt that there had to be a Restoration. And not a simple, "hey, you got this or that scripture wrong" but whole swaths of crucial doctrine wrong or completely missing. They were given immortality and told to do something for no reason.

 

[Hrairoo]

I believe the priesthood was taken away.

When? Wasn't John, John the Revelator who wrote Revelations? So, after Christ died, resurrected, and went up to Heaven, John was still making scripture and writing letters, right? So, when did his priesthood become null and void(for MAN) because he became "translated". Do you have a specific time frame for when he stopped being just a disciple proselytizing for real, and became the ghost of Christmas past?

 

[He is the way]

Well, reality disagrees with you. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

God would not suffer His priesthood to be used by some of the atrocities that were supposedly done in the name of God by some of the people you listed. God took the priesthood from them and they were left to the wisdom of man.

 

[Aussie Pete]

"The Claim Only two Christian churches really have a leg to stand on when it comes to claiming the authority to act in God’s name, the Catholic church who claims to have had the authority all along since the days of Peter the chief Apostle, and the Latter-day Saints, who claim that God, and Christ himself returned to earth and restored Christ’s ancient Church, complete with the authority to act in God’s name, to the prophet Joseph Smith. If the Catholic church has the priesthood then by definition all other churches have no rights to the priesthood, since they left the only church that had the authority from God to act in his name. All differences of doctrinal opinion aside, that is pretty clear. If the Lord had to come back to earth and restore his Church and his ancient authority once again through Joseph Smith, then that means the Catholic church lost their authority to act in God’s name long, long ago. Otherwise the Lord wouldn’t have had to come back to give it to us again."
- Kelly Merrill
The Priesthood vs. the Power of the Priesthood | Gospelstudy.us

Choose:
Catholic or Mormon

And it came to pass that he said unto me: Look, and behold that great and abominable church, which is the mother of abominations, whose founder is the devil.

And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the harlot of all the earth.

And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the harlot of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.

And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the harlot who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great harlot whom I saw.
Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 14: 9 - 12
1 Nephi 14

The premise that Roman Catholicism has the priesthood is patently false. One of the foundational truths of protestant believers is that all who are born again are priests. (1 Peter 2:9) Lord Jesus is the great High Priest, not Peter, the pope or any other man. Mormons are simply deceived. Joseph Smith was a false prophet. "Let no one deceive you with vain words..." Ephesians 5:6

 

[Aussie Pete]

That is still future friend.

You obviously do not read the news, have children at school, listen to the PC brigade rant or the lies of BLM and other leftist groups.

 

[He is the way]

Salvation is in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ. Who would be so demented as to divide these things pertaining to Him, saying that this over here is a work, while that over there is grace, etc.?

You are putting your phony baloney Mormon occultic temple work matrix over the scriptures and then saying that the rest of us can't understand them because we don't have that same set of presuppositions informing our reading. Thank God for that.

God is a fair God and gives everyone the opportunity to return to Him through the proxy work for them through His Son and others.

 

[He is the way]

When? Wasn't John, John the Revelator who wrote Revelations? So, after Christ died, resurrected, and went up to Heaven, John was still making scripture and writing letters, right? So, when did his priesthood become null and void(for MAN) because he became "translated". Do you have a specific time frame for when he stopped being just a disciple proselytizing for real, and became the ghost of Christmas past?

The gospel of Jesus Christ was restored with all of the keys after the priesthood was taken from MAN. Translated beings such as Elijah have had that priesthood since before they were translated, but they are changed beings and not classified as MEN. Resurrected beings are not classified as MEN either.

 

[He is the way]

By whom? Not by any humans. How then, do you know what they are doing?

They are seen by humans and they continue to do God's work on the earth.

 

[He is the way]

When? In what year? Based on what documents?

I don't know what year, God knows.

