Scriptural Defense: Those Who Say Mormons Aren'T Christian

[CV75]

First the claim is made that the wolves destroyed the church. Then this claim is qualified that the wolves attacked the church so badly that God withdrew the authority for the church to exist, because there were no faithful Christians prepared to serve with that authority. Yet other Mormons affirmed that there were always wonderful Christians around. Now your claim is that God could have restored the church at any time but simply chose to wait seventeen centuries. Meanwhile, you and others here continue to make such statements as that God "always" works through apostles and prophets.

I think a proper synthesis would show that it all makes sense, without contradiction.

First the claim is made that the wolves destroyed the church. Yes, they did, by seducing or co-opting the saints and by killing those with the priesthood keys.

Then this claim is qualified that the wolves attacked the church so badly that God withdrew the authority for the church to exist, because there were no faithful Christians prepared to serve with that authority. That is correct. The wolves attacked the church (in the very least by leading a sufficient number of members and their “overseers” away from the correct doctrine and authority). Those with the keys were scattered and killed, and I believe the wolves had a hand in this as well. Well-meaning Christians could not exercise faith in things that could no longer seal or be sealed on earth and in heaven, so they believed in whatever was left. Some of what was left was good, and some was bad, depending on how you look at it, but ultimately it excluded the priesthood keys. The term “Christian” is not synonymous with “Church.” No one was left that God would give that authority to. Hypothetically, if there had been someone with enough faith, He /His servants might well have kept the keys on earth longer. Joseph Smith had sufficient faith—whatever idea he had, he had sufficient faith in it to lead to the developments God had in store for him in restoring the keys and the Church. The phrases “Taking the keys away” and “The keys were lost” are used interchangeably and that semantic might be part of another discussion.

Yet other Mormons affirmed that there were always wonderful Christians around. Yes, there were. They had a Christian belief system but not the keys. Now your claim is that God could have restored the church at any time but simply chose to wait seventeen centuries. Yes, that is correct, according to His mind and will and mankind’s agency. Meanwhile, you and others here continue to make such statements as that God "always" works through apostles and prophets. Yes, when He has a work to do, He uses His priesthood, and when He formally delegates His authority to mankind, He always does so through apostles and prophets.

Edited June 1, 2012 by CV75

[Vance]

I think a proper synthesis would show that it all makes sense, without contradiction.

Unless, of course, you willfully don't want it to make sense of it and want to fabricate contradictions where none really exist.

[Vance]

Now your claim is that God could have restored the church at any time but simply chose to wait seventeen centuries. Yes, that is correct, according to His mind and will and mankind’s agency. Meanwhile, you and others here continue to make such statements as that God "always" works through apostles and prophets. Yes, when He has a work to do, He uses His priesthood, and when He formally delegates His authority to mankind, He always does so through apostles and prophets.

God, in his wisdom knew when the time was right. Had He started earlier (before conditions were right) something like this could have happened. Michael Servetus had many beliefs similar to Joseph Smith and look what happened to him, thanks to the religious establishment at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus

Edited June 1, 2012 by Vance

[Rob Bowman]

zerinus,

You wrote:

Yes, but He does so through human agents to whom He has given the “keys of the kingdom” (Matthew 16:19). Those “keys” were given to all the Apostles, not just to Peter (see John 20:23). Where those agents do not exist on earth to exercise those keys, then the Lord is not “governing” the Church.

On your view, apparently, the apostles "dropped the keys," because they never bothered even trying to pass them on to others. There was no second generation of apostles to lead the church. This really doesn't square with your earlier claim that it was God's intention that the office of apostle continue from one generation to the next. The fact is that it didn't happen.

You wrote:

The Church as a body of believers didn’t cease to exist. But the Church as a divine institution governed by revelation through the instrumentality of His own appointed agents in possession of the necessary “keys of the kingdom” did cease to exist. There is a subtle distinction between the two.

I'm afraid this distinction is not only overly subtle but ad hoc -- and to the best of my knowledge not supportable from LDS sources. We can test your distinction very easily. According to the NT, one becomes a believing member of the church in the sense of the body of Christ through the rite of baptism (1 Cor. 12:13). Yet according to Mormonism no one can be validly baptized except by God's "appointed agents" who possess the priesthood authority you claim God removed from the earth and kept from mankind for seventeen centuries. This means that if Mormonism is correct, no one could become part of the church in the sense of becoming part of the body of believers (the body of Christ) for the entire period of the Great Apostasy. Thus your distinction completely collapses.

