The Truth about Mormons

[froggy]

Professor Gene Sessions, a Mormon, historian and authority on the massacre has concluded:

"... some 50 Mormons taking orders from local ecclesiastical leaders actually went out and tricked these 120 people out of their encampment with a white flag and then proceeded to murder them in cold blood with the exception of 17 small children. ...

"It's an awful story, you can't put a smilie face on it. This was cold-blooded murder of innocent people. Occasionally someone will come up to me and say, 'Well don't you think they deserved it?' And, no I don't think they deserved it. I don't care how many of the stories you believe about whatever the immigrants did to get killed, nothing they did came anywhere close to justifying the murder of little children and the oldest child saved was six-years and 11 months old. Everyone older than that was murdered. In fact most of the murdered people were women and children. So there's no justification. Even if you wanted to make some justification for killing the men, it breaks down pretty fast. It's just- there's no justification for the murder of these people. ..."

"I also believe without any question, even though the Paiutes might deny loudly that they were involved, that there indeed were. At the beginning of the attack; at the beginning of the week somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred Paiutes--there may have been only a handful left by the end of the week when the actual murders took place--but they were involved from the beginning and anyone who suggests otherwise is just missing enormous amounts of evidence." 14

It was ordered by the church's prophet and president, Brigham Young. Author Will Bagley implicates Young directly in the massacre. Bagley's book "Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows " has generated considerable controversy since it was first published in 2002-OCT. He concludes that Brigham Young knew that the attack was imminent and, according to legend, sent the message "Brethren, do your duty." Bagley provides some circumstantial evidence in support of this assertion.

 

[Avatar4321]

What exactly is your question Froggy?

 

[JakeStarkey]

Froggy is pointing out that alternative narrative are suggested.

Sessions has adopted the current LDS story to the point that local LDS leaders caused the tragedy in southern Utah, while vastly overstating the number of Native Americans involved ~ the clan structure of native culture in the south probably could not have put together a war party of more than a dozen members.

Bagley insists that the massacre was masterminded by Brigham Young, aided and abetted by counselor George A. Smith, and carried out by the latter day saints militia in the south.

 

[Avatar4321]

Froggy is pointing out that alternative narrative are suggested.

Sessions has adopted the current LDS story to the point that local LDS leaders caused the tragedy in southern Utah, while vastly overstating the number of Native Americans involved ~ the clan structure of native culture in the south probably could not have put together a war party of more than a dozen members.

Bagley insists that the massacre was masterminded by Brigham Young, aided and abetted by counselor George A. Smith, and carried out by the latter day saints militia in the south.

That's not really a question or accurate with any sort of look at what actually happen. I don't see how someone who tells them to leave them be is a mastermind behind some plot.

 

[JakeStarkey]

The contention is that the letter was one of 'plausible deniability.'

Somebody a few years made a good point: does anybody who knows Brigham Young possibly that a wagon train could be eliminated by Mormon leadership and Mormon militia without BY's knowledge and permission?

 

[Truthspeaker]

Regarding Jehovah's Witnesses' "New World Translation" Bible and its rendering of John 1:1, it may interest you to know that there is soon to be published an 18+ year study (as of 01/2010) in support and explanation of their wording of this verse entitled, "What About John 1:1?"

To learn more of its design and expected release date, we invite you to visit:

www dot goodcompanionbooks dot com

Agape, JohnOneOne.



I completely disagree with so many tenets of "Jehovah's Witness"-ism on so many levels but I respect their fervor and general good intentions. I don't think I would take any of my time to debate our ways being better than theirs because their minds are made up just like ours are. They'll just have to wait till the last day to be shown their errors.

But it doesn't matter what religion you subscribe to as much as what is in your heart.

 

[Truthspeaker]

More from Compton.

Did JS have carnal relations with women not his wife:

Compton writes:
"Because of claims by Reorganized Latter-day Saints that Joseph was not really married polygamously in the full (i.e., sexual) sense of the term, Utah Mormons (including Joseph's wives) affirmed repeatedly that Joseph had physical sexual relations with his plural wives-despite the Victorian conventions in nineteenth-century American religion which otherwise would have prevented mention of sexual relations in marriage."

