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Old-Timer wrote:Quote:
I understand your beliefs. However, I don’t think they are borne out by the facts.
I disagree – and I also have a hard time with establishing “the facts” when it comes to things like this. “The facts” ends up being “the stuff I’ve experienced personally and the stuff of which I’m aware that I trust to have happened as someone else sees them”. My experiences, for example, present different “facts” than yours appear to present.
Oh, I’m prepared to be proven wrong. Can you point at one factual, undisputable incident that you know of in which someone experienced a miracle? I’d very much like to speak with someone that actually can verify such a thing.
Old-Timer wrote:Quote:Someone who really possesses the authority of God (or priesthood if you like) commands a thing and it happens.
This is a great example of what I said above. You haven’t seen this, but I have. Thus, our “facts” differ.
First, I’d like to know who possesses this supposed authority and are they willing to answer some rather pointed questions? Second, I would like to speak with any witnesses and examine any recorded evidence that they have performed any of these types of miracles.
Old-Timer wrote:Now, my definition of priesthood power is much more expansive than most members (more along the lines of “the priesthood of believers”, including non-Mormons and Mormon women), but I really do believe in the concept of priesthood power.
I understand that. However, I think we are talking about different things. I’m speaking about something real that can be examined, questioned, and understood. I’m certainly open to changing my view that other’s may have such an authority. The only problem I have is, I’ve never met someone living that does and know of nothing substantiated that can prove such power.
DarkJedi wrote:Tobin wrote:I have a slightly different view of priesthood. I view it simply as different types of authority.
In my opinion, the priesthood that Mormons employ, the Aaronic Priesthood and Melchizedek Priesthood, are merely ecclesiastical (and man-made) in nature. They should never be confused with the real priesthood or authority of God. This authority comes from God himself and no man can give it to you. So I really don’t understand those in the LDS Church that claim they have this priesthood and then lose it?!? They never had it in the first place. And it is self-evident in my view about who really has God’s Priesthood. Signs follow them. The lame walk. The blind see. And all sorts of what we would call miracles follow them.
However, my own take on this is these people have the right to call upon God’s technology to influence events on our planet. Few beings throughout our history have ever been given this right and for good reason. If I were an advanced species, I would not give a primitive species such as we are, the ability to utilize this type of technology. Almost none of us could control our desires to abuse such power and it would ultimately be destructive in our hands.
I have to respectfully disagree, Tobin. I do believe the priesthood came from God and that he assigned his angels to ordain JS who passed it on. This is similar to the pattern with the ancient Hebrews and makes sense a similar pattern would occur in the restored gospel. And, as I stated earlier, I do think the priesthood is mostly about having the authority to do things, but I also believe there is an actual power sometimes associated with that authority. The closest I can come is blessing of the sick, which I admit I have never seen anyone actually healed that couldn’t have just been attributed to medical practice, the body’s own amazing healing power, faith, or a combination of those. I do believe it is possible, however, and I do believe it is possible for other priesthood power to manifest itself. I think the limitation is actually human and based on faith or lack thereof.
I understand your beliefs. However, I don’t think they are borne out by the facts. I can not think of anyone in the modern Mormon era that possess this priesthood of God (as I described it). And yes, I know that Mormons bless the sick and do other such things and God may from time-to-time intervene (we have some urban legends at least to that effect). This is not what I’m talking about however. Someone who really possesses the authority of God (or priesthood if you like) commands a thing and it happens. There is no question about it what-so-ever. I do not believe this type of authority is possessed by anyone on the Earth at this time. All Mormons (and others of faith) have are man-made ecclesiastical priesthoods. They possess no authority outside of their religious role and can not demonstrate such an authority with the signs I’ve already pointed out.
I’ll add my 2 cents: 1) I currently don’t pay tithing and see no reason to ever do so again. I do believe one should dedicate as much as you can to help the poor and needy however. I wouldn’t mind seeing tithing become a 10% guideline as a good thing to set aside 10% or more of your income for such an endeavor. In fact, if the Church were to set up transparent programs for the poor and truly needy, I’d even contribute more than 10% since I can afford to do so.
2) The Church should get out of the underwear business. It is demeaning to the faith. My view is create a bunch of decals we can attach to our undergarments to remind us of our promises. I see nothing wrong with such symbolism.
3) I see nothing wrong with a sacrament meeting once a week and asking people to share their thoughts afterwards. I would have a common meal as well after the sacrament meeting. And I would champion various meetings to do volunteer work in the community during the week. I would make all other meetings optional.
4) I would give local congregations back control of their finances and focus on making them serve their communities. Richer congregations would be expected to help more since they would have more resources to do so.
