Hi folks,
It's that time of the year - Christmas, my daughter's favorite time of year, and mine too. I never really gave it much thought about how Mormons celebrate Christmas, or even if they do, until I was recently interviewed and asked the question. The show's host brought up about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and their beautiful renditions of many of the classic songs of Christmas and then asked me about Mormons and how they celebrate Christmas. I found a number of articles on Mormon Christmas traditions and ways that Mormons celebrate Christmas and have taken some excerpts to post in order to get your comments. Feel free to share your thoughts. I have put in bold the statements that I thought were especially interesting.
Art
Mormons know by modern revelation that the Savior of the World was born in the spring, April 6th specifically. However, the only commemoration of the Lord's birth, life, death, and resurrection that is specifically commanded by the scriptures is the sacrament of the Lord's supper. Jesus commanded his disciples to partake of the emblems of his flesh and blood in remembrance of him. In obedience to this commandment, latter-day saints partake of the sacrament at weekly church meetings. Because the scriptures and modern revelation do not designate any other special observances beyond the Lord's supper, we joyously celebrate the wonderful traditions of Christmas with the rest of Christendom in December.
The Christmas holiday is an invitation to give of ourselves and to reach out to others in love and compassion. It reminds us of the reality of the Living Christ. The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi reveled in a vision wherein he observed the nativity and felt the overpowering love of God for his children. As an angel revealed to him the birth of Christ, which would take place 600 years in Nephi's future, the heavenly messenger asked Nephi, "...Knowest thou the condescension of God? Nephi replied, "...I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things." Nephi then beheld Mary in vision and described the experience:
"And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh. And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit; and after she had been carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying: Look! And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw? And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things. (1 Nephi 11:16-22)
At Christmas, we reflect upon the wonderful Bible chapters that recount the Lord's birth and the miracles associated therewith. The Christmas story is one of revelation, visions, and angels. We are reminded of the angel Gabriel, who came first to Zacharias, father of John the Baptist to announce the birth of the forerunner to the Messiah, who would prepare the way for him. We reflect upon the message of this same Gabriel who announced to the Virgin Mary that she would become the mother of the Son of God. We consider that angels appeared to shepherds in the field and announced glad tidings. The prophetic insights of two elderly Jews in the temple, Simeon and Anna, who were given to know of the advent of their Messiah as his parents brought him to present to the Lord. Their testimony reminds us that God keeps his promises and that he gives knowledge by the Holy Ghost to those who seek him.
Is it not strange that modern sectarians deride latter-day saints for their belief in angelic ministrations, visions, and revelations in modern times when our Bible is filled with testimony that these things occur? Is is so odd to believe that the first coming of Jesus Christ would be announced by angelic messengers and prophets, but not his second coming, which will occur in this dispensation? Mormons celebrate, moreso than any other people, the testimony that God can and does speak to his servants and that angels visit the earth once again.
Here's another take on a Mormon Christmas. See anything missing?
A Mormon Christmas
After I converted to Mormonism, would I have to give up beloved wintertime rituals?
I stood Christmas Eve in the sanctuary, spotlights directed at my tinsel halo and white robe. I was 9, a good little Midwestern Methodist girl, one of two Christmas angels assigned to deliver the Luke 2 lines: "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people..."
I opened my mouth - and completely froze. The other angel, undaunted, delivered the line beautifully while I stood there in complete silence, a heavenly Teller to her Penn.
Later while relinquishing my wings, I agonized over my less than celestial debut. The Sunday school president smiled and said in a matter-of-fact tone, "Don't worry. You just had a mental block. All actors get them once in a while." I look back on the pageant with fondness, on that church community with warmth, and on that good woman with particular affection.
During my college years in Boston I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a group that has never developed Christmas worship traditions. Would I learn any new Christmas rituals? Would there be any substitute charm in this new environment? I loved my Protestant Christmas seasons. What would I have to give up?
As it turned out, not much.
During many years in Boston, I saw Christmas pageants in Mormon wards where children forgot lines, waved to their mommies and upstaged baby Jesus. I miss an institutionalized Christmas Eve program with little candles with drip shields, choir robes and processionals down a central aisle, but I have discovered there is lots of leeway for local initiative. Mormons in the Boston area do a bang-up job for the Christmas season.
For years, singers in the ward bundled up to carol in Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill. Carolers from many Christian traditions strolled in little clusters making this look like the quintessential Victorian greeting card - wonderful music backlit by the glow of wrought iron gas lamps, a tickling snowfall, appreciative Brahmin faces smiling in the steamy windows of their red brick town homes. One year, so I hear, a TV newscast looking for local color homed in on the Mormon group singing "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains," our unique and lovely contribution to Christmas hymnody.
Another Christmas tradition that persists in one suburban Boston-area ward begins as early as New England's apple crop. The young men and women of the ward take orders from members for apple pies. On one long, fragrant, gooey night the teenagers make and deliver the pies. The proceeds help buy toys the needy children of the inner city ward.
There have been memorable Christmas events here in the past - a majestic musical program, complete with a processional set to "O Come, O Come Emmanuel;" adults-only Madrigal dinners; and visits by the Sugar "Plump" Fairy tossing bonbons and pirouetting about the cultural hall.
Historically what happens in most LDS wards depends on a variety of factors - how invested the bishop is in music, who is activities chair, who likes kids included in parties, who prefers gala adults-only events, who is willing to tweak instruction and sneak in brass instruments, among others.
This year, our family will go to the Program of Lessons and Carols at Northwestern University. My seminary class will carol in my neighborhood. (Louisburg Square it's not, but it will do.) As a family we always celebrate Advent each of the four Sundays before Christmas - a tradition from my Protestant heritage. We read scripture, sing hymns and light candles sequentially in a wreath. On Christmas Day we may visit another church or just celebrate with family.
The lack of consistent church-wide programs is fine with me. I celebrate with my community both in their sanctuaries and in our chapels. I maintain traditions from my heritage that link me to my non-Mormon family in precious ways. I am connected to the whole Christian community.
And now that I'm an adult, I'm prepared to celebrate the angel's good news: "I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people...."
This next excerpt, from an article written by Blake Ostler called Covenant Traditions in the Book of Mormon, is part of his attempt to show the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Does he do a good job?
Ancient Background of the Book of Mormon
There are many features of the Book of Mormon that I believe were beyond the capabilities of Joseph Smith—or of any person living in the early nineteenth century—to devise. Some people have suggested that the Book of Mormon is the kind of book someone could and would write if the author lived in a culture saturated by the Bible, as New England was in the early 1800s. If that were true, then why was Joseph Smith the only one to produce such a book? The Book of Mormon is the only writing coming out of the nineteenth century that faithfully reflects the ancient Israelite covenant tradition. None of the books, articles, or sermons written in Joseph Smith's day presents the eight elements of the ritual pattern that I have shown are found in the Book of Mormon. Nor do any of his "everyday" writings contain anything like this pattern.
Further, I think it is clear and convincing from the similarity between King Benjamin's and King Limhi's presentations that the actions were ritual in nature and were repeated on special occasions. The similarity between the Israelite covenant renewal festivals and what we have recorded from among the Nephites in the Book of Mormon is undeniable. Those who are willing to ignore this type of ancient material in the Book of Mormon overlook what I consider to be compelling evidence.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Book of Mormon is available to us only in English and has passed through the hands of Joseph Smith, its ancient background can be detected throughout the book. The evidence that the Book of Mormon shows the Nephites faithfully carrying out the Israelite ritual tradition, even down to fine details, is for me among the most persuasive of all. It isn't possible that Joseph Smith just blindly duplicated the old Israelite covenant tradition through luck because he had read the Old Testament a good deal. Rather, the Book of Mormon repeats the same pattern and features it in almost identical language, over and over again.
Moreover, the evidence demonstrates that those responsible for keeping the Nephite records were conscious of the fact that their actions were part of a ritual tradition. The nature of the actions, the similarity of the language, and the understanding of the ancient Israelite covenant are simply too precise to be accounted for in terms of luck or even as a result of the most profound abilities in comparative literature. It seems to me that this is one aspect of the Book of Mormon that even the most skeptical of critics cannot explain away.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Twas the Month Before Christmas
Hi folks,
The following parody on the oh so familiar Christmas poem was included in our most recent church bulletin and I thought it was the perfect response to the assault on Christmas and the Christian aspect of this most important holiday.
I give you - "Twas the Month Before Christmas"
Twas the month before Christmas, when all through our land, not a Christian was praying, nor taking a stand.
See, why the PC Police had taken away the reason for Christmas - no one could say. The children were told by their schools not to sing about Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things. It might hurt people's feelings the teachers would say, and December 25th is just a "holiday".
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks, and credit, pushing folks down to the floor just to get it! CD's from Madonna, an X-Box, and I-pod, something was changing, something quite odd! Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa in hopes to sell books by Franken and Fonda.
As Target Stores hung their trees upside down, at Lowe's the word Christmas was nowhere to be found. At K-Mart and Staples and Penney's and Sears, you won't hear the word Christmas - it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty, are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, now Darden, now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzer - on Barack, on Reid, on Boxer, on clinton! At the top of the Senate there arose such a clatter, to eliminate Jesus in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word as they took away our faith, forbidden to speak of salvation and grace. The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded. The Reason for the Season stopped before it had started.
So, as you celebrate "Winter Break" under your "Dream tree", choose your words carefully, choose what you say.
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS, not Happy Holiday!
Please, all Christians, join together and wish everyone you meet during the holidays a MERRY CHRISTMAS.
CHRIST is the Reason for the Christmas Season!
The following parody on the oh so familiar Christmas poem was included in our most recent church bulletin and I thought it was the perfect response to the assault on Christmas and the Christian aspect of this most important holiday.
I give you - "Twas the Month Before Christmas"
Twas the month before Christmas, when all through our land, not a Christian was praying, nor taking a stand.
See, why the PC Police had taken away the reason for Christmas - no one could say. The children were told by their schools not to sing about Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things. It might hurt people's feelings the teachers would say, and December 25th is just a "holiday".
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks, and credit, pushing folks down to the floor just to get it! CD's from Madonna, an X-Box, and I-pod, something was changing, something quite odd! Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa in hopes to sell books by Franken and Fonda.
As Target Stores hung their trees upside down, at Lowe's the word Christmas was nowhere to be found. At K-Mart and Staples and Penney's and Sears, you won't hear the word Christmas - it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty, are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, now Darden, now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzer - on Barack, on Reid, on Boxer, on clinton! At the top of the Senate there arose such a clatter, to eliminate Jesus in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word as they took away our faith, forbidden to speak of salvation and grace. The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded. The Reason for the Season stopped before it had started.
So, as you celebrate "Winter Break" under your "Dream tree", choose your words carefully, choose what you say.
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS, not Happy Holiday!
Please, all Christians, join together and wish everyone you meet during the holidays a MERRY CHRISTMAS.
CHRIST is the Reason for the Christmas Season!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Attempt to overturn Prop 8 - Tail wagging the dog again?
Hi folks,
I suppose that I'm going to take a lot of heat on this one, but I have to speak my mind. There is a group that is currently trying to gather enough votes to try to overturn Prop 8, the "anti-gay" marriage bill, and they have been told by the California Attorney General, in so many words, that he will do as much as he can to help. This is ridiculous. I know that the gay/lesbian community claims that Prop 8 denies them rights but I just don't see it. Where is the evidence? What are the denied rights, other than the fact that they don't have something called a marriage certificate? I am tired of the attacks on marriage as defined in the Bible as the union between a man and a woman. For that matter, I am tired of the attacks on the Bible and Christianity for its stand on marriage and on alternate lifestyles. The marriage issue has been raised and voted upon multiple times and the result has been the same each time, though it has turned into a closer fight than in the past. Why? Because more people are sympathetic to the gay/lesbian community? I don't think so. Like so many other issues, I believe that those people who have in the past voted in favor of legislation like Prop 8 have tired of the fight to defend traditional marriage, or have perhaps been fooled into thinking that it simply doesn't matter anymore. But it DOES matter, especially when there is the distinct possibility that the gay/lesbian lifestyle will not only be taught in school but also that it will be promoted, as in the case of the children several months ago who were brought to a lesbian wedding.
I can guess that by my writing this blog I will be termed a "homophobe" or some other equally obnoxious term. So be it. I have absolutely nothing against gay or lesbian individuals and have had many as good friends my whole life, but I do have a problem with the relentless attacks against traditional marriage, as well as growing legislation that makes it harder and harder to speak my mind without running the risk of being accused of "hate speech" or bigotry, yet people who oppose my views can seemingly say just about anything they wish either to me or about me and I have no recourse. Not only that, but when the Prop 22 campaign was on, several signs in my front yard were vandalized. Prop 22 was the one before Prop 8. The vandalism was so bad that I finally had to post a sign about 15 feet up in a pine tree and literally cover it with heavy wire so that it couldn't be taken down, and even then someone tried to rip up the sign. So much for "free speech".
If I'm not mistaken, something like 37 states have already voted to endorse traditional marriage, and there is the distinct possibility that that number will increase. What the gay/lesbian community doesn't seem to realize, or maybe care about, are the other, more bizarre groups who are just waiting to get their foot in the door when/if more liberal legislation overturns traditional marriage. Also, it is not right, nor is it legal, for a minority to impose its will upon the majority, and the majority clearly supports traditional marriage and the values that go along with it.
The gay/lesbian marriage advocates have plead their case multiple times and they have been voted down multiple times. It is time to move on and leave the issue alone, but I doubt that it will be left alone and that is a shame. As I said before, I have absolutely nothing against the gay/lesbian community, but I do have a problem with the attacks on traditional marriage and the heterosexual lifestyle. If I have offended anyone with this post, I'm sorry but I have to speak my mind and I believe that I have done so in a respectful manner. If anyone wishes to take issue with what i have said, they are free to do so, and as long as it is done in a respectful manner, they have my word that their post will not be deleted.
Art
I suppose that I'm going to take a lot of heat on this one, but I have to speak my mind. There is a group that is currently trying to gather enough votes to try to overturn Prop 8, the "anti-gay" marriage bill, and they have been told by the California Attorney General, in so many words, that he will do as much as he can to help. This is ridiculous. I know that the gay/lesbian community claims that Prop 8 denies them rights but I just don't see it. Where is the evidence? What are the denied rights, other than the fact that they don't have something called a marriage certificate? I am tired of the attacks on marriage as defined in the Bible as the union between a man and a woman. For that matter, I am tired of the attacks on the Bible and Christianity for its stand on marriage and on alternate lifestyles. The marriage issue has been raised and voted upon multiple times and the result has been the same each time, though it has turned into a closer fight than in the past. Why? Because more people are sympathetic to the gay/lesbian community? I don't think so. Like so many other issues, I believe that those people who have in the past voted in favor of legislation like Prop 8 have tired of the fight to defend traditional marriage, or have perhaps been fooled into thinking that it simply doesn't matter anymore. But it DOES matter, especially when there is the distinct possibility that the gay/lesbian lifestyle will not only be taught in school but also that it will be promoted, as in the case of the children several months ago who were brought to a lesbian wedding.
I can guess that by my writing this blog I will be termed a "homophobe" or some other equally obnoxious term. So be it. I have absolutely nothing against gay or lesbian individuals and have had many as good friends my whole life, but I do have a problem with the relentless attacks against traditional marriage, as well as growing legislation that makes it harder and harder to speak my mind without running the risk of being accused of "hate speech" or bigotry, yet people who oppose my views can seemingly say just about anything they wish either to me or about me and I have no recourse. Not only that, but when the Prop 22 campaign was on, several signs in my front yard were vandalized. Prop 22 was the one before Prop 8. The vandalism was so bad that I finally had to post a sign about 15 feet up in a pine tree and literally cover it with heavy wire so that it couldn't be taken down, and even then someone tried to rip up the sign. So much for "free speech".
