Ray

Could you give me an example of a theological change? Thanks. :) Most of the changes that I know of are in I Nephi, and they all surround the nature of the Godhead. I will give the quote from the present BoM (LDS and RLDS), and then give the quote from the RCE which was restored to the original manuscript. 1Nephi 3:58 RLDS (LDS 1 Nephi 11:18) ...Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God... 1Nephi 3:58...Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God... 1Nephi 3:62 RLDS (LDS 1 Nephi 11:21)...Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father 1Nephi 3:62 ...Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father 1Nephi 3:193 RLDS (LDS 1 Nephi 13:40) ...the Lamb of God is the son of the Eternal Father... 1Nephi 3:193 ...the Lamb of God is the Eternal Father... The original text clearly demonstrates that God and Christ are one. It has a more modal view of the Godhead. It was changed to reflect a more trinitarian view of the Godhead. I don’t see that as a change in theology. I see “Son of God” as a relative term. The church has always taught that Christ was and is the same person that Abraham and his descendants knew as God, and is the same person who becomes our Father and our God through spiritual rebirth. I think when Christ referred to Himself as the “Son of God”, He was doing so in humility, to point our minds to the being who He worships. If we ever meet His Father in heaven, I suspect that He will also tell us that He is the “Son of God”, in humility, to point our minds to the being who He worships. I suspect the same will be true forever, because there never has been and never will be a Father who does not also have a Father.

The person referred to by the name of "Satan" is just as real as anybody else you know and many people you don't know. If you don't believe that Satan is real, you simply don't know it.And for those who want to hear or read as few words as possible, the correct answer to the question is True.

Cal, Try to pay attention to who is talking to you, okay? And while you’re at it, try to pay attention to what I’m saying. It may be a bit of a challenge for you, but I’m sure you can do it. The testimony that I have is just as real as the love that I feel. YOU may not be able to feel what I feel, but I can. I can feel the love that I have from God, and I can feel the love that I have from my wife. If you can’t feel the love that you have from God, can’t you at least feel the love that you have from your wife? If she truly loves you, and you have felt of that love before, I would think that you would know exactly what I am talking about. Can’t you answer a simple question with something like “Yes, I know that my wife loves me, and I know that her love is real” ??? Do you attribute the love that you feel from your wife to a chemical reaction in your body? Do you think your body might be conspiring with your wife to delude you into believing that she loves you when she really truly doesn’t? If you can’t acknowledge that the love you have from your wife is real, a wife who I assume you spend time with every day, or at least enough time to know how she truly feels, how do you expect to know that you are loved by a God that you can’t see? Do you expect to remain without a knowledge of the love that God has for you until you can see some other kind of physical evidence?

I think you missed a few points when you were trying to follow my line of thinking about my example of Santa Claus, Cal, but maybe that’s because I didn’t fully explain what my idea of Santa Claus was. I’ll go into a little more detail for you. I once believed that Santa Claus was the one who had been bringing me my Christmas presents, until my parents told me that they were the ones who had been bringing them. To me, Santa Claus was a really nice fat man with a white beard and a red suit, who flew around the world in a sleigh pulled by reindeer to deliver Christmas presents that he and his elves had made at the North Pole. What I knew about my parents did not harmonize with my understanding of Santa Claus, so both ideas could not have been true. Either one was true and one was false, or both ideas were false. Over the years I have seen that Christmas presents are given by regular people, and that they do not come from someone who fits my childhood description of Santa Claus. Some people still believe in that fairy tale, but nobody I know of has ever seen someone who fits that description, and nobody fitting that description has ever revealed himself to anyone I have ever known. Could he still exist? I will admit that it is possible, but I do not have Faith in him, and it seems to me that the only people who do have faith in him, that I have seen or heard about, are people who merely accept the fairy tale that has been told to them. My faith in the Book of Mormon is different. While it is true that I also haven’t seen any physical evidence, to show me that people who once lived on the American continents wrote this record, I have received and I continue to receive a testimony from God telling me that the record is truly what it claims to be. This testimony is real, and I can feel the truth within this testimony just as much as I can feel the truth in anything that someone else tells me. Until I feel confident about the truth that someone tells me, I have doubts. What removes the doubts? The power of truth. Have you never felt the power of truth without first having to see physical evidence to support what someone is telling you? When your wife tells you she loves you, how do you know that she is speaking the truth? What makes you think she isn’t lying to you, possibly to take advantage of you. How can your wife prove to you that she loves you? What can she show you to prove the truth of her words? How else do you know, unless you can feel the truth of what she says communicated from her very soul to yours? Do you doubt her truthfulness now, wondering if maybe she is setting you up for a fall? Do you really put so little confidence and trust in what you feel someone has communicated to you? Until you feel the power of love, and the power of faith, an assurance from one soul to another, you will never know the power of truth about things that you can not physically see for yourself. Until you feel Faith from God, assuring you that the Book of Mormon is true, you will never know that it is what it claims to be. (This is because the Book of Mormon has already been written, and there is no way for you to physically see whether it was written by people who once inhabited the American continents)

