LDS FAQ - "Masonry and the Temple"

I found a brief Church-sanctioned (I believe) explanation of the LDS temple's relationship to Freemasonry. I'm curious what it says. Text found here.

Students of both Mormonism and Freemasonry have pondered possible relationships between Masonic rites and the LDS temple ceremony. Although some argue that Joseph Smith borrowed elements of Freemasonry in developing the temple ceremony, the Endowment is more congruous with LDS scriptures (especially the book of Abraham and the Book of Moses) and ancient ritual than with Freemasonry. Both the book of Abraham and the Book of Moses are texts Joseph made up out of thin air, so I personally don't see why anyone would feel better knowing that they've influenced the creation of the LDS temple ceremonies. Pointing out that the temple has more more in common with those writings than with Freemasonry still doesn't justify the presence of Masonic oaths and handshakes in the temple. Latter-day Saints view the ordinances as a revealed restoration of ancient temple ceremony and only incidentally related to Freemasonry. There's no good reason to think the LDS temple ceremonies are ancient and I'm looking forward to seeing how you continue to downplay the influence of Freemasonry. The two are not antithetical, however, nor do they threaten each other, and neither institution discourages research regarding the ancient origins of their two ceremonies. The origins of Freemasonry are not ancient at all, they are medieval, late medieval. Many sacred ceremonies existed in the ancient world. Modified over centuries, these rituals existed in some form among ancient Egyptians, Coptic Christians, Israelites, and Masons, and in the Catholic and Protestant liturgies. Is this written for 6th graders? I can't believe you dared list the Masons in this group. And Egyptians? WTF? Which Egyptians are you talking about? Common elements include the wearing of special clothing, ritualistic speech, the dramatization of archetypal themes, instruction, and the use of symbolic gestures. Levi Strauss would be so proud to read this, but aren't these elements too broad to be taken seriously in this particular discussion of Freemasonry in the LDS temple? One theme common to many—found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Egyptian pyramid texts, and Coptic prayer circles, for example—is man's journey through life and his quest, following death, to successfully pass the sentinels guarding the entrance to eternal bliss with the gods. Right, Thor and all his buddies in Valhalla. Though these ceremonies vary greatly, significant common points raise the possibility of a common remote source. Human psychology most likely. Mormon wishful thinking knows no ends.
 

The Egyptian pyramid texts, for example, feature six main themes: (1) emphasis on a primordial written document behind the rites; (2) purification (including anointing, lustration, and clothing); (3) the Creation (resurrection and awakening texts); (4) the garden (including tree and ritual meal motifs); (5) travel (protection, a ferryman, and Osirian texts); and (6) ascension (including victory, coronation, admission to heavenly company, and Horus texts). Oh my god, that's so... DIFFERENT from the Mormon temple! Wow. Like such ancient ceremonies, the LDS temple Endowment presents aspects of these themes in figurative terms. Only if you're working in the most sympathetic of generalizations. It, too, presents, not a picture of immediate reality, but a model setting forth the pattern of human life on earth and the divine plan of which it is part. We're going to need some actual details here. It sounds like you're seeing what you want to see. It's called confirmation bias.
 
Masonic ceremonies are also allegorical, depicting life's states—youth, manhood, and old age—each with its associated burdens and challenges, followed by death and hoped-for immortality. The difference between your argument for the temple paralleling an Egyptian Book of Breathings and the Freemason ceremonies is that Joseph actually knew Masons and became one himself. On the other hand, he had no understanding of Egyptian despite having purchased a scroll containing a book of breathings. He feigned a translation that is laughable to today's Egyptologists. There is no universal agreement concerning when Freemasonry began. Maybe not, but no one can seriously claim it pre-dates the late Middle Ages. Some historians trace the order's origin to Solomon, Enoch, or even Adam. Only Mormon historians. Others argue that while some Masonic symbolism may be ancient, as an institution it began in the Middle Ages or later. Only everyone who isn't Mormon thinks this.
 
