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Should Mormons be baptizing Jews?

Pah

Uber all member
Overzealous Mormons continue to baptize Jews
Item 7732 • Posted: Fri, Jul. 02 2004 • Weblogged by ReligionNewsBlog

Jerusalem Post (Israel), July 1, 2004
http://www.jpost.com
By Abigail Radoszkowicz


Although the Church of Latter-day Saints signed an agreement with Jewish organizations in 1995 not to vicariously baptize those whose descendants have not given their consent – especially not Holocaust victims – the overzealous of the faith continue to do so.

Schelly Talalay Dardashti, who writes the Jewish genealogy column "It's All Relative" for the The Jerusalem Post's Metro supplement, says that whenever she comes across names that shouldn't be there – such as those of her Connecticut cousins – she notifies a Mormon official, who soon writes back that the "inappropriately entered names" have been removed. "But as fast as some names are removed, they are entered in again by others," says Dardashti.

Anne Frank, Golda Meir, the Shah of Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini are among the names found on Mormon lists of the posthumously baptized to the faith.

However, Mormon officials say they remain in full compliance with the 1995 agreement.

"We have actually gone above and beyond," D. Todd Christofferson, a church official involved with the negotiations, told The New York Times.

The church removed the names of Holocaust victims listed before 1995 and continues to instruct its members to avoid baptizing Jews who are not directly related to living Mormons or whose immediate family has not given written consent.

But he said it was not the church's responsibility to monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear.

"We never had in mind that we would, on a continual basis, go in and ferret out the Jewish names," Christofferson said, adding that the labor involved in constantly sifting through an ever-expanding archive, which contains more than 400 million names, would represent an "intolerable burden." Why should Jews care if some Mormons go overboard performing an important rite of their church?

Many see this as disrespect towards the dead, especially Holocaust dead, killed because they were Jewish, explains Dardashti.

For her part, she is worried abut the creation of fraudulent records: "Down the road, the only thing a family history researcher will see – or know, unless they are conversant with the issue – is that their great-great-grandfather was a Mormon, when we all know the person lived and died as a Jew."

"Researcher" here does not mean necessarily a professional historian but someone who has taken up the fast growing hobby of genealogical research.

Some 300 researchers – professionals and amateurs both – will be coming in from abroad to join 400 local attendees at the 24th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, running next Sunday through Friday at Jerusalem's Renaissance Hotel.

Gary Mokotoff, publisher of the international journal of Jewish genealogy Avotaynu, will speak on "The Mormon Jewish Controversy: The Problem that Won't Go Away."

Mokotoff was one of the original members of the first Jewish genealogical society in New York back in the late seventies, of which there are now some 80 around the world.
The Mormon Church
Theologically, Mormonism - the so-called 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' is a cult of Christianity.

Given that the theology and practice of the Mormon Church violates essential Christian doctrines, Mormonism does not represent historical, Biblical Christianity, is not a Christian denomination, and is not in any way part of the Christian church.

Research can lead to a globally extended family. Eitan Shilo found distant cousins from Buenos Aires to Pennsylvania to London. Now he never fails to meet the latter whenever Shilo is in England.

Sometimes it's medical urgency and not curiosity that drives the search for family links. Stanley Diamond, whose decade-long effort lies behind the 3.6 million-entry Jewish Records Indexing-Poland (www.jri-poland.org) will be at the conference to speak on "Combining Genealogical and Family Trait Genetic Research."

Other Jewish genealogical celebrities on hand will include Dr. Karl Skorecki of the Cohanim DNA project, and Dr. Stephen Morse, designer of the Intel 8086 microprocessor which set off the PC revolution 20 years ago.

Morse has developed a search engine to access the huge Ellis Island database with its 22 million immigrant names using just the first letter of a last name or other variables.

The Jewish names are often unwittingly mangled – as when Mendel becomes Menchel – as they are transcribed by mainly Mormon volunteers working from passenger lists, without any training in historical handwriting and without lists of common Jewish names.

From 1921 to 1948 the British Mandate kept the Palestine Gazette that recorded the spanking new Hebrew names of those who had decided to recast their Diaspora monikers. That, along with other data bases such as the translations of all 7,000 gravestones on the Mount of Olives, is included on the CD that conference attendees will receive.

The conference is hosted by the Israel Genealogical Society, the largest of the three genealogical societies that the country boasts.

