Archive
Reason #48: The Love of God (from Susan Storm Smith)
FROM SUSAN STORM SMITH: As I was in Bible study this morning, the most beautiful thought came to me in relationship to the subject of why I would not return to being a Mormon. As a Mormon, the focus is on works and good deeds. Its about...
Reason #47: The Monitoring of Church Members and Ex-Members
The LDS Church once instituted an organization "“ more of a practice, really "“ called the "Strengthening the Church Members Committee" which it publicly billed as a newspaper clipping service[ii] but which in reality was a spy organization that...
Reason #46 — Big Love and the Introduction of Polygamy into American Culture
Big Love, indeed. Mormonism, in all its incarnations, institutionalized what many people see as the inevitable successor to legalized same-sex marriage: the legalization of plural marriage, which many people are calling "the next civil rights...
Reason #45: Joseph Smith's Boasting about Languages
On one occasion Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of the LDS religion, quoted from seventeen different languages (not always accurately). At another time he claimed, "I know more than all the world put together" and went on to discuss the meaning of various...
Reason #44: The Whitewashing of LDS History
Mormons are taught that abstinence from tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco is essential for entrance into the celestial kingdom. If this is true, Joseph Smith must be a candidate for the terrestrial or telestial kingdom because he repeatedly violated the Word of...
Reason #43: Joseph and Nauvoo
There's an error in the upcoming edition of The Mormon Mirage. (Yes, since I'm human, there will be errors.) This one has to do with the assertion of Fawn Brodie (author of No Man Knows My History, a biography of Joseph Smith) and others who have said that...
Reason #42: from Susan Storm Smith
Here are a couple of reasons why I would not return to being a Mormon. 1) The whole Temple and Endowment process and the truth behind it is one of the factors why I would not return to being a Mormon. My maternal side of the family were Masons and Eastern Star Royalty...
Reason #41: The Sheer Number of Joseph Smith's False Prophecies
Because of the Sheer Number of Joseph Smith"'s False Prophecies: False prophecy became a habit for Joseph Smith. Most estimates of the number of recorded false prophecies that Smith made range from 50 to 60. Edmond C. Gruss and Lane A. Thuet in What Every...
Reason #40: Joseph Smith's Failed “Miracles”
False Prophecies and Failed Abilities of Joseph Smith: While at Kirtland Ohio, Joseph made a prophecy that is unfamiliar to most Mormons. Just before the first general church conference, he predicted that "not three days should pass away before some should see...
Reason #39: Because dissent or questions were stifled in Mormonism from the very beginning
In the formative years of the LDS Church, any revelation received by church members was only considered valid if it was approved by Joseph Smith, because any revelation that contradicted Joseph"'s just couldn"'t be true. It pains me to think how the Spirit of God was...
Reason #38: The Situation of Those Who First Heard the Mormon “Gospel”
I have often wondered how I would have responded, had I been an adult in New England in the early 1830"'s. Part of me wants to believe that Bible knowledge would have kept me from believing the story of the gold plates. The New Testament warned against people who...
Reason #37: The manipulative quality of Joseph Smith's “Revelations”
One of the most amazing (and least-noticed) revelations he gave out is that found in DoctrineandCovenants Section 15. The heading to the revelation states: "The message is intimately and impressively personal in that the Lord tells of what was known only to...