If you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
may I ask you this?
How much do you think you really know your Bible?
Are you absolutely certain that it has been corrupted and badly translated?
Would you bet your life on it?
And if you believe that the Bible has been
corrupted, how did you arrive at such conclusion? Was it through personal
verification and study, or did you trust the LDS leadership to teach you that?
Is it at all possible
that Joseph Smith said that about the Bible in order to diminish its
authority so that he could establish his own and account also for the many discrepancies
between his own teachings and the biblical writings?
Are you aware that Joseph's teachings on all of the essential doctrines are in open?
contradiction with everything that God has already revealed to us both in the Old and New Testament?
If you do not believe me, then
this is a channel you want to subscribe to and follow,
because we will cover all of this here and much more, and I would love for you to be part of the conversation.
Hello and welcome!
My name is Solange Renfroe and this is the introduction video for my channel, "From Joseph to Jesus."
My objective here is to share the biblical text in context of Orthodox Christianity,
with the members in ex-members also, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
and
hopefully, provide
members, provide you, with an
additional opportunity to
compare the biblical doctrines with what you are learning in church and then allow you to decide what you
desire to do with information.
But I certainly hope that it will serve as motivation
for you to open your Bible and get to work!
Actually, President Brigham Young himself thought that this was a wise
proposition, this comparison of the Bible with the LDS doctrine,  when he said, quote "I
say to the world, receive the truth no matter who presents it to you.
Take up the Bible and compare the religion of the LDS with it and see if it will
stand the test."
Journal of discourses
16:46
And that is
exactly what we will do here. I will also share my own story of conversion out of Mormonism,
after more than 20 years as a devoted member,
to a saving faith in Jesus Christ
and a personal relationship with Him as my Lord and Savior, a
Jesus as I found Him to be
only as He is described in the pages of the Bible,
an altogether different Jesus, and an altogether different Savior from the one preached by Joseph Smith.
At this point,  if you are a LDS member, you may be asking, "What do you mean different?
We believe in the same Jesus!"
But sadly, that is not so.
Although I used to think there was no difference myself.
But now I have been a biblical Christian for another 20 years
And although I am NOT a Bible scholar by any stretch of the imagination
I have seriously dedicated my time to study the biblical text, and I came to the
realization of how
actually little I knew of the Bible while I was a member of the church.That is mainly due to
the fact that
LDS leadership, beginning obviously with Joseph Smith himself,
taught us that the Bible had been tampered with and
therefore was not
reliable and it is only to be believed as long as its translation is correct. As
members of the church, we are taught that
whenever the Bible disagrees with LDS scripture, that is where it has been corrupted. And
we are only to trust Joseph Smith's
interpretations of the text to give us true meaning and the
context. But the first big problem with that is that we should not be trusting in Joseph's
interpretations with blind faith
But we should actually be using the biblical standard of God's
revelations already given to us both in the Old and New Testament to test
Joseph's claims of prophecy and revelations, and see if they hold true to that standard.
Not the other way around.
Meaning, it is the Bible who judges
Joseph and his teachings, and not Joseph who gets to judge the Bible.
But the biblical standard is not followed by the LDS leadership
who use the Bible mainly out of context, very selectively, for proof texting only,
in their continuous attempts to establish
Joseph Smith's teachings as true.
Therefore regular members view the Bible in the same manner.
And that take us right to the heart of the matter.
If you are a member,
obviously, you know this, but please bear with me in this quick recap.
So, we know that Joseph had many claims.
First, he claimed that
God's truth had been compromised, that Satan had been victorious in
corrupting the Bible by using evil men who
purposefully, took away from the text many precious
parts,
and or that they had been,
had become lost, and that the Bible had also suffered bad
translations in many parts.
Therefore, he claimed the Bible by itself alone could no longer
teach us
sufficiently, about God and his truth for eternal life.
Therefore, he claimed
also, a
restoration of God's truth became necessary,
with him being the very man that God had chosen
for the job!
He taught his followers that they needed to shift their trust from the Bible to him
because as the prophet called by God, he had received
divine inspiration and revelations also, to give us the right
biblical interpretation, but not only that but also to give us a
complete new body of
scripture that was necessary, according to him, in order to
restore all of the lost knowledge. But here is where we face our second big problem because
his teachings and
revelations that comprise the LDS canon, cannot be reconciled with the Bible. Actually,
the LDS canon does not reconcile with itself, as there are
contradictions in teachings in the Book of Mormon,
Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price.
