Mormons and Frisbee

[ATL2CDG]

I never claimed that everything the church said is true.

Despite my having married a LDS and having had been one for a little over 2 years, I am far from an expert on the complex and detailed history and theology involved.

Not being an expert, I cannot sit here and debate every topic... Heck, I don't even believe most of their doctrine... But I don't call their beliefs 'hooey' or demean them. It's people like you, Super 80, that murder the early Saints, drove them from their homes and land and forced them to leave their friends, family and property.

At least, Mormons don't call your beliefs 'hooey' or the alike. All I'm asking for is a little respect...

 

[redd]

Right on, ATL2CDG,

I never claimed that everything the church said is true....At least, Mormons don't call your beliefs 'hooey' or the alike. All I'm asking for is a little respect...

Exactly! It's about respect.

 

[johnpeace]

Respect?

Is it respectful to believe someone's lie and just not say anything?

Is it somehow respectful to not point out when someone is wrong?

If you were flying with someone who briefed an approach wrong, would you not correct them...out of respect for their ideas?

The Mormon teachings about the character and nature of God do not square with the Bible. Their origin is very suspicious. Their authenticity questionable.

How is it disrespectful to call attention to the fallacious nature of these teachings and contrast them with the words of Christ?

Here's another article that stacks up LDS with Jesus, side by side:
http://www.godandscience.org/cults/mormdiff.html

 

[johnpeace]

another excellent examination

...of the Book of Mormon:
http://www.focusonthefaulty.com/Pages/mormon.html

 

[redd]

Johnpeace,

Is it somehow respectful to not point out when someone is wrong?

Okay...as you wish.....

The Bible (the gospels and OT prophecies telling of the Messiah's coming) identify Jesus as being born in Bethlehem.

This isn't exactly true, from our historical vantage point of hindsight we can see that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but the Old Testament (OT) states that he was also to have come out of Egypt and Nazareth.

From the OT point of view, figuring out where the Messiah was to be born was like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. What is obvious now to us, wasn't to them, the OT prophecies:

And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.
Matt 2:19-23 (KJV)

There is no written record of any prophet saying that "He shall be called a Nazarene" in the Old Testament so the prophecy given here is something that was spoken by the prophets but not written down at least not in any writings that were included in the bible. Many times though Jesus was referred to as Jesus of Nazareth.

---


When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son
out of Egypt.
Hosea 11:1 (KJV)

And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.(Math 2:15)

A double prophecy.

---
"Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress." (Daniel 9:24-25)


Here it does not say that the messiah was to come out of Jerusalem, but rather indicates the rebuilding thereof.


You speak with such authority, I am surprised you didn't know this about the OT prophecies concerning the coming messiah, this is widely known by biblical shcolars.....

I am done with this thread, I won't participate in endless debates.

 

[johnpeace]

Johnpeace,

Okay...as you wish.....

This isn't exactly true, from our historical vantage point of hindsight we can see that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but the Old Testament (OT) states that he was also to have come out of Egypt and Nazareth.

Micah 5:2 But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

Lets see...
1) ruler over Israel
2) whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

Could Micah have been referring to Christ?

OK...the OT doesn't specifically say where Messiah will be born. But Christ's birth in Bethlehem fulfills the OT prophecy AND doesn't square with the Book of Mormon saying he was born in Jerusalem.

And that was my only point.

 

[Super 80]

It's people like you, Super 80, that murder the early Saints, drove them from their homes and land and forced them to leave their friends, family and property.

Now who is judging? You just called me a murderer all because I said the book of Mormon doesn't have the legs to stand on to call it Inspired Scripture from God.

The test of a prophet is unerring. Joseph Smith's book fails this test. As an analytical person raised as an atheist who tried to disprove the Bible only to come to faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and now professes that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the One Whom God Sent, not only is there no linguistic trail to the original author, the evidence has been conveniently whisked away.

The book itself does not pass muster when dealing with certain facts that may have passed for belief by someone as scientifically uneducated as Joseph Smith. Indians are not Semitic and horses are not indigenous to the Western Hemisphere. I am sure that somewhere in the book of Mormon there is an explanation why these God-fearing people who knew of Jesus Christ became pagan savages in its circular logic, however, that does not change the truth of genetics nor the archaeological record.