If I'm not mistaken, something like 37 states have already voted to endorse traditional marriage, and there is the distinct possibility that that number will increase. What the gay/lesbian community doesn't seem to realize, or maybe care about, are the other, more bizarre groups who are just waiting to get their foot in the door when/if more liberal legislation overturns traditional marriage. Also, it is not right, nor is it legal, for a minority to impose its will upon the majority, and the majority clearly supports traditional marriage and the values that go along with it.
The gay/lesbian marriage advocates have plead their case multiple times and they have been voted down multiple times. It is time to move on and leave the issue alone, but I doubt that it will be left alone and that is a shame. As I said before, I have absolutely nothing against the gay/lesbian community, but I do have a problem with the attacks on traditional marriage and the heterosexual lifestyle. If I have offended anyone with this post, I'm sorry but I have to speak my mind and I believe that I have done so in a respectful manner. If anyone wishes to take issue with what i have said, they are free to do so, and as long as it is done in a respectful manner, they have my word that their post will not be deleted.
Art
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The early church and polygamy
This is a post that is actually from a good exmo friend of mine named Jean. It is her thoughts on the early church and polygamy
Art
Some new thoughts on the early church and polygamy - No I'm not for it;-)Share
Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 11:03am
In the beginning was Sidney (Rigdon) and Sidney had the word and Sidney preached the word. And Satan came into his heart and he was jealous of Alexander Campbell who was the Baptist Minister who was his mentor. He wanted to be successful like him and have his very own church.
Now from early in Sidney's life he had been subject to seizures since being dragged by a horse according to his brother John - a physician. Sidney felt that when he had these seizures he was having a religious experience; rather like those that are entheogen induced or even NDE's. He was known to channel dead prophets. He wanted his own church so badly he could taste it. He knew that he would need more than a few changes to some doctrines to beat out the prominent ministers and great minds of the day; he needed a front man; someone with charisma - a known seer. Unfortunately for poor Sidney the man he chose for the job was a megalomaniac with a huge sexual appetite.
After Sidney and partner in crime Oliver (Cowdery) started to write the new bible (using as a base Solomon Spalding's story, Manuscript Found rather than Gold Plates Found) he realized that it would be necessary to convince people that he was actually an apostle like Paul, called by God himself, while Joseph Smith; the front man began his spellbinding performance as a seer. He used his magic stone to tell people where to dig for buried treasure and they believed him and even paid him. When he was taken to court on trial for being a glass looker or conjuror in Bainbridge, NY in 1826, he and others testified of these facts. This was at a time when he supposedly had already seen God and Jesus and the Gold Plates shown him by the angel Moroni, formerly known as Nephi. Joe's job was to pretend to translate the gold plates while Rigdon and Cowdery were working their own magic writing the manuscript for what was to become The Book of Mormon.
They needed a gullible man with money; enter Martin Harris - a great believer in the power of magic; very erratic and joining at least 8 different religions in his life time. Martin was convinced by Joe to mortgage his farm to pay for the printing of the 'translation of the gold plates'. Joe did his job quite well except he couldn't quite keep his story straight; that is quite difficult when you are lying and telling the story you have been told to tell. Keeping their stories all the same became another problem for them later on. Oh what a tangled web they wove.
And it came to pass (lol) that eventually, the 'translation' went off to the printers and the book was printed. When Joe discovered that they couldn't sell any copies of the book and he needed to pay Martin back his mortgage money as promised by himself, the seer, he tried to sell the copyright to the book in Canada after receiving a revelation from God instructing them to do so. God was obviously confused about how gullible Canadians were because the attempt failed.
Back to Sidney whom you will remember, only wanted his own church; not much to ask is it? Sidney and Oliver helped Joseph with the revelations that he spewed out with regularity, but the voices found by computer experts show that they belonged to Sidney and Oliver - not Joe. They did all the ordaining and such BEFORE the church was organized. Now Joe, the megalomaniac, had position and adoration from the growing group of members of The Church of Christ and Sidney started to pout. The ruse was for Parley (Pratt) to pretend to take the Book of Mormon to the preacher Sidney who had managed to pull away after him over 100 or so members of Alexander Campbell's flock of believers. All of the members of this group followed Sidney into the waters of baptism.
When Joe's great position as a prophet of God started to elevate him instead of Sidney, the power struggle began and continued even after Joe's death. Joe's elevated status created for him a pop star type of reputation and his sexual appetite could not be satisfied with only one woman. So many women and so little time!
Enter Fanny Alger, 16 year old housemaid for Emma, Joe's wife. This is Joe's first known affair and it was very quickly hushed up. Oliver and Sidney had not done all that work of deception only to have Joe ruin it by his sexual encounters, just a year or two after launching the new church. Oliver later called it a dirty, nasty little affair
When Joe pulled the same stunt in 1838 with Lucinda Pendleton (Morgan Harris Smith), Oliver's name was blackened and he was excommunicated from the church; a practice that would continue with anyone who refused to do Joe's bidding. As Joe's ego grew, the power struggle between him and Sidney grew to greater heights. Sidney had done all the work, came up with the revelations and Joe kept screwing around causing members to leave or be excommunicated.
As people began to discover Joe's indiscretions he began to take into his confidence an inner circle of men with whom he shared the 'doctrine' of polygamy. Though at first, as the story goes, they were appalled, they soon began to take new wives and their first wives just had to put up with it. Joe meanwhile went on a rampage of (affairs) 'marriages' coercing young teenaged women and the wives of other men with revelations regarding an angel with a drawn sword threatening to take his life if they did not comply.
It is easy to see what was happening here. Not every man could be asked to live polygamy for three reasons.
1. There were not enough women for that to happen
2. Joe knew that many would leave the church if it became known
3. The elite; those in his inner circle needed to feel special in order for him to maintain their allegiance.
So certain 'righteous' men were 'called' to practice polygamy as a higher law in a little secret group, making them feel superior to the others and giving them all the sex they wanted.
Number 1. problem was solved by Joe in marrying other men's wives. He still got to have free reign with his sexual appetite and his growing narcissism without taking women 'off the market'.
Number 2. Keeping it secret kept members in the church and
Number 3. those who DID know were doing it too so they had to be quiet about it.
Sidney was not into polygamy and when Joe decided to add Sidney's daughter Nancy to his harem and was rebuffed, that was pretty much the end of Sidney's days in the Church.
Joe then decided that 34 wives or so was not enough and asked Jane Law to become his polyandrous wife. Jane was very angry and told her husband who happened to be Joe's counselor; true and faithful and not among those who believed that Joe was practicing polygamy, until his very own wife was propositioned. They were excommunicated over this whole nasty little affair - to use Oliver's words and along with some other disgruntled members he bought a printing press and you know the rest of the story; it led to Joseph and brother Hyrum's deaths, leaving many young women widowed, spoiled and taken on then by Brigham and Heber; becoming part of their harems. So sad for these young women who had been duped into thinking that it was required of them by god.
After the Saints had endured their dangerous trek across the plains their sense of solidarity deepened in their trials. In 1857 Brigham Young the person who had wrested leadership from poor Sidney after the death of Joe, announced the revelation on polygamy to all members. Even going so far as saying that men needed to have more than one wife to inherit the highest degree of glory. This is when polygamy got out of hand and the numbers of men practicing polygamy grew until the government of the United States threatened to take the church's assets and to deny Utah statehood. It was not until long after Brigham's death that the practice actually was called to a real halt by the prophet of the day. It continued until 1906 and some members and general authorities still refused to give it up. Today they are known as Fundamentalist Mormons; a name the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints says they have no right to use; they are not Mormons. What is it about the Fundies behavior that makes them any different from the early Mormons? Why don't they have the right to use the name?
What happened to poor old Sidney? Well, he kept trying to have his own church until the day he died.
RIP Sidney, Solomon Spalding, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, Joe and Hyrum and all those who were used and abused by a man who would be king and another who would lead a church. I'm open for debate or questions about my source material. Some of this is my opinion based on a lot of reading.
Art
Some new thoughts on the early church and polygamy - No I'm not for it;-)Share
Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 11:03am
In the beginning was Sidney (Rigdon) and Sidney had the word and Sidney preached the word. And Satan came into his heart and he was jealous of Alexander Campbell who was the Baptist Minister who was his mentor. He wanted to be successful like him and have his very own church.
Now from early in Sidney's life he had been subject to seizures since being dragged by a horse according to his brother John - a physician. Sidney felt that when he had these seizures he was having a religious experience; rather like those that are entheogen induced or even NDE's. He was known to channel dead prophets. He wanted his own church so badly he could taste it. He knew that he would need more than a few changes to some doctrines to beat out the prominent ministers and great minds of the day; he needed a front man; someone with charisma - a known seer. Unfortunately for poor Sidney the man he chose for the job was a megalomaniac with a huge sexual appetite.
After Sidney and partner in crime Oliver (Cowdery) started to write the new bible (using as a base Solomon Spalding's story, Manuscript Found rather than Gold Plates Found) he realized that it would be necessary to convince people that he was actually an apostle like Paul, called by God himself, while Joseph Smith; the front man began his spellbinding performance as a seer. He used his magic stone to tell people where to dig for buried treasure and they believed him and even paid him. When he was taken to court on trial for being a glass looker or conjuror in Bainbridge, NY in 1826, he and others testified of these facts. This was at a time when he supposedly had already seen God and Jesus and the Gold Plates shown him by the angel Moroni, formerly known as Nephi. Joe's job was to pretend to translate the gold plates while Rigdon and Cowdery were working their own magic writing the manuscript for what was to become The Book of Mormon.
They needed a gullible man with money; enter Martin Harris - a great believer in the power of magic; very erratic and joining at least 8 different religions in his life time. Martin was convinced by Joe to mortgage his farm to pay for the printing of the 'translation of the gold plates'. Joe did his job quite well except he couldn't quite keep his story straight; that is quite difficult when you are lying and telling the story you have been told to tell. Keeping their stories all the same became another problem for them later on. Oh what a tangled web they wove.
And it came to pass (lol) that eventually, the 'translation' went off to the printers and the book was printed. When Joe discovered that they couldn't sell any copies of the book and he needed to pay Martin back his mortgage money as promised by himself, the seer, he tried to sell the copyright to the book in Canada after receiving a revelation from God instructing them to do so. God was obviously confused about how gullible Canadians were because the attempt failed.
Back to Sidney whom you will remember, only wanted his own church; not much to ask is it? Sidney and Oliver helped Joseph with the revelations that he spewed out with regularity, but the voices found by computer experts show that they belonged to Sidney and Oliver - not Joe. They did all the ordaining and such BEFORE the church was organized. Now Joe, the megalomaniac, had position and adoration from the growing group of members of The Church of Christ and Sidney started to pout. The ruse was for Parley (Pratt) to pretend to take the Book of Mormon to the preacher Sidney who had managed to pull away after him over 100 or so members of Alexander Campbell's flock of believers. All of the members of this group followed Sidney into the waters of baptism.
When Joe's great position as a prophet of God started to elevate him instead of Sidney, the power struggle began and continued even after Joe's death. Joe's elevated status created for him a pop star type of reputation and his sexual appetite could not be satisfied with only one woman. So many women and so little time!
Enter Fanny Alger, 16 year old housemaid for Emma, Joe's wife. This is Joe's first known affair and it was very quickly hushed up. Oliver and Sidney had not done all that work of deception only to have Joe ruin it by his sexual encounters, just a year or two after launching the new church. Oliver later called it a dirty, nasty little affair
When Joe pulled the same stunt in 1838 with Lucinda Pendleton (Morgan Harris Smith), Oliver's name was blackened and he was excommunicated from the church; a practice that would continue with anyone who refused to do Joe's bidding. As Joe's ego grew, the power struggle between him and Sidney grew to greater heights. Sidney had done all the work, came up with the revelations and Joe kept screwing around causing members to leave or be excommunicated.
As people began to discover Joe's indiscretions he began to take into his confidence an inner circle of men with whom he shared the 'doctrine' of polygamy. Though at first, as the story goes, they were appalled, they soon began to take new wives and their first wives just had to put up with it. Joe meanwhile went on a rampage of (affairs) 'marriages' coercing young teenaged women and the wives of other men with revelations regarding an angel with a drawn sword threatening to take his life if they did not comply.
It is easy to see what was happening here. Not every man could be asked to live polygamy for three reasons.
1. There were not enough women for that to happen
2. Joe knew that many would leave the church if it became known
3. The elite; those in his inner circle needed to feel special in order for him to maintain their allegiance.
So certain 'righteous' men were 'called' to practice polygamy as a higher law in a little secret group, making them feel superior to the others and giving them all the sex they wanted.
Number 1. problem was solved by Joe in marrying other men's wives. He still got to have free reign with his sexual appetite and his growing narcissism without taking women 'off the market'.
Number 2. Keeping it secret kept members in the church and
Number 3. those who DID know were doing it too so they had to be quiet about it.
Sidney was not into polygamy and when Joe decided to add Sidney's daughter Nancy to his harem and was rebuffed, that was pretty much the end of Sidney's days in the Church.
Joe then decided that 34 wives or so was not enough and asked Jane Law to become his polyandrous wife. Jane was very angry and told her husband who happened to be Joe's counselor; true and faithful and not among those who believed that Joe was practicing polygamy, until his very own wife was propositioned. They were excommunicated over this whole nasty little affair - to use Oliver's words and along with some other disgruntled members he bought a printing press and you know the rest of the story; it led to Joseph and brother Hyrum's deaths, leaving many young women widowed, spoiled and taken on then by Brigham and Heber; becoming part of their harems. So sad for these young women who had been duped into thinking that it was required of them by god.
After the Saints had endured their dangerous trek across the plains their sense of solidarity deepened in their trials. In 1857 Brigham Young the person who had wrested leadership from poor Sidney after the death of Joe, announced the revelation on polygamy to all members. Even going so far as saying that men needed to have more than one wife to inherit the highest degree of glory. This is when polygamy got out of hand and the numbers of men practicing polygamy grew until the government of the United States threatened to take the church's assets and to deny Utah statehood. It was not until long after Brigham's death that the practice actually was called to a real halt by the prophet of the day. It continued until 1906 and some members and general authorities still refused to give it up. Today they are known as Fundamentalist Mormons; a name the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints says they have no right to use; they are not Mormons. What is it about the Fundies behavior that makes them any different from the early Mormons? Why don't they have the right to use the name?
What happened to poor old Sidney? Well, he kept trying to have his own church until the day he died.
RIP Sidney, Solomon Spalding, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, Joe and Hyrum and all those who were used and abused by a man who would be king and another who would lead a church. I'm open for debate or questions about my source material. Some of this is my opinion based on a lot of reading.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Dialogue between Christians and Mormons
Hi folks,
Below is an interesting article on attempts at dialogue between Christians and Mormons. The problem with the article is that it doesn't in any way show how Millet, a Mormon apologist, is misleading Christians in his attempts at dialogue, nor how Dr. Mouw, in meeting with Millet and having "intense debates" with him, is failing to defend Christianity. Millet has absolutely no intentions of ever becoming a Christian, but is rather doing everything he can to mislead people into thinking that he is seeking "common ground" between Christianity and Mormonism, which as far as I am concerned, can never exist, and for obvious reasons. Dr. Mouw is doing much to help Millet accomplish his goals by basically not letting the truth stand in the way of dialogue with his Mormon brothers.
