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Joseph Smith – A Man Like Unto Moses? Assessment of a Man Called a Prophet of God

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Joseph Smith – A Man Like Unto Moses? Assessment of a Man Called a Prophet of God

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When I become 18 years Universe Inform of age, overdue within the year 1970, I became deceptively introduced by way of a persuasive high college German trainer to the devilishly insipid specter of a protracted-lifeless 19th Century guy, Joseph Smith, Jr., that, today, continues to loom over the minds of hundreds of thousands of God’s youngsters as a cult of persona within the guise of what they trust to be a modern-day prophet proclaimed to be a man within the likeness of Moses. That’s what I become told, that Joseph Smith turned into a prophet “like unto Moses,” having recognized not anything in any respect about him or the agency that he created in April of 1830, the Mormon Church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A question was asked of me quickly when I was visited by using complete-time Mormon missionaries from Utah in Tyler, Texas. “Wouldn’t it’s perfect to have a dwelling prophet to guide and guide humanity in this most confusing global?” The senior of the 2 missionaries, named Burgess, had asked me this, and I had answered that “sure, it might be great indeed if God had referred to as a prophet to manual his human beings here on the earth.” So that reaction to their question started my processive indoctrination into the Mormon Church, as an impressionable young man totally unaware of the scriptures discovered within the Holy Bible approximately prophets, which the Mormons claimed to accept and accept as true because of the word of God.

One factor led to another in the course of the early fall of 1970, as the 2 aforementioned Mormon missionaries met with me as soon as per week, for around six weeks, and told me pretty some things about Joseph Smith and his “Book of Mormon,” that I, for a few stupid cause, prevalent at that time without questioning their validity according to with the Holy Bible. Though I had examined the Bible at some point of my young people and had memorized pretty a few verses in it, I hadn’t clearly understood what I’d study; that is, the actual gospel, or accurate news, of Jesus as discovered by way of the Savior and his Apostles within the New Testament, and prophesied with the aid of holy prophets within the Old Testament.

I become absolutely ignorant about the Old Testament report, which made it smooth for these unscrupulously persuasive missionaries to guide me around by using the nose to believe in their nonsense and to do their bidding. In truth, the best analysis that I was required to do was to “achieve” a testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet and the Book of Mormon because the phrase of God was selected chapters and verses from the Book of Mormon. There turned into no required analysis from the Bible. During the periods of time in which the 2 missionaries met with me, they used a flannel board and plastic figures as a means of embellishing in my thoughts their six canned displays that they known as discussions.

Joseph Smith

At the beginning of each of those displays, one of the missionaries continually requested me whether or not I had prayed approximately what they had advised me about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and received a burning in my bosom as to the truthfulness of those things. But, not having regarded at that point the genuine ancient fact approximately Joseph Smith and his Book of Mormon, that Smith was a charismatic charlatan and the book a nineteenth Century conspiratorial made from Smith’s, and his 0.33 cousin, Oliver Cowdery’s vivid imaginations, I turned into absolutely taken-in and duped via those missionaries, and was baptized into the Mormon Church in October of 1970. Hence, allow me to offer on this recounting what I could have said. The way I might have responded, to those Mormon missionaries and the vast other Mormon ladies and men who had entered my life, had I regarded what I found out later, and now realize, about the Holy Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ.

As to the first query that I changed into asked, about the want for a dwelling prophet in the early-19th Century, I might have surely said that the entirety that was, and is, needed for a full and whole information of Jesus Christ and his superb gospel, is in the confines of the Holy Bible; and that if any man claimed to be a prophet, or a teacher, in the gift age, he wouldn’t say something however what has already been said in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible with the aid of holy men of God as the Holy Spirit moved them. Thus, every scripture inside the Bible became given via holy men of God for doctrine, reproof, correction, and guidance in righteousness, that someone seeking to follow Jesus may be very well supplied in each way.

There become a distinct motive why those Mormon missionaries hadn’t recommended me to study the Bible, however simplest the Book of Mormon. Had I study, and understood, the Old Testament, I might have found out that the God of the Old Testament, the ante-mortal Jesus, had set up some very stringent necessities for a being certainly one of his genuine holy prophets, and that Joseph Smith hadn’t fulfilled “any” of those exacting conditions. But, you see, there is another more biblical book that the Mormons take delivery of because of the phrase of God, which is filled with the evidence that conclusively shows that Joseph Smith changed into a fake prophet. That book is called the “Doctrine and Covenants.” It is rarely cited by using Mormon missionaries in the course of those six canned shows, referred to as discussions, which prelude an attractiveness or rejection of Mormon doctrine using struggling Christians.