Therefore, Joseph Smith is not a prophet because he did not tell the truth. It then follows that the Book of Mormon is not inspired Scripture. We then have a problem of people following something not from God in pursuit of God. From a neighbor who labored long and hard and finally succeeded in getting his wife out of the LDS church, he constantly advanced all the reasons why the LDS church was not right.

The real cruelty is to let those seeking Jesus stay mired in falsehood. I do not kill anyone. I love them. I am not out to offend any Mormon, but I have some very hard questions for them designed to wake them from their slumber. Should I have a personal relationship with a Mormon, I will accept them as they are in love, but I will learn more about their beliefs so as to be able to show them the error of their ways with gentleness and respect. The decision is theirs. I will not advance my theology on the point of a sword unlike some.

 

[Super 80]

I am going to answer your second objection first.

There is no written record of any prophet saying that "He shall be called a Nazarene" in the Old Testament so the prophecy given here is something that was spoken by the prophets but not written down at least not in any writings that were included in the bible. Many times though Jesus was referred to as Jesus of Nazareth.

Now who is calling whose faith hooey?

There is an explanation for this. The basis for it is that the Old Testament that we have come to know in its singularity was not the only line brought forward. We have many OT quotes in the New Testament that are worded differently than what can be found in the OT or Masoretic text, reflecting the name of the family that was largely responsible for keeping the manuscripts in their current form. Manuscripts, being manually written had to be periodically re-scribed because the material they were printed on, paper or linen for the most part, would deteriorate.

With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars have found other renditions of the OT. It seems there were more than one set of books in existence in Jesus' time for the Old Testament. In A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed the Temple, it is surmised that the Jewish authorities had time to recover only one set. That may have not been the best set as it now seems as other renditions found in the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to be better in their textual criticism in books like 1st Samuel, which has been judged not to be of very high quality in the Masoretic text that has come down to us.

The following comes from a book entitled: Is the Bible True?

The “Missing Prophecy”

So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."
—Matthew 2:23

A previously unknown passage in a copy of 1 Samuel found at Qumran may help explain the mysterious “missing prophecy” referred to in the nativity story in the gospel of Matthew. In the first two chapters of that story, Matthew recites five vignettes associated with the birth of Jesus and concluded each by quoting from Hebrew Scripture to show that this was done “to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet.” Four of those references are easily found in the traditional Old Testament—that the Messiah would be born of a virgin(1) and would be called Immanuel (Isa. 7:14); that Bethlehem would be his birthplace (Mic. 5:2); that he would come out of Egypt (Hos. 11:1); and that there would be mourning over Herod’s slaughter of the children of Bethlehem (Jer. 31:15).

But the fifth prophecy, that “he will be called a Nazarene” (or Nazorean)—explaining why Jesus and his parents settled in Nazareth—is nowhere to be found in the traditional Hebrew Bible. In fact, there is no mention of the Galilean town of Nazareth at all in the Old Testament.

The verse in Matthew has puzzled Bible scholars for centuries. Some modern biblical commentaries suggest that the writer of Matthew may have intended to link Jesus to the messianic “branch” (netzer, in Hebrew) that Isaiah 11:1 says shall grow out of the root of Jesse, or to the strict-living Nazirites such as Sampson, ancient Israel’s deliverer from the Philistines, who is described in Judges 13:5 as one who was “consecrated” (nazir, in Hebrew) to God.(2)

But could Matthew’s author simply have been reading from a different version of the Bible—one that includes a prophecy of a messianic connection to Nazareth? The mystery has not been satisfactorily resolved. But scholars who have studied the scrolls say a previously unknown line of text found in a Qumran version of 1 Samuel (4QSama) contains language that is startlingly close to Matthew’s. It appears at the end of 1 Samuel 1:22, where Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel, vows to take her newborn son to the temple at Shiloh, “that he may appear in the presence of the Lord, and remain there forever.” The Qumran fragment adds a final clause that does not appear in the traditional text: “and I will make him a Nazir forever.”

