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Mr. Wiggin wrote:
As a young man I was repeatedly taught that dwelling on thoughts about sex – no physical sexual act, mind you, just entertaining sexual thoughts – would make me “spiritually filthy” and “unworthy.”
So, you think that was an incorrect teaching? Why? Do you believe the Bible? Not that you have to, but I’m am wondering.Mr. Wiggin wrote:And then as a middle-aged man, I learned that the ‘Prophet of the Restoration’, Joseph Smith, repeatedly disobeyed the Lord and committed adultery – surely breaking Emma’s heart each time she found out after the fact and humiliating her as he pursued female members, married and single – yet he remained church president, and according to LDS scripture, has been exalted.
Listen to the certitude in your words. You really are convinced that you learned all that, eh? I have read the evidence. I have listened to those who declare what you say, as if it were incontrovertible truth. Yet it is not. It is opinion. What you learned was some spotty evidence and a ton of opinion. They may be right. But for me, it does not correspond with the rest of the evidence available. Reminds me of reading Grant Palmer’s book. (yawn)
Mr. Wiggin wrote:So what’s the point of obedience/compliance to God’s commandments, as per Mormonism, if, according to historical evidence and LDS scripture about JS, it doesn’t matter after death?
Beware what you deem ‘historical evidence’. It is VERY problematic, whether seen from your POV, or the Apologetic POV. If you think you have heard absolute truth at either end of the spectrum, you have likely been deceived.
Mr. Wiggin wrote:Why shouldn’t I have sex with women I desire (the word appears in D&C 132 in relation to virgins)?
Why shouldn’t I smoke cigars, as did JS?
Why shouldn’t I ‘follow the Brethren’ and drink booze (JS did the night before he was killed)?
Good questions all. I see no context whatsoever in your questions, though. Because Brother Brigham chewed tobacco, I should too? Do I have the same circumstances as he did? It’s worth thinking about, Mr. Wiggin.
Mr. Wiggin wrote:Crucially, why be a member of and support, financially and in other ways, a religious organization that would not – and does not to this day – tell the truth?
Truth is a terrible master, MW. Do you really want to rely on that alone, leaving mercy? I tremble to think of it.
Mr. Wiggin wrote:Finally, at the end of the Temple Square tour I asked the young sister missionary if I could see the ‘peep’ stone that JS had used to ‘translate’ the BoM, the one that supernaturally emitted “something resembling parchment”, and his hat that reportedly played a crucial role in the BoM ‘translation’. She looked at me like I was nuts.
Yeah, she was thinking “they’re in the First Presidency’s vault, doesn’t everyone know that?”
HiJolly
Welcome to stage 4, Mr. Wiggin. Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, things get weird. spacious maze wrote:Welcome to stage 4, Mr. Wiggin. Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, things get weird.
ROFL. Jeeze, I needed that. I know, I need to lighten up.😆 😆 😆 …and so true.HiJolly
Mr. Wiggin. Of course you are mostly right. Except when you are angry or disappointed. Being angry and disappointed isn’t nuts or weird or unacceptable. But it’s still wrong. It’s still correctable. It’s still an indication there is a problem inside my own heart.
HiJolly is also right. There may have been more wisdom in what you learned than you are currently focusing on. Hasn’t the church been a great schoolmaster in many ways?
OK. So with that out of the way, I will say again with the others that of course you are in many ways right. Joseph was despicable (and wonderful). The church is despicable (and wonderful). And disappointing (and amazing). And so are you. And so am I. So, how about them Dodgers (just kidding; I gag on sports)? So, you going to stay LDS, stay active, take a break, shop other churches, visit other churches, resign your membership, go on a spiritual retreat, or what? What do you think you will do?
spacious maze wrote:Welcome to stage 4, Mr. Wiggin. Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, things get weird.
ROFL too! Brilliant! Spacious Maze, thank goodness God made funny people who can speak truth too. Excuse me….I think I need to smile on this some more.
Tom Haws wrote:Mr. Wiggin. Of course you are mostly right. Except when you are angry or disappointed.
Being angry and disappointed isn’t nuts or weird or unacceptable. But it’s still wrong. It’s still correctable. It’s still an indication there is a problem inside my own heart.
HiJolly is also right. There may have been more wisdom in what you learned than you are currently focusing on. Hasn’t the church been a great schoolmaster in many ways?
