jospeh the con man?

[Avatar4321]

9 hours ago, LittleNipper said:

Truth is established by the Word of GOD. That is the standard by which everything must be measured.

 

http://truthreallymatters.com/wordpress/?page_id=84

truth is what is was and ever will be.

but do you have anything to add to the discussion on joseph's sincerity or duplicity?

if he is a con man, what.was the game? Why the evidence that he genuinely believed his message?

[Gray]

9 hours ago, LittleNipper said:

Truth is established by the Word of GOD. That is the standard by which everything must be measured.

 

http://truthreallymatters.com/wordpress/?page_id=84

Jesus is the word of God. Not the Bible. 

[Avatar4321]

6 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

And the Word of God, that thing you say you believe in, says that prophets are REQUIRED in the Body of Christ.  That is a problem for you and your church - you have no prophets, no priesthood, no apostles....but you have a book which you do not appear to understand.

See, we all can do "drive-by" snipping about the other's faith. It is not productive or helpful.  Most of us, if not all of us, have seen your kind for decades and we are not impressed.  You deal in third rate anti-Mormon attacks which on tells us you are not interested in a discussion or learning or even teaching.  You want to tell us - which does not work. 

It has been my opinion that we all can learn from one another.  Your approach conflicts with that premise - seen it, heard it, and it misses the point and denies the teachings of scripture. 

amen bro

[LittleNipper]

12 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

That presumes a consensus among everyone on what is the word of God.  There is none.

GOD will is all the consensus necessary.

[LittleNipper]

5 hours ago, Gray said:

Jesus is the word of God. Not the Bible. 

Jesus fulfills the Bible. They are inseparable. Without the Bible where is the record of Jesus? Where is the prophecy of His arrival and of what He will do? And without Jesus there is no need of the Bible --- it is nothing but empty words...

[Gray]

11 minutes ago, LittleNipper said:

Jesus fulfills the Bible. They are inseparable. Without the Bible where is the record of Jesus? Where is the prophecy of His arrival and of what He will do? And without Jesus there is no need of the Bible --- it is nothing but empty words...

The Bible is the record of the thoughts, feelings stories and spiritual insights of ancient believers. But it's not "the word of God"

[Avatar4321]

1 hour ago, LittleNipper said:

Jesus fulfills the Bible. They are inseparable. Without the Bible where is the record of Jesus? Where is the prophecy of His arrival and of what He will do? And without Jesus there is no need of the Bible --- it is nothing but empty words...

The Book of Mormon

[JLHPROF]

2 hours ago, LittleNipper said:

GOD will is all the consensus necessary.

Meaningless statement.  The fact remains that there is a lack of consensus on which words come from God.

[Avatar4321]

4 hours ago, LittleNipper said:

GOD will is all the consensus necessary.

And God has declared the Book of Mormon to contain His word

[LittleNipper]

9 hours ago, Gray said:

The Bible is the record of the thoughts, feelings stories and spiritual insights of ancient believers. But it's not "the word of God"

"IF" what you say is true then there is no hope of ever knowing the truth. and you will not go to heaven. You are lost. Only want GOD reveals is totally and without question the God's honest truth. 

Edited November 12, 2017 by LittleNipper

[Gray]

Just now, LittleNipper said:

IT what you say is true then there is no hope of ever knowing the truth. and you will not go to heaven. You are lost. Only want GOD reveals is totally and without question the God's honest truth. 

Your conclusions don't follow from my premise. 

[LittleNipper]

6 hours ago, Avatar4321 said:

And God has declared the Book of Mormon to contain His word

Where has GOD declared this? What saving grace appears in the book of Mormon that is an improvement over the Biblical Epic?

[Gray]

1 minute ago, LittleNipper said:

Where has GOD declared this? What saving grace appears in the book of Mormon that is an improvement over the Biblical Epic?

The Book of Mormon,  while not perfect, teaches more consistently high moral standards than the Bible.  

[LittleNipper]

8 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Meaningless statement.  The fact remains that there is a lack of consensus on which words come from God.

And you believe that GOD has no power to either protect His Word or fulfill it?  You cannot fathom that the very reason certain books were rejected by various councils, as not inspired 2000 years ago, was not the work of the Holy Spirit? Do you honestly believe GOD cannot control man to achieve HIS will either with or without man's cooperation? Do you imagine GOD as some two dimensional storybook character? I know GOD is far greater than anything we could ever imagine and that is why the Bible is considered The Living Book. Every time I read the Bible I discover something else and it isn't superficial ---- it's awesome! 

