How strong is your current testimony? (Poll)

[_Drifting]

"The Church" is the organization. It is not the gospel.

According to the Bible (Ephesians 4:11-14) they are one and the same in the sense that you can't have one without the other. The Church organization is THE vehicle by which the gospel is taught.

Didn't Elder Poelman articulate this very principle at a General Conference (1984?) only for the First Presidency to make him rewrite it entirely, refilm it entirely, to the point where it bore no resemblence whatsoever to it's original meesage?

[_ludwigm]

[*quote="bcspace"]
[*quote]"The Church" is the organization. It is not the gospel.[*/quote]
According to the Bible (Ephesians 4:11-14) they are one and the same in the sense that you can't have one without the other. The Church organization is THE vehicle by which the gospel is taught.
[*/quote]
Didn't Elder Poelman articulate this very principle at a General Conference (1984?) only for the First Presidency to make him rewrite it entirely, refilm it entirely, to the point where it bore no resemblence whatsoever to it's original meesage?

Poelman is dead. His original and reworded talk was his private opinion.
Both of them.

It is behind us.

[_Buffalo]

Self-refuting argument.

Doesn't appear to be.

The vehicle isn't the passenger. QED.

[_bcspace]

According to the Bible (Ephesians 4:11-14) they are one and the same in the sense that you can't have one without the other. The Church organization is THE vehicle by which the gospel is taught.

Seems like one must acknowledge the difference between the vehicle and the Gospel in order for that sentence to make sense.

It's exactly the sense I communicated.

The Gospel came before churches,

No, it didn't. There was always the original heavenly Church and the method by which the doctrine was communicated to men on earth such as Adam. After that, there were man-made churches and periods when the true Church was withdrawn.

[_UnicornMan]

The Church and the gospel are not the same thing. Church/Gospel confusion is at the heart of A LOT that is bad with the LDS church.

[_Sethbag]

The church is obviously not true, but I think the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only very likely to be untrue as well, but is in fact a depraved and wicked belief system. The idea that we can cast the responsibility for our own actions onto the back of one person, who through torture, suffering, and a grisly death atones for them, is disgusting.

Do you all know what a whipping boy was? The story of Jesus makes about as much sense as that, really. When you break down the elements of the story, there's not much difference.

How many of you ever saw, or at least heard about stories where someone would bring a block of wood and a hammer and nail into church while teaching a lesson, and start pounding it in, accentuating the story of Jesus' sufferings for us all by pounding the nail into the board, full of emotion, and dramatic flair? We were supposed to react emotionally to Jesus' sufferings for us in the same way a prince was supposed to react to seeing his whipping boy suffer for something he (the prince) had done.

[_Drifting]

The church is obviously not true, but I think the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only very likely to be untrue as well, but is in fact a depraved and wicked belief system. The idea that we can cast the responsibility for our own actions onto the back of one person, who through torture, suffering, and a grisly death atones for them, is disgusting.

Do you all know what a whipping boy was? The story of Jesus makes about as much sense as that, really. When you break down the elements of the story, there's not much difference.

How many of you ever saw, or at least heard about stories where someone would bring a block of wood and a hammer and nail into church while teaching a lesson, and start pounding it in, accentuating the story of Jesus' sufferings for us all by pounding the nail into the board, full of emotion, and dramatic flair? We were supposed to react emotionally to Jesus' sufferings for us in the same way a prince was supposed to react to seeing his whipping boy suffer for something he (the prince) had done.

Sethbag, I have never thought about the atonement in this way before.
I'm going to have a ponder about this, thank you for being thought provoking.

[_subgenius]

The church is obviously not true, but I think the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only very likely to be untrue as well, but is in fact a depraved and wicked belief system. The idea that we can cast the responsibility for our own actions onto the back of one person, who through torture, suffering, and a grisly death atones for them, is disgusting.

Do you all know what a whipping boy was? The story of Jesus makes about as much sense as that, really. When you break down the elements of the story, there's not much difference.

How many of you ever saw, or at least heard about stories where someone would bring a block of wood and a hammer and nail into church while teaching a lesson, and start pounding it in, accentuating the story of Jesus' sufferings for us all by pounding the nail into the board, full of emotion, and dramatic flair? We were supposed to react emotionally to Jesus' sufferings for us in the same way a prince was supposed to react to seeing his whipping boy suffer for something he (the prince) had done.

About as thought provoking as a rock. The whipping boy is form the 15th century and they served in different capacity than Christ.
Furthermore, such a blatant misinterpretation of either story accentuates how the meaning of martyrdom and/or selfless acts is lost in your post.
Your post's cynicism is hardly refreshing or insightful and hardly anything more than cliché' blather.
While your post brings to mind the need for some to still be nursed on milk for their capacity for meat has not yet been matured.
I believe you may find the lower forums more palatable to posts that simply want to Mormon-bash or cry "false gospel" without any intellectual rigor or standards of decency.

[_Drifting]

The church is obviously not true, but I think the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only very likely to be untrue as well, but is in fact a depraved and wicked belief system. The idea that we can cast the responsibility for our own actions onto the back of one person, who through torture, suffering, and a grisly death atones for them, is disgusting.

Do you all know what a whipping boy was? The story of Jesus makes about as much sense as that, really. When you break down the elements of the story, there's not much difference.

How many of you ever saw, or at least heard about stories where someone would bring a block of wood and a hammer and nail into church while teaching a lesson, and start pounding it in, accentuating the story of Jesus' sufferings for us all by pounding the nail into the board, full of emotion, and dramatic flair? We were supposed to react emotionally to Jesus' sufferings for us in the same way a prince was supposed to react to seeing his whipping boy suffer for something he (the prince) had done.

About as thought provoking as a rock. The whipping boy is form the 15th century and they served in different capacity than Christ.
Furthermore, such a blatant misinterpretation of either story accentuates how the meaning of martyrdom and/or selfless acts is lost in your post.
Your post's cynicism is hardly refreshing or insightful and hardly anything more than cliché' blather.
While your post brings to mind the need for some to still be nursed on milk for their capacity for meat has not yet been matured.
I believe you may find the lower forums more palatable to posts that simply want to Mormon-bash or cry "false gospel" without any intellectual rigor or standards of decency.

subgenius,

how was Christ's death an act of selflessness?
'Selflessness, the act of sacrificing ones own interest for the greater good'

I mean - how did he sacrifce His own interest?