Art
Evangelicals and Mormons in dialogue
By Rosalynde Welch
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
November 6, 2009
Civil Religion is an attempt—a successful one, in my short experience—to foster mutual understanding among members of disparate religious (and nonreligious!) traditions. The advantages of the blog format are its convenience and its transparency: readers can easily access posts, participate in the comments, and readily search, recover and distribute the content. These are good things, mostly. But because blogs expose participants to a potentially hostile public gaze, there can be a reluctance on the part of bloggers to engage in the kind of mutually self-disclosing dialogue that leads to real understanding. If one fears that reflective self-criticism will be exploited by bad-faith opportunists, one is less likely to engage in open discussion. I know I’ve felt a bit of that in my short tenure as a participant here, though, happily, that fear has been largely unrealized.
That’s why I was interested to read about an interreligious initiative that has taken a very different form. Christianity Today reports on a series of private meetings between Mormon and Evangelical representatives working toward a shared understanding and relationship of good will:
Not many years ago, evangelicals would have deemed substantive contact with Mormonism … improbable. Yet since 2000, small scholarly teams of Mormons led by Millet and evangelical teams led by Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw have managed to hold 17 intense, closed-door dialogue sessions.
I would imagine that the intimacy and privacy enjoyed in these conferences allows the discussants to develop genuine trust, which in turn encourages the openness necessary for fruitful interchange on the most difficult topics. The article goes on to describe a variety of other initiatives jointly undertaken by Evangelical and Mormon groups, including an Evangelical revival meeting held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, many of which seem to be fostering a more positive relationship between the two traditions. It makes an interesting read, and I recommend you take a look.
I don’t think that Civil Religion will ever be an entirely safe discursive space; there’s a genuine and inescapable tension between freedom and security, and blogs definitely skew toward freedom. But we’ll do our own good work here in this small corner of the universe, and we’ll learn from the work done in different ways and in different places.
Below is an interesting article on attempts at dialogue between Christians and Mormons. The problem with the article is that it doesn't in any way show how Millet, a Mormon apologist, is misleading Christians in his attempts at dialogue, nor how Dr. Mouw, in meeting with Millet and having "intense debates" with him, is failing to defend Christianity. Millet has absolutely no intentions of ever becoming a Christian, but is rather doing everything he can to mislead people into thinking that he is seeking "common ground" between Christianity and Mormonism, which as far as I am concerned, can never exist, and for obvious reasons. Dr. Mouw is doing much to help Millet accomplish his goals by basically not letting the truth stand in the way of dialogue with his Mormon brothers.
Art
Evangelicals and Mormons in dialogue
By Rosalynde Welch
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
November 6, 2009
Civil Religion is an attempt—a successful one, in my short experience—to foster mutual understanding among members of disparate religious (and nonreligious!) traditions. The advantages of the blog format are its convenience and its transparency: readers can easily access posts, participate in the comments, and readily search, recover and distribute the content. These are good things, mostly. But because blogs expose participants to a potentially hostile public gaze, there can be a reluctance on the part of bloggers to engage in the kind of mutually self-disclosing dialogue that leads to real understanding. If one fears that reflective self-criticism will be exploited by bad-faith opportunists, one is less likely to engage in open discussion. I know I’ve felt a bit of that in my short tenure as a participant here, though, happily, that fear has been largely unrealized.
That’s why I was interested to read about an interreligious initiative that has taken a very different form. Christianity Today reports on a series of private meetings between Mormon and Evangelical representatives working toward a shared understanding and relationship of good will:
Not many years ago, evangelicals would have deemed substantive contact with Mormonism … improbable. Yet since 2000, small scholarly teams of Mormons led by Millet and evangelical teams led by Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw have managed to hold 17 intense, closed-door dialogue sessions.
I would imagine that the intimacy and privacy enjoyed in these conferences allows the discussants to develop genuine trust, which in turn encourages the openness necessary for fruitful interchange on the most difficult topics. The article goes on to describe a variety of other initiatives jointly undertaken by Evangelical and Mormon groups, including an Evangelical revival meeting held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, many of which seem to be fostering a more positive relationship between the two traditions. It makes an interesting read, and I recommend you take a look.
I don’t think that Civil Religion will ever be an entirely safe discursive space; there’s a genuine and inescapable tension between freedom and security, and blogs definitely skew toward freedom. But we’ll do our own good work here in this small corner of the universe, and we’ll learn from the work done in different ways and in different places.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Why there had to be multiple Spalding manuscripts
Hi all,
A non-Mormon theory for the origin of the Book of Mormon that has always been controversial and has been getting increasing attention and credibility is called the Spalding or Spalding-Rigdon theory. In brief, it makes the claim that what we now know as the Book of Mormon was based largely on an unpublished manuscript that was written by Solomon Spalding, a down and out retired preacher toward the end of his life.
Mormons claimed it couldn't possibly be true because according to them, there is only one manuscript, and that D. P. Hurlbut and adherents to the Spalding claims made up a second manuscript called Manuscript Found to keep the Spalding claims alive. What follows is a brief paper on why there had to be more than one manuscript.
REASONS WHY THERE HAD TO HAVE BEEN MORE THAN ONE
SPALDING MANUSCRIPT:
Here are seven reasons why Spalding must have written more
than one manuscript. (Can anyone produce seven equally
credible reasons why he must have written only one?)
(1) Aron Wright to Hurlbut, August 1833: “Spalding had many
other manuscripts.” (ref: Howe, 284)
(1a) Aron Wright, December 31, 1833: “Hurlbut is now at my
store. I have examined the writings which he has obtained from
[said] Spalding’s widowe[.] I recognize them to be the writings
handwriting of [said] Spalding but not the Manuscript I had
reference to in my statement before alluded to as he informed
me he wrote in the first place he wrote for his own amusement
and then altered his plan and commenced writing a history of the
first Settlement of America the particulars you will find in my
testimony dated Sept 18 August 1833 . . . ” (ref: Aron Wright’s
unsigned letter of December 31, 1833)
In order to successfully argue that Spalding produced only one
manuscript, one must first convincingly impeach Judge Aron
Wright’s testimony, yet there is absolutely nothing on record
which would give reason to question either his accuracy or his
honesty or to suggest that he was actively anti-Mormon. Wright’s
testimony is crucial. If one cannot impeach Wright, the argument
that Spalding only had one manuscript fails de facto.
(2) John N. Miller to Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, September 1833: “I
was soon introduced to the manuscripts of Spalding and perused
them as often as I had leisure. He had written two or three books
or pamphlets on different subjects; but that which more
particularly drew my attention was one which he called the
Manuscript Found.” (ref: Howe, 282–83)
(3) Mrs. Matilda Spalding-Davison, November, 1833: According to
Howe’s account, the widow Spalding informed Hurlbut that her
husband “had a great variety of manuscripts,” and recalled “that
one was entitled the Manuscript Found. . . .” (ref: Howe, 287-288)
(4) Matilda Spalding McKinstry, April 3, 1880: “My father was in
business there [Conneaut], and I remember his iron foundry and
the men he had at work, but that he remained at home most of
the time and was reading and writing a great deal. He frequently
wrote little stories, which he read to me. . . . In 1816 my father
died at Amity, Pennsylvania, and directly after his death my
mother and myself went to visit at the residence of my mother’s
brother William H. Sabine, at Onondaga Valley, Onondaga County,
New York. Mr. Sabine was a lawyer of distinction and wealth, and
greatly respected. We carried all our personal effects with us,
and one of these was an old trunk, in which my mother had
placed all my father’s writings which had been preserved. I
perfectly remember the appearance of this trunk, and of looking
at its contents. There were sermons and other papers, and I saw
a manuscript about an inch thick, closely written, tied with some
of the other stories my father had written for me, one of which he
called, The Frogs of Wyndham. On the outside of the manuscript
were written the words, Manuscript Found. I did not read it, but
looked through it and had it in my hands many times, and saw
the names I had heard at Conneaut, when my father read it to his
friends . . . The Manuscript Found, she [my mother] said, was a
romance . . . She had no special admiration for it more than other
romances he wrote and read to her.” (ref: Statement given at
Washington, DC, April 3, 1880)
(4a) Matilda Spalding McKinstry, November 2, 1886: “I have
read much of the Manuscript Story Conneaut Creek which you
sent me. I know that it is not the Manuscript Found which
contained the words ‘Nephi, Mormon, Maroni, and Laminites.’ Do
the Mormons expect to deceive the public by leaving off the title
page—Conneaut Creek and calling it Manuscript Found and
Manuscript Story[?]” (ref: McKinstry to Deming, Nov. 2, 1886,
Chicago Hist. Soc.)
(5) Rachel Derby, daughter of John N. Miller, December 9, 1884:
“Father told him [Hurlbut] that the Manuscript Found was not
near all of Spalding’s writings. . . .” (ref: Deming, 1,1, col.7)
(6) L. L. Rice, May 30,1885: “there is no outcome of the quarrel,
as the story is evidently unfinished, and stops abruptly.” (ref:
Rice to James Fairchild, May 30, 1885) This in itself indicates
Manuscript Story cannot have been a copy of the manuscript that
Spalding had prepared for the Pattersons, because that
manuscript was said to have been complete except for a preface
and title page (see chapter 5 of our text).
(7) E. D. Howe to Elder T. W. Smith, July 26, 1881: “The
manuscript you refer to was not marked on the outside or inside
Manuscript Found . . . it was not the original Manuscript Found.”
(ref; Howe to Smith, in Shook, 75-76)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
FIVE ADDITIONAL POINTS:
(A) Benjamin Winchester’s premise that Hurlbut, motivated by a
desire “to obtain revenge,”(ref: Winchester [1840], 6) concocted
a notorious fabrication around Spalding and then sought to
deceive the world with it, is both illogical and untenable in light
of Hurlbut’s subsequent behavior. If he knew from the very
beginning that the entire story of a Spalding-Book of Mormon
connection was nothing more than the product of his own
vengeful imagination, a creation deliberately designed to
deceive, then it makes no sense whatsoever that Hurlbut would
devote all of his energies over the next several months to
seeking out the very manuscript which, once found and
compared to The Book of Mormon, would not only destroy the
theory he had striven so hard to promote, but would likely wreck
whatever was left of his own reputation in the process. In other
words, the presumption that Hurlbut would actively promote a lie
and then set out on a quest to uncover the one piece of evidence
capable of exposing him as a liar is patently absurd.
(B) In December of 1833, Hurlbut returned to Conneaut with
Spalding’s “Manuscript Story” in hand and proceeded to show it
to Spalding’s former neighbors, who verified that it was NOT the
manuscript to which they had referred in their various
statements. (ref: Howe, 288; Aron Wright’s unsigned letter of Dec.
31, 1833) In order to refute this, one must claim that Hurlbut
initially manipulated his witnesses, and that the deception stuck
even after they were shown the original manuscript containing
the very same story about which their memories had allegedly
been manipulated in the first place. Isn’t it odd that, upon being
confronted with Spalding’s original, not one of them ever said,
“Why yes, this is the story you were trying to get me to recall,
and it’s nothing like you coached me into saying it was”?
(C) Concerning the existence of more than one Spalding
manuscript, the words of Rev. Robert Patterson, Jr. are worth
repeating (ref: Patterson Jr. to J.H. Fairchild, Sept. 22, 1885):
“When so many hearers of the story in different places concur
in their recollections of names constantly recurring in the story,
and when some of them heard it read again and again, it seems
impossible that, after twenty years, they should confound it with
a story [i.e. Manuscript Story]... in which not one of these familiar
and unique names of persons and places did once occur. The
memory of people who, at that period, read or heard very few
romances, would be all the more tenacious of the few (it might
be the only one) they did hear....
“Moreover, it is unitedly testified by these witnesses that
before Spalding became a bankrupt, and when he wrote only to
while away the hours of his illness, without any thought of
making money by publishing his book, his purpose in the story
they heard him read was to show (seemingly) that our Indians
were descended from the ten lost tribes. He therefore started the
colonists from Jerusalem. This was the raison d’être-- the very
foundation-- of the whole fiction. How is it possible that such a
story in 20 years became confused in the memory of those who
heard it with a story which left the Jews out altogether?”
(D) The very physical appearance of the Oberlin manuscript itself
virtually destroys the Mormon argument that this was the same
work Spalding submitted to the Pattersons for their
consideration.
First of all, Story was never finished. It progresses, howbeit
fitfully, up to the point of a final war, devotes about forty pages
to a description of that war, and then ends abruptly in the middle
of a page just as the two opposing armies appear ready to begin
the final battle.
Secondly, this manuscript cannot possibly have been the one
Spalding took to the Pattersons, for it is hardly fit for publication.
For example, a number of changes in the spellings of proper
names occur throughout the text; Siota becoming Sciota,
Hadokam changing to Hadoram, Bombal to Banbo, Labarmock to
Labamack, Lambon to Lambdon (note the similarity to Lambdin
here-- q.v. Chapt. IV), and Mammoons being later designated as
Mammouths. In one especially confusing passage, two Kentucks
who sneak into the Sciotan camp by night are identified as
Thelford and Hamkien on one page, and as Kelsock and Hamkoo
on the next. Later, even Hamkoo changes to Hamko” Aside from
the fact that the manuscript itself is incomplete, can anyone
imagine that Spalding actually submitted such a work to the
Pattersons for their erudite consideration?
Furthermore, Story begins as a first-person narrative told by
its hero Fabius, and remains thus through chapter four. In
chapters five through eight however, only a few passages are in
the first person; and in all the remaining text (which comprises
more than half the manuscript) everything is written in the thirdperson.
These chapters contain lengthy and often intimate conversations, but provide the reader with no explanation as to how Fabius could have obtained such information. “As Spalding neared the end of his story, he must have realized that he had no plausible way to return to his first-person account,” and that radical changes to his manuscript would be necessary in order to reconcile this difficulty.
Consider also the circular logic used by Mormon writers when
they criticize supporters of the Spalding Enigma who hold that
there must have been at least one other Spalding manuscript in
existence. The Mormons claim, of course, that Spalding wrote
only one manuscript, the one which Hurlbut found in the trunk,
Manuscript Story-- Conneaut Creek, which, as we have shown, is
obviously unfinished and in no condition to be presented to a
publisher. Yet they do not question that Spalding took a manuscript
to the Patterson brothers for their consideration. If not this
one, then which one?
(E) Another piece of evidence indicating that Manuscript Story
and A Manuscript Found were not one and the same can be found
in the recollections of Redick McKee and Joseph Miller, Sr., both
of whom befriended the Spaldings during their residence at Amity
between 1814 and 1816, and later recorded statements providing
many details about Solomon, his family, and his manuscript.
What is important here is the fact that both individuals recalled a
certain specific detail about Spalding’s A Manuscript Found
which seems to have escaped prior notice.
