FLDS testimonies

[_Scottie]

Boy, I have to imagine the persecution complex of the faithful FLDS members is going bonkers right now.

Satan is pulling out all the stops in destroying God's One True Church on Earth.

Can you imagine the boost in testimonies that they must be experiencing?

[_malkie]

Boy, I have to imagine the persecution complex of the faithful FLDS members is going bonkers right now.

Satan is pulling out all the stops in destroying God's One True Church on Earth.

Can you imagine the boost in testimonies that they must be experiencing?

Hmmmm ......

Apart from plural marriage, and all that's associated with it, are FLDS testimonies very different from SLC-LDS testimonies?

I mean, don't they have much the same testimony of:

- Joseph Smith
- the Book of Mormon
- prophets
- apostles
- etc?

I know that they disagree with SLC-LDS about apostolic/prophetic succession, but is the underlying belief in prophets & apostles not the same, or very similar?

I also thought that the following statements from http://www.apologeticsindex.org/f/f39.html were quite interesting:

" FLDS members consider themselves to be the only true Mormons.
Mormons, meanwhile, consider themselves to be the only true Christians. "

[_Scottie]

You're right in that aspect.

I'm saying that LDS members quite often speak of the persecution that the early church endured as some sort of badge of truth. That only the true church would endure such persecution! Every time a new (usually imagined) persecution happens to the LDS church, the faithful trumpet this as more proof that Satan is trying to destroy God's church...for no other reason that it is true!! The testimonies flourish during these trying times!!

[_malkie]

Yes, Scottie, you are right - sorry for sidetracking your thread. But here I go again ...

What I was getting at, obliquely, was that the SLC-LDS and the FLDS are united in beliefs more than they are separated by them; and are united in the means of supporting these beliefs by testimony. Perhaps the SLC-LDS should get the feeling, on the basis of persecution, that the FLDS are more "true".

I wonder if any journalist will have the intestinal fortitude, and enough knowledge, to point this out. I know that the big story right now involves the FLDS compound in Texas, but I'd really like to see a followup that demonstrates that the SLC-LDS are not so different underneath.

Especially, I think that it would be worthwhile for a journalist to note that, in spite of the claim by SLC-LDS that the FLDS are unrelated to them, and are not legitimately entitled to call themselves "Mormon", or "Latter-day Saints", an unbiased observer would have a really hard time trying to decide which of them was really morally entitled to use these terms, and to dispute the legitimacy of the other. And that even without involving any of the other branches of Joseph Smith's original religion.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the members each of the two (and perhaps of all of the others) have testimonies that are indistinguishable in form from the other, though they may differ a little or a lot in what it is that the testimony is about. And I don't think that this is something that the SLC-LDS leaders want "us" (members or non-members) to think about.

It's much easier to deny the legitimacy of the feelings that members of other non-Josephite churches have about the truthfulness of their own beliefs, when they don't couch the discussion of these feelings in the same terminology as the SLC-LDS. But when it comes to other restorationist sects with beliefs based on the Book of Mormon/modern revelation/D&C etc, suddenly the basis for that denial starts to feel shaky.