Though in this dispensation the LDS Endowment dates from Kirtland and Nauvoo, Latter-day Saints believe that temple ordinances are as old as man and that the essentials of the gospel of Jesus Christ, including its necessary ritual and teachings, were first revealed to Adam. Mormons have no basis for believing this other than the fact that Joseph Smith, a notorious conman, taught it to his followers and it has been believed and repeated for generations. These saving principles and ordinances were subsequently revealed to Seth; Noah; Melchizedek; Abraham, and each prophet to whom the priesthood was given, including Peter. There is no historical evidence to convince us most of these men ever existed (Peter is the exception) and much less evidence that they ever practiced the ceremonies of the current LDS temples. Latter-day Saints believe that the ordinances performed in LDS temples today replicate rituals that were part of God's teachings from the beginning. But they have no reason to believe anything similar. Hopefully the author of this article will cite some convincing texts.
 

The Prophet Joseph Smith suggested that the Endowment and Freemasonry in part emanated from the same ancient spring. Joe Smith? He's not a very trustworthy source. Do you know he tried to trick investors into funding an illegal bank? The man was as phony as a $3 bill. Thus, some Nauvoo Masons thought of the Endowment as a restoration of a ritual only imperfectly preserved in Freemasonry and viewed Joseph Smith as a master of the underlying principles and allegorical symbolism (Heber C. Kimball to Parley P. Pratt, June 17, 1842, Church Archives). I'm sure those few unnamed Freemasons were totally right... The philosophy and major tenets of Freemasonry are not fundamentally incompatible with the teaching, theology, and doctrines of the Latter-day Saints. Obviously not, but that does not mean they derive from ancient biblical patriarchs or that one group did not co-opt them from the other. Both emphasize morality, sacrifice, consecration, and service, and both condemn selfishness, sin, and greed. So what? You're talking about two groups who's morality is founded in Christian European thought. You're also ignoring the fact that essentially every ethnography you'll read will describe cultures who's beliefs include similar concepts and virtues. That says more about human psychology than it does about the LDS temple being ancient. Furthermore, the aim of Masonic ritual is to instruct-to make truth available so that man can follow it.
 
Resemblances between the two rituals are limited to a small proportion of actions and words; indeed, some find that the LDS Endowment has more similarities with the Pyramid texts and the Coptic documents than with Freemasonry. At this point, dear reader you should compare and contrast the text shared between the temple endowment and the Mason ceremonies. They are in many cases identical! Even if we are to accept the author's claim that they only make up a "limited" portion of the temple, that DOES NOT justify their presence in temple liturgy. I would love to see where the endowment plagiarizes Coptic liturgy in the way. Even where the two rituals share symbolism, the fabric of meanings is different. Because Joseph took the symbols and recast them for his own purposes. In addition to creation and life themes, one similarity is that both call for the participants to make covenants. You keep dancing around the details. I find this approach willfully dishonest. Yet, the Endowment alone ties covenants to eternal blessings and to Jesus Christ. How did you reach this conclusion? Your argument is "OK, we have similarities, but ours is legit, theirs isn't, trust me!"? I'm not impressed. The Masonic ceremony does not emphasize priesthood or the need to be commissioned by God to represent him. So whoever emphasizes that the most wins? What kind of moronic game are you playing? The active participation of God in the world and in men's lives is a distinctly LDS temple motif. As is God's active participation with women, but only through men. It's called divine sexism. While Masons believe in an undefined, impersonal God, everything in the LDS Endowment emanates from, or is directed to, God who is a personage and man's eternal Father. That doesn't mean Joseph Smith didn't steal the Masonic rituals and infuse them into his own thought. The Endowment looks to the eternities and to eternal lives, but Freemasonry is earthbound, pervaded by human legend and hope for something better. Because Joseph had to outdo everyone, including himself.
 

