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[priesthoodpower]

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Edited August 10, 2020 by priesthoodpower

[Guest MormonGator]

10 minutes ago, priesthoodpower said:

Many former mormons express their faith crisis stemming from evidences as well as speculations that Joseph Smith made up and or copied from other sources.

for example some LDS Temple signs/rituals copied from the free masons. What do I think? I really dont care what happened 150 years ago, I have come to know God and my savior Jesus Christ because of this church and I know he used imperfect humans to restore the church.
 

My question to you all is this. Can we start to think of Joseph Smith as an organizer AND a restorer of the Gospel? No doubt that he RESTORED the priesthood, but other things pertaining to the fullness of the gospel have never left this earth and so Joseph was in the right place at the right time, surrounded by many christian sects that had some truth in them. The Lord was able to use Joseph as a tool to gather the easy accessible truths around him and bundle it into the Church as we have it today. Critics would say he copied or stole ideas.

Joseph was a free mason and must have felt the spirit while attending the mason temple and asked the Lord if some of those rituals are truth, received an answer then implemented it into the LDS church.

Think of Henry Ford, he did not invent the tire, the automobile or even the assembly line. He took all those elements and manufactured a car that everyone could afford. Is Joseph Smith the Henry Ford of religion?

I think Smith used the language and culture he was surrounded by in his church for his church. IE-Masonic symbols in temples, etc. I like your Smith/Ford comparison too. They certainly were alike in that way! 

[zil]

14 minutes ago, priesthoodpower said:

but other things pertaining to the fullness of the gospel have never left this earth

IMO, eternal truths can be found scattered (and distorted or corrupted) through myth, religion, ritual, and ceremony the world over.  Nearly every time I learn about a new one of these, I see bits and think, "ah, that came from [some eternal truth here]."

[The Folk Prophet]

30 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

I think Smith used the language and culture he was surrounded by in his church for his church. IE-Masonic symbols in temples, etc.

I believe the symbols in the temple predate masonry. There is good evidence, for many things, that this is the case too.

[priesthoodpower]

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Edited August 10, 2020 by priesthoodpower

[Guest MormonGator]

14 minutes ago, priesthoodpower said:

yup, I served a mission in Japan and rode my bike pass a statue like this everyday

 

That must have been gorgeous. There is nothing wrong with what Smith did of course. We are all products of our culture. 

You missionaries have such wonderful experiences. Getting to see the world and serve Christ at the same time. 

Edited March 8, 2016 by MormonGator

[David13]

Power

I have to agree with you.

Today I passed some type of Korean (I think) Christian church.  In a double office building.  With a large cross out front.

How absurd to think there would be someone who would apostatize from that church based on their offense from realizing that cross was taken from, or is the same as many many many other Christian churches.

dc

[Guest]

Whatever truth there is here that has been corrupted is corrupt.  My take is that Joseph would simply get what he could from the pure source.  It seemed rather odd to me how this works though.

Joseph once had a talk with a Jewish physicist.  He was looking for an instructor in Hebrew.  The professor told him,"I'm a physicist, not a language teacher.  If you wanted a physics teacher, I could help you."

Joseph responded,"I already have a source for physics."

"Who is that?"

"God".

"Well, then, why don't you ask Him?  I understand it is His native language."

This made me wonder why didn't he?  Why physics, yes, but language, no?  Because the physics they had at the time was corrupt.  It was certainly better than the dark ages, surely.  But compare that with what we know today.  How many errors were there at the time?  How many errors do we have today?  But language is simply man's.  Whatever errors there are in language, as long as they are common, then it isn't a real error.

************************************************************************************

Someone I know fairly well and still keep in contact with has a miraculous gift of healing.  It is more than what we're used to.  When we first discussed it, I thought he was talking about chi (as the Chinese know it).  So, I thought, well, there are more things in heaven and earth...  So I offered to hook him up with several elders in Chinese arts who seemed to be able to do similar things.

