Opinions on The Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints?

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Do I sense a little Bromance developing, from this flirting?

The Mormons are being rather silly about converting dead Jews.

http://news.yahoo.com/claim-surfaces-an ... 43134.html

Well, I don't have a terribly favorable one, if that's what you're asking.

My opinion is this, Joseph Smith was a modern day Muhammad, both claimed to see visions from God in the wilderness, and both claimed all the world religions were wrong and started their own. Both have armed conflict starting right a few years after their small religion's founding. If you look at Christianity, while we did have wars and whatnot in the name of religion, it wasn't 'til 350 or more years after the founding of the religion that they occurred, whereas Mormonism and Islam basically after their birth had armed conflict. Whereas Islam had a view more to take over the world, and really tried quite hard at the goal, Mormonism was perhaps less grandiose in their idea, they only wanted a US state or so for their own seclusive country. You can argue for Joseph Smith just sorta being misguided, but not really intentionally malicious per se in his prophethood, but then Brigham Young, I can't really think of anything nice to say about him. Brigham Young was the one who "officialized" polygamy in Mormonism, and who also tried to take over Utah. Note, it was a literal war between the Mormons and the US govt. over Utah.

Theologically, Mormonism is pretty far out there. As far as them being Christian, my answer would be....it depends. It's quite "heterodox" in the very least. One big weird is henotheism in it, and the chain of gods if you would. The fact that the goal of the religion is to become a god of your own planet is quite...out there. Also, the fact it's an evolution believing religion, in it's essence. The gods in Mormonism evolved out of matter, there was no original first cause in Mormonism, just eternal matter and spirit, without one Creator God creating such things. So, if you take Mormonism far enough, you're so far away from the idea of God Christianity, and by extension other Abrahamic faiths have, that you can't really say you're Christian. THAT SAID, most Mormon laity aren't really familiar with such doctrinal complexities. Oh, also, the Mormon temple ceremony is a knockoff of a Masonic degree ceremony, at least the dialogue. The Masons in their belief and worldview, take very much from the Jewish Kabalah, which is basically Babylonian magic that was Judaized, later on, Kabalic esoteric views tried to permeate Christianity, in what is known as Gnosticism. Gnosticism, "gnosis" means knowledge, and Gnosticism believes the key to living is acquiring "secret knowledge." Gnostics believed a variety of things, but one of which it shares directly in common to Mormonism is passwords into Heaven. Once you go through a few temple ceremonies, you'll be given passwords to get into the Celestial Kingdom of Heaven, and it is believed by you guys that Joseph Smith will ask you for the password, not Jesus Christ. This password belief mirrors a Gnostic belief. But basically, Gnosticism lives on in your religion, along with the Masons, Kabalists, and the various sects started by Ailister Crowley (of the Ozzy song's fame.) Once you get "into" it, it's all occult stuff. Basically, Kabalah and Gnosticism is the "seed" of the occult today in the world, and taking it even farther, it's just worship of the same gods talked about in the Old Testament, the ones that people would sacrifice their children to and/or have orgies in worship of.

As far as the orgies, LDS mirrors this to a T, well, not as much as in the mainstream LDS church polygamy is now outlawed, but you cannot deny that Mormonism was founded upon the basis of polygamy. If you don't have kids, you cannot attain godhood, so this means sex sex sex. Taking it REALLY far, you see people like the FLDS, who you can see did literally have orgies in their said temples. What happened was, after Brigham Young became the new Mormon Pope, the RLDS formed, Reformed Latter Day Saints. RLDS outlawed polygamy, from it's founding in the 1870s. What happened was, in 1890 when the LDS outlawed polygamy under public pressure, the FLDS formed.

So as far as if I believe Mormons are "saved" or not, it's quite hard to say really. To a lot of Mormon laity, their worldview is pretty Christian, really, for example, I've met a Mormon guy who was, from what I can tell, quite Christian. I didn't know he was Mormon at the time. He asked if I had a good church I was going to, I told him yes, and he was happy, and didn't try to get me to join LDS. As I said, it was only later I realized he was Mormon, from talking to him I didn't guess it. I've heard pretty miraculous stories of individual Mormons and the Holy Spirit protecting them or working through them, too, so I can't write them all off as like...devil worshipers, but their beliefs are quite wrong, it just depends on how far the wrong beliefs have gone really in their thought process. Some Mormons, as I said, it never gets really to the "weirdness" and they for all intensive purposes live as Christians, but once you start getting into the higher levels of Mormonism, it's the craziness I've described there. You've not gotten to the higher "crazy" levels of Mormonism, since you've not gotten your magic underwear, but yeah.