Freemasonry is a fraternal society, and in its ritual all promises, oaths, and agreements are made between members. In the temple Endowment all covenants are between the individual and God. You finally seem to be admitting they use the same oaths (which they do), even if directed to different entities. In Freemasonry, testing, grading, penalizing, or sentencing accords with the rules of the fraternity or membership votes. In the Endowment, God alone is the judge. You lost me. Do you mean that the Freemasons actually take quality control seriously while Mormons just let anything go in the temple? That's dishonest. In the Mormon temple you have someone checking on you every step of the way making sure you do everything just right. The difference being that Freemasons have to learn everything by heart and then get tested, whereas Mormons get to copy what's shown to them on the spot. Within Freemasonry, rank and promotions are of great importance, while in the LDS temple rites there are no distinctions: all participants stand equal before God. Not really. Men and women have separate seating and gendered clothing, including a veil to cover the faces of women. Husbands are placed over wives in the temple. Men get to become king and priests and women queens and priestesses. Historically kings ruled over their queens and we have no idea what a priestess even does according to Mormon doctrine. This is not equality. The clash between good and evil, including Satan's role, is essential to, and vividly depicted in, the Endowment, but is largely absent from Masonic rites. So Joseph added a maniacal Satan to the stage, so what? This is a red herring. You need to look at the details you so diligently avoid! That's where you'll find the real devil. Temple ceremonies emphasize salvation for the dead through vicarious ordinance work, such as baptism for the dead; nothing in Masonic ritual allows for proxies acting on behalf of the dead. Because it's a ridiculous notion. Why would a fraternity need to induct the deceased? Women participate in all aspects of LDS temple rites; though Freemasonry has women's auxiliaries, Masonic ritual excludes them. Freemasonry is a men's club, just like the LDS endowment was back when it was introduced. Both have changed (Mormonism first, thanks to polygamy) to be more inclusive of women. The Endowment's inclusion of females underscores perhaps the most fundamental difference between the two rites: LDS temple rites unite husbands and wives, and their children, in eternal families (see Eternal Lives; Marriage). Now you've moved away from the endowment, where the Masonic plagiarism is found, to the sealing room. You've just moved the goal posts, moron. Latter-day Saint sealings would be completely out of place in the context of Masonic ceremonies. Incredible. I almost want to give you points for trying, except I feel like you're purposefully being sloppy in your analysis of Freemasonry and the LDS temple. I don't know if you're being dishonest or if you simply don't know what you're doing.
 

Freemasonry's 5 points of contact as used in the LDS temple endowment until 1990.

Thus, Latter-day Saints see their temple ordinances as fundamentally different from Masonic and other rituals and think of similarities as remnants from an ancient original. This conclusion is only reached by ignoring the verbatim theft of oaths, the co-opting of symbols, the exact copying of handshakes, and many other elements, while simultaneously cherry picking cultures to compare your beliefs to and then staying back in the vaguest of generalities in order to avoid seeing your comparison implode.

KENNETH W. GODFREY should be ashamed of himself.

Skylanders and The Book of Mormon

I found some Skylanders Skystones game cards in my cereal the other day and as I read the back of the little box they came in I was amazed at how familiar the story line sounded. I switched out a few nouns and a verb and this is what I got:

"The origins of [The Book of Mormon] go way back to the days of the [Nephites]. While experimenting with early [translation] technology and magic they discovered a form of enchanted stone that would allow anything [read through] it to become real. The Ancients worried that this power might fall into the wrong hands so they turned it into a [treasure hunt], purely for fun and leisure."

"Fuckin' A, dude, you found the magic stone! You win! Fun!!!"

It sounds like fun to me!

Admissions

So the LDS Church has finally admitted that:

"None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham [...]. Scholars have identified the papyrus fragments as parts of standard funerary texts that were deposited with mummified bodies. These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived [...]."

But the brethren really want you to doubt your doubts on this one and believe that the words really are magically from Abraham and not from Joseph Smith's ass.

We should all definitely pray about it.

Kolob

I know the LDS Church doesn't like to emphasis this bit of doctrine and generally members don't feel much of a need to bear personal testimony of it, but that's no excuse for not acknowledging one of the most absurd aspects of Mormonism: Kolob, the star or planet nearest God's throne.

 God is no longer hiding among the clouds, but somewhere out beyond the nebulae of space! And yet Abraham and Methuselah saw this place thanks to the Urim and Thummim. So spare me all this modern science mumbo jumbo.

Oh yes, we also know that the Sun gets its light from Kolob, not from nuclear fusion. Thank God for modern revelation.

Sure, we haven't found God yet, but we can at least say we know what we're looking for.

