A Mormon View of Death...

Taken from: LDS.org

SALT LAKE CITY 12 February 2008

“If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14). So inquired the anguished Job. On this one fundamental question hang much of the hopes and fears of mankind. And how one answers it will largely determine not only how one approaches death but also how one lives life.

The passing of President Gordon B. Hinckley has moved Latter-day Saints to reflect more deeply upon the meaning of death and its implications for how we live our lives. Death is not the final stop on life’s path but a mere gateway that leads to an eternal course that we continually shape by our choices. President Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles likened the long journey of human life to “a grand three-act play” in which the first act is a previous pre-mortal existence with God, the second act is the trial of this mortal life, and the third act is a glorious future of eternity. Such a broad vision of life endows each moment with eternal significance.

During President Hinckley’s recent funeral, the choir sang a hymn that he himself composed titled “What Is This Thing That Men Call Death?” There is no doubt how he answered Job’s question. Echoing his typical brightness and optimism, the hymn proclaims that death “’Tis not the end but genesis of better worlds and greater light.”

Accordingly, Mormon funerals are typically marked by an atmosphere of hopefulness and peace. They generally are not burdened by the inconsolable grief and despair so often seen in other funerals. Latter-day Saints who mourn the death of loved ones are lightened by the assurance and understanding that the gospel of Jesus Christ offers. In addition, some might be surprised by the lack of formal ritual in these funerals. The commemoration service is conducted by a lay minister and features heartfelt tributes and comforting music. Moreover, the basic format, tone and length of President Hinckley’s funeral are typical of what might be seen in the funerals of regular Church members.

Regarding the undaunted way in which Latter-day Saints confront death, well-known literary scholar Harold Bloom proclaimed the following: “What is the essence of religion? … Religion rises inevitably from our apprehension of our own death. To give meaning to meaninglessness is the endless quest of all religion. … Of all religions that I know, the one that most vehemently and persuasively defies and denies the reality of death is the original Mormonism of the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator Joseph Smith.”

Most important, this affirmation of life in the face of death arises from faith in God’s abundant mercy. Joseph Smith taught that God is “more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.” It is on such a foundation that the fears of death can be reconciled with the hopes of life

The Prophet Joseph Smith's vision...

"Great was the Prophet Joseph Smith's vision. It encompassed all
the peoples of mankind, wherever they live, and all generations who have
walked the earth and passed on. How can anyone, past or present, speak
against him except out of ignorance? They have not tasted of his words,
they have not pondered about him, nor prayed about him. As one who has done
these things, I add my own words of testimony that he was and is a prophet
of God, raised up as an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to usher in
a new and final gospel dispensation. Of the Prophet Joseph Smith, we could
say:

" 'When a man gives his life for the cause he has
advocated, he meets the highest test of his honesty and sincerity that his
own or any future generation can in fairness ask. When he dies for the
testimony he has borne, all malicious tongues should ever after be silent,
and all voices hushed in reverence before a sacrifice so complete.'
(Ezra Dalby, manuscript, Dec. 12, 1926.)"

Well written, well said, needs to be read......

I borrowed this from the link below.......this was so well written and so well said, that I just had to share it. The highlights are my own.

http://www.uncorrelated.com/2008/02/total_crap.html


For Mormons, Mr. O'Donnell's comments were a rallying cry. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are taught not to argue with outsiders over faith. But as criticism of their church rose to new heights during the campaign, they took on their antagonists like never before, in a wave of activism encouraged by church leadership.

This is complete, total, unmitigated crap. None of it ever happened. 99.9% of LDS church members never heard of Lawrence O'Donnell, don't know what he said and certainly didn't" rally. There have been no, none, zero statements by church leadership to church members about those statements or any others or any mention at all of the political race--as consistent with LDS church policy. There is no wave of activism other than the normal public relations activities and proselyting activities

Mormon leaders and church members say they were initially unprepared for the intensity of attacks, which many say were unprecedented in modern times. The attacks, they say, are a sign that their long struggle for wide acceptance in America is far from over, despite global church expansion and prosperity.

More total crap.

The LDS church has endured consistent, unremitting, prolonged, intense attacks and hatred since the church was organized in the early 19th century. Church members were chased out of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois at gunpoint. The federal government went to war against the church, occupied the Utah territory, imprisoned it leaders and threatened to confiscate its temples (can you imagine the U.S. military confiscating the Dome of the Rock mosque?). Anti-Mormon literature, films, tapes, websites, discussion lists, groups, blogs didn't suddenly spring up since the Romney campaign was announced--the mainstream media simply got around to noticing them.

