Bridge of Reason

An image said to be that of Joseph Smith is circulating on the internet. The image does not belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It belongs to the Community of Christ. No one knows for sure if it is him. Many Utah residents have received an e-mail with a photo attached and a book, due out in three weeks, will try to prove the claim. The LDS church says there's no way to prove the image is really Smith. The picture is below on the left and, on the right, an official photo of the prophet. What do you think? Is it Joseph? For more on this story click on the title of this post. More to the point there are a number of similar stories floating around the Internet at the moment. Is this preoccupation with images of the founding prophet of Mormonism in breach of the second commandment?

PROPHETS OF GOD? Occasionally the Watchtower Society (WB&TS) publish an article, that while outlining one belief, inadvertently condemns another of their teachings. One such article appeared in Awake!, March 22 1993, pp.3/4 entitled Why So Many False Alarms ? Quoting the boy who cried ‘Wolf! Wolf!' once too often, they list several individuals and groups who have made false predic­tions. The final person mentioned being William Miller from whom Charles Taze Russell got his inspira­tion for dating the return of Christ. In the next para­graph they ask, “Does the failure of such predictions to come true convict as false prophets those who made them, within the meaning of Deuteronomy 18:20-22?” The question is eventually answered in the following way, “... they should not be viewed as false prophets such as those warned against at Deuteronomy 18:20-22. In their human fallibility, they misinterpreted matters.” Until this point, the WB&TS has not been mentioned. Indeed, it...

This is surely the Mormon version of Dumb and Dumber. This is a picture of a Mormon missionary "preaching" from the Book of Mormon from behind the Sangre de Cristo's altar at the Catholic Church in Colorado. Other pictures show a missionary holding the head of a church statue, which another claimed to have decapitated; and "sacrificing" a fellow missionary on the altar. They then posted them on the Internet! You can read more about this story at The Deacon's Bench http://deacbench.blogspot.com/2008/03/mormons-apologize-for-this-senseless.html and in the Deseret News http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695260598,00.html You can also watch a news broadcast by clicking on the title of this post. This story highlights two things for me. The first is that, for all their talk in recent years of respecting other faiths, it is natural for Mormons to feel contempt for anyone outside "the Church". The conduct of these missionaries is not so much out of ch...

WE SHOULD NOT BE WISHY-WASHY "It is a serious matter to represent God and Christ in one way, then find that our understanding of the major doctrines of the Scriptures was in error, and after that, to go back to the very doctrines that, by years of study, we had thoroughly determined to be in error, Christians cannot be vacillating - ‘wishy-washy’ - about such fundamental teachings. What confidence can one put in the sincerity or judgement of such persons?" - The Watchtower, 15 May 1976, p.298. This is the Watchtower’s own statement on what it means to be wishy-washy. This is very revealing when we consider the following statements. Each one shows a change and then a reverse to a specific doctrine. Wishy-washy or what? THE POWERS Evil as these Gentile governments have been, they were permitted or ‘ordained of God’ for a wise purpose (Rom 13:1). - Studies in the Scriptures, Vol.3, 1886, p.250. . . . the Scriptural exposition of Romans chapter 13. It showed ...

In writing my weekly Bible reading for the Reachout web site, the Richmond Briefing, there was such a clear application to the problems of dealing with the disingenuous answers routinely given by Mormons when they are challenged about aspects of their faith that they would rather not discuss. I wrote a second version of the study with a particularly Mormon application and put it up here as a warning that it just doesn’t do to take thing at face value. James is writing here about oaths and the way we represent ourselves to others. When he writes “Do not swear” he doesn’t have in mind bad language but the making of oaths designed to guarantee the truth of what we are saying. We hear this sort of thing a lot in certain circles; “On my mother’s life!” someone might insist when something they have said is challenged, a particularly obnoxious oath inasmuch as it indicates that neither their word nor their mother’s life means much to them. This reaches its extreme noxiousness when it’s expre...