Ancient texts and Mormonism. By Eugene Seaich Showing that Mormonism is a genuine restoration of Primitive Christianity. The purpose of this book is to demonstrate to Latter Day Saints that Mormonism is what it exactly what it claims to be a genuine restoration of the Gospel. Please invite all your Friends. For support for this Book..... Mormonism is an genuine restoration of the Gospel as it was taught by disciples of the Primitive Church. This is important because through out the world Mormonism is labeled as a non-scriptural, non-Christian cult, which departs in alarming in alarming ways from the traditional concepts of the bible. The claim that Mormonism is a cult, and not a Christian religion, is based on the fact that Mormonism accepts none of the traditional creeds of orthodoxy. The chief difficulty with this assessment is that so-called orthodoxy never existed before the fourth or fifth centuries, until the Churchs original teachings had been radically altered by Greek- informed metaphysical concepts, bearing little relationship to the thought of the earliest Christians! The purpose of Mormonism is to restore Christianitys original teachings, not to conform to the mutant orthodoxy which replaced them! The early Church believed in the divine origin and the pre-existence of man, and in the churchs espousal to her bridegroom in a previous life. They believed in a Godhead of three distinct and separate Beings, who organized the worlds from pre-existing chaos. They accepted the necessity of good works, though none claimed to be able so save himself. And marriage was considered to be the highest of all mysteries, based on the image of God, and the very symbol chosen to represent eternal life. Orthodoxy replaced this apocalyptic world-view with subtleties of Neo-Platonism and Aristotle, insisting that god is an indivisible Monad of Three, who made everything out of nothing, a force of pure spirit, whose mind is the quintessence of scholastic logic (Thomas Aquinas). This metaphysical abstraction bore little resemblance to Jesus Abba (Daddy), being the artificial offspring of the Gospel Message and Greek philosophy (von Harnack). Unfortunately, this steady infiltration of Hellenism into original Christianity (Jean Danielou) still exerts its baleful influence on the creeds of modern orthodoxy, which insist that God is totally other --eternally separated from humanity by an unbridgeable gulf. But the evangelical Protestantism went even farther in rejecting the concepts of original Christianity. The Reformation theology of salvation-by-faith-only, for example, dismantled the important relationship between faith and works expressed in the New Testament (faith without works is dead). The resulting distortion of the doctrine of grace condemns Mormonism for supposing that human works have an effect on salvation, while the Bible is said to teach that man is rewarded solely for his faith! Mormons, of course, have never claimed to be able to work their way into heaven. Neither does the Bible teach that man is saved by passive belief. According to both Mormonism and the Bible, true faith is evidenced by obedience to Gods commandments. To be saved by faith is in fact equivalent to being saved by obedience, for one who has faith in God is willing to obey him. Indeed, He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me (John 14. 21). Christ in fact promised his disciples that every man shall be recorded on his works (Matt. 12 27). All serious students therefore the necessity of including good works in any balanced picture of New Testament salvation-- as even Paul acknowledged on several occasions (Rom. 2 6 2 Cor. 5 10 etc.). Though justification is through faith, judgement is according to works (Gerald Scragg). Paul thus retains the concept of a future judgment in which man is judged according to his works, as do Mathew and James. Their is no single Pauline understanding of the Christian life; justification by faith is only one aspect of it (W. D. Davies). Albert Schweitzer, discussing Pauls righteousness through faith, likewise adds that Pauls ethic, because it is eschatological, is dominated by the idea of judgement and reward. Again and again he exhorts the believer to continue steadfastly in the good, because eternal life and the coming of Christ are promised as a consequence. Only by making one-sided dogmas out of aphorisms (Thy faith hath saved thee) Whosoever shall call on the name of the lord shall be saved) can evangelicals systematically avoid the Saviors warning that only He who endures to the end shall be saved(Mk. 13 : 13). Latter Day Saints consequently need not be intimidated by certain intellectuals who claim that Mormonism errs in demanding obedience as a condition for Gods rewards. After all. these represent only the Reformation view-point--which was once rejected by the entire Church, as it is rejected by non-dogmatic scholars today! Modern scholarship further reveals that canonical Scripture was selectively manipulated from the start by victorious factions who had no greater claim to authority than their own worldly. We now recognize, for example, how the evolving Old Testament was revised by triumphant Yahwists during the Deuteronomic Reform (ca. 620 - 400 B.C.), completely altering the theology of Israels ancestors and later, how nascent orthodoxy controlled the making of Christianity and the New Testament, selecting what agreed with its own Hellenizing attitudes, while suppressing the original legacy of semitic apocalyptic. Judaism thus began by obliterating what it could of Israels Old Belief from the Canon. Such recollections of former worship as could not be entirely expunged were condemned as importations from idolatrous neighbors, while the new faith was described as the original and true religion. The present Old Testament is therefore the idealized memoryt of Ethical Monotheism, though the scholar can still detect everywhere the debris of an earlier culture. The present Old Testament declares polemically, for example, that there is only one God (Deut. 6:4). Historical research, however, shows that there was no monotheism at all in Israel before the onset of the Yahwist Revolution! Early Israelites including the Patriarchs and at least two-thirds of the kings during the period of the First Temple--were avowed polytheists. Even the first monotheism was actually a kind of monarchism in which Israels God was simply superior to all other gods. The First Commandment presupposes such beings, though it prohibits their worship inside of Yahwehs temple. In fact, Deutero-Isaiah was the first book to expressly declare that there is no other God beside Yahweh. Indeed, scattered passages in the Canon recall the existance of two distinct and separate Gods: a shadowy Father-Figure, who ruled over the Divine Assembly, and a younger executive Deity, who controlled the processes of life and death. Comparative studies show that the attributes of these two Beings coalesced under pressure