Mormonism or Lies?

Question

1. 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 (but quite different) version of the vision is in Smith's own handwriting, dating from about 1832 (still at least eleven years afterwards), and says that only one personage, Jesus Christ, appeared to him. It also mentions nothing about a revival. It also contradicts the later account as to whether Smith had already decided that no church was true. Still a third version of this event is recorded as a recollection in Smith's diary, fifteen years after the alleged vision, where one unidentified "personage" appeared, then another, with a message implying that neither was the Son. They were accompanied by many "angels," which are not mentioned in the official version you have been told about. Which version is correct, if any? Why was this event, unknown for so long?

2. Careful study of the religious history of the locale where Smith lived in 1820 casts doubt on whether there actually was such an extensive revival that year as Smith and his family later described as associated with the "First Vision." The revivals in 1817 and 1824 better fit what Smith described later.

3. In 1828, eight years after he supposedly had been told by God himself to join no church, Smith applied for membership in a local Methodist church. Other members of his family had joined the Presbyterians.

4. Contemporaries of Smith consistently described him as something of a confidence man, whose chief source of income was hiring out to local farmers to help them find buried treasure by the use of folk magic and "seer stones." Smith was actually tried in 1826 on a charge of moneydigging.

5. It is interesting that none of his critics seemed to be aware of his claim to have been visited by God in 1820, even though in his 1838 account he claimed that he had suffered "great persecution" for telling people of his vision.

6. The only persons who claimed to have actually seen the gold plates were eleven close friends of Smith (many of them related to each other). Their testimonies are printed in the front of every copy of the Book of Mormon. No disinterested third party was ever allowed to examine them. They were retrieved by the angel at some unrecorded point. Most of the witnesses later abandoned Smith and left his movement. Smith then called them "liars."

7. Smith produced most of the "translation" not by reading the plates through the Urim and Thummim (described as a pair of sacred spectacles), but by gazing at the same "seer stone" he had used for treasure hunting. He would place the stone into his hat, and then cover his face with it.

8. The detailed history and civilization described in the Book of Mormon does not correspond to anything found by archaeologists anywhere in the Americas. The Book of Mormon describes a civilization lasting for a thousand years, covering both North and South America, which was familiar with horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat, barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, and other elements of Old World culture. But no trace of any of these supposedly very common things has ever been found in the Americas of that period. Nor does the Book of Mormon mention many of the features of the civilizations which really did exist at that time in the Americas. The LDS church has spent millions of dollars over many years trying to prove through archaeological research that the Book of Mormon is an accurate historical record, but they have failed to produce any convincing pre-columbian archeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon story.

9. In addition, whereas the Book of Mormon presents the picture of a relatively homogeneous people, with a single language and communication between distant parts of the Americas, the pre-columbian history of the Americas shows the opposite: widely disparate racial types (almost entirely east Asian - definitely not Semitic, as proven by recent DNA studies), and many unrelated native languages, none of which are even remotely related to Hebrew or Egyptian.

10. The people of the Book of Mormon were supposedly devout Jews observing the Law of Moses, but in the Book of Mormon there is almost no trace of their observance of Mosaic law or even an accurate knowledge of it.

11.

11. Although Joseph Smith said that God had pronounced the completed translation of the plates as published in 1830 "correct," many changes have been made in later editions. Besides thousands of corrections of poor grammar and awkward wording in the 1830 edition, other changes have been made to reflect subsequent changes in some of the fundamental doctrine of the church. For example, an early change in wording modified the 1830 edition's acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity, thus allowing Smith to introduce his later doctrine of multiple gods. A more recent change (1981) replaced "white" with "pure," apparently to reflect the change in the church's stance on the "curse" of the black race.

12. Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon contained the "fulness of the gospel." However, its teaching on many doctrinal subjects has been ignored or contradicted by the present LDS church, and many doctrines now said by the church to be essential are not even mentioned there.

13. Many of the basic historical notions found in the Book of Mormon had appeared in print already in 1825, just two years before Smith began producing the Book of Mormon, in a book called View of the Hebrews, by Ethan Smith (no relation) and published just a few miles from where Joseph Smith lived. A careful study of this obscure book led one LDS church official (the historian B. H. Roberts, 1857-1933) to confess that the evidence tended to show that the Book of Mormon was not an ancient record, but concocted by Joseph Smith himself, based on ideas he had read in the earlier book.

