According to my Southern Baptist pastors and church leaders growing up, it certainly fits the criteria. I remember asking my pastor this very question once. A very learned man with a doctorate, he answered a definitive "yes" to the question.

 

The Mormon Church is certainly the most successful home-grown religion in this country. Yet, it has not been without its scandals and detractors.

 

I watched a discussion on Mormonism awhile back and one of the guests said this religion will someday soon be exposed as a complete fraud .

 

Interestingly, anyone have an idea where Joseph Smith said the Garden of Eden was located?

 

In the State of Missouri , of course!

 

Before you say that Mormons believe some nutty stuff, let me remind you to reflect on the beliefs of many other Christian denominations. Some are just as strange. Have you ever considered that some of what you believe may seem kinda strange?

 

To quote Jeff Lynne and ELO, it all seems like "strange magic" to me.

Done having fun with the Catholics, I see...

Southern Baptists tend to categorize several religious groups using the "cult" nomenclature. Jehovah's Witnesses is another that Baptists look upon as nutty(ignoring their own nuttiness, of course). Why do religious groups that supposedly serve and love "God" hate and fight each other so much? Is this pleasing to your God? It looks like a loving God would get a handle on all of this "in-fighting" among Christians. Or does he just stay out of the way and not involve himself in such things? Your God is a stange one indeed; vengeful and murderous in the Old Testament ,nicer and more docile in the New Testament. If I was a servant of the Almighty, I would have a hard time knowing exactly what and who I was serving.

 

So are my Southern Baptist bretheren correct about groups like the Latter Day Saints and the Witnesses?

Done having fun with the Catholics, I see...

 

 

Southern Baptists don't think much of them either. Baptists have all the answers, you know. lol

According to my Southern Baptist pastors and church leaders growing up, it certainly fits the criteria. I remember asking my pastor this very question once. A very learned man with a doctorate, he answered a definitive "yes" to the question.

 

The Mormon Church is certainly the most successful home-grown religion in this country. Yet, it has not been without its scandals and detractors.

 

I watched a discussion on Mormonism awhile back and one of the guests said this religion will someday soon be exposed as a complete fraud .

 

Interestingly, anyone have an idea where Joseph Smith said the Garden of Eden was located?

 

In the State of Missouri , of course!

 

Before you say that Mormons believe some nutty stuff, let me remind you to reflect on the beliefs of many other Christian denominations. Some are just as strange. Have you ever considered that some of what you believe may seem kinda strange?

 

To quote Jeff Lynne and ELO, it all seems like "strange magic" to me.

Jackson County, Mo. (Kansas City).

Jackson County, Mo. (Kansas City).

 

[video=youtube_share;ZoWc6WRHKEE]

We had an offshoot of this discussion once in a thread about Jehovah Witnesses. I asked the question about when does a cult or a sect evolve into what we'd simply become a religion. And what I meant by that was that at some point pretty much every religion would have started as what others would have called a cult. Like the Jewish faith would have probably considered Christianity a cult at one point (hey, maybe they still do, I don't know). I was Mormon and I have no love lost for the religion that I walked away from over 12 years ago, but I don't believe they properly fit what can be characterized anymore as a cult. For reference, this was my post from that discussion:

 

It's just something that has fascinated me in the past. I was Mormon (10 years out in November - huzzah), and I still remember feeling it was strange that we/they were called a cult. When I think of a cult, I think of something that has less than a thousand followers, or if you didn't want to put a number on it, a very small group. Small enough that they could be in the same area entirely, which plays to the idea of isolation. The Jehovah's Witnesses claim a membership of over 7.5 million. Mormons now claim north of 14 million (it was around 10 million when I left). I certainly think both of those beliefs are separate from what I would call Christianity, especially Mormons. I don't know about the Jehovah's Witness origins, but I would say Mormonism's origins began in what I would call a cult. But I believe at a certain point something like that evolves past being a "cult" and becomes a "religion".

 

As to the original post in this thread about it someday being exposed as a complete fraud, well, I certainly hope so given what I know and no longer believe. I don't wish to offend any LDS members (if any) that we have on here, but once you see some cracks in the foundation, more and more appear. What people on the outside fail to grasp often is that there are Mormon doctrines that explain what we would all see as blatant contradictions. For example, Mormons believe that many "plain and simple truths" were removed from the Bible over the years and years of translating, and that Joseph Smith was divinely guided in adding many back in (you'll see JST - Joseph Smith Translation - footnotes throughout an LDS copy of the Bible). So many of the things you'd point to and say the Bible says this, there's probably a JST entry that explains it away. Once you've accepted the religion, or grew up in it as I did, you need something powerful to shake you loose. Only then can you pull on the thread and see how it all unravels.

In my opinion, all religions start out as a cult. It's not until they build up their numbers and become more accepted by the masses that they evolve into the "religion" status. Christianity is no different. Started out as a small movement in the ancient Middle East, was considered a cult by the Romans and the Jews, and grew from there to what it is today.

In my opinion, all religions start out as a cult. It's not until they build up their numbers and become more accepted by the masses that they evolve into the "religion" status. Christianity is no different. Started out as a small movement in the ancient Middle East, was considered a cult by the Romans and the Jews, and grew from there to what it is today.

I think time has a lot to do with it as well. The further they get away from the founding the less "out there" the ideas become to people.

Southern Baptists tend to categorize several religious groups using the "cult" nomenclature. Jehovah's Witnesses is another that Baptists look upon as nutty(ignoring their own nuttiness, of course). Why do religious groups that supposedly serve and love "God" hate and fight each other so much? Is this pleasing to your God? It looks like a loving God would get a handle on all of this "in-fighting" among Christians. Or does he just stay out of the way and not involve himself in such things? Your God is a stange one indeed; vengeful and murderous in the Old Testament ,nicer and more docile in the New Testament. If I was a servant of the Almighty, I would have a hard time knowing exactly what and who I was serving.

 

So are my Southern Baptist bretheren correct about groups like the Latter Day Saints and the Witnesses?

 

I believe you are correct about this. God allows man to make choices, with consequences, both in man's world and his world. Of course we don't answer for our actions in God's world until we are gone from Man's world.

 

All formalized religions come from Man's interpretation of God's word, hence the variations in interpretation of the Bible. Typically each religion believes their version is correct....kind of what makes the world go round.

 

Having been raised as a Baptist and converted to Catholicism, I not only have "all the answers", I have plenty of guilt about the solutions as well....I just don't judge those that have different views than mine, unless they directly threaten my way of life.