Only part you had correct in that biased piece of pseudo history you wrote is that people didn't much care for them. As to their racist foundation for the cult.. you tell me. Actually don't.. we've heard what your trying to sell.
Smith or one of the other huxters he went in with came up with the idea of the black people being the result of a curse just the same as smith and others concocted the translation of the Egyptian scrolls. They did it to curry favor. And now your stuck with it.
@PaleHearse Looks like the Achaemenid golden codex they found in Iran in 2004, bound by rings and all and dated to 500 BC in a land close to Lehi's homeland, proves that Lehi could totally have had access to an artifact like the Brass Plates off of which his descendants based their unique technology of record-keeping as done in the Golden Plates. Dang to you too.
@PaleHearse But the Etruscan golden codex has been authenticated as far as i remember. Either way, i'd be skeptic of calling the correlation between Middle Eastern/Mediterranean metal ring-bound codices and the description of the Golden Plates a coincidence, being a Christian who believes in the existence of a god. But for a skeptic Atheist, i agree that more correlation is needed. I feel that sufficient correlation exists, however. We can discuss this in PMs if you're interested.
Interesting as it is to find a single middle eastern artifact that already mimics material found in the dead sea scrolls.. what I'd be more interested in discussing is how any intelligent person might be taken in by mormonism.. much less be able to support it's underlying racist doctrine and practices.
But.. that's not likely to occur.
If it's archeological support for mormonism.. let's keep the discussion here so others can also chime in where they would like to.
@PaleHearse So apparently you find it racist that blacks were not given the priesthood for a time despite the fact that Joseph Smith ran for president as an abolitionist, that Brigham Young denounced those who mistreated slaves and explained that blacks did deserve the priesthood but by God's mandate they would not be allowed to receive it until God himself allowed, all of this also in the light of the fact that the Bible condemned even mere miscegenation with Canaanites?
I find it racist that the book of mormon should say that blacks were cursed with dark skin to mark them because they were not as righteous as whites. That.. is what I find racist.
What ever Smith's personal views it is immaterial to what he wrote into the book of moromon to curry favor with the majority. What he wrote...no matter how much damage control he tried to do in life..can excuse or erase the racist basis of what he wrote or the tool it became for the church.
@PaleHearse You'd be wrong in saying that. The ancestors of blacks, Cain and his immediate descendants, were wicked, and they had a mark as a punishment. Cain was the earliest to commit great evils, and the punishment of his was to have his entire descendants cursed for a very long time. In the end, he's the one upon whom all the guilt ought to fall. Blacks can be righteous, and Whites can be wicked.
@PaleHearse I mean it's very dumb when people argue against a religion on the grounds of it not being "politically correct", especially when those people themselves are part of religions historically VERY politically incorrect. If there is a god, i don't think he has to abide by man-made morals, but rather we by whatever he deems correct and incorrect. You believe Mormons are racists only because you believe the priesthood ban on blacks was not God's commandment at the time.
@PaleHearse I feel that it is especially paradoxical for Mormons, IF they truly were racist, to partake in so much effort to make it known unto members that aside from the God-mandated temporary priesthood ban, blacks were not to be discriminated at all. Joseph Smith was an abolitionist, other leaders (e.g. Brigham Young) explicitly condemned the abuse of blacks, and no one had a problem in later sharing the priesthood with blacks after the 1970s. They wanted to since years before.
@PaleHearse George Albert Smith in 1949 let it be very clear that the priesthood ban was not something the Church was choosing to follow but a commandment. In 1969, Harold B. Lee reminded the rest of the general authorities that the priesthood ban could not be lifted without divine mandate, even though they all wanted it lifted. Lee said in 1972 that he eagerly awaited the lifting of the mandate as imminent. And that took place with Spencer W. Kimball in 1978 by divine mandate.
@PaleHearse And concerning archaeological support, here's something: In 1830, Joseph Smith received a revelation of lost scripture concerning Enoch. One event includes Enoch encountering a man named Mahijah. A century later, the Dead Sea Scrolls uncovered a document where Enoch interacts with a man named MHWY. Commonly translated as "Mahway", the KJV translates MHWY-EL as "Mehujael", meaning that a precedent does exist for translated MHWY properly as "Mahijah".
@PaleHearse The Dead Sea Scrolls are dated to a time far after Enoch's lifetime however, and they do not reflect Enoch's scripture as accurately as they claim. Early Christians accepted at the very least parts of the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch (like the author of Jude, who quotes it), meaning that half-truths exist to some extent in the Book of Enoch and associated manuscripts like the one involving Mahijah found at Qumran.
@PaleHearse So i personally feel that the fact there are elements of Smith's account of Enoch and a manuscript at Qumran is evidence that he had access to material that even by the time of the Qumran community had been degraded through the tampering of men. Glimpses of the original, which Joseph restored, managed to make it into the Dead Sea Scrolls however, which is how we can see that a relationship exists. Smith had no access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we all know that.
@PaleHearse Furthermore, i've read parts of the Book of Enoch, and in one account Enoch is shown four separations of the spirits of the dead which match the three degrees of glory and the realm of Outer Darkness that Joseph Smith speaks about. It also claims that the Flood took place on part to wipe out the giant race, who were savages, something which parallels with the deluge myth of the Incas:
@PaleHearse Basically, Viracocha is said to have created first a race of brainless giants from stone. For being too terrible, he destroyed them with a flood. Beforehand he informed a couple of the upcoming calamity, and they entered a wooden vessel and survived the flood. Viracocha created a new race (these being normal humans) from clay or dirt and they populated the world.
@PaleHearse I don't believe this is evidence of either a worldwide flood or Nephite-Peruvian relationships. I'm of the belief that Nephites lived in upstate New York and the Flood was local to the Mississippi river basin, basing this off the fact that we believe Eden was in Missouri, the fact that Typhoon Tip was a third the size of the USA, the fact that the USA gets hurricanes often, and the fact that the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the size of Lake Ontario or so.
@PaleHearse So to sum it up (sorry for the long "rant", i told you PMs were better), i believe it's not unrealistic to believe that if the Flood was local and in North America, the urreligion of the people could have reached Peru and deformed into Inca religion, hence its strong Flood myth parallels to the authentic Flood story. A global flood is therefore not needed to explain why not only the Incas bear parallels to the Flood story (with ark and everything).
Except that there have already been genetic studies done on all the peoples of the earth and specifically looking to indigenous peoples of the Americas to try and find out where they came from... and they.. are ASIAN.. not Mediterranean or middle eastern.
In short..they are so very not Jews.
The book of mormon was a concoction from the first word and now your stuck trying not to look foolish.
Simply put there is zero evidence for any part of your story. it's fiction.
@PaleHearse Jewishness passes on through the mother, and the mitochondrial DNA of Algonquian peoples possesses a haplogroup (known as haplogroup X) in such high percentages that it has no close parallel matches except amongst the Galilean Druze population which, because of endogamy, gives us a picture at what ancient Hebrews genetically were like. In other words, it may be proper to call Algonquians "Jews".
@PaleHearse Haplogroup X is unique in that it is only found amongst the native people of eastern North America, centering around New England and its environs, and also amongst Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, in complete contrast with the other haplogroups of the Americas closely related to Siberian peoples. Scientists have gone as far as proposing something called the "Solutrean hypothesis" to explain this.
@PaleHearse The Solutrean hypothesis supposes that neolithic peoples actually managed to cross from Europe to North America going by the way of Iceland and Greenland in a time when the Ice Age was still not over. But why the high percentage of haplogroup X amongst Galilean Druze genetically most similar to Israelites around 600 BC, and Algonquians, who inhabit a region which includes the land where the Lehites dwelled?
@PaleHearse If this can be regarded as more than mere myth, then take it into account as well: when the Vikings first arrived in the Americas, they named Baffin Island "Helluland", Newfoundland "Vinland", and Labrador/Quebec "Markland". But their writings mention that accross from Markland lied a region known as Hvitramannaland, where instead of "Skraelings" (predecessors of Inuits), lived "Albani" or white-skinned people, hence the name, which can be translated "White Man's Land".
@PaleHearse If Hvitramannaland was across Markland, then it was possibly the southern coast of the St. Lawrence river and the land below it. The inhabitants were described by Vikings and Skraelings as possessing long poles, dressed in white garments, uttering loud cries, and wearing fringes. The Shawnee apparently have legends of white men who used iron instruments, and a certain Carl Christian Rafn advocated that these two myths described the same people.
@PaleHearse Also please consider the fact that New York fits a Nephite setting far better than anything FARMS and their Mesoamerican setting can claim. Considering chariots and the fact the word refers to vehicles (not necessarily wheeled ones), i feel sleds work out as a good identification. Peccaries are swine, a tiny population of mammoths might be the elephants and the cureloms and cumoms might be a similar relict population of glyptodonts and giant sloths.
There is zero archeological, genetic or cultural evidence for bronze age Israelites in the Americas.. until you can solve that issue.. your not going to gain any traction with me.
The book of mormon foolishly mentiones the number of these supposed peoples in the MILLIONS.
Smith could have never in his wildest dreams imagined the explosive interest in archeology, history and science that would come in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
@PaleHearse There were more than half a million Jews living in the wilderness in Leviticus, potentially many more when they settled in Israel. If millions can fit in the Levant, millions can fit in upstate New York. Regarding archaeology, it's kind of interesting to me that barely any has taken place in upstate New York and its neighbors. There are artifacts of Hebrew origin in the Americas, apparently all considered hoaxes, but they do exist. Don't be so quick to say "zero".
@PaleHearse Bighorn sheep, pronghorns, mountain goats, deer, and dall sheep all match the appearance of common sheep and goats of the Old World. Buffalo match cattle, and i feel that moose or reindeer match horses far better than any tapir that some claim is a sort of Nephite version of the horse. During Lehite times, the New York Hopewell were a mound-building civilization, a part of a larger exchange system, and i feel that the BoM refers mound building even amongst the Jaredites.
@PaleHearse Mound builders partook in the production of copper artifacts, including blades and other instruments that could rust. They also made dwellings out of a type of mortar or "cement" and especially out of timber (the BoM refers to timber and not stone as the main component of their buildings). The Hopewell tradition had connections as far as the Rocky Mountains, which i feel is why Zelph was known as far as there.
@PaleHearse If i may also add, i feel that one very crucial thing to note when people, especially other Christians, try to disprove Mormonism, is that no manuscript of any fulfilled Biblical prophecies have been found dated to the time before the fulfillment of those prophecies. Those Biblical prophecies left over have yet to be fulfilled. Joseph Smith prophesied a rather accurate account of the Civil War before it happened.
@PaleHearse Critics use their own apologetics to explain how this prophesy was not a prophesy, but hands down, you can't fail to admit, if you believe in a god and are a Christian, that if you believe in Biblical prophesies as truthful despite the lack of evidence and existence of potential evidence against it, the Civil War prophecy is more than enough of an example of divinely-inspired prophecy, going by Occam's razor Christian-style.
I'm not..and I don't. I see "prophecies" for what they are.. manipulative constructs designed to bring preferential treatment to an individual or group that they didn't actually earn an probably don't deserve..or that they are used as a license to hate.
Basically that's where we are with the book of mormon and blacks being lesser human beings for not being "white and delightsome".
So I'll stick to the truth.. and that truth is that there is no support for the fables.
@PaleHearse If you don't believe in God, what's pushing you to oppose Mormonism? Your own inner hero trying to free the poor serfs from the wretched claws of brainwash, hm? I don't know man, but historically Mormons have caused very little harm for others or themselves. We're called a "cult" yet that word matches Southern Baptists and others more appropriately, don't you think?
@PaleHearse I mean i'm the type of person that believes morality is relative to oneself, a society, or in the case of religious people, a god. That may shatter the perfectly built glass world that Romantic-era-style people live in and replace it with Nihilism, but it's not quite as radical. I base my morals on God's word and inspiration. Atheists who don't believe in God clearly base it on their own philosophies and ideas.
@PaleHearse Which means that there is nothing other than consensus to say something is right or wrong. Having realized that, why would an Atheist want to impose his moral beliefs on others? He, knowing logic trumps all, would have to let go of his humanistic impulses eventually and realize that anything he does is only right and wrong because he or society choose to say it is.
