long ago ideas

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago." - Friedrich Nietzsche. Long ago, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery conquered false claims that the Book of Mormon was fiction or that it came through a stone in a hat. But these old claims have resurfaced in recent years. To conquer them again, we have to return to what Joseph and Oliver taught.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

On radio this Friday

I did some radio interviews which will be broadcast this Friday. The link in the red letters below will take you to the station if you don't have radio.

Jonathan for all 3 hours, talking about “TWO” Sets of Plates, and “ONE” Hill Cumorah.KLO 1430 AM Radio Salt Lake City. Tune in on Fri June 15, 2018 – 10 am to 1 pVisit KLO HERE!
_____



M2C explanation
Apparently the other day the Interpreter Foundation (part of the M2C citation cartel) had a radio program during which a caller asked why the Book of Ether doesn't mention the priesthood or ordinances such as baptism. 

The host said that is probably because it is a super abridged account by Moroni and that there is some evidence that Moroni was abridging the book from memory since he was probably unable to pack very many plates with him as he traveled to New York.

This is one of the most absurd M2C explanations yet.

(A better solution for M2C believers is this: Moroni could have hauled all the Nephite records to New York on a wheeled wagon pulled by a llama, a "herd" of agouti, or a tapir.)

The M2C intellectuals are so deluded that they think there is "some evidence" that Moroni wrote the book from memory? Like he's going to memorize 33 generations of Ether's ancestry?

This is what happens when you repudiate the prophets. 

Because the M2C intellectuals think the prophets are wrong about the New York Cumorah, they actually believe the "real" Cumorah containing Mormon's depository of Nephite records is somewhere in southern Mexico.

They think Moroni hauled up one set of plates to New York, but they don't know if he did this before or after he abridged the Book of Ether. Maybe he walked all the way back to Mexico, or maybe he wrote the book from "memory" like he did his father's sermons and letters.

M2C is such a mass of confusion that it's amazing anyone still believes it.

Far simpler is what the prophets have taught. There was no need for Moroni to write about the Jaredites from memory because he lived in western New York and could access the depository of Nephite records whenever he needed to.

1. Mormon and Moroni wrote and deposited the records not far from Joseph Smith's home in Palmyra (see Oliver Cowdery's Letter IV, here: http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/69).

2. Moroni finished his father's record, and then, when he survived and decided to add more to the record, he went into the depository in the Hill Cumorah in New York and abridged the plates of Ether.

3. Moroni later retrieved his father's sermons and letters and added them just before putting the "original Book of Mormon" (i.e., the Harmony plates) into the box he made of stone and cement (Nephite cement) in the hill Cumorah in New York.

There were two departments in the hill Cumorah, as Orson Pratt and others explained. One department contained all the Nephite records. This is the one that Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and some of Joseph's brothers visited multiple times.

The other department contained Moroni's stone box. Moroni put the Harmony plates (the original Book of Mormon) here because Joseph needed much more preparation to be able to enter the depository. As it was, it took Joseph four years of preparation just to obtain the Harmony plates. He had to overcome the temptation of wealth, as described in President Cowdery's letters.


No comments:

Post a Comment