Ask Anything about Me or my Religion (Restored Gospel/Mormonism).

[viole]

I have noticed there are recent posts about Mormonism written by non-members.

Most information shared has misrepresented our actual beliefs

If you really want to know source beliefs from an active Elder of the Church who served a two-year mission in Russia and lives in Utah. I'm all ears. I can answer as much as I have knowledge of about the History of the Church, its doctrine, and the political, cultural, and social environment within highly concentrated LDS populations. (Utah, Idaho, North America, South America)

If you know everything about the Church already, I'm impressed and would like to hear something you think I haven't heard before about my Church so I can confirm if I had heard it before or not.

Oh and if you just have questions about me and why I personally am a member, I will try to answer that as well to the best of my knowledge.

Is that true that you have magic underwear protecting you from bullets, atomic bombs, and all that?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Clara Tea]

Welcome.
RF is a great place to discuss unicorns, you'll fit right in.

Hio Silver, away (Lone Ranger...but riding a unicorn).

 

[Clara Tea]

Are you intentionally trying to cause a debate? Cuz this is not the debate section.

Years ago, my dad took me fishing. My dad was munching popcorn. Distracted, dad started eating bait (fortuneately, it was cheese, not worms). One thing that I learned, that day, was that fish don't bite debaited hooks.

Debates are seldom by one person, and when they are between one person, there is seldom a clear cut victor.

 

[Clara Tea]

Is that true that you have magic underwear protecting you from bullets, atomic bombs, and all that?

Ciao

- viole

Many Latter Day Saints settled in Utah, and some of them, southern Utah, which was hit hard by the atomic tests in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas. As a result, many Latter Day Saint families, despite their aversion to bad chemicals (don't drink coffee, for example), are still suffering horribly from the effects of radiation poisoning. They would have led such a healthy life if people would have just left them alone.

In front of Nobel Laureate, Dr. Fred Reines (Nobel for detecting neutrinos), I speculated that the US government intentionally exposed humans to radiation. I didn't realize that Dr. Reines heard me or that he had been in Manhatten Project, the Bikini island test, and in charge of the Enewetok island nuclear test. I explained that soldiers were ordered into ground zero of the Nevada tests (soldier's hair blew back from the atomic bomb blast before they advanced into it). Dr. Reines said to me "oh, you think that do you?" Dr. Reines eventually forgave me, and helped me work crossword puzzles and sang opera with me.

I now believe that the US military's control of nuclear tests was responsible for nuking America, islanders, and soldiers, and that the scientists were unaware of the scandal.

 

[Colt]

I have noticed there are recent posts about Mormonism written by non-members.

Most information shared has misrepresented our actual beliefs

If you really want to know source beliefs from an active Elder of the Church who served a two-year mission in Russia and lives in Utah. I'm all ears. I can answer as much as I have knowledge of about the History of the Church, its doctrine, and the political, cultural, and social environment within highly concentrated LDS populations. (Utah, Idaho, North America, South America)

If you know everything about the Church already, I'm impressed and would like to hear something you think I haven't heard before about my Church so I can confirm if I had heard it before or not.

Oh and if you just have questions about me and why I personally am a member, I will try to answer that as well to the best of my knowledge.

Do LDS members believe in a hell place of eternal torment?

 

[Jane.Doe]

I have noticed there are recent posts about Mormonism written by non-members.

Most information shared has misrepresented our actual beliefs

If you really want to know source beliefs from an active Elder of the Church who served a two-year mission in Russia and lives in Utah. I'm all ears. I can answer as much as I have knowledge of about the History of the Church, its doctrine, and the political, cultural, and social environment within highly concentrated LDS populations. (Utah, Idaho, North America, South America)

If you know everything about the Church already, I'm impressed and would like to hear something you think I haven't heard before about my Church so I can confirm if I had heard it before or not.

Oh and if you just have questions about me and why I personally am a member, I will try to answer that as well to the best of my knowledge.

This is a really solid thread. Good job @Jacob Samuelson and everyone else. I'm also an LDS Christian and will tackle a few of these questions.

 

[Jane.Doe]

Do LDS members believe in a hell place of eternal torment?

Super short answer: no.

Fuller answer: the place that the wicked go after death is temporary, until until that person repents or the second coming of Christ. Which depending on when a person died "temporary" could be a couple thousand years. We call it "Spiritual Prison". After Christ's Second Coming, the Millennium, and all of those events, the LDS Christian view of the after life is in gist a "good, better, best system". By this point even the most wicked people have acknowledged Christ even if they don't want to give up their sins. They will spend eternity happy beyond their wildest dreams, with some measure of God's light. That is the "good" level and that happiness/glory pales to the highest joy (of those whom have fully embraced Christ) the way the stars pale to the sun.