@PaleHearse Anyways sticking to the point, i do not feel that Mormons have ever used their belief that being descended from Cain means that one can't obtain the priesthood until every other race gets it first to spread hate against Blacks.
@PaleHearse In the 19th century the taste of basically all whites was that African appearance was ugly and hardly human. That was not hatred, they saw that as fact. But concerning the value of their innate self, Mormons believed and still do that all men are of equal value and worth in God's view. Victimizing Blacks, Jews, Gays, women, others when a case of discrimination is not present is something Brigham Young denounced as basically idolatrous.
@PaleHearse To see what i mean, take a look at this. Person A says group A likes rock music. Group A has no problem with that, for it is a fact that percentage-wise many members of group A do like rock. Person B says group B likes to eat rice. Despite the fact that numbers show this to be more truthful than false, society sees it as inappropriate because not everyone in group B likes rice. Poor person B gets labeled a racist. His intention wasn't to discriminate. Is that fair?
@PaleHearse That's the problem with Jews saying things like Passion of the Christ was anti-semitic, or Blacks saying the Pokemon Jynx was racist against Blacks, or women saying it's discriminatory that someone rejects them to a job that requires much labor simply because they are women. Some people don't like the aesthetic appearance and attitude of "flaming" homosexuals. That doesn't mean they hate Gays, but Gays sometimes use this fact to victimize themselves too.
@PaleHearse In the 19th century, just like the example with Gays, many Whites found Blacks' aesthetic appearance and culture, to be lowly compared to their factually-more-advanced civilization. Now many many Whites used this as an excuse to mistreat Blacks. People like Brigham Young said those type of people were wicked and ought to change if they did not want to face the penalty from God for it.
@PaleHearse If a person is fat, and i believe fat people are ugly, that does not mean i believe that intrinsically fat people are inferior to better-looking non-fat people. There is a difference between aesthetic and the taste that some people have for or against that, and intrinsic value of the intrinsic self. The self is a noumenon. Appearance is phenomena.
@PaleHearse Concerning Mormons who held on to the traditional ideal that white skin was fair and dark skin was not fair, you can't call that discriminatory or racist. They believed in that as a fact. When Asians say that white racial appearance is less-fair than their own, that doesn't make them racist. It's racist when they discriminate based on that, as it is when Whites discriminate Blacks based on appearance.
@PaleHearse The popular belief of the 19th century was that Blacks, especially the Khoisan apparently, were very uncivilized and also rather ugly. That's not racism. Even abolitionists believed this, and yet because they believed the intrinsic value of all men was equal, they pushed for reform. Except for those abolitionists who did what you do, saying things are racist where they're not. It's still unfair on their part and yours, calling people like Mormons racists.
@PaleHearse So please keep off from using straw men arguments of racism when they don't exist, to paint Mormons as racists when they're not. You might have actually believed Mormons are racist against Blacks, in that case i'd rather you talk to a Black Mormon who has a strong testimony and ask him his opinion on the matter.
My points are valid.. I'm not sure you even grasp what a straw man argument is.
Earlier you said:
"The ancestors of blacks, Cain and his immediate descendants, were wicked, and they had a mark as a punishment. "~
That about says it all. Without any archeological or genetic proof of this.. your apply a myth written during racist times to justify placing a religious plague on blacks.
I'm not saying the black mormons are racist.. I'm flat out saying that you are.
It begs me to ask what part of this you are blindly.. religiously . supporting?
Do you support that "god" would curse the sons and daughters of someone because of their own iniquity? Why would this even be a concept? That's an easy one.. fear. It was put in print as a way to attempt to control the parent.
What wasn't thought through is the terrible social effect this would have on blacks.. then and now.
And not to let this whole "curse" thing go.. I'll use it again as an illustration as to why I'm not religious.
The curse can be seen 2 ways.. either Cain was black already and murdered his brother... or the curse was put on Cain's children after the murder. Either way it speaks to the heart of the vicious mindset of the devoutly religious... vengeance.
I'm not going to judge Cains children for his actions even if they are black.
@PaleHearse You see once again, you keep claiming that i and other Mormons are racist and "judge" Blacks or have a license to "hate" them. You have either very little knowledge of how White Mormons treat Blacks, or you are too zealous to accept it. That's what i meant by the straw man argument: "Mormons believe God has temporarily withheld Blacks from the priesthood" is similar enough to "Mormons are racists" for you to think disproving racism proves Mormons to be bigots.
@PaleHearse Furthermore, early on in Mormon history, Blacks like Elijah Abel were ordained to the priesthood by Joseph Smith. Brigham Young spoke of some of these as amongst the finest men he knew and never did he revoke their authority. God did not reveal his will that Blacks ought to be barred from the priesthood for a time until the era of Young's presidency, and Young also received knowledge from God that it was to be temporary. Other Church presidents affirmed this before 1978.
@PaleHearse I feel that if you look at it thoroughly, you will see that Mormon leaders were not trying to be racist in barring Blacks from the priesthood but genuinely believed it was a divine mandate, and a temporary one too. If this wasn't the case, Blacks would never have been even allowed to convert. Mormons have got to be the weirdest specimens of racists if they really are racists...
@PaleHearse Racists rely on the belief that some races are intrinsically inferior to others. This is not the same with, say, a White man saying Blacks are ugly out of pure aesthetic taste, if that man nevertheless sincerely believes Blacks and Whites are intrinsically equal human beings. If Mormons were truly racist, i just don't see why they spent so much effort to show otherwise other than the priesthood ban which was not in their control but God's.
Firstly, your exact words were that the curse outlines the iniquity of the blacks.. that they were descendent from a murderer and that accounted for their black skin. It's going to be pretty hard to explain that as not being raciest.
Secondly, my digital reference copy of the book of mormon includes every hateful word uttered by your leaders.. so be VERY careful or I'll be happy to start posting some of Brigham Young's own outrageous racist statements.
@PaleHearse "If the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent." From Brigham Young.
@PaleHearse I pointed out several times that 19th century Whites did not see it as politically incorrect to say things such as "Blacks are ugly" or "Blacks are uncivilized". You can find Brigham Young and Joseph Smith saying these things and in the same paragraphs condemn discrimination against Blacks. Smith even ordained Blacks and sought abolition of slavery, as I already pointed out.
@PaleHearse Also i continue to remind you that racism is not what you think it is. Some people find certain other people (e.g. obese people) uncomely. That's not racism, that's perspective. Racism is discrimination based on judgment made on people seen as innately "inferior". It's ironic that you call me racist when i have mixed racial heritage myself, including ancestry from Madagascar. I accepted Mormonism responsibly without any racist intentions being what led me to it.
@PaleHearse If there's one thing i've learned from religion that i try to follow, it's the principle of trying not to judge people. I can't believe you believe all Mormons are innately racist, for that is in of itself religionist. Racism and religionism, and any other type of unfair judgment based on generalization and a decision to see others as inferiors, is all the same.
Are you high? Look.. it's simple.. what is written in the book of mormon is every bit as racist as what is written in clan handouts. Yes.. I judge people in the KKK by their affiliation. I also judge mormons by their affiliation.
If you don't like the association ... then perhaps it's time to look at a less racist religion.
@PaleHearse This is why i'm telling you, you don't understand religion. Religion is not supposed to be about finding the religion that sounds the nicest in a world where many things are politically incorrect. There is one religion that is right, and that's the religion we all ought to belong to. The point of humans seeking religion is to find that correct religion. Otherwise they're only religious to suit their needs.
@PaleHearse Totally, because the BoM portrays every Lamanite in a negative light doesn't it? I'm being sarcastic there. God put a curse of dark skin on the Lamanites, yet the Lamanites were often times more renowned than the Nephites. When God curses people it doesn't mean God is rendering them innately inferior. Get that out of your mind. God especially hates it when people try to abuse people by justifying their hate via a curse from God. Mormons understand that.
@PaleHearse And i can't believe you can compare the BoM to the texts of the KKK. That's every bit as hateful, discriminatory, and slanderous on your part as if i was to say that you telling me the sky is blue is hateful speech against the color green. God made Blacks "cursed", that's not something Mormons can decide. We declared it as the fact it is, but we don't use that as license to HATE Blacks.
@PaleHearse This is the "curse" that God put upon Africans: that they would be subject to harsh ways of life in Africa, that they would be abused by evil slave traders and slave masters, and that they would be treated with despise by evil people for a long time. "Curses" are not commandments for God's people to abuse the cursed, rather prophecies that other (evil) people shall hurt them. Example: God cursing Israel. It was the wicked Babylonians who conquered them.
...practices. It was long after the civil rights movement.. LONG after. So why weren't they putting blacks in the priesthood BEFORE the civil rights activists altered things in the 60's.
Look.. I get that this is very embarrassing for you.. hell I'd be mortified too.. but you can't alter the fact that it was ONLY when the federal government threatened to end them.. that they "suddenly" had a revelation about blacks in the priesthood.
@PaleHearse Because God did not want them to. Why else would Brigham Young, George Albert Smith, Harold B. Lee, and others all affirm that God's will to ban Blacks from the priesthood was temporary? Racists boast their racism. Mormons from the beginning made it clear that the ban was not based on hatred, and that it was 1) temporary 2) not their will but God's 3) NOT a license to hate (read my Brigham Young quote again).
Funny.. sounds to me like the curse was enacted upon those with black skin AFTER they left Africa.. eh?
Look.. no matter how you want to try and defend those hateful racist passages and the resulting behavior of YOUR church afterward.. your left what actually happened.
In the case of bigamy, only when the federal government threaten to end them.. did the mormans aqueous and suddenly have a revelation about the subject.
@PaleHearse That's how God historically works though. He sends revelations when the time is right and they are best needed. But concerning the practice of not sharing the priesthood with Blacks, i keep pointing out that it was known by the prophets from the very beginning that it wouldn't be long before God removed this temporary priesthood ban. Brigham Young, George Albert Smith, and Harold B. Lee all expected this to come soon. They simply waited for God's permission to act.
Also, your statement that the priesthood ban was up to "god" is just more of you using your religion as a license to hate.. and a clear example of you not taking responsibility for the nasty things done in the name of your religion.
@PaleHearse The way i see it is: Originally God restricted all people save Kohanim from the priesthood. The Kohanim were the priestly caste for a long time until that "caste" was expanded to include all Jews in the times of Jesus, and after the Council of Jerusalem, all Sethites. Expansion to include Cainites was meant to be the last expansion, as Brigham Young once clarified, but that required divine revelation.
@PaleHearse And please, what you are doing right there is equal to the racism you oppose. I don't hold Blacks guilty for Cain's evil, although in your confusion of what the term "curse" means, you seem to think we Mormons ALL do. On the other hand, you seem to believe that all Mormons, Christians, and overall Theists are responsible for "nasty things done in religion's name". Which is itself discriminatory. The irony of this is very surprising, if you ask me.
@PaleHearse If it helps you to understand how Mormons can accept that God would temporarily make Blacks have no access to the priesthood, you have to remember that Mormons already believe that for over a thousand years no man on Earth could perform saving ordinances unto people. We come from a mindset where God sometimes takes away all his blessing from massive amounts of people, yet where God ALWAYS provides ways around it. Because God loves Blacks he humbled them in his ways.
@PaleHearse We believe that people agreed to their forthcoming earthly conditions prior to being born. No Black has therefore been "punished". Rather, they faithfully accepted God's foreordination just as Jesus did when he accepted to suffer for all of mankind's sins willingly. Why did God make his own begotten son suffer to the point of bleeding through his pores? Because Jesus agreed to it out of his love for God.
@PaleHearse And God punished his peoples, whether they be the antediluvian peoples, or the people of Babel, or the Israelites, or the Nephites, or the Lamanites. Yes he's even punished his people the Latter-day Saints, as D&C shows. He allows suffering, because without suffering there would be no exercise of free will, and no humbling moment, and therefore no willing decision to seek God and obtain his salvation. We agreed to his plan before birth. No point in going against it now.
@PaleHearse Going against God on this Earth is commonly done in pure ignorance, and luckily for Atheists, non-Mormon Theists, and many Mormons themselves, this is a state of bliss that prevents them from responsibly going against God and receiving no glory after the final judgment. I feel that i am one of those people who has received a strong testimony of the Church, however. This means i can't give up my beliefs without becoming an apostate son of Perdition.
