The Impossible Gospel of Mormonism

11 Responses to The Impossible Gospel of Mormonism

1. H. Lions says:

   April 23, 2012 at 12:26 am

   I was really enjoying this presentation, it seems a logical, reasonable way to have Mormons come to analyses their own faith on their own terms.
   However at about the one hour mark Mr. Walker begins talking about witnessing to a sixteen year old boy and his whole idea of compassion and love seems to go out of the window as he relishes the memory of terrifying that child with those obnoxious passages from Alma.
   I’m sorry but to me at that moment Keith Walker, who I have for some time held up as a good example of a counter (not anti) Mormon went down in my estimation. He dressed it up nicely but that was blood and thunder, hell-fire and damnation preaching of a type I hoped all but the likes of the Westborough Baptists had left behind years ago.
   Trying to frighten a 16 year old, especially one interested enough to explore other spiritual possibilities is in my opinion calumniatory and unworthy.
   I’m sorry he could not have found a more gentle way of communicating his message.

   Reply
   • Bobby says:

     April 23, 2012 at 6:46 am

     Hey bud thats really great you watched it all, Keith is like any other human and not perfect, I think the heart behind why he will have done that is to help a Mormon realise that what they believe has serious implications that they have not considered. But we are never going to agree with everything everyone else does I guess thats life. Thanks for watching it though I am going to put a couple of other videos like this on soon just to make up for my own lack of time at the minute.

     Reply
     • H. Lions says:

       April 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm

       Cheers Bob,
       Your right of course and maybe I am a little touchy about that sort of thing having been brought up with it and spending a good portion of my youth honestly believing I was going to go to Hell.
       There is a You Tube video of the Impossible Gospel being used in action here [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmJn4MItMGo&w=560&h=315%5D
       It is worth noting how an older more experienced priesthood holder jumps in to save his brothers when he notices what is happening by manhandling the camerawoman.
     • Bobby says:

       April 23, 2012 at 4:08 pm

       Ah I will watch that thanks, out of interest what do you mean about spending the portion of your youth believing you were going to hell? Was that as LDS or before?
   • Keith Walker says:

     June 14, 2012 at 8:47 pm

     H. Lions,
     Thanks for your comments. I’m sorry you feel the way you do about my use of Alma 34. I have just now re-watched the segment of the video you mentioned and I stand by my use of it. I specifically mentioned that I believe I was led by the Lord to use Alma 34 *in the way that I used it.*

     The comparison of what I did and what the Westborough Baptist Church does is an unsubstantiated and frankly irresponsible, comparison. Those three young men walked away from our conversation KNOWING that I loved them and that I didn’t want to see them end up in outer darkness. No one who hears the Westborough bunch could come to the conclusion that they do it out of love. In contrast, these Mormon young men knew that I loved them.

     Maybe you don’t like it, but some times the most loving thing you can do is warn someone about hell. If you have a problem with it, take it up with Jesus. He spoke about hell much more than people realize. But then perhaps, He wasn’t as gentle as you would appreciate.

     Reply
2. H. Lions says:

   April 23, 2012 at 8:52 pm

   My mother was a staunch Salvation army member (or Tambourine Basher as my Dad called them) while my father was a fundamentalist Baptist, who though not religious in everyday life still believed heavily in the concept of combating Sin with brute physical force.
   I grew up being told that associating with Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Quakers, Muslims etc was a damnation worthy sin. My mother delighted in telling us how the Devil (literally) lurked in every shadow ready to tempt us and claim our souls as his own and whispered in our ears at night. By the time I was seven I was a nervous wreck, unable to conceive that anything I did was not a sin and that I was not already irrevocably damned. Praying was to me was a nightly round of tearfully begging God not to send me to Hell if I died in my sleep, begging for protection from old nick while I slept and begging forgiveness for reading other books in preference to the bible.
   My mother saw this as proof that she was bringing me up to be righteous and was protecting me from evil influence, my father was not so concerned with eternal punishment as with immediate punishment enacted by his simply threatening that he would not have his family seen to be ‘heathen’ under pain of… well pain.
   Fortunately I began reading religious text books (as a forgivable alternate to the bible) in an attempt to come to terms with all this as I reached my late preteen years and began to discover there were ways to look at religion other than in the light of “Hell Fire and Damnation”
   By the time I was Thirteen I was a practising member of the Quaker society of friends (via Methodism) and wavered between Pentecostal-ism and the Quakers until my first committed relationship in the mid eighties to a Mormon woman, who persuaded me to take the lessons and begin attending on and off at the local stake. My wife was also a Mormon and we were married in a Mormon Church after my conversion. It was later once I had taken the priesthood and began to get more or the ‘Meat’ of Mormonism that I began to realise that this was the same old doctrine dressed up in American fashions and that again a large amount of Mormons “strengthening your testimony” was based on plain and simple fear of (if not of actual damnation) not achieve the highest possible place of bliss in the after life.

   Reply
   • Bobby says:

     April 24, 2012 at 7:55 am

     Wow thats certainly a very religious background, where would you say you are with belief in God now?

     Reply
     • H. Lions says:

       April 24, 2012 at 9:02 am

       I’m a deist in that I believe in the idea of higher powers and that all existence is a manifestation of that wonder that is existence, however I find the idea of religion (especially religions that build shopping Malls or own banks in the name of God,) highly unlikely to be true, since God if you choose to use that term, which is as good a name as any for the personification of the positive side of the natural order already is everything anyway.
     • Bobby says:

       April 24, 2012 at 4:18 pm

       Yeah I understand certainly the malls part, I think a lot of people who leave Mormonism or groups like it tend to want nothing more to do with any kind of organized religion, understandable really. What would you say you believe about Jesus now?
3. H. Lions says:

   April 24, 2012 at 5:45 pm

   I’ll drop you an e mail about that Bob

   Reply
   • Bobby says:

     April 24, 2012 at 5:47 pm

     Cool no probs

     Sent from my iPhone

     Reply

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