Things Your Testimony Should Not Be Built On!!!

[Tacenda]

It should not be based on the faith of your parents and getting baptised at 8 yrs. old knowing right from wrong and being held accountable. You should find it on your own when you're old enough to truly get all sides.

[Garden Girl]

Tacenda... I agree...

There comes a point in every Latter Day Saint's life who was baptized at 8 where they have to become converted to the gospel.

That may not come until they are an adult but it must come or they will falter and eventually fall away if/when faced with difficult issues such as we discuss here on this board, or just in general.

GG (We're having one of those beautiful days that reminds me of why I live in the Pacific Northwest)

[Jim B.]

got ya... here is a small one of mine. Mark of the beast is 666 We know one third of the host of heaven were cast out. 1/3 in decimal is .333 while the two thirds who recieved bodies past their first estate. 2/3 = .666 Not sure what it means but I have wandered if there is a connection. Like you I save the big ones for close circles but you can ponder that one a little... it doesn't go anywhere.......

2/3 = .667. Might want to go back to the drawing board on that one.

[Anti-NOMunistJackMormon]

I don't think any religious faith or testimony should be built upon secular rational thought. Ask your self wht is love from a rational viewpoint? You can't explain it. I suppose Hitchen's and Dawkins can but to me it is no explantion because that feeling is not mechanical science and rationalization. That's what faith and love is. A feeling that can't be totally rationalized by the science of man.

[altersteve]

got ya... here is a small one of mine. Mark of the beast is 666 We know one third of the host of heaven were cast out. 1/3 in decimal is .333 while the two thirds who recieved bodies past their first estate. 2/3 = .666 Not sure what it means but I have wandered if there is a connection. Like you I save the big ones for close circles but you can ponder that one a little... it doesn't go anywhere.......

The scriptures actually tell us that the "third part" of the hosts of heaven were cast out, not one-third. Also, 1/3 in decimal is .333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333..., to infinity and beyond.

[cksalmon]

I am in the process of trying to formulate ideas on things your testimony should not be built on. I am hopeful this will be a serious list of things that can get a member in dangerous territory or on unsafe ground if these are the things their testimony is rooted in.

My list so far

1.) a testimony based on church history

2.) a testimony based on science or scientific evidence

3.) Testimony based on the testimony of others even if that person is a bishop, apostle, prophet. I knew a man who I said he has a testimony and will never leave, I will follow him and I will be safe. He left the church about a year later.

4.) Testimony based on the doctrine or theology of a church leader, his talks, or his books. kind of goes with 3 but more knowledge based then spiritual based.

5.) Testimony based on what others think of you. this may sound odd but need a way to say my testimony is not based on what others say in being critical of me or how i serve in a calling. in otherwords be not easily offended.

6.) Testimony should not be based on doing good = being outwardly blessed. In other words good and bad things happen to good people. Doing what God asks doesn't always equal being belessed like abraham

What others... thanks ahead for your time and help

Touched on later in the comments, but conspicuously absent in your list: should your testimony be based upon a personal spiritual experience?

What aobut: Plausibility of Mormon-specific truth claims?

[Aliwe]

The scriptures actually tell us that the "third part" of the hosts of heaven were cast out, not one-third. Also, 1/3 in decimal is .333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333..., to infinity and beyond.

Scripture tells us that the dragon cast down a third of the stars of heaven. This is equated with the fallen heavenly host by men who have come to realize stars are really suns. It could be Satan and five angels for all we really know, if we go by what we read rather than what Dante, Aquinas, and others have written long after.

[altersteve]

Scripture tells us that the dragon cast down a third of the stars of heaven. This is equated with the fallen heavenly host by men who have come to realize stars are really suns. It could be Satan and five angels for all we really know, if we go by what we read rather than what Dante, Aquinas, and others have written long after.

We don't know how many angels were cast out of heaven, but if we Latter-day Saints go by what we really know, then it's far more than just five.

[Calm]

This is equated with the fallen heavenly host by men who have come to realize stars are really suns.

Equated by whom?

[Aliwe]

Equated by whom?

Aliwe, on 21 June 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

This is equated with the fallen heavenly host by men who have come to realize stars are really suns.

D&C 29:36-37

And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil—for, behold, the devil was before Adam, for he rebelled against me, saying, Give me thine honor, which is my power; and also a third part of the ghosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency; And they were thrust down, and thus came the devil and his angels.

[Calm]

D&C 29:36-37

And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil—for, behold, the devil was before Adam, for he rebelled against me, saying, Give me thine honor, which is my power; and also a third part of the ghosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency; And they were thrust down, and thus came the devil and his angels.

??????

[Aliwe]

??????

In case you failed to understand, the answer to your previous query is, "The man who wrote D&C 29:36-37".