Just wondering if the Mormons might have their own calendar since they claim Jesus came twice. Is it 2013 ADD, perhaps?
Wouldn’t it be 208 AJS? (After Joseph Smith.)
Joseph Smith??? I thought Brigham Young was their main man next to the Big Guy…
Joseph Smith was the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is considered a prophet. However, I don’t think he is considered a deity on the same level of Jesus. More like Moses.
Brigham Young was just the guy who took over after Joseph Smith died. He’s more like the first Mormon Pope if that makes any sense.
Also, while I’m not an expert, I don’t think Mormons have a special calendar.
In my 35 years of active membership, we always used the standard Gregorian calendar. I never heard any suggestion that an alternative be used.
While the Mormons believe that Christ came to the Americas, it was a post resurrection appearance similar to what happened in Palestine. That is he showed up to his disciples and did the basics to found his church and then took off, kinda like Broadway show hitting the road. It wasn’t the second coming. That is still supposed to happen in the (near) future. So his visit to the Americas was no more significant than such events as the day of Pentecost in Acts.
I’m pretty sure it’s 2013 to Mormons, unless they stopped worshipping Jesus when I wasn’t looking.
Just across the water from here, to the Mormons in Japan, it’s both 2013 AD and Heisei 25. To the Mormons in Israel, it’s both 2013 AD and 5775 AM. In short, Mormons everywhere use whatever the prevailing calendar happens to be.
How near?
Very near. Here are some of Joseph Smith’s prophesies from the 1830s and 1840s:
For the hour is nigh and the day soon at hand when the earth is ripe; and all the proud and they that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and I will burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that wickedness shall not be upon the earth; For the hour is nigh, and that which was spoken by mine apostles must be fulfilled; for as they spoke so shall it come to pass;
Not many years shall pass away before the wicked of this generation will be swept off the face of the earth; and there are those now living upon the earth whose eyes shall not be closed in death until they see all these things, which I have spoken, fulfilled.
The coming of the Lord, which is nigh - even fifty-six years should wind up the scene.
I prophesy in the name of the Lord God, .. the Son of Man will not come in the clouds of heaven till I am eighty-five years old… [T]he 14th chapter of Revelation… The hour of his judgement is come … After … 2,520 years; which brings it to 1890.
There are those of the rising generation who shall not taste death till Christ comes.
So millennial predictions have been present since the beginning. Similar statements have been made ever since. I can recall a good number of times when we would have one of the church leadership give a talk and include similar statements, “that there are some here today that will live to see the second coming of Christ.” The popular belief is that is just about to happen. During the last US presidential campaign I heard from family and friends multiple times, that Romney winning would usher in the millennium. And when he lost I heard it was a sign that the end times were upon us.
So there is no set date. After all “no man knows the day or hour.” But few members of the church would be surprised to see it tomorrow.
Interesting. Thanks - I’d never heard much about Mormom end time beliefs before.
I lived in SLC for four years. Kids cruised Main Street on Saturday night, socialized at Snelgrove’s Ice Cream, and the Cosmic Aeroplane Bookstore had what amounted to a Head Shop upstairs.
So I think was the late 1950s, maybe the late 1960s when I lived in Utah. That was 25 years ago, so maybe it’s 1985 there by now.
Edited to remove excess snark
I seem to recall that AD originally stood for Anno Domini which roughly translates as year of the Lord. This is in keeping with the standard christian dogma that Jesus didn’t actually die (not after recovering from that incident with the cross, anyway) but rather ascended to Heaven (think of this like the sci-fi trope of evolving beyond a material body).
Thus, even if Jesus came back to start another church, it wouldn’t have been as a mortal being. and the end of that visit wouldn’t occasion the need for a new calender. If the calender was reset every time somebody had a divine encounter, timekeeping would be a nightmare.
Doesn’t seem to bother the Japanese, who until not that long ago considered their emperor to be divine. Every time you get a new emperor, you reset the calendar, but with the last year of the previous era overlapping with the first year of the current era.
Yeah, and my birthday falls on the first year of the Heisei era which is a bitch because there’s a special word for the first year :mad:. (Specifically it’s called something that roughly means “beginning year” instead of “first year”). mumble grumble skulk
There is so much wrong with this post that it’s hard to know where to begin.
AD originally stood for Anno Domini
It still does; that’s the meaning of the abbreviation. It’s also why there was/is a trend to the use of “C.E.” to signify the years elapsed since 1 B.C.(E.).
This is in keeping with the standard christian dogma that Jesus didn’t actually die
Standard Christian doctrine is that Jesus died on the Cross, then arose from the dead/was raised from the dead by God. (Since He is God, which way you express it is not alleging one of two different things, but focusing on either Jesus’s triumph or God’s grace and mercy.) This is the belief of every Christian denomination I have ever learned of.
Note that I’m not “witnessing” to the historical accuracy of any statements regarding Yehoshua bar Mariam, called the Christ, but making the factual statement that what** dstarfire** said is false, that it is not “standard christian [sic] dogma.” Just as it is a true statement that “Orly Taitz believes Barack Obama was born in Kenya”; the facct that her belief is false and he was born in Hawaii does not invalidate the accuracy of a statement about her beliefs.
***but rather ascended to Heaven (think of this like the sci-fi trope of evolving beyond a material body). ***
Um, no. It’s true Paul gets into stuff about “the spiritual body,” but that is in reference to the Resurrection. While most Christians are so used to the “Heaven is UP” metaphor that they don’t realize they’re pulling a bait-and-switch, the fact of the matter is that at the Ascension, Jesus’s body ascended (and for Catholics, at the Assumption Mary’s body was taken) “bodily into Heaven.” Whatever that means. Bottom line is that Scripture and doctrine claim that He went up, was hidden by a cloud, and then entered bodily into Heaven.
But dstarfire’s second paragraph, however inelegantly phrased, is on target. The Mormons believe Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, twenty centuries and change ago, same as other Christians. They simply think He came to America after the Resurrection. It’s the same number of years since His birth for them as everyone else. And like it or not, the internationally-used standard referent for year enumeration is a miscalculation of years since His birth. You don’t have to believe anything about Him, even whether He ever lived, to subscribe to using the standdard count of years; it’s a vast improvement over “How many years has it been since Ulf the Unwashed seized the castle and made himself king, anyway?” times ten thousand for all the different cultures that might want to speak of a given date in an internationally-accepted standard chronology.