mgran wrote:
Most people wouldn't believe that someone is a Christian who thinks Joseph Smith is going to sit at the side of God the Father, and judge the living and the dead, and who also believes that Jesus Christ is the spiritual brother of the devil... not to mention believing that Black and White people are physical manifestations of different classes of angels. Or come to that believe that God the Father was once a human being, and he populated the earth by having lots of babies with his spirit wife... and that humans males can attain to godhood. Not meaning to be rude, just pointing out that calling satan's spirit brother Jesus doesn't make it the actual Jesus of the historical Christian church, or of the Bible.
1. not only men can become gods
2. black and white people are not different classes of angels, black people were cursed with a dark skin (not that they are still cursed)
3. God was not a human on this earth but on another earth.
4. Also, it has been scientifically proven that every single human being is related. Which means that you (and I) are related (however distantly) to one another as well as every other person on the planet. Gandhi and Hitler were both related (most likely very distantly)
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Agreed. Much of LDS doctrine is historically unsubstantiated and contradictory to the Christian Bible. It's amazing to me that Mormons also claim the KJV as holy, authoritative scripture when it does nothing to confirm some of the unique articles of faith within their religion.
I also fail to understand why it is the text of the Book of Mormon would have been hidden for so long had it been true. The OT has accumulated a few scribal errors because of the tradition of copying it over the millennia, yet the overall meaning of it remains intact. Why couldn't the book of Mormon have similarly been widely distributed at the time of its writing--that is, extending beyond the lifetime of Moroni? At least with OT, you had wide distribution of a sacred text that hardly deviated at all from one manuscript to the next. We can even compare the Masoretic Text with the Dead Sea Scrolls to get an idea of its accuracy. No other written book in ancient history has been so well regarded in terms of copying accuracy and number of surviving manuscripts.
The NT has entire collections of books being copied from the early AD 200s, representing one of the shortest times from the actual, recorded historical events to publication with hardly any copying errors worth mentioning.
My point is that if the Bible can be passed down throughout the millennia with little question of its reliability, clearly something God intended, why couldn't the Book of Mormon have had same treatment? Granted, the book is copied with 100% accuracy. But at what expense? That its words and wisdom are completely lost for several generations? If we are, as per the "Great Commission" to "go forth and tell," it makes no sense that an important religious text would have ever been covered up.
The Book of Mormon was hidden until the time was ripe and the world was ready for it
And anyways, what about the Roman Catholic Church that is actually a polytheistic religion (you can pray to any number of saints in addition to God)?