How many are there in 'numerous plagiarisms'? Could you list them? Better yet, because they're so numerous, I'lll just provide you with a link. If you bother to actually skim over the pages that are linked it'll soon dawn on you the magnitude of JS's plagiarism. If you want to know how a "simple farm boy" could possbily write the BoM, it's not too hard to imagine that with Spaulding's basis for a story, JS's plagiarism of the Bible, and repition..he could've wrote it. http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bom/intro.shtml Don't forget that huge portions of Isaiah were included under the guise of the Brass Plates. I’ll repeat what I said before, expounding a little bit more. In my opinion, and in what seems to be President Faust’s opinion, anyone who assumes the Book of Mormon could have been written by human intellect alone is not thinking logically, and has not given the teachings within the Book of Mormon enough consideration. Even if Joseph Smith started writing the Book of Mormon when he was 14, and even if he had the help of every person you can imagine who might have associated with him [other than persons in heaven], and even if he could have plagiarized from every book on Earth that was available to him and his associates [other than the records given to him by Moroni], it still seems illogical to me to conclude that the Book of Mormon could have been written by human intellect alone. Have you even read the Spaulding story, or do you simply offer that as a possibility because you have heard someone else say that before? Do you know that the Spaulding story doesn't have any spiritual teachings whatsoever? Even if the translation process involved copying scriptures from the modern Bible that was available in Joseph Smith's day, which it did not, what do you say about the teachings that are found only in the Book of Mormon, which are consistent with the teachings in the Bible? It's painfully logical to me that your heart is hardened and you do not see the truth.

Laman and Lemuel thought their father Lehi and their brother Nephi were doing the same thing…that is, trying to persuade them to believe their teachings because they wanted them to be in subjection to them, so that they could get their investments of time, energy, money, and devotion and would be dependent upon them, their father and brother, as their leaders and teachers of truth. You can find other references in the Book of Mormon about other people who had this belief too. People who believed that the teachings of prophets was merely the teachings of men. People who believed true prophets were merely people who had their own agenda, wanting to bring people in subjection to them. People who thought this way were said to be people who were hardening their hearts against the truth, preferring to continue their false notions and beliefs instead of opening their hearts to the possibility the teachings were inspired by God, and that the people who taught those things were truly prophets of God. You’re not much different from those disbelievers in the Book of Mormon, Antishock. You may believe that examples of people like that were written into the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith and others to convince people who read the Book of Mormon that the record is true, but in doing so you’re only hardening your own heart. Someday you will know that the Book of Mormon is truly what it claims to be, and hopefully that day will come before the day when you’re standing in front of Christ and trying to explain to him why you didn’t accept the testimony of His prophets.

I think we'd better just leave logic out of our Book of Mormon studies. The faith thing works a lot better. I agree. I'm guessing that you probably wrote this before I edited in my second paragraph. :)

Even if Joseph Smith started writing the Book of Mormon when he was 14, and even if he had the help of every person you can imagine who might have associated with him [other than persons in heaven], it still seems illogical to me to conclude that the Book of Mormon could have been written by human intellect alone. In my opinion, and in what seems to be President Faust’s opinion, anyone who assumes the Book of Mormon could have been written by human intellect alone is not thinking logically, and has not given the teachings within the Book of Mormon enough consideration. I still haven't read that article, but hopefully President Faust also touches upon the idea that a definitive conclusion reached by logic alone is NOT what most people refer to as a testimony. As convincing as logic may be, a person should still seek a testimony from the Holy Ghost to confirm that their logic and reasoning is true.