- Faithful Mormon Melissa Lott (Smith Willes) testified that she had been Joseph's wife "in very deed." (Affidavit of Melissa Willes, 3 Aug. 1893, Temple Lot case, 98, 105; Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 156.)

- In a court affidavit, faithful Mormon Joseph Noble wrote that Joseph told him he had spent the night with Louisa Beaman. (Temple Lot Case, 427)

- Emily D. Partridge (Smith Young) said she "roomed" with Joseph the night following her marriage to him and said that she had "carnal intercourse" with him. (Temple Lot case (complete transcript), 364, 367, 384; see Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 15.)

joseph smithIn total, 13 faithful latter-day saint women who were married to Joseph Smith swore court affidavits that they had sexual relations with him.

- Joseph Smith's personal secretary records that on May 22nd, 1843, Smith's first wife Emma found Joseph and Eliza Partridge secluded in an upstairs bedroom at the Smith home. Emma was devastated.
William Clayton's journal entry for 23 May (see Smith, 105-106)

- Smith's secretary William Clayton also recorded a visit to young Almera Johnson on May 16, 1843: "Prest. Joseph and I went to B[enjamin] F. Johnsons to sleep." Johnson himself later noted that on this visit Smith stayed with Almera "as man and wife" and "occupied the same room and bed with my sister, that the previous month he had occupied with the daughter of the late Bishop Partridge as his wife." Almera Johnson also confirmed her secret marriage to Joseph Smith: "I lived with the prophet Joseph as his wife and he visited me at the home of my brother Benjamin F." (Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 44. See also "The Origin of Plural Marriage, Joseph F. Smith, Jr., Deseret News Press, page 70-71.)

- Faithful Mormon and Stake President Angus Cannon told Joseph Smith's son: "Brother Heber C. Kimball, I am informed, asked [Eliza R. Snow] the question if she was not a virgin although married to Joseph Smith and afterwards to Brigham Young, when she replied in a private gathering, "I thought you knew Joseph Smith better than that."" (Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 23, LDS archives.)

4. Did Joseph Smith father any children from his polygamous wives?

- Stake President Angus Cannon also testified: "I will now refer you to one case where it was said by the girl's grandmother that your father [Joseph Smith] has a daughter born of a plural wife. The girl's grandmother was Mother Sessions . . . She was the grand-daughter of Mother Sessions. That girl, I believe, is living today, in Bountiful, north of this city. I heard prest. Young, a short time before his death, refer to the report . . . The woman is now said to have a family of children, and I think she is still living." (Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 25-26, LDS archives.)

- Faithful Mormon and wife of Joseph Smith, Sylvia Sessions (Lyon), on her deathbed told her daughter, Josephine, that she (Josephine) was the daughter of Joseph Smith. Josephine testified: "She (Sylvia) then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church." (Affidavit to Church Historian Andrew Jenson, 24 Feb. 1915)

- In her testimony given at a Brigham Young University devotional, Faithful Mormon Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner stated that she knew of children born to Smith's plural wives: "I know he [Joseph Smith] had six wives and I have known some of them from childhood up. I know he had three children. They told me. I think two are living today but they are not known as his children as they go by other names." (Read her full BYU testimony here: LDS History)

- Faithful Mormon Prescindia D. Huntington, who was Normal Buell's wife and simultaneously a "plural wife" of the Prophet Joseph Smith, said that she did not know whether her husband Norman "or the Prophet was the father of her son, Oliver." And a glance at a photo of Oliver shows a strong resemblance to Emma Smith's boys.
(Mary Ettie V. Smith, "Fifteen Years Among the Mormons", page 34; also Fawn Brodie "No Man Knows My History" pages 301-302, 437-39)

- Researchers have tentatively identified eight children that Joseph Smith may have had by his plural wives. Besides Josephine Fisher (b. Feb. 8, 1844) and Oliver Buell, named as possible children of Joseph Smith by his plural wives are John R. Hancock (b. Apr. 19, 1841), George A. Lightner (b. Mar. 12, 1842), Orson W. Hyde (b. Nov. 9, 1843), Frank H. Hyde (b. Jan 23, 1845), Moroni Pratt (b. Dec. 7, 1844), and Zebulon Jacobs (b. Jan 2, 1842). ("Mormon Polygamy: A History" by LDS Historian Richard S. Van Wagoner, pages 44, 48- 49n3

I've already said that it is no problem for a man to have sex with his wife. No matter how many of them he has. Surely then we would have to call Abraham and many of the other biblical patriarchs adulterers as well by your ideal.