Ulrich says he is “not prepared to claim that this precise passage was the source” of the Matthew citation. Indeed, to do so would seem to require establishing either a misreading of the Hebrew prophets on Matthew’s part or a mistranslation of Matthew’s gospel in its early form.(3) But the similarity of the language is striking, he says, and so is its context. Just as in Matthew, it appears in a birth narrative. In this case, it is the story of the birth of the prophet who would be chose by God to anoint King David—the forebear of Israel’s Messiah.

Even if this is not the basis of Matthew’s “missing prophecy,” says Ulrich, “all reasonable indicators point toward the occurrence” in the Scripture in Matthew’s hands “of a line, now no longer extant, that could serve as the basis for that quote.”(4)

While no other ancient biblical manuscripts contain the passage found at Qumran, the Jewish historian Josephus included it in his close paraphrase in Antiquities of the Jews, suggesting that he too knew of this version of 1 Samuel.(5) Convinced of its authenticity, editors of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible have inserted the line into the modern biblical text, along with a footnote attributing it to the Qumran scrolls.

Jeffery L. Sheler, Is the Bible True?, (HarperSanFrancisco: Zondervan: First Edition, 1999), p154-155.

Notes

1. The Greek (Septuagint) has it “virgin.” It is “young girl” in the Masoretic text.
2. See, for example, Howard Clark Kee, ed., The Cambridge Annotated Study Bible
NRSV (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
3. More than a mistranslation of a single key word, nazir-Nazorean, would be at issue
here. If nazir is authentic, and the Matthew passage refers to the fulfillment of a prophecy involving consecration, it does not fit with the portion of the birth narrative with which it has been paired.
4. Eugene C. Ulrich, “The Qumran Biblical Scrolls” the Scriptures of the Late Second
Temple Judaism,” unpublished paper, University of Notre Dame, 10.
5. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, as it appears in The Complete Works of
Josephus, trans. William Whiston (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publication, 1981), 5:10.2-3.

 

[Super 80]

(Daniel 9:24-25)

Here it does not say that the messiah was to come out of Jerusalem, but rather indicates the rebuilding thereof.

Let me speak with authority. You do not know what you are speaking of when you quote Daniel. This is not a birth prophecy. This prophecy given to Daniel by Gabriel concerns the Messiah. It leads from the time of exile to Christ's first advent and then covers the last seven years at which time, all the prophecy in this short explanation revealed by God through His angel will be complete.

Here is a study I did: (taken out of context from my eschatological pursuits)

The events in Daniel 9:24 constitute a theme for what is to follow. As a rule of the Bible, their order is important and an assumption of linear progression will be applied to this introductory verse. Viewing the events which are to unfold as a chronological map, we can then compare their description to theology in order to interpret the prophecy. This analysis will discern the theme of the seventy sevens by studying the verbs used as they are central in the construction of the verse.

DA 9:24 "Seventy `sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.

As the first order is to “finish the transgression” God had decreed as a consequence for not following his ordinances, the captivity the Hebrew people are in and in the near term, this will soon be accomplished as described as recorded in Nehemiah. But in context of the rest of the verse, the transgression being brought to conclusion can refer to aspects of the Messiah. Indeed, the word for finish has “the basic idea of this root is “to bring a process to completion.””—TWOT Vol. I page 439. So in the broader context, this transgression can also refer to original sin, such that sin is put to death on the cross, once and for all and the salvation foretold in Genesis 3:15b will be completed.

To put an end, comes from the word tamam, and means to be complete or finished. This is wholly different than the previous use of end as in qes. As sin can only be atoned for with blood, but never completed or finished by man or the Levite class of priests, only God can be responsible for ending the curse of original sin. With the Messiah on the cross, “to put an end to sin” tamam gains significance in Jesus’ own words saying, “It is finished.”—John 19:30, meaning paid in full, or completing the account as it was used then in the common cultural first century sense.

