baldzach

Members
  • Posts

    8
  • Joined

  • Last visited

baldzach's Achievements

  1. I guess what it comes down to is that everything the church publishes -- websites, official statements, Ensign articles, even General Conference talks -- aren't necessarily "binding" or "doctrine" and may very well still be "mistakes" by "imperfect people" and we must decide individually when we are to be bound by what we hear.
  2. Honestly I don't have concrete examples of excoms. Just grapevine stories. As far as official statements goes, the 1949 FP statement, anytime Brigham Young spoke and said that everything he spoke in a sermon ought to be scripture, etc., These have been well hashed in the priesthood ban thread, however.
  3. There are people who were excommunicated for speaking out on the "official" stance of the day. Substituting "speculation and opinion" as doctrine and subsequently disciplining members for not believing it seems to qualify as "astray." How about scriptures? Fallible or infallible? After all, they are just writings of prophets, which are of course fallible.
  4. Fallibility is one thing, but signed, read-over-the-pulpit "from the mouth of the First Presidency, yea verily" letters and instruction manuals should have been -- correctly -- interpreted as being "thus saith the Lord" type of statements, because, the Lord won't let the Prophet lead the church astray....
  5. Agreed. I guess I should say I don't like the cognitive dissonance I'm struggling with that church leaders make mistakes (a la Pres. Uchtdorf) and the topic of this thread from OD1. It just has come to a head with the recent "speculation and opinion" statements on race in the last two years.
  6. Personally, I have no problem with the church coming out and claiming new revelation that now allows XYZ when XYZ was not allowed in the past. Ending the racial ban on the priesthood, for example -- no problem. It was the will of God, no the will of God is this, and that's cool. I'd be fine if the church came out and said "God has revealed that now the blessings of marriage should be extended to all couples regardless of orientation" or that polygamy was to be reinstated. I am perfectly willing to accept that God's ways are not my ways and that he knows what I don't know and he has his reasons. All good. What I have a problem with, however, is when the church says "God's will is now THIS, and we don't know why the past prophets thought it was something else -- it never was. This has always been God's will, and previous prophets didn't understand it, even though they definitely sounded like they had direct revelation explaining it, they really didn't."
  7. The plates were never lost. It was the translation of the plates -- words on paper -- that comprised the 116 pages that were lost. The plates were returned to Moroni, according to Joseph Smith's own account, complete with the Book of Lehi and the much larger, sealed portion of the plates that contain scripture not yet available to us.
  8. Juts wanted to say Hi! I'm a runner, about to run my third marathon in the Salt Lake City marathon on April 18th. I've run the Ogden and St. George Marathons. I'm not fast, but I get it done! It's a great way to stay in shape.