The danger of Mormonism.

The danger of Mormonism.

When Jesus was crucified almost all his critics wouldn't have bet a talent of the future of His church. The same thing it happened when Joseph Smith was assassinated. Unfortunately, or better fortunately for us, these people made a big mistake in their conclusions.
When they understood to have don this mistake they tried to fix this problem.
What they did it was that they tried to lie on their persons and on their teachings.
But why they worked and are working so hard for this?
To start let's go to read the warnings of Jesus in Matthew 10:35-36
and Luke 21:16-17 and John 15:18-21
From the Book "The Gainsaver" by Darrick T. Evenson pag 26
Cult, a word meaning "you are different than we are.
What is the dictionary definition of the word cult? The word simply means " a system of religious worship" Every church, then, is a cult, just as every church is a sect (definition " a group of people having the same principles, beliefs, or opinions)
But in recent years, the word-usage tendency among mainline, large church denominations has been to use the word cult to mean " a religious organization with belief which are distinctly different from the beliefs of the mainline groups" The tendency is for large groups to consider their beliefs to be "orthodox", and to regard smaller organizations with different beliefs as a "cult".
That's what the mainliners of Christ's day did. The Pharisees and Sadducees regarded Jesus and His followers as a cult. And that's what the mainliners do today: they regard Jesus and His followers, the latter day saints and others, as a cult.
There is nothing "bad" about being a cult, it is just a term the big guys use to tell the little guys "You are different than we are".
WHY MAINLINE CHURCHES WON'T CALL THEIR OPPONENTS "CHRISTIANS OR SAINTS"
I often used to wonder why the other ancient sects did not call the disciples of Jesus "Christians" as the Gentiles called them, or the "Saint" as they themselves were known to each other. I found that the term Christian was a Greek term that, when translated into Hebrew or Aramaic, means Messianist, a term that the orthodox sects reserved for themselves. In other words, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the mainline churches in Palestine during the mortal ministry of Jesus, believed that they themselves were the true followers (sic) of a Christ who had not yet appeared, and the mainliners thought that the Nazarenes believed in a false Christ (Jesus of Nazareth) and in a false prophet (John the Baptist).
They didn't refer to the saints as "Saints" because that was the scriptural term used by God for the people of God, and the apostate sects of Israel certainly did not want to call the Nazarenes the people of God!
The parallel holds true, today. The mainline churches do their best to reserve the term Christian for themselves. They are not about to use either the term Christian or "Saint" in reference to the Latter day saints. Antimormon gainsayers go a step further, doing their best to spread the belief that Mormons are not "Christians".
Modern Mainliner opposition similar to that used against Jesus in the new testament times.
In the days of Jesus, many of the common people believed that John was a prophet of God, but the ministers of the sects did not. They taught that God had completed (sic) His revelation with the close of the Old Testament and that no more prophets would come or be needed. Why did they teach that? The answer is obvious. Because they didn't have any living prophets among them, and had not had prophets among them for hundred of years. When the Lord Jesus began His mortal ministry, the very first thing He did was to be baptized by His prophet John. The leaders of the other sects did not believe in Jesus because, among other things, he went to John. The leaders of those sects believed that John was a false prophet.
Because the prophet John and Jesus Christ were taking away members from their flocks, the religious leader banded together to stop Jesus and John by spreading lies and rumors (sic) against the two of them, Jesus was aware of their falsehood and criticism, and made references to them in His teachings. see Matthew 11:18-19
That was not the end. Through the use of more lies, false accusations, and false witnesses, the ministers succeeded in opposing John and Christ till they finally brought about their deaths. Of course, Jesus gave up His life voluntarily as a sacrifice for a sin. Yet the Master was constantly harassed by those who opposed Him; they tirelessly sought to bring accusations against Him. And when nothing legitimate could be found with which to accuse Him, they set up false witnesses to lie and distort the truth.
ANCIENT MAINLINE CHURCHES HAD "CULT FIGHTERS" TO.
The leaders of the other sects believed that Jesus of Nazareth and His prophet John were "stealing their people", and they conspired together in an effort to stop them.
The churches chose certain men, usually religious leaders themselves, who made it their life's work to be cult fighters. One very famous cult fighter was Saul of Tarsus, a prominent Pharisee, who was very zealous in his persecution of the most dangerous "cult" of all "the Nazarenes".
