On the flip side of this, I have found something that helps innoculate Catholics from accepting Mormonism. The Mormons have a catechetical saying, “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may be.” The Mormon concept of “The Heavenly Father” is not the eternal God, but a man who developed into God. Even Catholics without too much doctrinal knowledge will balk at the idea of reducing The Heavenly Father to a glorified human being.
It definitely puts the lie to Smith’s claim, but I always thought that pointing out to Lutherans that no where does the Bible say it is the sole rule of faith was a stumper. Unfortunately, most of them think you are wrong and don’t take the time to look it up (or maybe they are just afraid to).
There are a number of stumpers, but many of them can be explained out of hand as being the result of the mysterious will of God. Not to mention the fact that Mormons tend to play pretty loose with the facts regarding Joseph Smith’s life.
For example, many simply do not know Smith was packing heat and shot to death at least one man when he was famously “martyred”. No Biblical or historical martyr goes down like this. The fact that his choice of actions — especially at such an important point — is so unmartyr-like should give people pause. The answer has been to gloss over this fact.
Smith not only was a polygamist, many of his “wives” were already married to his followers. This was a political necessity because there had to be a ready explanation for pregnancy. You see, Smith did not really openly proclaim or practice polygamy. He tried at several points to promote it, but the backlash among his followers and the outrage among gentiles was too strong. The moment it would leak out, he found himself doing some serious back-pedalling and flatly denying that he himself was practicing it.
In fact, his first wife never acknowledged that he did (but after he died she went on to marry a “gentile”).
Smith had half-resolved to weed out the nefarious members of his religion who were practicing plural marriage, but the move came too late because he had to flee angry mobs intent on bringing him to frontier justice.
He also found it expedient to marry the daughters of some of his plural wives. Who would suspect mother and daughter having some quality time with the prophet?
To paraphrase the old saying: “It’s good to be the demagogue .”
Also many Mormons take pride in Smith’s lack of education but the fact is, he took lessons in Hebrew when he was a budding prophet. It was his flawed understanding of certain OT passages that reference God as a plurality that led him to his heretical understanding of a henotheistic universe.
5 comments
On the flip side of this, I have found something that helps innoculate Catholics from accepting Mormonism. The Mormons have a catechetical saying, “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may be.” The Mormon concept of “The Heavenly Father” is not the eternal God, but a man who developed into God. Even Catholics without too much doctrinal knowledge will balk at the idea of reducing The Heavenly Father to a glorified human being.
It definitely puts the lie to Smith’s claim, but I always thought that pointing out to Lutherans that no where does the Bible say it is the sole rule of faith was a stumper. Unfortunately, most of them think you are wrong and don’t take the time to look it up (or maybe they are just afraid to).
Jeff,
That is a WHOPPER of a mistake on Joseph Smith and his cult. WOW! Good job in finding this one.
Tito
There are a number of stumpers, but many of them can be explained out of hand as being the result of the mysterious will of God. Not to mention the fact that Mormons tend to play pretty loose with the facts regarding Joseph Smith’s life.
For example, many simply do not know Smith was packing heat and shot to death at least one man when he was famously “martyred”. No Biblical or historical martyr goes down like this. The fact that his choice of actions — especially at such an important point — is so unmartyr-like should give people pause. The answer has been to gloss over this fact.
Smith not only was a polygamist, many of his “wives” were already married to his followers. This was a political necessity because there had to be a ready explanation for pregnancy. You see, Smith did not really openly proclaim or practice polygamy. He tried at several points to promote it, but the backlash among his followers and the outrage among gentiles was too strong. The moment it would leak out, he found himself doing some serious back-pedalling and flatly denying that he himself was practicing it.
In fact, his first wife never acknowledged that he did (but after he died she went on to marry a “gentile”).
Smith had half-resolved to weed out the nefarious members of his religion who were practicing plural marriage, but the move came too late because he had to flee angry mobs intent on bringing him to frontier justice.
He also found it expedient to marry the daughters of some of his plural wives. Who would suspect mother and daughter having some quality time with the prophet?
To paraphrase the old saying: “It’s good to be the demagogue .”
Also many Mormons take pride in Smith’s lack of education but the fact is, he took lessons in Hebrew when he was a budding prophet. It was his flawed understanding of certain OT passages that reference God as a plurality that led him to his heretical understanding of a henotheistic universe.
StubbleSpark,
Thanks for that brief history lesson on Joseph Smith’s unmartyrlike attributes and de facto polygamy.
Sad.