Show I 1 COULD nea BECOME A from the christian StateR statesman nian the following article which appeared in a recent issue of THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN an eastern publication was handed banded to the news during the week the article Is one ot of a series written by rev john D nutting well known la in this community and state and in view of 0 the tact fact that mr air nutting is now in this community we assumed that the article would be interesting to news readers so we publish it in full ed christian people make a confession of ct faith when they join the church ot of christ this is my personal confession of unfaith un falth because ot of which I 1 do not join mormonism it is made as brief and informal as possible and does not contain a statement which bair air investigation will not place beyond reasonable doubt for any one I 1 went to salt lake city as a mission pastor late in 1892 1 I went in all christian love and earnestness to help the souls ot of my fellow men into genuine gospel salvation and christian life just as I 1 had been doing tor for years elseN elsewhere here I 1 had not come to build up a sect or to make money as mormons cormons are falsely taught that all pastors do I 1 knew little of 0 mormonism tor for the facts had not been published then as now I 1 had no hatred for the mormon people as ministers minis are often charged with having I 1 loved them as fellow human beings in special need but I 1 had eyes and ears and a heart which was given to god and abhorred evil I 1 worked along on about the usual gospel lines tor for several years reading practically nothing about mormonism but the mormon daily paper which I 1 studied in order to get their own point of view that I 1 might be able to help them better after fully tour four years ot of this work I 1 began to study mormon books etc and was astonished at the doctrines I 1 found As these were not then preached in their reported meetings much it if at all I 1 hopefully supposed that they were not the beliefs ot of the common people till after we began our house to house work later on my aly work there as pastor closed in 1898 and I 1 came east to take up single handed and without financial backi backing gg the great work of trying to give the whole mormon people a reasonably fair chance to know and accept the true gospel golpl I of christ by a traveling unsalaried work visiting their homes in this effort we have now visited nearly every mormon set about three or tour four times making over calls 1 I 1 have personally visited or labored in well towards of 0 these places have hav i 0 talked with from to mor for mons on religious matters have con dudec over BOO meetings among them preaching at about and have attended hundreds of 0 mormon meetings I 1 am thoroughly acquainted with mormon literature and history many a time have they prophesied to me bo be a mormon sometime youre too good a man not to be I 1 always have sought to bo be perfectly open to all truth but the more I 1 have learned of the mormon system the less possibility Bibi lity there has been of my ever accepting it I 1 not only know it and its people as few men do but I 1 also know ot of its tremendous eff effort 0 rt to proselyte others to itself hobits young men are trained I 1 to believe its errors as gospel truth and are arc then he sent out by the priesthood to get more adherents who will pay more tithing give more votes and be more power tor for the system I 1 have stalked talked with many victims of such work I 1 often honestly deceived into believing doctrines as contrary to the bible as anything could possibly be and thus always deeply it if not hopelessly injured after much delay and reluctance it has seemed to be my duty to make a briet brief statement of the main reasons why in the full light of all the facts I 1 absolutely could not become an all adherent of 0 this system and why no one else should become such will the reader please read carefully and prayerfully er fully and look up the bible reter refer ancs li likewise keise for a true christian to accept anything known to be false would be to apostatize from god and wilfully take up the service of satan especially would this be true it if he were to take vp up a false religion with a false GOI god it would be simply awful idolatry in view of all the facts the real foundation reason why I 1 can never dever be a mormon is this I 1 Ile cau canse mormonism is untrue and there is no guesswork guess work about this I 1 am sure that the sun will v I 1 11 rise tomorrow morning because the world may end before then but any one can know absolutely that twice two is is four and that idolatry is not christian so I 1 do not guess but know that mormonism is not the one true religion which god has given to man among the many points in which the system is untrue there is room to specify only a few and these briefly I 1 could never be a mormon 1 I because the processed essed ed early history cry f Is untrue mormonism claims that in 1820 god the he rather father and god the son appeared to joseph smith then a boy of fourteen years who as himself alone asserts had gone into the woods to pray as to which church lie he should join it says that in this immediate bre presence sence of the almighty appearing in glory the boy really asked him this question and received the following false reply I 1 quote from the pearl of great price one of the mormon esac sacred books p 85 1902 1 I was answered that I 1 must join none of them for they were all wrong that their creeds were an abomination in his sight that those professors were all corrupt that they draw near to me with their lips but but their hearts are tar far from me they teach for doctrines the commandments of men having a form of godliness but they deny the power