Why did Paul persecute the Nazarenes? Because the Nazarenes were one of the cults. They believed in such "unorthodox" things as the ministering of angels, living prophets and apostles, continuous revelation, and that Jesus was truly the Messiah. All these things set the Nazarenes at variance with the other churches, including the other "cults". The anti- Nazarene movement proclaimed that John was a false prophet and that Jesus was a different Christ from the true Messiah who was to come. Saul of Tarsus succeeded in prosecuting many of the saints, but God had a plan for him. On the road of Damascus, Saul had a vision
Acts 9:1-23
No doubt in the eyes of the ministers of the other churches, Saul had become a traitor and joined the cultists. Saul, now as a despised Nazarene, began, in the eyes of those ministers, to steal their people, he had to be stopped? What did they say about Saul
Acts 24:5.
Tactics of the anti are always based on lies and false witnesses.
John 7:12, 45-47
Matthew 26:59-61
acts 6
But Jesus prevented these things and said Matthew 5:10-12
Other tactics against Jesus were stuff like this:" Jesus of Nazareth a bastard son of a married woman." From the book "Gainsayers" by Darrick T. Evenson pag 43
"A significant portion of ancient counter-mission propaganda was dedicated to the denigration and defamation of the New Testament. A classic example of such defamation is the parody of the Gospels called "Sefer Toledoth Yeshu" (the life of Jesus). This book had been written at the time of the Gospels, and was very popular among the various churches who rejected Jesus and his apostles. In this work, the miracles attributes to Jesus are explained away, and Jesus Himself is not regarded as the Son of God, but as the illegitimate offspring of Mary and a Roman soldier. Other criticism were made which asserted that the Gospels contradicted each other. Similarly, some counter mission writers repeated accusations already recorded in the New Testament, namely, that Jesus was not the Messiah because He could not save Himself (Mark 15:20-32), and that the disappearance of Jesus' body was the result of chicanery, and not a miracle (Matthew 28:11-15). A few early gainsayers also noted that a number of verses from the Hebrew Bible were incorrectly quoted in the New Testament. For example, they compared Deuteronomy 6:5 with Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27. How could Jesus be the Messiah, the gainsayers asked, if Jesus and his disciples were ignorant of verses that even the youngest child would know?
Another popular anti-Nazarene book was "Nizzahon Vetus" (Book of polemic) a book intended to expose the heresies of all cults, the Nazarenes being among them. Not only did the gainsayers try to refute all the prophecies of Jesus in this book, but they asserted that God had warned man against Jesus in scripture:
"the reason for God's concern was that He foresaw that Jesus would attempt to mislead the world by saying he is God, and so the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that it would be better that men should die so that Jesus could be hanged without having eaten from the tree of life and all the world know that he is not God."
The Book goes on to say that Jesus admitted to being a sinner. The ancient anti-Christ's used mockery as a means to an end. Jesus, in His lifetime, as Luke 2:48, 51 shows, was regarded as the actual son of Joseph. But when, at Pentecost, the preaching of the Apostles proclaimed that Jesus was the son of God, then the counter-missionaries took hold of this divine truth and attempted to make a mockery out of it. They said:
"Since God has no son, while Jesus, as the Nazarenes themselves admit, is not Joseph's son, it follows that he was born out of wedlock."
Unfortunately for the antis there are many ways to show how wrong they are
Daniel 2:44-45
This is clearly a description of the church of Jesus Christ a kingdom that, step by step will increase until to take the whole power, clearly in the millennium. So the true church of Jesus Christ should be an expanding church going to fill the whole world. Do you want to take a look at which church this definition fit perfectly?The Catholic church was born not in the last days but in the early days, this should disqualify her instantly, but leaving aside this particular problem we can easily see that the catholic church was an expanding church just at the beginning, thanking the Roman empire, but in the last day she is just shrinking, before during the middle age and the reformation and lately she is going very bad. The magazine "Time" wrote just two weeks ago "Can the Catholic church save itself?" After her were born the Protestants. Are they an expanding church? no because they are hundreds of different denominations so if you count them one by one their number is so little that maybe you will be astonished, and you can't count them ONE church because they are different churches, even if you would count them just one they are not an expanding church but just an idle church. There are just two churches that are having a great success in these last days: The seventh day Adventists are number two and guess what number one is the Church of Jesus Christ lds. Considering that the lds church was born after 1800 years after the Catholic church and three hundred years after the Protestants, well it seems that now is the fourth church by the numbers of his members and that we are increasing at a greater amount than any other Christian church it is evident to me why the Protestants are so tough with us and they consider the danger of Mormonism very seriously, because they are as John the Baptist to Jesus they have to diminish while the lds have to increase. That is the real reason why they are fighting the LDS church, but still the work can't be stopped neither slowed until the great Jehovah will say that the work is over.
From the advertising of the book
"The Gospel According to Joseph Smith" by Ethan Smith
the LDS finds itself in the midst of what the Christian Research Journal calls "enormous international growth and unprecedented public relations success," evangelical Christians must continue to study Mormonism