"These days I can smell the fear in Mormonism."

[Guest]

The letter from the Swedish Rescue makes it clear hagoth7's hypothesis does not stand.

From MormonThink -

Letter from Church History Department
”The Swedish Rescue” Salt Lake City, January 21, 2012.

I think we all agree that in your efforts to rescue those who are struggling, no ”program” [i.e. The Addiction Program] is needed. Rather, priesthood leaders who hold keys, who are filled with charity, and who seek the guidance of the Spirit, will know in each case how best to proceed.

The following summary of the principles that we discussed during your visit may be helpful to you and local priesthood leaders;

(1) The Church does not hide historical facts. In fact, it makes every effort to be open and honest about its past and current actions.

(2) The internet and digital records now make information about the Church available to many who because of language and other limitations have not previously known of this information. This does not mean that such information was hidden by the Church; it was simply not generally available.

(3) Joseph Smith and the prophets who succeeded him were not wicked or deceiving men. Joseph did not become a ”fallen prophet.” He and all other prophets of this dispensation have human weaknesses. They have often admitted this and the scriptures sometimes confirm that God is not pleased with them. However, they worthily exercised their priesthood keys and led the Church in their time as directed by God through revelation.This is true of President Thomas S. Monson today.

(4) Obtaining or regaining a testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet of God and of the restoration of the gospel through him is always essentially a spiritual quest. Nephi’s reminder to his older brother of the Lord’s words provides a good description of the path each must walk: ”If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you”, (1 Nephi 15:11).

(5) In working with individual members who are expressing doubts, priesthood leaders should (a) provide the best possible answers to the questions the members are asking, (b) teach the spiritual path each must walk to gain or regain a testimony, helping the members to remember past spiritual witnesses and to avoid contact with evil influences, and (c) emphasize that faith is a conscious choice that each must make.

(6) As guided by the Spirit, the scriptures, and Handbook 1 (section 6.7.3 material on Apostasy), priesthood leaders may need to take disciplinary action with those members who persist in publicly opposing the Church and its leaders after they have been lovingly worked with and corrected by their bishop or higher authority. Alma’s counsel is important in this regard: ”Now repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment…” (Alma 42:16).

The three-point approach [1. Prevent, 2. Regain and3. Facts & Answers]… formulated after our meeting may be a very good framework to share with priesthood leaders along with the principles set out above.

I think this sums up the things we agreed to during our meeting. We join our faith and prayers with yours that we can make difference in the lives of those Swedish Saints whose faith is being tested.

May the Lord bless you and your associates there, is our prayer.

Sincerely your brother

Elder Marlin K. Jensen

Elder Jensen's claim is the Church didn't hide the information from it's membership. It just wasn't available. Of course, everyone who has spent time on Mormon-related message boards knows those who don't know were obviously burying their heads in the sand since the information was also widely available if one just chose to look for it. hagoth7 can draw his own conclusions on how to reconcile the discrepancy.

Anyway, it doesn't matter because it can be shown rather clearly the LDS church has manipulated it's history at points since it's inception to today. This letter serves better as an example than because it's content clarifies any murky questions.

[Guest]

Quite serious. Consider again my bolded and underlined statement above. I've served several bishops, and know quite well just a fraction of the tremendous demands on their time that they give freely, week after week. The majority of those who have come up through bishoprics, stake presidencies, and the like frankly do not have the free time to also spend studying church history in depth. What little free time they have left (after their demands with the paying job that keeps the bills at bay) can and should go to quality time with their family. Keep in mind that this is largely a lay ministry.

You are joking - right? Are you really going to use ignorance as a valid excuse here?

By close analogy, you must also believe that individuals working long term in an illegally operating MLM organization have no responsibility to find out the truth about their organization.

MLMs often turn out to be fraudulent by reasons such as revenue under-reporting, and subsequent tax evasion, or simply being operated as Ponzi schemes.

Accordingly, you would seem to believe that people working for, and benefiting from, such organizations can fully expect to escape paying tax penalties, or worse - indictment and prosecution for their participation in illegal activities - because of their willful ignorance.

As a reasonable adult, you must know that ignorance is no excuse when it comes to the law. In such cases, the courts will usually find that any reasonable person involved would have known, or should have known, that they were benefiting from illegal activities, and are therefore responsible to society for their actions.

Ever heard of RICO?

(Give me strength.)

[_Chap]

Likewise, if artists have chosen to depict Joseph as actually reading from the plates, I can see how others may choose to see that as dishonest or deceptive. As a partial response, I would imagine relatively few artists and relatively few church leaders (other than those who have come up through the ranks of the church seminary or institute programs) have taken the time to study the history in considerable depth.

I choose to see it as dishonest or deceptive"?

Weird. It just is at least deceptive, in the sense that it leads people to believe things that are false. Whether it is dishonest depends on whether you think people have any duty to check on the truth of representations made in words or images before publishing them.

The idea that an artist who spends what may be several weeks painting a picture of Joseph Smith sitting in front of the plates just doesn't have the time to read any first-hand account of how the Book of Mormon was translated is just plain daft. Reading that material takes no more than a few minutes. For instance:

https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-morm ... n?lang=eng

The scribes who assisted with the translation unquestionably believed that Joseph translated by divine power. Joseph’s wife Emma explained that she “frequently wrote day after day” at a small table in their house in Harmony, Pennsylvania. She described Joseph “sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.”28 According to Emma, the plates “often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen table cloth.”

