Mormon Direction

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (others call the “Mormon” Church) sent a representative, Elder Pieper, to Third Congress of Traditional and World Religions which convened at Astana, Kazakhstan, 1-2 July 2009. He presented a paper to the congress that emphasised a collective effort and focus that would result in blessings for all mankind (you can read the entire news article >>here).

Elder Pieper offered three principles which the world religions can follow,

1. The right to choose ones worship
2. Friendship to all denominations and
3. A unified approach to the world’s challenges where possible.

After reading this article, I immediately felt impressed that God was speaking to worldly religions and groups. The principles depicted are of God and when given to the diverse religious groups at this conference, it cannot be anything less and nothing else but God speaking throug Elder Pieper.

Peace is the central message. Principles given are designed for peace. There is no special interest in Elder Pieper’s message, it was given to all people at the conference to glorify God and bless all mankind. The message did not condemn anyone or their beliefs, but gave clear grounds and principles by which even they, the worldly religions, can please God. For it pleases God to see peace as the foremost goal in every man and womans heart and to live and practice that peace.

The message given by Elder Pieper also speaks against religious intolerance. The freedom to choose which religion to follow is one of the paramount principles listed. This means each person has the right and freedom to accept or reject Christianuty and take up any other religion and the principles allow for that freedom. This means that those who take up bashing religions or another religion is working against God and no person can claim the right to do that by the Bible.

As Elder Pieper gave the basic principles of peace, how many will accept those principles for the benefit of peace and to bless others? The results, of course will be seen in the fruits of their works.

I was invited to a website called “S.P.A.M”, an acronym for the name of “Society For the Prevention of Anti-Mormonism“. It is an interesting site filled with articles, comments, membership and videos, the latter being the reason for the title of this post.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to peruse the Latter-day Saint video collection on YouTube (I prefer not to use the name “Mormon”), but once in a while I come across a good video or two that deserves attention. Just goes to show the abundance of good material and media on the web.

Firm in the Fire is a motivational video and was well done. Praise to its author – SethAdamSmith. Good to see the desire and inspired motivation this author has shown in his videos. Quality is always a good thing to produce.

For those who would like to view this video now, here is it just below. You can attend YouTube and view other videos by SethAdamSmith, or attend “S.P.A.M.” for a series of videos also.

Firm in the Fire

Link to YouTube for this Video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCbYHPmTbLU&feature=player_embedded

Most of us have seen this literature, where people have claimed Mormonism is false, accusing the Mormon Church of cover-ups, lies, false doctrine, and the sort. They have quoted leaders of this Church and even LDS scholars and from these quotes they made claims and accusations against the Church and its doctrines, sometimes against the membership as a whole. Some members of the Church found themselves swayed by Anti-Mormon literature, where their testimony and belief in the Church has fallen or crumbled, but of course, this is not true for all members.

My testimony was challenged, even degraded by some Anti-Mormons, but in the face of all the Anti’s, I continued steadfast with the Church and relied heavily on the Holy Spirit to offset the Anti deluge. In the past, I wondered why some members quit the Church when the availability of the Holy Spirit was (to me) so easy, but over time I saw that these members did not have any spiritual testimony from the Spirit or they failed to maintain their spiritual testimony and fell to the wilds of the world.

I have also read a book or two from other (Anti-Mormon) Christians, I was not impressed, especially with how they have misrepresented statements from Church leaders, made ludricous claims and misused the Bible, even using the Bible to justify their attacks and false claims, which is why I wrote this article.

It is not the intention of the Church (or myself) to force censor onto fellow members of the Church as many will read Anti-Mormon literature. Some will throw it in the trash bin while others will consider the claims and some will take it as gospel.

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