@PaleHearse Since we took part in a premortal covenant with our Heavenly Father, to abide to our part of the contract in exchange for his part (giving us a body, a life on Earth, which includes suffering but also joy, etc) is what we are expected to do. If we don't, by law, the covenant is rendered void, which is why after judgment all our blessings would be taken away, rendering us glory-less (this is what we know as the state of Outer Darkness).
@PaleHearse I'm sorry i'm ranting so often, but sometimes i find it easier to explain myself in wider context. In this case, i feel that it's not unfair for God to take away the priesthood from Blacks because God's actions are the definition of fair. If he wants to allow the Black Death, 9/11, the Holocaust, or something else, it's still not "evil", even if the act of Hitler killing Jews, etc, is evil for HITLER to do (not God to allow), etc.
@PaleHearse Let me make it clear one last time that Mormons did not use God's temporary (key word TEMPORARY) priesthood ban against Blacks as a license to hate. Brigham Young condemned those who hated Blacks and mistreated them! He declared that if they continued to do such evil things, White people would be terribly cursed by God.
And let me make perfectly clear.. the only reason that the ban was "temporary" was because they were told flat out that if they kept up the ban that the US government would END them. Clear?
So what happened? The whitehouse have a direct line to god? "God.. Hi.. This is President Johnson.. yeah.. that curse thing..your going to have to end it.. yeah.. it's getting in the way of domestic tranquility..".
What a crock.
As to Young.. you need to do your homework junior.
@PaleHearse I do not recall learning that God said the LDS church would be destroyed if Blacks did not receive the priesthood beyond 1978. Instead i recall Wilford Woodruff commanding that polygamy cease in 1890 so that the USA would not destroy the Church.
Brigham Young stated in the 1800s that Blacks would receive the priesthood some day. Prophets affirmed this before 1978. They knew from Brigham's time that the ban was temporary, they just had to wait for God to cease the ban.
Had nothing to do with god.. that's my point. What it had to do with was continuing a racist practice for as long as they possibly could... just like polygamy.
I invite all to have a look at Brigham Young's quotes on blacks.. they are all out there for the world to see in all their wretched glory. Having him say that blacks would be rid of the curse "some day" only tells of his own personal hatred. He could have ended the ban.. he did not do so.
@PaleHearse Sadly for your argument some of us Latter-day Saints have received direct revelation at least once in their lives which we can't dispute, and i'm one of those persons. I'm sorry but it's impossible for me to give up my religion. I'm not asking you to convert or anything, but rather to step in people's shoes. If you knew the Holy Ghost as i did and others have, you'd know that going against his testimony is the unforgivable sin of responsible apostasy.
@PaleHearse I feel that Brigham Young couldn't have ended the ban because that would be going against God. Anyways, have you heard of the Nethinim? They were Canaanites who converted to Judaism in ancient Israelite times, allowed to serve the Levites and help out with temple duties, yet unlike Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, etc, Jews could never ever marry with them. Yet the Jews at times wrote that Nethinim could be far more noteworthy than the High Priest.
@PaleHearse The Nethinim (who were Cainites) were subject to a type of "everlasting" marriage ban with Jews and convert Jews of Sethite origin. Do you think Jews used this God-given commandment to hate the Nethinim? No, on the contrary, the Nethinim had the opportunity to work helping out the Levites, and the Jews saw them as equals. Mormons also saw Blacks as equals. But God had not yet ended the ban which went back to the ancient Israelite days (actually back to the days of Seth).
@PaleHearse Think of how the priesthood was opened up; it was in a backwards motion to fulfill the covenants God made with Adam, Seth, Noah, and Abraham. At first, only Levites held the priesthood, and Jewish prophets. Then in Christ's time, the Hebrews (as Ammonites, Edomites, Moabites, etc had coalesced into Judean ethnicity by then) received the priesthood. Then the gentiles of Europe and west Asia (Noahides). Then all Sethites under the Restoration. Finally, all Adamites by 1978.
Your not getting this.. are you? I'm not concerned at all about how the priesthood was "opened up".. I'm telling you my concern was and is in the racist way it was closed up in the first place. I don't give a rat's ass that in order to save your wretched religion you opened your priesthood up to blacks.. not a hoot.
What I'm telling you flat out is that the very idea of blacks having black skin as the product of a curse is racist to the core. It was then.. it is now.
@PaleHearse I don't think you get it either. It IS all about God. It's precisely because you don't include him in the picture that you believe all religious people are delusional dystopian cultists trying to make the world worse. And like i've said already, i don't judge you because you haven't experienced God, but some of us who have just can't give up our testimonies without basically damning ourselves. I'd rather be an Atheist than a man who rejects God despite knowing he's there.
@PaleHearse What i'm trying to say is, i sometimes wish i was free from knowing God because then i could be free to do so much, but once you know he exists then you realize it's your duty to do what he tells you because that's the only truth and good in the world. "Good" is not intrinsic, it's relative, and in our world, relative to God not us. Since he gave us our life and all, and that was a covenant with us, we need to keep up our covenant too, and that is one of following him.
@PaleHearse But i'm simply very sorry. I assure you that i do know him personally, and i'm not telling you i saw visions or talked to God, but it's something my religion teaches, that through the Holy Ghost's testimony you can receive assurance of the truths of God. I distinctively felt that on one occasion in my life. Don't think that every Mormon who claims they've felt the spirit is right, i know now that they aren't, precisely because i know what direct private revelation is.
@PaleHearse So i'm sorry to be an impermeable wall for your cause which i can tell has good intentions, but i have my own testimony of God, and i know that he doesn't work for the purpose of racism. I know you don't get that now but i'm not telling you you never will understand it. I'm done explaining myself, but i ask that you simply put yourself in the shoes of a Theist to better understand my view and others' instead of looking at it from your view.
@PaleHearse God bless. Continue to fight racism where it really exists, i support that. And fight brainwash where it really exists, but never be 100% confident that you are always right. If it helps your argument a little, consider the fact that maybe i've been severely deceived, that my experience with the Holy Ghost was not what it was, just that i can't tell it wasn't. Now if that's true and i sincerely can't tell (i mean i really can't), i pray that someday i can snap out of it.
"but never be 100% confident that you are always right."~
What makes that difficult is that from your end.. the best lie is 80% truth. The way that relates is that you and your religious ilk, work on any doubt that exists by inserting lies to fill in the gaps. Rational people try and examine these lies.. but it takes time to discover their truth.. and by the time the truth unfolds.. millions of Jews and homosexuals are already up in smoke.
@PaleHearse Right, but if you saw God or in some other way received direct revelation from on high you would believe in him because, by Occam's razor, if you did receive direct revelation then the most logical conclusion is that God really does exist, right?
You're not in a situation like that, but i am. That's why i can't be Atheist and why i am a Latter-day Saint. With that come a lot of things non-LDS people have hard times accepting because it goes against their current beliefs.
..for this "revelation" your having. People can convince themselves of many things.. and find spiritual meaning in many things. This doesn't make them true. What your attesting is that it doesn't make them false.. and I'm telling you flat out.. that is wrong.
Occam's razor doesn't apply here because of the other more likely events to explain what you are seeing and feeling.
Would you like to discuss the book of Aberham fraud in pearl of great price?
What "other way" are you talking about? At this point in my life I have the complete understanding that something that can't be repeated and tested, or at the very least observed in a way that it's fully cataloged.. it's validity can't be trusted.
Look.. you are a LDS because you have accepted things like the book of Aberham in the "pearl of great price" as factual. Same as the book of mormon. Written by a convicted charlatan who gave you the very "foundations"...
@PaleHearse As evident from what JS meant by his "translation" of the Bible, by "translation" JS did not mean he translated the text, even though he did write down the characters he found down from the Book of the Dead. I believe hypocephali began with an Abrahamic tradition. Joseph Smith got hold of a Book of the Dead and restored a text that predated the entire tradition of tucking them with mummies, of which the hypocephalus tradition is common in both.
@PaleHearse "Translation" in JS' career means reproducing lost information from a source material lost to mankind at the time, and extracting it by using a modern deformed remnant as inspiration. That's the case with his translation of the KJV which conjured up the Book of Moses, which in fact holds in common the event of Mahijah meeting Enoch with a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript. Same goes for his "translation" of a common Book of the Dead, which produced the Book of Abraham.
@PaleHearse How about we discuss next time the several points of evidence that match what Joseph Smith revealed but which could not have been available to him for him to plagiarize off of.
@PaleHearse And the "convicted charlatan" card is the oldest in the book. Didn't Jesus get crucified because he too was a "convicted charlatan"? But right, you do believe Jesus is a convicted charlatan too, i forgot, sorry.
...be translated. It's this kind of short sighted thing that ALWAYS exposes huxters. Eventually the truth comes out and people like you that have followed them wind up looking stupid and start making excuses for it hoping the whole thing will just go away.
So.. no..what Smith was trying to do was to purport himself to be an expert on Egyptian hieroglyphics as is clear by what he told the antiquities dealer he bought them from.
@PaleHearse I see what you are saying sir, do not treat me like i don't take into account how this does sound like what you are describing. I feel there's reason to believe that it wasn't a literal translation because of a precedent: his "translation" of the KJV. Ironically as i've already mentioned the Mahijah-Enoch case and Etruscan and Persian golden codices, i feel that the ones "looking stupid" and making the apologetic excuses now are the critics of Mormonism.
@PaleHearse I mean the entire endeavor at explaining how JS could have made up his Civil War prophecy in 1832 through non-supernatural means is a perfect example of apologetic anti-Mormons, especially Christian ones. These people have so much "setting" evidence, but no manuscripts of prophecies have been found dating to the times before fulfillment. Christianity's claims of fulfilled prophecy better rest on the Civil War prophesy than the Bible at this time.
Joe McMoneagle predicted the Libyan civil war 13 years ago. That doesn't make him any more of a prophet then Joseph Smith. Smith was running for president.. or at least puffed himself up as a candidate.
As head of a religious cult who needed political license to do what he was doing, he was no doubt plugged in to the US current events in ways that the common man of the time could never have dreamed of being.
@PaleHearse Well that was a smart move, "disprove" a prophetic claim of someone who has access to God by using the example of a man who was involved in the US' own psychic powers research project and himself claims to have predicted these things through remote viewing, itself as supernatural in origin as what Joseph Smith claimed.
@PaleHearse And yes you must totally be correct, because Smith did in fact run for president. But when again? twelve years after he made the Civil War prophecy? Oh yes that's right. Ran for president in 1844, only after he realized that no one running for president wanted to help the Saints and felt he would need to try to do it himself.
@PaleHearse "Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense. Smith then wrote the leading presidential candidates and asked them what they would do to protect the Mormons. After receiving noncommittal or negative responses, Smith announced his own third-party candidacy for President of the United States". From Wikipedia.
@PaleHearse "He was no doubt plugged in to the US current events in ways that the common man of the time could never have dreamed of being." Now you're a conspiracy theorist too? Not to mention that he only figured he would have to run for president less than a year before his death, and his Civil War prophecy was made 12 years before.
Not at all.. unlike you.. I'm a study of history and understand the realities of his time.
Do you?
All that you present just brings us back to the same place we were. Ultimately the reason he needed to try and secure that protection was due to the issues with doctrine that gave the church a shaky moral foundation. It's walls show the cracks of that poor construction still with racism and polygamy.
@PaleHearse Oh come on, racism? They were abolitionists dwelling in Missouri, you've got to be kidding me. People in the South didn't even allow blacks into their churches. Polygamy is morally shaky? Why, because Queen Victoria and your consensus reality revolving around her etiquette makes it so? The American government disenfranchised women (who in Utah could vote before anywhere else) on purpose to make it seem like they were under a type of "slavery" to their husbands.
@PaleHearse And i called you "conspiracy theorist" because you want to portray Joseph Smith as someone trying to conquer the world. When the evidence shows Mormons only wanted a place where they could be independent and free in a world where no one liked them. That's literally what goes down into the high school U.S. history textbooks for a reason.
One other thing about your "12 years later" shtick is that the longer you wait for something, the more apt it is to happen anyway.
If I predicted the fall of the US.. I had better attach a friggin date to it.. eh?
