[Islander]

AnthonyB:

I appreciate your attempt to find logic and meaning wihtin the "brokeness" of the Christian diaspora. Although your argument is eloquent it fails to recognize a number of issues. I should also point that the tower of Babel itself, to use your own analogy, was the SIN. To build a tower in an attempt to reach and challenge God man's way. That was the sin that caused God to judge the people.

Thru recorded Christian history the splits and contentions within the Christian church were caused by the desire of wicked men to reach control and preeminence of the congregations (3 John 9-11). They were so bold and shrewd that even before the Apostles were all gone they began to challenge them for authority in the church. I doubt you will say that was God's design.

By the first council of the early church in the 3rd century AD the argument had reach riot-like pitch. Doctrine was being changed, corrupted and new doctrine introduced. The Eastern church splits from the church at Rome and some years later a larger, more significant split takes place during the Reaffirmation giving birth to the Protestant movement. Since then, several other splits along denominational lines have occurred over interpretation, application and observance of the faith. Again, doubtful that God is the author of such chaos, divisions and contention. You fail to recognize that sectarian divisions within Christiandom have resorted to violence to assert a theological and doctrinal point. Once more, not of God.

Yes, our claim to the truth is bold. But so has been since the beginning of time when God had a prophet on the earth. Prophets are not timid, they are not politically correct or are commanded to observe civic sensitivities to pacify the people and preserve the social status quo. Prophets call to repentance, to turn to God and the right way and to the truth as reveal by Him who sent him. Speculating has no real value and philosophical abstractions have led men to destruction and away from God since the beginning of time. By far, that is what other denominations have done with the Gospel of Christ.

Truth is always difficult to deal with, especially when we are seriously invested on a position contrary to it. Regardless of whether we know it or not.
I tend to avoid the theological arguments since I rather concentrate on what God hs revealed to me personally thru the Spirit. The issue at hand is simple. Either Joseph saw The Father and The Son or not. The evidence for the Book of Mormon rests within the pages of the book itself. We invite ALL to search and inquire of God, who is the creator and arbiter of ALL truth if such testimony as the one we bare is also true.