According to Miller: “...When Mr. Spalding lived in Amity, Pa., I
was well acquainted with him.... He had in his possession some
papers which he said he had written. He used to read select
portions of these papers to amuse us of evenings. These papers
were detached sheets of foolscap. He said he wrote the papers
as a novel. He called it the Manuscript Found, or The Lost
Manuscript Found. He said he wrote it to pass away the time
when he was unwell; and after it was written he thought he
would publish it as a novel, as a means to support his
family.”(ref: Washington, PA, Reporter, April 8, 1869; Creigh,
[1870], 89-93. Miller’s statement is dated March 26, 1869) And,
“...Mr. S. was poor but honest. I endorsed for him twice to borrow
money. His house was a place of common resort especially in the
evening. I was presenting my trade as a carpenter, in the village
and frequented his house. Mr. S. seemed to take delight in
reading from his manuscript written on foolscap for the entertainment
of his frequent visitors, heard him read most if not all of it,
and had frequent conversations with him about it.”(ref:
Pittsburgh Telegraph, Feb. 6, 1879)
According to Redick McKee: “One day when I called he
[Spalding] was writing upon foolscap paper, taken from some old
account book. My curiosity was excited, and I said to him, that if
he was writing letters I could furnish him with more suitable
paper. He replied that he was not writing letters, but... [a] story
he called The Manuscript Found. It purported to give a history of
the ten tribes, their disputes and dissentions... etc.”(ref: McKee
to Deming, Jan. 25, 1886, in Chicago Hist. Soc.)
These memories constitute an extremely important detail
because foolscap was a very special kind of paper with
particularly distinguishing and readily identifiable
characteristics. An examination of the original manuscript of
Spalding’s Manuscript Story, conducted at our request by Roland
M. Baumann, Archivist of Oberlin College’s Mudd Library,
revealed that no foolscap was employed in the creation of that
work.
Now with the research of Craig Criddle and his team from Stanford, the Spalding authorship claims are more valid than ever. Perhaps someday soon Solomon Spalding's family will finally be vindicated and Mormonism exposed for the sham that it is.
Art
A non-Mormon theory for the origin of the Book of Mormon that has always been controversial and has been getting increasing attention and credibility is called the Spalding or Spalding-Rigdon theory. In brief, it makes the claim that what we now know as the Book of Mormon was based largely on an unpublished manuscript that was written by Solomon Spalding, a down and out retired preacher toward the end of his life.
Mormons claimed it couldn't possibly be true because according to them, there is only one manuscript, and that D. P. Hurlbut and adherents to the Spalding claims made up a second manuscript called Manuscript Found to keep the Spalding claims alive. What follows is a brief paper on why there had to be more than one manuscript.
REASONS WHY THERE HAD TO HAVE BEEN MORE THAN ONE
SPALDING MANUSCRIPT:
Here are seven reasons why Spalding must have written more
than one manuscript. (Can anyone produce seven equally
credible reasons why he must have written only one?)
(1) Aron Wright to Hurlbut, August 1833: “Spalding had many
other manuscripts.” (ref: Howe, 284)
(1a) Aron Wright, December 31, 1833: “Hurlbut is now at my
store. I have examined the writings which he has obtained from
[said] Spalding’s widowe[.] I recognize them to be the writings
handwriting of [said] Spalding but not the Manuscript I had
reference to in my statement before alluded to as he informed
me he wrote in the first place he wrote for his own amusement
and then altered his plan and commenced writing a history of the
first Settlement of America the particulars you will find in my
testimony dated Sept 18 August 1833 . . . ” (ref: Aron Wright’s
unsigned letter of December 31, 1833)
In order to successfully argue that Spalding produced only one
manuscript, one must first convincingly impeach Judge Aron
Wright’s testimony, yet there is absolutely nothing on record
which would give reason to question either his accuracy or his
honesty or to suggest that he was actively anti-Mormon. Wright’s
testimony is crucial. If one cannot impeach Wright, the argument
that Spalding only had one manuscript fails de facto.
(2) John N. Miller to Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, September 1833: “I
was soon introduced to the manuscripts of Spalding and perused
them as often as I had leisure. He had written two or three books
or pamphlets on different subjects; but that which more
particularly drew my attention was one which he called the
Manuscript Found.” (ref: Howe, 282–83)
(3) Mrs. Matilda Spalding-Davison, November, 1833: According to
Howe’s account, the widow Spalding informed Hurlbut that her
husband “had a great variety of manuscripts,” and recalled “that
one was entitled the Manuscript Found. . . .” (ref: Howe, 287-288)
(4) Matilda Spalding McKinstry, April 3, 1880: “My father was in
business there [Conneaut], and I remember his iron foundry and
the men he had at work, but that he remained at home most of
the time and was reading and writing a great deal. He frequently
wrote little stories, which he read to me. . . . In 1816 my father
died at Amity, Pennsylvania, and directly after his death my
mother and myself went to visit at the residence of my mother’s
brother William H. Sabine, at Onondaga Valley, Onondaga County,
New York. Mr. Sabine was a lawyer of distinction and wealth, and
greatly respected. We carried all our personal effects with us,
and one of these was an old trunk, in which my mother had
placed all my father’s writings which had been preserved. I
perfectly remember the appearance of this trunk, and of looking
at its contents. There were sermons and other papers, and I saw
a manuscript about an inch thick, closely written, tied with some
of the other stories my father had written for me, one of which he
called, The Frogs of Wyndham. On the outside of the manuscript
were written the words, Manuscript Found. I did not read it, but
looked through it and had it in my hands many times, and saw
the names I had heard at Conneaut, when my father read it to his
friends . . . The Manuscript Found, she [my mother] said, was a
romance . . . She had no special admiration for it more than other
romances he wrote and read to her.” (ref: Statement given at
Washington, DC, April 3, 1880)
(4a) Matilda Spalding McKinstry, November 2, 1886: “I have
read much of the Manuscript Story Conneaut Creek which you
sent me. I know that it is not the Manuscript Found which
contained the words ‘Nephi, Mormon, Maroni, and Laminites.’ Do
the Mormons expect to deceive the public by leaving off the title
page—Conneaut Creek and calling it Manuscript Found and
Manuscript Story[?]” (ref: McKinstry to Deming, Nov. 2, 1886,
Chicago Hist. Soc.)
(5) Rachel Derby, daughter of John N. Miller, December 9, 1884:
“Father told him [Hurlbut] that the Manuscript Found was not
near all of Spalding’s writings. . . .” (ref: Deming, 1,1, col.7)
(6) L. L. Rice, May 30,1885: “there is no outcome of the quarrel,
as the story is evidently unfinished, and stops abruptly.” (ref:
Rice to James Fairchild, May 30, 1885) This in itself indicates
Manuscript Story cannot have been a copy of the manuscript that
Spalding had prepared for the Pattersons, because that
manuscript was said to have been complete except for a preface
and title page (see chapter 5 of our text).
(7) E. D. Howe to Elder T. W. Smith, July 26, 1881: “The
manuscript you refer to was not marked on the outside or inside
Manuscript Found . . . it was not the original Manuscript Found.”
(ref; Howe to Smith, in Shook, 75-76)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
FIVE ADDITIONAL POINTS:
(A) Benjamin Winchester’s premise that Hurlbut, motivated by a
desire “to obtain revenge,”(ref: Winchester [1840], 6) concocted
a notorious fabrication around Spalding and then sought to
deceive the world with it, is both illogical and untenable in light
of Hurlbut’s subsequent behavior. If he knew from the very
beginning that the entire story of a Spalding-Book of Mormon
connection was nothing more than the product of his own
vengeful imagination, a creation deliberately designed to
deceive, then it makes no sense whatsoever that Hurlbut would
devote all of his energies over the next several months to
seeking out the very manuscript which, once found and
compared to The Book of Mormon, would not only destroy the
theory he had striven so hard to promote, but would likely wreck
whatever was left of his own reputation in the process. In other
words, the presumption that Hurlbut would actively promote a lie
and then set out on a quest to uncover the one piece of evidence
capable of exposing him as a liar is patently absurd.
(B) In December of 1833, Hurlbut returned to Conneaut with
Spalding’s “Manuscript Story” in hand and proceeded to show it
to Spalding’s former neighbors, who verified that it was NOT the
manuscript to which they had referred in their various
statements. (ref: Howe, 288; Aron Wright’s unsigned letter of Dec.
31, 1833) In order to refute this, one must claim that Hurlbut
initially manipulated his witnesses, and that the deception stuck
even after they were shown the original manuscript containing
the very same story about which their memories had allegedly
been manipulated in the first place. Isn’t it odd that, upon being
confronted with Spalding’s original, not one of them ever said,
“Why yes, this is the story you were trying to get me to recall,
and it’s nothing like you coached me into saying it was”?
(C) Concerning the existence of more than one Spalding
manuscript, the words of Rev. Robert Patterson, Jr. are worth
repeating (ref: Patterson Jr. to J.H. Fairchild, Sept. 22, 1885):
“When so many hearers of the story in different places concur
in their recollections of names constantly recurring in the story,
and when some of them heard it read again and again, it seems
impossible that, after twenty years, they should confound it with
a story [i.e. Manuscript Story]... in which not one of these familiar
and unique names of persons and places did once occur. The
memory of people who, at that period, read or heard very few
romances, would be all the more tenacious of the few (it might
be the only one) they did hear....
“Moreover, it is unitedly testified by these witnesses that
before Spalding became a bankrupt, and when he wrote only to
while away the hours of his illness, without any thought of
making money by publishing his book, his purpose in the story
they heard him read was to show (seemingly) that our Indians
were descended from the ten lost tribes. He therefore started the
colonists from Jerusalem. This was the raison d’être-- the very
foundation-- of the whole fiction. How is it possible that such a
story in 20 years became confused in the memory of those who
heard it with a story which left the Jews out altogether?”
(D) The very physical appearance of the Oberlin manuscript itself
virtually destroys the Mormon argument that this was the same
work Spalding submitted to the Pattersons for their
consideration.
First of all, Story was never finished. It progresses, howbeit
fitfully, up to the point of a final war, devotes about forty pages
to a description of that war, and then ends abruptly in the middle
of a page just as the two opposing armies appear ready to begin
the final battle.
Secondly, this manuscript cannot possibly have been the one
Spalding took to the Pattersons, for it is hardly fit for publication.
For example, a number of changes in the spellings of proper
names occur throughout the text; Siota becoming Sciota,
Hadokam changing to Hadoram, Bombal to Banbo, Labarmock to
Labamack, Lambon to Lambdon (note the similarity to Lambdin
here-- q.v. Chapt. IV), and Mammoons being later designated as
Mammouths. In one especially confusing passage, two Kentucks
who sneak into the Sciotan camp by night are identified as
Thelford and Hamkien on one page, and as Kelsock and Hamkoo
on the next. Later, even Hamkoo changes to Hamko” Aside from
the fact that the manuscript itself is incomplete, can anyone
imagine that Spalding actually submitted such a work to the
Pattersons for their erudite consideration?
Furthermore, Story begins as a first-person narrative told by
its hero Fabius, and remains thus through chapter four. In
chapters five through eight however, only a few passages are in
the first person; and in all the remaining text (which comprises
more than half the manuscript) everything is written in the thirdperson.
These chapters contain lengthy and often intimate conversations, but provide the reader with no explanation as to how Fabius could have obtained such information. “As Spalding neared the end of his story, he must have realized that he had no plausible way to return to his first-person account,” and that radical changes to his manuscript would be necessary in order to reconcile this difficulty.
Consider also the circular logic used by Mormon writers when
they criticize supporters of the Spalding Enigma who hold that
there must have been at least one other Spalding manuscript in
existence. The Mormons claim, of course, that Spalding wrote
only one manuscript, the one which Hurlbut found in the trunk,
Manuscript Story-- Conneaut Creek, which, as we have shown, is
obviously unfinished and in no condition to be presented to a
publisher. Yet they do not question that Spalding took a manuscript
to the Patterson brothers for their consideration. If not this
one, then which one?
(E) Another piece of evidence indicating that Manuscript Story
and A Manuscript Found were not one and the same can be found
in the recollections of Redick McKee and Joseph Miller, Sr., both
of whom befriended the Spaldings during their residence at Amity
between 1814 and 1816, and later recorded statements providing
many details about Solomon, his family, and his manuscript.
What is important here is the fact that both individuals recalled a
certain specific detail about Spalding’s A Manuscript Found
which seems to have escaped prior notice.
According to Miller: “...When Mr. Spalding lived in Amity, Pa., I
was well acquainted with him.... He had in his possession some
papers which he said he had written. He used to read select
portions of these papers to amuse us of evenings. These papers
were detached sheets of foolscap. He said he wrote the papers
as a novel. He called it the Manuscript Found, or The Lost
Manuscript Found. He said he wrote it to pass away the time
when he was unwell; and after it was written he thought he
would publish it as a novel, as a means to support his
family.”(ref: Washington, PA, Reporter, April 8, 1869; Creigh,
[1870], 89-93. Miller’s statement is dated March 26, 1869) And,
“...Mr. S. was poor but honest. I endorsed for him twice to borrow
money. His house was a place of common resort especially in the
evening. I was presenting my trade as a carpenter, in the village
and frequented his house. Mr. S. seemed to take delight in
reading from his manuscript written on foolscap for the entertainment
of his frequent visitors, heard him read most if not all of it,
and had frequent conversations with him about it.”(ref:
Pittsburgh Telegraph, Feb. 6, 1879)
According to Redick McKee: “One day when I called he
[Spalding] was writing upon foolscap paper, taken from some old
account book. My curiosity was excited, and I said to him, that if
he was writing letters I could furnish him with more suitable
paper. He replied that he was not writing letters, but... [a] story
he called The Manuscript Found. It purported to give a history of
the ten tribes, their disputes and dissentions... etc.”(ref: McKee
to Deming, Jan. 25, 1886, in Chicago Hist. Soc.)
These memories constitute an extremely important detail
because foolscap was a very special kind of paper with
particularly distinguishing and readily identifiable
characteristics. An examination of the original manuscript of
Spalding’s Manuscript Story, conducted at our request by Roland
M. Baumann, Archivist of Oberlin College’s Mudd Library,
revealed that no foolscap was employed in the creation of that
work.
Now with the research of Craig Criddle and his team from Stanford, the Spalding authorship claims are more valid than ever. Perhaps someday soon Solomon Spalding's family will finally be vindicated and Mormonism exposed for the sham that it is.
Art
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The "one true church"?
Hi folks,
Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints the "one true church"? Here are some statements about it:
13th LDS President Ezra Taft Benson, “This is not just another Church. This is not just one of a family of Christian churches. This is the Church and kingdom of God, the only true Church upon the face of the earth...” (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p.164-165). This church is the only true and living church on the face of the whole earth (D and C 1:30) “There is no salvation outside the church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints (Mormon Doctrine, p.670)
“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 who so 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 whore of all the earth.” (The Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 14:10)
on April 8, 1973, LDS Apostle Mark E. Petersen proclaimed that salvation “comes only through the Church itself as the Lord established it... Therefore it was made clearly manifest that salvation is in the Church, and of the Church, and is obtained only through the Church.”
“The Roman Catholic, Greek, and Protestant church, is the great corrupt, ecclesiastical power, represented by great Babylon....” (Orson Pratt, Writings of an Apostle, “Divine Authenticity,” no.6, p.84).
the LDS church is, “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased ...” Brigham Young (Mormonism's Second President)
“Our message is so imperative, when you stop to think that the salvation, the eternal salvation of the world, rests upon the shoulders of this Church. When all is said and done, if the world is going to be saved, we have to do it “ (“Church Is Really Doing Well,” Church News (a bi-weekly publication by the Mormon church), July 3 1999, 3)
Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints the "one true church"? Here are some statements about it:
13th LDS President Ezra Taft Benson, “This is not just another Church. This is not just one of a family of Christian churches. This is the Church and kingdom of God, the only true Church upon the face of the earth...” (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p.164-165). This church is the only true and living church on the face of the whole earth (D and C 1:30) “There is no salvation outside the church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints (Mormon Doctrine, p.670)
“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 who so 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 whore of all the earth.” (The Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 14:10)
on April 8, 1973, LDS Apostle Mark E. Petersen proclaimed that salvation “comes only through the Church itself as the Lord established it... Therefore it was made clearly manifest that salvation is in the Church, and of the Church, and is obtained only through the Church.”
