“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (Romans 12:9)
Why do translators choose a strong word for ἀποστυγοῦντες, like “abhor”?
It is based on στύγω, which means to hate. But it is intensified.
Quoting John Piper:
If there were a universe in which there was no evil that hurt people or dishonored Christ, there would be only love and no hate. There would be nothing to hate. But in a world like ours it is necessary not only that we love and hate, but that our love include hate.
Paul says, “Let love be genuine, abhorring what is evil.” One commentator calls this abhorring “an intense inward rejection.” It is rejection. It is inward. It is intense. And my point is that in this world love has to feel hate for evil. Since evil hurts people and dishonors God, you can’t claim to love people while coddling evil.
Don’t make the mistake of saying: the evil I cherish only hurts me, and so it is not unloving to others. That’s absolutely false (see 1 John 5:2 above). You were made to display the worth of Christ to others. That is what is good for them. That’s what it means to love them. But if you do things to yourself that damage your delight in Christ and your display of Christ, you sin against others and not just yourself. You rob them of what God made you to give them.
So I say again, love for others must hate evil. Because evil hurts others directly, and evil hurts others indirectly by hurting you. Evil obscures the beauty of Christ. And Christ is our greatest good. Our greatest joy.
It’s probably time for someone to do that presentation on the three types of “love” as it appears in Greek. Let’s see if I can list them from memory with no regards for spelling: eros, agape, philleo.
I think the first one is erotic “love”. Now why would I remember that one? One is brotherly love as in Philadelphia. And “agape”…….isn’t that the one that Christians are suppose to have?
None-the-less I think “love” gets mixed-up with emotions or some sort of positive regard for the other person. In reality I think “love” in the Christian context would better be identified as “charity” as in “…with charity to all and malice towards none”. Gettysburg address, right?
I must say that sermons on love turn me off! YIKES!!! Everybody gets all dreamy eyed and starts emoting all over the place. It’s used way too often, especially in a religious context, to manipulate people.
Sometimes, as I’m sure rick will point out, love means kicking someone figuratively in the butt.
Love?
ok, so a women, better yet, my wife or daughter is being abused by some stranger.
do I say to my wife or daughter, I love you honey but, I cannot get involved since I might offend the guy hurting my wife or daughter. That’s not love.
So speaking only for myself since now a days so many men have given away their spines and their manhood, I give the guy a beating he will never forget, all because I love my wife or daughter.
How’s what I said relate to us sharing with Mormons? Well if a Christian does not know what Mormonism really teaches, then we need to share the truth, since that Christian is our brother or sister. We cannot sit back and say, I will keep quite since a Mormon might get offended.
If the person is not a believer then according to Jesus, they are our neighbor and even if they are an enemy we must love them as Jesus said. So we share with them. But then mormons will come along like off and says but your not loving mex by attacking what I believe and getting your facts wrong.
We will then point out, Joseph smith first claimed what we believe is wrong, then the prophet Joseph fielding Smith switch if Joseph smith is a false prophet, he must be expoused. And some lds apostles and lads scripture all claim the same thing.
so then some lads will have no reply to that, or still say, were wrong with out evidence.
So how are lads being honest and loving? Simply put, they are not. So they simply cannot cry about us. Yes falcon lets put some boots up some rear ends. I think its needed.
In relation to Mormonism , I view the vast majority of rank and file members as good
sincere people striving to serve God . Though they have been detoured by their leaders
into embracing a counterfeit gospel , still they deserve to be treated with how 1 Pt 3:15
describes i.e. respectfully . Mormon leaders on the other hand do not garner too much
respect from me as they have used their power to deceive their followers . They are
textbook false prophets who need to stop manipulating the lives of so many decent
people . Hopefully one day that will happen and they’ll come to their senses and realize
that they don’t need Joseph in their testimonies —- just Jesus . They are not beyond
the Holy Spirit’s convicting power —- John 12:42
I am reminded of Penn Teller’s video explaning that if Christians really believe souls will go to hell, the only rational choice is to shout it to the masses.
Its true. http://www.churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/outreach-missions-videos/167042-an-atheist-s-surprising-perspective-on-evangelism.html
How does this relate to Mormonism? Are Mormon’s evil? I don’t think they are evil in the traditional sense or how it is commonly known. Mormons are good, hard working people who mean well. My experience with them is that they are almost always polite and very pleasant. Its hard to call that “evil”.
However, there is indeed a different level of evil that lurks out there. Anything not of God can be considered “evil”, as I see it. Since LDS are apart from and not of God, then there is an evilness about them.
Therefore, we must do everything we can to help them see the Truth.
We can label people like lds as good, moral, hard working, etc. We can claim the vast majority are simply being lied to and decided, and they are.
But that does not change what the bible says and that is, we are all fallen sinful people, if we don’t know Jesus, we are not children of God and are enemies of God, and none of us our good.
