Did the Mark Hoffman forgeries rock the foundation of the Mormon faith?

Question

From the (LDS) October 1987 Ensign magazine:

Q. Some have asked, how was Mark Hofmann able to deceive Church leaders?

A. As everyone now knows, Hofmann succeeded in deceiving many: experienced Church historians, sophisticated collectors, businessmen-investors, national experts who administered a lie detector test to Hofmann, and professional document examiners, including the expert credited with breaking the Hitler diary forgery. But why, some still ask, were his deceits not detected by the several Church leaders with whom he met?

In order to perform their personal ministries, Church leaders cannot be suspicious and questioning of each of the hundreds of people they meet each year. Ministers of the gospel function best in an atmosphere of trust and love.

In that kind of atmosphere, they fail to detect a few deceivers, but that is the price they pay to increase their effectiveness in counseling, comforting, and blessing the hundreds of honest and sincere people they see.

Answer 1

No he didn't. He was a liar, and a murderer like a son of lucifer is.

Answer 2

Neither the Hoffman story, the Salamander, or any other fabrication to deceive the LDS Church has rocked its foundation where I am concerned.

The foundation of the Church is Jesus Christ and faith in Him. The organization is perfect, but run by imperfect individuals, and always will be.

There will always exist people that only want to upset the LDS Church and its principles because they are influenced by the adversary. I do not let such attempts influence my faith and belief in this, the true restored Church on earth.

Answer 3

I don't think it rocked the foundation of the church. The followers of any given faith believe things that people outside that faith find bizarre. At least Mormons don't believe virgins can have babies, for example. Therefore the specifics of what were in the Hoffman papers are neither here nor there when it comes to matters of faith.

Answer 4

How is Al Gore able to deceive millions of people and make them believe his fantasy of global warming caused by mankind and not nature, even though there is physical proof that climate changes are documented to be reliably cyclical and 100% attributable to ocean bacteria, sunspot activity, and the nature climate cycles of the earth and its ever-fluctuating inner core?

If people WANT to believe, they WILL believe.

And yes, we should be alarmed that we are approaching another scheduled warming cycle, but rather than spending time pointing the blame and trying to FIGHT nature (which we can't), we should instead EXPECT it and simply PREPARE for it as best we can. (Getting water to areas that will experience droughts, and away from areas that will flood, restricting shoreline construction, etc.)

This is just as you point out, the LDS church gets fooled sometimes, but they do a lot of good in the meantime and they simply deal with those deceivers as they come, as best that they can.

The Catholic Church is loaded with deceivers too. So is every religion. Even the Maharishi of India claims he can levitate at will, yet he flies around in a helicopter. LOL.

The bottom line is, when beliefs are genuine, those who believe aren't afraid to have those beliefs challenged. Truth invites skepticism, it doesn't fear it.

This is the problem that I have with Al Gore and his Envirofundamentalist Church. Only deceivers would call their critics "Deniers" and say "the time for debate is over".