Same with the civil war.. he didn't give a date. What. was god being stingy with his knowledge?. or was it just a guess based on what he knew about states rights and current events?
I'll take the latter especially given his political proclivities.
@PaleHearse He was mayor of Nauvoo, a city he and other Latter-day Saints built. They deserved to have control over Nauvoo because they purchased the original land and worked up a city more populated than Chicgo at that time on their own effort. I don't see how him being mayor of Nauvoo makes him somehow completely interested in politics all of a sudden. We already went over why he ran for president.
Oh.. one other thing. With a territorial militia of some 30,000 at a time when the US standing Union army was only 60-90,000 he may have felt that he had more then a slight chance of being able to start the war himself.
As is evident by history.. he reached too high and had too little to back it up. When he, as tyrants do, came out against free press and destroyed a print shop..people had enough and took him out.
And that's just the simple economy of power in the US.
@PaleHearse He was mayor of Nauvoo, it was legally considered a public nuisance, the Nauvoo government decided to destroy the printing press printing out the slander because they wanted to avoid more anti-Mormon violence. Smith was responsible for his people's welfare, and he wished them no harm. He didn't destroy that press just to satisfy his ego as you want to believe, that's why it was the whole Nauvoo council that was the one that agreed to cutting down on the libel.
Oh.. and one other falsehood I just picked up on in your "history" lesson.
Smith destroyed a printing press that was run by MORMONS.. you ding dong.
The "slander" was because they called smith on his shit. He was preaching a polygamy and polytheism "vision" he had.. and a LARGE group of influential mormons tried to call him on his shit... and he didn't care for it.
So I am not sure who you think your fooling with your half truth version of the historical facts. Dang.
@PaleHearse What half truth, it was a public nuisance, made by apostates who later built their own sect which died out just as quick. It was obviously going to incite anti-Mormon hate amongst the Illinoians and the Church's leaders did not want something to happen the same way it did in 1838 in Missouri where the testament of apostates was what caused the death and suffering of many Latter-day Saints
@PaleHearse He destroyed that printing press democratically, because the government of Nauvoo agreed it was the best thing to do to avoid anti-Mormon mob attacks. He destroyed it on the charge of libel, did he seek to kill or otherwise destroy the people who made the article? Oh please. You can't fool anyone either by portraying Smith as a vile violator of human rights for doing something meant to protect the Mormon community.
It' wasn't a democratic decision... Smith gathered a mob made up of militia men that he controlled. It was the governor that called him on his shit and brought him to the jail to try and keep him from being killed.
More revisionist history?
The printing press he destroyed.. ding dong.. was RUN by mormons. they exposed Smith's attempt to introduce polygamy and polytheism.
Or were those facts hidden from you by your church?
...let's see what you have to say about his translation of the book of breathings...shall we?
He gets this scroll and a couple mummies from a traveling antiquities dealer. He doesn't say.. "This has given me an inspiration from god to tell you a tale revealed to me in a vision..". Oh.. no.. what this idiot does is to apply tactics he had spent a lifetime honing.
Problem was that he could not in his wildest dreams have thought that the thing would one day actually...
Firstly, Jesus was crucified because he stole power from the established clergy. If you want to say that's charlatanism.. well.. it's a forgivable type.
What Joseph smith was convicted of was bilking a farmer out of money and lodging because he said he could divine where buried treasure was by looking through a glass.
A rather embarrassing public record came to light in the 70's highlighting his apparent long career as a huckster.
@PaleHearse He wasn't crucified for "stealing power from the established clergy", he was crucified for saying he was the son of God and Messiah, claiming miracles and prophecies, and so forth, something Pharisees saw as blasphemous. Blasphemy is considered charlatanism in religious societies, you know.
...into heaven. That.. is what got him crucified. So let's be honest here. What he said and did had no motivation for personal gain.. his motivation was totally to free the people from the grip of the established clergy... period. And they killed him for it.
On to the second point.. no.. the "book of Abraham" in the pearl of great price was most certainly NOT a translation of that scroll.. it was.. a fraud. Plain and simple.. just his way of puffing himself up.
Like I said.. stealing power from the established clergy. Did you just disagree with me for the sake of doing so? It appears you did because you then turned right around and said the same thing I did.
Up until Jesus, the established church had the whole thing tied up. They established the rules you needed to follow to get into heaven, how much you needed to pay the rule givers... everything. Then along comes this guy that says "You don't need a temple to get...
...and a christian are caught by a cop beating up a homosexual in the street. They both turn to the cop as he's arresting them.. and they try to explain to the cop..
"Yeah.. but the Jew helped..".
You are NOT going to be allowed to defend the screwed up things YOUR religion believes or does by telling myself and others how fucked up other religions are.. you got that? Clear enough?
Clean up your own act.. then worry about how wacked the jews and muslims are.
@shiverleaf15 Oh.. and one other thing.. As you pointed out about Jewish traditions also holding that certain people were excluded.. There are 3 defenses that you and your like use .. and only 3. The three are: 1) I only joined the KKK for the cookouts 2) Yeah.. but the roads are great and the trains run on time and the one your using now... 3) The Jew helped. Let me explain the third one.. and we can address the first 2 as you attempt to use those later in this game of yours.. A muslim and...
@PaleHearse Mormons were anti-discrimination activists and many even completely abolitionists (e.g. Joseph Smith). Brigham Young, the same man who said that Blacks were, by God's rule, to be temporarily barred from the priesthood, heavily condemned the abuse of Blacks that most American slave-owners partook in. To me this type of paradox can't be explained unless God really did command Mormons to refrain from ordaining Blacks between 1848 and 1978.
@PaleHearse But anyway, i'll let you believe what you wish. People who do not believe in God will sometimes lack the same perspective in understanding religion unless they are religious themselves. If somehow God is unreal and Mormonism is as fake as all religions are, you still can not change the fact that most Mormons who believed in the temporary priesthood ban on Blacks nevertheless did this because of belief in God, not racism.
I understand organized religion perfectly.. that's why I'm not religious.
Belief in god.. where it runs counter to divine truths.. or scientific truths.. is wrong. Period.
All that's happened here is you've swallowed what some racist priest has told you.. because it suits his desires.. and the reason you have accepted what he's telling you about blacks.. is that in your own mind you somehow need it to be true as well.. to fuel your own sense of superiority.
@PaleHearse I don't think Jews are racist for believing that non-Jews are not part of God's covenant. I don't think anyone believes Jews are anti-"Gentile", because they aren't. Neither are religions "religionist" for believing other religions do not provide salvation. I hope these examples help you understand why Mormons are not racist, but merely doing what they believe is God's orders.
@PaleHearse And no you do not understand religion perfectly. You can not understand the color blue until you experience it. People who believe in one thing do not always believe in it because of secret subconscious prejudice. Christians don't have secret subconscious prejudice against Jews, not true Christians at least. You believe, unfairly, that secret subconscious prejudice is the root to all religious beliefs people adhere to. And you're generalizing (unfairly) there.
@PaleHearse And i say that because in my case, i used to flinch internally when it came to confusing subjects of Mormonism, until i gained my testimony through the witness of the Holy Ghost. After that, i began to understand those things found in my religion which previously appeared paradoxical to me. I did not begin a Mormon as a racist. And i am not, never was, and never will be, a racist.
@PaleHearse If i may add, i think you feel a little superior inside yourself, in contrast to religious people, hence why you enjoy "proving others wrong" with logic that makes you feel accomplished, maybe even proud. It is noticeable through your zeal. I'm not holding that against you, because i think all human beings get a little too egocentric when they get too zealous. As i said earlier, i try not to judge people, but i am not perfect.
"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God is death on the spot. This will always be so." - Brigham Young, President and second 'Prophet' of the Mormon Church, 1863, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 10, p. 110.
@PaleHearse Take it into the context, don't spew recycled anti-Mormonism. Read the entirety of his discourse. It's about condemning rape of Blacks on behalf of Whites. Utah followed in the principle that any slave raped by their master deserved immediate freedom because no slave deserved abuse. The quote i gave earlier, about God condemning White peoples' abuse of Blacks, if i'm not mistaken, comes from the same discourse.
"Check out my YouTube channel/playlists and websites for present-truth materials, Three Angels' Messages and God's last-mercy warning to His people in these last days.
Papacy = Antichrist / Little Horn / Beast from the Sea
Roman Catholicism = Whore of Babylon
Investigative Judgement has commenced in 1844 (1st Angel's Message)
Ellen G. White, 1827-1915 = End-time Prophet Sent of God
7th-day Sabbath = Seal of God
Sunday Worship to be Enforced as Mark of the Beast"
OK, you can't find coins. What about concrete, steel (or other) mills, city and road foundations, steel weapons, horse bones or "millions of skeletons" at various battles.
This is so typical - pick one item, declare it doesn't mean what it says, thus ignoring the tons of errors (scientific & historical in the BOM). Ignore the Jewish - Indian connection, JS's rather exotic lifestyle, his chats with Bible heroes, god's many wives and oh yes, god changes his mind when politically expedient
Speaking of gold, I first have to highlight Mormon Torah Bright, who leapt into the Olympic spotlight with her stunning snowboarding halfpipe performance. I love following her story: how she cleanly lives her religion, how her parents sweetly surprised her by coming to Vancouver, how she excitingly attacks the snowboarding sport. Wow, what a memorable Olympic story!
SALT LAKE CITY — More than 300 Hispanic young single adults are expected to gather for a summer conference full of service, fun and spiritual activities starting Friday, July 2, and running through Monday, July 5.
Cleaning and clearing up the tons of mud, debris and volcanic ash that filled homes and fields will also demand a long-term commitment. Some members whose homes survived the deluge will still be forced to relocate because the property surrounding their homes is perilous and unstable. Most of the homes in the impacted mountainous regions are made from wood or some form of masonry.
"We drink and celebrate. Can we be part of your services?" Debbie said. "He told us 'I am what I am because of you. If you weren't included, it wouldn't be worthwhile.'"
For the next three months, Weddle answered questions, provided information, explained why the gospel was important to him and fasted and prayed for his parents' approval.
The gospel had been waiting for him, Weddle said. His conversion was not one big dramatic manifestation, but a subtle process of learning little by little. He was already living the lifestyle.
"They (the missionaries) taught me to pray and read the Book of Mormon. I put an effort into it," he said. "This was for me. It felt right."
I want to talk really in some general terms about the reliability of Mormon history produced by the Church. I think there has been in years past the sentiment that the Church hedged on the way that it did business; that it was not forthright in what was published; that it was afraid of its past and unwilling to hold our heritage and our historical past up to the kind of scrutiny that other disciplines were subjected to.
I'm only going to talk about a couple of projects in which I have been involved, so I can speak with some confidence of knowing the trouble that we went through to ensure that what was done was done properly.
The LDS church is partnering with other community organizations to host Running from Hunger, a 5K family fun run/walk and food drive, on April 24 at Tribble Mill Park in Lawrenceville. Before the race, local church units will also hold community food drives.
In lieu of an entry free, individual participants are asked to donate 10 cans of nonperishable food items and families are asked to donate 40 cans. About 600 participants are expected for the event. All food collected will be given to local food banks for distribution directly to families in the communities who need it most.
Elder Gong has served in numerous Church callings, including full-time missionary in Taiwan, high councilor, high priests group leader, stake Sunday School president, bishops counselor, seminary teacher, bishop, stake mission president and stake president.
From 1989 to 2001 he served in many positions for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Currently he is the assistant to the president for planning and assessment at Brigham Young University.
Only part you had correct in that biased piece of pseudo history you wrote is that people didn't much care for them. As to their racist foundation for the cult.. you tell me. Actually don't.. we've heard what your trying to sell.
Smith or one of the other huxters he went in with came up with the idea of the black people being the result of a curse just the same as smith and others concocted the translation of the Egyptian scrolls. They did it to curry favor. And now your stuck with it.
PaleHearse 1 month ago
So the headings, then, were written by flawed Humans? Perhaps flawed "prophets?"
lcar4000 7 months ago
@lcar4000 You mean that as if the PROPHET Jonah hadn't fled from the Lord. Since when are prophets perfect?
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
And the metal plates.. you moron.. oh.. sorry mormon.
So you focus on coins but you totally ignore the metal plates for writing? Where are those? Dang.
