I just noticed a comment made last October in my "Another string of thought" post. It points out that Latter Day Saints claim that the Book of Mormon is "the most correct book on the face of the earth" which would infer that the Bible is below the Book of Mormon in truth. This does not ring well in the ears of the rest of Christendom. Here is my response.
The Articles of Faith of the LDS church state that we "believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly". I will paraphrase a quote from a church authority whose identity I have forgotten: the words of the Bible as they were produced from the pen of the apostles was perfectly accurate. Now, the filters of multiple translations have caused many passages to lose their original meaning and have thus been rendered incomplete in truth. Examples of this are not terribly hard to find.
Exodus 7-14 mentions frequently that "the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh". If this is true, then why didn't God soften the heart of Pharaoh, instead of seemly forcing him into doing the evil that would cause his own destruction?
Exodus 33:20 and John 1:18 say that no man has seen God or can see God and live. Yet several accounts of man seeing God are recorded in the Bible - one of them is a few verses behind the former scripture reference: "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." Other accounts and references are found in Job 19:26, Acts 7:56, Genesis 32:30, Isaiah 6:5, and others. How else do you think we have a prophetic description of the risen Lord in the Book of Revelations?
Ephesians 2:8-9 says that man is saved by Grace and not by works, that God gives the gift of salvation. Different sects of Christianity differ on how to interpret this scripture, but most who say that salvation comes by Grace alone argue between 'predestination' - that God has already chosen who He is going to save - and the need to put forth faith - a simple acknowledgement that God exists - to obtain salvation. But according to Revelations 20:12-15, people whose works have been judged to be evil, regardless of their level of faith or predestination status, will be "cast into the lake of fire."
These are some of the more obvious doctrinal conflicts that occur within the Bible. As Christians, Latter Day Saints hold the Bible to be the Word of God, but we acknowledge that during a period of great apostasy, Biblical truths were altered. We assert that the Book of Mormon is a record of complete truth, as it came to Joseph Smith from Spirit of Revelation. That said, we do not believe either book holds the entirety of the Word of God. Article of Faith 9 states: "We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." We believe that God does not speak to a few people at a few points in history and then "shuts the heavens" so to speak. Why wouldn't God reveal everything at once instead of having a stream of revelation only when there are enough righteous people and prophets to listen, as seems to be the pattern in the Bible (Chronicles 36:15-16; Jeremiah 7:25-26)? And why would He stop after the death of the Apostles of the early church? Was there suddenly nothing left to reveal? Did the people suddenly become righteous and stop corrupting the doctrine to what they thought it should be (Galatians 1:6-10; 2 Timothy 4:3-4)? But I digress. What I wanted to say is this: we believe both books of scripture are necessary for us to know the truth of God, that they support and testify of each other, and that neither stands alone as a complete volume of the Word of God. Like the synthesis of the Old and New Testaments, the histories contained within both books create a more complete image of God.
Before I end, I want to mention one other thing. As I was reading the post in question, "Another string of thought", I found that I did not like the way I wrote some of my commentary. Of course I leave it the same doctrinally, but I felt I was too unnecessarily judgmental of some of the people to whom I made reference. I have since been working to improve in that area, seeing that I have no authority to make any such judgments.
The Articles of Faith of the LDS church state that we "believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly". I will paraphrase a quote from a church authority whose identity I have forgotten: the words of the Bible as they were produced from the pen of the apostles was perfectly accurate. Now, the filters of multiple translations have caused many passages to lose their original meaning and have thus been rendered incomplete in truth. Examples of this are not terribly hard to find.
Exodus 7-14 mentions frequently that "the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh". If this is true, then why didn't God soften the heart of Pharaoh, instead of seemly forcing him into doing the evil that would cause his own destruction?
Exodus 33:20 and John 1:18 say that no man has seen God or can see God and live. Yet several accounts of man seeing God are recorded in the Bible - one of them is a few verses behind the former scripture reference: "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." Other accounts and references are found in Job 19:26, Acts 7:56, Genesis 32:30, Isaiah 6:5, and others. How else do you think we have a prophetic description of the risen Lord in the Book of Revelations?
Ephesians 2:8-9 says that man is saved by Grace and not by works, that God gives the gift of salvation. Different sects of Christianity differ on how to interpret this scripture, but most who say that salvation comes by Grace alone argue between 'predestination' - that God has already chosen who He is going to save - and the need to put forth faith - a simple acknowledgement that God exists - to obtain salvation. But according to Revelations 20:12-15, people whose works have been judged to be evil, regardless of their level of faith or predestination status, will be "cast into the lake of fire."
These are some of the more obvious doctrinal conflicts that occur within the Bible. As Christians, Latter Day Saints hold the Bible to be the Word of God, but we acknowledge that during a period of great apostasy, Biblical truths were altered. We assert that the Book of Mormon is a record of complete truth, as it came to Joseph Smith from Spirit of Revelation. That said, we do not believe either book holds the entirety of the Word of God. Article of Faith 9 states: "We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." We believe that God does not speak to a few people at a few points in history and then "shuts the heavens" so to speak. Why wouldn't God reveal everything at once instead of having a stream of revelation only when there are enough righteous people and prophets to listen, as seems to be the pattern in the Bible (Chronicles 36:15-16; Jeremiah 7:25-26)? And why would He stop after the death of the Apostles of the early church? Was there suddenly nothing left to reveal? Did the people suddenly become righteous and stop corrupting the doctrine to what they thought it should be (Galatians 1:6-10; 2 Timothy 4:3-4)? But I digress. What I wanted to say is this: we believe both books of scripture are necessary for us to know the truth of God, that they support and testify of each other, and that neither stands alone as a complete volume of the Word of God. Like the synthesis of the Old and New Testaments, the histories contained within both books create a more complete image of God.
Before I end, I want to mention one other thing. As I was reading the post in question, "Another string of thought", I found that I did not like the way I wrote some of my commentary. Of course I leave it the same doctrinally, but I felt I was too unnecessarily judgmental of some of the people to whom I made reference. I have since been working to improve in that area, seeing that I have no authority to make any such judgments.
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