The whole point is you need to experience it yourself. It is fully up to you to have a personal relationship with God. Looking at reason, logic, trying to understand and be wise is part of your journey, but part of your journey also requires faith, not just hope or belief - faith to choose God on purpose and align yourself him and then receive God's witness, the Holy Ghost.
That's the nature of a subjective experience. Every person has to do it for themselves. Maybe they received the witness from the Holy Ghost, but they lost the spirit and now they don't remember or think it was real anymore. Or they never actually receive witness from the Holy Ghost in the first place. It's subjective to each person. But each person is responsible for their own connection to God. It's the way it functions for everyone. This is not surprising. It's expected. Living a christ-like life is difficult. The fact that people fail in doing so is unsurprising.
It was modern revelation that revealed he had a body. He has always been the same species as humans. he has feet, hands, back, face, we are in his image and called his children. Nobody ever thought that he is an everywhere 3 persons in one essence alien, that creates creatures to worship him.
@TribeRuffner@ScottLake543694 Not a sect, But most biblical scholars agree that Creatio ex nihilo is a 2nd century development. That just isn't how the people in the bible undertsood it at all. It developed fully in the 2nd Century. Look it up.
We should all acknowledge that when someone says someone isn't "christian" with other people listening, the listener will be assuming a dictionary general knowledge understanding of the term "Christian" -as someone who follows and believes in Jesus Christ. So if that isn't the definition of "Christian" that you are using, then you need to clarify your redefined definition so you don't mislead people to misunderstand (that's called deception) what LDS believe.
The early church didnt even have a completed Bible. They had the Old Testament, living apostles, and the Holy Ghost.
God has always added His word whenever He wanted to. Nothing in Scripture says that suddenly stopped forever after the apostles.
Jude quoting Enoch shows truth can come through other sources and the Holy Ghost confirms it to those who seek.
If we found another real letter from Paul tomorrow it should be tested by the Spirit not rejected because the canon is closed. (that would be stupid) Authority is in God not in whatever humans collected centuries later. (collections of texts, don't supercede God choosing to speak) Don't tell God he can't speak.
Each person has to ask God for themselves to verify what is truth. Thats always been the pattern.
The only questionable one would be the thief on the cross, but there's too little information known about him to assume that he was not baptized, because every other person ever mentioned was baptized. Why would he be the only exception. And we're talking all of the first Century Christians as well. That's a lot.
Scenario 1: You walk into a library to do some research on an idea or belief you have, and you can't find an author/book that clearly teaches the idea you have. Feeling unsatisfied, you flip through a bunch of books in the library from different authors(or even the same author) and pull a few words or concepts out of each book, and cobble them together to form sentences that none of the books contain alone and none of the authors taught, and you end with a nice paragraph that teaches and affirms your original idea or belief. Then you claim, "The library teaches this, and these authors believed this!"
Is this good practice?
Scenario 2: You read the Bible to do some research on an idea or belief you have, and you can't find an author/book in that Bible that clearly teaches the idea you have. Feeling unsatisfied, you flip through a bunch of books in the Bible from different authors(or even the same author) and pull a few words or concepts out of each book, and cobble them together to form sentences that none of the books contain alone and none of the authors taught, and you end with a paragraph that teaches and affirms your original idea or belief. Then you claim, "The Bible teaches this, and these authors believed this!"
Is this good practice?
What say you?
Jude specifically quotes Enoch as existing authoritative scripture. not found in the 66 book bible. there are dozens of references the authoritative texts that are nowhere to be found in the Bible.
Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14).
Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18)
Annals of the Kings of Israel/Judah, Annals of Solomon, etc. (referenced in Kings and Chronicles).
Acts of Samuel/Gad/Nathan the Seer, Story/Visions of Iddo the Seer (in Chronicles).
Others like a lost Pauline letter (mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5:9) or sources behind quotes in the New Testament.
In John it says that the world couldn't contain all the words that could be written about Jesus. Sounds like that would be nice to have more of. (hint: that is what the Book of Mormon is)
Not the same. He was already a seasoned professional and prolific writer with modern tools, and there are not witnesses to verify his claim, unlike JS. it wasn't dictated, and his text doesn't withstand the same critical scrutiny that the Book of Mormon does, and most scholars don't even call it equivalent.
I didn't discount his mother, but I it would be smart to accommodate the fact that a dotting Mother would speak in glowing terms about her son in a biased biography, and when you find no other collaborating data, you might not use it as the entire basis for a skill that was central to a claim.
Sounds easy. Feel free to be the first person in history (other Than JS) to pull it off with the parameters that we know.
You like picking which witnesses to believe and what to believe depending on your desired outcome.. all witnesses say he had no notes. I'm not saying what you should believe, but you don't seem to be accounting for the data.
@RavnReborn@justin_hart That is actually quite peculiar, because it was the appearant chosen English "voice" of the translation, and was definitely not in contemporary 19th century English. In fact the English was even a bit older than KJV English..Kind of hard to do.
You only focus one direction. Give me a source for JS "obsessive" storytelling besides his dotting mom. (Hint: she is the only source). why is that fact completely missing in any other contemporary data?
The 65 days dictation is pretty hard for even critics to downplay, because JS met Oliver Cowdrey for the first time on April 5, 1829 when Oliver visited him in harmony, PA, and the entire Book of Mormon was in his handwriting minus a few pages,and was finished in June, 1829. Analyzing the original documents that we have, The diction was essentially one draft, with no revisions.
A real analysis doesn't cherry pick the data.