5) I would change the structure of the bishopric. It should be the Bishop, the Elders Quorum President, and the Relief Society President as his counselors. I would make the Relief Society equal with the Elders Quorum and allow them to call upon God’s priesthood again as they could before.
6) All Church education should be dedicated to helping members achieve higher professional degrees and skills. I would have programs for children such as an after school program for parents that work and to help children with their school work. For adults, I would focus more on what the scriptures say, the history in which they were written, and bring a sense of scholarship to the material presented about the Church and gospel. I would have a highly paid and trained set of professional teachers as well.
cwald wrote:I was extending you a peace offering.
I wasn’t aware we were at war? But, I’ll accept your offer. I’ll be polite so long as you are and so long as you refrain from attacking me to make your point.
I have a slightly different view of priesthood. I view it simply as different types of authority. In my opinion, the priesthood that Mormons employ, the Aaronic Priesthood and Melchizedek Priesthood, are merely ecclesiastical (and man-made) in nature. They should never be confused with the real priesthood or authority of God. This authority comes from God himself and no man can give it to you. So I really don’t understand those in the LDS Church that claim they have this priesthood and then lose it?!? They never had it in the first place. And it is self-evident in my view about who really has God’s Priesthood. Signs follow them. The lame walk. The blind see. And all sorts of what we would call miracles follow them.
However, my own take on this is these people have the right to call upon God’s technology to influence events on our planet. Few beings throughout our history have ever been given this right and for good reason. If I were an advanced species, I would not give a primitive species such as we are, the ability to utilize this type of technology. Almost none of us could control our desires to abuse such power and it would ultimately be destructive in our hands.
cwald wrote:Tobin, I judge you as a troll here…but you have been nothing but respectful so far. Thanks.
As I’ve said before, I don’t troll. I simply express my views and respond to comments. If people wish to attack me, then I don’t feel a need to stay quiet. I will respond to that as well.
cwald wrote:Perhaps staylds is a better fit for you than MD?
I like this forum. I have not experienced any personal attacks and most people here have interesting things to say about Mormonism.
cwald wrote:All I ask is you don’t turn every thread into a “get your own personal visit from God like I have” answer to every issue and problem.
I’ve never said that since I don’t believe you can force God to appear to you. Instead, my position is if you want to really know God, you need to speak with him yourself.
cwald wrote:Is that okay to ask of you?
I’m behaving the same on this forum as any other forum I participate in, so I fail to see the difference. And I fail to see what any of this has to do with the topic of this thread however?
Hey Ray, I like your thinking about the prophets (especially including Gandhi and MLK among them as I do) and JS in particular and it reflects my own views. I’m interested in prophets for the truths they can teach us. And yes, at times, it is their misbehavior that can be instructive as well. I certainly extend that view to the polyandry of JS.
On Own Now wrote:It’s completely different for us now. JS used his position to accomplish spiritual coercion. Some did separate themselves from JS over polygamy, but most gave in, thinking that it must be from God, no matter how awful. Like SD said, that’s leading astray.
What I draw from that is that we should use this to learn about the perils of blindly following any man and merely assuming they know better or speak for God or whatever the misconception may be.
On Own Now wrote:My own belief is that JS’s motives were not as sex-based as often asserted. While we will never fully understand his motives, I think we can agree that the results were terrible in the extreme, and I think it is unfortunate that then and now, the Church’s dogma is that following the prophet is what God wants regardless of where the prophet leads. I agree with Ray that this is not the doctrine of the Church, but the Church does nothing to stop this common belief.
Of course the Church should do a better job and not teach that we should blindly follow any man, no matter his title including prophet. In fact, it my view that It would do a world of good for Mormons to carefully consider any teaching and make our decisions based on good reasons or if we still can’t decide, ultimately speak with God about it ourselves.
SilentDawning wrote:I have to be a bit frank here. These kinds of statements disturb me….we DO make huge claims about prophets,
Who is we? I have no such misconceptions about prophets. A prophet is only useful or relevant to me if they tell the truth. And I certainly don’t entertain any illusions that prophets are God, super-human, magical or incapable of sin.
SilentDawning wrote:about the need to live our lives clean,
Yes, and I try to conduct my life like that. I am not responsible for anyone else but myself though. I certainly am not accountable for JS nor am I his judge.
SilentDawning wrote:Moses shut out of the promised land because he didn’t follow basic instructions.
And JS was killed, in part, as a consequence of his own decisions and actions.
SilentDawning wrote:That prophets will “never lead us astray”.
That is nonsense in my view. This pseudo-doctrine came from a man and not from God. It is used to support a fiction that prophets are not human, are God, and incapable of sin. I find such concepts unreasonable.
