Why Do Biblical Christians Think God Doesn't Inspire the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

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msnobody
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Re: Why Do Biblical Christians Think God Doesn't Inspire the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Post by msnobody »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 6:34 pm
huckelberry wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 6:20 pm

Psalm 58
"The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies"

A person might imagine that in Bible world some people upon birth are directly able to speak and create lies. Or one might imagine that an exaggeration is being made here.

The Psalm is not god explaining things it is a person complaining about the dangers of military enemies.
Are you suggesting the chief Musician, Altaschith, who served David directly didn’t understand Jewish theology and was allowed to just make up things up because it made for a good ditty? Furthermore, are you saying Psalms is heretical with regard to Jewish theology?

- Doc

eta: I should point out the Bible is very clear the “Lord” creates evil and uses evil, even evil spirits, to afflict others. It also falls squarely within Jewish theology, as described by the Bible, that the Jewish god forms man by his own hand (or something approximating the metaphor). In other words, if someone comes out of the womb as an evil of some sort, it’s because the “Lord” did it, and it’s because he has something in mind for the evildoer later on.
I’m not sure where the Bible says that God creates evil. Maybe you could show me.

Genesis 5 says
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered
a son in his own likeness[Adam], after his image [Adam], and named him Seth.

This contrasted with pre Fall where God created man in his [God’s] image.

Psalm 51 says
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

From what I can tell biblical text tells us that from the Fall, man is born with a sin nature or propensity to sin. Nevertheless, in our lifetime we choose to sin.


About all I’ll give you in what you said, Doc, is that God sometimes allows the fallen gods [elohim] of the divine council/ heavenly hosts to make some decisions about how things will play out such with King Ahab as was discussed previously in one of the threads. Admittedly, God does remain sovereign.

Jeremiah 18 speaks of clay in the potter’s hand
” So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.
Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD.”

Then, there is Romans 9 where again the potter and clay, vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath are mentioned, with God having mercy on those whom he chooses to do so.

Revelation 22 says
The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession... The LORD set his love on you and chose you... The LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery. Deut. 7
dastardly stem
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Re: Why Do Biblical Christians Think God Doesn't Inspire the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Post by dastardly stem »

JohnW wrote:
Thu Nov 24, 2022 4:19 pm


I'm not sure who Leonidas DeVon Mecham is, although it looks as if he lived in Salt Lake City in 1950, so maybe he is a Latter-day Saint. The graphic certainly suggests he is a somewhat familiar with church doctrine. The difference between official church graphics and the one above is that official church graphics try to avoid describing who goes where (at least the modern ones tend to avoid these type of mistakes). The one above seems to have the final judgement all figured out. I doubt it will be that simple. The three sign posts heading to the Terrestrial Kingdom aren't very good. They certainly don't capture official church doctrine in such a way to avoid confusion. Even a couple of the signposts leading to the Celestial Kingdom are a little misleading. Not to say Leonidas is flat out wrong, I just suspect he didn't have a non-member audience from 2022 in mind when he put this graphic together.

The first official link that popped up in Google https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... y?lang=eng talks about how people who are good and honest but did not get the chance to accept the gospel in this life will go to the Celestial Kingdom. I know that many people would argue all of you here have had your chance to accept the gospel and have rejected it. I personally disagree. As I said above, the way some of you describe the gospel to me sounds so warped that I would fully expect you to reject it. I wouldn't call this a fair chance at accepting the gospel, but who am I to judge?
Except, officially, the church does teach that the number of souls in the testial realm will be too many to count—innumerable it says. Giving the impression that place outnumbers the other two kingdoms combined. These are they who suffer god’s violent wrath and eternal hell fire, the church officially tells us. Giving the clear impression that god actually thinks violence is the answer. The celestial will house very few—many will be called but most of them will be told by Jesus or god that these all mighty ones actually have ignored them from the beginning when he tells them he never knew them. They are to suffer for not believing correctly, we are officially told.

Again I rather enjoy hearing believers reject their scriptures and come up with something more palatable. and guesswork is guesswork, but it’s kinda silly, I think, to pretend the violent, wrathful god really loves everyone when he officially denies that over and over. Much like for traditional Christianity, the violent god wishes to do violence on most of us. That’d be his position if we take him seriously. Luckily believers and nonbelievers alike all hate that fool and reject his teachings, correct?
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
huckelberry
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Re: Why Do Biblical Christians Think God Doesn't Inspire the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Post by huckelberry »

from article on Harold Blooms book of J (for a different point of view)
https://www.janemendelsohn.org/the-book-of-j-review
author Jane Mendelsohn

Much has been said already about Bloom’s identification of J as a woman, and the superiority of the female figures in The Book of J does come across persuasively in his reading; however, it’s hardly the most original or most shocking aspect of the book. I suspect that while Bloom genuinely prefers his fiction of biblical authorship to anyone else’s, his decision to see J as a woman has to do with his larger, more radical project: to reveal the Bible as the product of one individual’s consciousness, not as Moses’s lecture notes, or as the result of some invisible, societal effort. What better way to emphasize the individuality of the author than by giving her such a distinctive biography? Never a believer in the autonomy of language, Bloom has primarily been concerned with personality and its relation to greatness in art. Through all his mood swings, from grandiosity to depression, he has attempted to bring Psyche back into reading of poetry, and Narcissus into criticism. In the book of J, he creates two unforgettable characters — Harold Bloom and J — and the result is what Wilde thought criticism should be: the only civilized form of autobiography.

Still, the question remains: Why do people find the notion of a female biblical author so surprising? Presumably because the characterizations of woman in the Bible — Eve’s irrepressible appetite, Sarah’s cruelty, Tamar’s prostitution — have emphasized weakness and shame. Yet, as Bloom’s meticulous, inventive interpretations reveal, if read without any concern for the conflict between the spirit and he flesh, but instead with an attention to irony, wordplay, and human psychology, J’s stories have nothing to do with sin. An amalgamation of fairy tale, comic strip, tragedy, and romance, the narrative that begins with the creation of man and woman and ends with the burial of Moses by Yahweh can best be described as an adventure story, a quest on the part of human beings to gain “the Blessing” and a kind of divine Star Search sponsored by Yahweh to find the appropriate recipient for his favors.

Bloom defines the Blessing — the one Jacob wrestles for, the one Moses passes on the his people — as “more life,” and he recognizes that the characters in J’s writing most naturally endowed with the gift of life with that toughness which challenges the limits of human existence, are woman:

I can begin to see in J’s matriarchs the origins of the Protestant will whose heroines dominate British and American fiction: Clarissa Harlowe, Austen’s protagonists, Hester Prynne, the moral visionaries among the women of George Eliot and Henry James.

Of course, J didn’t have to be a woman to write powerful female characters, .......
huckelberry
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Re: Why Do Biblical Christians Think God Doesn't Inspire the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Post by huckelberry »

I went looking at Bloom related articles because Stems one focus view reminded me of a phrase from Bloom,(unless memory is tricking me) that God in the Torah is one of fictions most unpleasant characters.

I snipped only a piece of the article which is worth reading as a whole. It explains Bloom sees the fall not as a big sin but a natural end of the innocence of childhood. He sees a female author late Solomon period which is an engaging speculation. One might call this authorship a fictional history standing in for the unknown actual one.

Just making my own phrase perhaps inspired by the article, God is a presence or dimension of our experience which people struggle with.
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