OK. So with that out of the way, I will say again with the others that of course you are in many ways right. Joseph was despicable (and wonderful). The church is despicable (and wonderful). And disappointing (and amazing). And so are you. And so am I. So, how about them Dodgers (just kidding; I gag on sports)? So, you going to stay LDS, stay active, take a break, shop other churches, visit other churches, resign your membership, go on a spiritual retreat, or what? What do you think you will do?
Loved this post too, Tom. Gosh, so many great thinkers here. I teach gospel essentials. Wish all of you could come to my class. What an experience that would be!
[moderator action] Moving this thread to the Support section. It is sort of in between an Introduction and a Support post. Sorry it is already 3 pages of comments, but wow you guys talked a lot in a short period of time.
…from church websites like FamilySearch.org. It is there that people can view a list of plural wives that includes four of the 11 married women whom JS made his plural wives, violating “the principles and doctrines” (see the section summary for D&C 132) of the revelation on polygamy. The word of the Lord (see D&C 132:61) that JS claimed came to him regarding polygamy included the following (emphasis is mine): “And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—
if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.” Eleven married women (that we know of) were vowed to another man; they each belonged “unto” their husband. The Lord could not have been more clear to JS: Stay away from females who do not fit the requirements of this commandment.
For generations, members who have committed adultery have been subjected to the severest form of church discipline: excommunication. Why did JS get off scott-free? Where was the divine revelation to Brigham Young and other Apostles that the president of the church had repeatedly committed adultery and had to be removed from his office and excommunicated? Why did the Lord tolerate JS’ blatant disobedience time and again? Had Jesus not commanded that members of his church were to be perfect even as his Father? Yes, he had. He told JS in several revelations (that became part of the Book of Commandments and later the D&C) how importance obedience was, including the following:
“Who am I that made man, saith the Lord, that will hold him guiltless that obeys not my commandments?” (D&C 58:30)
“And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.” (D&C 59:21)
So where was God’s wrath in relation to church president and adulterer Joseph Smith?
Not only did JS pursue women who were already vowed to their husband in violation of the Lord’s commandment, he repeatedly disobeyed the requirement that “the first [wife] give her consent.” How do we know this to be true?
In the spring of 1841, the Walker family, church members, arrived in Nauvoo. In January 1842, Lydia Walker, the mother, died of malaria, leaving her husband with nine children to care for. In 1843, JS sent widower John Walker away to the eastern States on a two-year mission. He placed most of the Walker children in the homes of church members while John was away, with a notable exception: 16-year-old Lucy Walker was to live in his house. Shortly after John’s departure, daughter Lydia also died (of brain fever). One can only imagine how much the grieving children, having lost their mother and sister, needed their remaining family members to be together. But the will of God (in this case, but not in the case of staying away from married women), according to JS, was more important.
Keeping in mind the historical fact that Mormon polygamy began after teenager Fanny Alger became a servant girl in the Smith home in the early 1830s and she “was unable to conceal the consequences of her celestial relation with the prophet” (reference provided in my last post), guess what happened after young Lucy Walker moved into the house where JS lived?
“While living in the Smith home, Lucy remembers: “In the year 1842 President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me, and said, ‘I have a message for you, I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman.’ My astonishment knew no bounds. This announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me…He asked me if I believed him to be a Prophet of God. ‘Most assuredly I do I replied.’…He fully Explained to me the principle of plural or celestial marriage. Said this principle was again to be restored for the benefit of the human family. That it would prove an everlasting blessing to my father’s house.”
“What do you have to Say?” Joseph asked. “Nothing” Lucy replied, “How could I speak, or what would I say?” Joseph encouraged her to pray: “tempted and tortured beyond endureance until life was not desirable. Oh that the grave would kindly receive me that I might find rest on the bosom of my dear mother…Why – Why Should I be chosen from among thy daughters, Father I am only a child in years and experience. No mother to council; no father near to tell me what to do, in this trying hour. Oh let this bitter cup pass. And thus I prayed in the agony of my soul.”
Joseph told Lucy that the marriage would have to be secret, but that he would acknowledge her as his wife, “beyond the Rocky Mountains”. He then gave Lucy an ultimatum, “It is a command of God to you. I will give you untill to-morrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you.”
“Lucy remembers, “Emma Smith was not present and she did not consent to the marriage; she did not know anything about it at all.” Of the relationship, Lucy said, “It was not a love matter, so to speak, in our affairs, -at least on my part it was not, but simply the giving up of myself as a sacrifice to establish that grand and glorious principle that God had revealed to the world.”’
(ref.