Edited November 12, 2017 by LittleNipper

[LittleNipper]

26 minutes ago, Gray said:

The Book of Mormon,  while not perfect, teaches more consistently high moral standards than the Bible.  

Then why are Mormon's iffy on the subject of homosexual marriage for instance? One would think they would be spot on. What moral standards? Love thy neighbor as thyself ---- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you --- Love the Lord your GOD with all your body, heart and soul? Or could it be just a return to the very old belief that GOD needs us and cannot exist without us. Isn't that the very same drivel that Satan fed Adam & Eve.

Edited November 12, 2017 by LittleNipper

[LittleNipper]

40 minutes ago, Gray said:

Your conclusions don't follow from my premise. 

Yes, they do. If the Bible was just the work of some high-minded Jews according to you, and the New Testament is simply a collection of Catholic books ----  no matter how well intended, it can never be fully trusted. I for one cannot believe your ideology. As a Christian, something inside (call it a still small voice) "He is attempting to uplift man and limit GOD's authority and power." 

Edited November 12, 2017 by LittleNipper

[JLHPROF]

47 minutes ago, LittleNipper said:

And you believe that GOD has no power to either protect His Word or fulfill it?  You cannot fathom that the very reason certain books were rejected by various councils, as not inspired 2000 years ago, was not the work of the Holy Spirit? Do you honestly believe GOD cannot control man to achieve HIS will either with or without man's cooperation? Do you imagine GOD as some two dimensional storybook character? I know GOD is far greater than anything we could ever imagine and that is why the Bible is considered The Living Book. Every time I read the Bible I discover something else and it isn't superficial ---- it's awesome! 

I feel the same way about the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, yet you reject them.

You say truth is established by the word of God yet you reject everything he has said after 95 AD in one location on earth.  It is you who are limiting God.  Do you honestly believe GOD cannot say more to man than is in the Bible? God is the living scripture, not the Bible, and man must live by EVERY word he says, not just the ones chosen by a council of clerics.

[cdowis]

9 hours ago, LittleNipper said:

And you believe that GOD has no power to either protect His Word or fulfill it? 

Do you believe that you can tell God HOW to do his business? 

He "protected His Word and fulfilled it" by calling prophets in our day and restoring  the Gospel.  He did it by giving us modern revelation -- the Book of Mormon -- and calling prophets in our day.

Do you remember the Jews rejecting Christ because he did not defeat the Roman domination of Israel.  The Jews made the same mistake by telling God what the Saviour would do.  They told God what to do and  they rejected God's living prophets.  They supposed that they were wiser than God Himself.

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by cdowis

[Pete Ahlstrom]

On 11/10/2017 at 8:21 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

 

Both you guys can't be simultaneously right.  Was he as clueless as our current fake COINC?  Or was he a cunning liar and cheat?  After all, we have seen plenty of phonies in our time, and we'll probably see more.

One the one hand, hope argues that no one is 100% honest, but that is a fallacy and doesn't address the hard question of fraudulent behavior.  sunstoned is certain that he has the "facts," but his own comments here and elsewhere indicate a great loathing for Joseph, such that his interpretations tell us more about him than about Joseph.  For example, sunstoned accuses Joseph of "sexual exploits," but we have no offspring of Joseph from any of those "exploits," and we know for certain that he was fertile during that entire time.  Likewise, for the Kirtland Banking fiasco (he misspells it "Kirkland"), which was part of a nationwide economic crisis, from which Joseph repaid all his debts.  sunstoned imagines "translation failures," even though the main problem we have is accounting for the impossible accuracy of those translations -- even including a feat no one else could perform of employing an extinct form of the English language.  A "smoking gun"?  More of an obstacle in sunstoned's path which he is unable to account for.   As for what regular non-Mormons think of the Mormon story, since when has sunstoned taken a survey?  In fact, of the non-Mormon scholars who in fact know something about Mormonism, they seem quite friendly and admiring, and they include some brilliant minds.  Why is sunstoned unable to make an even-handed statement about the Mormon Church?  Antipathy and ignorance, I'd say.

Hear, hear, Robert.  It is always about how one views the evidence and never about the evidence itself.  One must be tainted with incredible negative bias to view mormonism contrary to how our leaders tell us to view it.

[Pete Ahlstrom]

My take on the con-man/holy prophet debate is that joseph smith was a complex character like many human beings are.  There are stories of how magnanimous he was and stories of his faults.  For me, his motivations are hard to decipher and I think we will never have a clear picture of what he was thinking from one moment to the next.  I however think he was motivated by power - he did have himself crowned king by the counsel of 50.  His revelations always put him on top whenever there was a power struggle.  However, he seemed like the kind of guy one would want to be around.

