The Turncoats

[_Ray A]

And Droop? Let's see your source for your claim of "the fastest growing church". Because I think you're wrong.

The action starts about 30 seconds into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mjf04Fs ... re=related

I don't know why you always resort to Church propaganda. Adherents.com usually has a reasonably up to date site:

Religious Body Number of Adherents
Catholic Church** 1,100,000,000
Sunni Islam* 1,000,000,000
Eastern Orthodox Church* 225,000,000
Jinja Honcho* 83,000,000
Anglican Communion* 77,000,000
Assemblies of God* 50,000,000
Ethiopian Orthodox Church 35,000,000
Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD)* 27,400,000
Iglesia ni Cristo (based in the Philippines) 27,000,000
Sikhism 23,000,000
Juche (North Korea) 19,000,000
Seventh-day Adventist Church 16,811,519
Jehovah's Witnesses** 16,500,000
Southern Baptist Convention* 16,000,000
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 12,275,822
United Methodist Church* 11,708,887
Soka Gakkai 11,000,000
New Apostolic Church 10,260,000
Ahmadiyya * 10,000,000
Veerashaivas (Lingayats) 10,000,000
Coptic Orthodox 10,000,000
Sathya Sai Baba 10,000,000
Church of Uganda 8,000,000
Choge Buddhism 8,000,000
Church of Sweden 7,143,292
Church of God in Christ 6,500,000
Kimbanguist Church 6,500,000
Bahai World Faith 6,000,000
Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
(Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus) 6,000,000
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,500,000
China Christian Council 5,000,000
Rissho Koseikai 5,000,000
Swaminarayanism 5,000,000
Aglipayan Church 4,500,000
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland 4,400,000
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark 4,350,000
Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) 4,000,000
Kale Heywet (SIM, Ethiopia) 4,000,000
Church of Norway (Evangelical Lutheran) 3,850,000
Church of South India 3,800,000
Armenian Apostolic Church 3,500,000
Christian Congregation (Brazil) 3,120,000
National Baptist Convention of America 3,106,000
"God is Love" Pentecostal Church (Igreja Pentecostal "Deus e Amo") 3,000,000
Zion Christian Church (South Africa) 3,000,000
Cao Dai 3,000,000
Ch'ondogyo 3,000,000
Church of the Lord Aladura 3,000,000
Reiyukai 3,000,000
United Church of Canada 3,000,000
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel 2,863,232
Balinese Hinduism 2,800,000

Religious Bodies of the World with at Least 1 Million Adherents.

Even the JWs and the SDAs have outstripped the Church, and this has been so for a number of years. Hmmmm. They must be true.

[_why me]

Yes it has.

And to prove it, the Church has to keep invgestigators ignorant of the things that would dissuade them from baptism. The only people who think it hasn't been proved are those who are already neck-deep in the Church. They've inested too much of their time, family, and finances into the social system that it leads to confirmation bias to kick in whenever that proof is shown to them.

We all know that if investigators were given a fair and balanced run-down on what the Church expects of us, the future of the Church would be bleak. When I say fair and balanced, I mean a presentation not predesigned by the Church. As it is, investigators are ignorant of so many things that eventually create spiritual discontent in their lives. The Church's answer to this is to keep them ignorant as long as possible so their attachment to the social system will eventually outweigh their appeal to reason.

Yes, you are right. The LDS church has a committee called the 'dirty dozen' which meets secretly in the inner santum of the temple to discuss such things. This small group of men are the most trusted and the most disciplined and have the responsibility to implement ignorance throughout the worldwide church. Their names are kept secret and only Thomas S. Monson knows who they are but they are very powerful.

The main responsilibity of these men is to keep members away from anything that may cause spritual discontent so that finally they will become so invested in the system that they will find it no longer necessary to leave.

Quite an imagination Kevin.

[_why me]

Even the JWs and the SDAs have outstripped the Church, and this has been so for a number of years. Hmmmm. They must be true.

