Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
Heres a wiki on JS and his prophecies eddly...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophec...seph_Smith,_Jr.
It has the prophecy on the 2nd coming about 2/3s of the way down.
Again Im not trying to suggest you are wrong...Im just saying there are literally hundreds of sites that have the same "factual" info out there. As a matter of fact Id suggest there is likely more factual sites out there than LDS supported sites.
Thanks for suggesting that not everything on the anti-sites is a lie...thats important...like I said...if you think half of it is a lie...that means half is correct.
How do you justify the lies as a Mormon? |
This quote from the wiki article seems to explain it satisfactorily:
Coming of the Lord within 56 years
"President Smith then stated that the meeting had been called, because God had commanded it; and it was made known to him by vision and by the Holy Spirit. . . . it was the will of God that they should be ordained to the ministry and go forth to prune the vineyard for the last time, for the coming of the Lord, which was nigh — even fifty six years should wind up the scene.[23] [This was uttered in 1835, and 56 years was completed in 1891] It should be noted that Joseph Smith did not preface this statement with "Thus sayeth the Lord," as he generally did when he claimed to be quoting the Lord. Latter-day Saints generally assume he was stating his opinion, on the basis of an earlier, recorded revelation:
Doctrine & Covenants 130:14-17 states:
I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice repeat the following: Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter. I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face. I believe the coming of the Son of Man will not be any sooner than that time. Joseph Smith, Jr., died at the age of 38, and so the terms of the revelation were not fulfilled.
While some consider this prophecy, uses of words and phrases such as "should", "without being able to decide", and "I believe" demonstrate this to be opinion, interpolation, and conjecture that can not be taken as prophecy.
This doesn't appear to be a false prophecy to me.
Your next question "
if you think half of it is a lie...that means half is correct. How do you justify the lies as a Mormon?" How do I justify there being lies on anti-mormon sites? Quite easily, they have an agenda. They are using pieces or parts of facts and twisting them. In some cases whole "facts" are simply created.
For example, while I served as a missionary the local paper in the city I was in published an "advertisement" that claimed Mormons pray to Joseph Smith and only he can forgive our sins. That was created by the author of the advertisement to generate a reaction. It is based on nothing.
Here is another example, the statement that we believe Jesus and Lucifer to be brothers is in fact true. When I say nothing more than that it certainly leaves you with a fowl taste in your mouth. Understandable! The explanation that you would not see is the fact that we believe that we are all God's children created in his image. Jesus is our brother, and so is Lucifer. That lessens the severity of the statement in my opinion.
Perhaps a more interesting question you could have asked me would have been "
how do you justify the church's stance that anti-mormon literature is entirely false when you in fact disagree?". But you didn't ask that question.