EVIDENCE FOR THE MORMON FAITH BEING FROM GOD

The Mormon Church thinks that the expression “their souls did expand” in Alma 5:9 is so odd that it could not have been invented by Joseph Smith. The expression appears in Ugaritic and Akkadian sources. It’s Semitic. But it is not much good as evidence for the Germans use the same expression. The Book of Mormon makes it clear that the expression means rejoicing. We must remember that in Christianity heart and soul are sometimes used interchangeably. An open heart full of joy and generosity might have made the fairly simple Joseph to think you could say the same of a soul thus he translated this into fancy King James Version language so it became “their souls did expand”. It evidently means their hearts overflowed or expanded with joy. Smith must have heard puppy loves saying their hearts would burst if they loved any more? And all grammatical anomalies in the way a person writes can be matched up to some ancient expression.

 

1 Nephi 2:9 supposedly says that the sea is a fountain of waters which is a Near Eastern expression Smith did not know about. So the Church says. But when you look at the verse you see that it was plagiarised from a verse in the gospel of John which speaks of a fountain of living waters. It was just a coincidence.

 

Pity the Church never points out the blunders like 3 Nephi 13:13 having Jesus teaching the Lord’s Prayer and saying, “But deliver us from evil”, while the correct translation is, “Deliver us from the evil one”. The Book of Mormon just used the incorrect version that was used in all Churches. Other blunders are Jesus using words like raca and mammon which he used in Palestine in America to a nation that would not have known what he meant.

 

Another Mormon boast is that at Qumran the ideas of baptism and several doctrines similar to Christianity existed even before Christ meaning that the Book of Mormon is proved plausible when it says that explicit knowledge of Christianity existed before Jesus came in ancient America. But the similarities are naturally explicable. For example, baptism was suggested in the Law of Moses when it prescribed washing for uncleanness. The fact that paganism went further than the Jews of Qumran at being closer to Christianity says a lot. There is a huge difference between any prophecy in the Old Testament, and any parallel to Christianity in the preceding religions and the too clear fore-knowledge of Christ and his works that exists in the Book of Mormon.

 

The Mormons say nowadays that they believe every verse of the Bible. They know fine well that the Church of Rome would not have removed the evidence of the clear knowledge of Christ among the Jews before he came from the Bible and yet it is absent from it.

 

If you compare the Bible with the Book of Mormon it shows that the prophecies in the Book of Mormon closely match many verses from the New Testament. These Book of Mormon portions then had to have been copied from the Bible by Joseph Smith.

 

The Mormon Church says that a line from the Book of Enoch was quoted in the Book of Mormon before Enoch was discovered. But the Church translates the Enoch verse in question in exactly the same English wording as the Book of Mormon has. So the meaning is the same in both books but the Church translates Enoch to match the Book of Mormon perfectly and that is dishonest. You could use that trick to prove that Shakespeare was quoting Stephen King. The Book of Mormon does not even claim to be quoting and it is unfair of the Mormons to say it is quoting. And how would believers in ancient America be able to quote from books written in other parts of the world that they had no contact with? The Book of Mormon never said that it was quoting Enoch!

 

The Mormon Church which believes that it is the restoration of the true Church of Jesus Christ says that when Jesus said two thousand years ago that the gates of Hell would never prevail against his Church he meant the Church would never fail but did not rule out men failing to keep up the Church and falling away. So that allows them to say they can believe what Jesus said and still maintain their traditional doctrine that the Churches have all apostatised from the true faith. In context, Jesus said that he was founding his Church on a rock which was certainly the faith of Peter but not Peter himself and this Church would never die meaning that this community that holds the faith of the rock will never die. But it could exist in Heaven not on earth when the earth apostatises so it does not promise that the Church will always exist on earth.

 

In the Jeff Lindsay pages LDS FAQ, The Restoration, we read many things that cannot be true.

 

The Mormon Church assumes that Matthew 13 with the parable of the sower says that the Church founded by Christ would apostatise totally. Hugh Nibley the Mormon apologist says that the parable which starts off by saying some seeds were killed by the sun for having no root and others fell among thorns and failed to grow and others brought forth great abundance describes three separate eras. The last era is the seed growing after the Church is recovered from its apostate condition. But there is no hint of this three eras stuff at all in the parable. It says the seed was sowed once and the three things that happened to it. For the Mormons to be right there would need to have been new seed sown for the third era. The Mormons think that the parable of the vineyard in Luke 20 predicts the destruction of the faith of the Church but it only says that Israel will reject the son and its privileges will be given to new nations.

