No matter what any TBM thinks, the actual truth is that the LDS church is not true. There are a myriad of reasons why I make this claim and the purpose of this blog is to discuss as many of them as possible. In truth, the LDS church is a cult that has brainwashed its members into thinking that they belong to an elite group. They alone have the truth and the power of god.
There is a mountain of evidence against the church. However the church hides this information from it's members by telling them which books to read. They warn that apostates are going directly to hell, no passing Go, no collecting $200. Hence, most members live in total ignorance of the many issues facing their true church, just the way the leaders like it. The members are so brainwashed and afraid that they do not even look in the direction of "anti-Mormon" literature. What issues they may be exposed to, are shrugged off as lies spun by the devil to tear down god's true kingdom.
Those who leave are looked upon as evil and dangerous. An apostate is literally more dangerous to you than a stalker or a murderer. A murderer can only take your life... an apostate can take your soul.
Because this organization is led by a living prophet who receives inspiration directly from Jesus Christ, the prophet must be obeyed at all costs. The church puts heavy emphasis on complete and total obedience to any commandment, whether it be new or old. The church leaders claim infallability by stating that it is impossible for them to lead the saints astray. It's just impossible. Therefore, the leaders can say anything and since they were allowed to say it, it must be from god.
Great emphasis is placed on the members gaining their own testimony, or witness that it is all true. Based on no evidence, brainwashing, and "the spirit" a member can know for sure that it is all true. Because "I know it's true" is pounded into their heads ever since infancy, members truly believe that it is. No other religion focuses so much on "self brainwashing". Leaders of the LDS church have been known to say that if you don't have a testimony, you must repeat it to yourself until you do believe it.
Members born into the church believe that their birth into the church is a reward for good behaviour in a past life. In fact, a persons position in the church is a reward for behaviour in the pre-earth life. Mormons believe that they lived with god before they were born and their loyalty to god earned them a place in a righteous Mormon home. If you are a convert to the church, you were not quite as elite. If you are black, then you barely passed.
Mormons believe that all their righteous and worthy males hold the holy priesthood. This is literally the authority to act in god's name. If you were not baptized by a Mormon, then your baptism is invalid and you cannot be saved. The priesthood, if wielded worthily, can allow a Mormon man to preform amazing feats, such as heal the sick.
Only by being Mormon can you be truly happy. In fact, members are taught that the world in general is confused and clammering around in darkness. The Mormon gospel brings joy and happiness. Therefore it is your duty to convert as many of your family and friends as possible. If you don't, then you will pay the price for their sins, since they might have joined if you had tried to convert them.
Mormonism is a deep religion that requires much of your time, money, and talents. If you try and convince a Mormon that the church is not true, you are seen as an agent of the devil who is trying to cheat and deceive your soul to hell. Numerous Book of Mormon scriptures warn about the devil who tries to lead you quietly down to hell. Therefore, a Mormon will not listen to any type of reasoning. He sees you as trying to destroy his soul, so any argument you make will be shrugged off and explained away.
As you can see, this religion holds its members in STRONG mental bondage. That is why few ever escape. Everything in this system is designed to keep members in and paying. Tithing is a big issue. If you do not pay your tithing, you will be burned in a great fire at the second coming of Jesus. Additionally, you will be denied a temple recommend, which is the highest honor an LDS person can have. A temple recommend is like a golden ticket to heaven. If you don't have a TR, then you just aren't cool. It takes a lot of work and dedication (or just a good lie to the bishop) to get a TR.
The purpose of going to the temple is to preform many ordinances, in addition to baptism, which are necessary for salvation. (Can't you see by now that the LDS church has a LOT of requirements for salvation?) These ordinances are hightly cult-like and are regarded as "sacred" so they are not spoken of outside the temple. A person attending the temple for the first time will make covenants and promises not knowing beforehand what they will be.
A worthy man and woman can be married in the temple. This will seal them together for time and all eternity (why anyone would want to be married FOREVER is beyond me) and they will not be permanantly separated by death. The idea of "Families Are Forever" is a strong theme used by the church to keep members in and attract new ones. Your sealing is only valid as long as you live your entire life as a devout Mormon. In fact, your level of spirituality in the church may determine who you see and where you go in the next life.
If you weren't a very serious Mormon, you may be denied the right to be with other family members. Therefore, it is crutial that you strictly obey all the rules.