“The Roman Catholic, Greek, and Protestant church, is the great corrupt, ecclesiastical power, represented by great Babylon....” (Orson Pratt, Writings of an Apostle, “Divine Authenticity,” no.6, p.84).
the LDS church is, “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased ...” Brigham Young (Mormonism's Second President)
“Our message is so imperative, when you stop to think that the salvation, the eternal salvation of the world, rests upon the shoulders of this Church. When all is said and done, if the world is going to be saved, we have to do it “ (“Church Is Really Doing Well,” Church News (a bi-weekly publication by the Mormon church), July 3 1999, 3)
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The FLDS, Raymond Jessup, and others
Hi all,
Well, Raymond Jessup will soon stand trial for "marrying" a teenager. It has been called abuse and a number of other things. What gives Jessup and others the right to commit such crimes, or as they try to claim, their "holy duty" as authentic Mormons. What about their compound in Eldorado, Texas, which some have described as a bunker as much as a church or "temple".
Here is an article that y'all might find interesting.
October 26, 2009 8:00 AM
Raymond Jessop, First FLDS Polygamist to Stand Trial for Sexual Assault on Child Bride
Font size Print E-mail Share 2 comments Posted by Edecio Martinez
(AP/Texas Dept. of Public Safety)Photo: Raymond Merrill Jessop.
ELDORADO, Texas (CBS/AP) America will get another look inside the secretive polygamist sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), as one of its patriarchs, Raymond Jessop, is about to face a jury for allegedly sexually assaulting a child – his own wife.
Jessop, 38, the first of a dozen polygamist sect members charged with abuse of women, is set to stand trial Monday, 18 months after agents raided the group's remote ranch and carted off more than 400 children in the largest child custody case in American history.
Jessop faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sexual assault of a child, a charge stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl in the FLDS.
He will be tried later on a separate count of bigamy related to a second alleged underage bride.
In all, 12 sect members have been charged with crimes ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault and bigamy.
Attorneys must cull from a pool of 300 people to try to seat 12 jurors and two alternates. Seating an impartial jury in this community of fewer than 1,900 voters may prove difficult, because most residents know one another and the April 2008 raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch drew intense media coverage. Images of sect girls in pigtails and women in prairie-style dresses dominated the cable news networks for weeks after the raid.
(CBS/EARLY SHOW)Photo: FLDS women wear traditional dress outside a Texas courtroom in April of 2009 as they battle for custody of their children.
If lawyers can't come up with a jury from the initial pool, the trial could be moved to an adjoining county.
Jessop's trial is expected to last two weeks, said Assistant state Attorney General Eric Nichols, who is prosecuting the case. The prosecution's witness list has 59 people, including law enforcement and child welfare officials, two of Jessop's alleged wives and former FLDS members.
Authorities have said little about the allegations against Jessop, but documents seized from the ranch indicate the assault charge stems from his alleged marriage to an underage girl. The girl later became pregnant and was in labor for several days in August 2005. But after Jessop consulted with sect leader Warren Jeffs, the girl wasn't taken to the hospital, allegedly out of fear that hospital authorities would discover her age and turn in Jessop.
"I knew that the girl being 16 years old, if she went to the hospital, they could put Raymond Jessop in jeopardy of prosecution as the government is looking for any reason to come against us there," Jeffs wrote in a journal seized from the ranch.
Jeffs was arrested in 2006 and later convicted as an accomplice to rape in Utah for arranging an underage marriage there. He faces similar charges in Arizona and is charged with bigamy and sexual assault of a child in Texas.
(AP)Photo: Warren Jeffs in a Las Vegas court Aug. 31, 2006.
One of Jeffs' daughters allegedly married Jessop the day after she turned 15. The bigamy charge against Jessop pertains to that alleged marriage.
Under Texas law, generally, no one under 17 can consent to sex with an adult. But that law was changed after the sect arrived in the state.
Sect members, who believe polygamy brings glorification in heaven, historically have lived around the Arizona-Utah line, but the sect bought a ranch on the outskirts of Eldorado about six years ago. Hundreds of FLDS members, including many of the 439 children initially taken by child welfare authorities, have returned to the log cabin-style homes there.
The sect is a breakaway of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Well, Raymond Jessup will soon stand trial for "marrying" a teenager. It has been called abuse and a number of other things. What gives Jessup and others the right to commit such crimes, or as they try to claim, their "holy duty" as authentic Mormons. What about their compound in Eldorado, Texas, which some have described as a bunker as much as a church or "temple".
Here is an article that y'all might find interesting.
October 26, 2009 8:00 AM
Raymond Jessop, First FLDS Polygamist to Stand Trial for Sexual Assault on Child Bride
Font size Print E-mail Share 2 comments Posted by Edecio Martinez
(AP/Texas Dept. of Public Safety)Photo: Raymond Merrill Jessop.
ELDORADO, Texas (CBS/AP) America will get another look inside the secretive polygamist sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), as one of its patriarchs, Raymond Jessop, is about to face a jury for allegedly sexually assaulting a child – his own wife.
Jessop, 38, the first of a dozen polygamist sect members charged with abuse of women, is set to stand trial Monday, 18 months after agents raided the group's remote ranch and carted off more than 400 children in the largest child custody case in American history.
Jessop faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sexual assault of a child, a charge stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl in the FLDS.
He will be tried later on a separate count of bigamy related to a second alleged underage bride.
In all, 12 sect members have been charged with crimes ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault and bigamy.
Attorneys must cull from a pool of 300 people to try to seat 12 jurors and two alternates. Seating an impartial jury in this community of fewer than 1,900 voters may prove difficult, because most residents know one another and the April 2008 raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch drew intense media coverage. Images of sect girls in pigtails and women in prairie-style dresses dominated the cable news networks for weeks after the raid.
(CBS/EARLY SHOW)Photo: FLDS women wear traditional dress outside a Texas courtroom in April of 2009 as they battle for custody of their children.
If lawyers can't come up with a jury from the initial pool, the trial could be moved to an adjoining county.
Jessop's trial is expected to last two weeks, said Assistant state Attorney General Eric Nichols, who is prosecuting the case. The prosecution's witness list has 59 people, including law enforcement and child welfare officials, two of Jessop's alleged wives and former FLDS members.
Authorities have said little about the allegations against Jessop, but documents seized from the ranch indicate the assault charge stems from his alleged marriage to an underage girl. The girl later became pregnant and was in labor for several days in August 2005. But after Jessop consulted with sect leader Warren Jeffs, the girl wasn't taken to the hospital, allegedly out of fear that hospital authorities would discover her age and turn in Jessop.
"I knew that the girl being 16 years old, if she went to the hospital, they could put Raymond Jessop in jeopardy of prosecution as the government is looking for any reason to come against us there," Jeffs wrote in a journal seized from the ranch.
Jeffs was arrested in 2006 and later convicted as an accomplice to rape in Utah for arranging an underage marriage there. He faces similar charges in Arizona and is charged with bigamy and sexual assault of a child in Texas.
(AP)Photo: Warren Jeffs in a Las Vegas court Aug. 31, 2006.
One of Jeffs' daughters allegedly married Jessop the day after she turned 15. The bigamy charge against Jessop pertains to that alleged marriage.
Under Texas law, generally, no one under 17 can consent to sex with an adult. But that law was changed after the sect arrived in the state.
Sect members, who believe polygamy brings glorification in heaven, historically have lived around the Arizona-Utah line, but the sect bought a ranch on the outskirts of Eldorado about six years ago. Hundreds of FLDS members, including many of the 439 children initially taken by child welfare authorities, have returned to the log cabin-style homes there.
The sect is a breakaway of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Lying for the Lord
Hi everyone,
Here's a subject that has caused a bit of controversy over the years - lying for the Lord. In brief, it has been claimed that if Mormons believe that the end will justify the means, it is okay for them to lie. In other words, if they believe that lying will further the kingdom of God, or that it will be good for or help further the goals of Mormonism, it is okay to lie.
The following is an excellent article by my good friend and fellow researcher Bill McKeever, of Mormonism Research Ministry, on the subject of lying for the Lord. He has a great website on Mormonism and his materials are a ready resource to those who are looking for help with Mormonism. I believe his website is http://www.mrm.org. Another website where you will find good information on Mormonism is http://www.solomonspalding.info, as well as the older site: http://www.thedigitalvoice.com/enigma. I mention both sites because some of the documents apparently haven't been transferred to the new site as yet.
So much for the commercial and now to Bill's article.
Lying for the Lord
A Review by Bill McKeever
In the October 1994 "Ensign" article entitled "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness," Mormon writer Robert J. Matthews expounds on the fact that the ninth commandment is a "strong declaration against ... gross understatements, fabrication, or the willful giving of any explanation not supported by the facts." He went on to say, "Even sharing the truth can have the effect of lying when we tell only half-truths that do not give the full picture. We can also be guilty of bearing false witness and lying if we say nothing, particularly if we allow another to reach a wrong conclusion while we hold back information that would have led to a more accurate perception. In this case it is as though an actual lie were uttered" (pg.54).
Mr. Matthews continued on page 55, "Lying and misrepresentation in all of their forms are wrong, no matter how they may be rationalized, and those who silently let these evils pass unchallenged are also doing wrong". On the following page he states, "There are many ways in which language is twisted, warped, or packaged to convey misleading thoughts."
On several occasions I have asked Christians if they have ever had a Mormon tell them that they were "Christians just like them." I think just about everyone who talks with Latter-day Saints on even an irregular basis has heard a Mormon say this. The next time this happens to you, respond by saying, "If you are Christian just like me, then I must be a Mormon just like you." No doubt the Mormon will object to such a conclusion. Why? Because Mormons don't believe like Christians.
On far too many occasions Mormons fail to clarify their positions when they speak to Christians. They will say they believe in "Jesus Christ," trust in the "scriptures," believe they are "saved by grace," and have been "born-again." They will talk about "eternal life" and things like "heaven," but they rarely explain what they mean when they use such terminology. Is this not an act of lying as defined by Mr. Matthews above? Surely if the Mormon allows that person to assume Mormonism is similar to Christianity by "holding back information that would have led to a more accurate perception," they have done exactly what Mr. Matthews says should not be done.
Holding back information is especially a problem in the foreign field. It is not uncommon for Mormon missionaries to purposely refrain from discussing doctrines which clearly separate Mormonism from the usual perception of Christianity. They are well aware that to do otherwise would risk any chance of a return visit.
In many foreign countries the local population is at a severe disadvantage. Very few books are printed in their native language which critically examines LDS teachings. In many areas they do not even have a translated set of the standard works. At best they may have a copy of the Book of Mormon (or selections). Since the Book of Mormon does not reflect modern LDS teaching on many critical issues, this only adds to the deception.
Unfortunately, when it comes to religion, full disclosure to a prospective convert is not mandatory. One of the reasons many religions flourish is because new investigators are not told the whole story. Few are aware of what they are getting themselves into. This is true of the LDS Church as well. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to masquerade as a Christian organization by suppressing information, misrepresenting history, and redefining Christian terminology. We challenge the Mormon Church to quit being dishonest with prospective converts, either in this country or abroad. We ask that the LDS Church tell people up-front what Mormonism really teaches. They owe it to their investigators to explain those doctrines which make Mormonism unique, and distinct, from biblical Christianity. In other words, they should quit twisting language and conveying misleading thoughts and follow your own admonition, "if we tolerate lying to any degree, we are accessories to deception" (pg.57).
contact@mrm.org
Unless otherwise noted, you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute our text, audio, and video in any format provided that you do not alter the content in any way and you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. Translations faithful to the original meaning in other languages are also permitted and encouraged. For web posting, a link to our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be explicitly approved by Mormonism Research Ministry.
Here's a subject that has caused a bit of controversy over the years - lying for the Lord. In brief, it has been claimed that if Mormons believe that the end will justify the means, it is okay for them to lie. In other words, if they believe that lying will further the kingdom of God, or that it will be good for or help further the goals of Mormonism, it is okay to lie.
The following is an excellent article by my good friend and fellow researcher Bill McKeever, of Mormonism Research Ministry, on the subject of lying for the Lord. He has a great website on Mormonism and his materials are a ready resource to those who are looking for help with Mormonism. I believe his website is http://www.mrm.org. Another website where you will find good information on Mormonism is http://www.solomonspalding.info, as well as the older site: http://www.thedigitalvoice.com/enigma. I mention both sites because some of the documents apparently haven't been transferred to the new site as yet.
So much for the commercial and now to Bill's article.
Lying for the Lord
A Review by Bill McKeever
In the October 1994 "Ensign" article entitled "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness," Mormon writer Robert J. Matthews expounds on the fact that the ninth commandment is a "strong declaration against ... gross understatements, fabrication, or the willful giving of any explanation not supported by the facts." He went on to say, "Even sharing the truth can have the effect of lying when we tell only half-truths that do not give the full picture. We can also be guilty of bearing false witness and lying if we say nothing, particularly if we allow another to reach a wrong conclusion while we hold back information that would have led to a more accurate perception. In this case it is as though an actual lie were uttered" (pg.54).
Mr. Matthews continued on page 55, "Lying and misrepresentation in all of their forms are wrong, no matter how they may be rationalized, and those who silently let these evils pass unchallenged are also doing wrong". On the following page he states, "There are many ways in which language is twisted, warped, or packaged to convey misleading thoughts."
On several occasions I have asked Christians if they have ever had a Mormon tell them that they were "Christians just like them." I think just about everyone who talks with Latter-day Saints on even an irregular basis has heard a Mormon say this. The next time this happens to you, respond by saying, "If you are Christian just like me, then I must be a Mormon just like you." No doubt the Mormon will object to such a conclusion. Why? Because Mormons don't believe like Christians.
On far too many occasions Mormons fail to clarify their positions when they speak to Christians. They will say they believe in "Jesus Christ," trust in the "scriptures," believe they are "saved by grace," and have been "born-again." They will talk about "eternal life" and things like "heaven," but they rarely explain what they mean when they use such terminology. Is this not an act of lying as defined by Mr. Matthews above? Surely if the Mormon allows that person to assume Mormonism is similar to Christianity by "holding back information that would have led to a more accurate perception," they have done exactly what Mr. Matthews says should not be done.
Holding back information is especially a problem in the foreign field. It is not uncommon for Mormon missionaries to purposely refrain from discussing doctrines which clearly separate Mormonism from the usual perception of Christianity. They are well aware that to do otherwise would risk any chance of a return visit.
In many foreign countries the local population is at a severe disadvantage. Very few books are printed in their native language which critically examines LDS teachings. In many areas they do not even have a translated set of the standard works. At best they may have a copy of the Book of Mormon (or selections). Since the Book of Mormon does not reflect modern LDS teaching on many critical issues, this only adds to the deception.
