Joseph Smith's Personal Claim to Fame.

[_beastie]

And yet, I have never seen him as being evil. In fact, just the opposite. His letters to emma when he was in prison are full of love for her, for the kids and for god. I don't see any part of Joseph's anguish that he was an evil man out to commit a fraud against god. Now he certainly knew his own imperfections and he seemed to suffer accordingly from them in terms of his own conscience. But I don't see an evil man in the life of Joseph Smith. In fact, I see a guy caught between a rock and a hard place...having to do what god wanted him to do and his own sense how difficult it all is.

Yeah, if a guy can write a loving letter to his wife, then one just has to ignore the fact that he "married" dozens of women behind her back, against her known wishes. He's just a good ole' boy. And of course God wanted Joseph Smith to marry dozens of women behind his wife's back. What God wouldn't?

We also need to remember that from the very beginning he was being judged by the members and many left the faith over his behavior because they had the impression that a prophet needed to be perfect or judged according to the protestant calvinist mindset that many of the members came from. And Joseph himself said to the members not to expect him to be perfect.

Also, it were Jeffs wives that ratted him out. Just the opposite for Joseph. Not one wife said a negative word about him after he died or during the whole process of being a plural wife. And that speaks volumes.

Yeah, I mean, who's perfect? Marrying dozens of women behind your wife's back should be held against him.

And why would any woman hesitate to speak poorly about Joseph Smith? I mean, who cares if Martha Brotherton and others were openly called mentally ill whores after speaking out????

by the way, which of Jeffs' wives ratted him out? Names and links, please.

[_MsJack]

We also need to remember that from the very beginning he was being judged by the members and many left the faith over his behavior because they had the impression that a prophet needed to be perfect or judged according to the protestant calvinist mindset that many of the members came from. And Joseph himself said to the members not to expect him to be perfect.

You mean people were upset with Joseph for marrying dozens of women without his wife's knowledge or consent?

Damned Protestant prudes. It's all their fault.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

You mean people were upset with Joseph for marrying dozens of women without his wife's knowledge or consent?

Damned Protestant prudes. It's all their fault.

Do we need to have a discussion about all the ****ed up things Protestants have done in the name of their god/religion?

I love how Ms. Jack jumps at every opportunity to take a big crap on Mormonism, but she doesn't cast the same critical eye toward her own faith.

Hrm....

V/R
Dr. Cam

[_Tator]

The message moves forward as a result how the religious innovator gets the message out. The means. The how. The what. Joseph Smith's message got out to the world at large in a way that is unique and amazing. For the message to get out, his name had to be out there, up close and personal, and with a certain degree of notoriety.

And it is, for both good and evil. If not, my guess is people would have lost interest. Look at the nightly news. What do people pay attention to? Controversy. Good mixed with evil, and such.

And yet, in a world that just topped 7 billion people, you might be lucky to find 10 million people who really know dick about the Mormons, other than that they exist and are annoying. I realize there are more than 10 million people claimed as members by the church, but probably at least half to two thirds are inactive or wouldn't even self-identify as members, and a good number of these inactives probably don't really know Mormonism very deeply. So I think 10 million is being pretty generous.

The bottom line is that even with Mitt Romney and Huntsman running for President, Mormonism means absolutely nothing in the lives of, statistically, almost every human being on Earth.

Actually a large percentage of the one third of "actives" don't know squat about their own religion.

10 million is beyond generous.

[_Tator]

A footnote to WHOSE history?

World history. United States history.

You have to admit, the CofJCofLDS is much more decidedly on its way to becoming more than just a footnote in history than the Strangite movement is.

Regards,
MG

Golly MG add both of them together in fact add all the splinter Mormon groups together, add everything Mormon together and they don't make a pimple on a gnat's rear end of history. Footnote?.......10,000 comedians out of work and you're trying to be funny.

[_MsJack]

Do we need to have a discussion about all the ****ed up things Protestants have done in the name of their god/religion?

I've never denied that Protestants have done bad things in the name of our religion. Quite the opposite.

I'm not sure why you think that would be relevant to the topic of this thread though, other than your recent decision to issue gratuitous random attacks on me.

I love how Ms. Jack jumps at every opportunity to take a big crap on Mormonism, but she doesn't cast the same critical eye toward her own faith.