This idea the the church is struggling for mainstream acceptance is part of the liberal media narrative about the church. The church itself is not looking at all to be part of the mainstream, it wants to be the mainstream. Does this surprise you? Isn't this the goal of any ideology? Don't socialists work to be the mainstream? Don't Evangelicals work to be the mainstream? The LDS church doesn't have 100,000 full time missionaries so that it can adapt to mainstream thought and practices, but rather to proselyte its own principles and culture.

It is precisely because it doesn't want to be part of the mainstream, that it generates such intense opposition from some very insecure Evangelicals. And why shouldn't they be? For a "wacky religion" they sure are kicking butt and taking names aren't they? Wealthy, successful, growing and accepted in the highest ranks of corporate America, politics and academia. I doubt the dynamic was any better represented than with Huckabee, the pinnacle of Evangelical social achievement, and Mitt Romney, one of many highly successful LDS business people and political figures.

Romney was in Huckabee's way. Mormons are in the way of Evangelical Protestantism. Its as simple as that, and its always been like that, and it will always be this way.

On the Internet, the Romney bid prompted an outpouring of broadsides against Mormonism from both the secular and religious worlds. Evangelical Christian speakers who consider it their mission to criticize Mormon beliefs lectured to church congregations across the country. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the Catholic journal First Things, wrote that a Mormon presidency would threaten Christian faiths. Atheist author Christopher Hitchens called Mormonism "a mad cult" on Slate.com, and Bill Keller, a former convict who runs an online ministry in Florida, told a national radio audience that a vote for Mr. Romney was a vote for Satan.

"It seems like it's been open season on Mormons," says Marvin Perkins, a Los Angeles Mormon Church member who lectures about the history of blacks in the church.

Romney's campaign represented a proportionally greater threat and thus elicited a more panicked response, but the only thing about the song that changed was its volume. The reality is that Romney got 4,000,000 votes and McCain got 4,700,000, which suggests to me that Mormons are not the bogeymen the liberal media would like them to be.

There is no question that he scared a lot of the inbred chicken pluckers in the rural south, but they were just as suspicious of Mitt's yankee roots as they were his Mormonism. Other people's success scares these people, which is why they ran around in sheets and lynched black people after the civil war. Notably, the urban, better educated, upwardly mobile Evangelicals were happy to vote for Mitt--because they weren't threatened by him.

For the sake of fairness, Mormons have their inbred turkey-plucking contingent as well, but the church is working with those people. Pastor Huckabee just exploited their unchristian hatred.

Ultimately, the LDS church takes the attitude that people can say whatever they want as long as they spell the name right.

Larry Miller, owner of the Utah Jazz, local entertainment and automotive magnate, was interviewed by a local television station about his remembrances of the late LDS church president, Gordon Hinckley. Miller went to see Hinckley (before he was church president) for advice about purchasing the Jazz franchise. Apparently Hinckley's only comment was that "it would be good for the church". Some ten years later during the Bulls-Jazz championship, Miller got a call on his private cell phone from the triumvirate Mormons refer to as the First Presidency. The congratulated him on the 100+ million viewers that were watching the game, when Hinckley piped up, recalling their earlier conversation, and said, "see I told you..."

Miller went on to explain that what Hinckley saw in the prospect of bringing the Jazz to Utah was a unique opportunity for advertising impressions. Every time someone mentions the basketball team, its referred to as the UTAH Jazz, and people automatically associate Utah with Mormons. The Jazz have produced billions of ad impressions for the church, and Gordon saw, and pronounced it good.

The LDS church is a very sophisticated operation. Nine of the fifteen members of their highest leadership council have advanced degrees, two thirds of those are PhDs. Four are former University presidents. One has an MD and PhD. Brigham Young Universities MBA program and its accounting program are ranked among the very best in the nation. Mormons don't do "Bob Jones U." and they are very, very clear about their goals.

My point is, the LDS church absolutely loved the Romney campaign. They love Harry Reid for the same reason. The more people hear about the LDS church, the more curious they are going to get and ultimately they have enough confidence in their message that they welcome the scrutiny. What the Journal interprets as defensive measures is actually an effort to capitalize on all the attention.

Reverence for the Bible

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Taken from http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/ :


SALT LAKE CITY 25 January 2008 During the past several years, scholars, religious leaders, journalists and the general public have steadily shown an increased interest in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Much of this attention has been focused on the question of whether it is a Christian faith. Central to this inquiry is the Church’s relationship with the Bible. Many have wondered whether Latter-day Saints believe in the Bible at all. Still others have supposed that the Church uses the Bible only when convenient, while shrugging it off as an inessential part of scriptural canon. With so many conflicting voices participating in this discussion, it may seem difficult to know where the Church stands on this issue.