Unfortunately, when it comes to religion, full disclosure to a prospective convert is not mandatory. One of the reasons many religions flourish is because new investigators are not told the whole story. Few are aware of what they are getting themselves into. This is true of the LDS Church as well. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to masquerade as a Christian organization by suppressing information, misrepresenting history, and redefining Christian terminology. We challenge the Mormon Church to quit being dishonest with prospective converts, either in this country or abroad. We ask that the LDS Church tell people up-front what Mormonism really teaches. They owe it to their investigators to explain those doctrines which make Mormonism unique, and distinct, from biblical Christianity. In other words, they should quit twisting language and conveying misleading thoughts and follow your own admonition, "if we tolerate lying to any degree, we are accessories to deception" (pg.57).
contact@mrm.org
Unless otherwise noted, you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute our text, audio, and video in any format provided that you do not alter the content in any way and you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. Translations faithful to the original meaning in other languages are also permitted and encouraged. For web posting, a link to our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be explicitly approved by Mormonism Research Ministry.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Ex-Mormon Foundation Update
Hi folks,
I just found this update on the "exmo" foundation annual conference and wanted to share it with you. As you will see, it tells where you may either watch or listen to the various seminars and breakout sessions at this year's conference. Take it from me, this year's conference was great, and possibly the best of the three I've attended so far, with the possible exception of when I spoke at the 2007 conference, ha ha! Seriously, the 2009 conference was superb, so check out the exmo website and go through all of the many links to their media and other files.
Art
Monday, Oct 26, 2009, at 07:59 AM Exmormon Foundation's 2009 Conference Presentations Now Online! Posted By Chad Spjut
Hello fellow Exmos! I wanted to let you all know that the audio and video presentations from the Exmormon Foundation’s 2009 Conference are now online. You can download or listen to them here: http://exmormonfoundation.org/audio20... or you can watch the presentations online at the Foundation’s Youtube page here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ExmormonF... This year’s conference was one filled with wonderful insights and information with presentations discussing questions surrounding authorship of the Book of Mormon by Craig Criddle Ph.D, to Richard Packham’s presentation on Joseph Smith’s language problems in the creation of Mormon scripture and doctrines, to Charles Larson’s recounting of his journey out of Mormonism and into the world of post-Mormon authorship, and LA Times reporter and author, William Lobdell as he discuses the “Truth About Exmormons & Others Who Lose Their Faith.” The debut of the new independent documentary “In the Shadow of the Temple” was also a great success, and more information about the film can be found on the Foundation’s website at http://www.exmormonfoundation.org or by visiting the Perpetia Productions site here: http://www.intheshadowofthetemple.com... For those of you who were unable to attend or for those who just want to listen again, I’m sure you will enjoy all of the presentations. All the best, Chad C. Spjut, President, The Exmormon Foundation p.s. If you are interested in becoming involved and helping out the Foundation, please visit here for more information: http://exmormonfoundation.org/join.ht...
I just found this update on the "exmo" foundation annual conference and wanted to share it with you. As you will see, it tells where you may either watch or listen to the various seminars and breakout sessions at this year's conference. Take it from me, this year's conference was great, and possibly the best of the three I've attended so far, with the possible exception of when I spoke at the 2007 conference, ha ha! Seriously, the 2009 conference was superb, so check out the exmo website and go through all of the many links to their media and other files.
Art
Monday, Oct 26, 2009, at 07:59 AM Exmormon Foundation's 2009 Conference Presentations Now Online! Posted By Chad Spjut
Hello fellow Exmos! I wanted to let you all know that the audio and video presentations from the Exmormon Foundation’s 2009 Conference are now online. You can download or listen to them here: http://exmormonfoundation.org/audio20... or you can watch the presentations online at the Foundation’s Youtube page here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ExmormonF... This year’s conference was one filled with wonderful insights and information with presentations discussing questions surrounding authorship of the Book of Mormon by Craig Criddle Ph.D, to Richard Packham’s presentation on Joseph Smith’s language problems in the creation of Mormon scripture and doctrines, to Charles Larson’s recounting of his journey out of Mormonism and into the world of post-Mormon authorship, and LA Times reporter and author, William Lobdell as he discuses the “Truth About Exmormons & Others Who Lose Their Faith.” The debut of the new independent documentary “In the Shadow of the Temple” was also a great success, and more information about the film can be found on the Foundation’s website at http://www.exmormonfoundation.org or by visiting the Perpetia Productions site here: http://www.intheshadowofthetemple.com... For those of you who were unable to attend or for those who just want to listen again, I’m sure you will enjoy all of the presentations. All the best, Chad C. Spjut, President, The Exmormon Foundation p.s. If you are interested in becoming involved and helping out the Foundation, please visit here for more information: http://exmormonfoundation.org/join.ht...
"Reformed Egyptian" is evidence for the Book of Mormon?
Hi folks,
I couldn't pass this one up. In yet another article at Mormontimes.com there is an article which has as its headline: Reformed Egyptian is Evidence for the Book of Mormon. It goes over the usual events, like Martin Harris visiting Prof. Anthon - the Pratt version of course, with Anthon first allegedly saying one thing and then another regarding the strange characters that Harris showed him which Smith claimed were from an ancient language. Here's the link to the story:
http://www.mormontimes.com/mormon_voices/michael_r_ash/?id=11383
Enjoy!
Art
I couldn't pass this one up. In yet another article at Mormontimes.com there is an article which has as its headline: Reformed Egyptian is Evidence for the Book of Mormon. It goes over the usual events, like Martin Harris visiting Prof. Anthon - the Pratt version of course, with Anthon first allegedly saying one thing and then another regarding the strange characters that Harris showed him which Smith claimed were from an ancient language. Here's the link to the story:
http://www.mormontimes.com/mormon_voices/michael_r_ash/?id=11383
Enjoy!
Art
"Lost" Book of Commandments Witnesses Found
Hi all,
I just saw an interesting article at Mormontimes.com about the "lost" witnesses to the Book of Commandments being found. In the latest book on the writings of Joseph Smith, the list was published (names being "modernized" - what does that mean?). Anyway, here's the url for the article:
http://www.mormontimes.com/studies_doctrine/church_history/?id=11397&preview=1.
I wonder what Craig Criddle thinks of this? I noticed a comment by someone who had looked at the article, where the person remarks that it looks like some signatures may have been erased or something. I wonder why anyone would do anything like that? It does sort of look that way, at least from the photograph they show in the article.
Comments and/or questions?
Art
I just saw an interesting article at Mormontimes.com about the "lost" witnesses to the Book of Commandments being found. In the latest book on the writings of Joseph Smith, the list was published (names being "modernized" - what does that mean?). Anyway, here's the url for the article:
http://www.mormontimes.com/studies_doctrine/church_history/?id=11397&preview=1.
I wonder what Craig Criddle thinks of this? I noticed a comment by someone who had looked at the article, where the person remarks that it looks like some signatures may have been erased or something. I wonder why anyone would do anything like that? It does sort of look that way, at least from the photograph they show in the article.
Comments and/or questions?
Art
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sheep Stealing
Hi folks,
With permission from a good friend and fellow researcher, I want to share the following article with you regarding a tactic my friend and others have come to call "sheep stealing", and would like to get your comments.
Art
Sheep Stealing: How the Cults Infiltrate Christian Churches
By Kurt Van Gorden
Jesus set forth the imperatives for pastoral care by telling
Peter, "Tend My lambs," "Feed My sheep," and "Tend My
sheep" (John 21:15-17). In 33 years as a missionary, I have
encountered cult representatives who view the Christian
Church as their special place to proselytize for new converts.
Among these I have found the Unification Church, The Way
International, and a smattering of others, but few groups can
match the Mormons in entering Christian churches for
proselytizing purposes. When I became a minister, a wise
pastor once told me, "Notice that the cults are never the first
on any mission field. They wait for Christian missionaries to
spend their resources and then they follow us and steal our
sheep." That observation has proven true over and over.
At one time, the Unification Church, founded by Sun
Myung Moon, encouraged their members to join Christian
Churches incognito to gain new converts. Sitting in the back
of the church and making friends was the first step. Once this
recruiting method was initiated, they worked themselves into
voluntary positions and occasionally they became Sunday
school teachers. This I witnessed and wrote about in the late
1970s through the mid-1980s, to help pastors prevent a
potential problem. Although these members (called Moonies
or Unificationists) actively pursued Christians for Moon’s
new gospel, they were not actually missionaries. They were
rank and file members doing their duty for their leadership.
Another group I encountered was The Way International,
which tried this approach among young Church people in
Orange County, California. Their missionaries, the WOW
(Word Over the World) ambassadors, began showing up at
Christian concerts to invite concertgoers to their Twig Bible
studies. The church asked me to help them identify this
group and stop them from preying upon their youth. Part of a
shepherd’s work is to "guard what has been committed to
your trust" (2 Timothy 6:20), which in this case was to guard
the unaware youth from false doctrine and spiritual predators.
The Mormons have a history of aggressively infiltrating
Christian churches to convert Christians. When I was on a
Christian mission in Copenhagen, Denmark, I found that the
Danish Mormon church began in 1850 through this same
method. Mormon missionaries began attending a Baptist
Church without identifying themselves or their purpose. Yet
one member of the mission group was a Mormon Apostle
from Salt Lake City, Utah, Erastus Snow, who completely hid
his Mormon rank and affiliation from the Baptist pastor.
Snow had been commissioned at a Mormon Church
conference six months earlier to begin a Scandinavian
mission. The unsuspecting Baptist congregation became their
target. The Mormons sat in the back of the Baptist Church
and quietly befriended the members. Once they gained their
confidence, they gradually introduced Mormonism into their
discussions. Within three months of arriving, they swept all
but a handful of members into Mormonism, thus organizing
the first Danish Mormon church.
This is sheep stealing through dividing and conquering.
In response to this, a Danish Lutheran bishop, Reverend Peter
Kierkegaard (the brother of the famed philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard), published the first Scandinavian pamphlet to
warn other Christian Churches about the errors of
Mormonism (About and Against Mormonism, 1855).
Proselytizing happens to large and small churches.
Seldom do we get an insider’s glimpse of this like what I
have seen in letters from active Mormons.
A Mormon from Pomona, California, wrote to me boasting about baptizing
several Baptists and Calvary Chapel members into the
Mormon Church. He wrote this because he knew that I
taught at Calvary Chapel, Evangelical, and Baptist Churches.
Quite sadly, I found out that what he wrote was true. He
covertly entered Calvary Chapels and Baptist Churches to
befriend members and convert them.
One time I saw this same man sitting toward the back of
a large Calvary Chapel where I was preaching. I took that
opportunity to publicly warn the congregation that he was
roaming among them in search of his next convert.
Mormonism was my subject that day, so I quoted his letter
from the pulpit as one who targets Calvary Chapels. The
Bible urges us to "note those who cause divisions and
offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and
avoid them" (Romans 1:16). This we must do.
Jesus had little regard for sheep stealers. He called them
wolves in sheep’s clothing and hirelings, who pretend to be
real Christians when they are nothing of the sort (Matthew
7:15; John 12:10; Acts 20:29). We should view them through
Christ’s eyes and see their true nature. A wolf can be nothing
other than a wolf by nature and sheep are sheep. A wolf does
not become a lamb by wearing sheep’s clothing. His motive
and purpose does not change with a change of clothing.
In another example, a Mormon missionary admitted by
letter that he was recruiting for the Mormon church at a
Christian single’s group. When the pastor confronted him, he
outright lied to the pastor until the pastor showed him his own
letter. Caught in embarrassment, he then apologized, only to
turn around and repeat the same thing at a later time in the
same church! This is aggressive sheep stealing.
Dr. Steve Johnson, a pastor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
wrote about this on a blog:
A number of years back our Singles Sunday School class had a visit from a
Mormon, who did not identify himself as such. He attended a class
taught by one of our singles.
After the class, the Mormon wrote a letter to the class teacher, seeking to
recruit him to Mormonism. The class teacher passed the letter on to me. Later, I
arranged a meeting with this Mormon. I asked him if he had been proselytizing
members of our church. He said, ‘Absolutely not.’ At that time I took his letter out
of my pocket and said, ‘Would you like me to read you your recent letter to the class teacher?’
He turned beet red and apologized.
I told him that he was welcome to propagate his views off our property and
outside our meetings, but if he thought we'd allow him to come to our meetings to
recruit people to Mormonism, he was sadly mistaken. He apologized. Three years
later the same guy attended a Bible Study sponsored by our class and tried to do a
similar thing.
The Mormon’s letter to the single’s teacher at Dr.
Johnson’s church, is quoted and reproduced below. It serves
as an example for how this operation works inside a Christian
congregation. It states:
Dear Xxxx,
I enjoyed your lesson last Sunday. You are an excellent teacher. That is a
great gift. I am a missionary for my Church—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints (L.D.S. or Mormons) and so I wanted to share of the things which I have
learned to be true. There are many other things that I could send, but hopefully I
will be able to give them to you later. The book "Marvelous Work and a Wonder" is
an excellent book to explain about the Church. The second book also good
because prayer is important to knowing the thing which you read are true.
The men who wrote these essays on prayer are all apostles and prophets
which have been chosen for this dispensation by the Lord. But you don’t need to
take my word for it the Lord will tell you himself. As it says in the Book of Mormon,
Moroni 10:3 . . . [see text below] . . ..
So I would challenge you to pray for answers to these questions.
1. Has God restored his authority through the Holy Priesthood and
established a Prophet for us in this day? A prophet as surely as was Abraham,
Moses, and Isaiah.
2. Is the Book of Mormon the word of God as important to us in this day as
the Bible, both Old and New Testaments?
I know that these things are true as I have received personal revelation to
know this. I would like to make myself available to you for further explanation and
instruction. We have a set of discussions which take no less than 5 hours to
present. I feel that you might be uncomfortable about this because of your
experience with the group in Houston.
I am at your service in Jesus Christ’s name,
Sincerely.
Xxx Xxxxxxx
Running parallel with these infiltration programs, we
now see a new arena where Mormons are being openly
invited by Christian Churches under the guise of dialog.
I have attended these meetings (largely sponsored by the
Mormon-owned Brigham Young University), where Dr.
Robert Millet, of BYU, and Rev. Greg Johnson, of Utah, role-
play a rehearsed conversation designed to get Christians to
lay down their defenses.
What is the result? I have personally talked with Christians who have become baptized
members of the Mormon Church through these meetings.
Christian Churches, without knowing it, become hosts to
the sheep stealing by inviting Mormon speakers, like Dr.
Millet, to freely speak without refutation by Rev. Johnson.
Furthermore, the unique power of Christ’s gospel is left
undefended by Johnson. He quickly silences Christians if
they point out differences or defend historic Christianity.
This charade becomes sheep stealing with a welcome sign.
False teachers send their workers forth to steal sheep
from Christian churches and they often hide their motive and
purpose from Church leadership. This article serves to warn
pastors about wolves in sheep’s clothing who seek to convert
the weak and unaware Christians from their congregations.
Pastors are charged with the duty of feeding and tending the
sheep, which includes their protection and sound apologetics.
Utah Gospel Mission P.O. Box 780 Victorville, CA 92393
www.UtahGospelMission.org
Kurt Van Gorden is a contributing writer to several books on cults, world religions, and
the occult with Drs. Walter R. Martin, Ronald Enroth, Norman Geisler, Josh McDowell,
Ravi Zacharias, and Alan Gomes, in addition to writing Mormonism (Zondervan, 1995).
He directs two missions to the cults, Jude 3 Missions and the Utah Gospel Mission,
which was founded in 1898. www.UtahGospelMission.org missioneditor@homail.com
© 2009—Utah Gospel Mission. Permission is granted to reproduce without changing.
[The Mormon Church has also targeted Christian ministers as converts through a
"fellowshipping" program (c.f., Ensign, June 1976, 52). The story of fourteen ministers who I dealt with this at length in my chapter, "Mormonism," in Geisler and Mieister, Reasons for
converted to Mormonism is found in Gibson’s From Clergy to Convert (Bookcraft, 1983). Faith: Making a Case for the Christian Faith (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2007).]