It was commanded and ispired of God at their times and in the times of Joseph Smith. End of debate.

 

[Truthspeaker]

Mormons are anyone who follows the teachings of Joseph Smith. The term is not defined by you or the LDS church or anyone else. The term is what it is. So, yes, the FLDS, the Wightites, the Bickertonites, the Smithites, Temple Lot, RLDS, Community of Christ ~ all are Mormons, along with literally the hundreds of other Mormon schismatic organizations.

The LDS are merely one of so many Mormon sects.

Here is a great work to read: Scattering Of The Saints: Schism Within Mormonism by Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer (Paperback - Sept. 10, 2007)

Sorry dude,
your dog and pony show of Shrutism does not make you seem authoritative on who's a sect and who's the mother ship.

All those who break off the mother ship and have formation dates after the Church of Jesus Christ are uniquivocally and indisputably the breakoffs and obviously unauthoritative sects completely separated and unsanctioned by the mother church.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the official name of the Church Joseph Smith founded in 1830. All other names after that are just that....after that.

Capish?

 

[JakeStarkey]

More from Compton.

Did JS have carnal relations with women not his wife:

Compton writes:
"Because of claims by Reorganized Latter-day Saints that Joseph was not really married polygamously in the full (i.e., sexual) sense of the term, Utah Mormons (including Joseph's wives) affirmed repeatedly that Joseph had physical sexual relations with his plural wives-despite the Victorian conventions in nineteenth-century American religion which otherwise would have prevented mention of sexual relations in marriage."

- Faithful Mormon Melissa Lott (Smith Willes) testified that she had been Joseph's wife "in very deed." (Affidavit of Melissa Willes, 3 Aug. 1893, Temple Lot case, 98, 105; Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 156.)

- In a court affidavit, faithful Mormon Joseph Noble wrote that Joseph told him he had spent the night with Louisa Beaman. (Temple Lot Case, 427)

- Emily D. Partridge (Smith Young) said she "roomed" with Joseph the night following her marriage to him and said that she had "carnal intercourse" with him. (Temple Lot case (complete transcript), 364, 367, 384; see Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 15.)

joseph smithIn total, 13 faithful latter-day saint women who were married to Joseph Smith swore court affidavits that they had sexual relations with him.

- Joseph Smith's personal secretary records that on May 22nd, 1843, Smith's first wife Emma found Joseph and Eliza Partridge secluded in an upstairs bedroom at the Smith home. Emma was devastated.
William Clayton's journal entry for 23 May (see Smith, 105-106)

- Smith's secretary William Clayton also recorded a visit to young Almera Johnson on May 16, 1843: "Prest. Joseph and I went to B[enjamin] F. Johnsons to sleep." Johnson himself later noted that on this visit Smith stayed with Almera "as man and wife" and "occupied the same room and bed with my sister, that the previous month he had occupied with the daughter of the late Bishop Partridge as his wife." Almera Johnson also confirmed her secret marriage to Joseph Smith: "I lived with the prophet Joseph as his wife and he visited me at the home of my brother Benjamin F." (Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 44. See also "The Origin of Plural Marriage, Joseph F. Smith, Jr., Deseret News Press, page 70-71.)

- Faithful Mormon and Stake President Angus Cannon told Joseph Smith's son: "Brother Heber C. Kimball, I am informed, asked [Eliza R. Snow] the question if she was not a virgin although married to Joseph Smith and afterwards to Brigham Young, when she replied in a private gathering, "I thought you knew Joseph Smith better than that."" (Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 23, LDS archives.)