You wrote:

There were indeed true Christians (i.e. believers in Christ) in those centuries. But the conditions simply did not permit the institution of the Twelve Apostles to continue. As you know, according to Christian tradition the Apostles were all martyred. If the condition of the world is such that they are being martyred faster than they are being rebuilt, then clearly the world is ready to receive them.

As I have explained, this is simply not in accord with the historical facts. The first martyrdom of an apostle, James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12), took place in AD 44. To the best of our information Peter and Paul were martyred in the mid-60s in Rome. We have little reliable information about the deaths of the other apostles, but what little we have clearly points to the conclusion that they died one or at most two at a time and in different places. John evidently lived into the 90s. A reasonable estimate is that between the years 40 and 100 an apostle died on average once every five years or so. There was plenty of time throughout this period of the church's history to appoint new apostles as the need arises. Yet it did not happen. Persecution is not an adequate explanation for this fact.

You wrote:

You are now engaging in obfuscation. The point was not about whether the Apostasy was “complete” or not, but what kind of Apostasy the Protestants believed in.

Come now, Zerinus, let's play nice. Try to see it from my point of view. A "complete" apostasy in which the church ceases to exist is a very different kind of apostasy from the kind that I as a Protestant affirm. That the church became rather corrupt by the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is widely acknowledged by Protestants and even to some extent by Catholics. That the church had entirely ceased to exist a millennium or more earlier and needed to be restored by new supernatural revelations and apostolic commissions is contrary to Protestantism.

You wrote:

More obfuscation. The point of 2 Timothy 1:15 was not that the Apostasy was “complete” or not, but that it was on a large scale. The “completeness” of the Apostasy relates to the completeness of the loss of the priesthood keys, not the apostasy of every Christian on the planet.

Apostasy on a "large scale" is not adequate to explain the loss of the priesthood keys. At the present time only about one-half of one per cent of the world's professing Christians accept the Mormon prophet and apostles as the true holders of the priesthood keys. This means that by Mormon standards about 99.5% of Christianity today is in apostasy. That's pretty "large scale" apostasy there, bud, yet I don't see Mormons concluding that God is removing the priesthood keys from them any time soon. Again, the passive "loss of the priesthood keys" is not a forthright way of stating the matter. Your position is not that the keys were lost but that they were removed from the earth by God himself. Yet you admit that many Christians remained and were not personally apostates. This appears to be an inconsistent position.

You wrote:

More obfuscation still. The purpose of quoting Acts 20:28–31 was to demonstrate that the Apostasy was among the leadership of the Church—not whether it was complete or incomplete.

Vance claims that this is the point of quoting Acts 20:28-31. He claims that the obvious meaning of the passage is that the whole church was devoured by the wolves and no sheep were left. He would ask you, What part of "not sparing the flock" do you not understand? Perhaps you and he should get in a huddle and sort this out.

From my point of view, I have absolutely no problem agreeing that Acts 20 warns us about apostate leaders in Christianity. I could name quite a few examples for you. But this doesn't amount to the conclusion that the true church ceased to exist on the earth.

[Vance]

Try to see it from my point of view.

Why are you asking something of us which you are unwilling to do yourself?

[Rob Bowman]

CV75,

You wrote:

I think a proper synthesis would show that it all makes sense, without contradiction.

Let's take a look.

First the claim is made that the wolves destroyed the church. Yes, they did, by seducing or co-opting the saints and by killing those with the priesthood keys.

Already there is a problem with your synthesis. In Acts 20:29 the wolves are not Roman authorities persecuting the saints; the wolves are false teachers or false prophets misleading people in the church (see also Matt. 7:15, the saying of Jesus that likely stands behind Paul's statement). The false prophets did not kill the apostles.

