Gene Touchet:

Of course SBC members are easy pickings for LDS. Sheep follow the nearest bell.

Good Point. Of course most Baptists aren't the most educated folk whereas Mormons, even with their whacky belief system, do seem to be fairly well educated so it seems like the Baptists would be dragging down the general education level of the Mormon church. Maybe the Mromons are taking the long view and, who knows, the converts children could move out of the trailer park so it could be a general good.

Harold, maybe you can help me out here. I'm not going to convert you any more than you will me, but I'm curious about this. Mormonism introduced me to Christianity. (I know you would strongly disagree with me already, but I am actually very interested in your opinion. Hear me out.) I believe that the only way I can be redeemed from sin is through Christ's sacrifice for all of us. He died on the cross and was resurrected. We agree on that most important of points. The reason Mormonism could reach me where evangelical Christianity couldn't has to do with the whole Buddhist baby issue. According to Evangelical Christianity, that baby, should it die, goes to Hell. Straight there in fact. It never admitted Christ as it's personal Savior. Despite the fact that goes against the entire tone of Christ's ministry on the Earth, that doctrine has been taught for hundreds of years with varying amounts of emphasis. (Sometimes the babies get a free pass and it's only the hard working and loving parents that go to Hell.) Mormonism at least admits that before a just judgement can occur, whether in this life or the next, everyone is taught the real deal. The phase immediately after this life and before judgement happens consists of EVERYONE learning what the meaning of life down here had been about. This phase would include, by the way, mormons who only learned from men and opinions instead of direct from the Spirit. There are some of those folks in ALL religions.

Despite the fact that I am TOLD by non-mormons all the time that I believe I am saved by my works, I have never been taught this in a mormon church. The doctrine that I have heard has been very consistent, we are saved by grace through Christ, but we are judged by works. To me this has been a very straightforward stance and is Bible based. (Rom 5:2 Rev 20:12-personal favorites.) I have NEVER been taught otherwise. Also, please don't resort to the cop out of saying, "Yeah, you just haven't gotten high enough up the ranks to know what they really teach."

Our views of the trinity are probably very different. Personally, when I read the New Testament I think Christ is very clear that his Father and himself are distinct personalities and that he always defers to his Father's judgements. (Let this cup pass from before me, but not my will but thine be done.) Christ never directly indicates that his relationship with God is so complicated it is in fact unknowable and mysterious. That has always sounded just a little too Roman for me. Fine, if it is the official opinion of Evangelical Christianity and especially the SBC that not accepting the Roman definition of the trinity is the great crime against God and that it requires a person to be ejected from the "Christian" title, okay. But if that's the case your team has got some serious internal housekeeping to do as well. I served a mission in Louisiana, I met tens of thousands of non-denominational Christians, but primarily Baptists, and I had people disagree with my understanding of the Godhead fewer than five times. All of the people who said my understanding of the trinity was a damnable heresey were fresh out of seminary. Everyone else agreed that when they prayed to God at night or were crying for help they saw in their minds eye a Man, like themselves, only perfect and eternal. I never met anyone who prayed to an unknowable manifestation of an infinite substance. On that one I'll agree to disagree.

"Jesus and the Devil are brothers." In Louisiana I once had a soccer Mom stick her whole head out of her car to scream that at me in a total rage. I've met Baptists who act like if they were to ever go into a mormon chuch, God forbid, the first thing they would see is a mural of Jesus and the Devil playing hopscotch and holding hands on the spiritual playground. This is not a tenant of our religion. This is not an article of faith. No one prays about this. This whole accusation comes from a few people in the early church who were of the opinion that since God the Father is the father of us all (thus the name) it would be unlikely that the Devil created himself. Since Jesus also refers to the Father, as "Father" it looks like He is in the same boat as the rest of us. God created all of us. All of us, good or bad. That is the only way this idea is ever even discussed in a mormon church. Baptists take this and twist it until they have convinced themselves that mormons believe Jesus is half evil... as if mormons think he's just a Darth Vader type in reverse. Just a sidenote; if I accuse you of believing something that you don't believe, and in fact you have maybe never even heard it before, you probably don't really believe it.

My question is that I don't understand how what I have written here is "radically anti Christian." I just don't get it. By the way, one of my more interesting mission moments was when we knocked on someone's door outside of Many, Louisiana. Through the screen door I could see a man picking up a double barreled shotgun, which he promptly pointed through the crack in the door about four inches from my face and he asked what I wanted. I said, "We've been out talking about the Lord." His response was awesome. "Well I'm a Baptist preacher and I know all about the Lord." He kept that gun on us until we got off his property. Harold, what is that all about?! I'm not the only one who sees the irony there!!!

