[masterlee]

My opinion is yes, they are both necessary and scriptrural. This, to me, is at the heart of the LDS question; that being, who of all the churches have authority to teach. Wherever the vestitures of priesthood are, this principle governs: God speaks in these latter Days, he has not forsaken his people. Our God is in our midst, and reveals himself to his faithful. Every occasion we speak, it is to be with His words placed in our mouths, or else we are without the Power of God behind our words. Scripture has never indicated otherwise, though some have decieved themselves otherwise. If any has any doubt, look at these fools first line of defense--they quote the Book of Revelations, as written by John on the Isle of Patmos: "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophesy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." {Revelation 22:18-19.} Now, I ask, which book is John referring to? It couldn't mean the Bible, since the book we all now acknowledge as the Bible did not then exist at the time of it was written. If we are to acknowledge the book written of in this passage, then how did our ancestors determine which, of all the thousands of manuscripts, were of God and which ones were not? How did the compilers of the Bible know they even found every book of inspired origin in their search? What about the several books mentioned by name in the scriptures that were considered sacred by the apostles but are lost to us. What of the Books of Enoch, the Book of Iddo the Seer, the book of Nathan the prophet, Epistles written by the hand of Paul, and dozens of other books we do not have in our collection? Wouldn't these be just as sacred? So what, I ask, is the book we should neither add nor diminish? It is "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto...his servant John." {Rev. 1:1.}
The fact that our decietful friends include such a flimsy argument as their sole reasoning, shows that they have no better argument to substantiate their claims.