God, the Meaning of Life

[High Spy]

I have never imagined the mind to be linear. I can see that I likely misinterpreted the way I'm which it was meant.

The mind has to be something akin to quantum physics, it's full of waves. I think when we define these things, measure them, etc, we surely must cause a change in what we perceive, like Schrödinger and his cat.

Or like Schroder on CB (Charlie Brown).

[NRnowlinMA]

Recently, I was visited in Woodbridge, Virginia by two teenage Utah men who were part of the 75,000 fulltime missionaries of the LDS Church. As a former elder of the Mormon Church who had my name removed from the records of the church in 2013, I suppose that they were somewhat interested in my response to them. For 30 years, from 1970 until 2000, I was a stake missionary on 8 stake missions, and finally was a ward mission leader in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. In 30 years', time, I probably presented Joseph Smith and the five standardized discussions to over 3,000 families and individuals through the USA and the world as a U.S. Marine in many wards and branches. I had memorized the content of the five discussions by 1984 and had unfortunately baptized or confirmed 65 souls into Mormonism by the year 2000. So, I knew these eager youngsters very well as they approached me.

It is not what these missionaries tell lukewarm Christians, ignorant of Mormonism, about Mormon theology, doctrine, and history that is so bad, since the crux of Mormonism, the Book of Mormon, has been significantly changed in the years following 2000. I recall Craig Burgess and Barry Erickson, from Utah, in October 1970 showing me a flannel-board picture of Joseph Smith actually sitting in front of the alleged golden plates with the Urim and Thummim around his neck actually translating the golden plates and dictating to his scribe Oliver Cowdery sitting across a veiled table. This was the basis for Smith alleging to have actually translated the Egyptian papyri that comprised the Joseph Smith Papyri discovered in the New York Metropolitan Museum in 1965. Yet now the storyline has substantially changed to "dictation" instead of translation. In 2013, 13 apologetic essays were place on the LDS.org website telling what had never been told for many decades since 1830, that Smith, Jr. had not even used the alleged golden plates to create the Book of Mormon, but had placed a seer stone, that he had claimed to use to find buried treasure for his Palmyra, New York neighbors, into a dark hat and read to his scribes what he read on the seer stone. A major revision of Mormon history, theology, and doctrine occurred in the time period before the demise of Smith, Jr. which was placed in these 13 essays. Most of the investigators to Mormonism don't realize just how much Mormonism has changed since 2000, and it is what these missionaries don't tell these investigators about Mormonism that is so damning.

I gave these two missionaries color copies of the 1984 "Lesson 21-Man May Become Like God" and encouraged them to read them and get back to me about what anything to which they disagreed. A link follows for a PDF copy of the 1984 Melchizedek Priesthood lesson from the 1984 39-lesson priesthood study guide, "Search These Commandments." http://www.mormonthink.com/files/Lesson ... 201984.pdf

This Lesson 21 was taught to all prospective elders in 1984 and if read verbatim to Mormon investigators today would cause them to ask the Mormon missionaries to leave and not return because of the heresies contained within it. The things that the Mormon missionaries deliberately withhold from investigators before baptism about Mormon theology are stated in "Lesson 21." So far, those two Woodbridge missionaries have not contacted me about their impressions of "Lesson 21." If they do, I will be glad to sit down with them and discuss New Testament Christianity and the grace and salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus.

[Moksha]

I imagine they destroyed the materials you gave them, then shut their eyes tight and repeated, "I do believe in prophets" about a hundred times.

[NRnowlinMA]

"Lesson 21-Man May Become Like God" was the last official LDS restatement and affirmation of the 1844 theology given by Smith, Jr. in his King Follette Discourse that he gave in Nauvoo before his 1844 lynching in Carthage, Illinois. This theology is what is taught by symbolism in the Mormon temple rite. In "Lesson 21," the doctrine of works is taught from the outset of the lesson as the means to be "as great as the Mormon father-god. As was presented in the widely viewed Mormon film, "Man's Search for Happiness," the resurrection of Jesus is a universal gift to ALL mankind but getting to become like the Mormon father-god, or getting to the top Mormon heaven, requires work and following doctrinal rules throughout one's life and doing the same things that the Mormon father-god has done. You see, the Mormon father-god of this earth was born biologically as a man on some earthlike planet in the cosmos, and so was that father-god's father, and grandfather, ad infinitum.

Instead of accepting what the Apostle John said in John 1:1 (KJV), "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," Mormon Smithian theology claims that Jesus was not a part of the Godhead from everlasting unto everlasting, but, rather, was "sired" through celestial sex as the firstborn spirit offspring of a heavenly mother-goddess and the father-god. This was a part of Smith, Jr.'s King Follette Discourse, and is figuratively implied in "Lesson 21." The reason that Mormon elders work so hard in Mormonism is to eventually become "as great as the Mormon father-god." By reading and perusing Lesson 21, a person, Christian or not, can understand that Mormonism teaches, mainly in the Mormon temple, that all worthy Mormon elders can become celestialized father-gods and with their temple-wed wives as heavenly mother-goddesses, to eventually be given the power to create their own planets, produce trillions of spirit-children with which to populate the planets with their own versions of Adam and Eve, and to create, or sire, a first-born spirit son as their own version of Jesus Christ to be a savior to their plant world.

In a half hour of reading "Lesson 21," a Christian not knowing anything about Mormonism can determine that Mormon theology is grossly heretical to the Holy Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles. http://www.mormonthink.com/files/Lesson ... 201984.pdf