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What's with this god thinking that old, ancient records of Abraham on the papyri or peoples supposedly living in the Americas from 592 BC to 424 AD needed to be put on metal plates, hucked across continents, buried, later revealed, and then 'translated' for people of those later times to have the "word of God"?

Why couldn't or wouldn't god do with a prophet (such as JSJr) to restore a church, like he did with Moses and the Ten Commandments--just dictate the do's and do not's in a list?

What does the Lehi-Nephi travel log and the gyrations here in the Americas do to give current people the "truth" that just listing out the rules would not?

Yeah, why should anyone care about what happened to a bunch of people thousands of years ago? And besides the Bible has hundreds of equally useless ancient stories.

sock puppet wrote:What's with this god thinking that old, ancient records of Abraham on the papyri or peoples supposedly living in the Americas from 592 BC to 424 AD needed to be put on metal plates, hucked across continents, buried, later revealed, and then 'translated' for people of those later times to have the "word of God"?

Why couldn't or wouldn't god do with a prophet (such as JSJr) to restore a church, like he did with Moses and the Ten Commandments--just dictate the do's and do not's in a list?

What does the Lehi-Nephi travel log and the gyrations here in the Americas do to give current people the "truth" that just listing out the rules would not?

I think that a few of the reasons that most religions end up making connections to the ancient world can be summed up as follows:

1. It plays off the "fallen world" myth: If someone started a religion tomorrow with a simple list of "do's" and "don't's", then I think that people would tend to subject that list to a lot of scrutiny, including possible scientific inquiry into the relative merits of each point of the list. However, if something is established as "ancient wisdom", it can manage to avoid some of the harshest parts of this examination by claiming that the modern/technological world has somehow lost ancient wisdom. It's pretty much an extension of the whole "fallen world" myth that permeates so many cultures around the world (not just the Judeo/Christian ones), and it's a motif that gets employed subtly in everything from Harry Potter to herbal medicine.

2. It gives the work authority: One of the claims that Mormons about the Book of Mormon is something like, "It's a miracle that the book even exists". In reality, not so much. We already know who wrote the book (Joseph Smith) -- a fact not in dispute by anyone really. However, since he claimed to be translating an ancient record of an omnipotent-God-that-is-older-than-our-civilization, suddenly his book gets a lot more notice and street cred than if he just called it inspiring fiction.

There are probably a few other reasons I could come up with, but I guess those are enough for now. The simple fact is that humans want mythology and they want to feel connected to their past. I think any work, whether it be the Book of Mormon or the Lord of the Rings, which reaches that part of the human psyche will always have a powerful effect on its readers.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give him a book and you have hooked him for life.

LDS truthseeker wrote:Yeah, why should anyone care about what happened to a bunch of people thousands of years ago? And besides the Bible has hundreds of equally useless ancient stories.

Indeed. God should have stuck with his tried and true listing of commandments, like he did with the Ten Commandments. It would sure be better than reading all that stifled King James English crap to know what god wants.

Fence Sitter wrote:Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give him a book and you have hooked him for life.

Libraries are even going so far as to have pre-school books on display when entering the library. They know the insidious nature of these books and they will stop at nothing to promulgate this usage, even going so far as to tout these books as a source of "knowledge".

Don't get me started on ancient books. Have you seen what the works of Homer does?

Do you think the Church grows better in Latin America because of the Book of Mormon, or are the numbers there basically the same as any other part of the third world?

ajax18 wrote:Do you think the Church grows better in Latin America because of the Book of Mormon, or are the numbers there basically the same as any other part of the third world?

Maybe Monson should receive revelation about an ancient Israelite people in Africa(Lemba), Asia, Europe, etc.

sock puppet wrote:What's with this god thinking that old, ancient records of Abraham on the papyri or peoples supposedly living in the Americas from 592 BC to 424 AD needed to be put on metal plates, hucked across continents, buried, later revealed, and then 'translated' for people of those later times to have the "word of God"?

Why couldn't or wouldn't god do with a prophet (such as JSJr) to restore a church, like he did with Moses and the Ten Commandments--just dictate the do's and do not's in a list?

What does the Lehi-Nephi travel log and the gyrations here in the Americas do to give current people the "truth" that just listing out the rules would not?

God is a showman. Moses did not just give God's commandments to the people. He miraculously freed them from bitter bondage. He arranged in the first place to get them into bondage. He arranged for them to become a tight family that would keep close by placing them in a racial situation and forbid them to intermingle.

After keeping them in the wilderness utterly dependent upon him and thinning the heard, he spoke his lesser law which ONLY set up the hypocrisy that would generations later crucify the Messiah and creator of the world! Then he allowed the Gentiles to take over and make their great production of human excellence and extravagance from the legacy of the Risen Lord. And now that the great drama of the Restoration God has set up the Gentile who have made an extravaganza of human excellence to dramatically unfold The Apocalrock in the eyes of all nations to convert even the heathen to the right way of the Lord. Making look stupid the highest arrogance and pride above all nations in this day and age. cool.

And it is profitable if only a few, a couple one here and another there come rightly unto Christ and he is able to make them to become his sons and daughters. What better meaning for an existence than to be born of God?