Mormons, i have a question?

Question

Why is it that latter day sints say that mormonism can and should only be explained by mormans?
and why has the book of mormon been changed over 4,100 times since it original publication?
and no where in the bible does it ask you to read it then pray to see if it is true. for exsample james 1:5 promices wisdom and knowlege not an inner feeling. in fact there are severail scriptures warning us of letting ourselves beieng decieved by our own inner feelings.

Answer 1

it is their way of keeping people in the cult

it makes it harder to show that it is not christian if only people in the faith can explain it

and it changes to keep people in the cult and stops them form seeing the truth

Answer 2

I don't care if other people answer questions about Mormons. To me, it just makes sense that their answers should be taken with a grain of salt. I've asked questions about other religions, and the answers that I pay attention to are the ones that belong to that religion.

Most of the changes were either in spelling, grammer, or format. Like how I would change your question in a few places: i to I; latter day sints to Latter-Day Saints; mormans? to Mormons?; book of mormon to Book of Mormon; no where to nowhere; exsample to example; james to James; promices to promises; in fact there are severail scriptures to In fact, there are several scriptures; and beieng decieved to being deceived. If you count every change I made there are nineteen changes.

Galations 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Answer 3

Because there are so many contradictions within their religion that they feel they must put their "spin" on those contradictions in order to validate thier beliefs. The antis are much the same way.

The vast majority of the alterations to the BoM were versing changes. The original text, like ancient Hebrew, had no punctuation or versing so this was placed into the BoM by Oliver Cowdery and others. These changes did not alter the original meaning. However there are a few changes where an "s" is added such as "Family" was changed to "Families" possibly to make polygamy more reasonable (yet other passages bitterly attack the practice).

I agree we should not "trust" in inner feeling. One of the proverbs states the "heart is desperately wicked... who can know it?". However the Holy Ghost does exist and can move upon a person, sometimes subtly, sometimes boldly in direct revelation. These inspirations or revelations must be compared to the scriptures to see if they agree with already established scripture... or deception is possible. I wish there was some sort of direct sign we could use to discern between our own thoughts and feelings, directions by the Holy Ghost, and directions by the evil spirit. But we have what we have and must sort it all out carefully.

Answer 4

I'll focus on your comment about inner feelings. While you're correct that people can and often are deceived by their feelings, this doesn't mean feelings aren't important for understanding the things of God. For example, the heart is a symbol of feelings in the Bible. Here's a list of verses that use this symbol including many in the Old and New Testaments:

http://scriptures.lds.org/en/tg/h/48

I just selected one from Paul to include here, but I think it's a good one:

Ephesians 4:17-29
17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

One of the reasons we're on this earth is to develop a better understanding of how to discern truth. There are many examples of people being deceived by depending on either their mind or their heart. One approach to avoid this problem is to use both together.

For example, if I'm getting the feeling I should criticize someone, hopefully I'll remember that Jesus taught that we shouldn't find fault with each other.

Answer 5

As you can see the Anti-Mormons has a hay day answering your question, thus you see why mormons prefer to answer questions directed to them. I am obviously Mormon and if you read the first few pages of the Book of Mormon, it will answer your questions about reading and praying about the book being true. People should relax about religion and let others peacefully choose what they believe and learn about religion instead of bashing others freedom to choose what they believe! GOD RULES!!!

Answer 6

So the Bible doesnt say "Ask and ye shall recieve, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be given unto you?"

The only way to know the truth is the same way that Peter did. Through revelation from the Father.

Mormons should be allowed to explain mormonism because antimormons have an agenda and get alot of things purposely wrong.

Book of Mormon was changed over time because of bad punctuation, printing errors, etc. Not for substance.

Answer 7

This makes it easier to control circular arguments. I often hear the argument, "You wouldn't go to a Chevy dealer to find out about a Ford.." - Actually if you want to find out what Chevy doesn't tell you, that might be a good resource. Better yet, I'd go to Consumer Reports, Motor Trend, Car and Driver and maybe even NHTSA.
The BoM was the result of a semi-literate charlatan dictating a story to an overly gullible cohort, that he had related since boyhood. Only this time he was committing it to a written manuscript, and had difficulty keeping the story line intact. several re-writes plus the printer's corrections got rid of the colloquial "God was a-coming" syntax.
As for comparisons with the bible, Smith himself was subject to reading out of the KJV bible every evening, and had probably memorized chapters of text. He was also exposed to the new wave of fire and brimstone type circuit preachers of the era who made several changes to Anglican Christianity as a result of it no longer being the state religion.
Finally - "Trusting your feelings" is nothing more that betting on a 'hunch', and not the best method of making decisions. The mormon church sort of circumvents this by insisting the membership simply "Follow the Prophet" and that thinking or discussion of doctrine is severely discouraged, if not prohibited entirely.

Answer 8

The original publication of the book of Mormon had grammatical errors. It wasn't published by the church. It was published by a printing company. The correct text is in the original and printers copy handwritten manuscripts.

Answer 9

so the person that told u that the book of mormon has changed a lot...were they mormon? and did they tell you that it was changed for punctuation and stuff?


the bible does that this, "Ask and ye shall recieve..."


and also only mormons can truly explain our church because there are so many lies about the LDs church i was going to the sacramento temple dedication and a guy thought we believed in gay marriage (and we dont) so he held a sign that said "god created adam and eve not adam and steve" and we rolled don the window and told himwe dont support gay marriage and then he said oh you dont my froind told me you do.....okay ill go now....and he left =) hope this helped

Answer 10

That was actually several questions and a couple opinions, but ok.

Here goes:

1) Because they think that anyone outside of the Church that is interested in explaining Mormonism "must needs be" *anti-mormon* and that if someone is critical to the Church, they are obviously full of lies, because in their minds, no honest person could ever think wrong about the Church. "The Church is perfect, even if its people aren't"

(Edit: see the below post; Avatar_defender assumes by his answer that if you're not a mormon and you're explaining mormonism, you must be antimormon, and are purposely "getting things wrong")

2) Joseph Smith, who had a 3rd-grade education, and Oliver Cowdery, who had maybe a 5th or 6th-grade education, were not the best spellers. Silly errors in spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and syntax account for probably two-thirds of those changes. Another 10 or 15 were to tone down the racially provocative nature of some of the scriptures. In other words, "black and loathsome" was changed to "impure and loathsome", while "white and delightsome" was changed to "pure and delightsome". There were also several places in the Book of Mormon referencing the same events (like the Lehi dream and Jesus' "visit" to the Americas) where one part would heavily contradict another, so they wanted to make it mesh better. A couple hundred changes dealt mostly with the "umpteenth year of the reign of the judges" to make the chronology cohesive within itself so that the years would add up correctly.

3) The Bible references prayer, but never as a form of obtaining a spiritual witness. This idea came many years later, and was prevalent in 19th-century revivalist movements, similar to Smith's "burned-over district" in upstate New York. Moroni was tagged onto the BoM by Smith and Cowdery after it was finished to kind of "sum up" everything, and they threw in chapter 10 with the challenge so that people could feel that God had told them it was true.

4) Yes, the Bible says that Satan controls our hearts and emotions, and that man's heart deceives him. It also says several times that we will know the truth in several ways, but never lists Spiritual Witness as one of those ways. It only says that the Holy Spirit will "comfort" and "guide" us, but doesn't say that it produces a burning in our bosom or anything like that.