Mormon Dilemma 126

Prophet of God

Ensign, May 1991, 64; “Joseph Smith was not only a great man, but he was an inspired servant of the Lord, a prophet of God. His greatness consists in one thing–the truthfulness of his declaration that he saw the Father and the Son and that he responded to the reality of that divine revelation. Part of the divine revelation was instruction to reestablish the true and living Church, restored in these modern times as it existed in the day of the Savior’s own mortal ministry. The Prophet Joseph Smith said the Church of Jesus Christ was ‘organized in accordance with commandments and revelations given by Him to ourselves in these last days, as well as according to the order of the Church as recorded in the New Testament.’ (History of the Church, 1:79.)

“For the first time in eighteen hundred years, God had revealed himself as a personal being. Furthermore, the Father and the Son demonstrated the undeniable truth that they are separate and distinct personages. Indeed, the relationship of the Father and the Son was reaffirmed by the divine introduction to the boy prophet, ‘This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him.’ (JS–H 1:17.) Those who were baptized into the Church on the sixth of April, 1830, believed in the existence of a personal God; they believed that his reality and the reality of his Son, Jesus Christ, constitute the eternal foundation upon which this Church is built.” – Howard W. Hunter, “The Sixth Day of April, 1830”

Numbers 23:19; “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”

Joseph Smith was a false prophet and the statement above is false as well.  Mr. Hunter said that for the first time in 1,800 years God revealed himself as a personal being.  Actually God has never revealed Himself as an exalted man.  The Bible is replete with verses stating as much and the verse above is only one example.

And to elevate Joseph Smith in such a manner is another example of how the Church goes out of its way to exalt him and degrade the greatness of God.  Interestingly when you look up the meaning of servant you typically see the term humble to go along with it and nowhere in Mormon literature do you see this when talking about Smith.

Servant is defined as “a person in service of another” on www.dictionary.com and in Holman’s Bible Dictionary describes it as a “person who is responsible to and dependent upon another person”.  In the Bible it is often associated with “slave”.

From all Smith had to say about himself he was far from dependent upon Jesus and with the LDS teaching of being self-sufficient it’s difficult at best to place Smith into the humble servant category.

The truth is that Smith did in fact see something out in the woods that day back in 1820 and it wasn’t God who is spirit (John 4:24) and it wasn’t Jesus.  If Jesus made an appearance to Smith then he He lied when he said “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:3) – we’re still here.