 

[He is the way]

When? Wasn't John, John the Revelator who wrote Revelations? So, after Christ died, resurrected, and went up to Heaven, John was still making scripture and writing letters, right? So, when did his priesthood become null and void(for MAN) because he became "translated". Do you have a specific time frame for when he stopped being just a disciple proselytizing for real, and became the ghost of Christmas past?

Like Elijah John was translated. I don't know when, but he was and he became a translated being. The priesthood was taken from man not Gods, resurrected beings, or translated beings.

 

[dzheremi]

God would not suffer His priesthood to be used by some of the atrocities that were supposedly done in the name of God by some of the people you listed. God took the priesthood from them and they were left to the wisdom of man.

What people I listed? I showed two plaques sharing some historical details of the churches of Rome and Jerusalem.

Also, anything that you cannot prove and instead just assert based on nothing more than your religion's stance towards Christianity can be set aside very easily by literally anyone who has a different stance than you. The crucial difference between you and I, however, is that my stance is actually informed by history (contested history, sure, but then that would always be the case, since choosing one historical outlook necessarily privileges it over others), whereas yours is informed by nothing, because none of your religion's leaders have ever bothered to actually look at the historical claims and roots of the preexisting Christian churches, since they've all chosen to believe Joseph Smith's very stupid and very obvious lies instead.

All I'm saying is that anyone with even the tiniest shred of curiosity as to how and why we've ended up with the different churches at different historical centers of Christianity being as they are (which everyone should have if they're going to be claiming anything about the history of Christianity or any of its major figures, as Mormons definitely do) should actually want to find and look at things like the monuments I mentioned, the papyrological evidence for the earliest transmission of the scriptures, the vast collection of Early Church Fathers and other commenters on the life of the Church, etc. As it is, you have in Mormonism a religion that makes a bunch of historical claims about the Church and its supposed 'restoration', but not only absent the evidence necessary to sustain those claims, but actually against the copious evidence that proves those same claims wrong.

And yet you still expect to be taken seriously. You still want to sit at the adult table with all the actual Christian churches that have real reasons for existing and aren't based on Hebrew Indian magical seer stone gobbledygook.

No. It's never going to happen.

But that's the real reason why you have to believe in 'proxy' work and all the other good works you claim your religion does: because those are in some sense a substitute for being rooted in anything real. It's as simple as claiming that everything that came before you was by its very nature corrupted and based in ignorance and/or wickedness of this or that kind, and then claiming to have the true way that is totally not-coincidentally built upon the denial of the core beliefs of the religion that you claim your 'restoration' is to replace. The Islamic prophet Mohammed (a.k.a. Arabian Proto-JS) claimed the same by calling all of existence before his own 'revelations' the "time of ignorance", and much earlier false prophets like Montanus also claimed some variation of that during the early centuries of the Church. So since we'd been through this very same thing numerous times long before Joseph Smith came around, why do you or any Mormon think you should be taken seriously when your true religious forerunners (this group of 'new prophets', which were all rejected by Christianity) were not?

Do you think you could've avoided being this easily dismissible by actually reading about the history of Christianity from outside of the Mormon paradigm before claiming a propos of nothing that Mormonism is the 'restoration' of the early Church? I think you could have, but apparently you'd rather look like an idiot by parroting the claims of another idiot who also didn't realize what an idiot he looked like because he didn't bother to learn anything about what he was rejecting before doing so either.

It's a real shame, this Church of Perpetual Latter-Day Idiocy we know as Mormonism. It could've been mercifully put down at any point before right now by anyone in any position of authority actually bothering to read and learn, but noooooooo, the 'restoration' of the Church (that never actually went anywhere) must continue because...well, because the phony power structure that is built atop JS' foundation of historical illiteracy, racism, bigamy, and lying must continue, or else the likes of Elders Holland, Eyring, et al. might have to actually get real jobs (or just live off their retirement savings, like every other elderly person does) that don't consist of obfuscating with the non-Mormon public while emotionally manipulating everyone who has bought into JS' lies. And Lord knows we can't have that, for some reason!