The bible does not give a free pass to people claiming, well you were lied to or decived. We all must do our home work and will either believe jesus or reject him.
Rick, I don’t disagree, hence my comment that there is an evilness about them. Nonetheless, it is true that they are what most people would call good and upstanding citizens.
The Bible tells us evidence of God is all around us and no one will have an excuse at the end. Deception is not an excuse. It is our duty to spread the Truth.
Map, I was not arguing with you, I was simply making the point clear since some people feel were all God’s children, or we all will be saved, or just in General the false gospel of were all good people keeps getting out.
Examples, family man and Thor, or what ever his name was felt that way, but of course both never did get back to me.
Also mike r keeps saying lds are good, moral people who simply have been decived and lied to. And while I agree with him that, that is the case, some people will walk away believing that were picking on good moral people and since I don’t recall mike adding to what he says, that the bible teaches we are all wicked fallen people and in need of a saviour lest we end up in the lake of fire for all of eternity.
I know people who don’t know their bible will read what mike says, not being aware of what the bible says and misunderstand the truth so I felt I needed to add what the bible says.
Its all good Rick, just making sure you understand we feel the same way. Hard to tell on these forums intent.
LDS follow a path that leads to destruction. That is what evil does.
Trust me mjp, if I have an issue with you or anyone ever, I will make it known.
but I do agree, not being able to see facial expression or hear tone of voice can lead to problems.
So I had an epiphany. Why do the majority of Mormons turn to no religion rather than Christianity when they learn that Joseph Smith was a false prophet? Because their foundation all along was Jospeh Smith not Jesus Christ. But Mormons will object that their foundation is Jesus Christ, just look at their name: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. No, no, no. They follow the unique version of Jesus Christ that Joseph Smith taught. This is of course a false Christ, which is really no Christ at all. Their church should more correctly be called The Church of Joseph Smith’s Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So when they discover that Jospeh Smith was a false prophet then everything that he taught becomes rejected as well, which of course includes his heretical teachings of a false Jesus. (All Mormon missionaries know that they teach a different Jesus than every Christian they encounter.)
It is interesting that with Mormonism a Man was able to do what God himself was unable to do. “Praise to the Man!” What blasphemy!
Mistaken Testimony,
You made some interesting points that the Mormon people should ponder .
Sadly , but these decent people do follow latter days prophets who have drifted from the truth
about Jesus . I think that their church should have been named ” The revised Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints ” , rather than , ” The restored church of Jesus Christ …” .
That would be closer to the truth . It’s like how a counterfeit Fifty dollar bill can closely
resemble the authentic ( original ), Fifty Dollar bill etc .
In recent years many Mormons like Lynn have examined some of the important teachings
their leaders have taught and have discovered they don’t measure up to what Jesus’ original
apostles taught . They walked away from following counterfeit prophets /apostles .
They came to discover that the Jesus in the Bible was special and unique when compared
to what their leaders had taught Him to be . They chose the authentic Lord and Savior over
the latter days version .
Well Mike…………………looks like some group has stolen your idea.
“The Restored Church of Jesus Christ is a small Latter Day Saint church headquartered in Independence, Missouri. It was founded in 1980 by Eugene Oliver Walton (November 6, 1927 – May 28, 2010), who had previously been an Elder in the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), and who claimed to be the “One Mighty and Strong” prophesied in Mormon scripture. When the Cutlerites rejected his claims to leadership of their movement, Walton left to found his own church.”
“Walton’s organization disavows the label “Mormon”, but claims to be the original church established in 1830 by Joseph Smith, Jr. His church denies the authority of Brigham Young, who led the majority of Latter Day Saints to Utah after Smith’s death, together with that of Joseph Smith III, who became the leader of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The church also disavows plural marriage, and is unique in the Latter Day Saint movement in that it teaches the existence of a bipartite god (God the Father and Jesus Christ), as opposed to the usual three part godhead of Mormonism (God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit).”
Note: I think we’d need to clarify the “three part godhead of Mormonism” part of this Wiki article.
………….and then we have the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This group is a break off of the CofC. And on and on and on it goes with Mormonism. They all have the revelation of the truth.
http://www.restorationchurch.net/default2.asp?active_page_id=90
Falcon,
I think the name of what Joseph Smith built , what Mormons claim God allegedly ” restored ”
through him , was not the very same church that Jesus established 2000 years ago . I think it
could be described as , ” The Substituted Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ” .
That might be the best title to describe it because the way Smith ( and his successors) altered
what the New Testament reveals about Jesus’ church makes it a substitution instead of a
restoration . Bottom line : Jesus’ church did not die off and become extinct after the
death of His apostles and His gospel of salvation was not unavailable to mankind on earth until
1830 as Mormon leaders have claimed . We can read in the New Testament about the church
of Jesus as well the gospel that saves —Rom 1:16 , and not be diverted by the advertising from
certain men who may call themselves , ” latter day prophets ” .