With permission from a good friend and fellow researcher, I want to share the following article with you regarding a tactic my friend and others have come to call "sheep stealing", and would like to get your comments.
Art
Sheep Stealing: How the Cults Infiltrate Christian Churches
By Kurt Van Gorden
Jesus set forth the imperatives for pastoral care by telling
Peter, "Tend My lambs," "Feed My sheep," and "Tend My
sheep" (John 21:15-17). In 33 years as a missionary, I have
encountered cult representatives who view the Christian
Church as their special place to proselytize for new converts.
Among these I have found the Unification Church, The Way
International, and a smattering of others, but few groups can
match the Mormons in entering Christian churches for
proselytizing purposes. When I became a minister, a wise
pastor once told me, "Notice that the cults are never the first
on any mission field. They wait for Christian missionaries to
spend their resources and then they follow us and steal our
sheep." That observation has proven true over and over.
At one time, the Unification Church, founded by Sun
Myung Moon, encouraged their members to join Christian
Churches incognito to gain new converts. Sitting in the back
of the church and making friends was the first step. Once this
recruiting method was initiated, they worked themselves into
voluntary positions and occasionally they became Sunday
school teachers. This I witnessed and wrote about in the late
1970s through the mid-1980s, to help pastors prevent a
potential problem. Although these members (called Moonies
or Unificationists) actively pursued Christians for Moon’s
new gospel, they were not actually missionaries. They were
rank and file members doing their duty for their leadership.
Another group I encountered was The Way International,
which tried this approach among young Church people in
Orange County, California. Their missionaries, the WOW
(Word Over the World) ambassadors, began showing up at
Christian concerts to invite concertgoers to their Twig Bible
studies. The church asked me to help them identify this
group and stop them from preying upon their youth. Part of a
shepherd’s work is to "guard what has been committed to
your trust" (2 Timothy 6:20), which in this case was to guard
the unaware youth from false doctrine and spiritual predators.
The Mormons have a history of aggressively infiltrating
Christian churches to convert Christians. When I was on a
Christian mission in Copenhagen, Denmark, I found that the
Danish Mormon church began in 1850 through this same
method. Mormon missionaries began attending a Baptist
Church without identifying themselves or their purpose. Yet
one member of the mission group was a Mormon Apostle
from Salt Lake City, Utah, Erastus Snow, who completely hid
his Mormon rank and affiliation from the Baptist pastor.
Snow had been commissioned at a Mormon Church
conference six months earlier to begin a Scandinavian
mission. The unsuspecting Baptist congregation became their
target. The Mormons sat in the back of the Baptist Church
and quietly befriended the members. Once they gained their
confidence, they gradually introduced Mormonism into their
discussions. Within three months of arriving, they swept all
but a handful of members into Mormonism, thus organizing
the first Danish Mormon church.
This is sheep stealing through dividing and conquering.
In response to this, a Danish Lutheran bishop, Reverend Peter
Kierkegaard (the brother of the famed philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard), published the first Scandinavian pamphlet to
warn other Christian Churches about the errors of
Mormonism (About and Against Mormonism, 1855).
Proselytizing happens to large and small churches.
Seldom do we get an insider’s glimpse of this like what I
have seen in letters from active Mormons.
A Mormon from Pomona, California, wrote to me boasting about baptizing
several Baptists and Calvary Chapel members into the
Mormon Church. He wrote this because he knew that I
taught at Calvary Chapel, Evangelical, and Baptist Churches.
Quite sadly, I found out that what he wrote was true. He
covertly entered Calvary Chapels and Baptist Churches to
befriend members and convert them.
One time I saw this same man sitting toward the back of
a large Calvary Chapel where I was preaching. I took that
opportunity to publicly warn the congregation that he was
roaming among them in search of his next convert.
Mormonism was my subject that day, so I quoted his letter
from the pulpit as one who targets Calvary Chapels. The
Bible urges us to "note those who cause divisions and
offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and
avoid them" (Romans 1:16). This we must do.
Jesus had little regard for sheep stealers. He called them
wolves in sheep’s clothing and hirelings, who pretend to be
real Christians when they are nothing of the sort (Matthew
7:15; John 12:10; Acts 20:29). We should view them through
Christ’s eyes and see their true nature. A wolf can be nothing
other than a wolf by nature and sheep are sheep. A wolf does
not become a lamb by wearing sheep’s clothing. His motive
and purpose does not change with a change of clothing.
In another example, a Mormon missionary admitted by
letter that he was recruiting for the Mormon church at a
Christian single’s group. When the pastor confronted him, he
outright lied to the pastor until the pastor showed him his own
letter. Caught in embarrassment, he then apologized, only to
turn around and repeat the same thing at a later time in the
same church! This is aggressive sheep stealing.
Dr. Steve Johnson, a pastor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
wrote about this on a blog:
A number of years back our Singles Sunday School class had a visit from a
Mormon, who did not identify himself as such. He attended a class
taught by one of our singles.
After the class, the Mormon wrote a letter to the class teacher, seeking to
recruit him to Mormonism. The class teacher passed the letter on to me. Later, I
arranged a meeting with this Mormon. I asked him if he had been proselytizing
members of our church. He said, ‘Absolutely not.’ At that time I took his letter out
of my pocket and said, ‘Would you like me to read you your recent letter to the class teacher?’
He turned beet red and apologized.
I told him that he was welcome to propagate his views off our property and
outside our meetings, but if he thought we'd allow him to come to our meetings to
recruit people to Mormonism, he was sadly mistaken. He apologized. Three years
later the same guy attended a Bible Study sponsored by our class and tried to do a
similar thing.
The Mormon’s letter to the single’s teacher at Dr.
Johnson’s church, is quoted and reproduced below. It serves
as an example for how this operation works inside a Christian
congregation. It states:
Dear Xxxx,
I enjoyed your lesson last Sunday. You are an excellent teacher. That is a
great gift. I am a missionary for my Church—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints (L.D.S. or Mormons) and so I wanted to share of the things which I have
learned to be true. There are many other things that I could send, but hopefully I
will be able to give them to you later. The book "Marvelous Work and a Wonder" is
an excellent book to explain about the Church. The second book also good
because prayer is important to knowing the thing which you read are true.
The men who wrote these essays on prayer are all apostles and prophets
which have been chosen for this dispensation by the Lord. But you don’t need to
take my word for it the Lord will tell you himself. As it says in the Book of Mormon,
Moroni 10:3 . . . [see text below] . . ..
So I would challenge you to pray for answers to these questions.
1. Has God restored his authority through the Holy Priesthood and
established a Prophet for us in this day? A prophet as surely as was Abraham,
Moses, and Isaiah.
2. Is the Book of Mormon the word of God as important to us in this day as
the Bible, both Old and New Testaments?
I know that these things are true as I have received personal revelation to
know this. I would like to make myself available to you for further explanation and
instruction. We have a set of discussions which take no less than 5 hours to
present. I feel that you might be uncomfortable about this because of your
experience with the group in Houston.
I am at your service in Jesus Christ’s name,
Sincerely.
Xxx Xxxxxxx
Running parallel with these infiltration programs, we
now see a new arena where Mormons are being openly
invited by Christian Churches under the guise of dialog.
I have attended these meetings (largely sponsored by the
Mormon-owned Brigham Young University), where Dr.
Robert Millet, of BYU, and Rev. Greg Johnson, of Utah, role-
play a rehearsed conversation designed to get Christians to
lay down their defenses.
What is the result? I have personally talked with Christians who have become baptized
members of the Mormon Church through these meetings.
Christian Churches, without knowing it, become hosts to
the sheep stealing by inviting Mormon speakers, like Dr.
Millet, to freely speak without refutation by Rev. Johnson.
Furthermore, the unique power of Christ’s gospel is left
undefended by Johnson. He quickly silences Christians if
they point out differences or defend historic Christianity.
This charade becomes sheep stealing with a welcome sign.
False teachers send their workers forth to steal sheep
from Christian churches and they often hide their motive and
purpose from Church leadership. This article serves to warn
pastors about wolves in sheep’s clothing who seek to convert
the weak and unaware Christians from their congregations.
Pastors are charged with the duty of feeding and tending the
sheep, which includes their protection and sound apologetics.
Utah Gospel Mission P.O. Box 780 Victorville, CA 92393
www.UtahGospelMission.org
Kurt Van Gorden is a contributing writer to several books on cults, world religions, and
the occult with Drs. Walter R. Martin, Ronald Enroth, Norman Geisler, Josh McDowell,
Ravi Zacharias, and Alan Gomes, in addition to writing Mormonism (Zondervan, 1995).
He directs two missions to the cults, Jude 3 Missions and the Utah Gospel Mission,
which was founded in 1898. www.UtahGospelMission.org missioneditor@homail.com
© 2009—Utah Gospel Mission. Permission is granted to reproduce without changing.
[The Mormon Church has also targeted Christian ministers as converts through a
"fellowshipping" program (c.f., Ensign, June 1976, 52). The story of fourteen ministers who I dealt with this at length in my chapter, "Mormonism," in Geisler and Mieister, Reasons for
converted to Mormonism is found in Gibson’s From Clergy to Convert (Bookcraft, 1983). Faith: Making a Case for the Christian Faith (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2007).]
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
2009 Ex-Mormon conference Photo's
Hi all,
Here are some photo's I took at the 2009 Ex-Mormon Conference. A great time was had by all. Too bad I didn't think about taking more photo's until it was too late. Next year.
Enjoy!
Art
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Craig Criddle and Spalding
Hi all,
During the recent LDS General Conference, someone by the name of Elder Holland delivered a rant against those who would question the divine origin and authenticiy of the Book of Mormon. Included among the targets of his anger was the Spalding-Rigdon theory for the origin of the Book of Mormon, along with his calling it "pathetic".
Shortly after I got back from the conference, I was asked to do a quick edit job on a Wikipedia site that contained a description of that "pathetic" theory, as well as a misleading description of Craig Criddle's breakthrough research. I made some corrections and apparently just in the nick of time, because a good sized chunk of the article appeared in a column at "Equality Time", a blog about things Mormon.
Here is the freshly edited Wikipedia piece that concerns itself with Spalding:
Solomon Spaulding – Manuscript FoundThis summary is taken in whole from Wikipedia. Spalding–Rigdon theory of Book of Mormon authorshipFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Spalding–Rigdon theory of Book of Mormon authorship is the theory that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized in part from an unpublished manuscript written by Solomon Spalding. This theory first appeared in print in the book Mormonism Unvailed,[1] published in 1834 by E.D. Howe. The theory claims that the Spalding manuscript was at some point acquired by Sidney Rigdon, who used it in collusion with Joseph Smith, Jr. to produce the Book of Mormon. Although publicly stated that it was through reading the Book of Mormon that Rigdon joined the Mormon church,[1] the Spalding–Rigdon theory argues that the story was a later invention to cover the book's allegedly true origins.Spalding manuscript and the Book of MormonWhile living in Conneaut, Ohio, in the early nineteenth century, Solomon Spalding (1761–1816) began writing a work of fiction about the lost civilization of the mound builders of North America. Spalding shared his story, entitled Manuscript Story[2] with members of his family and some of his associates in Conneaut, as well as his friends in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Amity, Washington County, Pennsylvania, where he lived prior to his death. However, Manuscript Story was not published during his lifetime. In 1832, Latter Day Saint missionaries Samuel H. Smith and Orson Hyde visited Conneaut, Ohio, and preached from the Book of Mormon. Nehemiah King, a resident of Conneaut who knew Spalding when he lived there, felt that the Mormon text resembled the story written by Spalding years before. In 1833, at the urging of Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, King, Spalding's widow, his brother John, and a number of other residents of Conneaut signed affidavits stating that Spalding had written a manuscript, portions of which were identical to the Book of Mormon.Origins of the theoryThe Spalding theory of authorship first appeared in print in Eber D. Howe's 1834 book Mormonism Unvailed. Howe printed collection of affidavits collected by Hurlbut. Hurlbut had heard of an unpublished romance novel by Solomon Spalding as he was touring Pennsylvania giving lectures against the Latter Day Saint church. Hurlbut concluded that the description of the story in the manuscript bore some resemblance to that of the Book of Mormon.[3] A contemporary of Hurlbut's, Benjamin Winchester, states that Hurlbut "had learned that one Mr. Spaulding had written a romance, and the probability was, that it had, by some means, fallen into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, and that he had converted it into the Book of Mormon." Upon learning this, Hurlbut determined to obtain the manuscript.[4] Hurlbut learned that Sidney Rigdon had once resided in Pittsburgh and that the manuscript had once been there, and subsequently "endeavoured to make the finding of the manuscript take place at Pittsburgh, and then infer, that S.R. [Sidney Rigdon] had copied it there."[5]Author Dan Vogel suggests that Hurlbut was not the originator of the Spalding-Rigdon theory, noting that Hurlbut pursued this in response to what he had heard about the manuscript and suggests that had Hurlbut been the inventor of the theory "he would not have made strenuous efforts to recover Spalding's manuscript."[6][edit] Statements from Spalding's neighbors and relativesEight of the affidavits acquired by Hurlbut from Solomon Spalding's family and associates stated that there were similarities between the story and the Book of Mormon.[7]An example is the statement of Solomon Spalding's brother John, which declared that Spalding's manuscript "gave a detailed account of their journey from Jerusalem, by land and sea, till they arrived in America, under the command of NEPHI and LEHI. They afterwards had quarrels and contentions, and separated into two distinct nations, one of which he denominated Nephites and the other Lamanites." Spalding's widow told a similar story, and stated that "the names of Nephi and Lehi are yet fresh in my memory, as being the principal heroes of his tale."[8]Author Fawn Brodie expressed suspicion regarding these statements, claiming that the style of the statements was too similar and displayed too much uniformity. Brodie suggests that Hurlbut did a "little judicious prompting."[9]However, an article published in the Hudson Ohio "Observer", (Masthead of Vlll:15 - June 12, 1834), tells a different story. In the article, the editor interviewed some of the Conneaut witnesses, who then told the editor the same thing that they told to Hurlbut, even though they had every opportunity to say anything they wished. The significance of the article is that it appeared shortly after Hurlbut's trial in April 1834 and around six months before Howe's book, "Mormonism Unvailed", was published, thus refuting the claims that the witnesses had been coached by Hurlbut or that he had inaccurately reported their testimony.Howe's response to the Spalding manuscriptHurlbut obtained a manuscript through Spalding's widow, and showed it in public presentations in Kirtland, Ohio, in December 1833.[citation needed] Hurlbut then became embroiled in a legal dispute with Joseph Smith. Subsequently, Hurlbut delivered the documents he had collected to Howe. Howe was unable to find the alleged similarities with the Book of Mormon that were described in the statements and instead argued in Mormonism Unveiled (1834) that there must exist a second Spalding manuscript which was now lost. Howe concluded that Joseph Smith and Sidney Ridgon used the Spalding manuscript to produce the Book of Mormon for the purpose of making money.[10][edit] Responses to the theoryIn 1840, Benjamin Winchester, a Mormon defender who had been "deputed ... to hunt up the Hurlbut case,"[11] published a book rejecting the Spalding theory as "a sheer fabrication." Winchester attributed the creation of the entire story to Hurlbut.[12]Regarding Sidney Rigdon's alleged involvement, Rigdon's son John recounted an interview with his father in 1865: My father, after I had finished saying what I have repeated above, looked at me a moment, raised his hand above his head and slowly said, with tears glistening in his eyes: "My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of [the Book of Mormon] is true. Your mother and sister, Mrs. Athalia Robinson, were present when that book was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin of [the Book of Mormon] was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all of my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but one story."[13]In 1884, a Spalding manuscript known as Manuscript Story was discovered and published, and the manuscript now resides at Oberlin College in Ohio.[14]. This manuscript appears to bear little resemblance to the Book of Mormon story, but some critics claim it contains parallels in theme and narrative.[citation needed] The second "lost" manuscript purported to exist by Howe has never been discovered.A 2008 computer analysis of the text of the Book of Mormon compared to writings of possible authors of the text shows a high probability that the authors of the book were Spalding, Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery; concluding that "our analysis supports the theory that the Book of Mormon was written by multiple, nineteenth-century authors, and more specifically, we find strong support for the Spalding-Rigdon theory of authorship. In all the data, we find Rigdon as a unifying force. His signal dominates the book, and where other candidates are more probable, Rigdon is often hiding in the shadows".[15] This study did not include Joseph Smith as one of the possible authors, arguing that because of Smith's use of scribes and co-authors, no texts can be presently identified with a surety as having been written by Smith.The Stanford group (Jocker et al., 2008) found a strong Spalding signal in Mosiah, Alma, the first part of Helaman, and Ether. The Spalding signal was weak in those parts of the Book of Mormon likely produced after the lost pages incident (1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, some of the middle part of 3 Nephi, Moroni). They found the Rigdon signal distributed throughout the Book of Mormon (except for the known Isaiah chapters), and a weak Pratt signal in 1 Nephi. They also found a strong Cowdery signal in mid-Alma and weaker Cowdery signals in locations that contain content similar to Ethan Smith's "View of the Hebrews".Previous wordprint or computer studies have come to different conclusions (for a history of such studies from the perspective of a LDS group, see http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Wordprint_studies). A 1980 study done by John Hilton with non-LDS colleagues at Berkeley concluded that the probability of Spaulding having been the (sole) author of book of Nephi was less than 7.29 x 10-28 and less than 3 x 10-11 for Alma[16].In the Stanford group (Jocker et al., 2008) peer-reviewed publication in the "Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing", they reviewed the (non-peer reviewed) Hilton study and pointed out numerous flaws in it.They (Jocker et al., 2008) found that the Book of Alma is a mixture of Rigdon, Cowdery, and Spalding. The Hilton study does not indicate what text they used for Alma. If one lumps all the signals for Rigdon, Cowdery, and Spalding together, one is left with a corrupt signal that does not match Spalding.