You wrote:

Then this claim is qualified that the wolves attacked the church so badly that God withdrew the authority for the church to exist, because there were no faithful Christians prepared to serve with that authority. That is correct. The wolves attacked the church (in the very least by leading a sufficient number of members and their “overseers” away from the correct doctrine and authority). Those with the keys were scattered and killed, and I believe the wolves had a hand in this as well. Well-meaning Christians could not exercise faith in things that could no longer seal or be sealed on earth and in heaven, so they believed in whatever was left. Some of what was left was good, and some was bad, depending on how you look at it, but ultimately it excluded the priesthood keys. The term “Christian” is not synonymous with “Church.” No one was left that God would give that authority to. Hypothetically, if there had been someone with enough faith, He /His servants might well have kept the keys on earth longer. Joseph Smith had sufficient faith—whatever idea he had, he had sufficient faith in it to lead to the developments God had in store for him in restoring the keys and the Church. The phrases “Taking the keys away” and “The keys were lost” are used interchangeably and that semantic might be part of another discussion.

Well, you seem to be going with Vance and taking the position that for seventeen centuries there were no Christians with enough faith or open enough to God to be instruments he could use to restore the priesthood keys and apostolic authority. He had to wait 1700 years and finally Joseph Smith came along. This is, as I keep saying, absurd on its face. Countless men laid down their lives for Jesus Christ during those 1700 years. They risked everything to preach the gospel, translate the Bible, or worship Christ according to the truth as they had it. The claim that Joseph was the first man in seventeen centuries that God could use is simply absurd. It also runs into an interesting theological problem in light of a specific doctrine of Mormonism, namely, the doctrine of preexistence of spirits. At any time, God could have sent Joseph Smith into the world as a human being to become the prophet of the restoration. God did not need to wait seventeen centuries for Joseph to be born -- Joseph could have been born at any time of God's choosing! This makes the explanation you are defending doubly incredible.

Yet other Mormons affirmed that there were always wonderful Christians around. Yes, there were. They had a Christian belief system but not the keys.

The inconsistency is here patently obvious. If there were always wonderful Christians around, any of them could have been tapped by the Almighty to be his chosen instrument to restore the priesthood keys. Yet God chose not to do so. Somehow in your "synthesis" there were always wonderful Christians around but not one of them was open to God speaking to them. Your synthesis doesn't seem to work.

[Vance]

Vance claims that this is the point of quoting Acts 20:28-31. He claims that the obvious meaning of the passage is that the whole church was devoured by the wolves and no sheep were left. He would ask you, What part of "not sparing the flock" do you not understand? Perhaps you and he should get in a huddle and sort this out.

Why would he need to talk to me. You are perfectly willing to make declarations about what I claim and what I would ask.

[Rob Bowman]

Vance,

You wrote:

God, in his wisdom knew when the time was right. Had He started earlier (before conditions were right) something like this could have happened. Michael Servetus had many beliefs similar to Joseph Smith and look what happened to him, thanks to the religious establishment at the time.

Um, Vance...according to Mormon belief, the same thing that happened to Michael Servetus happened to Joseph Smith. Both of them were killed. If God could use Joseph to start the restoration, why couldn't he have used Servetus or someone like him?

[Vance]

Um, Vance...according to Mormon belief, the same thing that happened to Michael Servetus happened to Joseph Smith.

Really? What official statement of "Mormon belief" even mentions Michael Servetus?

Both of them were killed.

Yup.

And had Michael organized a church at that time his followers would have met with the same fate as he did.

If God could use Joseph to start the restoration, why couldn't he have used Servetus or someone like him?

See above.

[Darren10]

Rob #106;

He had to wait 1700 years and finally Joseph Smith came along. This is, as I keep saying, absurd on its face. Countless men laid down their lives for Jesus Christ during those 1700 years. They risked everything to preach the gospel, translate the Bible, or worship Christ according to the truth as they had it. The claim that Joseph was the first man in seventeen centuries that God could use is simply absurd.

A) Why was Moses the only one God could use to free the Hebrews from the Egyptians?

B) God also established the United States of America. That came, ohhh, seventeen centuries after the Apostolic Era.

C) Since you uphold the freedoms you have within the United states, why did God wait 10,000 years or so to before He *could* create it? Countless peopel died for freedom previous to the United State yet it took George Washington to come around and be the firgurehead forthe United States? Isnt that absurd?

D) Of the many people who died in the name of Jesus, how many of them did God tell not to join any church but to wait and that through them He may restore His true church?

E) What of Ignatius being the "olny faithful Christian" in Antioch?

