JOSEPH SMITH WAS NOT GETTING REVELATIONS FROM GOD

Like Jesus Christ, the Joseph Smith story makes quite an impression until you find out that occultism and religious impostors were rife in the communities they were part of.

 

Smith claimed to a Prophet of God and to have restored real Christianity. The truth of Mormonism is important for you should not be asked to validate somebody committing to a god who is not there. The Mormon God is a man of flesh and bone. And there is the dedication of missionaries where they waste two years of their lives. And there is the tithing. There is the greed of the Church.

 

JOSEPH SMITH AS A PROPHET by Richard Packham is worth thinking about. www.exmormon.org/prophet.htm

 

It refutes the Mormon claim that Smith was a real prophet of God. The Mormons accept the validity of Ezekiel 12:21-28 which says that if a prophecy is too long in being fulfilled then it is a false prophecy. A prophecy will come true by chance given long enough. Smith made many prophecies that have not come true yet so he was a false prophet. By the same criteria, the Old Testament prophets failed and the Christian claim that they predicted Jesus and his life by the power of God is false for even if the prophecies did come true it was not God that was behind it.

 

Doctrine and Covenants 1:37 pledges that every word prophesised by Smith will come true for God has spoken.

 

On January 4th 1833 Smith predicted by the authority of Jesus that there were people then living who would see the twelve tribes of Israel gathered to Missouri. This never happened. Slaves did not rise up and cause a war as he predicted in Doctrine and Covenants 87. God told Smith that the communism practiced by his Church would never be done away and would still be done when he comes again (Doctrine and Covenants 104). The Mormon Church dropped the communism causing minor schisms on the basis that the Church could no longer be the true Church for doing that.

 

Jerald and Sandra Tanner provided loads of material showing that Smith and his Church were actually human constructs and that lots of lies were put into God's mouth. They produced Mormonism, Shadow or Reality? This is one of the best resources on the real truth about Mormonism. A pathetic Mormon response can be found at www.xmission.com/~country/reason/ldshist1.htm

 

This page shows plainly the harm that the Christian Church in general is doing with its rotten Bible for the evil commanded by God in the Bible is defended on the basis that it has a purpose known to God and this is used to justify the terrible doctrines such as polygamy that the Mormons used to live out. The page does what all apologists for religion do. They ignore the major problems and nitpicks on rather minor errors in the hope of showing the critics to be not worth listening to. For example, the Tanners believed that Joseph Smith copied his father’s story of a dream he had in 1811 into the Book of Mormon as the dream of Lehi because Joseph’s mother Lucy wrote about the dream in 1845 and the two were identical in all serious points. The page says that Lucy Smith simply filled in her memory of her husband’s dream subconsciously from the Book of Mormon. But she had family and friends to help her remember. The page says that since the Book of Mormon was written first and she was writing 15 years later it is wrong to say that the author of the Book of Mormon was the one doing the copying. But how do you know? It is still most probable that the Tanners are right. If it is not then we still have no reason to take one side or the other. Anyway, what about the more serious objections to the Book of Mormon that the Tanners made? The page is padded out with nitpicking.

 

The page says that since the Temple ceremony of the Mormons, rites which the Prophet said were revealed by God to give you the fullest glory with him, has many elements in it like Masonry that Smith did not borrow from Masonry for Masonry might have been partly divinely inspired. This denies Occam’s Razor, stick to the simplest explanation and that is that Smith stole Masonic rites. With the logic of the page you could say the book or song you got caught plagiarising was not copied on purpose but somebody must have telepathically put the words of an existing song and the music into your unsuspecting mind.

 

Smith produced the Book of Abraham and claimed he translated it from Egyptian characters on ancient papyri. www.mormonstudies.com/seer2.htm 

 

When Smith translated the book of Abraham he invented hieroglyphics where there was a piece missing from the papyri. The characters Smith added make no sense to translators. Yet he translated these imaginary hieroglyphics! His mother and close associate David Whitmer spoke of Joseph copying characters of the gold plates of the Book of Mormon before he translated and that like the Book of Abraham Smith often produced two lines in the manuscript with the translation of a single character which shows that the whole Book of Mormon thing was a hoax.