During the conference, local archives such as Yad Vashem and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People will be open extended hours, with volunteer translators on hand.

Additional links

An Examination of "Baptism for the Dead"

Did Jesus Establish Baptism for The Dead?

Does the Bible Teach Salvation for the Dead?

Research resources on Mormonism
 

dan

Well-Known Member
I'm very aware of this practice and everything behind it, but why this statement?

Given that the theology and practice of the Mormon Church violates essential Christian doctrines, Mormonism does not represent historical, Biblical Christianity, is not a Christian denomination, and is not in any way part of the Christian church.

Is this a paste from another site or a continuation of this article? If it is it seems the author may hold some sort of anymosity towards the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The above statement is an opinion, and if you believe it I'd like to ask for a justification for this inference. I happen to respect the Latt-day Saints very highly and find this sort of bigotry to be highly unfounded and hypocritical. How do back that statement up?
 

Pah

Uber all member
dan said:
I'm very aware of this practice and everything behind it, but why this statement?

Given that the theology and practice of the Mormon Church violates essential Christian doctrines, Mormonism does not represent historical, Biblical Christianity, is not a Christian denomination, and is not in any way part of the Christian church.

Is this a paste from another site or a continuation of this article? If it is it seems the author may hold some sort of anymosity towards the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The above statement is an opinion, and if you believe it I'd like to ask for a justification for this inference. I happen to respect the Latt-day Saints very highly and find this sort of bigotry to be highly unfounded and hypocritical. How do back that statement up?

The link provided goes to the home page of The Jerusalem Post which currently shows the stories for the 5th of July. ReligiousNewsBlog merely reposts the story put out by other sources. When I have been able to check both links, I have found identical writing.

The original article was written by a Jew (or Israeli) and has understandable bias - Mormanism is including ancestural Jews in the Morman faith without the consent and intention of those that died in the Jewish faith. A case may be made that Mormanism is now the largest "Christian" denomination in the world given the size of the genaelogical database stemming from Mormans that submit their ancestural line to the Church.

On the face of it, Mormanism has new, revealed scripture that is not part of the historical Christian canon. That alone should justify the remark

For futher information click here
 

dan

Well-Known Member
What gives you the idea that the canon was closed?

Revelations 22:18? Really? I thought we've been over this. John is talking about "these things" and he refers to them in every single one of his writings (refering to his own personal writings each and every time), so he cannot be refering to the Bible. Revelations was written before any of his other books, so your interpretation renders all his other writings null and void as they fall under your condemning glance. The Bible would not be compiled for another hundred years, and Revelations would not be added until 1547. The Samaritans said the same thing you do for the same reasons, only they condemned all the writings after the Pentetauch (see Deuteronomy 4:2), and Christ condemned them for it. Don't make the saem mistake.

Any other justification for ending God's pattern of prophets and scripture?

Oh, you think Christ was the last prophet? After His ascension there were no more prophets? Read Acts 10:43; 13:1; 15:32; 21:10 and 26:22.

The Bible seems to think there were many more prophets after Christ, so what you're really saying with that article is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not agree with your interpretation of what it means to be Christian; and I hardly see how that justifies saying they "violate essential Christian doctrines." You make sweeping judgments based on your own interpretation of things, and assume it will hold water, but it doesn't. If you'd care to respond to the scriptures and arguments I've introduced I'd be happy to listen, but changing the subject doesn't interest me. No one has ever come up with a response for Rev. 22:18 or the scriptures from Acts. Maybe you'd care to share some other reason for thinking the Mormons are not Christians (according to the Bible, of course, and not your own interpretation of isolated scriptures).

I am very aware of the issue with the Jews; I knew of it well before that article was ever written, and I know what sparked the contraversy to begin with. I have no problem with them wanting to protect the memory of their ancestors, and I have no problem with the rest of that article, but those statements that I quoted reflect a bigoted hypocrisy that is unbecoming of the Christian name.
 

Pah

Uber all member
If you are not Morman, Dan, then you are are in a minority that consider LDS to be full partners with the rest of Christianity. Sorry

"...I hardly see how that justifies saying they "violate essential Christian doctrines..."

It appears you didn't read my link where there is answer to your statement.
 

dan

Well-Known Member
There's actually a very big majority, but you can't see past your bigotry. Just where might the evasive answer to my question be lurking?
 