 

[dzheremi]

God is a fair God and gives everyone the opportunity to return to Him through the proxy work for them through His Son and others.

Nonsense. I don't believe that any such 'ordinances' or whatever can add anything to Christ's mysterious and glorious resurrection, and that is what grants us eternal life, not the actions of some Mormon teenagers who are wasting their young spiritual lives getting dunked in a mechanical fashion over and over in the name of an endless list of dead people.

 

[mmksparbud]

God is a fair God and gives everyone the opportunity to return to Him through the proxy work for them through His Son and others.

The gospel of Jesus Christ was restored with all of the keys after the priesthood was taken from MAN. Translated beings such as Elijah have had that priesthood since before they were translated, but they are changed beings and not classified as MEN. Resurrected beings are not classified as MEN either.

Like Elijah John was translated. I don't know when, but he was and he became a translated being. The priesthood was taken from man not Gods, resurrected beings, or translated beings.

Strange that the translation of others has been mentioned in scripture, but not that of John, Esp. when the bible expressly says, Jesus did not say John would not die.
So, John was changed into a translated being and left on earth. He was (is ) a Priest. How can the Priesthood have been removed if these 4 beings had it? They were left on earth to porotect the Priesthood? They did a lousy job of it for it became corrupted under their watch. 4 beings coulodn't keep that from happening when One Angel could destroy an army of 1000's!! After being translated, are we not then higher than the angels? They've done exactly as much good as though they had not been here at all!! Tbe priesthood was only taken from men---what priesthood was that? For there is not one single word about any apostle or diciples being designated a priest and the only priest mentioned is Jesus Christ. Jesus is is our High Priest in the heavenly Temple and we all haver been named priests in this world and the next--so what exactly was taken? There is no Temple except the heavenly Temple from which our High Priest is officiating so no esartly temple for any earthly Priests. The only nofficials mentioned are bishops and deacons , etc---no priests mentioned.

The work of the Priests was to tend to the temple. To officiate over the cleansing of sins was the work of the High Priest alone---and we have one. All that the priests were to do, preparing and cleaning the vessels of the temple, presiding over the offerings, none oif that was being done anymoire for there was no more temple, certainly not after it had been burned down.They had nothing to do after it burned down. No more Jewish Priests---never had there been any Chnristian priests set up. There is no official record of a single Chnristian Priest and what his duty was as was written for the Jewish Priests.
So what is it that these beings are doing when God created the angels as His Messengers. They are the ones that God has used throghout history to direct, protect, guide, and watch over us? Little chikldren even have their own angels also. So what were they left here to do? Nothing. All translated beings have remained in the pure air of heaven itself. They do not come into contact with this earth, and neither has Jesus. They have been here only through visions and dreams and will not touch this sin ridden world again until it is renewed.

 

[Hrairoo]

Do you think you could've avoided being this easily dismissible by actually reading about the history of Christianity from outside of the Mormon paradigm before claiming a propos of nothing that Mormonism is the 'restoration' of the early Church? I think you could have, but apparently you'd rather look like an idiot by parroting the claims of another idiot who also didn't realize what an idiot he looked like because he didn't bother to learn anything about what he was rejecting before doing so either.

Brilliant, @dzheremi . I just wanted to add that this kind of extreme information control is one of the markers for a cult(qualifying for the BITE model doesn't automatically make a religion a cult but ranking high on every single part of the acronym does).

There is so much I have learned about the history of Christianity since leaving the LDS cult that it definitely feels like their version of history is something a 17 year old boy in the 19th century would conceptualize based on his knowledge of the world and the Bible. Their greatest claim of divinity is how Joseph Smith only had a third grade education. So, if you wonder why LDS have a limited scope on history, it is because of the educational limits of its founder.

 

[dzheremi]

Brilliant, @dzheremi . I just wanted to add that this kind of extreme information control is one of the markers for a cult(qualifying for the BITE model doesn't automatically make a religion a cult but ranking high on every single part of the acronym does).

