I’d have no problem with her trying to save my soul, Siege, if she’d just not tell lies about me and others.
I have to concur with Siege regarding the motivation of that lady. However, I also consider that in my own experience she has returned kindness and compassion with judgment, has knowingly and willingly subscribed to and spread lies about her fellow Christians as well as all the gay people here (and I do realize that they are overlapping sets). I have done all I can to try to get through to her, as has Siege – and the result is that she judges the two of us as people who compromise the Gospel in an effort to be well-liked. So let her deal with the Father of Lies. :mad:
Well, I cannot see how They could have made it any clearer than to say, “this is the most important thing to do, this is second, here’s what happens if you try to take over My job and sit in judgment, here are the criteria on which I’m going to judge, mercy and compassion are important, here are ways to show mercy and compassion in everyday life, I came to give you a new and richer life, now go and tell your brothers and sisters it’s theirs for the asking.”
And somehow she’s converted that message into a rulebook for living and handy guide to identify the true Christians from apostates and frauds like Catholics, Anglicans, and Mormons. Anyone who can seriously suggest as a devotional an essay that “He who shows mercy denies God” has bigger problems than people who think that the “all men” whom God loves includes Mormons and gay men and women. I have no problem accepting that; I just question whether He meant to include the liar/judgmental subset of fundamentalists! :dubious:
(No, not really – I knew he loves them too, and I shouldn’t condemn them. But I’m trying to get over that.)
“You can’t make a person learn something against their will.”
I gather from all of her postings that His4Ever isn’t interested in learning something new or experiencing new things or considering other viewpoints. All she wants to do is parrot her Bible verses. shrug
Oh, btw, Siege, that bit of flaming is really a literary masterpiece. Very nice writing there!
Hell, I even recall her saying that she came here and to other message boards expressly as a means of witnessing.
Siege, I have to say I was also greatly impressed by that bit of flaming and the most remarkable thing about it was that you did it without profanity. I had no idea it was possible to flay somebody so thoroughly without a single use of the eff word. I am in awe. 
Quick aside about this point… From that I would suppose that the Illinois Mormons were RLDS. However, I’ve been to Nauvoo, IL, (where they went when MO kicked them out) dozens of times, and got the definite impression that they were the Utah-based sort. They just put up a huge new temple last year (very impressive-looking structure) that was described as one of about 12 places official enough to do certain ceremonies. But I was certain it was Utah-based, because the local gas stations were selling the Desseret News (which is published out of Utah) to all the Mormon tourists who had bused in for the temple’s 2-week “open house” public tour period. I assume that’s an LDS-flavored publication. Well perhaps some of the LDS folks moved back there after the RLDS moved to Independance then. Does anyone happen to know more about Nauvoo, who could fill me in?
Anyways, of special note to this thread, there was a His4Ever-type Christian in Nauvoo who had set up shop in a formerly abandoned storefront, apparently just because he knew there would be zillions of Mormons in town over that 2-week period. He was advertising on the storefront “literature” about the so-called “truth about Mormonism”.
Even more extreme, an old high school friend of mine actually tried to transfer into BYU from K-State, for the stated purpose of trying to convert Mormons to his brand of Protestant evangelicalism. Thankfully, he didn’t get admitted (I don’t know why he thought his grades were good enough to transfer).
All of which goes to show what Siege is saying. These people are willing to sacrifice alot of their time to convert people who they think are in error, willing to expose themselves to quite alot of hassle, so IMHO they really do believe their efforts are the most important thing in their lives. However, they really need to read one of those books about how to convince people of your positions, because they’re being far too intransigent and confrontational to succeed.
IIRC, the “mainstream” Mormons first tried to establish a Mormon settlement somewhere in Missouri, and on being persecuted for their beliefs moved to Illinois, where they founded Nauvoo. When Nauvoo was burned and Joseph Smith killed (?-assaulted at least), they headed west for Deseret, where they could live in peace. As with all generalizations, though, this one fails to deal with details. Obviously some LDS did not live in Nauvoo, and some who did did not go west.
