Cunning of the devil


Jonah
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Would someone clarify this section.

D&C 10:43

"I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them 
that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil
"

The 1997 Gospel Principles says God's church was eventually destroyed.

Are these two teachings referencing two different events?

 

destruction.jpg

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Two things:

FIRST:  D&C 10 was referring to the retranslation of the record of Nephi after the "lost manuscript" was stolen.  So, specifically, that verse was not talking about the Church or even the organization.  The Church hadn't been organized -- and wouldn't be for another year after that.

SECOND: If you have to insist on making this about the establishment of the Church (which it isn't):  The Lord had already known that the early Church as He established it would be destroyed.  An entire world and society so evil that they would crucify the only perfect being to walk the earth was not a world where the Lord's Church was going to survive in its fulness.

So, he set things up to be restored at a time when the world would be more prepared to receive the fulness of the Gospel.  Even then, it almost got snuffed out.  But with all the enemies and all the wholesale slaughter they wrought upon the Latter-day Saints, and even the government of the United States out to kill them, the Church survived.  That, to me, is a testament that this really is a work that was protected by the Hand of the Lord.

Edited by Carborendum
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8 minutes ago, NeedleinA said:

Ah, the classic 1997 GP reference.

Yup.  Notice how "out of context" he had to make it to even have the semblance of a reasonable question. 

  • It is preceded by a reference to "After Jesus was resurrected..." 
  • Then, the very next lines after his quoted section refers to how the Church developed in Ancient Rome.
Quote

Soon pagan beliefs dominated the thinking of those called Christians.  The Roman emperor adopted this false Christianity as the state religion.  This church was very different from the church Jesus organized.

The context alone should tell the reader that the section was discussing the Early Church in the days of Peter & Paul.  If he had honestly come across that in honest study, he would have realized that.

More signs that he's getting these cherry-picked out-of-context statements from an anti-Mormon source specifically designed to twist meaning into something they clearly were not intended to be - just to sow confusion where there was none.

But he keeps putting trust in it instead of realizing that they are not dependable sources.  That's what happens when you start with a pre-conceived notion.

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The 1997'ses were the start of a very good couple of decades for LDS apologetics.  They began with antimormons outnumbering saints on a fledgling world wide web by a very comfortable margin.  Folks willing to opine on the dangers of mormonism were happily making money writing books and gathering lecture fees speaking to congregations.  Sometimes even having radio shows.  The general conference protestors made people nervous.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and dang things have changed.  The church is flooding the internet with things like the topical essays, and the free searchable library of all existing records from or about Joseph Smith.  The work laid down by FARMS and FAIR and a dozen others, gave ammo to everyday schlubs like me, who were now ready willing and able to take the battle to the critics, in hundreds of websites and message forums.   In 2007, evangelical scholars Owens and Mosser published their gamechanging essay "Mormon Scholarship, Apologetics, and Evangelical Neglect: Losing the Battle and Not Knowing It?", basically calling out the shoddy nonsense that made up the bulk of antimormon literature for what it was. 

Now, we're sort of in a golden age of apologetics.  The answers and responses are easy to find, easy to understand, and seem to have stuck.  The money dried up for the critic book writers and speech givers.  The critic-to-saint ratio online has swung far the other direction, and we're flooding social media, letting the world see us and our beliefs.   Last week, I saw some girl on TikTok starting her "responding to the CES letter" videos.  She plans to do a video a week.

Folks like Jonah can't be considered a dying breed, they're almost extinct.  Thirdhour allows the posts, because although every single issue raised has been well answered for decades, hey, they haven't been answered here yet, so why not.

Edited by NeuroTypical
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10 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Now, we're sort of in a golden age of apologetics.  The answers and responses are easy to find, easy to understand, and seem to have stuck.  The money dried up for the critic book writers and speech givers.  The critic-to-saint ratio online has swung far the other direction, and we're flooding social media, letting the world see us and our beliefs.   

That was Helm’s Deep, to use a Tolkien analogy.  But Pelennor Fields—the confrontation with the secularists and, perhaps in time, Islam and eastern religions and philosophies like Buddhism and Hinduism—is just getting started; and it will require very different skill sets and knowledge bases than what apologists have cultivated so far.  Ironically, we will probably find ourselves adopting and adapting arguments and tactics pioneered by some of the same Christian apologists with whom we’ve recently been sparring on our home turf.  

There is so much—so very, very much—yet to do; and so few people who are competent to do it.  We need to step up our game.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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6 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

That was Helm’s Deep, to use a Tolkien analogy.  But Pelennor Fields—the confrontation with the secularists and, perhaps in time, Islam and eastern religions and philosophies like Buddhism and Hinduism—is just getting started; and it will require very different skill sets and knowledge bases than what apologists have cultivated so far.  Ironically, we will probably find ourselves adopting and adapting arguments and tactics pioneered by some of the same Christian apologists with whom we’ve recently been sparring on our home turf.  

There is so much—so very, very much—yet to do; and so few people who are competent to do it.  We need to step up our game.

I won't name the particular prognosticator who said this, but... A prediction was made about 5 to 10 years ago stating that this explosion of knowledge we find on the internet is both good and bad.  We have so much knowledge available at our fingertips that we can learn almost anything we want.  We can verify anything we want.

Anything we want... That is a double edged sword.  If we can verify the truth, then with enough "information" out there, we can also verify falsehoods.