And yet we still get:




Rather than this:




How come I know this (and I do lead a busy life) and artists working for church publications don't find the time?

[_Quasimodo]

them.
How come I know this (and I do lead a busy life) and artists working for church publications don't find the time?

This is something that I do know a little about. Illustrators, working on commission, have to paint what the customer wants. It doesn't matter if they agree with the depiction or not.

I haven't been able to find an artist's credit on this image, yet. I'm sure there must be one out there, somewhere.

[_I have a question]

I take it you may not have grown up in a family where parents served extensively in local callings. Or perhaps, if you have, you've forgotten. They don't have the time to focus on the past. They're focusing on the present and the future.

Why do you keep trying to make this a matter of local leader ignorance through time pressure? Institutional dishonesty does not lie at the feet of a few local Sunday School teachers. We are talking about the dishonesty in the materials the Church provided them.

The Church has a history department.
The Church has long known about Joseph many wives, girlfriends and already married concubines.
The Church has long known the Book of Mormon was not translated by Joseph deciphering the plates, the undivine nature of the priesthood ban etc.
Yet it did nothing about teaching a true history.
it continued to propagate a deliberately misleading faith promotion.
For generations.

The essays categorically prove that - if the truth was already being told, the essays would have been superfluous.

That's institutional dishonesty by any measure of the term.

To quote the good DrW...Give me strength...

[_sock puppet]

I take it you may not have grown up in a family where parents served extensively in local callings. Or perhaps, if you have, you've forgotten. They don't have the time to focus on the past. They're focusing on the present and the future.

Why do you keep trying to make this a matter of local leader ignorance through time pressure? Institutional dishonesty does not lie at the feet of a few local Sunday School teachers. We are talking about the dishonesty in the materials the Church provided them.

The Church has a history department.
The Church has long known about Joseph many wives, girlfriends and already married concubines.
The Church has long known the Book of Mormon was not translated by Joseph deciphering the plates, the undivine nature of the priesthood ban etc.
Yet it did nothing about teaching a true history.
it continued to propagate a deliberately misleading faith promotion.
For generations.

The essays categorically prove that - if the truth was already being told, the essays would have been superfluous.

That's institutional dishonesty by any measure of the term.

To quote the good DrW...Give me strength...

Trying to put blame on the possibility of local aberrations is despicable, bureaucratic B.S., for all the reasons you cite. As an institution, from the top down, the LDS Church is challenged when it comes to honesty. The 'buck stops' with FP/12. They know that are a body of deceivers.

[_Chap]

them.
How come I know this (and I do lead a busy life) and artists working for church publications don't find the time?

This is something that I do know a little about. Illustrators, working on commission, have to paint what the customer wants. It doesn't matter if they agree with the depiction or not.

I haven't been able to find an artist's credit on this image, yet. I'm sure there must be one out there, somewhere.

Well then, greater still is the fault of the leaders who commissioned them.

Are you sure these are commissioned pictures, paid for on a commercial basis, rather than works by devout LDS?

[_Maksutov]

Why do you keep trying to make this a matter of local leader ignorance through time pressure? Institutional dishonesty does not lie at the feet of a few local Sunday School teachers. We are talking about the dishonesty in the materials the Church provided them.

The Church has a history department.
The Church has long known about Joseph many wives, girlfriends and already married concubines.
The Church has long known the Book of Mormon was not translated by Joseph deciphering the plates, the undivine nature of the priesthood ban etc.
Yet it did nothing about teaching a true history.
it continued to propagate a deliberately misleading faith promotion.
For generations.

The essays categorically prove that - if the truth was already being told, the essays would have been superfluous.

That's institutional dishonesty by any measure of the term.

To quote the good DrW...Give me strength...

Trying to put blame on the possibility of local aberrations is despicable, bureaucratic B.S., for all the reasons you cite. As an institution, from the top down, the LDS Church is challenged when it comes to honesty. The 'buck stops' with FP/12. They know that are a body of deceivers.

I knew one of the managers of the church magazines in the 70s (he baptized me)--the magazines were designed and produced in the Church Office Building and reviewed by General Authorities. This is a highly centralized and correlated organization which carefully considers all of its media products. It is not credible to claim that the church leadership was unaware. If they weren't in charge, then what the f is their job any way?

[_DrW]

It is not credible to claim that the church leadership was unaware. If they weren't in charge, then what the f is their job any way?

It looks more and more like their main job is Lying for the Lord. Furthermore, as evidenced by the internet, they have gained a world-wide reputation for being very good (and prolific) at their main job.

[_Chap]

It is not credible to claim that the church leadership was unaware. If they weren't in charge, then what the f is their job any way?

That's an interesting question. Perhaps instead of asking whether there is some explicit plan they are working to, we might just ask what organic function they fulfill in the LDS Institution.

There is one function at least they do fulfill, and that is surely just to occupy the leadership space at the top of the church in a way that prevents anybody else but dealers in platitudes, truisms and faith-promoting clichés from ever getting near the podium, whether literally at General Conference, or figuratively at all the other times the CoJCoLDS expresses itself corporately.

I'm sure that when the GAs saw what happened inside and outside the Vatican after the election of Pope Francis, they all said to themselves "Nothing like that must ever, ever happen here". And given the way the CoJCoLDS selects its leaders, I am pretty sure nothing like that ever will happen. For them, that is a great success and a job well done.