Thinking is discouraged. All you need is the voice of the prophet. If you doubt or have questions, then something is wrong with YOU. Since the church is perfect, if you have a problem with it, then the bottom line is that the problem is YOU. Obviously you have not prayed enough or don't have enough faith. Maybe you committed a sin which made the holy ghost leave.
That's another aspect of Mormonism. Members are taught and believe that once they are baptized then they have the companionship of the Holy Ghost. This HG serves as a means by which you can receive your own personal revelation from god. It can also act as a means to find out for yourself that the church is true. Sometimes it warns of impending physical danger. You can have the HG with you all the time, but if you sin it is easily offended and can withdraw itself from you. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are worthy and following all the rules so it can stay with you.
Hopefully you can see that the LDS church is a cult. Every aspect of the church is designed to scare and manipulate people into complete and total obedience. For fear of hell and damnation, the members willingly hand everything they have over to the church. The church literally wants your very will, and once you hand it over, they will not hesitate to tell you every little thing that you should do (mission, BYU).
And yet, they claim to have this principle called free agency. Anyone is free to choose if they want to obey. So basically, these are your two choices, 1) obey every rule unquestioningly until you die, or 2) live however you want and go to hell when you die. Now who would willingly choose to go straight to hell? Therefore, the only real choice is to obey. So the people do.
Mormonism is deep and its members are heavily brainwashed. They are oppressed and yet they think they are free. They are manipulated and yet they think they have the true priesthood of god. Many people are unhappy in Mormonism but say nothing because they think that the problem is them. To escape from the trap of Mormonism requires many things.
1) Knowledge - which the church tries desperately to keep away from it's members.
2) Desire - a person can get out at any time, but they have to want it. They have to be completely tired of the system.
3) Acknowledge the possibily of losing everything - if you leave the church, the Mormons will make you pay the price. LDS women are strongly encouraged to divorce their apostate husbands. In Utah, you may be denied work, friends, even family if you leave. Ironically, once you lose everything, the Mormons will point their fingers and say, "See? If you leave the church god will punish you."
4) Getting over the fear of what other people think - Mormons believe that you have actually chosen to serve the devil. You are an agent of evil and therefore must be shunned and avoided.
It is a cult. It's members are brainwashed. This is a fact.
15 comments:
Ummm..... no.
Sounds more like you chose to live a particularly brainless brand of Mormonism and now you're bitter the Church didn't wipe your nose for you.
No one ever told me what to read in this Church. I've never felt like the Church's history was hidden from me any more than the ugly parts of US history are hidden from any average American. Sure, I didn't know Joseph had multiple wives as a kid. But when I learned about it years later, it didn't upset me much. I figured that learning this stuff was just a part of being an adult with a brain.
The LDS Church has no obligation to spoon feed you every aspect of the history and doctrine.
I read what you had to say and we must have attended two different churches. I guess you really needed to vent.
Wow! Three TBM commenters! This post must have really struck a nerve with someone!
Bryce, can you elaborate a bit more? BTW, nice web site... I'll be lurking to find the goodies. Tell you what, since your site is all one sided and so is mine, how about we exchange links?
Seth, ironically, all of Mormonism is "brainless". What exactly are you saying? Actually, I'm bitter because I discovered that these so-called prophets are actually filthy, dirty, lying scumbags.
For example, I was told all my life that the scrolls from which were translated the Book of Abraham were lost. I find out after 30 years that the scrolls were lost, but then were found again, BEFORE I WAS EVEN BORN! The church doesn't want people knowing that the original scrolls were found because they prove Joseph Smith was a fraud.
I too was aware that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. No big deal. Didn't bother me either. But what does bother me is finding out that Horny Joe would send his faithful away on missions and then marry their wives! And their young daughters! I bet you never heard that in church or seminary, did you?
I am aware that the church has no obligation to "spoon feed" every aspect of their history... and they exercise it to the fullest! Why would they go around tooting a horn that makes them look bad? After all, they are true prophets, right? That means that they should never be wrong. So when they are wrong, they just excuse it away and try to make it disappear. This church is lead by the most decietful and dishonest men I can imagine.
Ian, where did you attend church? I've been in the Utah/Idaho area all my life and I was "spoon fed" with traditional Mormonism all my life. If you can honestly tell me that you've never heard of paying tithing being regarded as "fire insurance" then you must have only gone every other week or something. My best guess is that you are either a convert who hasn't been around very long, OR you are a member living somewhere other than Idaho/Utah. The closer you get to Temple Square, the more hardcore Mormonism becomes!
