Did Mormons really strike the first blow?

[nrajeff]

Jeff, just because you like to act like a drama queen doesn't mean everybody else is. I'm not "having a cow" in the sense you imply, but I DO have cows.

Preacher, just because YOU love to act like a jerk, doesn't mean that everyone who notes that all was not well in past iterations of Christendom is "going against the Bible."

Indeed, pointing out problems within it could very well be a case of AFFIRMING the Bible.
You're not playing the part of a good PROTESTANT very well, since they kind of have the patent on pointing out problems within the mainstream. It's kind of what they are famous for, yet here you are playing the part of "defender of the mother church against these heretics who dare to claim that we have a problem."

More like a Torquemada than a Luther. Maybe you should resign from the Protestant Heritage Society before they revoke your membership "with extreme prejudice." :)

[Cow Poke]

Actually, what' going on here is that YOU will continue to think that Smith is the ONLY person who said that Christendom had fallen into disrepair after the Apostolic Era,

That's just goofy for you to say that, Jeff. ANYBODY can make that claim, but it doesn't mean it's true. And nobody "back then" could possibly know what was going on globally.

...when the TRUTH is that Christians with some integrity and honesty were saying it waaaaaay before Smith came long. But it doesn't help your agenda of "We must focus our antagonism only on Smith, and pretend that he's the reason for all our troubles."

Again, just because somebody with integrity and honesty were saying it does not mean they were correct. It could mean it was their honest perception from what they knew from where they were.

It would tear the soul right out of the anti-LDS movement....

OH the DRAMA!

... if it ever actually faced the facts of history and realized that even if Smith and the LDS had never existed, all those other outspoken Christians DID exist, and DID say what they said, and there IS some truth to their observations.

"ALL those outspoken Christians"? You name a FEW who expressed their honest opinions. Why do you put more emphasis on what THEY say than the goofy stuff your LEADERS say from which you have to distance yourselves by "Well, that was not official...."

[rogue06]

Does it make you FEEL BETTER that there were other people mad at Smith for reasons OTHER than his imaginary "first vision"?

Considering his apparent history of getting others to invest in failed treasure hunting schemes* before he supposedly encountered an angel named Moroni I can't imagine why he might have some folks angry with him.








* using seer stones that he put in a stovepipe hat and then obtain information in reflections given off by the stone -- sounding suspiciously like how he is said to have translated the Book of Mormon.

[Cerebrum123]

Preacher, just because YOU love to act like a jerk, doesn't mean that everyone who notes that all was not well in past iterations of Christendom is "going against the Bible."

Indeed, pointing out problems within it could very well be a case of AFFIRMING the Bible.
You're not playing the part of a good PROTESTANT very well, since they kind of have the patent on pointing out problems within the mainstream. It's kind of what they are famous for, yet here you are playing the part of "defender of the mother church against these heretics who dare to claim that we have a problem."

More like a Torquemada than a Luther. Maybe you should resign from the Protestant Heritage Society before they revoke your membership "with extreme prejudice." :)

Jeff, can you give even 1 example where ANY of these men taught something EXPLICITLY against what the Bible actually teaches? Joseph Smith taught things that were completely contradictory to Biblical teachings, and Mormons today still do. THAT is what we mean by "attacking the Bible". Not only that he was saying that his unbiblical teachings were TRUE teachings, and got a lot of people to follow him, but he then called ALL other Christians apostate. Other than say someone like Mohammed(who wasn't a Christian btw), I doubt you are going to find anyone who fits in with what Joseph Smith did.

[Cow Poke]

Preacher, just because YOU love to act like a jerk

Drama! Right on cue.

doesn't mean that everyone who notes that all was not well in past iterations of Christendom is "going against the Bible."

Nor did I ever claim it did.

Indeed, pointing out problems within it could very well be a case of AFFIRMING the Bible.
You're not playing the part of a good PROTESTANT very well

Yes, I should trust your expertise on being a good PROTESTANT. "Trust me, I'm a Mormon!"