F) You could not perservere 1/1,000 of the hardships Joseph Smith went through. Could God have used you to restore His church?

[CV75]

In Acts 20:29 the wolves are not Roman authorities persecuting the saints; the wolves are false teachers or false prophets misleading people in the church (see also Matt. 7:15, the saying of Jesus that likely stands behind Paul's statement). The false prophets did not kill the apostles.

I see no harm in borrowing the word “wolves” from Acts 20:29 (or anywhere else) to categorize the broader category of those who seek to destroy the sheep through any method. The point is, enemies of the Church, no matter what we call them, plied their trade by seducing or co-opting the saints and by killing those with the priesthood keys. I see the concentration and focus on the specific Acts 20:29 text ebbing and flowing throughout this thread (I thought it had been dropped), so I’m looking at it from a broadening of the discussion.

Well, you seem to be going with Vance and taking the position that for seventeen centuries there were no Christians with enough faith

///

Joseph could have been born at any time of God's choosing!

RE: Christians with faith: 1) I tried to convey that Peter was a very faithful man when he stepped onto the water; just not faithful enough to stay afloat. The same with early Christians—while many were faithful in some things, they just didn’t have enough faith to keep their Church. 2) A key component of faith is that the object has to be true. Enough falsehood had crept in to erode the sense of sustaining a functioning quorum of priesthood key-holders, and this disabled a key object of faith. Since one hand washes the other, they could not have faith in something that no longer existed. 3) Add to these ideas the other circumstances Vance and Darren listed, and those I listed from Elder Maxwell, and it becomes clear there wasn’t enough faith to overcome these obstacles and permit the development of such a fruit of faith as an authorized Church. 4) Add to these ideas the role of death in any divine victory, the Great Apostasy was as inevitable as the Crucifixion, and swallowed up in Christ, another testament to His power to overcome all things.

///

RE: Jospeh Smith's birth, I think you need to be consistent in what you represent as what God can/will and cannot/won't do about His servants' births.

If there were always wonderful Christians around, any of them could have been tapped by the Almighty to be his chosen instrument to restore the priesthood keys.

Is that so? Maybe we need to define what a "wonderful Christian" is. I think Peter was wonderful just stepping off the boat. Or the disciples struggling to understand who would be greatest in the kingdom. But no matter what kind of Christians (good and bad, wonderful or not), only God can judge their hearts and their circumstances to select someone through whom to restore on earth the keys He had given to Peter. His Plan spans eons and the history we know and whatever we can project for the future are in His hands. God’s will and His chosen instrument's faith have to be in alignment. Joseph Smith obviously had enough faith in the right principle at the right time.

Edit: Plus we have the whole idea of foreordination, which Darren presents below!

Edited June 2, 2012 by CV75

[Darren10]

Here's one aspect of the gospel to consider:

Before I ^aformed thee in the belly I ^bknew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I ^csanctified thee, and I ^dordained thee a prophet unto the ^enations.

(Jeremiah 1:5)

This is a explicit statement of God "sanctifying" and "ordaining" a prophet even before the prophet was born. I've no doubt that before Moses was born, God "sanctified" him and "ordained" him to be the prophet to lead the Hebrews out of Egyptian slavery. Likewise, I've no doubt that Joseph Smith was "sanctified" and "ordained" by God to be the prophet of the resotration of the LORD's gospel on the earth. Like Moses, and Jeremiah, God is in charge of who gets "santified" and "ordained" to be prophet and God is in charge of who they are a prophet to and what their purpose as prophet is. Joseph Smith was chosen to be a prophet to the world in our latter days and to restore God's Church as Christ established it in New Testament times.

Edited June 2, 2012 by Darren10

[zerinus]

On your view, apparently, the apostles "dropped the keys," because they never bothered even trying to pass them on to others. There was no second generation of apostles to lead the church. This really doesn't square with your earlier claim that it was God's intention that the office of apostle continue from one generation to the next. The fact is that it didn't happen.

I didn’t say it was “God’s intention”. I said it was “meant to”. You are making it sound as if I said that God was powerless to carry out His own “intention”. That is not what meant or implied. What I meant was that the correct organization of the Church requires the Twelve Apostles to be permanently at its head. The fact that it was not means that it was not correctly organized—or I should say, not organized at all.