from Yahwist reformers to create the personality of monotheisms YHWH-Elohim (KJV LORD God). At the same time, the ubiquitous semitic Mother-Goddess was expelled from Israelite theology and replaced by Israel herself as the LORD Gods allegorical wife, bequeathing to Judaism and Christianity the theology of the Bridegroom, which survived in the Temple till its destruction in 70 A.D. Many features of Israels Old Belief returned for a time in Primitive Christianity. It is well-known that early Israel identified Yahweh with the Canaanite Baal, who was a dying-and-resurrecting god, a bestower of life on the dead through his own death and renewal. It is highly significant, then, that the first Christians identified Christ as the OT Yahweh, who (as recent evidence suggests) must have also been known as a dying-and-resurrecting God in early Israel! The return of this ancient theme in Christianity confirms that the Gospel was already old when it was restored at the Meridian of Time. Early Christians also recognized above Christ an unknown Father, who can have been none other than ancient El. Even the Heavenly Mother was known again to certain Christians, who thereby affirmed mans divine origins, and the essential relatedness of Christ and his many brethren. Early writers told of a plan to send these divine spirits to earth to receive bodies, in which to gain experience and develop moral character. God himself decreed that man should fall into this mortal state, that all might experience the lessons of joy and sorrow, before being reunited with Christ, and sent to the Third Heaven to be deified and procreate worlds of their own. The Temple was a paradigm of this cosmic journey, passing through ascending levels corresponding to the Primitive churchs Three Degrees of Glory. Some of our evidence has been drawn from so-called Gnostic-Christian sources, which (in spite of certain defects of their own) contain a wealth of authentic survivals from Christianitys apocalyptic beginnings. If one is careful to disentangle this original material from the eclecticism that finally engulfed it, it becomes an important witness for its Christian antecedents, and a useful addition to our knowledge of the early church. If one removes, for instance, the Gnostic bias against the Jews, and the corresponding denigration of the OT Creator to the rank of Demiurge, Gnostic mythology tells us a great deal about the Churchs own speculation on Creation and pre-existence. Careful inspection of the Gnostic veneration of the Serpent likewise reveals a fundamental understanding of the Fall as a necessary stage in Adams progression, while Yahwehs subordination to the unknown Father is seen as an expression of the Churchs archaic polytheism. Since these discoveries can be supported by other sources, as well, we are justified in concluding that they were once important doctrines which the compilers of the New Testament deliberately sought to conceal. But the resulting New Testament itself has always been the object of debate and disagreement. Scholarly circles have long conceded, for instance, that a single, unified theology of the Gospel is impossible to reconstruct from the pages of Canon. Even evangelical protestants, who look for a canon within the Canon by which to interpret the rest of Scripture, have never been able to agree on what this authority yardstick might be. For similar reasons, modern theologies of the New Testament no longer concern themselves with a single system of belief, but with the separate theologies of Jesus John and Paul, or even this the divergent opinions within these. The latest edition of a standard Bible Encyclopedia similarly finds it necessary to provide fouir separate articles on Baptism alone: one describing the confusing variety of Scriptural pronouncements on the subject, and three defining the Baptist, Reform and Lutheran interpretations thereof--not to mention the Catholic and early Christian views, which are deliberately ommitted! Orthodox Christians can likewise find no agreement on such fundamental matters as eternal security, whether or not one can fall from grace, when and how the Holy Spirit is received, at what point one becomes saved, whether spiritual gifts belong to the modern churhces, who holds the priesthood, the relationship of works and faith, the advisability of infant baptism, and a host of other details which find no unambiguous clarification in the Bible. Christianitys thousand-and-one jarring sects--all claiming to derive their doctines from the same enerrant text--are witness to the fact that man needs to hear Gods voice once again, and to have his original teaching restored in its purity and consistency. Mormonism enjoys this divine instruction through the continuous medium of prophecy. Gods oracles did not end with Malachi--as recent scholars have admitted by including Qumran Teacher of Righteousness in the Great tradition of Israels prophets (Hugh Schonfield, Jean Danielou). The Didache likewise proves that prophets continued long in the Christian Church. Indeed, the New Testament itself recognizes prophecy as a sign of the last Days (Acts 2:18; 1 Cor. 12:28; 1 Tim. 4:14; 1 pet. 1:10; etc.). The special genius of Mormonism is its recognition of the Divine Continuity of Life in the universe, in which like begets like, Intelligence begets Intelligence, and Godhood begets Godhood throughout eternity.l Life is itself divine, without beginning or end, a process which extends through infinite generations in an ever-expanding cosmos. Mormonism strongly supports the doctine of free agency as the means of developing this innate, divine life. Mans moral choices thus become an initiation into the attributes of Deity, drawing the free gift of salvation into the life of the believer through sympathetic attunement to the power of the Gods. The Fathers ability to raise his offspring to his own level is thus assured, in contrast to orthodoxys ignoble view of mans essentioal nothingness. What we have portrayed below is drawn from actual historical accounts, and expresses the real religion of early believers, recorded in their own words. Whether or not they appeal to modern sectarians, the seeker after truth must deal with them, for the mounting evidence makes it ever more certain that todays orthodoxy bears little relationship to original Christianity. Mormonism, on the other hand, easily accomodates the historical facts--from the faith of the ancestral Semites, to the unknown face of the Primitive Church. Thus restored, Mormon doctrine takes its place at the conclusion fo a grand, continuous trajectory of immeasurable antiquity, whose true nature is becoming apparent once more, after millenia of obscurity and apostasy. amazon/Ancient-Texts-Mormonism-Eugene-Seaich/dp/1300441968/ref=la_B001JPA76W_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413072739&sr=1-1
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 00:31:39 +0000
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