Mormon perspective on the old-world Christian church pre-Joseph Smith

Great Debates
1

I’d have this discussion with a Mormon friend but I value his friendship so I know where to quit. Not sure if this is a debate as it’s more a question on my part but I can see where it would easily turn into a debate. Mods, if you see fit to move the thread fine by me.

FTR I am a Christian and do not believe that Joseph Smith is a true prophet or anything close to it. That alone will keep it in GD I suppose.

What got me thinking was a conversaion I just had with my Mormon friend. It was about meeting with my fiancee’s ex who is going to make her wedding ring. That’s his sideline but he’s also an Orthodox minister of the non-ethnic flavor. His card in fact says Catholic Orthodox. He gave us a mini lesson on the Orthodox church and how it split from the Bishop of Rome (or he split with them depending on your perspective). I find early church history fascinating and said so to my Mormon friend. He replied “You of course know my view on it.”

I step slowly back from the keyboard. I want to keep D. as a friend. Further discussion can serve no useful purpose.

This got me wondering about some more fundimental inconsistencies. It is my understanding that the the Mormons hold that the old world Christian churches do not have the full gospel, that was only given when Jesus visited the new world.

That doesn’t make sense to me. Why would God give his word in human form in Judea but only give an incomplete gospel, then send him to the new world which won’t have significant contact with the old world for almost 1,500 years? The kicker is that the “full gospel” is given to a race that will become extinct before the old world ever makes contact.

God should have seen that coming.

Anyway that leads me to ask how the Mormon church can fault old world Christian churches for not having the “full gospel” when by their own account God did everything possible to keep it from them for hundreds of years.

2

The Mormon view on mainstream Christianity (in the late 70s early 80s, when I was a mormon youth) was that it had been lost prior to and irreparably perverted by the Nicean council. That the scriptural text had been changed and had many parts deleted to make it palatable to all concerned. This resulted in change of the basic teachings and rendered it no longer the church of Jesus. Joseph Smith said (something to the effect) that all churches have a form of truth, but deny the whole truth.

As for why “the TRUTH” was kept from humanity for so many centuries, I really don’t recall having been given a more satisfactory answer than that God had seen it all coming & Joseph Smith was fore-ordained to restore the fullness of truth and couldn’t be born any earlier because we choose our parents & they choose us in the pre-earth existence, which kinda locks us all into being born when we are. Maybe an active mormon like Monty will come along & give us the official answer. Maybe another active mormon will come along, take issue with what I’ve said and flame me.

3

False. I quote from the Introduction to the Book of Mormon(emphasis mine):

I’m baffled that you write:

Why? Do you mean evangelization? Because discussion can facilitate understanding even if it doesn’t lead to agreement. We can learn to live together in peace even if we don’t agree–doesn’t that seem reasonable? You make claims about what Mormons believe, but have you asked your friend what he believes? Do you know if his beliefs are in agreement with the majority of LDS members? Or what the LDS church teaches as doctrine? These are questions you really should investigate before you pass judgement on what LDS believe.

I suggest looking here for a good, brief summary of what LDS think of historical Christianity (also, follow the “Restoration” link). If you have more questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

I’m afraid jack@ss has it mostly wrong–as a bunch of folklore, mixed with actual LDS teachings. I’m afraid that as most people who leave any belief system as a juvenile, he appears to have a juvenile understanding of the beliefs.

4

That’s why I asked emarkp.

From your restoration link:

If according to your quote from the introduction to the book of Mormon the Bible contains the fullness of the everlasting gospel then why did Joseph Smith need to restore it?
I didn’t continue the discussio with my friend because I realized the limits where my questions would be seen by him as an attack.

5

I’m just going to address this part:

As emarkp said, there’s a lot of inaccuracy there (for one thing, there is no doctrine about whether people get to choose their families). So, why was the Whole Truth kept from humanity? AFAIK, largely because they didn’t want it, couldn’t deal with it, and were apt to kill people with ideas different from their own. Once certain aspects of the whole gospel were lost and Christianity became heavily Hellenized (that is, doctrine was changed to fall more in line with Greek philosophy), many leaders in the Christian churches became quite corrupt. We all know about the mess the Church was in in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, for example.

Restoration was actually a process that required hundreds of years of preparation. We believe, for example, that Martin Luther and other reformers were at least partially inspired from heaven and did what they could with what was there. They paved the way for religious freedom and new ideas, trying to reconcile Christianity with what was actually written in the Bible.

Still, it took a long time. With the establishment of a country based on ideals of freedom and liberty, with freedom of worship built into the government, it became possible for people to practice what they believed, and yet in that very country (where new religions were springing up like weeds), Joseph Smith and the latter-day Saints were hounded, persecuted, and sometimes killed, and the government paid very little attention. (Martin van Buren told Joseph Smith in a personal interview that his case had merit and right was on his side, but he–van Buren–would be voted out of office if he helped Smith.)