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/23-LucyWalker.htmhttp://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/23-LucyWalker.htm” class=”bbcode_url”> What other evidence is there that JS disobeyed the Lord’s revealed commandment that “the first give her consent”? The ‘divine’ death threat directed at Emma that he wrote on July 12, 1843, just two months after he made 14-year-old Helen Kimball his youngest-yet plural wife (and had sex with the girl, as the mournful poetry she wrote in her diary entries after she married him indicated).
In May and June alone of 1843, JS married young Helen (she too was ‘sold’ on the idea of polygamy via a promise that her marriage to JS – in name only, she was told – would secure eternal salvation for her family, and like Lucy Walker, Helen was given mere hours to make the profoundly life-altering decision), two 17-year-olds, a 19-year-old, two 29-year-olds, and a 58-year-old.
It’s not hard to imagine that long-suffering Emma, church Relief Society president, finally reached her breaking point relative to her husband’s ‘liaisons’ with women and girls. It’s also not hard to imagine that she gave JS an ultimatum: “Get rid of your practice of polygamy or I’m leaving you!” What married woman wouldn’t?
And JS’ response? He wrote down the following on July 12, 1843:
“And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph…And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed.” (D&C 132:52 and 54)
What kind of a ‘Prophet’, having committed adultery at least a dozen times, as the historical evidence and LDS scripture prove, and having probably been confronted by his first wife after repeatedly acting on his “desire to espouse…virgins” (see D&C 132:61) as well as non-virgins/women vowed to their husband, communicates a death threat to the woman he fell in love with years before when he was a young man claiming to have been chosen by God to carry out the most important spiritual work since Jesus Christ eighteen centuries earlier?
The spiritual authority claimed by the Mormon Church and its senior patriarchal leadership for the past 179 years requires Joseph Smith to have demonstrably been “a man of God” who obeyed the word of the Lord. Yet the historical evidence, including data and text on church websites, shows that JS repeatedly disobeyed, and in the most grevious way next to murdering people, according to LDS doctrine and generations of Mormon prophets. What they taught was “true”, right?
What does LDS scripture say about the eternal fate of individuals who deceive and commit adultery?
“And the glory of the telestial is one, even as the glory of the stars is one; for as one star differs from another star in glory, even so differs one from another in glory in the telestial world;”
“These are they who are liars, and sorcerers, and adulterers, and whoremongers, and whosoever loves and makes a lie.” (D&C 76:98 and 103)
Perhaps it takes a special kind of ‘Stage 4’ mind to believe that JS was a ‘true prophet of God’. What much evidence does one have to turn a blind eye to in order to acquire such a mindset?
Quote:Mr. Wiggin:
Perhaps it takes a special kind of ‘Stage 4’ mind to believe that JS was a ‘true prophet of God’. What much evidence does one have to turn a blind eye to in order to acquire such a mindset?
Well, I guess you’re happy where you are. Best wishes to you and your future.
HiJolly
It is my understanding that the church made some errors with regards to “how” sealings should take place at first. Lots of people were “sealed” to Joseph but then I think the practice ceased when they started to understand better how the process was to take place. I think now the process of sealing is like a fine oiled machine. Then it was a brand new tipsy baby. Mr. Wiggin wrote:Perhaps it takes a special kind of ‘Stage 4’ mind to believe that JS was a ‘true prophet of God’. What much evidence does one have to turn a blind eye to in order to acquire such a mindset?
Perhaps. I’m not going to claim I went straight from Stage 3 to Stage 5. I am not sure I am at Stage 5 now, nor will be for a great while. But never at any time have I supposed other than that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Maybe my definition of a prophet just changed fast enough to keep Joseph in the running all along. I do remember that the saying of Moses, “Would God that all his people were prophets,” was with me from quite early.
Joseph Smith made grave mistakes, and I will stand squarely with you in calling his practice of celestial marriage harmful. That doesn’t mean he had no theophanies as a teen. The evidence of his words tell me he did. Was he called to change the world? Well, yes, his world. Did he restore the gospel? In a sense, yes. Was he a prophet to the end of his life? I don’t know, but it seems possibly so, though the “cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches” choked his fruit to a great degree. Was he a fallen prophet? Was there ever one who wasn’t?
Maybe I am betraying Stage 5 leanings. But my Stage 4 mind says, “Sure. That dangerous guy I wouldn’t trust my kids, my wife, or my salvation with was a prophet.”
I’m locking this thread temporarily while I ask Mr. Wiggin a question privately. Just wanted everyone to know why it is now locked.
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