[One Bad Pig]

Well, yeah--if you're intent on having a cow over every Christian who has ever done what you're "defining" as "going against the Bible," then you can't stop at just Pastor Wesley, or you're being inconsistent. The "et al" list includes:

Eusebius wrote that after the apostles,

"with our greater freedom a change came over us. We yielded to pride and sloth. We yielded to mutual envy and abuse. We warred upon ourselves as occasion offered, and we used the weapons and the spears of words. Leaders fought with leaders and laity formed factions against laity. Unspeakable hypocrisy and dissimulation traveled to the farthest limits of evil." And Eusebius, referring to "heresies held by leaders of the Church: "Beryllus ... Bishop of Bostra in Arabia, perverted the true doctrine of the Church and tried to bring in ideas alien to the Faith, actually asserting that our Savior and Lord did not pre-exist in His own form of being before He made His home among men, and had no divinity of His own but only the Father's dwelling in Him "and noting "the continued spread of apostasy at high levels under Constantine:

"There was also the unspeakable hypocrisy of men who crept into the Church and who took on the name and the character of Christians ... [Constantine] put his trust in those who said they were Christians and who feigned the utmost affection for him."

http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?tar...es&story_id=10

Bill the Cat has already commented at some length on this article. Further, I've taken a look at your quotes of Eusebius above (which you sloppily copied and conflated from the article). I can't find the first one, and there is no section 1.3.32 of his Ecclesiastical History as referenced by the article. The second quote, about Beryllus, is rather disingenuously taken out of context - after a discussion with Origen which is narrated immediately after the quote, he realized his error and returned to orthodox doctrine.

As far as the third quote goes, those who live in glass houses should not cast stones. If it ever becomes politically expedient to join the LDS, you can be certain that people will do so for that reason. Further, I'd bet a year's worth of paychecks that people have become LDS so they could marry the man/woman of their dreams - hardly a religiously pure motive.

Was Evangelist Peter Gilquist "going against the Bible" when he observed that "Christian Evangelism was failing to change the world "because the church itself had lost its holiness and righteousness" ???

You might want to re-think using this as a broad-brush indictment of orthodox Christianity. Fr. Peter Gilquist is an Orthodox priest, and he was only speaking about the Protestant Evangelical movement.

It would tear the soul right out of the anti-LDS movement if it ever actually faced the facts of history and realized that even if Smith and the LDS had never existed, all those other outspoken Christians DID exist, and DID say what they said, and there IS some truth to their observations.

Find some better props for your assertions than the poorly cited out of context dreck like you gave here before you make such bold pronouncements. Unfortunately for you, I'm quite willing to go digging into actual church history to see why such things were said when they were said.

[nrajeff]

... that he put in a stovepipe hat....

Your source for it being a stovepipe hat is....... ?

[Cow Poke]

Your source for it being a stovepipe hat is....... ?

Probably inaccurate, from Comedy Central.

smith in hat - stovepipe.jpg

This is probably a better likeness....

smith in hat - regular.jpg

Neither, or course, appear to be anything like the "official" version of the translation, which is depicted thusly:

smith translating.jpg

[Bill the Cat]

Your source for it being a stovepipe hat is....... ?

Dan Vogel says that Joseph was known to wear a white stovepipe hat.

[Cow Poke]

Dan Vogel says that Joseph was known to wear a white stovepipe hat.

Hmmmm.... Vogel and Whitmer both.... (David Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ Part 1 (1886))

Wikipedia

Some early-nineteenth-century Americans used seer stones in attempts to gain revelations from God or to find buried treasure. Beginning in the early 1820s, Joseph Smith was paid to act as a "seer" in (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to locate lost items and find precious metals hidden in the earth. Smith's procedure was to place the stone in a white stovepipe hat, put his face over the hat to block the light, and then "see" the necessary information in the stone's reflections.

© source where applicable

WHO KNEW!

[nrajeff]

Wikipedia

......

© source where applicable

YOU ARE BEING SCOLDED by a TWEB member for committing the venial sin of using Wikipedia as a source.

[Cow Poke]

YOU ARE BEING SCOLDED by a TWEB member for committing the venial sin of using Wikipedia as a source.

Well, yeah, but I also gave another source - (David Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ Part 1 (1886))

And the article is well footnoted. If you dispute the notion that there were reports that Smith wore a white stovepipe hat (and some even said he used it for the "translation") I will be more than happy to research it "for real".

