Interesting things said by early prophets of the Church. Reading these will definitely shake the testimonies of some members. You have been warned.
http://www.journalofdiscourses.org/
My favorite one is where Brigham tells us that Adam, the first man was in fact God Himself.
http://journalofdiscourses.org/Vol_01/refJDvol1-10.html
Midway through this page you can see the "African" racist passage.
http://www.journalofdiscourses.org/Vol_10/refJDvol10-24.html
And down near the bottom here you can read about how blacks will only be able to receive the priesthood after their resurrection.
http://journalofdiscourses.org/Vol_02/refJDvol2-27.html
So basically, in Declaration 2 Spencer Kimball lied when he claimed that past prophets taught that at some time the ban would be lifted and that God, by revelation, had shown him that the day has come. In fact we see this is not the case. The official Church stand up until 1978 has always been what Brigham Young said.
You can see another explanation of this here.
More links :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_doctrine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam-God_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_atonement
The Church likes to put a disclaimer on these papers, since some of the content can obviously cause controversy. They want you to think there are errors in the transcribing, and that at the time when these documents were recorded the Church was being heavily persecuted and driven West which somehow excuses some outrageous statements. General Authorities also claim that some of the doctrinal discussions are speculative in nature. But aren't many of these documents from talks given by so called prophets of the Church ?
So is it acceptable to take other revelations from the time as gospel, but not others that just happen to be controversial ? You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can read this Church priesthood manual and see many references to the JoD in it.
http://www.lds.org/gospellibrary/materials/teachBY/Start_Here.pdf
Finally, the apologist view of the racism issue. In his conclusion he says to spin it as best you can and hope people don't dig too deep and find out things like the Journal of Discourses. He actually instructs members to offer the explanation that "We don't know." Once again, just bury your head in the sand and it will go away, right ?
http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2003_LDS_Church_and_the_Race_Issue.html
And finally, a funny one, people living on the Moon and Sun !
http://journalofdiscourses.org/Vol_13/JD13-268.html
That Brigham Young, such a kidder.
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3 comments:
Is the premise of your argument that if BY made some misstatements, he must have never been right about anything else? Is it possible that a person who made half a dozen misstatements over the course of several decades was nevertheless correct about a great many other things? Is it possible that BY was inspired by God, but was nonetheless human and therefore subject to making human errors on occasion? If we learn that Einstein was wrong about some of the things he said, should we disregard everything else he said?
Joseph Smith acknowledged that sometimes even prophets make mistakes, and that a prophet does not always speak as a prophet (i.e., sometimes a prophet expresses his own opinions as a man, and may have difficulty discerning whether something is from God or just his own idea). Why hold them to a higher standard than they claimed to meet?
Its a good way out for a prophet to have had JS say that. Now if they screw up and say something stupid, they can just write it off as "speaking as a man" instead of a prophet. So when _can_ I trust what they say as coming from God ?
And we hold them to a higher standard, because according to the church they are supposed to be prophets, seers, and REVELATORS. They are supposed to have a channel directly to God himself.
If the church admitted that in reality these were just nice old men who had our best interest at heart and not real prophets who spoke to god, then I would have an easier time accepting what some of them have said.
Paul said we see as though through a glass, darkly. The fact that a prophet's vision may be obscured and fuzzy does not mean he sees nothing.
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