SilentDawning wrote:To have a prophet that had sexual urges he could not control,
Welcome to the reality that prophets are human-beings too.
SilentDawning wrote:and then led his people to practice a sanitized form of sexual promiscuity is definitely leading the people astray.
I find that unlikely. People are completely capable of making their own decisions and saying ‘no’. I certainly feel no need to be a polygamist because JS was one. In fact, I view polygamy as a sin.
SilentDawning wrote:At some BASIC level, prophets and leaders and the church as a whole is accountable for providing at least a basic level of commitment to the gospel ideas – such as chastity. Otherwise, the church and JS wielded power without accountability. And its that power without accountability that I have a tremendous amount of concern about.
Only if you believe things like the LDS Church is the “one true church”, is perfect, is not man-made and other such nonsense. I share no such misconceptions about it in the slightest. We are dealing with human beings here and a man-made organization, nothing more. However, none of that has any bearing on whether or not the claims about seeing and experiencing God made in Mormonism have a basis in fact. If you are interested in that, you need to speak with God and make your own determinations. And that is exactly the true message of Mormonism – that each of us should ask God about it.
SilentDawning wrote:I think your comment that there is no need rationalize his behavior is a rationalization in itself.
No, I think my views are firmly grounded in reality.
SilentDawning wrote:My question, is, was their physical consummation of these marriages? [Or is it just plain naive to ask this question at all].
The best answer is nobody knows except JS and these women for EVERY case. I think it is clear that in some cases there was physical consummation however which appears pretty bad.
SilentDawning wrote:This is not addressed in the church statement, and if this happened, and these women were married, it does not bode well for the reputation of a prophet….And I’m not sure how this is for the spiritual benefit of these people if they already had legal families.
No doubt. But I don’t believe or disbelieve in Mormonism because of the behavior and weaknesses of JS. Let’s suppose the JS had one or more experiences with God, but couldn’t deal with the responsibilities he felt for having that experience, embellished it, and started doing things he felt was best because he felt special as a result of having had that experience. Does that change the fact he had such an experience? In my view, no. To tie yourself to the idea that as a result of his experiences, JS was anything other than a human-being and quite capable of making mistakes and sinning, is extremely foolish in my view.
SilentDawning wrote:No doubt people will rationalize this somehow because it happened so long ago.
There is no reason to rationalize it. If it happened, it is deplorable. However, all it shows is JS was human and sinned. If people had the belief that JS was perfect and incapable of sin, they will need to adjust their view.
Sheldon wrote:Old-Timer wrote:There is absolutely nothing in Mormonism that is harder to handle than what is in generic Christianity – and this is a great example of that.
Yes, I agree. But the fact is that Mormon’s hold themselves up to be the “one true church”, so we should have more than just “generic Christians”, but we don’t. Our prophets provide no better or worse than anybody else’s. Where does that leave us?
I’ll wade in here with a different view (and the one I have of the LDS Church). I do not believe it is the “one true church”. I view such claims as complete hogwash. In my view, the LDS Church is a man-made organization and I believe its history and the mistakes that have been made by the LDS Church render that blatantly obvious to even the most casual of observers. The reason I attend the LDS Church (despite my view it is man-made organization) is because of the association with like-minded believers. And it gives me an opportunity to serve others as well.
I believe if you are looking for the “one true church” or Church of God or Kingdom of God, you would be far wiser to look where the Lord said it was:
Luke 17:21
Quote:Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
My view of such statements as not that the end of the world is near, but instead, for each of us, end is truly near (and may be one misstep in front of a bus away). And even if we don’t do that, most of us will only live typically 80 years. That is not a very long time in the scheme of things, so when I think about this – the words of Alma (and others) spring to mind: Alma 12:24
Quote:And we see that death comes upon mankind, yea, the death which has been spoken of by Amulek, which is the temporal death; nevertheless there was a space granted unto man in which he might repent; therefore
this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God; a time to prepare for that endless state which has been spoken of by us, which is after the resurrection of the dead. Ruthiechan wrote:[Yes. I noticed that too in NDE’s. It makes the admonition to watch our thoughts in the scriptures make a lot more sense.
So the question is, how do you control your thoughts? I start to make progress, at least I think I do, and then I just seem to get worse at it. I dunno. o_O
Some might think I’m kidding, but in all seriousness – I’d get a dog. You can learn a lot about love and acceptance from a pet like that. If you can adopt the good qualities of such a pet into your being and do our best each day treating one another as we ought to, I do not believe the Lord will deny us.Also, I have hope in the life to come, but I have not been there and do not know for a fact that there is a life after this. However, I think about it this way. If there is not, I don’t think I’ll be too disappointed since I will cease to exist. And if there is, I will approach it with a bit of trepidation, immense humility and a sense of honor to be allowed to continue to exist, a strong sense of loss at being separated from my loved ones here, but also a sense of excitement and happiness to be greeted by my ancestors who have gone on before. It will be a grand occasion to embrace them once again and knell at the feet of my Lord and Savior, who I will feel most unworthy and inadequate of being in his presence. The thought if such a reunion brings tears to my eyes even as I write this and it something I look forward to, but I still have much to do in this world and will do all I can and do the best I can with what time the Lord blesses me with in this world.