“To atone for wickedness”, or make atonement comes from kaphar, which is a derivative verb from kopher and means, to cover over, pacify, make propitiation. kopher itself means: the price of a life, ransom. So when Jesus lay down His life to cover a multitude of sin, He also gave his life as a ransom for many. His shed blood was the redemptive power of the Lord as only blood can make atonement of sin—Lev 17:10

“To bring in everlasting righteousness” comes from the prim word, bo and means to come in, go in, go, and reflects the invitation Christ has to each of us to bring Him into our lives as the indwelling Holy Spirit. This aspect of fellowship with God was not known at all during the time before the Pentecost described in Acts. As such it reflects one of the mysteries of the Church not revealed otherwise in Old Testament prophecy. Until the Pentecost, man knew God through his physical manifestation. As Enoch walked with God, Abraham met with Him, Jacob wrestled with Him, Moses spoke with Him, Joshua conferred with Him, and the Prophets listened to Him, the one aspect missing was the indwelling Holy Spirit. As Jesus said;

JN 16:7 “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

The Spirit then moves through the apostles:

AC 2:1 “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them,”

This was indeed a new experience and heralds the initial formation of the Church. To view bo as being accomplished in this manner is inline with a chronological outline of the Messiah’s work within creation.

The next part of Daniel 9:24 marks a break in the chronology we have had up until this time. Up until now, the aspects have all pointed to the past and present; the last two tasks are relegated here to the future. This gap will be covered in detail as Gabriel specifically breaks it off as well in the detail of the ‘sevens.’ The time lengths are covered in detail later, as will be their analysis. However, as with other gaps, the one in Daniel 9:24 is not uncommon in prophecy. The theme here places no emphasis in when the actions will be performed because all six items are important, not their timing.

“To seal up vision and prophecy,” the word seal has not changed much since Hebrew times. Professor Lewis of Harding Graduate School of Religion denotes that; “Hence sealing designates that which is securely enclosed by lying under a seal…Isaiah was to seal up his teaching in his disciples, that is, to keep it securely (Isa 8:16).”—TWOT p.334.

ISA 8:16 Bind up the testimony
and seal up the law among my disciples.

“Also an unintelligible prophecy is said in a simile to be sealed (Isa 29:11)”—ibid p.334

ISA 29:10 The LORD has brought over you a deep sleep:
He has sealed your eyes (the prophets);
he has covered your heads (the seers).

ISA 29:11 For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say to him, "Read this, please," he will answer, "I can't; it is sealed." 12 Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, "Read this, please," he will answer, "I don't know how to read."

Likewise to seal up can also be to contain as in to signify “that which is closed up”—ibid p.334, and marries our present day usage in sealing a vessel, making it complete by making it tight. So, one aspect of sealing is the visions and prophecies are then to be securely enclosed in the time described within the verse. Another can be said that this verse was not to be intelligible to those before the coming of Christ. But as God uses His stamp of the miraculous to validate monumental steps in His plan, prophecy continues until His return so the sealing here must continue until Christ’s reign. This then would close up the timeframe when visions and prophecy will be necessary.

Another aspect to sealing up has to do with the principle of prophecy itself. The only place in the Bible that discusses the time after the Day of the Lord is the six references to the Millennial Period in Revelations and the Temple of the Lord described in the last part of Ezekiel starting in verse 43:10 until the end of that book. However, prophecy as conveyed from God will not exist after the Day of the Lord. This will be brought out as the timeline progresses through the end times and into the Millennium, however, at this juncture, it should be noted that this future prophecy marks a significant change between this present age and the Rule of Christ that will come.

The last phrase, “to anoint the most holy” occurs after the seal or the visions of end times contained in Daniel. Holy in the noun form qodesh connotes the concept of “holiness,” i.e. the essential nature of that which belongs to the sphere of the sacred and which is thus distinct from the common or profane.”—TWOT Vol. II page 787. “The verb mashah with its derivatives occurs about 140 times…in the prophets it is found as a verb only twice with its religious connotation of sacred anointing (Isa 61:1; Dan 9:24).”—TWOT Vol. I page 530. So we have a religious anointing rather than a physical anointing and the object or subject is the embodiment of holy.

With the last reference having a holy basis, it could be likened to the anointing of the Messiah after the period covered by the prophecy which has been sealed and would come at the conclusion of the seventy sevens. So while (only) the NASB adds the word ‘place’ to “holy,” qodesh may not refer to a place. This would be in line with the celebration of the Lamb after the defeat of the world and the rule of man described in end time prophecies.

