I may be bringing this blog out of retirement to oppose examiner.com’s Greg West, or rather, his columns. Since making that decision, I haven’t been motivated to actually oppose the articles he’s written, but watch for that series.
In the meantime, I have found some new information about the character of Joseph Smith, according to his neighbors, before he became famous.
Did I mention the Mormon church has tried to suppress this information?
This information comes via Steve Benson, at RfM:
Ok, So i’m posting on my blog again today. Don’t expect me to go back to regular updates, but as I’ve said before, I may post interesting things from time to time.
This list was posted to the RfM board by “Lost”, and he found it from another source, linked below.
Facts: Mormons Wont Tell You When They Call at Your Door.
http://www.macgregorministries.org/mormons/facts.html
MORMONS WON’T TELL YOU that they believe your Church is wrong, your Christian creeds are abomination to God, and you pastor or Priest is a hireling of Satan.
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Joseph Smith had a problem. He started God’s one true church, but those pesky other churches on the earth were giving him flack. Some refused to recognize Joe as a prophet. Some claimed Joseph had no authority over them. Some had the audacity to claim that they had a better historical claim to proper, preisthood authority. This couldn’t do.
Joe’s solution claim to have recieved the proper authority from imaginary friends, such as God and Jesus, John the Baptist, and even Peter, James, and John.
Let’s get started.
Alright, I’ve really put a lot of effort in the last couple of weeks, and next week’s lesson looks pretty good for me, too. But this week? Not so much to pick apart… really just a basic rundown of Mormon Doctrine. If someone else wants to do a review of the lesson and have me post it here, that’s fine. My email is on the about page.
I can’t let myself go without posting one minor contradiction, though. Great thing about the mormon church is, you find even one contradiction in the doctrine, and it should theoretically take the whole church down… since it’s supposed to be the greatest, most perfect thing since Jesus.
I found this post on RfM, where confused has found some more rock-solid contradictions in the mormon faith.
Here is the post from “confused”
Confused, RfM message board, writes:
Okay. I finally figured it out. But to explain it is needful to read these three links;
Fisrt the varying first vision accounts:
http://www.lds-mormon.com/fv.shtml
Here’s some fun quotes I ran across reading about the Book of Mormon translation method today. Joseph’s father-in-law actually testifies that Joseph used the exact same method for con artistry of the locals, for translating the book of Mormon! First a bit of set-up from Book of Mormon witness David Whitmer.
This was a fun lesson to review, so my review runs a bit long this week. Also, it’s better sourced than any of my prior reviews. The church keeps piling on the lies. Let’s get started.
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…
So, a professor with access to a common Greek Psalter is offered a chance to show whether or not Joseph Smith was a fraud. He gladly takes the opportunity, presents the Psalter as a document of unknown origins to Joseph Smith. Far from easily deflecting this attempt to expose him, Joseph falls for it hook, line, and sinker.
Here’s the post from “Anon Brit” at RfM:
I know I’ve covered the “First Vision” story before, but here’s a new post from Spongebob SquareGarments that tackles the issue of whether Joseph made it all up…. years after it supposedly happened.
Here’s the post from Spongebob:
The First Vision wasn’t even known by church members until 1842, and even then it wasn’t very important. Joseph said that he was persecuted for telling people that he had seen a vision. There is simply no evidence that Joseph told anyone about the vision until many years later and not until after the Book of Mormon was published. There are no accounts in the newspapers, by neighbors, preachers or even by the members of Joseph’s own family. There is much evidence to indicate that the First Vision either never really happened or was very different than we’ve been taught.
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