Mormons

my, uh, recent ex-girlfriend was a mormon. and i have known a few others as well. well i was visiting her last, i had the opportunity to talk to a few missionaries from their church.they were actually very willing to discuss just about anything. one seemed a little like she should have been a fundamental christian (similar attitude and mindset) but almost everyone i talked to seemed very rational and friendly.their beliefs actually align with my own very well. better than christianity for the most part, but for several glaring inconsistancies. and they do take offense, btw, when you attack their holy book, even though it is... a lot more spurious than the bible, and that's saying alot.i have no faith in joseph smith.why is it so big lately? well, they have the most sensible church service i've been to in a long time. and they're nice people.

i do hope this is a joke.an actual measure of a cult is one such system of belief that places a human being at the center of a religion, often ascribing him immortality even after his death.by all definitions, christianity is a cult.the church of lds is actually LESS of a cult, because they tend to focus less on christ and more "heavenly father." and they have not replaced the "word of god." the old and new testaments in their entirety can be found in any mormon bible. actually, it does.

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Jhn 13:35 By this shall all [men] know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

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um. no. try again.and how do you know that anyways? how do you know he wasn;t behind any other texts?christ appears so many times in the book of mormon it would be a difficult task to count them. they, however, don't focus on christ as much as they do god. which, in my opinion, is a GOOD thing.fundamentalist christians like to worship christ, who was made in the image of god. that's called idolatry, and is specifically against god's commandments.

yes. mormons believe that also. their official name is "the church of JESUS CHRIST of latter day saints"

then why does he address god the father as a separaten entity in the garden of gethsemane?simply put, whether or not jesus was god, he was also made in the image of god, being part human. worshipping any image of god is idolatry. yes, well, your beliefs offend mine. i think you're a member of a cult. how do you like that? turnabout is, afterall, fair play.

jesus was made in the image of god. any worship of any image of god or anything else is strictly forbidden. it's idolatry, qed. remember the golden calf? that was supposed to be god too. revelation mixes a lot of imagery up, because it's not really talking about what you think it's talking about. it for instance combines satan, leviathan, and devils into one supreme evil. it's probably talking about the emporer of rome, in all actuality. simply put, john is blasphemous. no man may claim to be god. jesus walks around full of himself and saying how he is god and people should follow and worship him, and this simply does not match with anything jesus said in any of the other gospels, including the apocryphal ones. i, and a few others i've talked to, do not believe john to be a factual portrayal of his words, but more of a propaganda pamphelet telling you about jesus.in the other gospels, jesus directs attention to the father, and calls himself "the son of man" not "the son of god" and NEVER "god." the second two were seen as blasphemy in his day, and the last certainly would have been. on top of that, jesus demonstrates clear separation from god. gethsemane is good evidence of this.jesus was not the sort to get around on technicalities. he came as an example, and running around saying you're god does not demonstrate the humble qualities he sought to teach. saying you're god is a sin, blasphemy. it's not ok, even you believe he is god. it's still a sin, and the jesus portrayed in john is a sinner and a hypocrite and a blasphemer, rightly punished by death.so i ignore john entirely.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 07-22-2004 01:40 AM

jesus asks the pharisees whose son christ is. by christ he's talking about the messiah. he is not directly talking about himself, and saying he's the messiah. notice that the pharisees respond, saying he's ben dabid. they're not saying that jesus is of the family of david, they're saying the messiah they are expecting is.the messiah david is speaking of in psalm 110 is probably not jesus. let's read.

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Psalm 110:
1. [[A Psalm of David.] The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
2. The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.
3. Thy people [shall be] willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.
4. The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou [art] a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
5. The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.
6. He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill [the places] with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries.
7. He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head.

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have a good look at verses 5 and 6. did jesus do that? well, first of all, "god with us" in a name doesn't mean anything at all. traditionally, a lot of people in the old testament were named with things that gave people a message about god. a name saying that god is with us, and has not forgotten about us, is not the same as saying someone IS god. the only way to do that would be to name the child yhvh, which would be strictly forbidden.second, isaiah is not talking about jesus. immanuel was the name of a prophesied messiah to save the hebrews from the assyrians. he would have been a military leader (as the rest of that chapter asserts) and his name would actually have been immanuel. not jesus. immanuel. jesus is called this once in matthew, and it's the only two places the name appears in the bible. it appears the author of matthew had read parts of isaiah, seeing as how he quotes it as out of context as you just did. philemon only has one chapter. let's check philippians.