To investigate the actions contained within Daniel 9:24, is to confirm that only Jesus’ accomplishments could satisfy all the requirements. Once the verbs are examined in their meaning, obvious parallels can be drawn to actions by and surrounding the Messiah. These occur as they have in the first four instances. The totality of this opening is the salvation of God’s people and the crowning glory of God culminating with the restoration of Jerusalem as the bride of Christ. It will take seventy ‘sevens’ until all that is accomplished. The overview thus defines the objective point of view upon which his proclamation will hinge: the people, the city and the Messiah.

 

[Super 80]

This isn't exactly true, from our historical vantage point of hindsight we can see that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but the Old Testament (OT) states that he was also to have come out of Egypt and Nazareth.

From the OT point of view, figuring out where the Messiah was to be born was like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. What is obvious now to us, wasn't to them, the OT prophecies:

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son
out of Egypt.
Hosea 11:1 (KJV)

And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.(Math 2:15)

A double prophecy.

You may be done with this thread redd, but the damage you have done will be undone.

You have misquoted and so blurred a fine distinction in the original language of the prophets when you say the Lord has come out of Bethlehem and Eqypt equally.

While each verse has out of, they do not both have the Lord coming or originating from both. The words out of comes from the Hebrew preposition min which can have several shades of meaning depending on the context with which it is used. This kind of complexity is also found in simple English words like to so it should not be strange to find it in the Hebrew. min means from, out of, or more than.

The meaning of out of is fairly consistent between Hosea 11:1 and Micah 5:2. It follows from the second of six definitions given in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament:

Second, with other verbs, it means out of, e.g. out of Egypt. It is used for material out of which something is made. Allied with this is the causal force: to shake from the noise, or on account of our transgressions.--p. 512.

Therefore for a distinction between these verses, you have to look at the verb or action associated with the preposition in order to put the particular word you are putting so much emphasis on in context.

In Hosea 11:1 the action is calling. HOS 11:1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." This verb comes from the Hebrew, qara. It means: I, call, call out, recite (read).

The root qr' denotes primarily the enunciation of a specific vocable or message. In the case of the latter usage it is customarily addressed to a specific recipient and is intednded to eliicit a specific response (hence, it may be translated "proclaim, invite").--TWOT p. 810.

One of the derivative words to qara is qari which means: called one, summoned.

In Micah, the action is to come. MIC 5:2 "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel." This verb comes from yasa and it means to: go out, come out, go forth.

The basic notion of yasa is "to go out." It is used literally of going out from a particular locality of from the presence of a person.--TWOT p.393

One of the derivative words from the root word yasa is se esa and it means offspring, produce. While yasa has strong ties to the Exodus in the Bible, as an originating statement of locality, and being associated with its derivative of offspring, placing Micah 5:2 as a birth place prophecy is substantiated and it is why the Jewish scholars answered Herod that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

Subsequently, being called out of Egypt was fulfilled as well as being a Nazarene. But the lineage of the Messiah as an offspring of David is firmly fixed in the Old Testament. To be so, the Christ has to be Jewish or Hebrew (not Egyptian) and would be born or originate within the land of David's tribe in Judah and not from Galilee.

Matthew does a good job of interpreting all the birth prophecies about Jesus, and shows us the extent of how prophecies can have both a near sense and a far when applied to the birth of sons with Isaiah's sign for a son being named Immanuel, or God is with us -quite literally in Jesus' case (Isaiah 7:14), and the Qumran scrolls in 1st Samuel describing another son as a Nazir that can also be applied to Jesus.

To say the prophecies about Jesus can be confusing shows that God's message can be complex, and needs revelation from the Spirit from time to time. Indeed, there is a gap of some 2000 years contained within Isaiah 61:2. Jesus stopped reciting at the "year of the Lord's favor" in proclaiming that this was accomlished with His reading. He did not go on to the following words, "day of vengeance of our God" because that is reserved for a time still yet to come. It is not too hard to see the difficulty the Jewish scholars had to recognize the large gap of time that exists within one sentence and for them to realize this verse describes two separate advents of the Messiah.

But for God, the aspect of Christ's two advents easily spans the gap, and so God, to whom a thousand years is like a day, goes from one to the other in sequential linear fashion.