This is blatantly false. What I was being critical of here is the fact that Why Me never passes up on an opportunity to blame Protestantism for Mormonism's shortcomings. That's hardly the same as denying that Protestantism has its own shortcomings.

[_Fence Sitter]

Personally, I think the answer has something to do with his having a foreknowledge, given to him from an angel, of what would happen in regards to his name/reputation as time went on and contraries were settled and put into place. He knew that many people would truly struggle, really struggle, with having to decide whether or not he carried the mantle of a true prophet vs. a charlatan and fraudster, because his foibles were there, front and center, for the world to see. He as a matter of fact and bluntly said that if he hadn't experienced the things that he had, he wouldn't have believed it himself. What a vulnerable and yet at the same time powerful statement to make. Was he referring to the fact that he knew, along with Paul the apostle, that he carried "thorns in the flesh" that would act as barriers/obstacles which would have to be surmounted and penetrated before a reasonable leap of faith could be taken.

Regards,
MG

If you find this as evidence for his prophetic mantle do you then accept his failed prophecies as counter evidence?

[_mentalgymnast]

If you find this as evidence for his prophetic mantle do you then accept his failed prophecies as counter evidence?

Joseph said:

Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of men: and some revelations are of the devil.

I'm not sure that we can throw this thing we refer to as revelation/inspiration into a tidy little bag and claim to understand all there is to know concerning it. If we take Joseph Smith at his word, he also struggled with the intricacies/requirements/perceptual blocks, etc., that may be part and parcel of receiving light and knowledge from a divine source.

Think:

1. Having to ask forgiveness from Emma before he could continue the translation process.
2. Zion's Camp revelation and what transpired therefrom (people died from disease which could have been prevented if they had just stayed home).
3. Canadian copyright to the Book of Mormon.
4. First vision accounts.
5. Moving from the U&T to the seer/peep stone during translation.
6. Book of Abraham "translation" process.
7. Liberty Jail- "Oh God, where art thou?"
8. Insertion of endowment within the masonic overlay/template.
9. Excommunicating then welcoming back ex-communicants into full fellowship within short periods of time and possibly questioning if he'd acted upon impulse or revelation.
10. Kirtland Bank fiasco and the after effects.
11. Vision of Alvin in the celestial kingdom with streets of gold. (are there REALLY streets of gold?)
12. Going back and revising revelation that had already been written down.

These are just a few instances, just off the top of my head, of many where I would imagine Joseph having to struggle with receiving and/or understanding how revelation actually WORKS and having to second guess whether he had actually received something from a divine source rather than from his head or from the devil in certain instances.

So to use what are referred to as "failed prophecies" by some to prove that Joseph never received actual revelation that can be "taken to the bank", so to speak, I think is a rather simplistic/incomplete way of approaching a very complex issue.

Regards,
MG

[_Fence Sitter]

If you find this as evidence for his prophetic mantle do you then accept his failed prophecies as counter evidence?

Joseph said:

Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of men: and some revelations are of the devil.

I'm not sure that we can throw this thing we refer to as revelation/inspiration into a tidy little bag and claim to understand all there is to know concerning it. If we take Joseph Smith at his word, he also struggled with the intricacies/requirements/perceptual blocks, etc., that may be part and parcel of receiving light and knowledge from a divine source.

Think:

1. Having to ask forgiveness from Emma before he could continue the translation process.
2. Zion's Camp revelation and what transpired therefrom (people died from disease which could have been prevented if they had just stayed home).
3. Canadian copyright to the Book of Mormon.
4. First vision accounts.
5. Moving from the U&T to the seer/peep stone during translation.
6. Book of Abraham "translation" process.
7. Liberty Jail- "Oh God, where art thou?"
8. Insertion of endowment within the masonic overlay/template.
9. Excommunicating then welcoming back ex-communicants into full fellowship within short periods of time and possibly questioning if he'd acted upon impulse or revelation.
10. Kirtland Bank fiasco and the after effects.
11. Vision of Alvin in the celestial kingdom with streets of gold. (are there REALLY streets of gold?)
12. Going back and revising revelation that had already been written down.