 

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

 

A GATHERING OF SAINTS, Robert Lindsay, Corgi, London, 1990

 

A MARVELLOUS WORK AND A WONDER, LeGrand Richards, Deseret Books, Utah, 1976

 

AN ADDRESS TO ALL BELIEVERS IN CHRIST, David Whitmer, Board of Publications of The Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, Lacy Road, Independence, Missouri

 

ARE THE MORMON SCRIPTURES RELIABLE? Harry L Ropp, IVP, Illinois, 1987

 

ASK YOUR BISHOP, Ira T Ransom, 317 W 7th South, Brigham City, UT 84302

 

CHANGES IN JOSEPH SMITH’S HISTORY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1965

 

CHANGING OF THE REVELATIONS, Apostle Daniel McGregor, Church of Christ, Independence, Missouri

GOD’S WORD FINAL INFALLIBLE AND FOREVER, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985

 

CONCISE GUIDE TO TODAY’S RELIGIONS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1983

 

HOW TO ANSWER A MORMON, Robert A Morey, Bethany House Publishers, Minnesota, 1983

 

JOSEPH SMITH AND MONEY DIGGING, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1970

 

JOSEPH SMITH’S BAINBRIDGE NY COURT TRIALS, Wesley P Walters, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Salt Lake City, 1977

 

LARSON’S BOOK OF CULTS, Bob Larson, Tyndale, Wheaton, Illinois, 1988

 

MORMONISM SHADOW OR REALITY? Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1972

 

MORMONISM, AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978

 

MORMONISM, MAGIC AND MASONRY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1988

 

MORMONISM, MAMA AND ME, Thelma Geer, Calvary Missionary Press, Arizona, 1983

 

MORMONISM, THE PROPHET, THE BOOK AND THE CULT, Peter Bartley, Veritas, Dublin, 1989

 

NEW LIGHT ON MORMON ORIGINS, Rev Wesley P Walters, Utah Christian Tract Society, 1967

 

NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY, Fawn M Brodie, Vintage, New York, 1995

 

SOME MODERN FAITHS, Maurice C Burrell and J Stafford Wright, IVP, Leics, 1988

 

THE BOOK OF COMMANDMENTS, Church of Christ, Temple Lot, Independence, Missouri, 1995

 

THE BOOK OF MORMON, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Deseret Enterprises Ltd, Manchester, UK, 1972

 

THE CASE AGAINST MORMONISM, VOL 2, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1968  

 

THE FACTS OF MORMONISM ARE STRANGER THAN FICTION, Charles Crane and J Edward Decker, Christian Information Outreach, Kent, 1982

 

THE HUMAN ORIGIN OF THE BOOK OF MORMON, Wesley P Walters, Ex-Mormons for Jesus, Florida 1979

 

WHY THE CHURCH OF CHRIST WAS ESTABLISHED ANEW IN 1929?, Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, Independence, Missouri

 

 

THE WEB

 

www.mormonthink.com 

 

FULFILLED PROPHECIES OF JOSEPH SMITH

www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_prophecies.shtml

 

THE BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES

www.exmormon.org/file9.htm

Excellent refutation of the claims of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon

 

BY HIS OWN HAND ON PAPYRUS, Charles Larson

At Mormons in Transition Website www.irr.org

 

MORE PROBLEMS WITH THE FIRST VISION, ANSWERING DR CLANDESTINE, Jerald and Sandra Tanner

www.xmission.com/~country/reason/clndst10.htm

 

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS WITH THE MORMON CONCEPT OF GOD, Francis J Beckwith,

www.equip.org/free/DM410.htm

 

Barry R Bickmore

www.geocities.com/Athens/parthenon/2671/EC.html

 

MORMON SCHOLARSHIP, APOLOGETICS AND EVANGELICAL NEGLECT, Carl Mosser and Paul Owen,

 www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/cpoint10-2.html#mosserowen

 

BOOK OF MORMON QUESTIONS

www.lds-mormon.com/bookofmormonquestions.shtml

 

MORMONISM UNVAILED: MORE EVIDENCE THAT IT IS TRUE. Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry

 www.carm.org/lds/unveiled_defended.htm

 

THE ABRIDGEMENT OF D&C 137

 www.saintsalive./com/mormonism/falseprophetjs/htm

 

THE BOOK OF MORMON: ONE TOO MANY M’S Stephen Van Eck

 www.infidels.org/library/modern/stephen_eck/toomany.html

 

MORMON FARMS

www.xmission.com~country/reason/farms_1.htm

by Jerald and Sandra Tanner. Gathers evidence that indicates that it was possible that Smith was insane and had manic depression.

 

DR CHARLES ANTHON RE AUTHENTICITY OF WRITING SAMPLES ALLEGEDLY COPIED FROM THE GOLDEN PLATES

www.mormonism-web.com/anthon.htm

 

INTERVIEW OF MARTIN HARRIS

www.xmission.com/~research/about/docum4.htm

 

COMMENTS ON THE BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES: A RESPONSE TO JERALD AND SANDRA TANNER

www.mormons.org/response/bom/witnesses_Roper.htm

A ridiculous rebuttal that has been taken into account for this book and refuted.

 

FACTS ON THE BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES, PART 1

 

www.irr.org/mit/bomwit1.html

Excellent refutation of the reliability of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon

 

THE STOLEN MANUSCRIPT

www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bom_early_problems/goldenbible_stolenmanuscript.htm