LogGrad98
Well-Known Member
Contributor
20-21 Award Winner
2022 Award Winner
2023 Award Winner
2024 Award Winner
I've wondered the same thing.
The Official "Ask A Mormon" Thread
- Thread starter colton
- Start date
I've wondered the same thing.
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
What else is there to reveal after the "restoration" except when the Second Coming is?
Nightmare
Active Member
https://cesletter.com/Letter-to-a-CES-Director.pdf
Pretty much everything.
Specifically the Native American and Egypt archaeology.
Why was this changed?
“…the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians”
to
“…the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians”
How come modern Egyptologists disagree with the translation of Joseph Smith?
Pretty much everything.
Specifically the Native American and Egypt archaeology.
Why was this changed?
“…the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians”
to
“…the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians”
How come modern Egyptologists disagree with the translation of Joseph Smith?
Absolutely nothing. Neither of my brothers went on a mission. Both were married in the temple. Both are still active in the Church.
(just my opinions)
1- "they actively do none of those things?" -- I would say you may not know what it means to be a prophet, seer, and revelator if you think they actively do none of those things. The Jews of the New Testament were looking for The Messiah to come as a King of Kings to rule as an Alexander the Great and crush all other nations to rule them. That's not how Christ came and many missed the connection of Christ to be the Messiah because they were looking in the wrong places and for the wrong things.
2- "as if the church had never gone into apostasy before." -- When do you think the restored church as a whole has gone into apostasy? There were definitely a decent amount of church leaders and members that apostatized but the church as a whole did not.
3- "Why do we have an open canon, and yet with 150 years and many different prophets, not added to our canon?" -- It depends on what you consider "open canon". The prophets and apostles speak to us every six months, and those words are distributed in many forms. In regards to 1 and 3 I can think of a couple things that come to the top of my mind. "The Family: A Proclaimation to the World", and "The Living Christ : A Testimony of the Apostles".
If these don't answer your questions or you have more in depth questions feel free to clarify.
~TM
Last edited:
Seconded
That is taken from the Introduction to the Book of Mormon which was if I recall correctly written in 1985. At the time the author of the introduction (Bruce R. McConkie, I believe) felt that the Book of Mormon peoples were the principal ancestors of the American Indians. That was very likely the prevailing view of the church at that time. Later, as scientific studies (DNA, etc) showed that the American Indians were not principally of Middle Eastern origin, the introduction was edited. Even before the edit, I myself had formed the opinion (based on a close reading of the Book of Mormon text itself, a paper on population growth in the Book of Mormon I had seen, as well as the DNA studies) that the Nephites and Lamanites described in the Book of Mormon were very likely surrounded by many other groups of people from different origins. I was glad when the introduction was changed, as now it better matches my own view and is more compatible with science. (I myself am a scientist, in case you didn't know that.)
Are you talking about the Book of Abraham? I'll assume so. If not, please let me know.
There are many reasons why modern Egyptologists may disagree with Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Abraham (without having to resort to "the Book of Abraham must be false"). The first possibility is that the documents which you describe the Egyptologists as looking at are not the same as the ones which Smith translated. This seems very possible, as the eyewitness accounts of the original documents describe documents which aren't in existence now. Jeff Lindsey's written an extensive article about this, see here: https://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_Abraham.shtml#source. A second possibility is that perhaps as with the Book of Moses (produced by Smith by revelation, not by translating a document), the Book of Abraham was not exactly a "translation" in the traditional sense but rather was produced by revelation which was prompted by the presence of the Egyptian documents. There may be other possibilities.
As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm more than happy to give you my perspective on the claims of that letter. Just continue to pick out a topic or two at a time. And if you're interested in any of the reasons why I do believe (as opposed to why I don't disbelieve, which is what my responses to that letter are likely to be), just let me know.
scootsy
Well-Known Member
Appreciate the response and yes, clarification is necessary.
1. By prophesy I mean tell of things to come. By revelation I mean the process to receive and pass along the words of God directly. When's the last time an apostle said "[insert idea] was made known unto me by an angel" or the words of God were written verbatim, as was standard practice previously. There is a reason our prophets are called presidents now. Pres. Monson vs the prophet Joseph. It certainly seems like their main responsibility now is to preside, not prophecy, see, revelate.
2. The "restored" church has always cycled through apostasy. Read the BoM, Bible, the establishment of Christ during his lifetime. All cycled through apostasy when the church had established presence (and presumably prophets). The establishment of a church does not preclude the possibility of an apostasy, and so I don't believe what pres. Woodruff said.
3. My main issue with both of the works you referenced is that both explicitly state that they are not words of God, but of the apostles themselves. And yes, DC xx says words of prophets are the words of God themself, but their words can also be their own. And so there has been a mechanism in the past that is no longer being used to determine what type of words we were receiving.
Offhand, Pres. Kimball said something much like that with regards to O.D. #2 (1978).
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/2?lang=eng
"...we have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren, spending many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple supplicating the Lord for divine guidance. He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood..."