I'm afraid this distinction is not only overly subtle but ad hoc -- and to the best of my knowledge not supportable from LDS sources. . . .

That is not correct actually. If you read carefully D&C 10:53–56, you will notice that the Lord recognizes the true believers in Him among other Christian churches in a generic sense as “His church”. The purpose of this Restoration or dispensation is to “build them up,” meaning to unite them under the umbrella of the genuine organizational or denominational Church that has been restored (i.e. with the proper priesthood keys which the at that time they did not possess).

Other scriptures that expand on the same doctrine are D&C 86 and D&C 101:65–66. God’s “true Church” has existed throughout the centuries; but they have been as “wheat” mixed with the “tares”. The purpose of this Restoration is to extract wheat form the tares. So God’s true believers throughout Christian history have indeed been “His Church,” but they have been mixed up with the tares, so that for the most part it has not always been possible to distinguish between them, and therefore organize and minister to them. The purpose of this dispensation is to change all of that. The true Church will be gathered (not only in this world but also in the spirit world, “that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal; and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual” —D&C 77:2); while the “tares” are being bound in bundles ready to be burned (D&C 88:94).

As I have explained, this is simply not in accord with the historical facts. The first martyrdom of an apostle, James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12), took place in AD 44. To the best of our information Peter and Paul were martyred in the mid-60s in Rome. We have little reliable information about the deaths of the other apostles, but what little we have clearly points to the conclusion that they died one or at most two at a time and in different places. John evidently lived into the 90s. A reasonable estimate is that between the years 40 and 100 an apostle died on average once every five years or so. There was plenty of time throughout this period of the church's history to appoint new apostles as the need arises. Yet it did not happen. Persecution is not an adequate explanation for this fact.

All of this shows clearly a hostile environment in which they could not survive, let alone administer the Church.

Come now, Zerinus, let's play nice. Try to see it from my point of view. A "complete" apostasy in which the church ceases to exist is a very different kind of apostasy from the kind that I as a Protestant affirm. That the church became rather corrupt by the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is widely acknowledged by Protestants and even to some extent by Catholics. That the church had entirely ceased to exist a millennium or more earlier and needed to be restored by new supernatural revelations and apostolic commissions is contrary to Protestantism.

What you believe, or what Protestants presently like to declare; and what they did believe and declare a century ago are two different things. I was merely pointing out that the idea of a total apostasy did not begin with the Mormons, or with any of the so called “restorationist” group. It started with Protestants. If the Protestants now feel embarrassed by that, and would like to portray it differently, that is a different issue.

Apostasy on a "large scale" is not adequate to explain the loss of the priesthood keys.

Actually it is.

At the present time only about one-half of one per cent of the world's professing Christians accept the Mormon prophet and apostles as the true holders of the priesthood keys. This means that by Mormon standards about 99.5% of Christianity today is in apostasy. That's pretty "large scale" apostasy there, bud, yet I don't see Mormons concluding that God is removing the priesthood keys from them any time soon.

That is a wrong comparison. No large scale apostasy of that description occurred within the Restoration itself. The fact that that “apostate Christendom” is indeed hostile to that Restoration is a plus sign for that Restoration, not a minus.

Again, the passive "loss of the priesthood keys" is not a forthright way of stating the matter. Your position is not that the keys were lost but that they were removed from the earth by God himself. Yet you admit that many Christians remained and were not personally apostates. This appears to be an inconsistent position.

See above. They could not be perpetuated because of the Apostasy as well as the hostile environment of Gentile world at that time.

Vance claims that this is the point of quoting Acts 20:28-31. He claims that the obvious meaning of the passage is that the whole church was devoured by the wolves and no sheep were left. He would ask you, What part of "not sparing the flock" do you not understand? Perhaps you and he should get in a huddle and sort this out.

A scripture can have more than one meaning or application. I was quoting it with the application that the Apostasy took place within the local leadership of the Church, not just the lay members. Other applications of the scripture may be possible, which I am not commenting on.

From my point of view, I have absolutely no problem agreeing that Acts 20 warns us about apostate leaders in Christianity. I could name quite a few examples for you. But this doesn't amount to the conclusion that the true church ceased to exist on the earth.

