In the morning I had to take care of some business downtown. When I was finished I was walking back and noticed some LDS missionaries. Downtown is pretty empty on the weekends so when I saw them I knew that I’d be able to get a conversation going.
The first thing I did was ask them to give me their testimonies. Every LDS has a testimony and are encouraged to give it so ask them for this the next time you see them. Shortly after that they talked about the restoration of the gospel. I simply asked them why the gospel needed to be restored. He asked me if I’d heard about the Council of Nicaea. I told him that I had.
Basically he said that Christianity and the Bible had been corrupted by the Council and Joseph Smith needed to restore it. I kindly pointed out that this is the exact same thing that the Muslims say. While their finer apologists won’t use the council of Nicaea as their reference point they’ll essentially make the same claim. Christians and Jews corrupted their earlier revelations and a man with a new book needed to come restore it. In this case it’s Muhammad.
I suppose the appropriate question to ask Muslims is the following: How is your religion any different?
We see an intimate connection between the Old and the New Testament. We see in the OT that while there were times when Israel went astray into false beliefs, the Prophets always confronted them telling them to follow the existing revelation. Now, Prophets had a few beliefs of their own as well but no true prophet has ever said that everything prior is corrupt and you must follow my new religion while excluding all previous religious texts.
Although this probably doesn’t happen outside of Utah and even then it doesn’t get much beyond a coffee house chat, I would like to see a Muslim debate a Mormon. Both sides have to account for the other ones pseudo-history. Both sides will be able to see clearly the pseudo-history of the other one.
It’s just something I’d like to see. Muslims or Mormon: let me know if you’d like to tackle the claims of the other one.
On a completely different note, I have an announcement to make. The traditional Catholic community of my city invited me to give my testimony on how the Latin Mass has helped my faith. I recorded my testimony and put it Youtube for everyone to listen.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.