Funny story some may appreciate about polygamy stereotypes in Mormonism. My family used to live in Oregon, and extended family would visit from time to time. My aunt was visiting from Utah (where I was born), and there was an MLS game (soccer) where Real Salt Lake (Utah team) was playing The Portland Timbers (Oregon team). They went to watch it at the stadium, and being Real Salt Lake fans, wore the jerseys for that team. Some Portland fan noticed them and assumed they were from Utah because they were wearing RSL gear, and knowing that there was a high percentage of Mormons in Utah and the polygamy stereotype, asked if they were sister wives.

That is extremely rude. O_O

Some people are just clueless. O-o 😄

They actually thought it was a normal question to ask some Mormons! (They didn't even know for sure that they were Mormon, they probably just assumed that all Utahns are Mormon) 😂

Prayer request: Please, if you all could pray with me, I have butterflies in my stomach and I'm kind of worried. This is why: My Momma is pregnant with what will be my sixth sibling. She is fourty- two (or something) and she is worrying that she might have a miscarriage. I'm scared because this is the second alarm. Please, can you pray for a safe pregnancy? And for peace, both for now when we're worried, or for later, if things don't turn out. I'm praying hard. Just pray that we can keep in mind that God knows what he's doing, and he knows what's best for little baby. Thank you. ♡♡♡♡♡♡

Of course! I'm sure whatever happens, it will be according to God's plan.

jalc: Yeah, some people never think things through at all. O_O

Tall: I definitely will!

Thank you. ♡♡♡

TallGirl (specifically, but really everybody) If you are ever in need of laughter, one of the funniest movies I have ever seen is called "Hunt for the Wilderpeople". It's on Netflix and made me laugh practically to tears. If you don't mind swearing (Sh** is as bad as it gets, but it is said at least 10 times), and I know some Christians have big problems with that, this movie is amazing. Being Mormon I don't swear at all, but I don't have that big a problem with hearing the words. Maybe check out the https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ review for it first.

@Op011, you brought up another point I was going to clarify. The age of accountability is 8 for people with fully developed brains. If someone has a mental disorder or handicap, their age of accountability is later, or may never come in this lifetime. Again, Christ will not punish someone who cannot understand His gospel. It's the same thing that applies to babies or children under 8 -- they are innocent, and do not understand (fully) the consequences of their actions. An example of this would be: My seminary teacher has a brother who has autism very, very severely, to the point that multiple doctors he has been submitted to said that he has the mind of a 5 year old -- he is nearly 40. He probably is not accountable for any of his sins, because he simply doesn't understand the consequences. He has been baptized, but he probably does not commit full sin. Basically, he and other people with minds that do not fully develop are not held accountable for their sins in full, to the capacity at which a normal person would be. If their mind is like a child, then they are only held accountable as such, or not at all.

If you guys like, I can link the official doctrine from LDS.org to further clarify. Like I've said, I'm not very good at dictating my thoughts, and my short-term-memory is spotty 😉

@Wiz: We also believe that there is a judgement process. We believe that Christ will come again to redeem the earth and put an end to all evil in the end, which will be followed by the "Final Judgement" where all people are judged completely fairly. Those who cannot understand sin, (i.e. they are not accountable, such as people with severe mental handicaps, babies, children under 8, etc), go straight to the celestial kingdom, which is the holiest part of heaven where God Himself dwells. Those who truly repented of their sins and truly forgave everyone also go there. Everything will be understood in what influenced your life. Maybe you have problems with (as a toned down example of real problems) substance and do not fully understand the importance because your parents never taught you -- that could be taken into account. Maybe you had problems raising a family on earth with love and respect because you grew up in an unstable family, or because you were bullied or abused -- that, too, is taken into account. We also believe that (as I stated before), heaven and hell each have three separate kingdoms, or "levels" or "tiers". The most holy, "highest" tier in heaven is the celestial. Then you have the telestial and terrestial. The latter two tiers are of course holy, as they are in heaven, but they are for those who committed sin that they did not fully repent of on earth, or for other circumstances. They have to pay for their punishment for a certain amount of time in hell, but they are eventually freed "with much rejoicing and joy of being free from everlasting misery" and can enter heaven to these less holy areas. Even in heaven, we believe that there is room for progression, bettering, and improvement. I won't speak of that of hell, except that (as I also stated before) there is a worst place called "Outer Darkness". A person in Outer Darkness cannot be redeemed, and they will stay there forever. Only true murderers and those who have committed very, very specific types of sin are sentenced to that place, along with the original beings who followed the devil in the beginning and chose to willfully rebel against God. We also believe that, until that day when Jesus comes once and for all, there are two places you go when you die. You can imagine them as a sort of waiting place. One is "spirit prison" and one is "spirit paradise". Spirit paradise is for those who were righteous on earth, and spirit prison is for those who were wicked, OR unrepentant as of yet, OR did not know of or accept the gospel in their lifetime. Spirit prison is not truly bad for all people, again, there are different levels of misery - some being none. It is called a "prison" because those who are in it feel sad that they did not accept the true gospel, or were not able to. They can repent and move on to spirit paradise, or accept the gospel and do the same. If you have any questions feel free to ask 😃

