I (Do Not) Love to see the temple

I personally believe the church continues to build temples to make money. To attend temples, members must pay tithing. All members are told to get a temple recommend which requires tithe-paying. If there is a temple within reasonable distance, the pressure to attend regularly (and pay) is even greater. They claim their temples are based on the ancient Biblical temple but they are not. (See the Mormon Coffee article mentioned below, it's illustrated.)

From Mormon Coffee, posted May 11, 2015:

"...considering the fact that every detail of the biblical temple is clearly presented in the Bible, the Mormon Church knows its assertions are untrue. Which means the Church is willfully deceiving people about Mormon temples."

I've been talking to a friend who is Mormon but has "lost her testimony." She hasn't completely left the church yet and sometimes points out what she thinks are its good points. I remind her on occasion that the LDS church lies to people. They can't claim to have made a mistake, to have erred based on incomplete or wrong information.

How can a church that continues to hide information and lie be a church that serves God?

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Matthew 6:24, KJV

Is God an Organizer or a Creator?

I have a Mormon grandmother. (I had two, but one passed away, and I hope she is in Heaven and not in the Spirit World of Mormonism.) My living Mormon grandmother is 100% dedicated, word and deed, to the Mormon church. At any time of day she can be found indexing names for Family Search, reading General Conference talks or the Sunday School lesson, listening to the Tabernacle Choir, or writing in her journal. She faithfully attends church meetings, rain or shine, unless she is very ill indeed. She is quick to quote scriptures and the words of General Authorities and give morality lessons to everyone at every opportunity. 

I often like talking to her about God because she waxes enthusiastic. I try to avoid areas where I know we'll have a conflict of ideas. Yesterday I brought up creation ex nihilo, creation from nothing, because we were talking about the greatness of God. (It's been three years since I left the Mormon church so I'd forgotten they don't believe in that.) I told her I'd read that all other religions besides Bible-based one like Judaism and Christianity believe that their god or gods only organized materials, or were already part of the world or the universe. 

She and I both thought she'd misunderstood me. (She's hard of hearing.) So I repeated myself and clarified that God is so awesome that He created everything from nothing and there are only two religions that hold to this. Grandmother, then understanding, insisted then that no, God organized everything. Then she corrected herself and said that Heavenly Father and Jesus and the others organized the matter that already existed. I told her that this was not based on the Bible but on the words of the Books of Abraham and Moses. Even science may support the idea that there was creation from nothing (the Big Bang). She got her stubborn look on and said she wasn't going to talk about it anymore. They organized all the worlds and that's that. 

I didn't want to fight with her so I steered the conversation toward  her comment about "all the worlds" and we speculated on whether we'd ever meet people from other planets. Soon it was dinnertime and the conversation had an excuse to end. But it left me with a sorrow that her god is a small god. He's a bureaucratic organizer. My God is a Great Big Amazing God who created the Universe. 

Today I researched creation ex nihilo. I read some articles that explained that there is no one Biblical verse that explicitly states this idea, but it is derived from various ideas presented in the Bible. (This is like the idea of the Trinity.) Most Christians do believe our God is the Creator, not the organizer. For example, see these verses in Colossians 1:

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 

"In him all things were created." ALL things. "Through him and for him." These words were directed to the Christians of Colossae to teach them about Jesus and saved for all the world to read. If I trust that the Bible comes to us because God wants us to know him, then I trust that God is the creator of all things because these words are preserved in the Bible. Further, this trust leads me to believe that if my God can create all things in heaven and on earth, then I can believe he can do other miracles.

My grandmother is adamant that she be buried, not cremated. She quotes the scripture in Ezekiel 37 as supporting her reasoning to not have her bones destroyed. She talks like she is afraid if this should happen. She thinks God needs our bones to raise us. But her god is an organizer. Of course he has to have something to work with to resurrect people. 

If my God is the Creator of all things, then I trust he can make me again, bones or no bones. 

(For further reading, see an article by William Lane Craig.)

Salt Lake City less "Bible-minded" than New York or Los Angeles

Seriously:

"A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible"

That's a quote from 2 Nephi 29:6 in the Book of Mormon. Let's talk Bible translations. I heard someone say that some languages began to be written down for the first time just so that they could have the Bible in their own tongue.