The pervasiveness and scale of that apostasy prevented the perpetuation of the council of the Twelve Apostles at the head of the Church, and consequently the preservation of the priesthood keys.

Edited June 2, 2012 by zerinus

[CV75]

Here's one aspect of the gospel to consider:

(Jeremiah 1:5)

This is a explicit statement of God "sanctifying" and "ordaining" a prophet even before the prophet was born. I've no doubt that before Moses was born, God "sanctified" him and "ordained" him to be the prophet to lead the Hebrews out of Egyptian slavery. Likewise, I've no doubt that Joseph Smith was "sanctified" and "ordained" by God to be the prophet of the resotration of the LORD's gospel on the earth. Like Moses, and Jeremiah, God is in charge of who gets "santified" and "ordained" to be prophet and God is in charge of who they are a prophet to and what their purpose as prophet is. Joseph Smith was chosen to be a prophet to the world in our latter days and to restore God's Church as Christ established it in New Testament times.

Of course--how could we forget foreordination!

[Darren10]

CV75;

LOL! That was a slap to the forehead, "duh," moment for me as well.

[Rob Bowman]

Darren,

Your lettered questions appear below with my responses following.

A) Why was Moses the only one God could use to free the Hebrews from the Egyptians?

Who says he was? This question doesn't really engage my point. Jesus Christ founded the church in AD 33 with apostles. According to Mormonism, they were supposed to maintain a quorum of apostles that would continue from one generation to the next. They didn't. Some Mormons claim they couldn't because God couldn't find Christians with enough faith to serve. Thus, it is those Mormons who make that claim, not I, who are saying that God was unable to have the church on the earth until Joseph Smith came along.

B) God also established the United States of America. That came, ohhh, seventeen centuries after the Apostolic Era.

The relevance of this comment escapes me.

C) Since you uphold the freedoms you have within the United states, why did God wait 10,000 years or so to before He *could* create it? Countless peopel died for freedom previous to the United State yet it took George Washington to come around and be the firgurehead forthe United States? Isnt that absurd?

See above. This analogy just doesn't work. I don't view the United States as essential to the salvation of the whole world. You view the LDS Church as essential in that way. Thus, your analogy is irrelevant.

D) Of the many people who died in the name of Jesus, how many of them did God tell not to join any church but to wait and that through them He may restore His true church?

None. Of course, if God had wanted to tell any of them this, he could have. But he didn't. Now, what does this prove?

E) What of Ignatius being the "olny faithful Christian" in Antioch?

What of it?

F) You could not perservere 1/1,000 of the hardships Joseph Smith went through. Could God have used you to restore His church?

Please don't try to make this about me. It's nothing more than a diversionary tactic. Assume if you like that I am a hard-hearted unbeliever. The fact remains that there have been many, many Christians at least as faithful as Joseph Smith (and I would argue far more so) in every generation of Christianity, and God could have appointed many of them as apostles, but he didn't. You don't move one inch closer to coming to terms with this point by trying to get me to defend my own faith.

[CV75]

The fact remains that there have been many, many Christians at least as faithful as Joseph Smith (and I would argue far more so) in every generation of Christianity, and God could have appointed many of them as apostles, but he didn't.

This makes priesthood succession sound like an “Aramaic Idol” contest of some sort where God selects His anointed from a cast of competing faithful saints!

Instead, God foreordains His servants and then those that would respond to the Light of Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost in this life (as planned) are called to rcarry out their dispensations and / or assignments within those dispensations.

Also, we must recognize that the Light of Christ was never taken from the earth, and many people of all persuasions have responded well to it (even many Christians) from the beginning, whether they were living under conditions of apostasy or not.

nce Christ enters the picture, some lack faith because they choose wickedness, some lack because they know not where to find it or its objects (principles of truth), and others lack faith because the objects have been otherwise obstructed from view. Also, a lack doesn't necessarily mean an utter absence ot it.

As a group the early Christians at some juncture, and then “for 1700 years,” simply did not have faith sufficient to maintain the Church as Christ established it and it died. The reasons / excuses for their lack of faith vary, and may very acceptable in some cases and unacceptable in others, but that is not for us to judge. We can only to observe this phenomenon as something that was prophesied and then happened. Our take on the NT supports this, and yours does not. This is perfectly understandable bcause God did not choose any apostles because He didn't plan to, except we beleive that was the case only until 1820.