FYI, this blog is a vent for me, but it's greater purpose is to expose the lies and fraud and just to get people thinking.
I'm currently writing a post on the Book of Mormon and it's views on the government and how apostates and non-believers should be dealt with. I think you'll find it very thought provoking.
You should read Richard Bushman's recent "Joseph Smith and His Critics."
Thank you, Bryce. I've checked out the link you provided. It appears that Bushman is trying to approach apologetics from a different angle. His approach is to try and inform the members why apostates leave and show members that they are still good people. If he encourages the church leaders to come clean about their past, then it's not all that bad. I wonder, however, how long it will be before the church exes him? The church has a famous history of exing anyone who speaks out in such a manner. I'll check into in further. However, the bottom line is that Bushman is still an apologist and is trying to explain away all the inconsistencies, which is what apologists do. I like his quote, "They find that Egyptologists do not translate the Abraham manuscripts the way Joseph Smith did, making it appear that the Book of Abraham was a fabrication." Classic. Such a careful choice of words. The fact about the scrolls were that they were common Egyptian funeral documents. Even before the scrolls were found, there were many people who recognized the facsimiles from similar documents and they stated that something was wrong. Joseph Smith did not translate in any way... he made up the entire story as he went along. I'll check out the book when I can... won't promise that it will be soon.
I do have to admit that Bushman describes the exit process very clearly and I am impressed that he does not take a condescending attitude, unlike most other TBM's. That being the case, I will listen to what he has to say, but I won't promise that I'll agree with it.
I might again mention that we currently only have about 13% of the papyri that Joseph Smith originally had, so it is very difficult, if not impossible, task to determine whether or not Joseph's translation is correct. You should check out Nibley's book "The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment" too, as he translated all of the papyri that the Church recovered, and it reveals some very interesting Egyptian ritual practices which parallel LDS temple ceremonies in remarkable ways.
With all due respect, I disagree. As the missionaries like to say in reference to the Book of Mormon, do you need to eat the whole cake in order to know that it tastes good? No, you just need one bite and that is what we have here.
The bottom line is that the papyrus scroll is from Egypt 2,000 years after the time of Abraham. It is a common text that has absolutely nothing to do with Abraham. The evidence is overwhelming but you want the church to be true so badly that it doesn't matter what the evidence says, does it?
Which is the more likely explanation... that Joseph Smith just happened to come across extremely rare documents that were written by the actual hand of Abraham himself 4000+ years ago, OR that he just took some mysterious looking scrolls and made it up as he went? The evidence AND common sense both dictate that it was a fraud.
The ways of God are sometimes unexplainable by our finite mortal minds. I think if you'd study the subject a bit more you'd find much evidence of truth in the Book of Abraham when compared with many ancient documents being discovered today, things which Joseph could clearly not have known at his time and place. Critics have the hardest time explaining these bulls eyes. But you are right in one aspect - if you don't want it to be true, nothing in the world will convince you otherwise. That is the principle of faith which God will never destroy.
It seems that whenever something does not have a logical explanation, it is convenient to play the "gods ways are higher than our ways" card. Sorry but I just can't accept that. The gospel is supposed to be simple, right? but apparently it is anything but.
I just go by the evidence. If you feel that you have valid evidence supporting the BoA please give me the references and I'll check it out. I'd love to see what the critics are having a hard time explaining, because I haven't heard about anything like that at all.
Just keep in mind that Joseph had a very active imagination. He might have gotten some things correct by pure chance. So the question is, do the things he got right outweigh the things he got wrong?
I guess we'll never really know for sure.
The gospel is simple, but sometimes our understanding of it is weak.
Since the countless things he got right could have happened by chance only in about 1 in a billion, I'm casting my vote for Joseph (e.g. 100+ hits in the BoM, "Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon", online for free). Hugh Nibley once noted:
"Even if every parallel were the purest coincidence, we would still have to explain how the Prophet contrived to pack such a dense succession of happy accidents into the scriptures he gave us. Where the world has a perfect right to expect a great potpourri of the most outrageous nonsense, and in anticipation has indeed rushed to judgment with all manner of premature accusations, we discover whenever ancient texts turn up to offer the necessary checks and controls that the man was astonishingly on target in his depiction of general situations, in the almost casual mention of peculiar oddities, in the strange proper names, and countless other unaccountable details. . . . As the evidence accumulates, it is not the Prophet but his critics who find themselves with a lot of explaining to do."