These are just a few instances, just off the top of my head, of many where I would imagine Joseph having to struggle with receiving and/or understanding how revelation actually WORKS and having to second guess whether he had actually received something from a divine source rather than from his head or from the devil in certain instances.

So to use what are referred to as "failed prophecies" by some to prove that Joseph never received actual revelation that can be "taken to the bank", so to speak, I think is a rather simplistic/incomplete way of approaching a very complex issue.

Regards,
MG

So then you would agree that offering up a singe instance where he appears to predict something would be a

a rather simplistic/incomplete way of approaching a very complex issue.

[_Darth J]

I'm trying to extract some kind of coherent reasoning from your propositions.

My proposition is that there is reason to cut Joseph Smith some slack as we consider whether or not he carried the mantle of a prophet of God.

That's it.

Now...to arrive at that point in reasoning, however, it is necessary to build the necessary foundation which can bear up the load which will naturally result from having to "prove contraries". It was Joseph himself who said, "By proving contraries, truth is made manifest". How can this transpire and take place unless we find ourselves in real life situations where we are forced to choose between two alternatives, each which can seem at the time to be reasonable? What better sets up an environment in which real choices are made between contraries than to have paradoxical hoops to jump through to reach the the other side of the barrier which separates belief from doubt?

Because the only choice is to believe in Joseph Smith or not. Those are really the only two alternatives available vis-a-vis our metaphysical beliefs.

And lest we forget, there is only one denomination that believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet. All the rest are just "footnotes." But even though we can snidely dismiss all of the people who belong to other branches of the Mormon movement, let's make sure to go ballistic if a Baptist says that Mormons aren't Christians.

One of the strangest quotes I've read from Joseph Smith is the following:

“You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself."

What did he mean? What is he referring to?

It means he was a drama queen.

Personally, I think the answer has something to do with his having a foreknowledge, given to him from an angel, of what would happen in regards to his name/reputation as time went on and contraries were settled and put into place. He knew that many people would truly struggle, really struggle, with having to decide whether or not he carried the mantle of a true prophet vs. a charlatan and fraudster, because his foibles were there, front and center, for the world to see. He as a matter of fact and bluntly said that if he hadn't experienced the things that he had, he wouldn't have believed it himself. What a vulnerable and yet at the same time powerful statement to make. Was he referring to the fact that he knew, along with Paul the apostle, that he carried "thorns in the flesh" that would act as barriers/obstacles which would have to be surmounted and penetrated before a reasonable leap of faith could be taken?

Maybe. I don't think it is unreasonable to make this assumption based upon the known historical evidence.

Faith isn't easy. It isn't cheap. Although some would like it be so. There is a price to pay, and then it comes as a gift. We have to knock, we have to sacrifice, we have to do our part to receive the gift. And along the way there have to be real alternatives and choices to choose from. Without contraries and opposites involved in the process, we wouldn't really be making a choice, would we?

The more I think about it, it makes total sense that Joseph would be given a glimpse of the future and be shown a portion of the process/program that would be put in place which would enable people to make real choices rather than easy/pat choices in regards to their personal journey of faith. Part of that process would be that his name would be known for good and evil.

Unfortunately, many choose the easy way which, in my opinion, involves immature doubt and easy dissent without having paid the price to receive the gift of faith.

That sure is a tricky God there: giving us the Light of Christ that would tell us that many of the things that Joseph Smith did were morally wrong. Maybe giving everyone a conscience but also demanding that everyone believe in Joseph Smith is one of those contradictions that God set up for us.

As far as the other stuff in this thread having to do with the off shoots from the mainline church in Salt Lake, I'm just not interested in going there. It's either brother Brigham and the resulting line of authority coming through his successors or it's not worth looking at, in my opinion.

Your mileage may vary.

That was a fairly concise statement of the reasoning that so many people use when they say that Mormons aren't Christians. By the way, the FLDS Church believes that Brigham Young was a prophet. But then, unlike the modern LDS Church, the FLDS Church follows the teachings of Brigham Young.

But at least you have demonstrated that you do not have set-in-stone views regarding Joseph Smith and the Church.

Oh, and as far as LDS myth goes regarding the succession crisis of 1844 and the dogma that the line of authority in church presidents is self-evident, here are some places to start:

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/docume ... SHOW=14314

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/docume ... 556&REC=16