Obviously, the point in question is that his teachings do not agree with the Bible.
So, the very foundation of his claims
both for a need of
a restoration of God's truth and for his prophetic calling as a latter-day prophet,
can only
stand if his charges against the Bible are true.
But are they? Are his claims true? Has the Bible been tampered with?
No.
No.
Not true.
It is interesting though, to notice, that other religious leaders like Charles Taze Russell who
formed the Jehovah Witnesses' organization and Ellen G. White with the Seventh Day
Adventists,
also
said the same things about the Bible and
taught their followers that they were the necessary "middlemen"
between God and the members. If they are, right, they are all competing for the same
position as the latter-day
messenger who was divinely chosen,
but if they are wrong, if the Bible has been divinely preserved for us,
then, the only conclusion left, is that such people are false prophets and false teachers.
We cannot have it both ways.
If the Bible has been preserved, then there is nothing to be restored,
corrected or added to it. In the upcoming
videos and through the content that I intend to bring here to the channel,
I am confident that we are going to be able to clearly see how
all of these claims of his are proven to be completely
untrue, especially
when we examine together
things like the history of text
transmission, which is the history of how the books that we have nowadays in our Bibles
arrived to us.
We will see that actually, nothing was lost, neither in the Old nor the New Testament,
but that God has been completely sovereign in preserving his truths for us. As
wonderful evidence for that, for what
I am saying about God being sovereign to preserve His Word, we have for example,
great evidence of God's preserving his word for us in the
discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Israel in
1947. Did you know the Dead Sea Scrolls contain all of the books of the Old Testament,
with the exception of the book of Esther?And for the New Testament,
only for the Greek language, which was the original language
that the New Testament was written in,
we have available today, more than five thousand seven hundred and fifty-two
manuscripts with multiple lines of transmission,
which refers to the genealogy of these manuscripts?
And although having multiple lines of transmission,
they all read
the same, have the same content without ever having though, a
central editing process.
Meaning, that no one, at any time, had monopoly over the
originals. Due to Joseph's claims of revelation in prophecy, it becomes necessary for us to
take a close and careful look at all of his teachings, as well as the other
LDS prophets teachings,
and compare all of it with the Bible. We will follow Brigham Young's
suggestion and
even compare his teachings with the Bible! And it also becomes necessary for us
to take a careful and close look at
their
character, lives and behavior.
I have began this work here because first, I believe that the Holy Spirit has impressed in me
the need to become vocal about the reason for the faith that I now have in Christ.
And also because I have love, care and a great deal of concern for the LDS people,
who in their vast majority, in my experience, are people of great sincerity and dedication,
beginning with my own family of origin,
whom I love with all of my heart and who are very active in the Mormon faith.
God has also told us in his Word, that people perish for lack of knowledge, for lack of wisdom
So, definitely knowledge about truth matters.
And I believe that we are supposed to be sharing truth,
in all love and respect. You who are an LDS member, if truth matters to you
above all other considerations,
I do hope that you you choose to keep on following the videos here. Do not trust
what I say
but get your Bible open and go
read and check everything out for yourself.
And if you are an ex-member, if you are someone who has left the church,
I hope that you do likewise.
I also hope that you have not thrown away your Bible together with everything else
that you may have found out that was not true in regards to the church.
May I say something to you in all love and respect?
if all the knowledge you have
about the Bible is that the teachings that you have received in the church while a member,
may I say to you that you most probably, do not have
enough information
about what the Bible really teaches. May I plead with you to not make a
negative and final decision about the biblical God before you really dig in and
really learn what it teaches?
I am looking forward to establish meaningful positive
dialogue with many of you going forward, especially
if you were searching.
So, please leave me your thoughts and your comments below in the comment section and I will definitely
reply back to you.
Like this video if you have,
dislike it if you haven't but please tell me why, and in the off-case you are wondering
just what kind of accent this woman speaks with, I
definitely invite you to check my next video, where I will be sharing with you about my own story and
my faith journey.
Thank you and until there.
Blessings to you! See you in the next one. Bye. Bye