PaleHearse 8 months ago
@PaleHearse Looks like the Achaemenid golden codex they found in Iran in 2004, bound by rings and all and dated to 500 BC in a land close to Lehi's homeland, proves that Lehi could totally have had access to an artifact like the Brass Plates off of which his descendants based their unique technology of record-keeping as done in the Golden Plates. Dang to you too.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Several issues here. Firstly, it hasn't been authenticated.
Secondly.. it's a coupe pages. Accounts of Smith running with the thing from pursuers or even carrying it don't pass muster.
Then come the real issues here. No one saw these plates.. and they were never produced for display.
No culture in the Americas used such writings and there are no artifacts, building styles, clothing styles.. that would reflect any such migration.
It's pure fabrication start to end.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse But the Etruscan golden codex has been authenticated as far as i remember. Either way, i'd be skeptic of calling the correlation between Middle Eastern/Mediterranean metal ring-bound codices and the description of the Golden Plates a coincidence, being a Christian who believes in the existence of a god. But for a skeptic Atheist, i agree that more correlation is needed. I feel that sufficient correlation exists, however. We can discuss this in PMs if you're interested.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Interesting as it is to find a single middle eastern artifact that already mimics material found in the dead sea scrolls.. what I'd be more interested in discussing is how any intelligent person might be taken in by mormonism.. much less be able to support it's underlying racist doctrine and practices.
But.. that's not likely to occur.
If it's archeological support for mormonism.. let's keep the discussion here so others can also chime in where they would like to.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse So apparently you find it racist that blacks were not given the priesthood for a time despite the fact that Joseph Smith ran for president as an abolitionist, that Brigham Young denounced those who mistreated slaves and explained that blacks did deserve the priesthood but by God's mandate they would not be allowed to receive it until God himself allowed, all of this also in the light of the fact that the Bible condemned even mere miscegenation with Canaanites?
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
I find it racist that the book of mormon should say that blacks were cursed with dark skin to mark them because they were not as righteous as whites. That.. is what I find racist.
What ever Smith's personal views it is immaterial to what he wrote into the book of moromon to curry favor with the majority. What he wrote...no matter how much damage control he tried to do in life..can excuse or erase the racist basis of what he wrote or the tool it became for the church.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse You'd be wrong in saying that. The ancestors of blacks, Cain and his immediate descendants, were wicked, and they had a mark as a punishment. Cain was the earliest to commit great evils, and the punishment of his was to have his entire descendants cursed for a very long time. In the end, he's the one upon whom all the guilt ought to fall. Blacks can be righteous, and Whites can be wicked.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I mean it's very dumb when people argue against a religion on the grounds of it not being "politically correct", especially when those people themselves are part of religions historically VERY politically incorrect. If there is a god, i don't think he has to abide by man-made morals, but rather we by whatever he deems correct and incorrect. You believe Mormons are racists only because you believe the priesthood ban on blacks was not God's commandment at the time.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I feel that it is especially paradoxical for Mormons, IF they truly were racist, to partake in so much effort to make it known unto members that aside from the God-mandated temporary priesthood ban, blacks were not to be discriminated at all. Joseph Smith was an abolitionist, other leaders (e.g. Brigham Young) explicitly condemned the abuse of blacks, and no one had a problem in later sharing the priesthood with blacks after the 1970s. They wanted to since years before.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse George Albert Smith in 1949 let it be very clear that the priesthood ban was not something the Church was choosing to follow but a commandment. In 1969, Harold B. Lee reminded the rest of the general authorities that the priesthood ban could not be lifted without divine mandate, even though they all wanted it lifted. Lee said in 1972 that he eagerly awaited the lifting of the mandate as imminent. And that took place with Spencer W. Kimball in 1978 by divine mandate.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And concerning archaeological support, here's something: In 1830, Joseph Smith received a revelation of lost scripture concerning Enoch. One event includes Enoch encountering a man named Mahijah. A century later, the Dead Sea Scrolls uncovered a document where Enoch interacts with a man named MHWY. Commonly translated as "Mahway", the KJV translates MHWY-EL as "Mehujael", meaning that a precedent does exist for translated MHWY properly as "Mahijah".
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse The Dead Sea Scrolls are dated to a time far after Enoch's lifetime however, and they do not reflect Enoch's scripture as accurately as they claim. Early Christians accepted at the very least parts of the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch (like the author of Jude, who quotes it), meaning that half-truths exist to some extent in the Book of Enoch and associated manuscripts like the one involving Mahijah found at Qumran.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse So i personally feel that the fact there are elements of Smith's account of Enoch and a manuscript at Qumran is evidence that he had access to material that even by the time of the Qumran community had been degraded through the tampering of men. Glimpses of the original, which Joseph restored, managed to make it into the Dead Sea Scrolls however, which is how we can see that a relationship exists. Smith had no access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we all know that.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Furthermore, i've read parts of the Book of Enoch, and in one account Enoch is shown four separations of the spirits of the dead which match the three degrees of glory and the realm of Outer Darkness that Joseph Smith speaks about. It also claims that the Flood took place on part to wipe out the giant race, who were savages, something which parallels with the deluge myth of the Incas:
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Basically, Viracocha is said to have created first a race of brainless giants from stone. For being too terrible, he destroyed them with a flood. Beforehand he informed a couple of the upcoming calamity, and they entered a wooden vessel and survived the flood. Viracocha created a new race (these being normal humans) from clay or dirt and they populated the world.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I don't believe this is evidence of either a worldwide flood or Nephite-Peruvian relationships. I'm of the belief that Nephites lived in upstate New York and the Flood was local to the Mississippi river basin, basing this off the fact that we believe Eden was in Missouri, the fact that Typhoon Tip was a third the size of the USA, the fact that the USA gets hurricanes often, and the fact that the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the size of Lake Ontario or so.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse So to sum it up (sorry for the long "rant", i told you PMs were better), i believe it's not unrealistic to believe that if the Flood was local and in North America, the urreligion of the people could have reached Peru and deformed into Inca religion, hence its strong Flood myth parallels to the authentic Flood story. A global flood is therefore not needed to explain why not only the Incas bear parallels to the Flood story (with ark and everything).
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Except that there have already been genetic studies done on all the peoples of the earth and specifically looking to indigenous peoples of the Americas to try and find out where they came from... and they.. are ASIAN.. not Mediterranean or middle eastern.
In short..they are so very not Jews.
The book of mormon was a concoction from the first word and now your stuck trying not to look foolish.
Simply put there is zero evidence for any part of your story. it's fiction.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Jewishness passes on through the mother, and the mitochondrial DNA of Algonquian peoples possesses a haplogroup (known as haplogroup X) in such high percentages that it has no close parallel matches except amongst the Galilean Druze population which, because of endogamy, gives us a picture at what ancient Hebrews genetically were like. In other words, it may be proper to call Algonquians "Jews".
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Haplogroup X is unique in that it is only found amongst the native people of eastern North America, centering around New England and its environs, and also amongst Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, in complete contrast with the other haplogroups of the Americas closely related to Siberian peoples. Scientists have gone as far as proposing something called the "Solutrean hypothesis" to explain this.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse The Solutrean hypothesis supposes that neolithic peoples actually managed to cross from Europe to North America going by the way of Iceland and Greenland in a time when the Ice Age was still not over. But why the high percentage of haplogroup X amongst Galilean Druze genetically most similar to Israelites around 600 BC, and Algonquians, who inhabit a region which includes the land where the Lehites dwelled?
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If this can be regarded as more than mere myth, then take it into account as well: when the Vikings first arrived in the Americas, they named Baffin Island "Helluland", Newfoundland "Vinland", and Labrador/Quebec "Markland". But their writings mention that accross from Markland lied a region known as Hvitramannaland, where instead of "Skraelings" (predecessors of Inuits), lived "Albani" or white-skinned people, hence the name, which can be translated "White Man's Land".
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If Hvitramannaland was across Markland, then it was possibly the southern coast of the St. Lawrence river and the land below it. The inhabitants were described by Vikings and Skraelings as possessing long poles, dressed in white garments, uttering loud cries, and wearing fringes. The Shawnee apparently have legends of white men who used iron instruments, and a certain Carl Christian Rafn advocated that these two myths described the same people.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Also please consider the fact that New York fits a Nephite setting far better than anything FARMS and their Mesoamerican setting can claim. Considering chariots and the fact the word refers to vehicles (not necessarily wheeled ones), i feel sleds work out as a good identification. Peccaries are swine, a tiny population of mammoths might be the elephants and the cureloms and cumoms might be a similar relict population of glyptodonts and giant sloths.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
There is zero archeological, genetic or cultural evidence for bronze age Israelites in the Americas.. until you can solve that issue.. your not going to gain any traction with me.
The book of mormon foolishly mentiones the number of these supposed peoples in the MILLIONS.
Smith could have never in his wildest dreams imagined the explosive interest in archeology, history and science that would come in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
A short sighted myth.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse There were more than half a million Jews living in the wilderness in Leviticus, potentially many more when they settled in Israel. If millions can fit in the Levant, millions can fit in upstate New York. Regarding archaeology, it's kind of interesting to me that barely any has taken place in upstate New York and its neighbors. There are artifacts of Hebrew origin in the Americas, apparently all considered hoaxes, but they do exist. Don't be so quick to say "zero".
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Bighorn sheep, pronghorns, mountain goats, deer, and dall sheep all match the appearance of common sheep and goats of the Old World. Buffalo match cattle, and i feel that moose or reindeer match horses far better than any tapir that some claim is a sort of Nephite version of the horse. During Lehite times, the New York Hopewell were a mound-building civilization, a part of a larger exchange system, and i feel that the BoM refers mound building even amongst the Jaredites.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Mound builders partook in the production of copper artifacts, including blades and other instruments that could rust. They also made dwellings out of a type of mortar or "cement" and especially out of timber (the BoM refers to timber and not stone as the main component of their buildings). The Hopewell tradition had connections as far as the Rocky Mountains, which i feel is why Zelph was known as far as there.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If i may also add, i feel that one very crucial thing to note when people, especially other Christians, try to disprove Mormonism, is that no manuscript of any fulfilled Biblical prophecies have been found dated to the time before the fulfillment of those prophecies. Those Biblical prophecies left over have yet to be fulfilled. Joseph Smith prophesied a rather accurate account of the Civil War before it happened.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Critics use their own apologetics to explain how this prophesy was not a prophesy, but hands down, you can't fail to admit, if you believe in a god and are a Christian, that if you believe in Biblical prophesies as truthful despite the lack of evidence and existence of potential evidence against it, the Civil War prophecy is more than enough of an example of divinely-inspired prophecy, going by Occam's razor Christian-style.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
I'm not..and I don't. I see "prophecies" for what they are.. manipulative constructs designed to bring preferential treatment to an individual or group that they didn't actually earn an probably don't deserve..or that they are used as a license to hate.
Basically that's where we are with the book of mormon and blacks being lesser human beings for not being "white and delightsome".
So I'll stick to the truth.. and that truth is that there is no support for the fables.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If you don't believe in God, what's pushing you to oppose Mormonism? Your own inner hero trying to free the poor serfs from the wretched claws of brainwash, hm? I don't know man, but historically Mormons have caused very little harm for others or themselves. We're called a "cult" yet that word matches Southern Baptists and others more appropriately, don't you think?
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I mean i'm the type of person that believes morality is relative to oneself, a society, or in the case of religious people, a god. That may shatter the perfectly built glass world that Romantic-era-style people live in and replace it with Nihilism, but it's not quite as radical. I base my morals on God's word and inspiration. Atheists who don't believe in God clearly base it on their own philosophies and ideas.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Which means that there is nothing other than consensus to say something is right or wrong. Having realized that, why would an Atheist want to impose his moral beliefs on others? He, knowing logic trumps all, would have to let go of his humanistic impulses eventually and realize that anything he does is only right and wrong because he or society choose to say it is.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Anyways sticking to the point, i do not feel that Mormons have ever used their belief that being descended from Cain means that one can't obtain the priesthood until every other race gets it first to spread hate against Blacks.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse In the 19th century the taste of basically all whites was that African appearance was ugly and hardly human. That was not hatred, they saw that as fact. But concerning the value of their innate self, Mormons believed and still do that all men are of equal value and worth in God's view. Victimizing Blacks, Jews, Gays, women, others when a case of discrimination is not present is something Brigham Young denounced as basically idolatrous.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse To see what i mean, take a look at this. Person A says group A likes rock music. Group A has no problem with that, for it is a fact that percentage-wise many members of group A do like rock. Person B says group B likes to eat rice. Despite the fact that numbers show this to be more truthful than false, society sees it as inappropriate because not everyone in group B likes rice. Poor person B gets labeled a racist. His intention wasn't to discriminate. Is that fair?