 

[Jane.Doe]

I only have 1 question:
Do you believe that your Religion is the only way leading to "God" or do you believe that other Paths also lead to "God"

e.g.: Some people eat mainly bread, others eat mainly rice. Some eat vegan, others eat vegetarian or meat etc. But all live many years on it. So, there are many (food) paths all giving us the needed energy

This is actually not a simple answer.

Ultimately, everything that is Good comes from God. For example, when Islam teaches a person to love their neighbor and serve them, that truth is ultimately from God. All faiths have some of God's goodness in them. At the same time, all other faiths have gone astray in some regard.

LDS Christians also believe that a person can convert after they die -- their spirit still carries on after all. So if you lived in China and in 500 BC and never embraced Christ (cause you never heard of Him), that person can now choose to embrace Christ.

 

[Watchmen]

Too bad this isn’t a debate forum.

Are you interested in a debate?

 

[Jane.Doe]

Hi @Clara Tea , I hope you don't mind that I abridge your posts to keep my response pithy.

Mitt Romney: A Dishonest, Dishonorable Man

LDS Christians have all sorts of political beliefs. For example, the recently deceased Harry Reid was also an LDS Christian and held very different political views than Romney. Me (or anyone else) also being a LDS Christian doesn't mean I politically agree with Romney, Reid, or anyone else. And all men (and women) sin.

Many Christians claim that Mormons are not Christians. This is not true, they believe that Jesus visited the Americas before Columbus. Their belief in Jesus makes them Christians. However, they have their own bible.

To clarify, the "Mormon Bible" is the King James Version. The Book of Mormon is not the Bible, rather is viewed as a sister to the Bible. Most Christian denominations have literature besides the Bible they refer to (examples the Creeds, Sacred Tradition, writings of church leaders, etc). Additionally, which books are included in the Bible itself vary from denomination to denomination.

 

[Jane.Doe]

Is that true that you have magic underwear protecting you from bullets, atomic bombs, and all that?

Ciao

- viole

No.

Religious clothing worn by LDS Christians is clothing, nothing magical about it. It's purpose is to help that person remember the promises they made with God. Speaking personally, I actually like the fact that this clothing is worn under your "normal" outer clothes-- it's a private thing, not one I wave around boasting "look how righteous I am!".

 

[stvdv]

I only have 1 question:
Do you believe that your Religion is the only way leading to "God" or do you believe that other Paths also lead to "God"

This is actually not a simple answer.

I thought that my question is really simple and easy to answer, but it seems I thought wrong

LDS Christians also believe that a person can convert after they die -- their spirit still carries on after all. So if you lived in China and in 500 BC and never embraced Christ (cause you never heard of Him), that person can now choose to embrace Christ.

This answer I heard from other Christians too. And this (that person can now choose to embrace Christ) very clearly answers my question I think

LDS seems to believe that e.g. Hinduism on itself is not potent enough to be a Path to "God". Correct me if this statement of mine is wrong. This means that LDS can be called exclusive, whereas Hinduism is inclusive (although there are probably also exclusive individual Hindus of course, but the core of Hinduism is inclusive)

 

[Jane.Doe]

I thought that my question is really simple and easy to answer, but it seems I thought wrong


This answer I heard from other Christians too. And this (that person can now choose to embrace Christ) very clearly answers my question I think

LDS seems to believe that e.g. Hinduism on itself is not potent enough to be a Path to "God". Correct me if this statement of mine is wrong. This means that LDS can be called exclusive, whereas Hinduism is inclusive (although there are probably also exclusive individual Hindus of course, but the core of Hinduism is inclusive)

I stated that is was a complex answer in that LDS Christians are not: "Any path is as good as the other" camp (purely inclusive) or the "unless you believe just as I do you're going to be tortured for eternity" camp (purely exclusive).

 

[PruePhillip]

Arrowheads are generally tied with sinew to wooden arrow shafts. However, in Alaska, native Americans used shells embedded in wood as the projectiles. Arrowheads generally have ears at the back end, to attach the sinew. The ears and edges of the arrowheads are made by wrapping hide over the arrowhead and pressing with a rock or antler until a tiny chip comes off. So, in general, ancient Native Americans didn't glue arrowheads to arrow shafts.