It’s hard to imagine an earlier point in history where the entire gospel could have been restored and survived. Try to place someone like Joseph Smith in, say, 16th century Italy or Germany. Luther was quite radical enough for the time.

I’ve lent the book out now and can’t quote the passage, but in the American Library’s collection of American sermons, the very first one, from 1621, has a section stating that the true order of God had been lost, and perhaps in this new land, a real prophet would spring up someday to lead the faithful. I found that very interesting; it was actually a very common idea (as far as I can figure out) in the early 19th century; that things weren’t right and that a true restoration of the early Christian church was needed.

I’m sure there’s much more to know and I don’t claim to have gotten everything correct, but according to my understanding, that’s the gist of things.

6

Pad:

I’m not any religion, and so I can ask you, why did God wait thousands of years before sending Jesus to earth to save “all mankind”? To boot, “all mankind” would not be exposed to Christianity until somtime in the 20th century (when the last isolated New Guinean tribe was “discovered” by westerners). Religions are notorious for harboring glaring logical inconsistancies. They are a matter of faith, not fact.

7

As the lyric goes, “Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication.”

8

John, I don’t know why God does thing according to his schedule so you’ll have to ask him but if you are a non-believer the question is moot now isn’t it. I welcome other viewpoints but the OP was a very specific one that may not be relavent to non-Christians.

9

Pad: I mean no disrespect to your religious beliefs. I’m just curious as to why you can say “I don’t know why God does things” when it applies to your religion, but can’t accept that your Mormon friend would say the exact same thing when it comes to his religion. That’s the great thing about God-- we can’t understand him or explain him. He gets to do anything!

10

Oh, the irony…

11

John, read the OP again. The question was about conflicting statments from Mormons that the bible is the full gospel but at the same time that it needed to be restored by Joseph Smith.

12

I’m not John, but I read it again, and that’s not what your question was about.

13

In a broad way it is. It is my understanding that Mormon theology holds that Jesus later went to the new world and left another testament that is very different from the one that old world Christian churches have. I’m asking for clarification on that.

14

Padeye, the Book of Mormon (BoM) is a record of people in the American continent, most especially the writing of their prophets and their religious history. The record includes prophecies of Christ, and records that He visited them after His resurrection. The full text of it can be found here.

I don’t believe the record of the teachings of Christ in the BoM is “very different” from the Bible. That is, it is a record of different people, but I believe the teachings are the same. There are some places where the BoM speaks to an issue in which the Bible is silent or ambiguous (see, for instance, passages about the method of baptism, or infant baptism).

15

Padeye, the teachings of Jesus in the Book of Mormon are almost exactly the same as the bible teachings, with the exception of a few misplaced words.

To post-mormons like myself, this only underscores our belief that Smith plagiarized parts of the BoM from the King James version of the Bible and other sources, and padded out his tale from his own fertile imagination.

A Comparison of BoM and Bible Verses

An LDS General Authority on Joseph Smith’s Imagination and the Book of Mormon

And there are many things in the modern LDS religion that are simply not mentioned in the BoM. The structure of the two priesthoods, for instance. The temple ceremony and endowments. Baptism at 8 years of age. Missinaries. Non-professional clergy. Polygamy (which is denounced as sin in the BoM). If the BoM is God’s handbook, as it were, for how to be a good Mormon, why is it at such odds with the religion itself?

16

Thank you for the references Rico. I may have been asking some of the wrong quesions or asked them differently.

17

quote

from the Introduction to the book of Mormons

After Mormon completed his writings, he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Moroni, then a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

In addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord provided for eleven others to see the gold plates for themselves and to be special witnesses of the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon. Their written testimonies are included herewith as “The Testimony of Three Witnesses” and “The Testimony of Eight Witnesses.”

The last I talked with any Mormons they said these plates where locked in a safe in Utah. If they have these plates, they should be around the age of 180. Why have they not showed them to the world? Why have no other theologists been allowed access to these plates? It seems to me that these plates would have been shown to increase the substance of their doctrine.

18

quote

from the Introduction to the book of Mormons

After Mormon completed his writings, he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Moroni, then a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

In addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord provided for eleven others to see the gold plates for themselves and to be special witnesses of the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon. Their written testimonies are included herewith as “The Testimony of Three Witnesses” and “The Testimony of Eight Witnesses.”

The last I talked with any Mormons they said these plates where locked in a safe in Utah. If they have these plates, they should be around the age of 180. Why have they not showed them to the world? Why have no other theologists been allowed access to these plates? Just makes me wonder if they ever existed at all.

19

Well, gee, Rico, isn’t that amazing that not everything about the current LDS Church is mentioned in the Book of Mormon. One would never imagine that they would even think of structuring and operating the church based on the Doctrine & Covenants.

I would expect a “post-mormon” to know that little tidbit.

20

The Schneider cup ended in 1931 and the average speed of the winner around the circuit was about 340mph. Keep in mind that’s average speed around a short pylon course.