With General Conference upon us, we will again see and hear the racket
and squawking from dissidents, anti's, and apostates, all trying to use
the increased attention on the Church for their own nefarious purposes.
The Salt Lake Tribune is leading the way,
as usual. This quotation from President Heber J. Grant summed it up in his day and in ours, beautifully:
"I
have received a
lot of anonymous letters, since I became President of the Church,
telling me a great many things that people would like me to announce
here, positions they would like me to take, etc., to all of which I
shall pay no attention." Conference Report, June 1919,
139.
I see Peggy Stack of the Tribune has done an (alleged) story on a new book about Joseph Smith's translation process. Her story, and evidently much of the book, is complete rot. I couldn't find a thing in her story that matched solid and sound church doctrine. These scholars, some of whom are apostates and nonmembers, are shooting in the dark. Ann Taves is promoting old worn-out theories of "automatic writing" to explain the production of the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham. She doesn't believe the gold plates existed. She quotes anti-Christs like Vogel and others who disbelieve that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.
ReplyDeleteBut this stuff gets more attention because Conference is almost here. I wish church members could get their understanding of past and ongoing revelation from sources like Elder Quentin L. Cook (at the last conference) and other like legitimate and authorized and knowledgeable sources. I don't think Elder Cook will get his understanding of how Joseph translated from this baloney book. Moroni gave Joseph a Urim and Thummim and the gold plates for a reason--to assist him in translating. If he also used a seer stone on occasion, that's fine, but there is no "new narrative" that is approved by the Church.