Mormon Prophets?

Question

Sorry to the LDS...silly questions just keep popping into my head all the time. I know that the LDS believes that its President(s) is a Prophet, seer or revelator.
When your seers lead you into undertakings that are dismal failures, such as, the Kirtland Bank, the United Order, the gathering of Zion to Missouri, the Zion's Camp expedition, polygamy, the Deseret Alphabet and more recently the successful hoax perpetrated on the church by manuscript dealer Mark Hofmann, do you drop the level of the Prophet to something less, or is he forgiven for an "x" amount of wrong prophecies?

Answer 1

The Mormon "cult" is one of the biggest con jobs in human history. Really, they are God's gift to the cosmic used car salesman. There cannot be a more gullible group of people on the planet... Well perhaps the Scientologists.

Answer 2

Back in the time of Brigham Young, the general idea of a prophet was someone who taught the doctrine to the people. He often introduced new ideas and he always stated very clearly what the official doctrine was. The prophet at that time also dictated the non-religeous affairs of the people (commerce, culture, the arts etc).

Now days Gordon Hinkley is more of a wishy-washy everyone-just-feel-good sort of leader. He has told Larry King that God only speaks to him in 'impressions', not in an actual voice. He very rarely makes any doctrinal statements. He usually just says things like "I don't know if we teach that" or "I don't think that's doctrinal" or "Try a little harder". This way he can never be accused of making a false prophesy.

Joseph Smith was really the only one who made a lot of 'prophesies'. Of course most of them never came true, but the LDS church doesn't publish any info on those. It has been proved though DNA and archeology etc. that the Book of Mormon isn't what it claims to be. The Book of Abraham was proved in the late 1960s to be a hoax. We all know how succesful Polygamy and institutionalized racism were for the church!

So to sum up: The current Mormon 'prophet' does not prophesy. He merely tries to make the church seem more main-stream so that people won't be too scared by it.

Answer 3

The only perfect being that I know of to have walked this earth is Christ. The Kirtland Safety society was set up and run properly with the exception of one dishonest man (NOT Joseph Smith). They recovered the record book for that bank and there were no illigal acts within its pages by Joseph. Many banks failed int he country at that time. Zions Camp was not a failure, it proved to be a training ground for future church leaders, and heped strgnthen them, as well as testing them.
I could go on, but the point already made is this: Prophets ar prone to make mistakes, though fewer than other men I've seen :) This includes ancient and modern. Peter denied knowing Christ 3 times, but proved to be great. Paul was an enemy to the church at first, then became one of the best advocates for Christianity of all time. God allows men, prophets and otherwise, to make mistakes and learn from them. The success of many of the above mentioned programs was dependent on the church as a whole, and nobody is perfect, some people made bigger mistakes and caused the "program" practice or whatever to fall short of success. A prophet is still a prophet and God's mouthpiece, even if they make mistakes.

Answer 4

As Joseph Smith once said, "A prophet is only a prophet when he is acting as such." Not everything a prophet does is in the name of the Lord, nor is everything a prophet says considered prophecy. They are human, just like the rest of us, and are prone to make mistakes on occasion. But most of these things you consider to be "dismal failures" are really not that important. They pale in comparison to the organization known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has actually been very successful despite every attempt by its enemies to destroy it.

Pelotahombre makes some good points. Many critics of the Mormon faith bring up accusations against latter-day prophets which make them out to be false prophets. But if the same standards are applied to Biblical prophets, then they too would be considered false prophets.

Read the article I have linked below. It sheds light on the nature of prophets and prophecy, both modern and ancient.

Answer 5

Amen to Justin, with one addition. Polygamy didn't fail. One of the goals of polygamy was to create more seed (people) in the church and it has definitely been accomplished. I don't know the exact numbers, but a great percentage of the members are decended from polygamous families.

Answer 6

That word 'revelator' is funny as hell. For some reason it always reminds me of a soda fountain running over.

I wouldn't ask them questions like that, since the answer is dreadfully obvious. They WANT to be conned by their church leadership. All of the 'prophets' of their church have been con-men and always will be.

Answer 7

I'm not a morman but I very much doubt that the president of the church had anything to do with undertakings you mention.

Answer 8

If I remember correctly, Moses didn't get it all right by himself. didn't his father-in-law tell him to institute judges to help with the weight of judging Israel? It seems to me that you're thinking that prophet=perfect. It doesn't work that way in the Old Testament, why would God change that now?
Yes, they made mistakes, but I think David trumps them all. Look at what he did with Bathsheba before you get too excited about condemning others.

Answer 9

Mormons are taught that the prophet would be instantly struck dead by god if he ever tried to lead the church astray. So you see, these undertakings were ordained by god, but he was forced to take them away when people became unrighteousness and undeserving.