In Jeremiah 14:14 (KJV), the prophet writes, “Then the Lord stated unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I despatched them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a fake imaginative and prescient and divination, and a thing of naught, and the deceit in their coronary heart.” This turned into written over 500 years after Moses had already written in Deut. 18:18, “I will increase them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto all of them that I shall command him.” Furthermore, the Lord maintains speaking in Deut. 18:20-22 (NIV), “If any prophet presumptuously speaks a phrase in my call that I did now not command him to speak or speaks in the name of different gods, that prophet need to die.

However, you may say for your heart: How can we realize that Jehovah has not spoken the word? When the prophet speaks in the call of Jehovah, and the word is not fulfilled or does no longer come true, then Jehovah did no longer talk that phrase. The prophet spoke it presumptuously. Therefore, you must not fear him.” What does this imply? I suppose that means of the words is pretty darn clear. If a man claims to be a prophet, like unto Moses and makes a prediction, or prophecy, approximately what is to come back to skip, and if what he says, in every detail, does no longer come to bypass, the person is a fake prophet, and, if he was dwelling anciently, have to be put to demise. The Old Testament is full of examples of genuine prophecy given by way of real holy prophets of God.

One of those examples is the prophecy given through Isaiah, in Isaiah 37:22-35(NIV), “Therefore, for this reason, says the Lord regarding the king of Assyria: “He shall now not come into this metropolis, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come earlier than it with defend, nor construct a siege mound against it. By the manner that he came, by the same shall he return; and he shall not come into this town,” says the Lord. “For I will protect this city, to keep it For My personal sake and My servant David’s sake.” Isaiah had prophesied that the Assyrian Army, under the King of Assyria, could no longer shoot “one” arrow into the metropolis. Not one arrow, he said! Well, had one measly arrow been discharged from the bow of 1 irritating Assyrian soldier into the city, Isaiah might have added a fake prophecy in God’s call. But the file exhibits that no longer one arrow became shot into the metropolis, which made the prophecy true and faithful to God. In fact, every prophecy brought through God’s genuine anointed prophets was true and devoted to the Lord God and turned out much like the prophet had they would.

At this juncture, the prophecies of Joseph Smith, Jr. May be tested and understood for what they had been, predictions made by using an uninspired man calling himself a prophet. Remember, if a person, presuming to be a prophet, predicts something to come back to pass in God’s name, every element of the prediction needs to come to skip. For example, If I claimed to be an anointed prophet of God and said, inside the call of God, that on Friday, May 12, 2017, at four:00 within the afternoon in Washington, DC, that it would start raining, and that it’d rain progressively till nine:00 and without delay stop. Then an earthquake would be felt during the arena. Well, shall we say that on that Friday it started raining at 3:00 in the afternoon and rained steadily till 6:00 and right away stopped, and no earthquake followed? Was my prophecy fulfilled in every detail?

No, it wasn’t! It started raining on that Friday. However, the time element became not fulfilled, nor changed into the earthquake fulfilled. Therefore, I delivered a fake prophecy inside the call of God, for which I could have been put to death if I had been living in the course of the time of Isaiah. That turned into the penalty paid using fake prophets. Now allow’s observe one of the numerous prophecies delivered via Joseph Smith. Section 87 of the infamous book, the Doctrine, and Covenants, considered with the aid of Mormons to be their supply of doctrine and scripture, is supposedly a prophecy of the American Civil War brought using Joseph Smith on December 25, 1832. Let’s examine exactly what Smith said would manifest in Doctrine and Covenants 87:

Calvin M. Barker

Typical tv scholar. Problem solver. Writer. Extreme bacon fan. Twitter maven. Music evangelist. Spent a year consulting about salsa in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Spoke at an international conference about lecturing about junk food in New York, NY. Earned praise for promoting robotic shrimp in Phoenix, AZ. Spent 2002-2007 working on catfish in Naples, FL. Spent several months developing yogurt in Orlando, FL. Spent high school summers managing dandruff in Africa.

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