4. Did Joseph Smith father any children from his polygamous wives?

- Stake President Angus Cannon also testified: "I will now refer you to one case where it was said by the girl's grandmother that your father [Joseph Smith] has a daughter born of a plural wife. The girl's grandmother was Mother Sessions . . . She was the grand-daughter of Mother Sessions. That girl, I believe, is living today, in Bountiful, north of this city. I heard prest. Young, a short time before his death, refer to the report . . . The woman is now said to have a family of children, and I think she is still living." (Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 25-26, LDS archives.)

- Faithful Mormon and wife of Joseph Smith, Sylvia Sessions (Lyon), on her deathbed told her daughter, Josephine, that she (Josephine) was the daughter of Joseph Smith. Josephine testified: "She (Sylvia) then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church." (Affidavit to Church Historian Andrew Jenson, 24 Feb. 1915)

- In her testimony given at a Brigham Young University devotional, Faithful Mormon Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner stated that she knew of children born to Smith's plural wives: "I know he [Joseph Smith] had six wives and I have known some of them from childhood up. I know he had three children. They told me. I think two are living today but they are not known as his children as they go by other names." (Read her full BYU testimony here: LDS History)

- Faithful Mormon Prescindia D. Huntington, who was Normal Buell's wife and simultaneously a "plural wife" of the Prophet Joseph Smith, said that she did not know whether her husband Norman "or the Prophet was the father of her son, Oliver." And a glance at a photo of Oliver shows a strong resemblance to Emma Smith's boys.
(Mary Ettie V. Smith, "Fifteen Years Among the Mormons", page 34; also Fawn Brodie "No Man Knows My History" pages 301-302, 437-39)

- Researchers have tentatively identified eight children that Joseph Smith may have had by his plural wives. Besides Josephine Fisher (b. Feb. 8, 1844) and Oliver Buell, named as possible children of Joseph Smith by his plural wives are John R. Hancock (b. Apr. 19, 1841), George A. Lightner (b. Mar. 12, 1842), Orson W. Hyde (b. Nov. 9, 1843), Frank H. Hyde (b. Jan 23, 1845), Moroni Pratt (b. Dec. 7, 1844), and Zebulon Jacobs (b. Jan 2, 1842). ("Mormon Polygamy: A History" by LDS Historian Richard S. Van Wagoner, pages 44, 48- 49n3

I've already said that it is no problem for a man to have sex with his wife. No matter how many of them he has. Surely then we would have to call Abraham and many of the other biblical patriarchs adulterers as well by your ideal.

It was commanded and ispired of God at their times and in the times of Joseph Smith. End of debate.

Adultery was against the law of the land. Your argument thus is bogus. You certainly have no proof whatsoever that it was "inspired [sic] of God . . . in the times of Joseph Smith." That's the point. You lose.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Mormons are anyone who follows the teachings of Joseph Smith. The term is not defined by you or the LDS church or anyone else. The term is what it is. So, yes, the FLDS, the Wightites, the Bickertonites, the Smithites, Temple Lot, RLDS, Community of Christ ~ all are Mormons, along with literally the hundreds of other Mormon schismatic organizations.

The LDS are merely one of so many Mormon sects.

Here is a great work to read: Scattering Of The Saints: Schism Within Mormonism by Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer (Paperback - Sept. 10, 2007)

Sorry dude,
your dog and pony show of Shrutism does not make you seem authoritative on who's a sect and who's the mother ship.

All those who break off the mother ship and have formation dates after the Church of Jesus Christ are uniquivocally and indisputably the breakoffs and obviously unauthoritative sects completely separated and unsanctioned by the mother church.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the official name of the Church Joseph Smith founded in 1830. All other names after that are just that....after that.

Capish?

You argument is so absurdly false. The official church of Joseph Smith was awarded to the Community of Christ (then the RLDS) in the Temple Lot Case (1893).

Don't you know any of your church's history.

 

[Truthspeaker]

Exactly wrong, guys. Many Mormons (followers of Joseph Smith and the Restoration, of which the LDS is only a sect) disagree with you guys. In other words, the LDS church does not control the definition of who is a "Mormon". Yes, many Mormons do believe in it and practice it.