The LDS church will never be a large church. However, I must say that when compared to the two above, I would have to say that the LDS church is the most persecuted on the internet. Also, it seems to be singled out more than the other two. That's only my opinion, of course.

[_Ray A]

The main responsilibity of these men is to keep members away from anything that may cause spritual discontent so that finally they will become so invested in the system that they will find it no longer necessary to leave.

Quite an imagination Kevin.

Educate yourself: The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than The Intellect.

There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful.

[_Jason Bourne]

The action starts about 30 seconds into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mjf04Fs ... re=related

Sure the Church has grown and has had a large upswing. But the point is that it really is not the fastest growing. Still it is growing just at a slower rate. Islam is growing faster, Some pentecostal churches are as well. Seventh Day Adventists and I believe JWs are a bit ahead of us in growth as well. But of larger concern to me than growth is retention. Of course you will always lose some but our retention rate for converts is just dismal. And it continues to be. In my stake we have a huge push right now, HUGE, for members doing more missionary work to bring more in. But It think why push for more when we don't keep them. Let's take more time to teach, give more information, let a potential convert come to church, hold call for six months and go through lots of lessons and so forth before they are baptized.. We would keep more. Might get fewer but more would stay and make for a better Church in the long run

[_why me]

Educate yourself: The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than The Intellect.

There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful.

The fact is Ray that the church depends on one thing and on only this one thing: is the Book of Mormon true or false. People are told to pray about it for answers and guidance. Anything else is fluff. Many on this forum who are now suffering from criticitis received a yes answer. But now...that yes answer has become just a warm fuzzy. But it doesn't change the answer that they received.

[_Kevin Graham]

Yes, you are right. The LDS church has a committee called the 'dirty dozen' which meets secretly in the inner santum of the temple to discuss such things. This small group of men are the most trusted and the most disciplined and have the responsibility to implement ignorance throughout the worldwide church. Their names are kept secret and only Thomas S. Monson knows who they are but they are very powerful.

Stop being an idiot. The simple fact is the Church doesn't inform investigators of things that they know would dissuade them from baptism. In any other context this would be considered immoral. They have to be conscious of these things. So when the Church recently decided that the Lamanites were no longer the "principle ancestors" of the American Indians, they don't bother to add anything about DNA evidence into the discussions. You know, that DNA evidence that pretty much forced their hand in making this concession. They just hope that any investigator wouldn't have come across this issue elsewhere, so they play ignorant about it. Likewise, polygamy being completely ignored in the discussion on families or the racist ban against negros on the discussion about priesthood.

I guess next, you're going to tell me that tithing is covered at the very end of the discussion series, just by coincidence and not by design. They talk about this stuff long after the investigator has been "committed" to baptism, so there is that extra element of guilt working in the missionary's favor. Yes, the Church has put a great effort in designing the lessons to cover certain subjects, while ommiting pertinent data that would otherwise undermine their intentions. So the reason Mormonism is the most criticized on the web, has more to do with this than anything else.

Every ex-Mormon had a particular issue that gnawed at them before finally leaving the church. These were issues they knew nothing about when being baptized. IF the Church were upfront and honest, then it would have saved everyone the hassle. The Church wouldn't have to go through the motions of baptism, and excommunication, or having to deal with a horrible rate of activity, and the person baptized wouldn't have wasted so much of their life in a fantasy.

For me, it was the Book of Abraham. That proved to me Joseph Smith could not translate ancient documents, which meant the Book of Mormon was out the window as well. I can't just change my paradign like Bokovoy pretending it doesn't matter if he couldn't translate ancient documents because that was and always has been the PROOF that Joseph Smith was a prophet. The Church throough the years even admitted that if the Book of Mormon wasn't true, then neither can the Church be.
After I found out about the Book of Abraham and the KEP, all the other stuff I was defending seemed like a huge burden off of my shoulders. I spent years banging away at apologetic problems, constantly trying to develop "plausible" scenarios that would explain why Joseph Smith lied about polygamy, how the Church wasn't really racist, why a prophet could stand in conference and say "white and delightsome" referred to skin color, how Joseph Smith could misunderstand basic scriptures (i.e., Rev 1:6), etc.