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse That's the problem with Jews saying things like Passion of the Christ was anti-semitic, or Blacks saying the Pokemon Jynx was racist against Blacks, or women saying it's discriminatory that someone rejects them to a job that requires much labor simply because they are women. Some people don't like the aesthetic appearance and attitude of "flaming" homosexuals. That doesn't mean they hate Gays, but Gays sometimes use this fact to victimize themselves too.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse In the 19th century, just like the example with Gays, many Whites found Blacks' aesthetic appearance and culture, to be lowly compared to their factually-more-advanced civilization. Now many many Whites used this as an excuse to mistreat Blacks. People like Brigham Young said those type of people were wicked and ought to change if they did not want to face the penalty from God for it.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If a person is fat, and i believe fat people are ugly, that does not mean i believe that intrinsically fat people are inferior to better-looking non-fat people. There is a difference between aesthetic and the taste that some people have for or against that, and intrinsic value of the intrinsic self. The self is a noumenon. Appearance is phenomena.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Concerning Mormons who held on to the traditional ideal that white skin was fair and dark skin was not fair, you can't call that discriminatory or racist. They believed in that as a fact. When Asians say that white racial appearance is less-fair than their own, that doesn't make them racist. It's racist when they discriminate based on that, as it is when Whites discriminate Blacks based on appearance.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse The popular belief of the 19th century was that Blacks, especially the Khoisan apparently, were very uncivilized and also rather ugly. That's not racism. Even abolitionists believed this, and yet because they believed the intrinsic value of all men was equal, they pushed for reform. Except for those abolitionists who did what you do, saying things are racist where they're not. It's still unfair on their part and yours, calling people like Mormons racists.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse So please keep off from using straw men arguments of racism when they don't exist, to paint Mormons as racists when they're not. You might have actually believed Mormons are racist against Blacks, in that case i'd rather you talk to a Black Mormon who has a strong testimony and ask him his opinion on the matter.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
My points are valid.. I'm not sure you even grasp what a straw man argument is.
Earlier you said:
"The ancestors of blacks, Cain and his immediate descendants, were wicked, and they had a mark as a punishment. "~
That about says it all. Without any archeological or genetic proof of this.. your apply a myth written during racist times to justify placing a religious plague on blacks.
I'm not saying the black mormons are racist.. I'm flat out saying that you are.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
...curse as a license to hate.
It begs me to ask what part of this you are blindly.. religiously . supporting?
Do you support that "god" would curse the sons and daughters of someone because of their own iniquity? Why would this even be a concept? That's an easy one.. fear. It was put in print as a way to attempt to control the parent.
What wasn't thought through is the terrible social effect this would have on blacks.. then and now.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
And not to let this whole "curse" thing go.. I'll use it again as an illustration as to why I'm not religious.
The curse can be seen 2 ways.. either Cain was black already and murdered his brother... or the curse was put on Cain's children after the murder. Either way it speaks to the heart of the vicious mindset of the devoutly religious... vengeance.
I'm not going to judge Cains children for his actions even if they are black.
Mormons use the very idea of the...
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse You see once again, you keep claiming that i and other Mormons are racist and "judge" Blacks or have a license to "hate" them. You have either very little knowledge of how White Mormons treat Blacks, or you are too zealous to accept it. That's what i meant by the straw man argument: "Mormons believe God has temporarily withheld Blacks from the priesthood" is similar enough to "Mormons are racists" for you to think disproving racism proves Mormons to be bigots.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Furthermore, early on in Mormon history, Blacks like Elijah Abel were ordained to the priesthood by Joseph Smith. Brigham Young spoke of some of these as amongst the finest men he knew and never did he revoke their authority. God did not reveal his will that Blacks ought to be barred from the priesthood for a time until the era of Young's presidency, and Young also received knowledge from God that it was to be temporary. Other Church presidents affirmed this before 1978.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I feel that if you look at it thoroughly, you will see that Mormon leaders were not trying to be racist in barring Blacks from the priesthood but genuinely believed it was a divine mandate, and a temporary one too. If this wasn't the case, Blacks would never have been even allowed to convert. Mormons have got to be the weirdest specimens of racists if they really are racists...
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Racists rely on the belief that some races are intrinsically inferior to others. This is not the same with, say, a White man saying Blacks are ugly out of pure aesthetic taste, if that man nevertheless sincerely believes Blacks and Whites are intrinsically equal human beings. If Mormons were truly racist, i just don't see why they spent so much effort to show otherwise other than the priesthood ban which was not in their control but God's.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
2 things.
Firstly, your exact words were that the curse outlines the iniquity of the blacks.. that they were descendent from a murderer and that accounted for their black skin. It's going to be pretty hard to explain that as not being raciest.
Secondly, my digital reference copy of the book of mormon includes every hateful word uttered by your leaders.. so be VERY careful or I'll be happy to start posting some of Brigham Young's own outrageous racist statements.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse "If the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent." From Brigham Young.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I pointed out several times that 19th century Whites did not see it as politically incorrect to say things such as "Blacks are ugly" or "Blacks are uncivilized". You can find Brigham Young and Joseph Smith saying these things and in the same paragraphs condemn discrimination against Blacks. Smith even ordained Blacks and sought abolition of slavery, as I already pointed out.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Also i continue to remind you that racism is not what you think it is. Some people find certain other people (e.g. obese people) uncomely. That's not racism, that's perspective. Racism is discrimination based on judgment made on people seen as innately "inferior". It's ironic that you call me racist when i have mixed racial heritage myself, including ancestry from Madagascar. I accepted Mormonism responsibly without any racist intentions being what led me to it.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If there's one thing i've learned from religion that i try to follow, it's the principle of trying not to judge people. I can't believe you believe all Mormons are innately racist, for that is in of itself religionist. Racism and religionism, and any other type of unfair judgment based on generalization and a decision to see others as inferiors, is all the same.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
"Religious racism"?
Are you high? Look.. it's simple.. what is written in the book of mormon is every bit as racist as what is written in clan handouts. Yes.. I judge people in the KKK by their affiliation. I also judge mormons by their affiliation.
If you don't like the association ... then perhaps it's time to look at a less racist religion.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse This is why i'm telling you, you don't understand religion. Religion is not supposed to be about finding the religion that sounds the nicest in a world where many things are politically incorrect. There is one religion that is right, and that's the religion we all ought to belong to. The point of humans seeking religion is to find that correct religion. Otherwise they're only religious to suit their needs.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Totally, because the BoM portrays every Lamanite in a negative light doesn't it? I'm being sarcastic there. God put a curse of dark skin on the Lamanites, yet the Lamanites were often times more renowned than the Nephites. When God curses people it doesn't mean God is rendering them innately inferior. Get that out of your mind. God especially hates it when people try to abuse people by justifying their hate via a curse from God. Mormons understand that.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And i can't believe you can compare the BoM to the texts of the KKK. That's every bit as hateful, discriminatory, and slanderous on your part as if i was to say that you telling me the sky is blue is hateful speech against the color green. God made Blacks "cursed", that's not something Mormons can decide. We declared it as the fact it is, but we don't use that as license to HATE Blacks.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse This is the "curse" that God put upon Africans: that they would be subject to harsh ways of life in Africa, that they would be abused by evil slave traders and slave masters, and that they would be treated with despise by evil people for a long time. "Curses" are not commandments for God's people to abuse the cursed, rather prophecies that other (evil) people shall hurt them. Example: God cursing Israel. It was the wicked Babylonians who conquered them.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
...practices. It was long after the civil rights movement.. LONG after. So why weren't they putting blacks in the priesthood BEFORE the civil rights activists altered things in the 60's.
Look.. I get that this is very embarrassing for you.. hell I'd be mortified too.. but you can't alter the fact that it was ONLY when the federal government threatened to end them.. that they "suddenly" had a revelation about blacks in the priesthood.
Get a grip.. and a new religion.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Because God did not want them to. Why else would Brigham Young, George Albert Smith, Harold B. Lee, and others all affirm that God's will to ban Blacks from the priesthood was temporary? Racists boast their racism. Mormons from the beginning made it clear that the ban was not based on hatred, and that it was 1) temporary 2) not their will but God's 3) NOT a license to hate (read my Brigham Young quote again).
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Funny.. sounds to me like the curse was enacted upon those with black skin AFTER they left Africa.. eh?
Look.. no matter how you want to try and defend those hateful racist passages and the resulting behavior of YOUR church afterward.. your left what actually happened.
In the case of bigamy, only when the federal government threaten to end them.. did the mormans aqueous and suddenly have a revelation about the subject.
Same EXACT thing with their racist...
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse That's how God historically works though. He sends revelations when the time is right and they are best needed. But concerning the practice of not sharing the priesthood with Blacks, i keep pointing out that it was known by the prophets from the very beginning that it wouldn't be long before God removed this temporary priesthood ban. Brigham Young, George Albert Smith, and Harold B. Lee all expected this to come soon. They simply waited for God's permission to act.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Also, your statement that the priesthood ban was up to "god" is just more of you using your religion as a license to hate.. and a clear example of you not taking responsibility for the nasty things done in the name of your religion.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse The way i see it is: Originally God restricted all people save Kohanim from the priesthood. The Kohanim were the priestly caste for a long time until that "caste" was expanded to include all Jews in the times of Jesus, and after the Council of Jerusalem, all Sethites. Expansion to include Cainites was meant to be the last expansion, as Brigham Young once clarified, but that required divine revelation.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And please, what you are doing right there is equal to the racism you oppose. I don't hold Blacks guilty for Cain's evil, although in your confusion of what the term "curse" means, you seem to think we Mormons ALL do. On the other hand, you seem to believe that all Mormons, Christians, and overall Theists are responsible for "nasty things done in religion's name". Which is itself discriminatory. The irony of this is very surprising, if you ask me.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If it helps you to understand how Mormons can accept that God would temporarily make Blacks have no access to the priesthood, you have to remember that Mormons already believe that for over a thousand years no man on Earth could perform saving ordinances unto people. We come from a mindset where God sometimes takes away all his blessing from massive amounts of people, yet where God ALWAYS provides ways around it. Because God loves Blacks he humbled them in his ways.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse We believe that people agreed to their forthcoming earthly conditions prior to being born. No Black has therefore been "punished". Rather, they faithfully accepted God's foreordination just as Jesus did when he accepted to suffer for all of mankind's sins willingly. Why did God make his own begotten son suffer to the point of bleeding through his pores? Because Jesus agreed to it out of his love for God.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And God punished his peoples, whether they be the antediluvian peoples, or the people of Babel, or the Israelites, or the Nephites, or the Lamanites. Yes he's even punished his people the Latter-day Saints, as D&C shows. He allows suffering, because without suffering there would be no exercise of free will, and no humbling moment, and therefore no willing decision to seek God and obtain his salvation. We agreed to his plan before birth. No point in going against it now.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Going against God on this Earth is commonly done in pure ignorance, and luckily for Atheists, non-Mormon Theists, and many Mormons themselves, this is a state of bliss that prevents them from responsibly going against God and receiving no glory after the final judgment. I feel that i am one of those people who has received a strong testimony of the Church, however. This means i can't give up my beliefs without becoming an apostate son of Perdition.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Since we took part in a premortal covenant with our Heavenly Father, to abide to our part of the contract in exchange for his part (giving us a body, a life on Earth, which includes suffering but also joy, etc) is what we are expected to do. If we don't, by law, the covenant is rendered void, which is why after judgment all our blessings would be taken away, rendering us glory-less (this is what we know as the state of Outer Darkness).