The truth is that the Church reveres the Bible as a sacred volume of scripture. Latter-day Saints cherish its teachings and engage in a lifelong study of its divine wisdom. Moreover, during worship and instruction services the Bible and its teachings are pondered and discussed. To increase biblical understanding, the Church provides extensive resources and tools: lesson manuals, cross-reference materials, Bible maps, a Bible dictionary, and articles in various magazines. Thus, the Bible is much more than simply a collection of antiquated writings and revelations that have only scant relevance to the modern world. On the contrary, it stands in the center of the Latter-day Saints’ spiritual lives.

In a recent sermon, Church apostle Elder M. Russell Ballard characterized the Bible as the “bedrock of all Christianity” and one of the “pillars” of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Furthermore, he described the Bible as a miracle: “It is a miracle that the Bible’s 4,000 years of sacred and secular history were recorded and preserved by the prophets, apostles, and inspired churchmen. … It is a miracle that the Bible literally contains within its pages the converting, healing Spirit of Christ, which has turned men’s hearts for centuries, leading them to pray, to choose right paths, and to search to find their Savior.” It instills real, tangible power in the lives of Latter-day Saints and offers practical solutions and spiritual guidance that inspire them to overcome challenges and trials.

There is a broad range of approaches within the vast mosaic of biblical interpretation. For example, biblical inerrancy maintains that the Bible is without error and contradiction; biblical infallibility holds that the Bible is free from errors regarding faith and practice but not necessarily science or history; biblical literalism requires a literal interpretation of events and teachings in the Bible and generally discounts allegory and metaphor; and the “Bible as literature” educational approach extols the literary qualities of the Bible but disregards its miraculous elements.

The Church does not strictly subscribe to any of these interpretive approaches. Rather, in the words of Joseph Smith, it regards the Bible to be the word of God, “as far as it is translated correctly” (8^th Article of Faith). Accordingly, Church members believe that during the centuries-long process in which fallible human beings compiled, translated and transcribed the Bible, various errors entered the text. However, this does not override the overwhelming predominance of truth within the Bible. As Elder Ballard noted, “Without the Bible, we would not know of His Church then, nor would we have the fullness of His gospel now.” Part of that fullness is the Bible’s seminal instruction that God reveals Himself to those who seek Him. The Bible is a living invitation to know personally the sacred revelatory experience that fills its pages.

The scriptures, or “standard works,” of the Latter-day Saints comprise the Old Testament and New Testament of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. According to Elder Ballard, these scriptures constitute a “great, indivisible whole” of God’s revealed word that help humankind understand the past, present and future. The great gospel plan contained in these works does not apply to one generation or one people alone but to all of God’s children throughout all time. Thus, in the words of Elder Ballard, “those who think that one part is more important or more true than the other parts are missing some of the beauty and completeness of the canon of ancient scripture.”

During previous periods of time when God organized His church, He added new revelations to pre-existing scripture, forming a connection between believers of the present and believers of the past. For example, the Old Testament book of Isaiah gives shape and meaning to the Gospel of Matthew. The two revelations need not be viewed as rivals competing with each other: the existence of one does not negate the relevance or legitimacy of the other. This ongoing revelation of scripture gives uniformity and continuity to an unfolding gospel narrative and unites people under one standard of doctrine.

Of all the standard works, the Bible remains the best source for an intimate understanding of the character and personality of Jesus Christ during His mortal mission. While the Old Testament offers a prophetic foretelling of that mission, the New Testament provides an unmatched account of the events, experiences, teachings and personal interactions of Christ. The Book of Mormon strengthens and reinforces His teachings through additional witnesses and provides moving accounts of the personal experiences many individuals had with Him. According to Elder Ballard, “The Book of Mormon does not dilute nor diminish nor de-emphasize the Bible. On the contrary, it expands, extends, and exalts it.”

The Name of Joseph Smith Will Continue to Ring with Honor

"A few years ago, I received a letter written by an evangelist who
with diatribe lashed out against the Prophet Joseph Smith, calling him a
wicked imposter, a fraud, a fake, and a deceiver, and declaring that he was
undertaking a campaign to spread his views. Whatever became of his work, I
do not know. It will not have been significant. That kind of work may
topple a few of the weak, but it only strengthens the strong. And long
after that man and others of his kind have gone down to silence, the name
of Joseph Smith will continue to ring with honor and love in the hearts of
an ever-growing band of Latter-day Saints in an
ever-increasing number of nations."

