Out, damned spot! out, I say!

Monday, May 14

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

The spot of false doctrine, that is. Persisting in error despite obvious and overwhelming contrary evidence does not wisdom make.

From here:

Latter day revelation has clarified many of the Biblical inaccuracies and inconsistencies that have resulted from translations.

Without the Original Texts (or their numerous manuscript copies, which we have today), how can you possibly know that "inaccuracies and inconsistencies" exist? Without the Originals (or their copies), how can you make any corrections?

Problems with translations are an entirely different category than copying anomalies. Translations can and should be revised using the best information available. Variations in manuscript copies of the Originals are easy to compare because so many copies exist that are from various geographic locations around ancient Christendom.

That a tilde or number in one family of copies is errant is possible to determine by comparing that manuscript with any of the manuscripts from other families.

All of that leads to a high degree of confidence that we know what the Original Manuscripts actually said.

Besides all of that, there is no way the Apostle John's quotation of Christ's statement that "God is Spirit" is a distortion of "god is an obedient, flesh-and-bone being fornicating on another planet."

To continue to promote such nonsense is utterly indefensible.

This is an area where you and I will most likely come to a disagreement. I believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and I believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

You believe that your god is either unwilling or unable to preserve his revelation, or if he is, that he doesn't mind contradicting himself.

Any deity that reveals one thing and then later contradicts his first story is a liar and a fraud.

I'm assuming you either do not believe in continued revelation or, at the very least, you do not believe that there is a living prophet today.

I believe that Jesus Christ will not contradict Himself. If any "prophet" comes along and says something other than what God has said, he is a liar and a charlatan.

I do. I have no tangible evidence of this. I have a personal testimony that it is true.

Subjectivism is no basis for religious faith. One's experience should be interpreted in light of what God has revealed through His Prophets and Apostles. If your personal experience leads you to embrace something contrary to the Word of Christ, you have allowed yourself to be deceived.

I agree with the scripture you mentioned. In the next life they are neither married or given in marriage. Marriage is an Early ordinance and cannot be performed after this life. Thus if you are not sealed on Earth you will not be sealed in Heaven.

No, He said they are not married, as in they are not in the state of being married. If he meant only that unions are not made in the next, He would not have then noted [*see below] . . . .

Also, Jesus specifically compares our state in the afterlife with regards to marriage by comparing us to His angels. Unless you want to say that they are married in this life and that carries over into the next, the only reasonable interpretation of this is that angels are unmarried and so will we be.

My whole intent was to share that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe in the same God and Jesus Christ that the rest of the Christian community does.

It seems unwise to lie about YHWH and His Christ if you want to please Them.

*Correction on Matthew 22:30:

Shane wrote, "In the next life they are neither married or given in marriage."

In Shane's version, Christ seems to be making a contrast between a status and an act. In Christ's version, he notes our celibacy by comparing our marital status to the angels':

"Jesus answered, 'You’re mistaken because you don’t know the Scriptures or God’s power. When people come back to life, they don’t marry. Rather, they are like the angels in heaven.'"

Shane's "sealed on Earth, sealed in Heaven" adds to (and contradicts) Christ's revelation, something He forbids.

On the fall of Constantinople

"[...] the great church of Hagia Sophia was filled to capacity. Thousands of people were moving towards the church. Inside, Orthodox and Catholic priests were holding liturgy, the last Christian service after almost 1,000 years. People were singing hymns, others were openly crying, others were asking each other for forgiveness [...].

"Bands of Ottoman soldiers began now looting. Doors were broken, private homes were looted, their tenants were massacred. Shops in the city markets were looted. Monasteries and Convents were broken in. Their tenants were killed, nuns were raped; many, to avoid dishonor, killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving, went on and on [...].

"The great doors of Hagia Sophia were forced open, and crowds of angry soldiers came in and fell upon the unfortunate worshippers. Pillaging and killing in the holy place went on for hours. Similar was the fate of worshippers in most churches in the city [...].

"Thousands of civilians were enslaved, soldiers fought over young boys and young women [...] the invaders broke the heads of those women who resisted on the floor of the churches and they raped them dead. The famous icon of Apostole Loukas was totally destroyed.

"The sultan asked for the young sons of Duke Loukas Notaras. Their father refused and Mehmed was ready to take their heads. Notaras asked him to kill him after his sons so that he was sure that they were dead and not disgraced from the pervert sultan.

"And this is what happened."

Black Tuesday, The Last Day of the World, the twenty-ninth of May, anno Domini MCDLIII

On American Liberty

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776

"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

Thomas Jefferson to Moses Robinson Washington, Mar. 23, 1801

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800

The truth about Mahomet

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

"A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property -- either as a child, a wife, or a concubine -- must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -- the science against which it had vainly struggled -- the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

Winston Churchill, Churchill, Winston S. (1899), The River War, First edition, Vol. II, pp. 248-250

A war of twelve hundred years

"And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here. His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man, was the early object of his mission; and the authoritative demonstration of the immortality of man, was that, which constituted the more than earthly tribute of glory to God in the highest [...] The first conquest of the religion of Jesus, was over the unsocial passions of his disciples. It elevated the standard of the human character in the scale of existence. [...] On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter. THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE.

[...]

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE

[...]

"Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant. [...] While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”

John Quincy Adams, Blunt, Joseph (1830),The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9, pp. 268-269

Impossible Islamophobia

Nearly one and one-half millennia of slavery, rape, and slaughter in Allah's name ...

80% of American -- not Pakistani, not Saudi Arabian, not Iranian, but American -- mosques teach jihad/Islamic supremacism ...

Nearly twenty-seven thousand documented jihad attacks since 9/11 alone, and ...

Islam's "Ideal Man" Muhammad -- Allah's "beautiful pattern of conduct" for those who want to please it -- preached and practiced genocide, pedophilia, rape, slavery, torture, mutilation, anti-Semitism, theft, extortion, arson, wife-beating, polygyny, religious and gender apartheid, sedition, treason, deceit, and blasphemy and warned his devotees that "Allah made me do it, and you will too, or else!"

No, "Islamophobia" is impossible. Merely pointing out simple facts regarding a genocidal, malevolent, and totalitarian ideology is neither phobic nor intolerant. It is highly rational and moral.

We are in only the latest phase of an ancient and existential struggle, Allah's war against humanity.

Speaking the truth in love

Never surrender

"we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone [...].

"we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end [...] we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender [...]."

Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940