14. Although Mormons claim that God is guiding the LDS church through its president (who has the title "prophet, seer and revelator"), the successive "prophets" have repeatedly either led the church into undertakings that were dismal failures or failed to see approaching disaster. To mention only a few: the Kirtland Bank, the United Order, the gathering of Zion to Missouri, etc..

15. A recent example is the successful hoax perpetrated on the church by manuscript dealer Mark Hofmann in the 1980s. He succeeded in selling the church thousands of dollars worth of manuscripts which he had forged. The church and its "prophet, seer and revelator" accepted them as genuine historical documents. The church leaders learned the truth not from God, through revelation, but from non-Mormon experts and the police, after Hofmann was arrested for two murders he committed to cover up his hoax. This scandal was reported nationwide.

16. The secret temple ritual (the "endowment") was introduced by Smith in May, 1842, just two months after he had been initiated into Freemasonry. The LDS temple ritual closely resembles the Masonic ritual of that day.

17. Many doctrines which were once taught by the LDS church, and held to be fundamental, essential and "eternal", have been abandoned. Whether we feel that the church was correct in abandoning them is not the point; rather, the point is that a church claiming to be the church of God takes one "everlasting" position at one time and the opposite position at another, all the time claiming to be proclaiming the word of God.

Examples:

- The Adam-God doctrine (Adam is God the Father)
- the United Order (all property of church members is to be held in common, with title in the church);
- Plural Marriage (polygamy; a man must have more than one wife to attain the highest degree of heaven);
- the Curse of Cain (the black race is not entitled to hold God's priesthood because it is cursed; this doctrine was not abandoned until 1978);
- Blood Atonement (some sins - apostasy, adultery, murder, interracial marriage - must be atoned for by the shedding of the sinner's blood);

- The Book of Abraham, from Egyptian papyrus scrolls which came into his possession in 1835. He stated that the scrolls were written by the biblical Abraham "by his own hand." Smith's translation is now accepted as scripture by the LDS church, as part of its Pearl of Great Price. Smith also produced an "Egyptian Grammar" based on his translation. Modern scholars of ancient Egyptian agree that the scrolls are common Egyptian funeral scrolls, entirely pagan in nature, having nothing to do with Abraham, and from a period 2000 years later than Abraham. The "Grammar" has been said by Egyptologists to prove that Smith had no notion of the Egyptian language. It is pure fantasy: he made it up.

Joseph Smith died not as a martyr, but in a gun battle in which he fired a number of shots. He was in jail at the time, under arrest for having ordered the destruction of a Nauvoo newspaper which dared to print an exposure (which was true) of his secret sexual liaisons. At that time he had announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, set up a secret government, and secretly had himself crowned "King of the Kingdom of God."

Mormonism includes many other unusual doctrines

God was once a man like us.
God has a tangible body of flesh and bone.
God lives on a planet near the star Kolob.
God ("Heavenly Father") has at least one wife, our "Mother in Heaven," but she is so holy that we are not to discuss her nor pray to her.
We can become like God and rule over our own universe.
There are many gods, ruling over their own worlds.
Jesus and Satan ("Lucifer") are brothers, and they are our brothers - we are all spirit children of Heavenly Father
Jesus Christ was conceived by God the Father by having sex with Mary, who was temporarily his wife.
We should not pray to Jesus, nor try to feel a personal relationship with him.
"God" ("Jehovah") in the Old Testament is the being named Jesus in the New Testament.
In the the highest degree of the celestial kingdom some men will have more than one wife.
Before coming to this earth we lived as spirits in a "pre-existence", during which we were tested

You are asking me as a Christian to read the book of mormon with an open heart and mind. Sir that is ridiculous.
I have read the book and I was taken aback by the childish style of it and how it utterly leaped with the stench of an unholy and satanic Bible.
It is amazing how you are willing to defend something that if you open your eyes is a world of Evil.

Answer 1

Laurel- Yes, there are indeed 8 versions of the first vision; I have read all of them.

Rac - Although the four Gospels have small discrepancies, they don't even compare to the different versions of the First Vision. For instance, the Gospel discrepancies have to do with the time of day of the crucifixion, how Judas died, and what sentences were uttered first and last on the cross. They never substituted one person for another. joseph first claimed that his 'first vision' was just an angel and that it occurred in 1823. Then he said it was "many angels accompanied by two personages", both of which referred to the Son as a different person. Then he said that the 'first vision' was in 1820 and that it was the Son, and that a 'second vision' in 1823 was the angel moroni, with "other angels". Then he added the father to the first and removed the "other angels" from the second. The only account actually written in Joseph's handwriting is from 1832, as mentioned above, which doesn't even include the father. These are all documented.

