Gospel Doctrine 2009 Lesson 3: Mormons Worship Joe Smith

This week, we explore a portion of the lies being offered by the Lord’s true and only church in a lesson about Joseph Smith, the church founder.  I have quoted a good portion of the beginning of the lesson. Any teens out there who are being forced to go to church and want to cause some trouble in suday school… I’ll link to some sources here you can use to refute your teachers…

Purpose

To strengthen class members’ testimonies of the First Vision and of Joseph Smith’s calling as the prophet through whom God restored the fulness of the gospel to the earth.

Mind control tactic. First paragraph is attempting to estabish facts not in evidence.

Joseph Smith was a prophet? False

There is a God? False

There is a fullness of the Gospel? False

Preparation

• 3. Ask a class member to prepare to summarize the account of young Joseph Smith’s leg operation (Our Heritage,pages 1–2).

Ah, the young Joseph’s leg operation. A tale that shows that from an early age, Joseph stayed true to the Word of Wisdom and refused to drink alchohol. Well, I’m sorry to say, this is an outright fabrication. Joseph still drank beer as late as 11 years after the Word of Wisdom was revealed and probably up to the night he started a gunfight. From his own journal.  After you’ve finished reading that link, let’s continue with the lesson.

Joseph’s family helped prepare him

Joseph Smith came from a rich spiritual heritage. His parents and grandparents were religious, patriotic, educationally minded, and of strong moral convictions. His paternal grandfather, Asael Smith, stated years before Joseph was born, “It has been borne in upon my soul that one of my descendants will promulgate a work to revolutionize the world of religious faith” (in Joseph Fielding Smith, Essentials in Church History, 27th ed. [1974], 25).

Really? Asael Smith said this pre-1805? Yet the earliest source the lesson makers can find for the quote is 175 years later in a book written by a Mormon prophet? Two options here: The original source doesn’t exist, or there is something wrong with the original source the church doesn’t want you to see…

Both of Joseph’s parents had profound religious experiences. Joseph Sr. had several dreams that gave him assurances that he would enjoy the blessings of the true gospel of Jesus Christ (see Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith,ed. Preston Nibley [1958], 47–50, 64–66).

Dreams that Joseph Jr shamelessly copied and pasted into the Book of Mormon

Ok, I’m going to cut out some irrelevant parts of the next paragraph to emphasise how ridiculous it is.

 Joseph Sr. and Lucy searched actively for religious truth. Both of them felt that none of the existing churches was consistent with the Church that Jesus Christ had established… Lucy…  joined the Presbyterian Church.

heh.

• • Why was Joseph confused about which church he should join? (See Joseph Smith—History 1:5–10.) How was Joseph’s situation like that of people today who are searching to know the truth?

Joe can’t even tell his story correctly. JSH 1:10 “…or ar they all wrong together?” JSH 1:18 “…it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong.”  Which is it, Joe? You damned liar. You expose yourself with your own history!

Ok, I could go on. But I think I’ve shown that this lesson is chock-full of lies from the start to the finish.  It’s this kind of lying that causes people to leave the church. When they find out the church isn’t being honest, they are offended not by a person, but by the organization itself, and leave.

If there was a God, he would not run a church that taught blatant falsehoods week in and week out.

UPDATE:  

Thanks to Kalos over at RfM, I now have some more information on the Asael Smith quote. Shocking nobody, the information isn’t pretty for the church. Here’s the info from Kalos:

Asael Smith told his grandson, George A. Smith, “that he always knew that God was going to raise up some branch of his family to be a great benefit to mankind” (George A. Smith, “Memoirs,” p. 2, Brigham Young University Special Collections, Provo, Utah)

George A. Smith also stated, “My grandfather, Asael Smith, heard of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and he said it was true, for he knew that something would turn up in his family that would revolutionize the world” (in JD 5:102).

And according to John Smith’s (JS’s uncle) diary “Father (Asael)received with gladness that which Joseph communicated; and remarked, that he had always expected that something would appear to make known the true gospel.”

Asael was 86 at the time and lying on his death bed. The main source of the quotes, George A., would have been somewhere around 13 at the time. 

Asael’s possibly senile statement that he “always knew that something would appear to make known the true gospel” evolved into George A.’s false memory that Asael “always knew something would turn up in his family” and then completed its evolution into the utter lie we have now after Joseph Fielding Smith got a hold of it and modified it further.

Tags: ex mormon, exmormon, joseph smith, LDS, Mormon, mormonism