Sacrificing Abraham

For many doubters the smokiest of Mormon guns is The Book of Abraham. At this point I would imagine that most Mormons are aware of the fact that there are a few problems with Joseph Smith's translation of the scrolls. If you are unaware, you absolutely must watch this video:

I've been waiting for the Church to release a more in depth defense of The Book of Abraham like it has recently done for several other sticky issues, but obviously the folks over in the PR department are taking their time with this one.

How can they possibly set this mess straight? We can only wonder. Can Mormonism simply throw Abraham to the dogs?

It's all Greek to us

Joseph Smith had a very difficult time distinguishing Hebrew names from Greek and Latin ones. One of his biggest blunders shows up in Doctrine and Covenants 110, which reccounts the supposed visitations to Joseph and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland temple. In verse 12 Joseph says "Elias appeared, and committed the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham, saying that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed," which sounds totally cool and only slightly confusing (why's Elias officiating for the gospel of Abraham, and what the hell is Abraham's gospel anyway?). The problem occurs in the next verse when "Elijah the prophet, who was taken to heaven without tasting death, stood before us." The problem is that Elias is the Romanized Greek version of the Hebrew name Anglicized as Elijah. In other words Elias and Elijah are the same person, the former spelling of his name appears in the New Testament and the later form is found in the Old Testament.

LDS Church leaders have since decided that (1) there must have been some other prophet out there during Abraham's time named Elias (a Greek dude was hanging around with Abraham?) and that (2) Elias is probably a title for a forerunner prophet. I'm not making this shit up.

The more likely possibility seems to be that Joseph just didn't know the difference between Hebrew and Greek versions of the name in question.

Corroborating evidence to this latter theory is found in The Book of Mormon when Nephi uses the terms "Messiah," a Hebrew term, and "Christ," a Greek term - both literally meaning the anointed - in the same verse. Twice. Isn't that amazing? Nephi, a Hebrew is using messiah correctly (as a title) but using the Greek word Χριστός as Jesus' proper name. Nephi and Joseph need some serious help with their Greek.

Not that their Hebrew was any better. In 3 Nephi Jesus gives the Nephites chapter four of Malachi and the Nephites write down that "the Son of Righteousness" shall arise whereas Malachi wrote about "the Sun of righteousness." Now unless Jesus was speaking to the Nephites in English, it would have been very difficult for them to hear shamesh (Hebrew for sun) and then write down ben (Hebrew for son). What are the chances that Joseph's scribe screwed things up and the mistake going uncorrected all these years? What are the chances that Joseph thought he was being clever and screwed up?

The Book of Mormon also inserts the use of synagogues "after the manner of the Jews" in Nephite America even though synagogue worship did not exist at the time Lehi left Jerusalem. So where did the Jewish synagogue practice come from? Might Joseph have imposed New Testament era Jewish worship on people who would have been entirely ignorant of those practices?

"Just because we'll be living in the New World without any kind of telecommunicative technology doesn't mean we won't know exactly what our fellow Jews are up to in several hundred years."

Well how about Jews going to church? Laban and Zoram, two Jews living ca. 600 B.C.E., apparently were church goers, if that makes sense at all. It seems as though Joseph really liked Hellenizing his Hebrews.

He done a good job a translatin'

Given that the glowing text in Joseph's hat was produced by the power of God, we must either conclude that God as a translator has decided to reinterpret the shitty grammar of the ancient authors of The Book of Mormon using a 19th century rural American flavor, that God is catering heavily to an ignorant Joseph Smith, or that God himself spoke like an early American farmer.

Is it sacrilegious that the LDS Church has since edited the text to sound more educated and refined? Does God want or even need his grammar checked like that?

Pulled from a hat

Supposedly God, in his infinite power, made the translation of the gold plates appear before Joseph's eyes as his face was hidden in a hat. (Originally we had been led to believe that the correct translation magically appeared through the lenses of the Urim and Thummim as Joseph scanned Moroni's text line by line.) In other words, the words Joseph dictated were not deciphered from a text - they were read aloud by Joseph as they magically illuminated in his hat.