Topic: Joseph Smith

(Gordon B. Hinckley, "Praise to the Man," Ensign, Aug. 1983, 2)

Mormons’ religious views “crazy”.....

This was borrowed from :

http://www.fairblog.org/2008/02/04/asia-times-mormons-religious-views-crazy/

This is from the new FAIR blog that I love - I guess that I am just a closet apologist, but this is typical of the media that the LDS Church has to deal with, yet in spite of these kinds of lies, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to grow stronger. Brigham Young said it best: "Every time they persecute and try to overcome this people, they elevate us, weaken their own hands, and strengthen the hands and arms of this people. And every time they undertake to lessen our number, they increase it."
Discourses of Brigham Young

Now for the lies.............





Here’s a wonderful example of the sort of unbiased media attention coming our way due to Mitt Romney’s White House bid:

In a front-page article the Asia Times, a fairly significant voice in Far East news, their reporter reviews the history and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The primary source material appears to be an article on the Catholic.com apologetic web site entitled “The Wacky World of Joseph Smith,” and the infamous South Park episode “All About Mormons.”

Yes, someone has clearly done their homework.

Here are some of the more amusing examples of what the reporter has discovered about us:

Voters may reject a candidate whose religious views are crazy, for example, someone who thinks he talks to God. [MP: Has the reporter ever heard of “prayer”?] Does Romney believe that he himself will become God, as Mormon doctrine teaches?

* * *

Just what is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly called the Mormons? Joseph Smith Jr, the forger, treasure-hunter, magician, polygamist and self-styled priest-king of the American continent, invented an American version of Europe’s ethnically-founded idolatry. Each European tribe that rebelled against Christianity styled itself the Chosen People. Smith concocted a tale in which Americans actually were the Chosen People, and America was the Promised Land of the ancient Hebrews and Jesus Christ. In short, Smith took to the extremes of fantasy and forgery an impulse towards national self-worship that always lurks somewhere in American Christianity.

* * *

Belief in the Book of Mormon is one of the strangest collective delusions in history. The circumstances of its forgery are transparent and exhaustively documented. After supposedly finding golden tablets composed by the aptly-named Angel Moroni, Smith “translated” 16 pages of them using his treasure-hunting stones. A friend showed the manuscript to his suspicious wife, who hid or destroyed it. Smith could not exactly reproduce the “translation” which he had dictated free-style, and stood in danger of exposure were he to produce a different version. Instead he received a new revelation to translate not those golden tablets, but yet another set of tablets that no one else could see. [MP: Note that the reporter hopeless garbles the details of the early translation attempts. One would hope that getting the basic facts right would be the first step to writing a major article.]

Historians have demonstrated that a sizable chunk of the supposed Book of Mormon was copied from a novel by a certain Reverend Solomon Spalding, who concocted the notion of an ancient Hebrew migration to North America as an entertainment. [MP: For crying out loud, even Fawn Brodie and the Tanners reject the Spaulding theory!]

* * *

If the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a tyranny tempered by incompetence, as the old joke goes, the Mormon Church is a megalomania atrophied by age. Although the Latter Day Saints claim 13 million members, less than one-third are active. Unlike American Christian denominations, the Mormons have had small success in Africa and Asia, the centers of Christian evangelization. As punishment for their sins, the Mormons must live in their promised land in the Rockies. [MP: The reporter pulled the “one-third” figure out of nowhere. He ignores the success we’ve seen in Latin and South America, and in Asian countries like Mongolia. And he fails to note that more Mormons live outside the United States than inside it.]

And so forth.

For all the unintended humor that one can find in this article, it unfortunately gives us a glimpse of what the Latter-day Saint movement is up against in Asia and the world at large. Despite what we think of ourselves, there is still a great deal of misunderstanding driven by misinformation from the popular press.

We have a lot of work ahead of us.

Expanding Our Circle of Love...

"We must strive to manifest the love of Christ, who always sought to
please His Father by doing His will. . . . We must make every effort to
follow His supreme example--to demonstrate such love through our
thoughts, our speech, our actions--in all the things we do and
are. We must not allow pride or vanity, selfishness or personal agendas to
displace our reaching out to others in love. Quite simply and profoundly,
we must first allow ourselves to be encircled by God's love. We do this
best by embracing the Savior's eternal Atonement. Then we can expand
that circle to include our family and all others. Such a circle is indeed
heaven."

Topics: Jesus Christ, love, sharing, example

(Bonnie D. Parkin, "Eternally Encircled in His Love," Ensign, Nov. 2006, 110)