If you'd like to see the 35+ things that Joseph got right about Abraham in the Book of Abraham, see "Traditions About the Early Life of Abraham."
If it was all by Joseph's active imagination, then he was the most creative genius this world has ever known.
And, yes, some day we will know for sure. But for the time being, I've received sufficient witnesses that it is true. But it is not by physical evidence, although that does lend credence and plausibility for faith. The Spirit testifies of the truth, and that is the only way to come by it.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1).
Thanks, it's going to take me a while since you have provided a lot of information. I'll see if the library has the books since that will be faster and cheaper than buying them.
But really the bottom line is this, you believe, I don't. I have no right to tell you that you can't or shouldn't believe. In fact, if you truly are happy with the church, then I am truly happy for you!
I found my peace by leaving. I see it all as a bunch of superstition and nonsense, but to each their own.
I'll get back to you when I've done a little more research. Ciao!
The "Echoes" book is available online for easy accessibility at the link I included.
There is nothing in this life that has made me happier. I wish you all the best. Let me know if you'd ever like to discuss anything.
Hi Bryce,
If you're still around, I had one other thought. I've briefly browsed through the info and when I get a little more time I'll read it more thoroughly. But my question is this, if indeed Joseph Smith did get many things right that he couldn't have possibly guessed or otherwise known, it would be a significant thing. I mean, theologists around the world would recognize Joe as a truly astounding man. But the truth is that only the LDS people regard him as such. No one else takes him seriously. Now if he got so many things right and it is so well documented, etc, then why does no one else recognize it? Why does no one take him seriously? If he really did have original scrolls that were written by the hand of Abraham, then that would not only be significant to Mormonism, but to the entire Christian, Jewish, and other communities! But the fact is, people just don't take it seriously, which tells me that there is little, if any, real evidence that he was telling the truth. Whatever "evidence" comes from the LDS apologetics department is viewed by the outside world as a desperate attempt to explain away the overwhelming evidence that it is all a fraud.
It's a good point, and I think you need to give it some serious thought. However, I do appreciate your insite, as I have genuinely wondered how people can still believe after knowing all this stuff. You've come closer to giving me the answer than anyone else has.
Hi there,
You've come to a very important point. Just because we have evidence, does not mean that we have faith. The two do not equal each other. There are many scholars that know that Joseph Smith was somehow right on a number of ancient facts, yet they still do not believe he was a prophet of God or that the Church is true (See this link to an article about scholars who believe Joseph got certain things astonishingly right in the Book of Mormon). How this can be? How can they take him seriously on certain unexplainable things while rejecting him as a prophet? I'm not entirely sure. The age-old method is that they have the struggle of trying to determine exactly how Joseph came up with all of the correct things he did, given his times, circumstances, environment, associates, place, culture, knowledge, language, upbringing, life events, etc., which has proven very difficult to do since you have to come to know Joseph inside and out. Either that or they irresponsibly shrug it off to chance, coincidence, insanity, or devils. For those of us who believe, it is much simpler to take Occam's razor and say that he was a prophet of God, and that is how he did it, in addition to receiving a witness from God that it is so.
Only those who have received a witness of the Spirit from God that Joseph is a prophet will tell others that it is so. Those that don't, won't.
Yes, the things that Joseph did, if they really are true, are the most remarkably significant discoveries in the history of mankind. Yet think about it. If it is true, then it is of God. And if it is of God, then would God ever allow an absolute 100% evidence of its truthfulness by worldly means and investigation? No. God requires man to have faith in Him. It is one of His eternal principles, and He can never violate it. The only means by which we can come to know with 100% surety of the truth of the gospel is on God's terms, which is the Holy Ghost (John 16:13). That is the only way he has provided for us to have a conviction that the restored gospel is true. There are many circumstantial evidences that will lend plausibility to the truthfulness of the gospel, as you have seen in these materials, and there is an equal plausibility of evidences that it is false. But nothing will ever be discovered that will ultimately prove the gospel is true in the world's eyes. That's not how God works, and would destroy the principle of faith. Everyone would suddenly become members of the Church if it was proven true by scientific means.
I hope that this helps answer your question.
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