He didn’t say such a conclusion was compelled by logic. He said that a person can conclude by logic [alone] that a human intellect could not have conceived of them all. I think President Faust was referring to all of the teachings quoted in the Book of Mormon that come from the Old and New Testaments in the Bible. I can now recall thinking the same thing myself, as I have read the Book of Mormon. I think President Faust may have been saying that considering the short period of time that the Prophet Joseph had to translate the Book of Mormon, it is illogical to conclude that Joseph Smith wrote it himself, without divine guidance, as some people claim. I'll have to read that article to better understand what he was talking about.

I'll have to ask my wife about her visiting teaching lessons more often. The love of God is my favorite issue. :)

Well, I can’t prove to YOU that Jesus loves me, or that He has given me any other assurance, but I can tell you that He has testified of these truths to me and that His assurance is the source of my testimony. Can you say that, or do you have some other form of evidence to prove to you that what you believe is true? If you were to say that your assurance of the truth comes from God, I would at least give you credit for acknowledging that His assurance is a form of evidence, but if we both say that we have God’s assurance on something and we both disagree with each other, then one of us is confused. God will not disagree with Himself on the same issue, so anything He says must be in harmony with anything else He has ever said about that issue. Or at minimum there must be some way to reconcile and explain why He would tell you one thing and tell me something different about the same issue. The question at hand is not that complex. The Book of Mormon is either what it claims to be, or it is not. Both assurances can not be true. So I will ask again: What makes you think that you know the truth NOW? What is your evidence that the Book of Mormon is NOT what it claims to be?

This reminds me of the same kind of thinking expressed in a song called "Jesus loves me". If people know that Jesus loves them only because the Bible tells them so, that's sad. People should feel His love for them in their very soul. When a person says they know that Jesus loves them, it shouldn't be because if it is written in a book, it must be true. If you don't know or can't recall the words of "Jesus loves me", they are: Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong, They are weak but He is strong, Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me, The Bible tells me so. I know Jesus loves me because I can feel it, and I can also feel His assurance telling me that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and the church is true. To me, this feeling is what matters the most, because this is what helps me want to change my life for the better.

"Untestability as a logical fallacy” sounds like mumbo jumbo to me. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I think it implies the idea that if you can’t test something you can’t know whether or not something is true. That makes sense to me. Are you saying that if you can’t see any testable evidence, or any way to test the evidence that proves that the Book of Mormon is true, that you don’t see a good reason to accept that the Book of Mormon is true? That makes sense to me too. Without Faith, I can easily see how someone would have doubts and be unable to decide whether or not the Book of Mormon is true. But you said, or it at least seem implied to me, that you know that the Book of Mormon is NOT true? That is why I asked about your evidence to support your position. If you have no evidence that can prove to you or anyone else that the Book of Mormon is NOT true, I think you are where most other people are who do not have Faith. I think you should simply say that you have doubts, and do not know, whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, unless you have some kind of evidence that proves to you that the Book of Mormon is true or not true. And yes, I did read and give consideration to what you said before. You sound like someone who does not see any evidence to show you that the Book of Mormon is true.

I'm sure someone will appreciate this list. Doing things to help people is a good thing. People who do good things are good people. Therefore you must be a good person. :)

I guess my answer to you Ray, is that I know the BoM is just as Not True as Santa Claus. Untestability is a logical fallacy...which is the only the way that I understand the BoM to be thought of as True. I can understand a person who says they have doubts about whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, but a person who will say that they know that the Book of Mormon is NOT true should have some kind of evidence which helped them to know that, shouldn’t they? Santa Claus is a great example. I can’t say for a fact that Santa Claus does not exist, but I do not have Faith in him. I do not have God’s assurance that there is a Santa Claus, and I do not have an assurance from a Santa Claus that there is a Santa Claus, at least not the Santa Claus that I once believed in as a child. After my parents told me that they were the ones who put the presents under the Christmas tree, and showed me some of the receipts, I then knew that the person who brought me those presents wasn’t Santa Claus. If there is a Santa Claus, he doesn’t visit anyone else I know either. My belief in the Book of Mormon is different. I have an assurance from God that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be, and that assurance that I feel is real. I can’t show that assurance to you because that assurance is a feeling, and feelings aren’t tangible, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it is still a form of evidence. Before I had God’s assurance that the Book of Mormon is true, I didn’t have it, and I think that may be where you are now. Or if you once had it, you lost it or forgot it. If I were you, I’d ask God for His assurance again, with a sincere desire to know the truth. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing something, or to have doubts about whether or not something is true. It’s only wrong to say that you know something is NOT true when you have no evidence to support that position.