@Pyrokinetic: About Adam and Eve. To put things simply, and to state one of the main things our religion is built around (that differs from traditional Christianity I guess), the Fall of Adam was part of God's plan: a plan called the "Plan of Salvation". After all, God is the greatest. He cannot be tricked, wronged, or stopped, right? So the devil could not have cunningly tricked God, because God is always greater and will always win. So basically, the Fall of Adam was purposeful and had to happen.

Again, we believe that there was a "premortal existence", or a life before the first life we had on this earth -- that of Adam and Eve. In it, we learned and improved just like we do now, but we were not truly tested because everyone was righteous and was with God. We developed our skills and talents, many of which are the same ones that we have now, but we were never truly tested in these things. We all knew what was good and what was evil. So God made a plan to send us to earth where we would be tested. Jesus said that he would go and covenanted to be the Savior of mankind. However, Lucifer rebelled against this plan, saying that we would all worship him and we would all do the same things -- the things he wanted us to do. This was against God's will, but some people still followed him. These people and the devil were cast out of heaven, and were (and are now still) unable to receive bodies. They never will be able to either. (On a side note, we believe that this is why the devil targets our bodies so much. If you think about it, every sin you will ever be tempted to commit -- every sin anyone is ever tempted to commit -- all tie back to the harm of either your or someone else's body or mind). However, more of us chose to follow God and Jesus and come to earth than chose the devil. We were taught that we would have trials, and we accepted.

When we come to earth, we have a veil of forgetfulness placed on us to make good and evil a real thing. Even Adam and Eve had this veil placed upon them, but they were still in the presence of God in a holy place, and, as a result, they were immortal. However, according to God's plan, Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and were cast out of the garden, beginning mortality and the onset of sin. This is when sin became a real thing. However, we believe that this is when sin became a thing that you could choose to commit, and not something that everyone automatically is born with, or inherits. We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression (Adam's original sin). Adam and Eve introduced sin into the world, and therefor the choice between good and evil, but they did not cause all men and women to be evil -- that comes as we reach accountability and begin to exercise our agency, ultimately ending up committing sin. Here is a link to learn more about the plan of salvation, in case I wasn't very good at explaining (which I probably wasn't). https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/true-to-the-faith/plan-of-salvation?lang=eng If it doesn't paste as a link, just select it and right click, and there will be an option to "open as a link", or "go to --------".

So basically, Adam and Eve did not cause a flaw in God's plan, and the devil did not stop God or put a roadblock in His way through this sin. It was a part of God's original plan that we all knew about and agreed to -- it was the start of our lifelong test that is mortality, and it was meant to happen. But the devil does try to tempt us to go against God's plan. And I don't know if this is officially correct, but I am assuming that even Lucifer's choice to become the devil is in accordance with God's plan (this does not mean that God sanctioned it, merely that He knew it was going to happen. I am NOT saying that God approves of any type of sin, and I am certainly not saying that it was God who engineered the introduction of sin), because it was meant for us to come here to choose between good and evil.