This process of translation gets me wondering what kind of translator God is. How the hell did he get confused over the whole "white and delightsome" vs. "pure and delightsome" thing? One would think he would have had the foresight to avoid the whole racist debacle, right? Why's he translating tapirs as 'horses,' deer as 'cows,' and turkeys as 'sheep'? Why did he need the King James translation of the Bible so badly? And why the hell couldn't he come up with a better translation for curelom and cumom? Here's an inspired rendering, or maybe this one's more accurate:

Read from a hat? It's more like this stuff was just pulled from somebody's ass.

LDS artistic interpretations

The LDS Church has done a wonderful job of controlling the popular imagery of the translation process of The Book of Mormon. Searching the Church website will get you pictures like this:

Plates present but no hat.

Or this:

The plates again but there's no hat here either.

Notice that there is a huge discrepancy in the LDS version of the story:

It doesn't feel very good when the accuracy of a South Park episode surpasses all the prophet talks and prophetically endorsed pictures you've encountered as a highly active and fully believing member of the Church. How are we not supposed to wonder why the hat thing's not been very popular in Mormon art? What else is the average Mormon ignorant of?

Urim and Thummim

Though I feel it's common knowledge now, I had no idea that Joseph Smith discarded the Urim and Thummin as translating devises in favor of one of the magic, treasure-finding peep stones he had collected throughout his teens and twenties. He would put it in his hat and the words of the translation would appear before his eyes.

The Urim and Thummin approach with the gold plates at Joseph's fingertips is already pretty fucking magical, but removing the plates completely is totally fucking nuts.

And yet the LDS Church still defends the peep stone in a hat method even thought the Urim and Thummim framed in spectacle-like frames attached to a breastplate has been dragged around by Moroni for the sole specific purpose of translating the 50 lbs. (or more) plates 1200 years later. The Church even dares suggest that Joseph's heavy involvement in early American folk magic could have been used "for the higher purpose of translating scripture."

They must be joking. Seriously, it has to be a joke. How does bullshit treasure finder magic suddenly become a legitimate tool of God for the sake of translating ancient languages? This is like believing a tarot card reader turned bishop can use his card reading skills to better conduct worthiness interviews and lead the ward under the divine inspiration.

"I've also got some impressive stones, sister, should you be interested."

This is where Mormonism starts to feel like a gullibility contest.

Hebraisms in The Book of Mormon

Those doubters who would have you believe that Joseph Smith or some contemporary of his wrote The Book of Mormon have clearly not considered all of the Hebraisms in the text. If it wasn't written by Egyptian-writing Israelites, why are there indications that the English text Joseph translated came from a Hebrew-influenced source? The authenticity of The Book of Mormon is essentially proven thanks to literary and rhetorical devises typical in ancient Hebrew texts!

Who cares if those same literary and rhetorical devises can be found in literature from across the world and in different periods, including Jacobean England? Who cares if the translators responsible for the King James Bible created a widely dispersed and extremely popular English text based on Hebrew Old Testament writings? The KJT might have influenced other books that followed it, but not The Book of Mormon! I mean, how could it have? The Book of Mormon was compiled 1200 years before the KJT ever existed, right? 

Reading material.

Scriptural errors

"And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ." (Title page of The Book of Mormon)

This would be a great "Get out of jail free card" for the ancient writers of The Book of Mormon if the faults and mistakes in their writings were not the same faults and mistakes of the translators of the King James Bible.

The Book of Mormon repeats verbatim the mistranslated words, it often keeps the non-textual words and phrases added by KJT translators, it promotes  misunderstandings of the Bible popular in Joseph Smith's time, and it doesn't even align with the "inspired" corrections of the JST.

To suggest that the Lehite prophets possessed the KJT is absurd. To suggest that God filled Joseph's illuminated translating mind with the texts he was already familiar with instead of giving him the actual translation of the gold plates defeats the purpose of bringing out new and improved scripture.

We need to think about this a little bit. If a student turns in homework with the same mistakes as another student, what is the teacher to think? If Thomas Monson came out tomorrow with a new book of freshly translated ancient scripture from Australia and a large part of it quoted verbatim sections from the Doctrine & Covenants and, say, the Book of Enoch, how would we feel about that?