 

Polycarp said the light went out when the apostles died but he only means that the era of revelation had closed for he certainly did not think of himself as an apostate. But the Mormons say he meant the Church apostatised soon as they died. Jesus did say the Church would not stay loyal but he did say a handful would stay true.

 

The Gospel of John makes it clear that though it wants people to believe in Jesus the apostasy had already happened for though Jesus tried to establish a Church it kept failing. Even the Mormons who use John to prove the Christian Church left the faith don’t go that far for they want to believe in the apostles. But Jesus himself in John complains that despite his following and baptising nobody believes in him (3:32). We know he meant the apostles for the gospel portrays them as traitors. No effort was made to show they had to be exceptions. The believers only believed in his powers but not in what he said (John 2:23-25; 6:36). The gospel says that the apostles will remember the sayings of Jesus but never says they will believe in them. Some of the apostles were brothers of Jesus and John says his own brethren did not believe in him (7:5). It does not say the apostle ones were exceptions. It does not say some of his brothers. It just says his brothers. John 14:7 accuses the apostles of apostasy. Jesus said he was the light of the world as long as he was in the world (John 9:5). But the light had to be transmitted through the apostles. He was saying when he would die the light would be extinguished. The Mormons accept the pessimism of St John’s gospel and then they are so positive about their own huge cult. Surely if loyalty is so difficult and unnatural then chances are the Mormon Church is apostate?

 

In Matthew 17:22 Jesus told the disciples that they would long to see Jesus just for one day again in the future and learn from him and it would not happen and then he warned because of this they must not run after other Christs. They would only want a new Christ and to learn from him if they had departed from the old one.

 

The Mormon Church has no business using Isaiah 24:5,6 which says that the whole earth lies destroyed and only a few men are left after a destruction by fire which God has sent because of transgression and because the covenant has not been kept as evidence of apostasy for it has not been fulfilled yet. Also, no religion should be allowed to incite the Osama Bin Ladens of this world to destroy the planet by fire under the belief that this is God’s will despite the evil example of Jesus who had himself killed for religious reasons.

 

Mormonism is led by apostles. Lindsay says that the need for a continued apostolic office in the Church an office of Twelve Apostles was shown when Matthias was pulled in to take the place of Judas in Acts. But the apostles were just for functioning as full-time witnesses to the resurrection and as prophets of God in the full sense. The Mormon apostles have not seen Jesus. There is no evidence that the Mormon Church is right to have twelve apostles.

 

Mormonism says the apostate Church which became Catholicism done away with the office. No apostate Church would have done that had the office existed. It wasn’t in its advantage to. Besides, it followed something that was similar in all essentials with a system of bishops and priests representing the apostles but not being apostles themselves and which regarded itself as beneath them in authority.

 

Mormonism says only validly ordained Mormon priests can baptise. Why did the apostate Church depart from the doctrine that a priesthood alone could confer water baptism for the Church loved priestcraft and the power it brought? The Mormon Church holds that this priesthood power is of supreme value in the Church and the main part of the restoration of the gospel. Even the Book of Mormon is no use without it. So the priesthood then is more important than the Book of Mormon. John the Baptist supposedly ordained Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to a priesthood which Smith to Cowdery’s horror later said was the Aaronic Priesthood for he wanted to introduce a new priesthood called the Melchizidek priesthood. Cowdery said it was just the priesthood not Aaronic or Melchizidek priests and that there could be no new Aaronic priests for that was a mimic of the Aaronic priests of the Bible who had to belong to the tribe of Levi. Later Peter, James and John ordained them to the Melchizedek priesthood. Then why do we not have a stronger and better in quality and quantity witness to these events than what we have? The Book of Mormon speaks of priests but it does not say that they have to be ordained by an apostolic succession – that is, nobody can ordain a priest but a priest. Why could we not have the neighbours seeing three men laying their hands on them but not knowing that they were supernatural beings? Why does God who supposedly does not want to force people to believe not present the evidence to some in a natural way – perhaps by preventing their eyes from seeing the glory - so that they do not know that something supernatural has happened though it has? If God gave as much evidence for Mormonism as Mormons say then why could he not give more in the important things instead of scattering it about?

 

Isaiah 2 is supposed to predict the Mormon Church headquartered in the Rocky Mountains! To read the prophecy is enough to show how improbable that is!

 

It is a disgrace that the Mormon faith regards the following as divinely inspired: "Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ...should come among the Jews, among those who are the more wicked part of the world; and they shall crucify him...and there is none other nation on earth that would crucify their God?" (2 Nephi 10:3). "For I, Nephi, have not taught them many things concerning the manner of the Jews; for their works were works of darkness, and their doings were doings of abominations" (2 Nephi 25:2). That is pure anti-semitism and should not be tolerated.