mocnarf wrote:liz3564 wrote:For the longest time, I believed that, too, Gaz.
But if the Joseph Smith was suppose to have restored the Primitive Church, why are there so many stark differences between that Primitive Church and the church of today?
I can't tell you how many times I've had to go into detailed explanations as to the differences between the Mormon definition for what Teachers, Bishops, etc, do in our Church as opposed to how it is laid out in the Bible.
Why was there no mention of Wards or Stakes...even in the Book of Mormon? Or the D&C for that matter?
I think your latter definition of how the Church was organized is more correct. If we're going on the idea that it was inspired to be run this way based on modern revelation.
But then, why is there still the constant emphasis on the restoring of Christ's original Church?
It really isn't. The Mormon Church is yet another interpretation of Christ's Church, but the organization hardly resembles it.
Liz, I totally agree with you, if anyone took the time to compare the "Original Church" with the Mormon Church they don't any any meaningful way resemble each other.
Hi mocnarf,
Your statement regarding “Original Church” is interesting since it is a widely held notion.
There really was
no original church as many perceive.
Religious mythologies evolved from previous mythologies (superstitions).
Let me illustrate:
There was no
original English language. We have today what we regard as
the English language. However, in our short time-frame as individuals (a few decades), we often loose sight of the fact that language, all language, developed relatively slowly and over significantly longer periods of time.
We have words today in
the English language which were not there even 50 or 100 years ago. The language grows. In addition, the meanings of words change. We
interpret words in the context of their use. Finding
original meaning in usage is an academic challenge even with a historical record.
Just to take a very common example, the word
gay meant
happy, joyful only a few decades ago. Today, we raise our eyebrows if someone uses that little word to mean
happy, joyful as it meant decades ago. Now it has a
different meaning. Depending upon your age, you may be sufficiently old to recognize that. However, to a person today who is 20 more or less,
gay has quite a different meaning.
With religious mythologies as with language the evolution of them can be documented. However, most religious groups have little or no interest in doing that. They are not interested in dating
doctrinal shifts and schisms in their own religious myth. Rather, they prefer
to believe that what they believe
now is exactly what their imagined
original religion believed.
They neither want nor intend to
visit the actual historical points when
doctrinal change evolved.
The notion of
the original English language is a flawed notion. Or, there never was an
original English language.
While in the USA, we regard that we speak
the English language, accents are so different from our own in places that we must listen carefully to understand or know exactly what word was spoken if the accent of that word is at great variance from our own. In print, such as we have in this bb, we don’t
hear an accent, a different pronunciation of words.
We do, however, mean different things sometimes with the very same word. When that occurs, there is misunderstanding or confusion.
However, the emergence/evolution of civilizations and cultures including their religious myths is one of
change over time.
I think we often forget or simply don’t think about things such as this which we would know if we reflected more fully on historical development.
JAK