The Bible - Joseph's translation

One of the absolute worst Bible translations out there today is the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), also known as the Inspired Version (IV).

Without any rigorous recourse to ancient texts in ancient languages, Joseph took to correcting the Bible and replacing the truths that had unfortunately (or by the cunning wiles of the Devil) been lost over the centuries. He remixed and deleted based on whatever (spiritual?) whim had taken him, but the real miracle of the project was how much Joseph added. He threw in entire chapters at times.

Some people have asked why we don't use this version of the Bible - myself among them. One would think that a scriptural project commanded by God to his prophet would qualify as canonical, right? God says "Hey, fix the Bible!," Joseph does it, and yet the LDS Church doesn't use it. Very weird.

Some say it's a copyright issue. The Community of Christ owns the copyright, so we can print it. Sucks, right? But just because the Community of Christ owns the copyright doesn't mean LDS Mormons can't buy it, does it? Why does the LDS Church have to own the copyright at all? This is about learning the true content of the Bible, not about which church is making money from scripture sales. Or at least it should be.

FAIR offers up another very interesting reason why we LDS saints can't adopt the JST: it "would be a stumbling block to converts." Too much newness for the new recruits. We wouldn't want to scare them off with the truth! I mean, we can believe Joseph's version is the most badass of the them all, but don't you dare tell any investigators or new converts about it until they're thoroughly convinced they're in The One True Church! It's not dishonest, it's practical.

"Holy shit, this book is awful!"

But isn't it silly that anyone should worry about this at all? The LDS version of the KJV has all sorts of JST footnotes and we even have some made up chapters published in their entirety in The Pearl of Great Price. That should be enough for any good saint. Why would anyone want the complete, unabridged version? People can be so greedy.

Anyway, what we really need is a modern translation of the JST! Something that fixes all the errors Joseph left in... But I doubt we'll get it.

The Bible "translated correctly"

The Mormon escape clause on believing "the Bible to be the word of God" states that the Bible should only be trusted "as far as it is translated correctly" (Article of Faith 1:8), so one might assume that Mormons have undertaken a very rigorous translation effort and that the Mormon version of the Bible is one of the best around.

The reality is that the LDS Church has stuck to using the King James translation, and the King James translation of the Bible actually kind of sucks. It's archaic and difficult to understand, it's full of mistranslations, and the translation was extremely limited to the texts available in England at the turn of the 17th century.

So why the King James Bible? Maybe because that's the version the Book of Mormon prophets preferred.

The biblical authors

Mormons "believe the Bible to be the word of God" (Article of Faith 1:8). Does this go for all of the words in all of the books? I ask because Bible scholars have found that, for example, Moses didn't write the first books of the Old Testament, Solomon didn't write the Psalms, Isaiah was written by at least two people, and Paul is not the author of all of his epistles. Those are significant problems, but there are still more.

Are they still the words of God if we know that the author is different than what was traditionally believed? Do we need to treat the questionable books, chapters, and verses with any particular care? How can the Bible's pseudopigrapha not be subjected to doubt? Do we need to revise the eighth Article of Faith? Couldn't one of our prophets, seers, and revelators go through and separate the actual words of the prophets and apostles from those of the impostors? What would remain of the Bible were we to remove everything of false or highly questionable authorship? Would we finally have a bulletproof Bible full entirely and only with the Word of God?

Jesus on marriage

Mormons believe that beginning with the union of Adam and Eve marriage done God's way is for eternity. Eternal marriage has become Mormonism's favorite doctrine: FAMILIES CAN BE TOGETHER FOREVER!

Imagine the frustration of all the Mormons who try to learn of ancient marriage practices from the Old Testament, where "eternal" never enters the equation,

or the Book of Mormon,

or the New Testament, where three of the four gospel writers manage to relate the same marriage lesson without significantly contradicting each other. It's the story of the Sadducees asking Jesus about couples being together in the next life. Their question is facetious, but Jesus' response is shocking (if you're a Mormon who believes in eternal marriage).