It's pretty logical to assume that the ORIGINAL church of the original name has the right to define who they are. Breakoff's of said church who have abandoned said name would be utterly unauthoritative in defining another group's name. Case closed.

 

[Truthspeaker]

But that is the issue.

FLDS follow their interp of JS and the Book of Mormon, D&C, etc. To them, you stopped in 1890. To them, they picked up the mantle. To them, they are 'real' Mormons.

And, of course, Mormons are a subset of Christianity, as are all the sects that follow JS subsets of Mormonism.

Of course....That's the whole point you're missing. Our church has always been founded on prophets and apostles, with Christ being the Chief Cornerstone. Their "interpretation" is an interpretation that is a clear and separate break from our original church. This is not even debatable.

Their argument is that the church's prophetic leadership was to be genetic through Joseph Smith's line. But Joseph NEVER EVER, said that. Christ certainly said nothing about prophets being required to come from a certain genealogy. You see their major fail?

Who cares what argument they think they're bringing to the table. It is thrown out because we have not deviated from Joseph's teachings. They have. It's not a matter of interpretation. It's black and white.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your LDS church, Truthspeaker, is only one denomination of Mormons.

Better get over your tantrum because that is not going to change.

 

[Truthspeaker]

Professor Gene Sessions, a Mormon, historian and authority on the massacre has concluded:

"... some 50 Mormons taking orders from local ecclesiastical leaders actually went out and tricked these 120 people out of their encampment with a white flag and then proceeded to murder them in cold blood with the exception of 17 small children. ...

"It's an awful story, you can't put a smilie face on it. This was cold-blooded murder of innocent people. Occasionally someone will come up to me and say, 'Well don't you think they deserved it?' And, no I don't think they deserved it. I don't care how many of the stories you believe about whatever the immigrants did to get killed, nothing they did came anywhere close to justifying the murder of little children and the oldest child saved was six-years and 11 months old. Everyone older than that was murdered. In fact most of the murdered people were women and children. So there's no justification. Even if you wanted to make some justification for killing the men, it breaks down pretty fast. It's just- there's no justification for the murder of these people. ..."

"I also believe without any question, even though the Paiutes might deny loudly that they were involved, that there indeed were. At the beginning of the attack; at the beginning of the week somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred Paiutes--there may have been only a handful left by the end of the week when the actual murders took place--but they were involved from the beginning and anyone who suggests otherwise is just missing enormous amounts of evidence." 14

It was ordered by the church's prophet and president, Brigham Young. Author Will Bagley implicates Young directly in the massacre. Bagley's book "Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows " has generated considerable controversy since it was first published in 2002-OCT. He concludes that Brigham Young knew that the attack was imminent and, according to legend, sent the message "Brethren, do your duty." Bagley provides some circumstantial evidence in support of this assertion.

Exactly! "ACCORDING TO LEGEND".

Legend has it that Zeus is the father of Kratos in God of War, along with Perseus and Hercules too!

 

[Truthspeaker]

Froggy is pointing out that alternative narrative are suggested.

Sessions has adopted the current LDS story to the point that local LDS leaders caused the tragedy in southern Utah, while vastly overstating the number of Native Americans involved ~ the clan structure of native culture in the south probably could not have put together a war party of more than a dozen members.

Bagley insists that the massacre was masterminded by Brigham Young, aided and abetted by counselor George A. Smith, and carried out by the latter day saints militia in the south.

Anyone who has truly heard the teachings of Brigham Young knows that he was not capable of such an atrocity.
Never mind the circumstances being impossible for him to know and respond to the Arkansas party nuisance. His response, which was slower than snail mail speed was thus, "Let them alone, do not meddle with them."

It was received a week after the murderers dealt with the Arkansas wagon train.

 

[Truthspeaker]

The contention is that the letter was one of 'plausible deniability.'

Somebody a few years made a good point: does anybody who knows Brigham Young possibly that a wagon train could be eliminated by Mormon leadership and Mormon militia without BY's knowledge and permission?

You didn't gramaticize your sentence properly. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

But let it be known. Independant people can perform independant acts and contrary to many a belief, Brigham Young was not an omnipotent dictator. He could not control all the actions of his fellow man.