A Bible translation organization called Wycliffe.org.uk has some statistics on their site:

As of 2013, over five hundred languages have complete Bibles
Over one thousand have at least the New Testament
About one thousand more have at least one book 

They also estimate that 98 million people speak something for which there is no known Bible translation (yet). 

This is somewhat mind-boggling for me, not only how much translation has been done but that there are so many languages in the world. I looked up how many there might be and found 7,105 according to Ethnologue. Tower of Babel, anyone?

I am thinking the world still needs more Bibles. 

A river does NOT run through it

In the book of First Nephi, chapter 2, Lehi takes his family three days into the wilderness away from Jerusalem. They camp in a valley by a river:

 8 And it came to pass that he called the name of the river, Laman, and it emptied into the Red Sea; and the valley was in the borders near the mouth thereof.

 9 And when my father saw that the waters of the river emptied into the fountain of the Red Sea, he spake unto Laman, saying: O that thou mightest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness!

Okay, show me a map of the area so I can see this river: 

Hmmm, not seeing it. What do other sources say?

 The Suez Canal only opened in 1869 and it's at least a five day walk to where it meets the Red Sea, according to modern conditions and as perceived by Google Maps. There are seasonal rivers in Eritrea...but that's in Africa, much more than three days away from Jerusalem. There's the Gulf of Aqaba, but it doesn't look like a river. And the Red Sea itself is quite salty, as Wikipedia announces:

The salinity of the Red Sea is greater than the world average, approximately 4 percent. This is due to several factors:

1. High rate of evaporation and very little precipitation.
2. Lack of significant rivers or streams draining into the sea.
3. Limited connection with the Indian Ocean, which has lower water salinity.

Did you see the part about "lack of significant rivers or streams draining" into it?

If there was a wadi, perhaps, that had seasonal water...but the family stayed camped there while Nephi and his brothers went back for the Brass Plates. If it was only a stream resulting from rainstorms, Lehi was not hoping for much when he wished his son Laman would be "continually running into the fountain of all righteousness." 

Now let's see about rivers mentioned in the Bible, how many of them can be found today? Jordan, check. Tigris and Euphrates, check. The "river in Egypt," aka the Nile, check. Kishon, check. 

Now perhaps there was some river that existed three days distance from Jerusalem and it emptied into the Red Sea, but has since silted over. But this is only one of the examples of how Book of Mormon geography and history look like they were invented for a novel.

How did this false prophet end up making a true prophecy?

Most important, you must know that no prophecy of scripture represents the prophet’s own understanding of things, because no prophecy ever came by human will. Instead, men and women led by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

But false prophets also arose among the people. In the same way, false teachers will come among you. They will introduce destructive opinions and deny the master who bought them, bringing quick destruction on themselves.  Many will follow them in their unrestrained immorality, and because of these false teachers the way of truth will be slandered.  In their greed they will take advantage of you with lies. The judgment pronounced against them long ago hasn’t fallen idle, nor is their destruction sleeping.

2 Peter 1:20-2 Peter 2:3, Common English Bible Translation

I read these verses today and thought about Joseph Smith. I consider him to be a false prophet. You can read about how his own "prophecies" failed. You can find out about his "unrestrained immorality." You can read how he "introduced destructive opinions."

In his "translation" of the Bible, Joseph made it seem that he himself was mentioned in Biblical prophecies. It's with a bitter smile I see that indeed someone prophesied of Joseph--as a warning to us in the latter days.

Who judges us?

According to chapter 46 of Gospel Principles posted online at lds.org, at the Final Judgment, people will be judged by "The Son" with the assistance of the "The Twelve." I presume they mean Jesus and his apostles. To support this idea, they quote Matthew 19:28, which in the King James Version reads,

"And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." In the New Revised Standard Version, "Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." It seems that they take the English word "judging" literally. In Greek it is κρινοντες and can mean to preside over, or to rule, as well as pass judgment. I looked through several Bible commentaries available online and couldn't find any support for the LDS doctrine that the apostles would be helping Jesus in the Last Judgment. Instead, I found multiple sources that said something similar to this statement from the Scofield reference notes: "The kingdom will be administered over Israel through the apostles, according to the ancient theocratic judgeship." In my personal opinion, Jesus doesn't need any help to judge us. The triune God is perfectly loving and omniscient and it's a relief to entrust my eternal salvation to God and not to any other person.