"The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." (Matt. 22:23-30)

"Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven." (Mark 12:18-25)

"Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him, Saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man’s brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children. And the second took her to wife, and he died childless. And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also: and they left no children, and died. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife. And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage" (Luke 20:27-35)

Jesus makes it clear: the question is ridiculous because RESURRECTED PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE SPOUSES, they're like the angels. Once again, of the seven women the man married in life, Jesus says the man will have none of them in the resurrection. Zero. No eternal marriage, according to JC.

Other translations of the New Testament might help point out that "in the resurrection, they do not take wives, neither do men have wives," but probably the most important translation is the Joseph Smith Translation. Let's take a look.

"For in the resurrection, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angel of God in heaven." (JST Matt. 22:29)

"For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels of God who are in heaven." (JST Mark 12:29)

"But they who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, through resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage." (JST Luke 20:35)

Shit. Looks like Joseph wasn't inspired to have Jesus say something about how the man would only keep his first legitimate wife (take a look at 21-8 in the New Testament Institute Manual), or any of the others. For whatever reason, God wouldn't let his prophet foresee eternal matrimony in the early 1830s.

How disappointed will faithful Mormons be when they're resurrected as angels instead of their earthly families?

Jesus on divorce

It's very clear that Jesus would not be very happy with today's divorce practices.

"I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." (Matt. 19:9)

JC says no divorce unless you've been cheated on and no marrying someone who's been divorced (because they're cheaters!).

I'm not sure who to doubt on this one. Do I doubt Jesus for wanting to force people to stay in unhappy relationships and for showing so little forgiveness to those who have been unfaithful to their spouse at some point? Or do I doubt the LDS Church for not following Jesus' teachings?

Divorce runs rampant in the LDS Church, just like it does in the rest of the Western World. I can't even begin to count the number of temple marriages of people I know personally that have ended in divorce - and not because of infidelity. A lot of those same people have been remarried. Is their married life a sin in Jesus' eyes? Do they not care about Jesus' words on the matter? Have they not read the New Testament? Is the Church in a sinful state for allowing divorce?

It seems the LDS Church might have created for itself a "comfortable" god and some "comfortable" doctrine, and we all know how apostle Jeff feels about that!

Together in the clouds?

Do Mormons believe in the Rapture? I think the answer is no. I only ever recall teachers mentioning it as a belief in other faiths, not ours. And yet the scripture in 1 Thesselonians is quite clear:

"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (4:17, emphasis added)

I've already commented on the whole cloud thing, so let's move on to the issue of how Mormons might understand this verse. Good thing Joseph Smith came along to clarify the translation for us:

So now, thanks to Joseph's amazing powers to translate, we have:

“Then they who are alive, shall be caught up together into the clouds with them who remain, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.” (JST, 1 Thes. 4:17, emphasis added)

Dang. We're still getting beamed up into the sky to hang with JC. So is that a "yes" on Rapture?

Book of Mormon - King James Bible

The more I read The Book of Mormon and the more I read the Bible the more I saw how much of the King James Bible was in The Book of Mormon. It was already weird enough that Nephi didn't have the foresight to spare us all the Isaiah that we would have anyway (he should have simply left things with "hey, Isaiah's awesome so read up!"). Jesus could have left a simple endorsement as well.

As a believer I was taught that some of the Bible made it into The Book of Mormon because it wasn't really the Bible per se, just God's pure inspiration and profound insights given in the same words to his prophets. And I bought that explanation. For a while anyway. Did God really inspire them to write the exact same words? I can understand him imparting the same concepts, but the EXACT SAME WORDS? Usually you can't even get two people sitting in the same lecture to write the same notes down.

I think it would have been a little more convincing had there been something in the Bible that felt a little more like The Book of Mormon, if that makes sense. Maybe an epistle from Peter about some Roman village that converted after falling to the ground and then being baptized en masse after burying all of their weapons and making oaths to never fight Gauls again or something along those lines. Why was it that The Book of Mormon felt so desperate to be the Bible, but the Bible doesn't feel much like The Book of Mormon?

Unfortunately for Mormons who want to believe The Book of Mormon is the actual historic record of another so-called flock, there are some real problems to consider. It starts to look more and more like somebody just sat down and plagiarized the living shit out of the Bible all willy nilly.