The Mormon people are the victims of a broken trust . They’ve trusted their leadership’s claim
to offer consistently reliable guidance in teaching gospel truths , but sadly they have been
short changed by these men .
This break our hearts . Hopefully they will not turn a deaf ear to our trying to remind them to
make time to test their prophets — 1 Jn 4:1 . It’s crucial .
Falcon,
Unfortunately, “the one mighty and strong” was Jo Smith, but UNLIKE Moses, he utterly FAILED to “redeem Zion”. And the Mormons were fixated on that until the year 1890, when they finally gave up on Smith’s “prophesies” about Jesus returning by then. A few of them, like Willy Woodruff and Lozo Snow prophesied that the children living in their time would see it, but those were quietly swept under the rug.
In fact, Willy Woodruff was SO SURE that Jesus would return in 1890 that he told those at an Arizona Stake Conference in 1878 that “there will be no United States in the year 1890”. (Minutes of Eastern Arizona Stake Conferences, 1879-82, 28 June 1879, 87, cited in Charles S. Peterson, Take Up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing Along the Little Colorado River, 1870-1900 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973), 228.) You can read the Dialogue Article that sighted this reference, here.
Of course, since Jo failed to “redeem Zion”, Mormons now had to scramble to find another who could be the new “mighty and strong” Moses. Unfortunately, those pesky Gentiles are still inhabiting Jackson County, Missouri, along with a bunch of break off Mormons that don’t seem inclined to leave or sell their lands, (although many have caved in to the lure of big money). The Mormons were so obsessed with this, that Brigham Young put off the building of the Salt Lake Temple after the Civil War started, thinking that the US was going to destroy itself, and they would simply walk on in and reclaim their Missouri lands. He actually told the “saints” in 1862,
Funny how “the Nation” didn’t need any saving at all by the likes of Jo Smith, or “the one mighty and strong”. God raised up Abraham Lincoln, who the Mormons hated. As Brigham Young said in December of 1861,
This was very far from the truth. The Mormons had no intention of following the Bible, which said,
Instead, they wished them harm. And how did Young know all about what was going on in Washington, why he spoke about it at a funeral that same year,
Young claimed to have this kind of power, yet is accused of teaching “folklore”, and that he was only teaching things that socially influenced him in his life. You see folks, how disingenuous that argument is, that the modern Mormon apologists and “apostles” have concocted? What is the only other answer for it, folks? Brigham Young DIDN’T “see” as the Lord “sees”, he made it all up. He was a false prophet. But the Modern Mormon Hierarchy can’t and won’t admit this. The House of Cards [modern “revelation”] the Church is built on, would crumble. The next year (1862), Young said,
That is why Young was so confident at the start of the Civil War:
And said in 1867 (2 years before the prophesied return to Jackson County) about the Salt Lake Temple,
In 1864, Brigham seemed to have some second thoughts about all of this because not enough “saints” were gathering to the Utah Territory, and said this to the rest of the “saints”,
This is the guy who knew what was happening in Washington? So why the waffling. Well, it had to do with his predictions about a famine, which I will go into below. Did Moses worry about such things when he led the Children of Israel to the promised land? Not at all. He had the power. But then Young says something interesting… he says,
Yet, in 1857, Woodruff wrote,
PROMISED by the Presidency that they were to lay up grain AGAINST THE DAY OF FAMINE. So Brigham Young lied. Why? Because there was no famine. In August of 1857 Woodruff wrote,
The President of the U.S. dead? And that was his “own measure”? That he should die? Young here again predicts FAMINE. A few days later, Woodruff reported that,
Here, Woodruff writes that Heber C. Kimball confirms that Young prophesied of FAMINE, and that he WROTE IT DOWN. Actually, the people weren’t driven from the valleys because they did what the U.S. TOLD THEM TO DO, which was for Brigham Young to step down as Governor of Utah Territory and ACCEPT the Gentile Governor. They caved, as they did with Polygamy, and the Priesthood Ban. Again, in 1859:
Then, in July of 1859 Horace Greely came to visit Brigham Young. Here is part of that interview,
So now Young blames the famine prediction on Orson Hyde, and then in 1864 denies that he ever prophesied about it. This Journal of Discourses is a good source of Mormon Doctrine and information, but to get the whole picture, you need to know what was being said in private, things they thought no one else would ever know. From this, we get the whole picture of Mormonism…
As Jesus said about who is the father of liars,
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)
It’s kind of funny how the Mormon people follow these men who are put forth as apostles and prophets. Having never been inside the Morg I don’t know what it’s like to really believe that these guys are the real deal. I wonder if they even believe they are as advertised.