There is so much I have learned about the history of Christianity since leaving the LDS cult that it definitely feels like their version of history is something a 17 year old boy in the 19th century would conceptualize based on his knowledge of the world and the Bible. Their greatest claim of divinity is how Joseph Smith only had a third grade education. So, if you wonder why LDS have a limited scope on history, it is because of the educational limits of its founder.

Sure, and I'm more sympathetic to that than maybe my post would let on. When I first started interacting with Mormons here on CF, some of them used to claim that I was trying to make salvation into a "theology quiz" whereby if you haven't read this or that Early Church Father, or if you didn't know about the goings on of such and such Council from the 3rd/4th/5th century or whatever, then you were not able to be saved or however they'd put it, but that wasn't and never has been the point. Not only are we not talking about salvation as such in this discussion (or at least we weren't until HITW decided to bring up the LDS stance on works), but when we do then there are more than enough child martyrs and otherwise unlearned people in the history of Christianity to prove that salvation is not a matter of historical knowledge.

But certainly historical claims -- like the claim that the Church was corrupted at an early date -- should be supported with reference to history, since that's what you're dealing with by making such claims to begin with. So I find the fact that Mormons seem unable or unwilling to do so to be a bit more irritating than it needs to be, as it's not like it would be impossible for them to say "The great apostasy happened in/was happening by 200 AD" or similar, and then support it with reference to whatever was happening at the time they've chosen that they feel supports that claim. And in fact, to the extent that I've ever seen a Mormon here do so, it was very telling that he had to pretty much immediately retract his claim after it was pointed out that something that he thought was characteristic of the 'corruption' of the early Church actually predated his chosen date by some decades. Basically, "Oh, 200 AD is too late because there's evidence of ____ (objectionable practice) already being well-established in the 170s? Uh, I meant the 170s...the Great Apostasy was happening by the 170s..."

It really does seem like for Mormons, nothing exists for the sake of loving or caring about that thing itself as some aspect of or testament to the Christian faith, but instead everything exists and matters only to the extent that it can be used to buttress the claims of Mormonism.

This is so different than in Christianity, wherein things like the RCC's claims of historical continuity with the Church of Rome written about in the scriptures exist in some sense separately from any of our own personal beliefs in those historical claims (read: that plaque with all the Roman Popes' names written on it exists there as a testament to the early Christian presence in that city whether or not the people looking at it or photographing it are themselves Roman Catholics), and the many monuments to an early Christian presence in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, India, etc. exist likewise separately from the claims of any particular churches to those territories, such that they really do form a kind of common heritage that can and in my mind should be drawn upon by all Christians, not disregarding subsequent schisms and competing claims, but recognizing any of those to be necessarily later as a matter of the historical record.

To me, that's the real tragedy of the Mormon ahistorical (anti-historical?) approach: not only does it condemn them to live in a house of cards hastily built by JS et al. and necessarily limited by JS' own limitations, but it robs them of the great treasure they could also partake of if they would only allow themselves the intellectual freedom to draw upon these resources as evidence of the history of Christianity. This wouldn't necessarily need to involve leaving Mormonism (though to be 'fair' to the LDS cult in a manner they would never be to us, I can recognize that this is probably what would happen, so it definitely makes sense that they are discouraged from doing so), just like how I as a non-RC can reference some RC-specific claims without believing that the RCC is what its own people say it is, but it would certainly at least put them on better footing to be making claims of the type that they routinely make. So they seem to be handicapping themselves unnecessarily.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I don't know what year, God knows.

There IS a substantial historical record. If it happened you should be able to tell me when it happened.

 

[dzheremi]

I don't know what year, God knows.

What a copout. This idea is what the founding of your entire religion is based on, yet you openly admit that you don't know the relevant details, "God knows"?

Funny how you'll pass the buck to your God instead of answering a straightforward question (which chevyontheriver is right, you really should know), but when Jesus Christ, Who is Lord and God of the Christians, says that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, you (thanks to JS) say "Hold on; not so fast there, Jesus..."