The prediction was that at some point very soon (and this was 5 to 10 years ago) we will find ourselves so flooded with information from all sources that we won't know whom to believe.  Science itself is becoming coopted to support whatever political persuasion you want.  It no longer follows the scientific method.  So much is theoretical, supposition, and correlation rather than causal relationships.  Everyone will be saying things that seem so convincing with supposed evidence to back it up that anything "could" be true. 

The prediction said to be sure of your sources.  Be sure that you know what sources are really doing their best to give you the truth.But that still depends upon man.  And for man's knowledge and temporal items, that may be enough. 

But for spiritual things...the only way we're going to make it in the near future is a firm reliance on the Holy Ghost.  That is why the "Hear Him" campaign is so important.

Edited by Carborendum
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21 hours ago, Jonah said:

Would someone clarify this section.

D&C 10:43

"I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them 
that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil
"

The 1997 Gospel Principles says God's church was eventually destroyed.

Are these two teachings referencing two different events?

 

destruction.jpg

Yes. The Great Apostasy of the Original Church took place about 2,000 years ago (as prophesied), and the statement in D&C 10 refers to the Restored Church of 1830 onward (as prophesied).

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On 12/7/2020 at 12:57 PM, Carborendum said:

So, he set things up to be restored at a time when the world would be more prepared to receive the fulness of the Gospel. 

How prepared do you believe the Jews and Gentiles living in the first and second centuries were
to receive the fulness of the Gospel?

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8 minutes ago, Jonah said:

The 2009 version will become a classic some day.  We'll see what changes show up in the new
edition.

Your moves/maneuvers are "classic", not GP.
Your overt attempts here are beyond obvious to us all, the only one who doesn't seem to be aware that your game is old... is you.

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1 hour ago, Jonah said:

How prepared do you believe the Jews and Gentiles living in the first and second centuries were
to receive the fulness of the Gospel?

Wow.  Further evidence that you didn't come across it in honest study.  You only have the cherry picked snippet to work with.  Poor dear.

The answer to this question is in the very text that you pretend to have discovered all on your own in your "earnest" search for the truth.  Maybe if you actually read it, you wouldn't need to post such a question on an anonymous internet forum.

1 hour ago, Jonah said:

The 2009 version will become a classic some day.  We'll see what changes show up in the new
edition.

In other words, when the average Latter-day Saint doesn't have a copy handy to look up the context for themselves, you'll figure out what ways to cherry pick statements to twist their meanings again?

Thank you for yet again confirming your motivations.

And thank you for showing another tactic that you're using.  Once I point to the truth (the survival of the Latter-day Kingdom of God being preserved by the Hand of the Lord) you have to shift to divert attention from one weakness in your position to another weak position.

T4rYutM.gif.b5eb051df6ce10cbb6e6aac73f8e3b13.gif

That's Pero, BTW.

Edited by Carborendum
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1 hour ago, Jonah said:

How prepared do you believe the Jews and Gentiles living in the first and second centuries were
to receive the fulness of the Gospel?

Individual Jews and Gentiles were prepared to receive the fulness of that dispensation, but on the whole they couldn't get even that word out given the constraints of that dispensation, which led to the Great Apostasy.

1 hour ago, Jonah said:

The 2009 version will become a classic some day.  We'll see what changes show up in the new
edition.

What are you suggesting by this statement?

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18 hours ago, CV75 said:

Individual Jews and Gentiles were prepared to receive the fulness of that dispensation, but on the whole they couldn't get even that word out given the constraints of that dispensation, which led to the Great Apostasy.

What are you suggesting by this statement?

In an earlier post, Carborendum talked about the persecution of the LDS Church
and how it almost got snuffed out.  He said "so he set things up to be restored 
at a time when the world would be more prepared to receive the fulness of the 
Gospel.  Even then, it almost got snuffed out".

So my question was how prepared he believed the Jews and Gentiles were to receive
the fulness of the Gospel under Roman rule?

I have read literature describing the persecutions and murder of the Latter-day Saints
in the 1830's and beyond, but I would say it was much worse for the Christians under 
Roman rule before Christianity became acceptable under Constantine.

When NeedleinA said, "Ah, the classic 1997 GP reference", I made the comment that 
maybe the 2009 version would someday be viewed as a classic too.  I think the next 
version, whenever it comes out, will be just as valid as the previous versions 
though.

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8 minutes ago, Jonah said:

When NeedleinA said, "Ah, the classic 1997 GP reference", I made the comment that maybe the 2009 version would someday be viewed as a classic too.  I think the next version, whenever it comes out, will be just as valid as the previous versions though.

20 hours ago, Jonah said:

The 2009 version will become a classic some day.  We'll see what changes show up in the new edition.

We'll see what changes show up in the new edition ≠ I think the next version whenever it comes out, will be just as valid as the previous versions though.

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5 hours ago, NeedleinA said:

We'll see what changes show up in the new edition ≠ I think the next version whenever it comes out, will be just as valid as the previous versions though.

I think what he was trying to convey is that, somehow, simple editorial revisions really turn him on.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/7/2020 at 9:28 AM, Jonah said:

Would someone clarify this section.

D&C 10:43

"I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them 
that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil
"

The 1997 Gospel Principles says God's church was eventually destroyed.

Are these two teachings referencing two different events?

 

destruction.jpg

It could be the same event. While the priesthood or authority to administer the gospel was taken from the earth, God's work was not destroyed. This is a scenario where Satan gloats over his accomplishments only to find that God's work continues and there really is nothing Satan can do to stop it.

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