Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Faith Comes Through Hearing

“And my soul hungered and I kneeled down before my Maker and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication from mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens. And there came a voice unto me saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed.” (Enos 1:4-5)
Well I guess what we learn from this is that Jesus was wrong about prayer in Matthew chapter 6, and the prayers of pagans are heard for their many words. What is more is you should pray really loudly so that the Father can hear you on the planet Kolob. The problem, you see, is that you haven’t prayed loud enough. God can’t hear you. If you just raised your voice and screamed at him for the whole day and the whole night God would answer you and tell you your sins are forgiven in an audible voice.
The above is called sarcasm. I say that because I’m not sure anyone who believes the Book of Mormon would be capable of discerning sarcasm. This stuff is preposterously ridiculous. But the story gets better.
“ And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie, wherefore, my guilt was swept away. And I said: lord how is it done? And he said unto me: because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou has never heard nor seen, and many years pass away before he shall manifest himself in the flesh wherefore, go to, thy faith hath made thee whole.” (Enos 1:6-8)
Now this is in direct contradiction to Romans 10, that faith comes through hearing. Here Enos is saved by faith in someone he has never heard of, in the Christ. Aside from the fact that Christ is from the Greek, which we have covered before as a logical impossibility when it comes to its use in the Book of Mormon, how is it that Enos being raised in the faith by his father has not heard of the Christ? Sorry Christ, not The Christ. By the way Christ is a title not a name, which is why the Christ would be appropriate, Jesus was the Christ. Jesus was/is His name, Christ was/is his title, meaning the same as being anointed, or the anointed one, Messiah in the Hebrew. (Why again are Jews from the 5th century B.C. using some Egyptian language?)
Now Israel knew of the Christ, they were waiting for him. He was foretold in Genesis 3 as the offspring of the woman that would bruise his heal as he bruised the head of the serpent, he was foretold by Moses in Deuteronomy, he was prophesied by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, all of whom Jews that left Israel in the 5th century B.C would have known about. But then you would have to see Christ as being a title and not a name. But faith comes through hearing. If you haven’t heard of the Christ you don’t have faith in him.

2 comments:

Brigitte said...

Thank you for debunking that.

Many a person has heard this as a prescription as to how to become a Christian. Pray and wrestle, etc. until you become sure. J.S. must have got it from that.

It's just you can't be sure this way. And it is wasted effort, as well as faithless, ironically.

Bror Erickson said...

Brigitte,
The most vehement arguments I ever get into are precisely over that. When I point to the cross and tell people that it has all been done, that they don't even need to pray in order to be saved, it is as if I tore a teddy bear away from a baby. They just don't get that apart from works of the law, means all works of the law, not just the "big" ones. Prayer is a work, and not an easy one either.