It could be that the New Testament bible was written by psychics. After all, unless they passed statements by all of the apostles verbally (or in writing), they had no way of knowing that info in creating the bible nearly a hundred years after Jesus died when the bible was written.

Obviously, Revelation was written by a psychic.

An iron weapon is vastly superior. And iron is common. All you need is a lump of iron, plenty of
wood or charccoal and you can smelt iron - that is, to extract it from the base material.
Anyone from the European Iron Age could not have helped spread the technology had they
arrived in the New World, just as they couldn't help spread Old World diseases too.

The earliest datable New Testament text is about 55 AD - 25 years after Jesus.
John wrote his Gospel when he was elderly, living in Ephesus.
Mark is considered the earliest Gospel.
Luke wrote his Gospel after writing The Acts.
And Luke went to Rome with Paul, and died there, about early 60's - and Luke was familiar with
Mark and Matthew's Gospels.
None of the New Testament was written in the Second Century.

 

[PruePhillip]

Latter Day Saints believe (as you pointed out) that Europeans came to America. That doesn't seem so strange at all. The Solutrean Hypothesis shows that when a Clovis site was excavated, Clovis artifacts were found. But, digging deeper, a much older and different civilization (called pre-Clovis) was also found in lower strata.

There, pre-Clovis arrowheads were found. They were made by flaking. They were fluted (presumably to let blood leak through, to kill the animal that they hit), and an expert on fluted arrowheads of Europe claim that in 18 different ways, the arrowheads match the technology of the Solutrean civilization of Europe.

The Clovis technology goes back 12,000 years
For Europeans to be in the Americas it would have had to be before agriculture - certainly no tribe
of Israel existed then. The recent research on Sodom and Gomorrah in the Jordan Valley gives us
a date for when Abraham, the first Hebrew, was born - that's 1750 BC.
Technology and ideas can be duplicated - this happened often with stone axes, domestication of
dogs and horses, pyramids etc..
The Joseph Smith Papyri is a classic example of the deceit of this man.
No Jews went to the Americas in the Iron Age - indeed, the bible told us where the ten tribes went.
They were absorbed into the Assyrian empire. At least some of them - the rest fled sough to Judea.

Stick to the Gospels - they havent been updated, modernized, adapted or overturned.

 

[stvdv]

I stated that is was a complex answer in that LDS Christians are not: "Any path is as good as the other" camp (purely inclusive) or the "unless you believe just as I do you're going to be tortured for eternity" camp (purely exclusive).

Either you are inclusive or exclusive, IMO

To clarify. To say "I am a little pregnant" just means you are full blown pregnant.

Same with in/exclusive. I am inclusive, so all Paths offer the opportunity to reach "God". Of course you have to do what is required. So, not all people reach this Goal at the same speed, but their Path does offer the possibility to reach the goal

In my belief it's not required to first accept Jesus before being able to reach the Goal. If you accept Jesus as your Savior you might reach your goal AND also if you accept Krishna or Rama or Shiva or Allah

That in short is the difference between in/exclusive.

 

[oldbadger]

I have noticed there are recent posts about Mormonism written by non-members.

Most information shared has misrepresented our actual beliefs

If you really want to know source beliefs from an active Elder of the Church who served a two-year mission in Russia and lives in Utah. I'm all ears. I can answer as much as I have knowledge of about the History of the Church, its doctrine, and the political, cultural, and social environment within highly concentrated LDS populations. (Utah, Idaho, North America, South America)

If you know everything about the Church already, I'm impressed and would like to hear something you think I haven't heard before about my Church so I can confirm if I had heard it before or not.

Oh and if you just have questions about me and why I personally am a member, I will try to answer that as well to the best of my knowledge.

Hi...... Do you accept the gospels first, or some book or message above them?

 

[stvdv]

I stated that is was a complex answer in that LDS Christians are not: "Any path is as good as the other" camp (purely inclusive)

Maybe you mean to say "you need to act right to reach God", it's not automatically that any path reaches "God", right?

 

[stvdv]

I stated that is was a complex answer in that LDS Christians are not:...
"unless you believe just as I do you're going to be tortured for eternity" camp (purely exclusive).

That is a major positive step forwards, IMHO, compared to some Christian sects

 

[Jane.Doe]

Hi...... Do you accept the gospels first, or some book or message above them?

Answering for myself: I accepted God first & foremost. God whom saved me from the pit of disappear when I was a kid (rough childhood) and gave/gives me hope. I can't say that I accepted the writings of Luke before the writings of Jacob, Matthew, or Nephi, etc. I find those to all be important testifies of Him, but for me that direct me-to-Him contact came first & more important.