Pah

Uber all member
dan said:
There's actually a very big majority, but you can't see past your bigotry. Just where might the evasive answer to my question be lurking?

Come on Dan - you know I have no stake in this. It matters very little to me what views the LDS holds nor, in fact, any other sect claiming to know God. The basic premise is wrong

I'm only aware of the charges of heresy against the LDS. Bigot is such a strong label for a particular sect when they all seem defecient. to me.

But, back to the topic. A google search for "mormon heresy" yeilded 9570 results - "mormon apostasy" yeilded 10,800 ( I'm sure some must have been duplicates and some are even in favor ot mormanism)

ReligiousTolerance.org probably does not use either of those words nor does Apologetics Index. - but I'll bet you still haven't read my link http://www.apologeticsindex.org/m04a.html (they have a slew of linked references)
 

dan

Well-Known Member
Yes, I have been there, and I read several links and stopped to make a comment. I started this article about how to show a Mormon that the Bible is good and the Book of Mormon is bad. I read a couple of paragraphs and had to stop. The article is ludicrously misinformed. First, it states that the Bible is translated rom Greek. Only the New Testament is Greek (and not all of it was originally written in Greek). It also says this:

Your Bible--your New American Standard, New International Version, King James, New King James, etc.--is not a translation of a translation of a translation. It's a translation directly from the best Greek manuscripts we possess. It's a direct translation from the Greek to the English, a one-step process. So, they miscast the problem.

This is stupid. The manuscripts ("the BEST manuscripts we possess") were made hundreds of years after the originals were written, so it is impossible to say how many times they were copied and translated. Also, why is there a New King James version of the Bible? Because they found many, many very important errors in the first! Also, Christ did not speak Greek, He spoke Aramaic, so the Greek (even the originals, which no one on earth can get within 300 years of) are translations of translations! THEY miscast the problem?!? This article straight up lies to you! I will now go read more.
 

Pah

Uber all member
dan said:
This is stupid. The manuscripts ("the BEST manuscripts we possess") were made hundreds of years after the originals were written, so it is impossible to say how many times they were copied and translated. Also, why is there a New King James version of the Bible? Because they found many, many very important errors in the first! Also, Christ did not speak Greek, He spoke Aramaic, so the Greek (even the originals, which no one on earth can get within 300 years of) are translations of translations! THEY miscast the problem?!? This article straight up lies to you! I will now go read more.

Right on!!!!

But isn't the Bible still a holy book in the Morman Church?
 

dan

Well-Known Member
From another article:

The "First Vision" story in the form presented to you was unknown until 1838, eighteen years after its alleged occurrence and almost ten years after Smith had begun his missionary efforts. The oldest version of the vision is in Smith's own handwriting, dating from about 1832 (still at least eleven years afterwards).

I guess if a story is more than seven years, four months and eleven days old it is automatically false. I'm gonna make an interesting claim here, and you're welcome to test me: Everything people point out in the Mormon church to discredit it has a parallel event in the Bible. Joseph Smith waited eleven years, huh? How long did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wait? A lot more than eleven years. John waited 65 years. Man, that books gotta be the fakest of all the books in the world. Why did Joseph Smith tell his story that late in the game? There are many different accounts of his first vision. Many people spout many different versions as proof of the inherent fallacy of the claim. They say they have the real version of what happened, and it's false. What does Joe say?

"Owing to the many reports which have been put in circulation by evil-disposed and designing persons, in relation to the rise and progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all of which have been designed by the authors thereof to militate against its character as a church and its progress in the world-I have been induced to write this history, to disabuse the public mind, and to put all inquireres of the truth in possession of the facts."

So he wants to clear up the lies that are being spread by others. Now you understand where your thirty different versions come from?

Biblical correlation? Luke 1:1-3 - "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; it seems good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee"

So, Luke wants to clear up the misunderstandings and lies that were being spread by others. Interesting. How long did he wait? Thirty years? Wow.
 

Pah

Uber all member
dan said:
I shall also repeat -

Yes.

I hope that this was only a crossed post

If the Bible is still sacred scripture in the Morman Church and you "favor" the Mormon Church - why are you "bad-mouthing" the Bible?
 

dan

Well-Known Member
I'm not badmouthing the Bible; I'm badmouthing the imperfect renderings of the Bible that people claim are inspired.
 
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