In short, you are very correct that "every living thing was to be 'Fruitful and Multiply'" -- we believe that too. However, if Adam had not transgressed, we would be in the same boat we were before we came here: inexperienced in the choice between good and evil. Untested, untried, and without wisdom or knowledge or experience of such. We would live forever, and we would not have started God's plan -- the plan of salvation. This link sums up what we believe about the fall, and why we believe that the fall was good and necessary to God's wisdom.

https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/true-to-the-faith/fall?lang=eng

Finally, @TallGirl:

We have a list of 13 statements about what we believe regarding key doctrines in our religion called the "Articles of Faith". Joseph Smith created these Articles to clarify to curious people of other religions exactly where we stand in our beliefs, because the church was having a very hard time making it clear just what they believe, and it was being persecuted extremely badly. You can read them if you like: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/articles-of-faith#:~:text=Articles%20of%20Faith%201%20We%20believe%20in%20God%2C,and%20ordinances%20of%20the%20Gospel.%20More%20items...%20
This is nothing but the actual 13 articles themselves.

As one of these states, we believe in the Bible as far as it is translated correctly. This is the reason that we believe we have the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith (who at the time was just 14) was very zealous about religion, and really wanted to join a religion. However, he found that none of them seemed entirely whole and accurate to that of what Jesus taught in the Bible, and he noticed that so many different preachers interpreted the same Bible verses differently. Not just differently as in taking out different gospel truths from each one, but differently as in saying that "this verse says that the sacrament is bad", or "this verse contradicts this one" and such. Interpreting them in ways that made the Bible seem less holy, and went against the words of Christ in those very same bibles. He also noticed that many different bible editions had different accounts that often contradicted each other. So he went to a place to pray. Long story short, he met God and Jesus Christ in the flesh, and learned that he was to restore corrupted or lost truths from the Bible, held in another set of plates made by ancient peoples (which is now called the Book of Mormon). That is why we consider the Book of Mormon to be a "third testament" in the Bible -- essentially coming between the old and new testaments. It teaches and clarifies doctrines that have been lost over the many translations of the Bible by human, mortal men. It also actually contains many other accounts of things in the bible, such as Christ's ministry, the tower of Babel, the fall of Adam, much of Isaiah, and more. I actually wrote an essay on Joseph Smith, his vision, and the religion he founded a while ago for my 10th grade graduation if you would like to read it.

I promise I will remember to pray for you and your family.

So, did Joseph do this all when he was fourteen? And did God tell him all that about heaven and such? It's really detailed. Like, REALLY explicit.
Um, why the age eight?
What do you mean by a "set of plates made by ancient people"?
One more thing (again): I read/heard/saw somewhere about that you believe the first church ended when the apostles died. Is that true? I won't be surprised if it isn't- I don't quite remember it.
If you would like to show me your essay, sure! I'll read it.

This is getting a little too in-depth. Imma let Rubicks handle these.

Rubricks: I would like to present an argument against one point - you said that because Adam and Eve were in God's paradise, the Garden of Eden, they were immortal.

That's a flawed belief. Nowhere in the bible does it say that because they were in Eden (specifically the perimeter of the garden), were they immortal. No, I think it was because of the Tree of Life. If Adam and Eve had stayed in the Garden, they would've kept eating of the Tree of Life, and thus live forever with sin. So God kicked them out.

I believe entropy was always a natural part of creation. Genetic mutations, no, but entropy (things breaking down over time), yes. The Laws of Thermodynamics were not introduced after the Fall, they were always there. God just provided ways to counter them, i.e. the Tree of Life.

We would also not have had diseases like cancer, autism, etc. Those were introduced after the Fall when sin came into the world.

But Adam and Eve weren't immortal because of the Garden. They were never truly immortal at all, their bodies would always break down. But when they didn't have the Tree of Life, they eventually died, because the Tree of Life renewed their bodies.

So, yeah. That was a different view on the subject, what do you guys think?

Rubricks: It's actually a lot of fun and quite interesting to hear about these Mormon beliefs from a Mormon. Thanks for explaining them to us. 😄

Also, just want to say something:

Let's try to keep this a friendly discussion. I don't want to have friendships getting torn apart. 😂 Sorry if my last argument sounded a little harsh, but that's the style of preaching I'm used to hearing. 😂

So, yeah. If anyone's feeling uncomfortable debating these things, feel free to speak out.

RBC: Hang on . . . you said that Mormons are not part of the Latter Day Saints, or LDS, right? But then you offered to link an LDS document . . . ? Huh? 😂

LDS and Mormons are the same things. He said REFORMED Latter Day Saints are different. That is a church someone related to joseph smith started after he was martyred, and a new prophet was chosen. The person related to Joseph thought all prophets should be from that family. Originally, that church had very similar beliefs to the LDS Church, or Mormons, but over around two hundred years the views of gotten pretty different.