Some how they got to the top of the pile. They learned how to play the LDS political game to end up in the select few that run the LDS corporation. Grant Palmer revealed a while back that he was approached by someone in authority within the LDS sect who had serious questions about the validity of the Mormon claims.
I see the LDS church as a sort of glorified fraternal lodge like the Free Masons from whom Joseph Smith borrowed what would become his temple rituals.
“In mid-October 2012, a returned LDS Mission President contacted me to arrange a meeting. Several days later, he called again and said that a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy also wished to attend. He said the General Authority would attend on condition that I not name him or repeat any stories that would identify him. He explained that neither of them, including the GA’s wife, believed the founding claims of the restoration were true. He clarified that they had read my book, An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins, and had concluded that the LDS Church was not true; was not what it claimed to be. The GA often went to the MormonThink.com website for information and there discovered my book. The Mission President said he received my book from the GA.”
“We have at this writing met three times. We first met on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 and again February 14, 2013 at my house. On March 26, 2013 we convened at the GAs house. Upon entering my home for the first meeting the GA said, “We are here to learn.” I recognized him. He has been a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy for a number of years. He has served in several high profile assignments during this period.”
For more:
http://mormonthink.com/grant9.htm
I guess we could ask, “Is Mormonism evil?” Perhaps we could ask, “Have there been Mormon leaders who are evil?” We’d have to define Mormonism first I guess because there are a lot of different strains of the religion and various sects that practice some form of Mormonism.
Is Warren Jeffs evil, for example? Was Joseph Smith or Brigham Young evil?
Here’s a quick look at Jeffs:
Warren Steed Jeffs (born December 3, 1955) is the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church).[a] In 2011, Jeffs was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault.[5]
Jeffs gained international notoriety in May 2006 when he was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution on Utah state charges related to his alleged arrangement of illegal marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls. He was arrested in August 2006 in Nevada, and agreed to be taken to Utah for trial. In May and July 2007 the State of Arizona charged him with eight additional counts, including sexual conduct with minors and incest, in two separate cases.
I’d say that’s evil behavior. So I think we can conclude that someone who does evil isn’t merely being naughty. They’re evil.
Joseph Smith’s behavior, I think, could be labeled “evil”. Any time a guy seduces and “marries” women who were married to other men and does the same with adolescent girls, that’s evil.
We could even discuss Mormon doctrine that denies God, creates a new god, says that men can become gods and extracts 10% of their income for the “privilege”, is that evil?
Perhaps “evil” is in the eyes of the beholder. But then that would mean that their are no standards of “evil” and that “evil” is situational.
Mistaken Test:
You make a valid point about when members leave the LDS faith that they either turn away from all religion or they turn to a totally different religion. This May will make one year since I decided to leave the LDS faith….but today makes one week since I decided to take on the blood of Christ our Messiah as a total sin atonement.
When I realized that the LDS doctrine was a lie I had a very difficult time accepting anything having to do with Jesus. I hated the apostle Paul and all of his writings because his revelation was too similar to Joseph Smiths revelation. I ended up rejecting the entire New Test and started looking into converting to Judaism. Its only because of some people that God has brought into my life that has kept me from making that decision. He has used them to open my eyes to see truth.
Leaving the church and upsetting people I love was the easy part. Its the spiritual battle over the last year that has been the hard part and I know that I am not yet done with that.
CJ,
That’s very good news! Praise God! I am confident that the good work God has begun in you will continue until the day of Christ Jesus Our Lord.
I hope you stick around here and post from time to time because you have experience that someone such as myself does not have. You’ve been within the Mormon program and understand what the TBMs are thinking and feeling.
I remember when you were posting on here at the beginning of your journey and at times (me) thinking that nothing would penetrate your mind-set. I’m serious when I say I’d be totally exasperated interacting with you wondering if it was all a futile exercise.
So having seen now what God has and is doing in your life gives me, as well as the others here, encouragement to keep on keeping on. I rejoice in the Holy Spirit how the Father has drawn you to Himself and to the Lord Jesus Christ and how you have secured eternal life through faith in Him.
Thank you so much for reporting in and letting us share in the knowledge of your new birth in Christ.
Stay in the Word and question everything anyone tells you!
Caffeine,
I tried sending you a private email, but you email was not working and I could not get a hold ofyou. So please resend your new email to me at [email protected]
I have a question for you. Thanks, rick.
cattyjane,
Thanks for sharing . It was a blessing to read how you’ve been doing .
@cattyjane
I tried sending you an email and it bounced back. You can email me: [email protected]
Good to see you on the forum.
“Their church should more correctly be called The Church of Joseph Smith’s Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” – I like that a lot
Sheesh, grindael, you have a huge head for history 😉
Sure is nice to come here and still read all you guys
Set free , you are missed !
God Bless you .