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I'm sorry i'm ranting so often, but sometimes i find it easier to explain myself in wider context. In this case, i feel that it's not unfair for God to take away the priesthood from Blacks because God's actions are the definition of fair. If he wants to allow the Black Death, 9/11, the Holocaust, or something else, it's still not "evil", even if the act of Hitler killing Jews, etc, is evil for HITLER to do (not God to allow), etc.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Let me make it clear one last time that Mormons did not use God's temporary (key word TEMPORARY) priesthood ban against Blacks as a license to hate. Brigham Young condemned those who hated Blacks and mistreated them! He declared that if they continued to do such evil things, White people would be terribly cursed by God.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
And let me make perfectly clear.. the only reason that the ban was "temporary" was because they were told flat out that if they kept up the ban that the US government would END them. Clear?
So what happened? The whitehouse have a direct line to god? "God.. Hi.. This is President Johnson.. yeah.. that curse thing..your going to have to end it.. yeah.. it's getting in the way of domestic tranquility..".
What a crock.
As to Young.. you need to do your homework junior.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I do not recall learning that God said the LDS church would be destroyed if Blacks did not receive the priesthood beyond 1978. Instead i recall Wilford Woodruff commanding that polygamy cease in 1890 so that the USA would not destroy the Church.
Brigham Young stated in the 1800s that Blacks would receive the priesthood some day. Prophets affirmed this before 1978. They knew from Brigham's time that the ban was temporary, they just had to wait for God to cease the ban.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Had nothing to do with god.. that's my point. What it had to do with was continuing a racist practice for as long as they possibly could... just like polygamy.
I invite all to have a look at Brigham Young's quotes on blacks.. they are all out there for the world to see in all their wretched glory. Having him say that blacks would be rid of the curse "some day" only tells of his own personal hatred. He could have ended the ban.. he did not do so.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Sadly for your argument some of us Latter-day Saints have received direct revelation at least once in their lives which we can't dispute, and i'm one of those persons. I'm sorry but it's impossible for me to give up my religion. I'm not asking you to convert or anything, but rather to step in people's shoes. If you knew the Holy Ghost as i did and others have, you'd know that going against his testimony is the unforgivable sin of responsible apostasy.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I feel that Brigham Young couldn't have ended the ban because that would be going against God. Anyways, have you heard of the Nethinim? They were Canaanites who converted to Judaism in ancient Israelite times, allowed to serve the Levites and help out with temple duties, yet unlike Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, etc, Jews could never ever marry with them. Yet the Jews at times wrote that Nethinim could be far more noteworthy than the High Priest.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse The Nethinim (who were Cainites) were subject to a type of "everlasting" marriage ban with Jews and convert Jews of Sethite origin. Do you think Jews used this God-given commandment to hate the Nethinim? No, on the contrary, the Nethinim had the opportunity to work helping out the Levites, and the Jews saw them as equals. Mormons also saw Blacks as equals. But God had not yet ended the ban which went back to the ancient Israelite days (actually back to the days of Seth).
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Think of how the priesthood was opened up; it was in a backwards motion to fulfill the covenants God made with Adam, Seth, Noah, and Abraham. At first, only Levites held the priesthood, and Jewish prophets. Then in Christ's time, the Hebrews (as Ammonites, Edomites, Moabites, etc had coalesced into Judean ethnicity by then) received the priesthood. Then the gentiles of Europe and west Asia (Noahides). Then all Sethites under the Restoration. Finally, all Adamites by 1978.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Your not getting this.. are you? I'm not concerned at all about how the priesthood was "opened up".. I'm telling you my concern was and is in the racist way it was closed up in the first place. I don't give a rat's ass that in order to save your wretched religion you opened your priesthood up to blacks.. not a hoot.
What I'm telling you flat out is that the very idea of blacks having black skin as the product of a curse is racist to the core. It was then.. it is now.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I don't think you get it either. It IS all about God. It's precisely because you don't include him in the picture that you believe all religious people are delusional dystopian cultists trying to make the world worse. And like i've said already, i don't judge you because you haven't experienced God, but some of us who have just can't give up our testimonies without basically damning ourselves. I'd rather be an Atheist than a man who rejects God despite knowing he's there.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse What i'm trying to say is, i sometimes wish i was free from knowing God because then i could be free to do so much, but once you know he exists then you realize it's your duty to do what he tells you because that's the only truth and good in the world. "Good" is not intrinsic, it's relative, and in our world, relative to God not us. Since he gave us our life and all, and that was a covenant with us, we need to keep up our covenant too, and that is one of following him.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse But i'm simply very sorry. I assure you that i do know him personally, and i'm not telling you i saw visions or talked to God, but it's something my religion teaches, that through the Holy Ghost's testimony you can receive assurance of the truths of God. I distinctively felt that on one occasion in my life. Don't think that every Mormon who claims they've felt the spirit is right, i know now that they aren't, precisely because i know what direct private revelation is.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse So i'm sorry to be an impermeable wall for your cause which i can tell has good intentions, but i have my own testimony of God, and i know that he doesn't work for the purpose of racism. I know you don't get that now but i'm not telling you you never will understand it. I'm done explaining myself, but i ask that you simply put yourself in the shoes of a Theist to better understand my view and others' instead of looking at it from your view.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse God bless. Continue to fight racism where it really exists, i support that. And fight brainwash where it really exists, but never be 100% confident that you are always right. If it helps your argument a little, consider the fact that maybe i've been severely deceived, that my experience with the Holy Ghost was not what it was, just that i can't tell it wasn't. Now if that's true and i sincerely can't tell (i mean i really can't), i pray that someday i can snap out of it.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
"but never be 100% confident that you are always right."~
What makes that difficult is that from your end.. the best lie is 80% truth. The way that relates is that you and your religious ilk, work on any doubt that exists by inserting lies to fill in the gaps. Rational people try and examine these lies.. but it takes time to discover their truth.. and by the time the truth unfolds.. millions of Jews and homosexuals are already up in smoke.
Vigilance is key here.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Right, but if you saw God or in some other way received direct revelation from on high you would believe in him because, by Occam's razor, if you did receive direct revelation then the most logical conclusion is that God really does exist, right?
You're not in a situation like that, but i am. That's why i can't be Atheist and why i am a Latter-day Saint. With that come a lot of things non-LDS people have hard times accepting because it goes against their current beliefs.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
..for this "revelation" your having. People can convince themselves of many things.. and find spiritual meaning in many things. This doesn't make them true. What your attesting is that it doesn't make them false.. and I'm telling you flat out.. that is wrong.
Occam's razor doesn't apply here because of the other more likely events to explain what you are seeing and feeling.
Would you like to discuss the book of Aberham fraud in pearl of great price?
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
What "other way" are you talking about? At this point in my life I have the complete understanding that something that can't be repeated and tested, or at the very least observed in a way that it's fully cataloged.. it's validity can't be trusted.
Look.. you are a LDS because you have accepted things like the book of Aberham in the "pearl of great price" as factual. Same as the book of mormon. Written by a convicted charlatan who gave you the very "foundations"...
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse As evident from what JS meant by his "translation" of the Bible, by "translation" JS did not mean he translated the text, even though he did write down the characters he found down from the Book of the Dead. I believe hypocephali began with an Abrahamic tradition. Joseph Smith got hold of a Book of the Dead and restored a text that predated the entire tradition of tucking them with mummies, of which the hypocephalus tradition is common in both.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse "Translation" in JS' career means reproducing lost information from a source material lost to mankind at the time, and extracting it by using a modern deformed remnant as inspiration. That's the case with his translation of the KJV which conjured up the Book of Moses, which in fact holds in common the event of Mahijah meeting Enoch with a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript. Same goes for his "translation" of a common Book of the Dead, which produced the Book of Abraham.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse How about we discuss next time the several points of evidence that match what Joseph Smith revealed but which could not have been available to him for him to plagiarize off of.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And the "convicted charlatan" card is the oldest in the book. Didn't Jesus get crucified because he too was a "convicted charlatan"? But right, you do believe Jesus is a convicted charlatan too, i forgot, sorry.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
...be translated. It's this kind of short sighted thing that ALWAYS exposes huxters. Eventually the truth comes out and people like you that have followed them wind up looking stupid and start making excuses for it hoping the whole thing will just go away.
So.. no..what Smith was trying to do was to purport himself to be an expert on Egyptian hieroglyphics as is clear by what he told the antiquities dealer he bought them from.
He did it because he was a narcissist.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I see what you are saying sir, do not treat me like i don't take into account how this does sound like what you are describing. I feel there's reason to believe that it wasn't a literal translation because of a precedent: his "translation" of the KJV. Ironically as i've already mentioned the Mahijah-Enoch case and Etruscan and Persian golden codices, i feel that the ones "looking stupid" and making the apologetic excuses now are the critics of Mormonism.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I mean the entire endeavor at explaining how JS could have made up his Civil War prophecy in 1832 through non-supernatural means is a perfect example of apologetic anti-Mormons, especially Christian ones. These people have so much "setting" evidence, but no manuscripts of prophecies have been found dating to the times before fulfillment. Christianity's claims of fulfilled prophecy better rest on the Civil War prophesy than the Bible at this time.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Joe McMoneagle predicted the Libyan civil war 13 years ago. That doesn't make him any more of a prophet then Joseph Smith. Smith was running for president.. or at least puffed himself up as a candidate.
As head of a religious cult who needed political license to do what he was doing, he was no doubt plugged in to the US current events in ways that the common man of the time could never have dreamed of being.
Him predicting civil war was no great leap.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Well that was a smart move, "disprove" a prophetic claim of someone who has access to God by using the example of a man who was involved in the US' own psychic powers research project and himself claims to have predicted these things through remote viewing, itself as supernatural in origin as what Joseph Smith claimed.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And yes you must totally be correct, because Smith did in fact run for president. But when again? twelve years after he made the Civil War prophecy? Oh yes that's right. Ran for president in 1844, only after he realized that no one running for president wanted to help the Saints and felt he would need to try to do it himself.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse "Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense. Smith then wrote the leading presidential candidates and asked them what they would do to protect the Mormons. After receiving noncommittal or negative responses, Smith announced his own third-party candidacy for President of the United States". From Wikipedia.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse "He was no doubt plugged in to the US current events in ways that the common man of the time could never have dreamed of being." Now you're a conspiracy theorist too? Not to mention that he only figured he would have to run for president less than a year before his death, and his Civil War prophecy was made 12 years before.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
"Now you're a conspiracy theorist too?"~
Not at all.. unlike you.. I'm a study of history and understand the realities of his time.
Do you?
All that you present just brings us back to the same place we were. Ultimately the reason he needed to try and secure that protection was due to the issues with doctrine that gave the church a shaky moral foundation. It's walls show the cracks of that poor construction still with racism and polygamy.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Oh come on, racism? They were abolitionists dwelling in Missouri, you've got to be kidding me. People in the South didn't even allow blacks into their churches. Polygamy is morally shaky? Why, because Queen Victoria and your consensus reality revolving around her etiquette makes it so? The American government disenfranchised women (who in Utah could vote before anywhere else) on purpose to make it seem like they were under a type of "slavery" to their husbands.
shiverleaf15 1 month ago
@PaleHearse And i called you "conspiracy theorist" because you want to portray Joseph Smith as someone trying to conquer the world. When the evidence shows Mormons only wanted a place where they could be independent and free in a world where no one liked them. That's literally what goes down into the high school U.S. history textbooks for a reason.
shiverleaf15 1 month ago
@shiverleaf15
One other thing about your "12 years later" shtick is that the longer you wait for something, the more apt it is to happen anyway.
If I predicted the fall of the US.. I had better attach a friggin date to it.. eh?
Same with the civil war.. he didn't give a date. What. was god being stingy with his knowledge?. or was it just a guess based on what he knew about states rights and current events?
I'll take the latter especially given his political proclivities.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse He was mayor of Nauvoo, a city he and other Latter-day Saints built. They deserved to have control over Nauvoo because they purchased the original land and worked up a city more populated than Chicgo at that time on their own effort. I don't see how him being mayor of Nauvoo makes him somehow completely interested in politics all of a sudden. We already went over why he ran for president.
shiverleaf15 1 month ago
@shiverleaf15
Oh.. one other thing. With a territorial militia of some 30,000 at a time when the US standing Union army was only 60-90,000 he may have felt that he had more then a slight chance of being able to start the war himself.
As is evident by history.. he reached too high and had too little to back it up. When he, as tyrants do, came out against free press and destroyed a print shop..people had enough and took him out.