The RLDS ("I love the potential for confusion of ‘Shi’a Mormons’!;)) were among the latter. The present mainstream LDS presence in Nauvoo may be due to a group that remained behind, or from the idea that the city founded by the original LDS community would be a place that most obviously ought to be ‘reclaimed’ by missionaries at a later time. (There’s a fairly large LDS community in northern Ontario and southern Wayne Counties, New York, which among other things maintains the site and visitors center at Hill Cumorah, for the latter reason.)
Nauvoo is now a mainly LDS site, and the rebuilt temple is indeed a Utah-based one. (RLDS don’t have temples, so you can always tell.) The early Saints moved around from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Utah, and were sometimes split up between two or more sites. They were living in Nauvoo in 1844 when Joseph Smith was taken to jail in Carthage and killed there. Over the next several months, they prepared to leave and continued to work on the temple. Once it was completed, they stayed for only a short time before heading west. After that, it was burned (but the city of Nauvoo was not, though certainly the mobs burned quite a few Mormon homes before they left).
Nauvoo was almost completely lost, ownership-wise. Emma stayed there and retained a little property, but otherwise it was simply taken over by others or bought at very low prices. Emma also retained some property in Kirtland, Ohio–the temple there, which was never a temple in the way we use the word now, but more of a special meetinghouse and forerunner to modern temples. The CoC (RLDS) own the Kirtland temple, and it’s kind of their headquarters. It’s open to visitors, and they maintain a cordial relationship with the Utah LDS Church.
The Utah-based Mormons have always looked with longing back to their old places back east. Over the years, the Church has made efforts to buy places like Joseph’s Palmyra farm, the hill Cumorah, and others. I don’t know when the Nauvoo temple site was obtained, but in 2000, President Hinckley announced that an anonymous donor was going to pay for the rebuilding of the Nauvoo temple. (It was in General Conference and you could hear the gasping of several thousand people.) It has now been rebuilt as exactly like the old one as possible. There was a lot of excitement about it–any LDS bookstore will have coffee-table type books of pictures–and the open house lasted a couple of months. The temple is now officially in use, so you can’t go inside anymore, but the visitor’s center is open to all. (RexDart, there are now over 100 temples in the world, but they are used for certain special things.)
Some Mormons have picked up and moved to Nauvoo, but not a whole lot of them. It’s now much more of a vacation destination, though–we love to take Church history trips, and now that the temple is rebuilt, more people than ever will go.
<b>Diogenes the Cynic wrote:
BTW, what the fuck is so goddamned terrible if Muslims din’t become Christians? Is your god really such a giant fucking asshole that anyone who can’t pick out which particular mythology out of thousands is the “true” one is going to be tortured forever in his own private, sicko dungeon. That god can suck my dick, dude. If I see him after I die I’m gonna kick him in the nuts.</b>
<b>Diogenes</b>, I think I love you.
genie, thanks for all the info! I must say that the area around Nauvoo is always the highlight of my frequent trips up to northern Illinois, the 15 minute stretch of road south of Nauvoo runs right along the Mississippi and is quite scenic, as is the town itself, the historic area on the west side. (And Nauvoo is the furthest south you can buy Sterzings’ kettle cooked potato chips, a salty indulgence I partake of whenever I head back to Illinois.)
I find it fascinating that the temple there now is a recreation of the original. They sure did put alot of work into it, I saw it at several stages of construction on my trips through town. If I’d known it was such a historic event I might have tried to get the tour, since I was in town during the tour period (though the photo essay you linked me too does the trick, thanks.) My professor for History of the American West was big on Mormon history, so I at least have a passing familiarity with the subject. Perhaps I’ll check out the public stuff, like the Jospeh Smith historic site and the old houses, next time I pass through.