[_Ray A]

The fact is Ray that the church depends on one thing and on only this one thing: is the Book of Mormon true or false. People are told to pray about it for answers and guidance. Anything else is fluff. Many on this forum who are now suffering from criticitis received a yes answer. But now...that yes answer has become just a warm fuzzy. But it doesn't change the answer that they received.

The Church survived all through the 19th century, and up to the early '80s with very little emphasis on the Book of Mormon. The Bible was its main scripture. It only began taking the Book of Mormon seriously after President Benson's 1985 talk. If you'd like me to provide proof of this, I'll oblige.

But to the original point, you accused Kevin of having "quite an imagination", when in reality Boyd K. Packer's 1981 talk was a call to seminary and Institute teachers to teach and write only "faith-promoting history". In other words, the youth would never hear "truths that are not useful". They would have to get that from Signature Books.

[_Kevin Graham]

The fact is Ray that the church depends on one thing and on only this one thing: is the Book of Mormon true or false. People are told to pray about it for answers and guidance. Anything else is fluff. Many on this forum who are now suffering from criticitis received a yes answer. But now...that yes answer has become just a warm fuzzy. But it doesn't change the answer that they received.

Again this isn't teh whole truth. People don't join the Church only because they prayed about it. If that were the case then there would be no need for missionaries. The fact is missionaries feel it is important to make an intellectual case for Mormonism. That is the purpose of the discussions.

If you were to walk up to someone's house and tell them to pray for a confirmation that any Church is true, you'd have a hard time getting converts. But people join Mormonism because it appeals to them intellectually as well as emotionally. We know what the missionaries give people. They get the usual rundown about how all the other Christian sects squabble about the Bible, but like a hero in the night, along comes Mormonism with the only true authority to administer ordinances via the true priesthood. They get a rundown of all the out of context scriptures, carefully selected by higher powers in the Church, that are used as evidence to point to Mormonism as the "restored" Church of Jesus Christ.

My point that any organized effort to teach so much needed information, in such a short period of time, while constantly ommiting pertinent information and urging the investigator to "commit, commit, commit" before the third discussion even takes place, is behaving immorally. Period. It is the kind of stuff you'd expect from Amway, Quixtar, Mary Kay and Primaerica salespersons.

Maybe it isn't just a coincidence that so many Mormons appeal to these get rich quick scams.

[_Runtu]

Again this isn't the whole truth. People don't join the Church only because they prayed about it. If that were the case then there would be no need for missionaries. The fact is missionaries feel it is important to make an intellectual case for Mormonism. That is the purpose of the discussions.

If you were to walk up to someone's house and tell them to pray for a confirmation that any Church is true, you'd have a hard time getting converts. But people join Mormonism because it appeals to them intellectually as well as emotionally. We know what the missionaries give people. They get the usual rundown about how all the other Christian sects squabble about the Bible, but like a hero in the night, along comes Mormonism with the only true authority to administer ordinances via the true priesthood. They get a rundown of all the out of context scriptures, carefully selected by higher powers in the Church, that are used as evidence to point to Mormonism as the "restored" Church of Jesus Christ.

My point that any organized effort to teach so much needed information, in such a short period of time, while constantly ommiting pertinent information and urging the investigator to "commit, commit, commit" before the third discussion even takes place, is behaving immorally. Period. It is the kind of stuff you'd expect from Amway, Quixtar, Mary Kay and Primaerica salespersons.

Maybe it isn't just a coincidence that so many Mormons appeal to these get rich quick scams.

Kevin, in fairness to why me, maybe he didn't serve a mission, or he would know this. As you say, the missionary discussions are set up to build increasing levels of commitment. Praying about the Book of Mormon, etc., is just part of the process.