I found some more about the confirming revelation in a document written by Edward Kimball (Spencer's son) for BYU Studies, available for download here: https://byustudies.byu.edu/showTitle.aspx?title=7885 (click the "free pdf" link on the right)
LogGrad98
Well-Known Member
Contributor
20-21 Award Winner
2022 Award Winner
2023 Award Winner
2024 Award Winner
Is it possible that feeling was self-induced? Was it just that they had been thinking the matter over so much, and as a group, as was stated "with great struggle", and since they were unified they all felt that it was the right thing to do almost as a group hallucination, not to be offensive.
I ask this because of discussions I have had with family members who claim to have prayed fervently about if the mormon church was true and received similar "testimony" of its falsehood.
I ask this because of discussions I have had with family members who claim to have prayed fervently about if the mormon church was true and received similar "testimony" of its falsehood.
LogGrad98
Well-Known Member
Contributor
20-21 Award Winner
2022 Award Winner
2023 Award Winner
2024 Award Winner
Back to the CES document, does anyone care to comment on the locality of Joseph Smith and the similarity of Book of Mormon locations to local place names contemporary to Joseph Smith? I found that very compelling.
Group hallucinations could certainly be an explanation. Is it the most likely explanation? Not to me.
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
To me the most likely situation was a fear of losing the church's tax exempt status. Not trying to be rude but honestly that is what most non mormons think about the "God is cool with blacks now" revelation.
You're talking about pages 9 and 10?
First the map on page 9... I've seen many (5-10) internally consistent maps of the Book of Mormon. I haven't ever seen any that ended up looking like the Lake Erie/Lake Ontario region, and I don't think I've ever seen any in which places like Ramah, Morianton, Shurr, Jacobugath, and Onidah were labeled on the map. I'd have to check the Book of Mormon to see if enough information is given about their location such that they can be pinned down on an internally-consistent map. I suspect not. Since the document doesn't provide references for their locations, they haven't made checking their work easy. In fact, it seems very suspicious since much of that document is referenced. For what it's worth, none of those names appear in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism article on BoM geography, which does provide a few paragraphs on "reconstructing internal Book of Mormon geography." Anyway, their map seems like quite a stretch to me, like a critic found some place names similar to BoM places and drew a map to make it look like the BoM places were in similar spots. Also, if the Book of Mormon referred to places in roughly the same geography as actual places around New York/Pennsylvania, I'd think that the early converts/people being preached to WHO WERE ALL FROM THAT REGION would have noticed and mentioned it. And as far as I know, that was not done at all. Apparently people in that area--both pro and con--didn't see any place name similarities worth noting.
Second, the list on page 10. There are 20 names on the list. I note that many of them are obviously Biblical. It makes sense that some names in the Book of Mormon area would be taken from the Bible, since the BoM peoples came from the Biblical region. It also of course makes sense that many names in the U.S. would be taken from the Bible. Places in the U.S. and in the BoM both being named after Biblical places doesn't support their argument that the book is a fraud, so I'll discount those. Going down the list of 20 names, we have these Biblical names:
Antioch
Boaz
Jacob
Jerusalem
Jordan
Lehi
Noah
Ramah
Sodom
Shiloh
That leaves 10. And actually Oneida is used twice, so it leaves 9. Of those 9, I personally find 4 to be quite a stretch, namely: Antrim = Antum
Moraviantown = Morianton
Ripple Lake = Ripliancum
Sherbrooke = Shurr
That leaves these 5:
Hellam = Helam
Kishkiminetas = Kishkumen
Mantua = Manti
Oneida = Onidah
Rama = Ramah
Those certainly seem similar to me. But 5 names out of the ~100* non-Biblical place names mentioned in the BoM? That doesn't trouble me too much.
* My quick estimate from glancing over this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Book_of_Mormon_places
b_line
Well-Known Member
I am a practicing mormon, but I personally find it very disturbing to think that at one point in our church's history, it was viewed as an act of God to allow black people to have the priesthood. This was no more revelation than me telling my son to be nice to the neighbors cat. Not letting black people have the priesthood for all those years is one of the biggest black eyes (no pun intended) that has happened to the church. Simply shameful that a prophet of God like Brigham young and those who followed him could not stand up for what is right and just, and had to give in to the racist pressure of their time.
I've seen similar phenomena in Catholic prayer groups and Presbyterian services. Do you think they are self-induced in other religions?
LogGrad98
Well-Known Member
Contributor
20-21 Award Winner
2022 Award Winner
2023 Award Winner
2024 Award Winner
This was my point, and I have talked before on this forum about my sister-in-law who claims to have received unequivocal spiritual proof in almost these terms that the church is false. How is that reconciled?
Last edited:
I hear you, and share many of your sentiments. However, I don't see why you find "God didn't want the priesthood exclusion on blacks" and "God gave a revelation ending the priesthood exclusion on blacks" to be mutually exclusive. I don't.
Sometimes, definitely. (Pentacostals come to mind.) But from the people I've talked to, I'd say most of the time religious experiences in other religions are just as valid as those experienced in my religion.