That said, I believe Mormons, what they're looking for, is historical Christianity. They want the one true church, as everyone who believes does. So, I sorta Mormons initial concern and reason for joining the Mormon church being done sort of out of good intentions. It promises to be the restored church of Christ on Earth, who doesn't want that? Some of the things they do and promise sound a lot more palatable than mainstream Protestant thought on issues. One thing in particular is baptism for the dead, and the general belief that the dead nonbelievers aren't...totally f****d. I learned all this stuff in my debate with Mormon missionaries, they ended up actually helping to convert me to Orthodox Christianity, albeit that certainly wasn't their intention. Their questions really threw me for some loops and had me reevaluate my own religious beliefs. But yeah, baptism for the dead, basically, it's the belief that a person can be baptized on behalf of the dead, and that can contribute in some way to how they are judged in the afterlife. It is pretty clearcut that it did in fact happen, as it says it in the Bible that it did, and St. Paul spoke favorably of the practice. This led me to broader questions of salvation, fate of the dead, etc.

So, while doing some theological searching, and in a time of fallout between me and my old nondenominational Christian church with Charismatic leanings, I discovered Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism. I'm not Roman Catholic, and I don't agree with all of Roman Catholic theology, and I do see them as a "distortion" of the faith, and Catholics will say the same about the Orthodox. But, basically, we both do not believe a person is confined to Heaven or Hell until after the Final Judgement, and that prayers for them can help their eternal state. The Catholic church dogmaticizes it with purgatory, whereas the Orthodox haven't dogmaticized the idea of purgatory, but there is similar ideas within Orthodoxy (Orthodox in general aren't much to dogmaticize things.) The other theological idea twisted by Mormonism is theosis, an Orthodox Christian idea. Theosis is the idea of union with God, there's a saying in Orthodox Christianity "God became man so that man can become God." This goes along with participation in the nature of Christ, it only logically concludes we will be literally one with Christ the farther we go along in our walk with Christ. The Mormons flip this idea on it's head, though, and then Joseph Smith flipped this idea around and promised more or less independent divinity instead of this.

But, the main idea of Mormonism is like, the same as all the other Protestants sects. Guy wakes up one morning, goes "ALL THE OTHER CHURCHES ARE WRONG AND I MUST RESTORE NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTIANITY!" and then...does something or other. That idea is ludicrous though, as if you believe Christ's promise that his church would endure forever, the Protestant thought process of "And after AD100, Christianity went into apostasy, and Martin Luther saved the day in 1500 (and Martin Luther was too Catholic for us so we just ignored his alot of his stuff, too,)" doesn't really work logically. Seriously, 1000+ years of no or severely wrong believing Christians (to Protestants)? Really? However, both the Orthodox and Catholic churches have Apostolic succession, for most of the churches, we can trace their bishops down to the first Apostle who started them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pa ... of_Antioch As you can see, from that list, it can be traced to present day. As far as I can see, the Orthodox Church is the only church that's remained more or less unchanged throughout time, and it has actual history and facts to back their claims of being the "one true church" up. That said, Orthodox Christianity is unlike the Roman Catholics in that we don't have one Pope over the entirety of Orthodoxy. Churches are controlled at the level of basically per country/geographical location. The way churches are kept "in check" is if one geographical location goes off, it gets put out of communion with the other churches. I mean, there are differences slightly in belief or structure from place to place (ie, the Ethiopians are monophysites) but it's not like Protestantism where they say they all believe the same thing and vary widely on really important ideas, like salvation, predestination, etc.

Anyway, that's my rather longwinded criticism of Mormonism. You asked.

Only interaction I've had with the Mormon church is dating a girl within the church, and that was... interesting to say the least.
When I attended one of their services by mere curiosity I was immediately noticed and had the attention of most of the members as it felt that I was "different" than the rest. They are friendly at first but very cold at the same time. I don't really know how to explain it.

By the way, all dead Mormons have now been converted to Judaism.

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episo ... do-domingo

He was some kind of 19th century country bumpkin / would be wizard / "treasure hunter" before he started the religion. And when he was finally annoited by this angel he just happened to combine both of those interests. He was told to locate and dig up a box of wizard gear. Magic seer stone glasses, a breastplate, the golden plates and a sword. Then he translated the golden plates through the use of a seer stone (a rock). He'd put it in his hat, stick his face in his hat to block the light, and then read off the plates to a scribe. His wife once claimed the first copy (don't ask) was translated with the magic glasses. Later he was back to the rock / hat.

It's as if a Harry Potter fan suddenly created a religion that sounded a lot like Harry Potter.

The temple vestments / magic underwear / wizard robes, which have symbols on them, doesnt really help break the magic vibe.

Well I don't know a lot about it...I have heard some concerning things about it from my sociology professor I had before I dropped out. But if its like any other religion chances are there are the extremists and then there's the larger majority that aren't quite so extreme. So yeah I am not going to dislike someone simply because they are mormon but if they push it on me or use it as an excuse to treat others badly then I have an issue with it.