His response: No, I don't know what it is they do.  And I'm not fully certain what it is that I'm doing.  But I do know that I want it to be completely dependent on the Lord.  I need to know that this is part of the priesthood and not from any other source.  That way, I know it is not corrupt.  And I won't be prone to going all evil with it.

************************************************************************************

Whatever Masonic symbols, rites, observances, etc. were present, they were corrupt.  So he would have gotten them from the source -- i.e. God, not man.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Guest

[priesthoodpower]

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Edited August 10, 2020 by priesthoodpower

[NeedleinA]

On 3/8/2016 at 7:58 PM, priesthoodpower said:

Joseph was a free mason and must have felt the spirit while attending the mason temple and asked the Lord if some of those rituals are truth, received an answer then implemented it into the LDS church.

 

"While it is true that some of the endowment was developed and introduced in the weeks following Joseph Smith's initiation as a Master Mason. This oversimplifies the issue considerably. The endowment and other parts of LDS temple worship developed slowly over a period of years. It did not happen all at once. Joseph Smith's critics want to label him as an intellectual thief by claiming that he stole some of the ritual elements of Freemasonry in order to create the Nauvoo-era temple endowment ceremony. The greatest obstacles to this theory are the facts that

1. Joseph Smith claimed direct revelation from God regarding the Nauvoo-era endowment,
2. Joseph Smith knew a great deal about the Nauvoo-era endowment ceremony long before the Nauvoo period—and thus long before his entry into the Masonic fraternity, and
3. the Nauvoo-era temple endowment ceremony has numerous exacting parallels to the initiation ceremonies of ancient Israelite and early Christian kings and priests—parallels which cannot be found among Freemasons.

 

... It is also clear from Doctrine and Covenants 124 that Joseph Smith was well aware of the main ritual elements of the Nauvoo endowment ceremony at least as early as 19 January 1841"*

*(added by me, about 1 year prior to being a Mason)

 

Source: FAIR Mormon

 

 

 

[NeedleinA]

On 3/8/2016 at 7:58 PM, priesthoodpower said:

Think of Henry Ford, he did not invent the tire, the automobile or even the assembly line. He took all those elements and manufactured a car that everyone could afford. Is Joseph Smith the Henry Ford of religion?

• "Did Joseph Smith reinvent the temple by putting all the fragments -- Jewish, Orthodox, Masonic, Gnostic, Hindu, Egyptian, and so forth -- together again? No, that is not how it is done. Very few of the fragments were available in his day, and the job of putting them together was begun, as we have seen, only in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Even when they are available, those poor fragments do not come together of themselves to make a whole; to this day the scholars who collect them do not know what to make of them. The temple is not to be derived from them, but the other way around. . . . That anything of such fulness, consistency, ingenuity, and perfection could have been brought forth at a single time and place -- overnight, as it were -- is quite adequate proof of a special dispensation." (Ensign, February 2007).

[Guest]

13 hours ago, priesthoodpower said:

When you say the source is from God. In what manner do you think it was given?

1. Did Joseph meet with God or an angel face to face where these things were revealed?

2. Did Joseph have a dream of how it should be and then implement it the next morning?

3. Did Joseph see the masonic version and then feel inspired to add or subtract from it and then take it to the Lord in prayer if it is sufficient?

Here is a cut & paste job from another post (forgive me if the text no longer flows).

1&2) See explanation below.

3) All the Masons who knew Joseph were in awe of the temple ceremony when he first introduced it.  But it wasn't because of the similarities.  None of them cried foul.  None of them claimed any copy job.  It was only many years later that others declared the similarities.  My position is that they came from completely separate lines, and Joseph had most, if not all, of the ceremony prior to him ever becoming a Mason.

**************************************************************************************
LDS Author, apologist, and historian Matthew B. Brown says:

             "There are no statements (firsthand, secondhand, or otherwise) by the Prophet Joseph Smith indicating that the Nauvoo-era temple ordinances were a form of "purified Masonry".