And that's just the simple economy of power in the US.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse He was mayor of Nauvoo, it was legally considered a public nuisance, the Nauvoo government decided to destroy the printing press printing out the slander because they wanted to avoid more anti-Mormon violence. Smith was responsible for his people's welfare, and he wished them no harm. He didn't destroy that press just to satisfy his ego as you want to believe, that's why it was the whole Nauvoo council that was the one that agreed to cutting down on the libel.
shiverleaf15 1 month ago
@shiverleaf15
Oh.. and one other falsehood I just picked up on in your "history" lesson.
Smith destroyed a printing press that was run by MORMONS.. you ding dong.
The "slander" was because they called smith on his shit. He was preaching a polygamy and polytheism "vision" he had.. and a LARGE group of influential mormons tried to call him on his shit... and he didn't care for it.
So I am not sure who you think your fooling with your half truth version of the historical facts. Dang.
PaleHearse 1 month ago
@PaleHearse What half truth, it was a public nuisance, made by apostates who later built their own sect which died out just as quick. It was obviously going to incite anti-Mormon hate amongst the Illinoians and the Church's leaders did not want something to happen the same way it did in 1838 in Missouri where the testament of apostates was what caused the death and suffering of many Latter-day Saints
shiverleaf15 1 month ago
@shiverleaf15
"who later built their own sect which died out just as quick."~
That sect of mormonism still exists... it was started by Smith's wife/widow and their son.
If your going to pipe off crap like that you may want to do your research first... and stop assuming others haven't done theirs.
PaleHearse 1 month ago
@PaleHearse He destroyed that printing press democratically, because the government of Nauvoo agreed it was the best thing to do to avoid anti-Mormon mob attacks. He destroyed it on the charge of libel, did he seek to kill or otherwise destroy the people who made the article? Oh please. You can't fool anyone either by portraying Smith as a vile violator of human rights for doing something meant to protect the Mormon community.
shiverleaf15 1 month ago
@shiverleaf15
It' wasn't a democratic decision... Smith gathered a mob made up of militia men that he controlled. It was the governor that called him on his shit and brought him to the jail to try and keep him from being killed.
More revisionist history?
The printing press he destroyed.. ding dong.. was RUN by mormons. they exposed Smith's attempt to introduce polygamy and polytheism.
Or were those facts hidden from you by your church?
PaleHearse 1 month ago
@PaleHearse Especially because, it's not like Joseph Smith adored the constitution and spoke about it's importance in Mormon doctrine or anything.
Oh wait that's precisely what he used to do.
shiverleaf15 1 month ago
@shiverleaf15
There is a constitution for a reason.. it's there for everyone.. not just when it's convenient for you personally.
I hope that's perfectly clear.
PaleHearse 1 month ago
@shiverleaf15
...let's see what you have to say about his translation of the book of breathings...shall we?
He gets this scroll and a couple mummies from a traveling antiquities dealer. He doesn't say.. "This has given me an inspiration from god to tell you a tale revealed to me in a vision..". Oh.. no.. what this idiot does is to apply tactics he had spent a lifetime honing.
Problem was that he could not in his wildest dreams have thought that the thing would one day actually...
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
2 things...
Firstly, Jesus was crucified because he stole power from the established clergy. If you want to say that's charlatanism.. well.. it's a forgivable type.
What Joseph smith was convicted of was bilking a farmer out of money and lodging because he said he could divine where buried treasure was by looking through a glass.
A rather embarrassing public record came to light in the 70's highlighting his apparent long career as a huckster.
Now.. on that note..
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse He wasn't crucified for "stealing power from the established clergy", he was crucified for saying he was the son of God and Messiah, claiming miracles and prophecies, and so forth, something Pharisees saw as blasphemous. Blasphemy is considered charlatanism in religious societies, you know.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
...into heaven. That.. is what got him crucified. So let's be honest here. What he said and did had no motivation for personal gain.. his motivation was totally to free the people from the grip of the established clergy... period. And they killed him for it.
On to the second point.. no.. the "book of Abraham" in the pearl of great price was most certainly NOT a translation of that scroll.. it was.. a fraud. Plain and simple.. just his way of puffing himself up.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
Like I said.. stealing power from the established clergy. Did you just disagree with me for the sake of doing so? It appears you did because you then turned right around and said the same thing I did.
Up until Jesus, the established church had the whole thing tied up. They established the rules you needed to follow to get into heaven, how much you needed to pay the rule givers... everything. Then along comes this guy that says "You don't need a temple to get...
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
...and a christian are caught by a cop beating up a homosexual in the street. They both turn to the cop as he's arresting them.. and they try to explain to the cop..
"Yeah.. but the Jew helped..".
You are NOT going to be allowed to defend the screwed up things YOUR religion believes or does by telling myself and others how fucked up other religions are.. you got that? Clear enough?
Clean up your own act.. then worry about how wacked the jews and muslims are.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Mormons were anti-discrimination activists and many even completely abolitionists (e.g. Joseph Smith). Brigham Young, the same man who said that Blacks were, by God's rule, to be temporarily barred from the priesthood, heavily condemned the abuse of Blacks that most American slave-owners partook in. To me this type of paradox can't be explained unless God really did command Mormons to refrain from ordaining Blacks between 1848 and 1978.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse But anyway, i'll let you believe what you wish. People who do not believe in God will sometimes lack the same perspective in understanding religion unless they are religious themselves. If somehow God is unreal and Mormonism is as fake as all religions are, you still can not change the fact that most Mormons who believed in the temporary priesthood ban on Blacks nevertheless did this because of belief in God, not racism.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
I understand organized religion perfectly.. that's why I'm not religious.
Belief in god.. where it runs counter to divine truths.. or scientific truths.. is wrong. Period.
All that's happened here is you've swallowed what some racist priest has told you.. because it suits his desires.. and the reason you have accepted what he's telling you about blacks.. is that in your own mind you somehow need it to be true as well.. to fuel your own sense of superiority.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse I don't think Jews are racist for believing that non-Jews are not part of God's covenant. I don't think anyone believes Jews are anti-"Gentile", because they aren't. Neither are religions "religionist" for believing other religions do not provide salvation. I hope these examples help you understand why Mormons are not racist, but merely doing what they believe is God's orders.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And no you do not understand religion perfectly. You can not understand the color blue until you experience it. People who believe in one thing do not always believe in it because of secret subconscious prejudice. Christians don't have secret subconscious prejudice against Jews, not true Christians at least. You believe, unfairly, that secret subconscious prejudice is the root to all religious beliefs people adhere to. And you're generalizing (unfairly) there.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse And i say that because in my case, i used to flinch internally when it came to confusing subjects of Mormonism, until i gained my testimony through the witness of the Holy Ghost. After that, i began to understand those things found in my religion which previously appeared paradoxical to me. I did not begin a Mormon as a racist. And i am not, never was, and never will be, a racist.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@PaleHearse If i may add, i think you feel a little superior inside yourself, in contrast to religious people, hence why you enjoy "proving others wrong" with logic that makes you feel accomplished, maybe even proud. It is noticeable through your zeal. I'm not holding that against you, because i think all human beings get a little too egocentric when they get too zealous. As i said earlier, i try not to judge people, but i am not perfect.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
"
"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God is death on the spot. This will always be so." - Brigham Young, President and second 'Prophet' of the Mormon Church, 1863, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 10, p. 110.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
@PaleHearse Take it into the context, don't spew recycled anti-Mormonism. Read the entirety of his discourse. It's about condemning rape of Blacks on behalf of Whites. Utah followed in the principle that any slave raped by their master deserved immediate freedom because no slave deserved abuse. The quote i gave earlier, about God condemning White peoples' abuse of Blacks, if i'm not mistaken, comes from the same discourse.
shiverleaf15 2 months ago
@shiverleaf15
If you don't want to be proven wrong.. don't be wrong.
PaleHearse 2 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
"Check out my YouTube channel/playlists and websites for present-truth materials, Three Angels' Messages and God's last-mercy warning to His people in these last days.
Papacy = Antichrist / Little Horn / Beast from the Sea
Roman Catholicism = Whore of Babylon
Investigative Judgement has commenced in 1844 (1st Angel's Message)
Ellen G. White, 1827-1915 = End-time Prophet Sent of God
7th-day Sabbath = Seal of God
Sunday Worship to be Enforced as Mark of the Beast"
SeventhDayRemnant 8 months ago
OK, you can't find coins. What about concrete, steel (or other) mills, city and road foundations, steel weapons, horse bones or "millions of skeletons" at various battles.
This is so typical - pick one item, declare it doesn't mean what it says, thus ignoring the tons of errors (scientific & historical in the BOM). Ignore the Jewish - Indian connection, JS's rather exotic lifestyle, his chats with Bible heroes, god's many wives and oh yes, god changes his mind when politically expedient
smb12321 9 months ago
Speaking of gold, I first have to highlight Mormon Torah Bright, who leapt into the Olympic spotlight with her stunning snowboarding halfpipe performance. I love following her story: how she cleanly lives her religion, how her parents sweetly surprised her by coming to Vancouver, how she excitingly attacks the snowboarding sport. Wow, what a memorable Olympic story!
omiolo 1 year ago
SALT LAKE CITY — More than 300 Hispanic young single adults are expected to gather for a summer conference full of service, fun and spiritual activities starting Friday, July 2, and running through Monday, July 5.
omiolo 1 year ago
Cleaning and clearing up the tons of mud, debris and volcanic ash that filled homes and fields will also demand a long-term commitment. Some members whose homes survived the deluge will still be forced to relocate because the property surrounding their homes is perilous and unstable. Most of the homes in the impacted mountainous regions are made from wood or some form of masonry.
omiolo 1 year ago
"We drink and celebrate. Can we be part of your services?" Debbie said. "He told us 'I am what I am because of you. If you weren't included, it wouldn't be worthwhile.'"
For the next three months, Weddle answered questions, provided information, explained why the gospel was important to him and fasted and prayed for his parents' approval.
omiolo 1 year ago
When Weddle decided to join the church, support from teammates, coaches and friends was abundant. His parents were concerned, however.
"Are you crazy? What are you doing? We leave you for eight months and you want to join this church?" Weddle said, recalling their reaction.
Their big concern, Debbie said, was their son wouldn't think highly of them anymore.
omiolo 1 year ago
Special days
The gospel had been waiting for him, Weddle said. His conversion was not one big dramatic manifestation, but a subtle process of learning little by little. He was already living the lifestyle.
"They (the missionaries) taught me to pray and read the Book of Mormon. I put an effort into it," he said. "This was for me. It felt right."
omiolo 1 year ago
I want to talk really in some general terms about the reliability of Mormon history produced by the Church. I think there has been in years past the sentiment that the Church hedged on the way that it did business; that it was not forthright in what was published; that it was afraid of its past and unwilling to hold our heritage and our historical past up to the kind of scrutiny that other disciplines were subjected to.
omiolo 1 year ago
I'm only going to talk about a couple of projects in which I have been involved, so I can speak with some confidence of knowing the trouble that we went through to ensure that what was done was done properly.
omiolo 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Okay...so where is evidence of gold and silver PIECES of consistent weight?
This video is a classic bait and switch.
So are you going to flag this as spam too?
fudley2003 1 year ago
The LDS church is partnering with other community organizations to host Running from Hunger, a 5K family fun run/walk and food drive, on April 24 at Tribble Mill Park in Lawrenceville. Before the race, local church units will also hold community food drives.
omiolo 1 year ago
In lieu of an entry free, individual participants are asked to donate 10 cans of nonperishable food items and families are asked to donate 40 cans. About 600 participants are expected for the event. All food collected will be given to local food banks for distribution directly to families in the communities who need it most.
omiolo 1 year ago
Comment removed
fudley2003 1 year ago
Elder Gong has served in numerous Church callings, including full-time missionary in Taiwan, high councilor, high priests group leader, stake Sunday School president, bishops counselor, seminary teacher, bishop, stake mission president and stake president.
omiolo 1 year ago
From 1989 to 2001 he served in many positions for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Currently he is the assistant to the president for planning and assessment at Brigham Young University.
omiolo 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Okay...so where is evidence of gold and silver PIECES of consistent weight?
This video is a classic bait and switch.
fudley2003 1 year ago