Antishock, My question to you is: How do you know that you know the truth NOW? If the Book of Mormon is NOT true, how do you know that?

Peter was only in the "first presidency" of the early church. The church was led by James, the brother of Jesus. Of course, many people received revelation in the early church, Paul did, as did others. Interesting. Where do you get the idea that James led the church while Peter was still alive? If it was Peter who held the keys, which were given to him by our Lord, why would James be the Prophet for the church? It is the understanding throughout Christendom that James was the leader of the church, but I will look up some references. Please tell me, in return, where the keys of the kingdom were bestowed only on Peter. If I remember my church history correctly, it was Peter, James and John who restored the priesthood, so they all must have had them. Very interesting information about James, and Paul. I’ve wondered before why Paul was so boastful about “withstanding Peter to his face”. Someday I’ll look into that some more. The reasons that Peter seems to me to be the President of the church comes from my knowledge that our Lord said He was going to give Peter the authorization to use the keys, that He told Peter to feed His sheep, that Peter seems to take the prominent role in the scriptures, and that there is only one person on the Earth at any given time who is authorized to hold and use all of the keys of the priesthood. The First Presidency as a quorum also holds them, and the 12 Apostles also hold them, but they can only be used under the direction of the Prophet and President of the church, until he dies, and then they are used under the direction of the acting President of the church until the other apostles agree on who should be the next President of the church. Btw, the First Presidency and 12 Apostles of the church must also be in total agreement in all of their decisions regarding an issue, otherwise no other action or decision is made on that issue. But when actions and decisions are made, they are made by virtue of the keys that the President of the church is authorized to use.

Peter was only in the "first presidency" of the early church. The church was led by James, the brother of Jesus. Of course, many people received revelation in the early church, Paul did, as did others. Interesting. Where do you get the idea that James led the church while Peter was still alive? If it was Peter who held the keys, which were given to him by our Lord, why would James be the Prophet for the church?

I’m starting to get a better grasp on how the Church functions. I think people most often receive revelation when they are ready and willing to receive it. I can think of a few occasions when the Lord has given revelation to someone when they may have not been open to receiving it, perhaps because the Lord felt it was required, but I think most often it comes when people really want to know the Lord’s will. All of us are “human”, but some of us are more open to receiving truth than some other people. Some of us think we know quite a bit already, and are sufficiently satisfied with the level of understanding we have that we aren’t open to receiving any more, especially anything contrary to what we know or what we believe we know. If we aren’t open to receiving more revelation, or if we don’t feel a pressing need or desire to know the Lord’s will about something, how are we ever going to know it? I think Joseph Fielding Smith was sufficiently satisfied with his level of understanding about how revelation is essential to the building up of the church that he may not have thought about how our Lord’s statement could be interpreted in other ways. Or maybe he did understand how Peter and Christ were essential in the building of the church, but he was so focused on teaching about how revelation is essential that he didn’t fully express his understanding on the other two points. I’ve noticed that sometimes I don’t always express everything I know about a particular issue either, because I’m focused on expressing a particular point about that issue. I’ve noticed how other people don’t fully express themselves either. Maybe instead of thinking that Joseph Fielding Smith was only speaking as a man, you might think about the idea that he just didn’t fully express himself as well as he might have. Perhaps the only thing he thought was absurd was the idea that Christ built His church only upon Peter, without clarifying that it was through the revelation that Christ gave Him and continues to give to people who hold the keys of the priesthood.

Yah, it can get a bit confusing, and now that I’ve thought some more about this, I can see how it could truthfully be said that the church is or was also built upon Peter. As I said before, Peter was the means by which revelation was given to the church, to help build up the church, so Peter is as much a part of the building or organization of the church as Christ, and Joseph Smith for that matter. The revelations that have been received by the prophets of the church in the past are as much a part of the church as the prophets we have today, and without revelation through them, coming from Christ, the church would be lost and slip into apostasy. Heh, I’ve heard about and have seen some dualisms, but this is the first time I can remember seeing how a passage of scripture can be interpreted accurately in 3 different ways. And maybe there are more of these that I just haven’t noticed yet. :)

Hmm, thanks for agreeing with me, but when you put it that way it seems that the church is built upon Christ. A cornerstone is the first stone laid down before a building is built, isn’t it? I still believe Christ was telling Peter that He would build His church upon the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, but I now see that that doesn’t necessary conflict with the idea that the church is also built upon Christ Himself. In other words, I think I was wrong to say that our Lord’s church is not built upon Him. If Christ is the cornerstone, the church must be built upon Him, but the actual construction of His church is accomplished through revelation.