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Phl 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Phl 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
Phl 2:7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

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etc.things people write about jesus are nice and all. but being charged with a sin, how responsible is it to point to the next guy and go "he did it too!" you know, the bible doesn't get 4 chapters in before it deals with that. the son of god is not the same as god. adam was the son of god. david was the son of god. we are all sons of god in some respect, all being members and products of his creation.notice also he says at the right hand of the mighty one? not in the place of. not the same as. next to, and below. different gospels tell this story a little differently. matthew and luke both having saying "you say that i am" and then saying that. it almost sounds like "you're the one who's putting me there, not me"again, he doesn't call himself god, and he doesn't even call himself the son of god. he calls himself the son of man. speaking god's name aloud, unless for teaching purposes his blasphemy. writting god's name, unless for teaching purposes, or in copying the torah, is blasphemy. do you think christ did either of these things?if he actually said "i am" which is doubtful at best, he said it in aramaic. god's "name" is hebrew for "that which exists," which often gets told as "i am." hebrew and aramaic are different languages. "i am" is used a number of times in the christian bible. how many imply god's name?jesus was answering a question. he said, at the very most, that he was the son of god.

jewish people determine heredity through the mother, actually. luke's genealogy apparently actually traces it through his mother. why it says joseph, i don't know, but a few other sources apparently claimed that eli was mary's father, not josephs. that fits it a little better with matthew, which still doesn't fit chronicles.but i think the genealogies were largely made up anyways, in order to give validity to the story. the fact that we have two different ones, one being 15 generations longer than the other, casts a lot of doubt on their validity.

the issue was not insanity. the issue was blasphemy. that, and he didn't fit the description of the christ (lowercase) that the hebrews were expecting: a military leader. if he had said he was the christ, they would have just laughed at him and asked him where his army was. so the bible says. are you using matthew's genealogy, or lukes? well, the messiah they're looking for is that one, the second coming. not the first. the whole psalm is about that messiah. not jesus of nazareth. genesis teaches largely by counter-example.here's the finger pointing:

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Gen 3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
Gen 3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What [is] this [that] thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

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what does god do afterwards? does he curse just the serpent? no, he curses the serpent, and the woman, and the man. all three, not just the first one. the message of that little bit is that no matter what other people tell you to do, you're still responsible for your own actions.my point is that jesus-wroship is idolatry. pointing to the apostle paul and saying "he told me to!" i no better than adam pointing to eve and saying "she told me to!" or eve pointing to serpent and saying "the devil made me do it!"it breaks the first commandment (or the second depending on how you count), no matter what paul says. i never said christ wasn't divine. i said that he was separate from god, at least in his earthly incarnation, and that since he was made in the image of god, worship of him is idolatry. all worship/praise/etc should be directed at god ("the father") alone.

it doesn't fit the other gospels either. jesus walks around in john claiming divinity. he's a lot more humble in the other gospels. under good literary analysis, the jesus in the book of john and the jesus in the other three gospels are very different characters.so yes, i made a choice between the two of them. i choose to believe in the more humble one. the coming messiah. i believe that entity to be jesus, personally. i just don't believe jesus walked around bragging about being the son of god, the messiah, or worse, god. it does sound alot like jesus, doesn't it? i've heard some metaphorical interpretations. but anyhow, please note it says god's servant (starting in 52) not god himself. it talks about how god abuses him for israel's sake.but i was talking about in 7 and 8, that messiah is not talking about jesus. 53 may well be, but 7 and 8 are not. yes, blatantly clear that the messiah in question will be a military leader, with no indication of divinity at all. sitting at the right hand of god is no more indication of divinity than walking with god, as enoch did. was enoch also god? "with" and "in the place of" are very different things. the second part follows from the first, naturally. i'm skeptical of the bible BECAUSE i have a lot of knowledge about it.

no, you're not really. it actually is a real problem with the text, as it says nothing about mary. i was just stating that i heard of people reconciling the texts that way, and that other texts list eli as mary's father, not joseph's.honestly, i don't know. it is a legitimate contradiction, and doesn't really make sense.

actually, the concept of the trinity is much, much older than christianity. the qabala talks about one god, but with different facets: male, female, and neutral.all are god, and all are the SAME god, and no one is ranked over any other.contrast that with father and son. one is placed over the other. if jesus is god, placing him under another god, in this manner, ALSO breaks the first commandment.