[ERayR]

The fact remains that there have been many, many Christians at least as faithful as Joseph Smith (and I would argue far more so) in every generation of Christianity, and God could have appointed many of them as apostles, but he didn't.

You are absolutely correct. He could have chosen any one of them but he didn't. If he had you would most likely be using these same arguments against them so I guess we can chalk this up as a red herring. Why God chose Joseph Smith is God's business. Why God chose Moses is God's business. Why God chose Isaiah is Gods business. Why God chose... I guess you get the picture. It is Gods business who he chooses to deliver his message. It is up to each of us whether we accept, reject or fight against. Being on the wrong side can be detrimental to our spiritual progress.

[Rob Bowman]

ERayR,

You wrote:

You are absolutely correct. He could have chosen any one of them but he didn't. If he had you would most likely be using these same arguments against them so I guess we can chalk this up as a red herring. Why God chose Joseph Smith is God's business. Why God chose Moses is God's business. Why God chose Isaiah is Gods business. Why God chose... I guess you get the picture. It is Gods business who he chooses to deliver his message. It is up to each of us whether we accept, reject or fight against. Being on the wrong side can be detrimental to our spiritual progress.

I agree that it is God's business whom he chooses. But this totally misses the point. I am responding to the claim that God had no choice but to withhold the priesthood keys for seventeen centuries because there was no one worthy or faithful enough during all that time to whom he might entrust them. That claim is false, as you seem to recognize. But if it is false, then some other explanation will need to be given for the supposed Great Apostasy.

[Rob Bowman]

CV75,

You wrote:

I see no harm in borrowing the word “wolves” from Acts 20:29 (or anywhere else) to categorize the broader category of those who seek to destroy the sheep through any method. The point is, enemies of the Church, no matter what we call them, plied their trade by seducing or co-opting the saints and by killing those with the priesthood keys. I see the concentration and focus on the specific Acts 20:29 text ebbing and flowing throughout this thread (I thought it had been dropped), so I’m looking at it from a broadening of the discussion.

The problem I have here is that this loose use of the term "wolves" blurs an important distinction between those who persecuted Christians (e.g., the Roman governmental authorities) and those who were false prophets and false teachers (the biblical use of the term "wolves"). Neither of these groups could or did destroy the church. The martyrdom of Christians, far from destroying the church, purified it and attracted more people to the gospel as they saw its power in those who were willing to die for Christ (hence Tertullian's famous statement that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church). The false teachers and false prophets created their own versions of the Christian faith but never swayed the whole church to accept any of those false versions. Hence one had Gnostics, Arians, etc., and none of these groups ever became universally accepted or even the dominant form of Christianity.

You wrote:

RE: Christians with faith: 1) I tried to convey that Peter was a very faithful man when he stepped onto the water; just not faithful enough to stay afloat. The same with early Christians—while many were faithful in some things, they just didn’t have enough faith to keep their Church.

On what basis can you make this judgment? I'm afraid you are reasoning in a circle: there was a Great Apostasy because the early Christians did not have enough faith to keep the church; and we know they did not have enough faith because there was a Great Apostasy. The Great Apostasy is looking more and more like the Great Assumption. The Christians of the first three centuries spread the gospel like wildfire throughout the known world despite persecution, preserved and translated the Scriptures for people of many nations, were renowned for their charity and moral character, stoutly opposed heresies that would have paganized or corrupted the gospel (e.g., heresies that denied the physical resurrection), and in many cases passively accepted martyrdom out of loyalty to Christ. In so many ways they showed themselves to be people who cared about the truth and who loved God and their neighbors in exemplary fashion. What is the evidence that they didn't have enough faith to be entrusted with the priesthood keys?

2) A key component of faith is that the object has to be true. Enough falsehood had crept in to erode the sense of sustaining a functioning quorum of priesthood key-holders, and this disabled a key object of faith. Since one hand washes the other, they could not have faith in something that no longer existed.