 

[Truthspeaker]

More from Compton.

Did JS have carnal relations with women not his wife:

Compton writes:
"Because of claims by Reorganized Latter-day Saints that Joseph was not really married polygamously in the full (i.e., sexual) sense of the term, Utah Mormons (including Joseph's wives) affirmed repeatedly that Joseph had physical sexual relations with his plural wives-despite the Victorian conventions in nineteenth-century American religion which otherwise would have prevented mention of sexual relations in marriage."

- Faithful Mormon Melissa Lott (Smith Willes) testified that she had been Joseph's wife "in very deed." (Affidavit of Melissa Willes, 3 Aug. 1893, Temple Lot case, 98, 105; Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 156.)

- In a court affidavit, faithful Mormon Joseph Noble wrote that Joseph told him he had spent the night with Louisa Beaman. (Temple Lot Case, 427)

- Emily D. Partridge (Smith Young) said she "roomed" with Joseph the night following her marriage to him and said that she had "carnal intercourse" with him. (Temple Lot case (complete transcript), 364, 367, 384; see Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 15.)

joseph smithIn total, 13 faithful latter-day saint women who were married to Joseph Smith swore court affidavits that they had sexual relations with him.

- Joseph Smith's personal secretary records that on May 22nd, 1843, Smith's first wife Emma found Joseph and Eliza Partridge secluded in an upstairs bedroom at the Smith home. Emma was devastated.
William Clayton's journal entry for 23 May (see Smith, 105-106)

- Smith's secretary William Clayton also recorded a visit to young Almera Johnson on May 16, 1843: "Prest. Joseph and I went to B[enjamin] F. Johnsons to sleep." Johnson himself later noted that on this visit Smith stayed with Almera "as man and wife" and "occupied the same room and bed with my sister, that the previous month he had occupied with the daughter of the late Bishop Partridge as his wife." Almera Johnson also confirmed her secret marriage to Joseph Smith: "I lived with the prophet Joseph as his wife and he visited me at the home of my brother Benjamin F." (Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 44. See also "The Origin of Plural Marriage, Joseph F. Smith, Jr., Deseret News Press, page 70-71.)

- Faithful Mormon and Stake President Angus Cannon told Joseph Smith's son: "Brother Heber C. Kimball, I am informed, asked [Eliza R. Snow] the question if she was not a virgin although married to Joseph Smith and afterwards to Brigham Young, when she replied in a private gathering, "I thought you knew Joseph Smith better than that."" (Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 23, LDS archives.)

4. Did Joseph Smith father any children from his polygamous wives?

- Stake President Angus Cannon also testified: "I will now refer you to one case where it was said by the girl's grandmother that your father [Joseph Smith] has a daughter born of a plural wife. The girl's grandmother was Mother Sessions . . . She was the grand-daughter of Mother Sessions. That girl, I believe, is living today, in Bountiful, north of this city. I heard prest. Young, a short time before his death, refer to the report . . . The woman is now said to have a family of children, and I think she is still living." (Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 25-26, LDS archives.)

- Faithful Mormon and wife of Joseph Smith, Sylvia Sessions (Lyon), on her deathbed told her daughter, Josephine, that she (Josephine) was the daughter of Joseph Smith. Josephine testified: "She (Sylvia) then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church." (Affidavit to Church Historian Andrew Jenson, 24 Feb. 1915)

- In her testimony given at a Brigham Young University devotional, Faithful Mormon Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner stated that she knew of children born to Smith's plural wives: "I know he [Joseph Smith] had six wives and I have known some of them from childhood up. I know he had three children. They told me. I think two are living today but they are not known as his children as they go by other names." (Read her full BYU testimony here: LDS History)

- Faithful Mormon Prescindia D. Huntington, who was Normal Buell's wife and simultaneously a "plural wife" of the Prophet Joseph Smith, said that she did not know whether her husband Norman "or the Prophet was the father of her son, Oliver." And a glance at a photo of Oliver shows a strong resemblance to Emma Smith's boys.
(Mary Ettie V. Smith, "Fifteen Years Among the Mormons", page 34; also Fawn Brodie "No Man Knows My History" pages 301-302, 437-39)

