Showing posts with label B H Roberts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label B H Roberts. Show all posts
"Suppose your youth receive their impressions of church history from 'pictures and stories' and build their faith upon these alleged miracles [and] shall someday come face to face with the fact that their belief rests on falsehoods, what then will be the result? Will they not say that since these things are myth and our Church has permitted them to be perpetuated ...might not the other fundamentals to the actual story of the Church, the things in which it had its origin, might they not all be lies and nothing but lies? ... [Some say that] because one repudiates the false he stands in danger of weakening, perhaps losing the truth. I have no fear of such results. I find my own heart strengthened in the truth by getting rid of the untruth, the spectacular, the bizarre, as soon as I learn that it is based upon worthless testimony."

B. H. Roberts
(Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story, p. 363)
The question of advancement within the great divisions of glory celestial, terrestrial, and telestial; as also the question of advancement from one sphere of glory to another remains to be considered. In the revelation from which we have summarized what has been written here, in respect to the different degrees of glory, it is said that those of the terrestrial glory will be ministered unto by those of the celestial; and those of the telestial will be ministered unto by those of the terrestrial” that is, those of the higher glory minister to those of a lesser glory. I can conceive of no reason for all this administration of the higher to the lower, unless it be for the purpose of advancing our Father’s children along the lines of eternal progression. Whether or not in the great future, full of so many possibilities now hidden from us, they of the lesser glories after education and advancement within those spheres may at last emerge from them and make their way to the higher degrees of glory until at last they attain to the highest, is not revealed in the revelations of God, and any statement made on the subject must partake more or less of the nature of conjecture. But if it be granted that such a thing is possible, they who at the first entered into the celestial glory”having before them the privilege also of eternal progress”have been moving onward, so that the relative distance between them and those who have fought their way up from the lesser glories may be as great when the latter have come into the degrees of celestial glory in which the righteous at first stood, as it was at the commencement. Thus: Those whose faith and works are such only as to enable them to inherit a telestial glory, may arrive at last where those whose works in this life were such as to enable them to entrance into the celestial kingdom... they may arrive where these were, but never where they are.”

B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God 1:391-392.
“While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is established for the instruction of men; and it is one of God’s instrumentalities for making known the truth yet he is not limited to that institution for such purposes, neither in time nor place. God raises up wise men and prophets here and there among all the children of men, of their own tongue and nationality, speaking to them through means that they can comprehend. … All the great teachers are servants of God; among all nations and in all ages. They are inspired men, appointed to instruct God’s children according to the conditions in the midst of which he finds them.”

B.H. Roberts

http://www.lds.org/ensign/2000/08/a-latter-day-saint-perspective-on-muhammad?lang=eng
"Mental laziness is the vice of men, especially with reference to divine things. Men seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah’s ravens and feed us without effort on our part. To escape this effort, this mental stress to know the things that are, men raise all too readily the ancient bar-“Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther.” Man cannot hope to understand the things of God, they plead, or penetrate those things which he has left shrouded in mystery. “Be thou content with the simple faith that accepts without question. To believe, and accept the ordinances, and then live the moral law will doubtless bring men unto salvation; why then should man strive and trouble himself to understand? Much study is still a weariness of the flesh.” So men reason; and just now it is much in fashion to laud “the simple faith;” which is content to believe without understanding, or even without much effort to understand. And doubtless many good people regard this course as indicative of reverence-this plea in bar of effort- “thus far and no farther.”…This sort of “reverence” is easily simulated, and is of such flattering unction, and so pleasant to follow- “soul take thine ease”- that without question it is very often simulated; and falls into the same category as the simulated humility couched in “I don’t know,” which so often really means “I don’t care, and do not intend to trouble myself to find out.” 

Elder B.H. Roberts, The Seventy’s Course of Theology, vol. V (Salt Lake City: The Deseret News, 1912)

(Partial reference) http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=2&sourceId=078046581c79b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=024644f8f206c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD#footnote10

BH Roberts full book that this is quoted from is here:
http://www.cumorah.org/libros/english/BH%20Roberts/BH%20Roberts%20-%20Seventys_Course_in_Theology,_vol_5_-_B_H_Roberts.html#18285
B. H. Roberts was preoccupied with Joseph Smith’s role as translator. One reason was that critics turned Joseph’s phrase “by the gift and power of God” into a claim he never made, that of verbal inerrancy. Roberts wrote a whole treatise on these issues, concluding that Joseph Smith could not escape his own skin. Joseph’s vocabulary and grammar are as clearly imposed on the book as are fingerprints on a coin. When Harold Glen Clark asked President Roberts if the Book of Mormon would read differently had it been translated by someone else, B. H. Roberts replied, “Of course, not in substance and basic message but in modes of expression.” Although Joseph Smith affirmed he used a Urim and Thummim, the instrument did not do everything and the Prophet nothing. Roberts insisted that the translation process was neither so simple nor so easy a thing as has been supposed by both advocates and critics of the Prophet. On the contrary, “brain sweat” was required, and preparation, and labor. Further, as an illustration that exact word-for-word translation of one language into another is impossible, Roberts presented examples from the Greek New Testament showing that the word Master used in the authorized version is a translation of six different Greek words all having different shades of meaning. Judgment stands for eight different Greek words. He concluded, “Let us rid ourselves of the reproach of charging error, even though it be of forms of expression, unto God.” Elder Roberts hoped for the day when the President of the Church would authorize that the Book of Mormon be “made a classic in English . . . without changing the shade of a single idea or statement.” He did not live to see it become a classic in other translations.

B. H. Roberts and the Book of Mormon, Truman G. Madsen
https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/book-mormon-authorship-new-light-ancient-origins/1-b-h-roberts-and-book-mormon