It couldn't be more clear that you follow Joseph Smith, not Jesus Christ. Too bad for you then that Joseph Smith needed to follow Jesus Christ too, and yet did not do so. You need a better role model, which could be literally any Christian of note from the past 2,000 years, since literally any form of Christianity is better than being a pseudo-Christian cult like Mormonism.

 

[He is the way]

What people I listed? I showed two plaques sharing some historical details of the churches of Rome and Jerusalem.

Also, anything that you cannot prove and instead just assert based on nothing more than your religion's stance towards Christianity can be set aside very easily by literally anyone who has a different stance than you. The crucial difference between you and I, however, is that my stance is actually informed by history (contested history, sure, but then that would always be the case, since choosing one historical outlook necessarily privileges it over others), whereas yours is informed by nothing, because none of your religion's leaders have ever bothered to actually look at the historical claims and roots of the preexisting Christian churches, since they've all chosen to believe Joseph Smith's very stupid and very obvious lies instead.

All I'm saying is that anyone with even the tiniest shred of curiosity as to how and why we've ended up with the different churches at different historical centers of Christianity being as they are (which everyone should have if they're going to be claiming anything about the history of Christianity or any of its major figures, as Mormons definitely do) should actually want to find and look at things like the monuments I mentioned, the papyrological evidence for the earliest transmission of the scriptures, the vast collection of Early Church Fathers and other commenters on the life of the Church, etc. As it is, you have in Mormonism a religion that makes a bunch of historical claims about the Church and its supposed 'restoration', but not only absent the evidence necessary to sustain those claims, but actually against the copious evidence that proves those same claims wrong.

And yet you still expect to be taken seriously. You still want to sit at the adult table with all the actual Christian churches that have real reasons for existing and aren't based on Hebrew Indian magical seer stone gobbledygook.

No. It's never going to happen.

But that's the real reason why you have to believe in 'proxy' work and all the other good works you claim your religion does: because those are in some sense a substitute for being rooted in anything real. It's as simple as claiming that everything that came before you was by its very nature corrupted and based in ignorance and/or wickedness of this or that kind, and then claiming to have the true way that is totally not-coincidentally built upon the denial of the core beliefs of the religion that you claim your 'restoration' is to replace. The Islamic prophet Mohammed (a.k.a. Arabian Proto-JS) claimed the same by calling all of existence before his own 'revelations' the "time of ignorance", and much earlier false prophets like Montanus also claimed some variation of that during the early centuries of the Church. So since we'd been through this very same thing numerous times long before Joseph Smith came around, why do you or any Mormon think you should be taken seriously when your true religious forerunners (this group of 'new prophets', which were all rejected by Christianity) were not?

Do you think you could've avoided being this easily dismissible by actually reading about the history of Christianity from outside of the Mormon paradigm before claiming a propos of nothing that Mormonism is the 'restoration' of the early Church? I think you could have, but apparently you'd rather look like an idiot by parroting the claims of another idiot who also didn't realize what an idiot he looked like because he didn't bother to learn anything about what he was rejecting before doing so either.

It's a real shame, this Church of Perpetual Latter-Day Idiocy we know as Mormonism. It could've been mercifully put down at any point before right now by anyone in any position of authority actually bothering to read and learn, but noooooooo, the 'restoration' of the Church (that never actually went anywhere) must continue because...well, because the phony power structure that is built atop JS' foundation of historical illiteracy, racism, bigamy, and lying must continue, or else the likes of Elders Holland, Eyring, et al. might have to actually get real jobs (or just live off their retirement savings, like every other elderly person does) that don't consist of obfuscating with the non-Mormon public while emotionally manipulating everyone who has bought into JS' lies. And Lord knows we can't have that, for some reason!

Although I didn't see him on your list, this is the sort of thing that took the priesthood from the earth:

“Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with Church dogma must be burned without pity.”
– Pope Innocent III

From: The Horrors of the Church and Its Holy Inquisition