thereof II 11 he e again forbade me to join with any of them now first erst any thinking person knows that no living soul could have asked askea any such question in the overpowering presence of the almighty Y and second anyone who knows the facts about the christion churches of 1820 knows that not one single statement of the above Is true that hence of course god never spoke anything of the kind and that hence the whole story must be untrue to say the least and third by all wrong must be meant all radically wrong but the churches were the most fundamentally right institutions of earth guided by the infallible word and spirit of god by creeds must le be meant their statements of belief which contained aft all the great doctrines which christ taught and so could not be wrong much less an abomination to their author those professors can mean nothing else but all the church mem bers and to say that till nil the professing christian people of 0 the world in 1820 were the lying hypocrites which the passage goes on to describe Is to tell about as wicked a falsehood as one could ima imagine dinv to put all these lies into the mouth of god almighty ignot is not only lying but blasphemy lt it i is s also to construct so transparent a hoax that it if I 1 were trying to concoct a fraud I 1 would be intellectually ashamed ed to put forth such a foolish product I 1 cannot see liow any person of judgment n ent can give any weight whatever to such a thing certainly I 1 cannot my grandparents on both sides were church members in 1820 1 I know that they were not such hypocrites but among the faithful genuinely pious people of the earth with millions more like them from whatever direction I 1 look at this revelation it t is s totally and clumsily false no fiatt matter r whether wilfully so or not I 1 cannot believe it and when nhea one examines more closely the true early history of mormonism he can hardly help being convinced that this falsehood was wilful for this was not the only story which smith and his relatives told about the beginnings of the system nor was it the first though it wa was s the only finall finally y cettley upon see the affidavits and statements of over seventy citizens of palmyra and manchester N Y 1832 3 etc of which some are given later and this fake of a story scarred and honeycombed with falsehood as we see 11 is is the only foundation tor for the whole mormon system for it if smith had no real revelation as we see lie he did not because his own account proves itself a fraud then lie he had no ground whatever for claiming to be anything more than his neighbors nigh bors said lie he was a shiftless untruthful lazy boy who grow grew up into a worse kind of a man the whole fabric of mormonism rests on this one story like a pyramid standing on its point and the story is clearly ly false but look at it in another way also suppose that the boy smith was not the kind of a boy history says but was the good honorable boy that mormonism would have us think lie he was as what then suppose my boy when ot of that age a good truthful christian boy had come in one day and told me just such a story about a supposed revelation in the woods what would I 1 be compelled to think what would any man mail of judgment think in such a case wo we could not possibly believe that his vision was from god if one came at all because its statements are arc clearly untrue by every possible test we might believe that the boy had been unconsciously under satanic influence for satan would do almost anything to start a false religion which would deceive multitudes and get them info his power or we might believe that some one had hypnotized ahe boy and made him believe all these things when none of them had bad really taken place at all or that the boy might possibly have dreamed so vividly as really to have thought the dream a reality but it Is of little importance how we explain the matter so long as the revelation Is clearly false we have little concern with it in any way we do not have to explain everything in the case of smith there Is not the least reason to think there was even so much as a dream the whole story rests on the entirely unsupported word of the unreliable boy contradicted by his other stories by those of 0 his father and by other other facts and which lie he did not even tell to any one tor for probably years after he said it had happened his story would be thrown out of 0 any court instantly as unworthy of notice it there was nothing else at all against mormonism but this story of its beginning it would be proven a fraud but this is only the first of the facts against it which every candid investigator Is compelled to face equally unsupported by facts evidence or reason are the other points 0 the professed early history such as that of the angel coming coining three times over in one night to tell this boy now older more untrue things the story atory p pt the orgill of the book of mormon the story that there were any gold engraved plates the reformed egyptian characters engraved on such plates etc on the latter see the prece proceeding edIng page ot of the characters sent by smith to prof anthon of 0 new york and their explanation beneath the mornion mormon story about this is that prof anthon said they were egyptian but lie he says he warned harris who brought them that they were a fraud as the reader can 9 ee tor for himself only english letters or none turned and twisted in a clumsy effort to deceive not a letter of 0 egyptian in the whole and the whole a clear fraud by a 0 person who did not even know anoni liow how to spell the title word I 1 cannot believe any system which rests upon or even puts forth such utter untruths un truths instead of winning my allegiance they open my eyes and arouse my righteous indignation |