Even on this message board there are rantings about the mountain meadows massacre. It is documented history, the idiots out there involved in that mess sent a message to church headquarters asking for advice, but they all pulled the trigger before the reponse had time to come back. The response was to leave those people alone. It's documented history but there are still people on this board using that as if it is representative of church policy!! What about Catholics and witch trials? Two million women were exterminated. Inquisitions, torture, protestants throwing bombs at Catholics in Ireland. Yet you don't hear the SBC going tracting in the Vatican or Ireland. But hey, if they're not against us they're for us, right?

Why isn't all that negative energy directed at other places? Even assuming that all 12 or 13 million mormons are going to Hell, why would anybody waste time on mormons? There are a BILLION Muslims. Seems like they should be the looming danger on the horizon.

Yes, by all means, let's discuss the mountain meadows massacre.

Doubtless, it was an act of terrorism, because it involved the murder of women and children. Even by secular historical accounts like the History Channel, all available evidence shows that Brigham Young told his messengers to "spare no horse's flesh" in getting his cease-and-desist order to harper and the thugs who did that. Unfortunately, it was before the the days of cell phone and there were no wires to Mountain Meadows so Young's message came too late. Mormons also executed at least some of the terrorists who murdered those people.

But if we are going to remember the "rest of the story" about MMM, let us also remember Haun's MIll, Liberty Jail, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio and every other instance in which, prior to MMM, nefarious bigots murdered all of the Mormon Males from ages 10 to elderly, raped Mormon women till they could not stand and left bereft infants to freeze and die. I defy anybody to show that Mountain Meadows was anything but a local and isolated incident. The idea that the Brigham Young was involved is as fringy and unsubstantiated as the idea that Bush, love him or hate him, ordered the WTC bombings himself. It is the one thing anti-mormons can cling to, because all other evidence points to the fact that we are, in large part, a peace-loving and friendly people, who have not returned the viceral hatred leveled against us.

Now, to harp exclusively on one incident, purpotrated by a renegade Mormon Mob, after so much diaspora and genocide purpotrated by hosts of the vilest creatures who were backed by the state of Missouri, abedded by the Governor of Illinois, and unhampered by the Federal Government, is a bit like focusing soley on atrocities commited by a Zionist Jewish Conspiracy, when Jews have been threatened with destruction since Moses. Surely such rhettoric would win the author of it, titles like "Nazi, antisemite, bigot." I will do no such demagoguery, but will simply ask that anyone purporting to tell "the rest of the story," to look it up first.

Sir,

I am and LDS elder, am indeed college educated, and a middle class officer in the US Army Reserve.

However, I do not think it a ligitimate topic to see who is smarter or richer. I have intelligent Baptist friends who are not the bigots that any story here portrays.

I know some poorer Baptist people from here and in Portugal, and even in their poverty, they display quiet wisdom, grace and tolerance. I know poor Mormons as well. Jesus Himself was a carpenter's stepson and I do not think that interjecting class or social warfare helps anyone out. Perhaps it would help everyone if all religions and peoples would spend more time and money educating and sustaining the poor, than we spend on attacking each other.

The idea that Christianity in Mormonism is a recent trend is false. Joseph Smith taught that Jesus Christ was the only way whereby man can be saved, and the God of the Old Testament. It has been the central theme of the LDS Church from the beginning. The Book of Mormon mentions Jesus Christ as many times as the New Testament, and is even more forceful in saying that nobody can be saved without Him. There is no "cloaking in claims"

The focus on Kolob and Eternal Progression and other Doctrines harped on in this article is tantamount to zeroing in on the "hard sayings" of Jesus Christ; wherein He spoke of eating His flesh or compared a non-Hebrew woman seeking a blessing to a dog stealing children's meat (You'll find both stories in ST John); and excluding the overall message of His divinity and capacity to save, of doing good to all men, and loving God above all else. Such it is when you speak of LDS minute doctrines, while not focusing on the central message of the Church, which is the fall of man, the atonement of Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and His Second Coming accompanied by modern and continuous revelation. This has always been the central theme.

The reason mormons were persecuted in Missouri was not because of Kolob or Polygamy. Polygamy wasn't practiced until Nauvoo, and Kolob was relatively unknown and is today. Mormons were persecuted because a bunch of "Christians" decided that instead of trying to help an indigent 14 year old "crack-pot boy" with "vain imaginings" they persecuted and demagogued him as well as his family. If you think he was crazy, think whether Christ healed "lunatics (look it up in your Bible KJV)" instead of shooting them and their followers down in cold blood? In short, he was persecuted, along with his brothers and sisters in the faith, and murdered for claiming to have seen the Father and the Risen LORD, just as the martyr Stephen (Look in Acts 7:55-56, your KJV Bible. It's the same as mine. There is no "Mormon Bible"). The Mormons' neighbors thought that revelations and visions had ceased with the Apostles, and there could be no more word from the heavens. The Saducees also thought this was true after Moses, the Pharisees thought this true after Malachi, and Muslims think it is true after Mohammed. Many sincere people believe this and do good works in this belief. I have no quarell with them. But it can also be a convenient way for academians, scholars and potentates (like the Sanhedran) to take control of God's word when it rightfully belongs to humble prophets like Abraham the nomad, Moses the outcast, Peter the fisherman and John the Baptist who lived off of locus and honey, who did not learn about God from College, but from GOD Himself. When they take over is when we get Jihads and Crusades.

