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Originally posted by SeattleUte
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Caesar and Augustus absolutely did. (Romans, yes, but worth mentioning.)τὸν ἥλιον ἀνατέλλοντα πλείονες ἢ δυόμενον προσκυνοῦσιν -
The book of scripture for study in seminary this year is the Book of Mormon. Our youth had a fireside to get them ready for the new seminary year and the following was shared during that fireside. I couldn't help but chuckle a bit...
Occasionally you hear someone say, "I could believe your Mormon Doctrine if I just didn't have to swallow the story about Joseph Smith being a man of God and that he translated the Book of Mormon from some golden plates which he claimed he had found on a hill side." It is even possible that you, yourself, have doubted his story. Well, let us consider some facts or conditions that must be complied with in order for you or someone else to produce a similar record under comparable conditions.
1. You must be 23-24 years of age.
2. You cannot be a college graduate, in fact, you can have only three years of schooling.
3. You must write a book with 239 Chapters, 54 of them about wars, 21 about history, 55 about prophecy, 71 about doctrine, 17 about missionaries, and 21 about the mission of Jesus Christ.
4. Whatever you write must be on the basis of what you now know; no research can be done.
5. You must write a history of an ancient country, such as Tibet, covering a period from 600 BC to 421 AD. Why? Cause you know nothing about Tibet.
6. You must include in your writings the history of two distinct and seperate nations, along with histories of different contemperary nations or groups of people, of which no one ever knew existed.
7. Your writings must describe the religious, economic, social, and political cultures and institutions of these two nations.
8. You must weave into your history the religion of Jesus Christ and the pattern of Christian living.
9. When you start to produce this record, covering a period of over 1,000 years, you must finish it in approximatly 80 days.
10. When you have finished you must not make any changes in the text. The first edition must stand forever.
11. After pauses for sleep and food, if you are dictating to a stenographer you must never ask to have the last paragraph or last sentence read back to you.
12. Your record must be about 522 pages with over 510 word per page. You must add 180 proper nouns to the English language. William Shakespeare only added 20.
13. You must announce that your "smooth narrative" is not fiction, but truth, yes, even that it is a sacred record of history.
14. In fact, your book must fulfill Bible prophecies; even in the exact manner in which it shall come forth, to whom given, its purpose and accomplishments (Respectively-Psalms 85:10-11, Isaih 29:11-14, Ezekial 37:18-21, etc.)
15. You must publish it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, declaring it to be the Word of God.
16. You must include with the record itself, the marvelous promise; "And when ye shall recieve these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God the Enternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, He will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost" -Mor 3:5
17. Tens and hundreds of thousands must bear record to the world for the next 145 years that they know the record to be true, because they put the "promise" to the test and found it to be true, the truth manifested to them by the power of the Holy Ghost.
18. Thousands of great men, intellectual giants, and scholars must subscribe discipleship to the record and its movement even to the point of laying down their own lives for it.
19. Your descriptions of the culture and people in these civilizations of which you will write include, the manner of their written and spoken languages, type of buildings, geographic locations, governmental types, monetary system, types of tools and materials used, and many other facts completely unknown to the rest of the world.
20. There can be no flaw whatsoever in the entire record.
21. Yet, you must not make an absurd, impossible, or contradictory statement.
22. Even so, many of the facts, ideas, and statements given us as truth in your record must be entirely inconsistent, even the direct opposite of the prevailing beliefs of the world where very little is claimed to be known about these civilizations and their 1000 years of history.
23. You must invite the ablest scholars and experts to examine the text with care. You must strive diligently to see that your book gets into the hands of all those most eager to prove it a forgery and who are most competent to expose and flaw in it.
24. Through investigation, scientific evidence, and archaeological discoveries for the next 150+ years must verify your claims and prove even the minutest details of your history to be perfectly true, even to the types of roads they built.
25. After 150+ years of analysis, no claim or fact in the book is disproven, but all is vindicated. Other theories and ideas as to its origin, rise, and fall, leaving your claims as the only possible ones.
26. Internal and external prophecies must be confirmed and fulfilled in the next 150 years.
27. Three honest, accreditable witnesses must testify to the whole world that an angel from heaven appeared to them and showed them the ancient records from which you claim your record is translated. These three witnesses must never deny their testimony, not even upon their death bed.
28. You must call out of heaven the voice of the Redeemer to declare to the three witnesses that your record is true and that it is their responsibility to hear the testimony. They must handle and feel the engravings on the plates, and bear record of it. Again, they can never deny their testimony.
29. Eight other witnesses must testify to the world that they saw the ancient records in broad daylight and they that handled them and felt the engravings on the record.
30. The first three and the second eight witnesses must bear their testimony not for profit or gain, but under great personal sacrafice and severe persecution, even to their death.
31. You must find someone to finance your book with the understanding that neither he nor you will ever receive and monetary renumeration from it. You must sell the book at the cost of, or less than the cost of, its production value.
32. You must tell the world that the written record you have translated from was engraven gold plates, even though up until the time you make the claim, no one has ever found anywhere in past history any civilization using gold as a method of keeping records, and not until about 100 years later were any similar engraven gold plates found.
33. Finally, after suffering persecution and revilement for 20 years after you finish the book, you must willingly give your own life for your testimony that the record is from God. All the time you never make a profit or any other type of personal gain save it be your testimony of the work you brought forth.