Anyway, I look at what he did rather than what he might have been thinking.  There still isn't much evidence for historicity.  The papyri we have don't mention Abraham anywhere and I can't buy that whatever got translated somehow became the word of god.  Then there is the core question of the atonement.  For me having a god that was seemingly powerless to forgive his creations without an atonement is baffling.

[thesometimesaint]

13 hours ago, LittleNipper said:

Jesus fulfills the Bible. They are inseparable. Without the Bible where is the record of Jesus? Where is the prophecy of His arrival and of what He will do? And without Jesus there is no need of the Bible --- it is nothing but empty words...

Christians are still waiting for Jesus of the Bible to return. Its been some 2000 years. Did he get lost, or were the Bible Apostles mistaken about the time frames?

[thesometimesaint]

7 minutes ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

My take on the con-man/holy prophet debate is that joseph smith was a complex character like many human beings are.  There are stories of how magnanimous he was and stories of his faults.  For me, his motivations are hard to decipher and I think we will never have a clear picture of what he was thinking from one moment to the next.  I however think he was motivated by power - he did have himself crowned king by the counsel of 50.  His revelations always put him on top whenever there was a power struggle.  However, he seemed like the kind of guy one would want to be around.

Anyway, I look at what he did rather than what he might have been thinking.  There still isn't much evidence for historicity.  The papyri we have don't mention Abraham anywhere and I can't buy that whatever got translated somehow became the word of god.  Then there is the core question of the atonement.  For me having a god that was seemingly powerless to forgive his creations without an atonement is baffling.

If God can not tolerate sin in the least degree. Then we are all damned. He could have forced all of us to not sin, but that violates Agency. Sounds to me more like that other guy.

[Pete Ahlstrom]

2 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

If God can not tolerate sin in the least degree. Then we are all damned. He could have forced all of us to not sin, but that violates Agency. Sounds to me more like that other guy.

Where does the idea come from that God cannot tolerate any sin?  If he was once as we are now, he probably had to tolerate sinful people in his world prior to being anointed to to godhood.  Also, we tolerate "sinful" people here in hopes that they will repent one day.  Did he lose his ability to tolerate once he became God?  Is that the natural progression of things - the more one approaches perfection, the more one becomes less tolerant of those lesser, sinful people?

[Robert F. Smith]

44 minutes ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

Hear, hear, Robert.  It is always about how one views the evidence and never about the evidence itself.  One must be tainted with incredible negative bias to view mormonism contrary to how our leaders tell us to view it.

Are you telling me, Pete, that overwhelming antipathy and anger are conducive to an even-handed evaluation?  It has nothing at all to doe with the evidence, which can always be interpreted in a wide variety of ways -- including the :fake news" mantra we often hear.  Provided of course that there are people who are even familiar with the evidence.  What strikes me as most obvious is that non-Mormon historians are somehow able to refrain from harsh, apriori condemnation of this or that belief, without first at least accurately portraying that belief.  For an anthropologist, it makes no difference whether he is dealing with Mormons or Trobriand Islanders, he is ultimately going to be fair and impartial.  Why do you find fault with that?

For the professional historian, it is never about the facts but about the interpretation of the facts.  Do you know why that is?

[thesometimesaint]

35 minutes ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

Where does the idea come from that God cannot tolerate any sin?  If he was once as we are now, he probably had to tolerate sinful people in his world prior to being anointed to to godhood.  Also, we tolerate "sinful" people here in hopes that they will repent one day.  Did he lose his ability to tolerate once he became God?  Is that the natural progression of things - the more one approaches perfection, the more one becomes less tolerant of those lesser, sinful people?

Alma 45: 15-16

And now it came to pass that after Alma had said these things to Helaman, he blessed him, and also his other sons;  and he also blessed the earth for the righteous’ sake. 

And he said:

“Thus saith the Lord God—

Cursed shall be the land,
yea, this land, unto every nation,
kindred, tongue, and people,
unto destruction, which do wickedly,
when they are fully ripe;
and as I have said so shall it be;
for this is the cursing
and the blessing of God upon the land,
for the Lord cannot look upon sin
with the least degree of allowance.” 

The only example we have of a perfect life is Jesus. Did he tolerate sin or did he preach repentance?

Edited November 12, 2017 by thesometimesaint