We must do everything we can to preserve accurate descriptions of Spalding-Rigdon material, as well as anything critical and/or favorable to the LDS, so as not to create misleading information.
Questions or comments?
Art
During the recent LDS General Conference, someone by the name of Elder Holland delivered a rant against those who would question the divine origin and authenticiy of the Book of Mormon. Included among the targets of his anger was the Spalding-Rigdon theory for the origin of the Book of Mormon, along with his calling it "pathetic".
Shortly after I got back from the conference, I was asked to do a quick edit job on a Wikipedia site that contained a description of that "pathetic" theory, as well as a misleading description of Craig Criddle's breakthrough research. I made some corrections and apparently just in the nick of time, because a good sized chunk of the article appeared in a column at "Equality Time", a blog about things Mormon.
Here is the freshly edited Wikipedia piece that concerns itself with Spalding:
Solomon Spaulding – Manuscript FoundThis summary is taken in whole from Wikipedia. Spalding–Rigdon theory of Book of Mormon authorshipFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Spalding–Rigdon theory of Book of Mormon authorship is the theory that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized in part from an unpublished manuscript written by Solomon Spalding. This theory first appeared in print in the book Mormonism Unvailed,[1] published in 1834 by E.D. Howe. The theory claims that the Spalding manuscript was at some point acquired by Sidney Rigdon, who used it in collusion with Joseph Smith, Jr. to produce the Book of Mormon. Although publicly stated that it was through reading the Book of Mormon that Rigdon joined the Mormon church,[1] the Spalding–Rigdon theory argues that the story was a later invention to cover the book's allegedly true origins.Spalding manuscript and the Book of MormonWhile living in Conneaut, Ohio, in the early nineteenth century, Solomon Spalding (1761–1816) began writing a work of fiction about the lost civilization of the mound builders of North America. Spalding shared his story, entitled Manuscript Story[2] with members of his family and some of his associates in Conneaut, as well as his friends in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Amity, Washington County, Pennsylvania, where he lived prior to his death. However, Manuscript Story was not published during his lifetime. In 1832, Latter Day Saint missionaries Samuel H. Smith and Orson Hyde visited Conneaut, Ohio, and preached from the Book of Mormon. Nehemiah King, a resident of Conneaut who knew Spalding when he lived there, felt that the Mormon text resembled the story written by Spalding years before. In 1833, at the urging of Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, King, Spalding's widow, his brother John, and a number of other residents of Conneaut signed affidavits stating that Spalding had written a manuscript, portions of which were identical to the Book of Mormon.Origins of the theoryThe Spalding theory of authorship first appeared in print in Eber D. Howe's 1834 book Mormonism Unvailed. Howe printed collection of affidavits collected by Hurlbut. Hurlbut had heard of an unpublished romance novel by Solomon Spalding as he was touring Pennsylvania giving lectures against the Latter Day Saint church. Hurlbut concluded that the description of the story in the manuscript bore some resemblance to that of the Book of Mormon.[3] A contemporary of Hurlbut's, Benjamin Winchester, states that Hurlbut "had learned that one Mr. Spaulding had written a romance, and the probability was, that it had, by some means, fallen into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, and that he had converted it into the Book of Mormon." Upon learning this, Hurlbut determined to obtain the manuscript.[4] Hurlbut learned that Sidney Rigdon had once resided in Pittsburgh and that the manuscript had once been there, and subsequently "endeavoured to make the finding of the manuscript take place at Pittsburgh, and then infer, that S.R. [Sidney Rigdon] had copied it there."[5]Author Dan Vogel suggests that Hurlbut was not the originator of the Spalding-Rigdon theory, noting that Hurlbut pursued this in response to what he had heard about the manuscript and suggests that had Hurlbut been the inventor of the theory "he would not have made strenuous efforts to recover Spalding's manuscript."[6][edit] Statements from Spalding's neighbors and relativesEight of the affidavits acquired by Hurlbut from Solomon Spalding's family and associates stated that there were similarities between the story and the Book of Mormon.[7]An example is the statement of Solomon Spalding's brother John, which declared that Spalding's manuscript "gave a detailed account of their journey from Jerusalem, by land and sea, till they arrived in America, under the command of NEPHI and LEHI. They afterwards had quarrels and contentions, and separated into two distinct nations, one of which he denominated Nephites and the other Lamanites." Spalding's widow told a similar story, and stated that "the names of Nephi and Lehi are yet fresh in my memory, as being the principal heroes of his tale."[8]Author Fawn Brodie expressed suspicion regarding these statements, claiming that the style of the statements was too similar and displayed too much uniformity. Brodie suggests that Hurlbut did a "little judicious prompting."[9]However, an article published in the Hudson Ohio "Observer", (Masthead of Vlll:15 - June 12, 1834), tells a different story. In the article, the editor interviewed some of the Conneaut witnesses, who then told the editor the same thing that they told to Hurlbut, even though they had every opportunity to say anything they wished. The significance of the article is that it appeared shortly after Hurlbut's trial in April 1834 and around six months before Howe's book, "Mormonism Unvailed", was published, thus refuting the claims that the witnesses had been coached by Hurlbut or that he had inaccurately reported their testimony.Howe's response to the Spalding manuscriptHurlbut obtained a manuscript through Spalding's widow, and showed it in public presentations in Kirtland, Ohio, in December 1833.[citation needed] Hurlbut then became embroiled in a legal dispute with Joseph Smith. Subsequently, Hurlbut delivered the documents he had collected to Howe. Howe was unable to find the alleged similarities with the Book of Mormon that were described in the statements and instead argued in Mormonism Unveiled (1834) that there must exist a second Spalding manuscript which was now lost. Howe concluded that Joseph Smith and Sidney Ridgon used the Spalding manuscript to produce the Book of Mormon for the purpose of making money.[10][edit] Responses to the theoryIn 1840, Benjamin Winchester, a Mormon defender who had been "deputed ... to hunt up the Hurlbut case,"[11] published a book rejecting the Spalding theory as "a sheer fabrication." Winchester attributed the creation of the entire story to Hurlbut.[12]Regarding Sidney Rigdon's alleged involvement, Rigdon's son John recounted an interview with his father in 1865: My father, after I had finished saying what I have repeated above, looked at me a moment, raised his hand above his head and slowly said, with tears glistening in his eyes: "My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of [the Book of Mormon] is true. Your mother and sister, Mrs. Athalia Robinson, were present when that book was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin of [the Book of Mormon] was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all of my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but one story."[13]In 1884, a Spalding manuscript known as Manuscript Story was discovered and published, and the manuscript now resides at Oberlin College in Ohio.[14]. This manuscript appears to bear little resemblance to the Book of Mormon story, but some critics claim it contains parallels in theme and narrative.[citation needed] The second "lost" manuscript purported to exist by Howe has never been discovered.A 2008 computer analysis of the text of the Book of Mormon compared to writings of possible authors of the text shows a high probability that the authors of the book were Spalding, Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery; concluding that "our analysis supports the theory that the Book of Mormon was written by multiple, nineteenth-century authors, and more specifically, we find strong support for the Spalding-Rigdon theory of authorship. In all the data, we find Rigdon as a unifying force. His signal dominates the book, and where other candidates are more probable, Rigdon is often hiding in the shadows".[15] This study did not include Joseph Smith as one of the possible authors, arguing that because of Smith's use of scribes and co-authors, no texts can be presently identified with a surety as having been written by Smith.The Stanford group (Jocker et al., 2008) found a strong Spalding signal in Mosiah, Alma, the first part of Helaman, and Ether. The Spalding signal was weak in those parts of the Book of Mormon likely produced after the lost pages incident (1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, some of the middle part of 3 Nephi, Moroni). They found the Rigdon signal distributed throughout the Book of Mormon (except for the known Isaiah chapters), and a weak Pratt signal in 1 Nephi. They also found a strong Cowdery signal in mid-Alma and weaker Cowdery signals in locations that contain content similar to Ethan Smith's "View of the Hebrews".Previous wordprint or computer studies have come to different conclusions (for a history of such studies from the perspective of a LDS group, see http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Wordprint_studies). A 1980 study done by John Hilton with non-LDS colleagues at Berkeley concluded that the probability of Spaulding having been the (sole) author of book of Nephi was less than 7.29 x 10-28 and less than 3 x 10-11 for Alma[16].In the Stanford group (Jocker et al., 2008) peer-reviewed publication in the "Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing", they reviewed the (non-peer reviewed) Hilton study and pointed out numerous flaws in it.They (Jocker et al., 2008) found that the Book of Alma is a mixture of Rigdon, Cowdery, and Spalding. The Hilton study does not indicate what text they used for Alma. If one lumps all the signals for Rigdon, Cowdery, and Spalding together, one is left with a corrupt signal that does not match Spalding.
We must do everything we can to preserve accurate descriptions of Spalding-Rigdon material, as well as anything critical and/or favorable to the LDS, so as not to create misleading information.
Questions or comments?
Art
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Rules of the road
Hi again,
In the course of discussing things, tempers may flare, but I'm asking and telling everyone that abusive language and behavior will not be tolerated. Everyone has an opinion and that's fine, but express it in a non-abusive way, okay?
Thanks!
Art Vanick
In the course of discussing things, tempers may flare, but I'm asking and telling everyone that abusive language and behavior will not be tolerated. Everyone has an opinion and that's fine, but express it in a non-abusive way, okay?
Thanks!
Art Vanick
The 2009 Ex-Mormon Conference and Spalding
Why don't we start off with an event I just attended and go from there. Last Friday I once again attended the Annual Ex-Mormon Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, and had a terrific time. The presenters were perhaps the best I've seen yet (since I presented there two years ago :-)), in spite of the fact that attendance was down from last year. It was also the busiest I've been so far, between meeting with new colleagues, talking with old "exmo" friends, videotaping a session that ran concurrently with another one, and also two very personally gratifying conversations with some folks I've known for awhile.One of the highlights was the presentation by Craig Criddle on his research into various word patterns and phrases that were common to both the Book of Mormon and known samples of Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith, Pratt, and Solomon Spalding, the man whom we believe, based on over 30 years of research, wrote the basis for the Book of Mormon.I guess at this point I may need to answer a few questions, starting with who I am. My name is Art Vanick and I am one of three co-authors who wrote "Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? - The Spalding Enigma", published by Concordia Publishing House in 2005. It is the second of two books in which I participated with my two co-authors, the first book being published in 1977 with the help of Dr. Walter Martin. I did some of the research for the 1977 book but was not one of the authors. Now for the next question: who was Solomon Spalding and how was he connected with the Book of Mormon?Solomon was a down and out retired Congregationalist minister who toward the end of his life turned to writing with the hopes of providing a financial legacy for his poor family. He made two attempts at least two attempts at writing - Manuscript Story, which he ended abruptly, and Manuscript Found, which he submitted to several publishers and which finally found acceptance by the Patterson Print Shop. The book was mediocre, however, and so Spalding was required to raise the necessary amount of money to cover the printing cost, which he attempted to do but died before he was able to do it, so the manuscript lay in the print shop. This brings us to the next question - what does Spalding have to do with the Book of Mormon?The Spalding manuscript was taken or otherwise acquired by a man named Sidney Rigdon, who was said by many to have frequented the print shop where Spalding's manuscript was located. At some time after he got the manuscript, he met with Oliver Cowdery and his cousin, Joseph Smith, and the three of them over a period of about three years edited and otherwise rewrote Spalding's manuscript and turned it into what is now known as the Book of Mormon.The next question is how old is the Spalding-Rigdon theory? The answer is older than the Book of Mormon itself, and possibly goes back to a accusation that was attributed to Spalding and his wife, who supposedly accused Sidney Rigdon of taking Manuscript Found as early as 1814.In any case, it is quite probably the oldest and definitely tne most severely attacked of all of the non-Mormon theories for the origin of the Book of Mormon. I say this because it has not only been attacked by Mormons but also by non-Mormons and also various "Smith-only" Christian groups who insist that Smith had to have written the Book of Mormon.Our book, all 562 pages of it, attempts to solve the Spalding Enigma from a historical perspective. It's basically a historical "whodunnit" where we attempt to show via as much evidence as possible, how the principals in the story get together and do what we claim they do.We have been joined in recent times by others who have gone at the same problem from other viewpoints, like Tom Donofrio and Craig Criddle, whose presentation at the 2009 exmo conference has elevated the Spalding claims several notches, as had Tom's.Well, that's about it for now. It's Friday and that means "pizza and movie night" at my household. Join in as the spirit moves.Art
October 16, 2009 7:06 PM
October 16, 2009 7:06 PM
Friday, October 16, 2009
Welcome to Art's Enigma
Hi all,
Welcome to Art's Enigma - my new blog! I've never done a blog before so excuse any mistakes, at least until I get my bearings on things. Feel free to discuss whatever comes to mind, although I plan to discuss the subject of Mormonism a lot, though I'm sure that politics and other topics will also creep in from time to time.
Art
Welcome to Art's Enigma - my new blog! I've never done a blog before so excuse any mistakes, at least until I get my bearings on things. Feel free to discuss whatever comes to mind, although I plan to discuss the subject of Mormonism a lot, though I'm sure that politics and other topics will also creep in from time to time.
Art
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