                       --Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons p 129

Statements about "Celestial Masonry" were made many years after the Prophet's death by other individuals.  But none quoted Brother Joseph directly.  They refer to implications and feelings more than direct quotes.  Then as many more years passed, some quotes started coming to light of Joseph's supposed knowledge of the link between Masonry and the Endowment.  But none of it can be traced by documented history to primary quote to the Prophet himself.

The likely take-away is that when Joseph had received the endowment ceremony and was told to employ it and offer it in the new temple, he simply asked "if all the rumors about the Freemasons' link to Solomon's Temple were true."  Then he was told that there were some things that survived over the millennia, but that the fulness was being revealed to Joseph right there by the Lord Himself.  If he wanted to see the differences, he should become a Mason.  So he did.

And referring to such "Celestial Masonry" quotes, as well as others related to Masonry, Matthew Brown states:

                "None of these statements is meant to imply that the LDS temple ordinances are a species of... Freemasonry. (They express) that there is a divine or heavenly prototype, and the LDS version... is derived from the heavenly source -- and thus constitutes the true version."

                                 IBID p 155

Consider Heber C. Kimball's comment on the matter:

            "The Masonry of today is received from the apostasy... They have now and then a thing that is correct, but we have the real thing."
                          -- BYUS, vol 15, no 4, Summer 1975, 458

 

The fact remains that most of the endowment ceremony was already revealed to Joseph prior to his ever becoming a Mason.  D&C 124 refers to several rites that were not had in the Kirtland Temple.  And the Lord specifically states in 1841 that the purpose of the Nauvoo Temple would be...

             "a place...that he may come to and restore again that which was lost unto you, or which he hath
              taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood."
                                (D&C 124: 28) 

The fulness of the Priesthood by all indications must include temple ordinances.  Truly, prior to his death the Prophet was in earnest to get the Nauvoo Temple completed so that:

             "...he had conferred upon others all the keys given to him by the manifestations of the power of God."
                         (I need some help figuring out the reference...)
                         (The previous reference was BYUS, vol 21, No. 3, Summer 1981, p 306-307)
                         (This reference is IBID., 25:183  -- so the 183 is the page, but the 25 is the number or the volume?)

So it is apparent that he had all or most of the keys at least by the time the construction of the temple was begun.  The cornerstone was laid 6 April 1841.

And finally, we have the testimony of the Prophet himself.  Joseph bore testimony on 15 June 1844 (as Chronicled by Mormon Pioneer William Clayton) that some ceremonial knowledge of the endowment was received through the Urim and Thummim.  His testimony then would refute the notion that the endowment was a "modification" of the extant Masonic rites.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Guest

[priesthoodpower]

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Edited August 10, 2020 by priesthoodpower

[Blackmarch]

On 3/7/2016 at 6:58 PM, priesthoodpower said:

Many former mormons express their faith crisis stemming from evidences as well as speculations that Joseph Smith made up and or copied from other sources.

for example some LDS Temple signs/rituals copied from the free masons. What do I think? I really dont care what happened 150 years ago, I have come to know God and my savior Jesus Christ because of this church and I know he used imperfect humans to restore the church.
 

My question to you all is this. Can we start to think of Joseph Smith as an organizer AND a restorer of the Gospel? No doubt that he RESTORED the priesthood, but other things pertaining to the fullness of the gospel have never left this earth and so Joseph was in the right place at the right time, surrounded by many christian sects that had some truth in them. The Lord was able to use Joseph as a tool to gather the easy accessible truths around him and bundle it into the Church as we have it today. Critics would say he copied or stole ideas.

Joseph was a free mason and must have felt the spirit while attending the mason temple and asked the Lord if some of those rituals are truth, received an answer then implemented it into the LDS church.

Think of Henry Ford, he did not invent the tire, the automobile or even the assembly line. He took all those elements and manufactured a car that everyone could afford. Is Joseph Smith the Henry Ford of religion?

God has always struck me as an organizer.