This should really be a non-problem from a Mormon point of view, since your belief in continuing revelation would lead one to expect that if a necessary truth was lacking God could and would simply reveal it to those who needed it. This brings us back to the question of whether Christians of that era were so lacking in openness to God and his will that God's hands were effectively tied. In addition, once again I think your argument is circular. You have no evidence that there was a vibrant experience of "the priesthood keys" that was gradually eroded; this appears to be simply a stipulation you are making to explain how the Great Apostasy might have happened. I don't think it even makes sense. If just one man remained who held the priesthood keys and understood their significance, he could and would have passed this knowledge on to other Christians who sincerely loved God and wanted to serve him.

[Rob Bowman]

Darren,

You wrote:

This is a explicit statement of God "sanctifying" and "ordaining" a prophet even before the prophet was born. I've no doubt that before Moses was born, God "sanctified" him and "ordained" him to be the prophet to lead the Hebrews out of Egyptian slavery. Likewise, I've no doubt that Joseph Smith was "sanctified" and "ordained" by God to be the prophet of the resotration of the LORD's gospel on the earth. Like Moses, and Jeremiah, God is in charge of who gets "santified" and "ordained" to be prophet and God is in charge of who they are a prophet to and what their purpose as prophet is. Joseph Smith was chosen to be a prophet to the world in our latter days and to restore God's Church as Christ established it in New Testament times.

This claim does not do anything to resolve the problems I have been raising.

Edited June 3, 2012 by Rob Bowman

[mfbukowski]

Clearly there was never an apostasy and that is why Rob is still Catholic.

[mfbukowski]

The fact remains that there have been many, many Christians at least as faithful as Joseph Smith (and I would argue far more so) in every generation of Christianity, and God could have appointed many of them as apostles, but he didn't. You don't move one inch closer to coming to terms with this point by trying to get me to defend my own faith.

The entire point of course is that the church could not be restored until there was freedom of religion established on the earth and a country without a national religion.

Joseph was born less than 14 years after the Bill of Rights was past. That lag was probably due to family factors, his parents not being ready yet.

Edited June 3, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Darren10]

Darren,

This claim does not do anything to resolve the problems I have been raising.

Sure it does. It places the role of the prophets in a more eternal perspective. It shows order and precision on the pert of the Lord. It also shows the Lord's planning. furthermore, I self-reflected back on the fact that the Hebrews were enslaved fora very long time until "finally" God sent someone to free them. Why?

____________________________________________________________________________________

Clearly there was never an apostasy and that is why Rob is still Catholic.

LOL!!! Good point.

[Darren10]

ERayR,

I agree that it is God's business whom he chooses. But this totally misses the point. I am responding to the claim that God had no choice but to withhold the priesthood keys for seventeen centuries because there was no one worthy or faithful enough during all that time to whom he might entrust them. That claim is false, as you seem to recognize. But if it is false, then some other explanation will need to be given for the supposed Great Apostasy.

Who said God had "no choice"? Of course He had a choice and He chose what was best to do to mankind for that time and circumstance. Heym, at least He didn't send anpther flood to kill them all. Or did God have "no choice" but to send the flood?

because there was no one worthy or faithful enough

Which one was confused about "which church to join" and took the matter to the Lord? And if the preisthood keys were given to Peter "the keyts of the kingdom", then what happened to them? Either they got passed down or they didn't. If you think tey got passed down then you'd probably be Catholic or Mormon. If you don't think they got passed down then what happened to them?

But if it is false, then some other explanation will need to be given for the supposed Great Apostasy.

This conversation, I think, has now become cyclical. You've received explanations as to why the apostasy ocurred. They seem to be summed up as the world killed the Apostles, the Apostles ceased to ordain new apostles, thus their authority to govern God's Church on earth also ceased. mfbukowski already pointed out one summation regarding the need to establish a free nation based on religious freedom. That Joseph Smith came around very shortly after the founding of the United States. I think that was a big reason God waited "seventeen centuries" to restore His gospel. Also, there is foreordination. If Joseph Smith was foreordained by God, and again, I've absolutely no doubt he was, then that shows God already having had a plan in place to restore His Church on the earth. Beyond God wanting Joseph Smith, I don't think anybody knows *exactly* why it was Joseph any more than *exactly* why Jesus died the way He did. Nor does man know *exactly* why man suffers so much. But it's all according to God's plan and design.

After these answers you keep asking the same questions. I do not see an end to this cycle.

Edited June 3, 2012 by Darren10