Each of these points is relatively close to what mormons actually believe (except the part about the personal relationship with Jesus; they don't pray to Him, but they do believe it is important to 'know Him').

If you are a Mormon, I just suggest opening your eyes, doing your own research, and consulting the Bible with an open heart to discover whether or not your Heavenly Father wants you to follow the LDS Church. (James 1:5)

Answer 2

Your statement is quite lengthy and the only question is whether or not I agree with your statement.
The answer is no, I do not agree with your statement. Many of your itemized paragraphs come from age old false claims made by LDS apostates and persecutors. The fact that multiple accounts of the origin of the Book of Mormon and the first vision exist with slight variances should not alarm you. There are four gospels in the New Testament that were written by desciples of Christ documenting the same events yet they contain seeming discrepancies also. Yes, they were written long ago and have suffered the deprivations of mulitple translations whereas the LDS records were supposedly related by the same person different times. When I tell a story about my past experiences to different people at different times, the results are not always the same. At the beginning of the official record, Joseph explains that because of the many variations that have been promulgated, he had been encouraged to set the record straight once and for all. That is why it is the official version.
Archaeological evidences have been found but have been largely ignored by the mainstream scientific community. This is because in order to accept the evidences, they would have to rethink their entire theory of American civilization and the "experts" are unwilling to do that. Even the Spanish explorers and early Catholic Priests found evidence of Native Americans performing baptisms. Such unthinkable evidence was quickly squelched. The same phenomenon has been seen in the Middle East where early evidence supporting Christ and the Abrahamic story has been hidden by those who stand to lose face if the evidence ever came to light. Yes, our scientists, religious leaders and politicians do cover thing up in order to maintain their status. This should not surprise you either, that is exactly what the Pharisees did in collusion with the Romans in order to kill Jesus. Bad people don't want to be faced with the truth so it is easier to tell lies about it and cover up the evidence of the truth.
I am not going to try to respond to all of your points. Let me close with a question and a challenge. Have you read the Book of Mormon for yourself? Have you read it with a sincere desire to know whether or not it was true? If not, then I challenge you to do so and when you are done, to apply the test given in Moroni 10:3-5. If you will do that, following the test as outlined, then I promise you your outlook will change.

Answer 3

You have done well in your research, and yet there are still many more inconsistencies in the whole of the Mormon belief system. God says, "For I am the Lord, I change not." (Malachi 3.6) The Mormon system of beliefs speak of a different God than the one that the Bible speaks of. The Bible also attributes Jesus as One who does not change. Hebrews 13.8 says: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." They speak of a Jesus that is different than the one of the Bible. Mormon teachings say that Satan in the brother of Christ and that Mary was the wife of God.
We must remember that the Bible warns us about following other teachings. In II Peter 3.2-3, we are told: "That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts."
A deep look into the life of Joseph Smith will find many inconsistencies and teachings that helped him fulfill the lusts that he had in life.
But understand, I do not hate others who believe differently. All I can do is to explain what I have researched and what I believe.

Answer 4

Please site references (first hand accounts--not what some preacher said about it) to what you are referring to. I've read all of Joseph Smith's accounts of the first vision, and they all say that there are two personages who appeared to him. You need to look at your sources.
What's your beef with Mormonism anyway? We believe in Christ, and that his atonement is the only way we can obtain eternal life, just like you supposedly do (although you don't act very Christian). You should concentrate on building up the kingdom of God instead of tearing others down.

Answer 5

All of that doesn't matter to Mormons because their faith proves that their book is true.
Did you know about the Book of Abraham in the original Egyptian language? It is really the Egyptian book of the dead; the translation as the Book of Abraham is phony.
I have nothing against Mormons as individuals, it is their beliefs that I am against.

Answer 6

I won't say nothing bad about a persons choice of religion, that is all after all why many people came to this country. They have the right to believe what they want and I have the right to believe what I want.

Answer 7

Jesus warned us against men like Joseph Smith. Sadly, many are deceived, but even worse for those who lead them astray.

Answer 8

congradulations, u just proved mormonism wrong. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Answer 9

In truth---there isn't any branch of Christianity that could withstand close public scrutiny.Not one.

Answer 10

If it is not the gospel it is not Christianity.