Joseph Smith's Personal Claim to Fame.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I was in Islamabad and Lahore a few years ago. They'd have been surprised to learn that Westerners don't know who Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar is, since the Nizari sect of Ismai'li Muslims trace their religion to him. And they might have a point: Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar has had a much greater impact on world history and theology than Joseph Smith.

Excellent example.

[_Sethbag]

The message moves forward as a result how the religious innovator gets the message out. The means. The how. The what. Joseph Smith's message got out to the world at large in a way that is unique and amazing. For the message to get out, his name had to be out there, up close and personal, and with a certain degree of notoriety.

And it is, for both good and evil. If not, my guess is people would have lost interest. Look at the nightly news. What do people pay attention to? Controversy. Good mixed with evil, and such.

And yet, in a world that just topped 7 billion people, you might be lucky to find 10 million people who really know dick about the Mormons, other than that they exist and are annoying. I realize there are more than 10 million people claimed as members by the church, but probably at least half to two thirds are inactive or wouldn't even self-identify as members, and a good number of these inactives probably don't really know Mormonism very deeply. So I think 10 million is being pretty generous.

The bottom line is that even with Mitt Romney and Huntsman running for President, Mormonism means absolutely nothing in the lives of, statistically, almost every human being on Earth.

[_Sethbag]

As I said, things are moving along. His name and fame are gradually getting out there.

For good and evil. You guys are helping out with the latter. Your work is important in the eternal scheme of things if one looks at opposition being a necessary part of life/growth/experience.

Regards,
MG

You're welcome. :-)

[_harmony]

I'd venture to guess that billions of people have never heard of Mormons or Joseph Smith. Chinese, Indians, most of Africa... literally billions of people.

Get busy, MG!

[_mentalgymnast]

Outside of a few western states in the US, Mormonism is a very minor concern.

I'm not as concerned with the numbers game as much as you guys seem to be. In my OP my first point was that, if history serves us correctly, Joseph Smith prophesied, "that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil ...", and the fact that this was a fairly audacious thing to be putting out there. In areas where the gospel/church has set up shop, there will be those that are for Joseph Smith and those that are opposed to him. This prophecy has been fulfilled to the letter.

My second point was that in order to make choices and exercise agency there has to be a reasonable choice to make to make between two or more alternatives. In regards to Joseph Smith and his message/mission, this is indeed the case. Many are for, and many are against his message/mission. This would probably not be the case if all things church/gospel/Joseph Smith were lily white and spotless pure in their entirety in as-much as they were blatantly and "in your face" true with no wiggle room for doubt or discussion.

As it is, the waters are muddy at times and one has to wade through mire and muck here and there in order to find the elevated landing. Once one reaches the landing, however, the view becomes different than it did while mired in the muck of possible mis-understandings, immaturity, prejudice, incorrect assumptions, sin/transgression, etc.

If you haven't done so, I would invite you to listen to John Dehlin's interview with Terryl Givens.

http://mormonstories.org/?p=2018

Listening to this podcast tweaked my perspective on some important things in a few important ways. As Ray Agostino mentioned on some other thread recently, there seem to be many around these parts that are died in the wool and dogmatically opposed to listening to or reading anything that could alter their set in stone world view in regards to the church and Joseph Smith, so I don't expect there will be many takers on this invite.

But there you go.

Regards,
MG

[_Darth J]

The gospel preached by the Strangites is in fact going forth to all nations, via the world wide web.

Awesome. Sounds like quite the operation. I'm impressed.

Regards,
MG

And there's that snide, condescending attitude from Latter-day Saints regarding other branches of Mormonism that we have all come to know and love.

I'm being serious: tell me why this is not the fulfillment of prophecy received by James Strang.

Or are you just on the bandwagon fallacy again as the standard for determining the truth value of the claims of a given denomination?

[_MrStakhanovite]

I think what we are pointing out MG, is that Joseph's name isn't to be had, for good or for evil, among all nations.

[_Darth J]

...other religious innovators did not tend to be as arrogant as Joseph Smith, so they usually were concerned more about their message, rather than their own name, being known all over the place.

The message moves forward as a result how the religious innovator gets the message out. The means. The how. The what. Joseph Smith's message got out to the world at large in a way that is unique and amazing. For the message to get out, his name had to be out there, up close and personal, and with a certain degree of notoriety.

And it is, for both good and evil. If not, my guess is people would have lost interest. Look at the nightly news. What do people pay attention to? Controversy. Good mixed with evil, and such.

Regards,
MG

Among the problems of your folk apologetics here is that you don't have a coherent position. You are claiming that Joseph Smith's message got out to the world at large in a way that is unique and amazing.

That assertion is demonstrably untrue. For one thing, there is not a single, coherent "Joseph Smith's message." Unless you want to propose the idea that Warren Jeffs and Thomas S. Monson would have the same concept of what "Joseph Smith's message" is. Or that the LDS Church, the Strangites, the Bickertonites, and the Community of Christ all agree on what "Joseph Smith's message" is.

Second, in your solipsism, you not only ignore other Mormon denominations, you ignore other religious denominations altogether. Asserting that your interpretation of "Joseph Smith's message" got out in a way that is unique and amazing is asking everyone to compare the LDS Church (which you are conflating with "Joseph Smith's message") to other religious movements. However, when evidence does not support your position, suddenly you don't want to play the numbers game.

As of 2004, the Seventh-day Adventists claimed to have 13,936,932 members worldwide. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_s ... membership

That is very comparable to the numbers claimed by the LDS Church, and Joseph Smith had a head start on the Seventh-day Adventists.

So other than being your favorite denomination, what is objectively unique and amazing about your version of "Joseph Smith's message" compared to other religious movements by other religious visionaries started within shouting distance of the Second Great Awakening?

[_Darth J]

At this juncture, it probably isn't necessary to point out that from your perspective and in conjunction with this particular thread, it is important to downplay the notoriety of either the church and/or of Joseph Smith.

No, it isn't. While it is true that Joseph Smith's name is not as famous/infamous as you are telling yourself, it isn't necessary to take that position to refute the argument made in the OP.

You are suggesting that Joseph Smith must have been a prophet because he could not have foreseen when he was 17 how widespread knowledge of his name would become (and as I have said, that is begging the question about who wrote that, and when).

It has already been shown to you that other religious visionaries made similar predictions about their religious movements going forth in the world, and time has shown those predictions to be accurate. What you claim to be true about Joseph Smith is also claimed to be true about followers of other movements arising from the same general time frame and having comparable claimed numbers of adherents.

Your premise is not merely that Joseph Smith is notorious in certain circles (which I don't think anyone disputes), but that his prediction is unique. The facts do not support that premise.

[_sock puppet]

But Darth J, you are spoiling mentalgymnast's argument with facts and logic. MG was on a roll, sort of like Otter here.