Genuine Mormon Tolerance?

Traditionally, there has been a radical side to the LDS Church, that has fronted the notion that all truth was lost off of the earth due to a universal apostasy. This apostasy idea likewise states that only the Mormon Church has religious truth. Mormon founders have reported that they have been told directy from God that other religious beliefs are so deeply in error, that it they exist in a state of “abomination”.

Nevertheless, from the Newsroom of the official LDS web site: “Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable Holds Concert on Temple Square”

http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom

SALT LAKE CITY 13 February 2007 More than 700 people representing many faiths gathered on the afternoon of 11 February 2007 in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square to attend the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable’s annual concert ...

This was a big deal with Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman Jr. as a key speaker in an LDS hosted interfaith display of acceptance of all faiths.

The article lists a number of interfaith groups participated in this celebration of diversity. The various groups performing included:

--Methodists Bell Ringers

--Hindu Temple dancers

--Buddhists from near by Ogden

--Students from an Islamic Society

--A Baha’i Faith member to offer prayer


It was reported by one participant that , “There was peace and togetherness with all the faiths.”

But wait a minute, this is fundamentally out of character with the most basic claims of Mormonism!

In the sacred story of Mormonism’s beginnings, the Church reports an event, if true would be a major milestone event of human history. This account alleges that Almighty God appeared to a fourteen year old boy who was praying about what religion to join. In the account Joseph Smith learned directly from God, "for they were all wrong; ...an abomination in his sight" (Joseph Smith History 1:19).

( added 02/19/07) As Joseph Smith History states:

19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

The big idea behind Mormonism is that the truth disappeared off of the earth in ancient times. In this fallen state all other religious peoples existed in darkness that was so bad that God calls it an abomination. Mormonism teaches that only the Mormon Church has the truth because Joseph Smith was commissioned by God and divine power to restore the one true religion back onto the planet.


As an LDS general Authority of the past verifies:
"Nothing less than a complete apostasy from the Christian religion would warrant the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" ( B.H. Roberts, Introduction to the History of the Church 1:XL).

The LDS Scripture of the 1800s teaches in Doctrine and Covenants (1:30) that the LDS church is, "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth…"

The question therefore is--

Did God somehow change His mind, to now condone an interfaith celebration with those who commit abominations?

Could it be that Mormonism itself backslid into apostasy, becoming itself the very 'abomination' it first declared?

Or has Mormonism now traded in its basis for being founded, to become a champion for tolerance?

As an early LDS Founder once write:
"...all other churches are entirely destitute of all authority from God; and any person who receives Baptism or the Lord's supper from their hands highly offend God, for he looks upon them as the most corrupt of all people ...” (The Seer, pg. 255).

Other Mormon official Scripture teaches,
"Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth"
(Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 14:10).

Just 25 years ago Bruce McConkie, as one of the 12 highest ranking authorities in Mormonism identified Muslins and Buddhists, as well as other religious people as members of the devil’s church.

"What is the church of the devil in our day, and where is the seat of her power?
...It is all of the systems, both Christian and non-Christian, that perverted
the pure and perfect gospel...

...It is communism; it is Islam; it is Buddhism; it
is modern Christianity in all its parts"

(Millennial Messiah,1982, pp.54-55).

Nevertheless, the LDS invited a Baha’i Faith member to consummate this Mormon activity in prayer, sponsored Hindus to do their religious dances, and included Muslims, in this reported interfaith celebration.

What will we see next? Perhaps LDS Missionaries dressed in white robes passing out literature containing teachings of Hari Krishna?