To say that the rock refers to Christ is this passage would be the same as saying that Christ would build His church upon Himself, literally, and that doesn’t make any sense to me. To say that the rock refers to Peter in this passage would be the same as saying that Christ would build His church upon Peter, and I believe Joseph Fielding Smith did a pretty good job of explaining why that doesn’t make any sense. I think Christ gave Simon-Barjona the name Peter, or Petra, because Peter was to be the means whereby revelation would be conveyed to the church of Christ. I think this is another incident where Christ gave someone a name that had some relation to who they were or what they were to do in their life, as Christ gave other names to people. The church of Christ is an organization or group of people built upon revelation, conveyed through the Holy Ghost. One of those revelations is that Jesus is the Christ. Peter knew that Jesus was the Christ only through a revelation from our heavenly Father, which told him that Jesus was the Christ, so Christ was saying that His church would be built upon revelation. In 1 Corinthians 12:3, Paul states that “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost”, and I will assume that Paul meant that no man can say that with confidence and integrity without having it revealed to them through revelation. Someone may hear that testimony from their parents, or someone in Sunday School, or by reading someone else's testimony in the scriptures, but that someone will never know whether or not that testimony is true unless that testimony is conveyed into their heart by the testimony of the Holy Ghost. Without a testimony from the Holy Ghost, all information is only something that someone else thinks is true, and as far as that someone is concerned, there is only the possibility that it may or may not be true.

Does anybody have a problem understanding what is being taught here?Does anybody have a problem accepting what is being taught here? If so…ready, set, go…and let ‘er rip! :)

If you’re sure that all of this can be explained, what is stopping you from accepting that explanation? Because the explanation doesn’t conform to Your beliefs, or what people have taught You? Who or what do You worship as the source of all truth? Whose assurance do You want? There are also things in the Bible that seem difficult to accept, at least until you come to understand the reasoning. The Bible states that God put a mark upon Cain, and who are You to state what that mark was or what it looked like? Whether or not black skin originated as a mark put upon man by God is irrelevant in my book, because every man is now able to receive all the blessings our Lord desires to share with those who follow Him. If you haven’t seen many people with black skin among the Church recently, perhaps it’s for some other reason than because the Church is prejudiced. The Church now declares the gospel to everybody, both Jews and Gentiles. The Church doesn’t try to save people with only black skin, just as we also don’t specifically target people with yellow skin or red skin or brown skin in particular. I’ll leave you to deduce why there are relatively few people with black skin among the Church today.

Keep studying and hopefully someday you will be one with LDS, understanding what the scriptures mean when they state that God is one. The scriptures are clear about the fact that God is more than one person. How, then, can God be one? Think about what our Lord said in the garden of Gethsemane during His prayer to our Father in heaven, recorded in John 17. He prayed that [His followers] would all become one as He is one with our Father. Do you honestly believe our Lord was speaking to Himself, and praying that we would all become the same being? How can we all become the same being if we are all to be resurrected separately, with our own bodies of flesh and bone? Our Lord Jesus Christ, our Father in heaven, and the Holy Ghost are all God. They are one in agreement and purpose. Our Lord worships our Father in heaven, and our Lord directs us to do the same. Our Father in heaven glorified our Lord and made Him Lord over all the earth, and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that our Lord has been placed in that position of prominence over the rest of us. There is only one way that we can return to our Father in heaven, and that way is through a recognition and acceptance of our Lord. Our Lord is God and He has a body of flesh and bones. The Holy Ghost is also God and He is a Spirit, and those who worship God must worship Him through that Spirit, as He alone can guide us to the truth. Our Lord sends the Holy Ghost to anyone who truly desires to know the truth, so everyone who truly wants to know it is without an excuse. Don't expect to teach me anything, as I do not expect to teach you anything. I will leave the teaching to God, with hopes that you truly want to know the truth and not merely convince me of something you believe.