As an aside, I wonder if there are tensions between those Mormons who’ve returned to Nauvoo and the various other Christians who resided there in the interim. As I recall, there was widespread paranoia of the Mormons in Missouri about their tendency back then to vote in blocks, and I suppose the new batch of Protestant evangelicals is just as hostile for whatever reason.
Oh, genie, I meant to ask something, since you seemed to know quite a bit about this. Is there a specific purpose for the various rooms in the temple, that I saw on your link? They had a Creation Room, a Garden Room, a World Room, a Celestial Room, a Bridal Room, and a Sealing Room. I think I remember Sealing having something to do with marriage, so I gather that room has a ritualistic purpose (and is quite simple looking, distinguishing it from the others with their elaborate murals.) Do the other named rooms have some sort of specific purpose?
Actually, the Community of Christ does have one temple. You can go to either www.cofchrist.org or www.rlds.org and see a picture of it. Do a search on that page for temple for what they use it for (apparently, it’s a school).
Looks like His4ever is “no more”.
I was catching up on this thread and noticed she seems to have changed her username to lynn73. I’d like to think this reflects some kind of change in her outlook or some newfoudn humility, that maybe - just maybe - she is using that brain she believes God put in her head. Let’s hope so. Time will tell.
Mars, if I remember correctly from what was posted in another thread, h4e changed her name to lynn73 in an attempt at a new start. What she must have missed was that people don’t dislike her for her name but what she posts (and a fact backed up by the history of fundamentalists on this MB). Therefore this new start she wanted actually never came about because it didn’t involve her starting over, it involved her starting her whole schtick again.
Now she is on self-imposed (and mod/admin-guaranteed) temporary posting restriction. My guess would be that she has been temp-banned (for, say, hypothetically, a month. Whatever), but that at a later date she will be back and will try to explain to us, in her own words, the whole big long discussion she had with cj and Poly. And she will probably be greeted by people who are pleased to see that she wants to start anew, but wondering how long it will last.
If she is able to keep herself to posting questions instead of incorrect answers, then she will probably do just fine, comparatively speaking. There will doubtless be people who are very guarded about her because they remember the past however many months of her posts. I would like to say that I’ll be able to welcome her back with open arms, but in reality if I do touch her with both arms it’ll probably be to check her back for stashed knives. It takes more than one post to convince me that the person behind all the rest is gone (or at least sedated, bound and gagged far away;)).
If anything will do it, I’d posit that there are two things above all the rest (excluding hermitage because then there’d be no way we’d know;)):
- Working in a homeless shelter/soup kitchen-type place.
- Teaching adults to read.
A brief consideration of either of these by any who knew her well will surely lead them very quickly to why I point them out.
The only thing I can recall with that happening in it is one episode of the Drew Carey Show.
Sorry Rex, I didn’t see this before today. Yes, there are specific uses for the rooms. In the temple, we do sealings, which are marriages with the added special thing of being sealed for eternity. (A sealing can be a wedding, or can be done for a married couple/family.) That’s what the sealing room is for, and the room is indeed very simple, with just an altar for the couple and seats for the guests. Sealings take about 20 minutes and are simple, near-Spartan affairs when compared with your usual church wedding, but they are lovely. The bridal room is for last-minute preparation for the bride.
The other rooms are for the endowment, which is something we don’t talk about much; it’s sacred to us. Basically, it involves making covenants and a symbolic journey through life. The Celestial room is at the end, and is a quiet spot for meditation. Most temples do not have all the Creation/World/etc. rooms, but one room for the endowment (no murals) and then the Celestial room.
As for tension in Nauvoo, I haven’t heard much. I gather that the locals hope their small town won’t become a big city. There isn’t really a whole lot of reason to move to Nauvoo, and I expect that the enthusiasm will die down after a little while. Tourism will grow quite a bit, most likely. Mormons don’t vote in a bloc any more (well, there are a lot of Republicans, but not the same kind of thing), and voting on slavery is happily no longer an issue as it was in Missouri. The Palmyrans have learned to live with hordes of visiting Mormons, and I hope the Nauvooites(?) will be happy with it as well.