Surely, no one without God's help could produce a similar record and comply with all of the above conditions. Wouldn't you say that Joseph Smith was indeed a man of good and that he was an instrument in God's hands to bring forth such a record?"Discipleship is not a spectator sport. We cannot expect to experience the blessing of faith by standing inactive on the sidelines any more than we can experience the benefits of health by sitting on a sofa watching sporting events on television and giving advice to the athletes. And yet for some, “spectator discipleship” is a preferred if not primary way of worshipping." -Pres. UchtdorfComment
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chuckle? That kind of logic scares me. This is what my girls will get when they start seminary? I might have to volunteer.Originally posted by Moliere View PostDio perdona tante cose per un’opera di misericordia
God forgives many things for an act of mercyAlessandro Manzoni
Knock it off. This board has enough problems without a dose of middle-age lechery.
pelagiusComment
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Playing the recording of Hugh B Brown's Profile of a Prophet would have been more effective. And honest.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2At least the Big Ten went after a big-time addition in Nebraska; the Pac-10 wanted a game so badly, it added Utah
-Berry Trammel, 12/3/10Comment
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Ha, I almost bumped this thread last night!"Wuap's "problem" is that he is smart & principled & committed to a moral course of action. His actions are supposed to reflect his ethical code.
The rest of us rarely bother to think about our actions." --SolonComment
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I'd take you in a heartbeat. It is really not a bad idea to consider when the time comes.Originally posted by pellegrino View PostComment
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Apparently the church is going to show a new video sometime between the Saturday general sessions of conference. The video is called "Scriptures Legacy" and will depict scenes from the Book of Mormon. Most interesting about the video is that the setting appears to be more in line with the Heartland model than anything in MesoAmerica. Here's some screen captures from the upcoming video:
Link from the Desnews: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8...cy.html?pg=all"Discipleship is not a spectator sport. We cannot expect to experience the blessing of faith by standing inactive on the sidelines any more than we can experience the benefits of health by sitting on a sofa watching sporting events on television and giving advice to the athletes. And yet for some, “spectator discipleship” is a preferred if not primary way of worshipping." -Pres. UchtdorfComment
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Scriptures Legacy? Scriptures? What a clunky name.Originally posted by Moliere View PostApparently the church is going to show a new video sometime between the Saturday general sessions of conference. The video is called "Scriptures Legacy" and will depict scenes from the Book of Mormon. Most interesting about the video is that the setting appears to be more in line with the Heartland model than anything in MesoAmerica. Here's some screen captures from the upcoming video:
Link from the Desnews: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8...cy.html?pg=all
Looks like they got Yanni to play Jesus?Comment
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Yes, indeed...Originally posted by Moliere View PostApparently the church is going to show a new video sometime between the Saturday general sessions of conference. The video is called "Scriptures Legacy" and will depict scenes from the Book of Mormon. Most interesting about the video is that the setting appears to be more in line with the Heartland model than anything in MesoAmerica. Here's some screen captures from the upcoming video:
Link from the Desnews: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8...cy.html?pg=all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
http://puremormonism.blogspot.com/20...of-mormon.html
Not to mention the whole Zelph on a shelf thing."If there is one thing I am, it's always right." -Ted Nugent.
"I honestly believe saying someone is a smart lawyer is damning with faint praise. The smartest people become engineers and scientists." -SU.
"Yet I still see wisdom in that which Uncle Ted posts." -creek.
GIVE 'EM HELL, BRIGHAM!Comment
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Hilarious that they are using Cahokia. I wonder if they realize that Cahokia was built about 1000 years after Jesus Christ appeared in the BOM.Originally posted by Uncle Ted View PostYes, indeed...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
http://puremormonism.blogspot.com/20...of-mormon.html
Not to mention the whole Zelph on a shelf thing.That which may be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence. -C. Hitchens
http://twitter.com/SoonerCougComment
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So does this signal a permanent shift in church teaching? Decades ago the church was preaching the BoM lands were in MesoAmerica...even going to the length of producing that Evidences of the BoM video or whatever it was called that all the old people on this board showed on their missions. Heck, we even called the people in South America lamanites...which I guess you could still claim they could have had some intermingling with the heartland people.
At what point do the BoM tour guides to Mexico and Honduras stop claiming to be showing people the ancient lands of the BoM?"Discipleship is not a spectator sport. We cannot expect to experience the blessing of faith by standing inactive on the sidelines any more than we can experience the benefits of health by sitting on a sofa watching sporting events on television and giving advice to the athletes. And yet for some, “spectator discipleship” is a preferred if not primary way of worshipping." -Pres. UchtdorfComment
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They aren't using Cahokia as it seems the mounds in the video are computer generated. Earthen mounds date back way before the BoM times.Originally posted by SoonerCoug View Post"Discipleship is not a spectator sport. We cannot expect to experience the blessing of faith by standing inactive on the sidelines any more than we can experience the benefits of health by sitting on a sofa watching sporting events on television and giving advice to the athletes. And yet for some, “spectator discipleship” is a preferred if not primary way of worshipping." -Pres. UchtdorfComment
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Sure, but that's small potatoes. In editions of the Book of Mormon between about the 1880s and 1920 (I'd have to look up the exact years) there were footnotes, authored by Orson Pratt, that gave actual locations of Nephite cities and whatnot.Originally posted by Moliere View PostWe all trust our own unorthodoxies.Comment
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