Old-Timer wrote:Tobin, are you saying Joseph did or didn’t have more than one wife – and are you saying that, if he did, it was right for him but not right for future leaders, based on how you view the inspiration / revelation or lack thereof involved?
Actually, I did not bring up JS’s polygamy at all in my initial post. I was simply pointing out how Section 132 came to be a part of the D&C and what came before. I would again invite you to read my original post and if you can cite where I discussed JS’s polygamy – then I’ll be happy to apologize.
Anyway, I’ll address your questions. It is a fact that JS was a polygamist and had more than one wife. However, my view of it was this was either a test from the Lord to JS and one he failed or he simply made it all up, which is also possible. And I’m open to change my view. However, given how he conducted himself with others in secret, openly denying it at times, and the problems it caused both in and outside of the Church; I think my view has a factual basis. So given that, I believe leaders and persons that were polygamists afterwards were also not doing so at the commandment of God at all. And I think the Book of Mormon is clear on this point as well. The Lord does not condone polygamy EXCEPT in select instances where he directly says otherwise and I do not think the Lord would be the author of this much confusion and the antics that many of these polygamists were up to. I certainly cannot agree with the taking of other men’s wives as was done. I certainly don’t agree with the secrecy (i.e. if such acts were done out of pure motives why feel the need to hide the fact?). And I believe when someone dispassionately views this in total, it clearly indicates behavior that would not be condoned by God.
Old-Timer wrote:Ultimately, what I’m saying is that you are expressing your views as if they were objective fact
I’m sorry, but It is a fact. Section 132 was added much later to the D&C. I don’t think the facts are in dispute here. However, if I am wrong and you dispute the fact that section 132 was added later to the D&C, please let me know.
My view (and I hope you’ll note this is my opinion) is If it had been a commandment meant for the whole Church, it would have been added to the D&C when it was first given. Clearly it was not meant that way (if it came from God at all?!?), and I believe this was added later to justify behavior that was already going on against the will of God. I believes how one views those facts and the reasons behind this late addition is what makes D&C 132 interesting and worth discussing.
Old-Timer wrote:and as if anyone who really studied and thought about the issue with an open mind would agree with you.
Again, I presented my view. You are welcome to dispute my view as you want and I’m willing to reasonably discuss it with you. I certainly don’t believe my view is necessarily the correct one. However, I have laid out my case clearly as I can I believe.
Old-Timer wrote:That simply isn’t the case, and with an issue as complex as this one, it’s not a stance we accept here – on either side.
I think I should be able to present my views and the facts behind those views. If you disagree with my views, you are welcome to make criticisms. If the facts are in dispute, I’d welcome a correction there as well. And I am perfectly willing to entertain any points you wish to discuss and have no illusions that my view is necessarily the correct one as you seem to be saying.
Old-Timer wrote:We don’t take the position that polygamy was perfectly in line with God’s will, and we don’t take the position that it was evil and purely lust driven.
Again, I think the Lord makes it clear that it is often evil and lust driven in the Book of Mormon (as I cited it). You are welcome to cite the Book of Mormon where it states otherwise. Again, I’d be happy to be corrected.
Old-Timer wrote:We all have differing opinions about it, and we respect that. We aren’t here to reach a consensus or to convince others we are right and they are wrong. We are here to share differing perspectives and talk about how we “stay LDS” despite seeing things differently than many other people – and even each other.
I have not said otherwise. That was not my objective. I was simply presenting the facts and my view of them. Again, I think you adding things to my statements that I simply did not say or are reading in intentions that I simply do not have or share.
Old-Timer wrote:We have multiple threads in our archives dealing with polygamy – and more than one of those threads deal with polygamy as a broad, general topic. If you want to post comments in one of those threads, you are welcome to do so. This thread, however, is not focused on it that broadly.
Again, my comments WERE strictly about D&C 132. I provided additional contextual facts about what was stated in the Book of Mormon on the subject as well as what D&C 1835 101 had said
for comparison purposes. I will remind you again, that I was not the one the brought JS’s polygamy into this discussion. I simply provided my views about section 132, why it was added to the D&C, what the underlying context was, and what I believe the reasons were behind it were.
