Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 315; “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. I discover hundreds and thousands of my brethren ready to sacrifice their lives for me.”
John 15:13; “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
There’s not a verse in the Bible that Smith left unmolested.
This time around he tried to:
1.Take attention away from Jesus’ mission of being a servant for God
2.Refused to recognize God will die for us
3.Make people believe everyone would fall at his feet or even give their lives for him
4.Shifted focus away from Jesus and projected it upon himself
5.Indicate he’s your friend, but you’re not his
What godly man or friend would do this?
Do your friends lie to you?
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I all founded empires, but on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire on love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
Do you gave a link to this,”Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith”? ________________________________
You know, I somehow missed that so thanks for bringing it up! 🙂 Here’s the link –
http://scriptures.byu.edu/tpjs/STPJS.pdf
Michelle
1 Cor 1:18
This statement of Smith is appalling. What did he do to deserve people worshipping him (“Praise to the man”) ? He puts himself in God’s place. Many a false prophet has done this.
Many thanks for the link!!!
I am continually amazed at the amount of research you do to. This article was compiled by Joseph Field Smith and first published in 1938. In 1989, Richard C. Galbraith, a prof. at BYU, began to annotate this original with ‘scriptural’ notes (both from the Bible and the LDS scriptures). He did this as he always had a ‘fondness’ for Smith’ sermons and writings. [An intelligent person with a doctorate in Experimental Psychology from NWU?]
Anyway, reading the above-noted quote of this post from Smith’s writings in context, showed all the items that you listed, with “4.Shifted focus away from Jesus and projected it upon himself” the most prominent. The heading of that section was on friendship (?). I could quickly see how he twisted the Bible verse to point to himself and then went on from there.
He followed that by saying that people come to him asking for help but then there are people going against him for various reasons. This was followed by Smith stating that he believed in “reciprocity”! [From Wikipedia…Reciprocity in social psychology refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions…]
Firstly, “reciprocity” is probably NOT Smith’s own word as he had a low education. Secondly, there is nothing biblically sound about what he says. Au contraire! Jesus says in Matt. 5:43-48 ESV:
Love Your Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers,[i] what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Specifically, verse 46 says,” For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?…”
There are 395 pgs. in this article’s PDF and one can spend a few years doing an analysis of this! But just this except on “friendship” shows a person manifest errors throughout the entire work. I can even see the form of mind control that Smith takes but am very surprised that the Prof. of BYU could not with his degrees in Psychology.
As a result, each and every Mormon that questions any of their doctrine should not rely on the LDS scriptures to clarify anything. God only gave us ONE book and that is the Bible. The Bible is very clear, as in Jesus’ words above, as to what and how we should act.
Sue