Do you dispute that Smith wore a white stovepipe hat, and reportedly used it as part of his "translation" "equipment"?

[Sparko]

YOU ARE BEING SCOLDED by a TWEB member for committing the venial sin of using Wikipedia as a source.

very good. As Wiki says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ten_things_you_may_not_know_about_Wikipedia

We do not expect you to trust us

It is in the nature of an ever-changing work like Wikipedia that, while some articles are of the highest quality of scholarship, others are admittedly complete rubbish.

© source where applicable

If you can't trust wiki about wiki's trustworthiness, who can you trust?

Well me of course. Cuz a pirate never lies.

[rogue06]

Dan Vogel says that Joseph was known to wear a white stovepipe hat.

And coincidentally in 1859 Martin Harris, one of the "Three Witnesses" and who underwrote the first printing of the Book of Mormon, said in his "Mormonism—No. II", Tiffany's Monthly 5 (4):

I was at the house of his father in Manchester, two miles south of Palmyra village, and was picking my teeth with a pin while sitting on the bars. The pin caught in my teeth, and dropped from my fingers into shavings and straw ... We could not find it. I then took Joseph on surprise, and said to him—I said, 'Take your stone.' I had never seen it, and did not know that he had it with him. He had it in his pocket. He took it and placed it in his hat—the old white hat—and placed his face in his hat. I watched him closely to see that he did not look one side; he reached out his hand beyond me on the right, and moved a little stick, and there I saw the pin, which he picked up and gave to me.

He said this seer stone had been "dug from the well of Mason Chase, twenty-four feet from the surface" and was used to find the plates and "see many things to my certain knowledge."

Hiel and Joseph Lewis (IIRC, Emma Smith's cousins) in "Mormon History", Amboy Journal 24 (5): 1 (April 30, 1879) also write of Smith's "peeper stone" and an "old white hat."

They also described Smith's M.O. has a treasure hunter bilking the gullible:

Their digging in several places was in compliance with peeper Smith's revelations, who would attend with his peep-stone in his hat, and his hat drawn over his face, and would tell them how deep they would have to go; but when they would find no trace of the chest of money, he would peep again, and weep like a child, and tell them the enchantment had removed it on account of some sin or thoughtless word; finally the enchantment became so strong that he could not see, and so the business was abandoned. Smith could weep and shed tears in abundance at any time, if he chose.

[Cow Poke]

And coincidentally in 1859 Martin Harris, one of the "Three Witnesses" and who underwrote the first printing of the Book of Mormon, said in his "Mormonism—No. II", Tiffany's Monthly 5 (4):

I was at the house of his father in Manchester, two miles south of Palmyra village, and was picking my teeth with a pin while sitting on the bars. The pin caught in my teeth, and dropped from my fingers into shavings and straw ... We could not find it. I then took Joseph on surprise, and said to him—I said, 'Take your stone.' I had never seen it, and did not know that he had it with him. He had it in his pocket. He took it and placed it in his hat—the old white hat—and placed his face in his hat. I watched him closely to see that he did not look one side; he reached out his hand beyond me on the right, and moved a little stick, and there I saw the pin, which he picked up and gave to me.

He said this seer stone had been "dug from the well of Mason Chase, twenty-four feet from the surface" and was used to find the plates and "see many things to my certain knowledge."

Hiel and Joseph Lewis (IIRC, Emma Smith's cousins) in "Mormon History", Amboy Journal 24 (5): 1 (April 30, 1879) also write of Smith's "peeper stone" and an "old white hat."

They also described Smith's M.O. has a treasure hunter bilking the gullible:

Their digging in several places was in compliance with peeper Smith's revelations, who would attend with his peep-stone in his hat, and his hat drawn over his face, and would tell them how deep they would have to go; but when they would find no trace of the chest of money, he would peep again, and weep like a child, and tell them the enchantment had removed it on account of some sin or thoughtless word; finally the enchantment became so strong that he could not see, and so the business was abandoned. Smith could weep and shed tears in abundance at any time, if he chose.

Seriously, this (tonight) is the first time I've ever heard mention of a "white stovepipe hat" with Smith. Apparently, it's a first for Jeff, too!