Furthermore, the idea that we worship a "different Christ" ("Oh, you mean the other Jesus of Nazareth, step son of a carpenter and a Jew named Mary, who was murdered by Roman occupiers at the behest of a local Israelite mob for claiming that He was (and in fact is) the Son of God, as documented by the New Testament.") is the type of hair-spliting to make even the slickest politician cringe.

The idea that Joseph Smith was an anti-Christ is laughable by your own admission that he was and is so unexplicably unpopular among the "fundamentalist" religious leaders, as well as the fact he was so often betrayed and oppressed by his own friends, to whom he gave no retribution, much like...well.. the prophets of old and the apostles of Jesus Christ, who were also hated, mocked and murdered one-by-one. AntiChrists, by the accounts in Daniel and Revelations will be respected, prosperous, popular and largely triumphant (like Herod, and Jezabel, Pharoh, Annanias and others were) until Christ comes again.

The claim that the Bible can be the only canon is not advocated by the Bible. I am well aware of the scripture in the last chapter of Revelations. You'll find essentially the same scripture in Deuteronomy 4:2, hence the Saducees. It was a seal on the Book of Revelations, not all divine revelations. John himself wrote his epistles, and perhaps the gospel of John, after the Book of Revelations. They were not compiled thusly until the Roman Emperor and Pagan Constantine assembled the Nicean crew to edit the canon. It makes the Bible no less true. The Books of the Bible are the word of God, but it can hardly be said that the post new-testament assembly was inspired, at least not to the point of forbidding any further enlightenment from God. All of the apostles were already dead. It was at least two hundred years after Christ was born.

I would invite everybody to read the Bible free of anyone's influence, except God's. You will find that anti-Mormon ideas do not come from the Bible, but, in fact, from the same source which spread hatred in the hearts of pharisees, saducees and politicians, and convinced Cain to murder his brother out of enmity toward his religious sacrifice. It was the same source that told the Muslims to conquer and kill in the Iberian peninsula and the Crusaders to retaliate in likely cruel and depraved fashion. When the young Man who would claim to be the Son of God and the Great Jehovah, (and in fact was), was brought to stand trial before a corrupt politician, it was the same source that put it into the hearts of the people, who He loved, to cry "Crucify Him!"

Let Jesus worry about sending me to Hell, if that's what I deserve. I have proclaimed His Divinity to Muslims, and others who don't believe we need a saviour, in Portugal in buses and in their homes, but if I was doing it for that scurulous imposter you mentioned that claimed to be Him, the real Jesus can stand up and send me to hell . No one will save me by spreading falsehoods. If your religion has something good to offer, tell me, but don't tell me what I believe.

And if I am hellbound, perhaps I might make life better for someone while I am here. Evangelicals and Mormons can work together to fight poverty, and give poor people educational opportunities. We can work together with devout Catholics to save human life from abortion and euthanesea, and defend the sanctity of marriage. (I'm not talking politics, I'm not even a Romney fan). I know Mormon soldiers who fight alongside Evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Budhists against radical Islamists in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we don't have a perverse caliphate dictating our life from the middle east who believes conversion must be gained at the point of a sword. If we focus on what is right, it will take us from that which is wrong.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre as it was called was the work of an isolated local leader, John D. Lee. There is no direct evidence it came from higher authority (see PBS documentary).

Unfortunately, the Mormons were persecuted including their women and children for decades before that. Forced out of several states. He felt, although unwarranted, like it might happen again.

Precisely. It was not justifiable, but some of the men in that group from Arkansas had threatened some Mormons in a village.

If it had been an IRA or Al-Queda attack under the same circumstances, the media and historians would have given them a write-off.

I am honored by the fact that we are held to a higher standard, and I think that no matter what the grievance of any group or past suffering, no one should have license to terrorize women, children and innocent men for what a few in the company may have done or threatened. I wish we would expect the same from everyone, so that no one has the license for terrorism.
That "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" stuff is a lot of horse dung and the recipe for the destruction of Western Civilization.

05 February 2008
MAJOR BOOK OF MORMON RELATED DISCOVERY Iron Ore Mine Discovered in Peru
Since a pre-Columbian iron ore mine had never been discovered in the New World, critics of the Book of Mormon have scoffed at the book's claim that ancient Americans mined ore (see 2 Nephi 5:15, Jacob 2:12, Mosiah.21:27, Helaman. 6:11, Ether 10:23).
However, on 3 February 2008 several scientific websites announced that an ancient iron-ore mine has been discovered in Nasca, Peru.

<link>