- Researchers have tentatively identified eight children that Joseph Smith may have had by his plural wives. Besides Josephine Fisher (b. Feb. 8, 1844) and Oliver Buell, named as possible children of Joseph Smith by his plural wives are John R. Hancock (b. Apr. 19, 1841), George A. Lightner (b. Mar. 12, 1842), Orson W. Hyde (b. Nov. 9, 1843), Frank H. Hyde (b. Jan 23, 1845), Moroni Pratt (b. Dec. 7, 1844), and Zebulon Jacobs (b. Jan 2, 1842). ("Mormon Polygamy: A History" by LDS Historian Richard S. Van Wagoner, pages 44, 48- 49n3

I've already said that it is no problem for a man to have sex with his wife. No matter how many of them he has. Surely then we would have to call Abraham and many of the other biblical patriarchs adulterers as well by your ideal.

It was commanded and ispired of God at their times and in the times of Joseph Smith. End of debate.

Adultery was against the law of the land. Your argument thus is bogus. You certainly have no proof whatsoever that it was "inspired [sic] of God . . . in the times of Joseph Smith." That's the point. You lose.

Try again...
It doesn't matter to have "proof" as you call it. This is a matter of faith entirely. "proof" as you would call it, would require God to appear to you and tell you that he has sanctioned it.
Sorry I just don't have that proof. All else by humans is commentary unless you are of the correct belief. Spiritual proof by the power of the Holy Ghost is the only proof you will have on this matter. It is the strongest proof there is actually. It is pointless to debate this. Our minds are made up on the matter.

 

[Truthspeaker]

Mormons are anyone who follows the teachings of Joseph Smith. The term is not defined by you or the LDS church or anyone else. The term is what it is. So, yes, the FLDS, the Wightites, the Bickertonites, the Smithites, Temple Lot, RLDS, Community of Christ ~ all are Mormons, along with literally the hundreds of other Mormon schismatic organizations.

The LDS are merely one of so many Mormon sects.

Here is a great work to read: Scattering Of The Saints: Schism Within Mormonism by Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer (Paperback - Sept. 10, 2007)

Sorry dude,
your dog and pony show of Shrutism does not make you seem authoritative on who's a sect and who's the mother ship.

All those who break off the mother ship and have formation dates after the Church of Jesus Christ are uniquivocally and indisputably the breakoffs and obviously unauthoritative sects completely separated and unsanctioned by the mother church.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the official name of the Church Joseph Smith founded in 1830. All other names after that are just that....after that.

Capish?

You argument is so absurdly false. The official church of Joseph Smith was awarded to the Community of Christ (then the RLDS) in the Temple Lot Case (1893).

Don't you know any of your church's history.

First of all if you knew the Book of Mormon at all you would know we would never follow the church of a man. Jesus is quoted in 3 Nephi chapter 17 responding to the queries as to what they should name his church. He said, "Why should your hearts be troubled concerning this matter?

8 And how be it my church save it be called in my name? For if a church be called in Moses’ name then it be Moses’ church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel.
8 And how be it my church save it be called in my name? For if a church be called in Moses’ name then it be Moses’ church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel.


You see? The courts of earth have no authority in this matter? That is the reason why the FLDS fell away in their understanding. They think that the key to salvation was Joseph Smith! They became the church of a man in that instant.

Followers of Christ would recognize who the key to their salvation really is. Joseph Smith himself vehemently proclaimed this fact.
Judgment rules in favor of Christ's church, not Joseph's Church:

 

[Truthspeaker]

Your LDS church, Truthspeaker, is only one denomination of Mormons.

Better get over your tantrum because that is not going to change.

Thank you for your concession.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your LDS church, Truthspeaker, is only one denomination of Mormons.

Better get over your tantrum because that is not going to change.

Thank you for your concession.

You conceded because you know secular law in the affair of man transcends your church comments. Remember that one of your Articles of Faith state thats you follow the laws of man.

You can't win on this. JS was an adulterer before the law and in the eyes of God. Tough place to be.