Mormons and Muslims Have Similarities

Rise of Loneliness · Mormons and Muslims Have Similarities · Yes, Christianity Traditionally Permits 12 Year Old Women to Marry — No, Not Three Year Old Girls

The Exact Moment I Lost My Testimony in the Mormon Church
Alyssa Grenfell | 30 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n0ppfPZy7k

0:03 What is "testimony of the Mormon Church" in the first place?

[spoiler alert — she described it in such detail later, that it's clear]

1:02 Nancy Maria Winchester and Helen Mar Kimball were 14.

Do you have any reason to believe that Vienna Jaques, Sally Ann Fuller, Mary Huston, Nancy Maria Smith, Jane Tibbets, or Sophia Woodman were significantly younger than that?

Because, if not, I'm hard pressed to see how he could be a pedophile.

Polygamist and adulterer (both by polygamy as such and by "marrying" other men's wives), sure. But if these were the worst things, why do you mention "pedophile" first? And if they weren't, where is the girl you take to have been under 12?

[spoiler alert, from what she said later, it doesn't seem so, she was abusing the word paedophilia]

2:08 Wait, you specifically said "married 14 year olds"?

Is that "pedophilia" to you?

The plural obviously is polygamy to me, but that's a different problem.

It seems that Mormon "testimony" is some kind of improvised version of Muslim Shahada, because each involves a "testifying" that so and so, who isn't the actual prophet of God "is the prophet of God" ... just that Muslims do it in more formalised terms, same words every time, you do it in more improvised terms.

Did I get it wrong?

2:29 So, having the spirit bear witness is sth which, in Mormonism, every believer can feel, just as in Calvinism every believer can feel that he is personally elect and that the Bible has 66 books, contrary Roman Catholic dogma not withstanding?

The Bible has these two passages:

Now the Spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error, and doctrines of devils,
[1 Timothy 4:1]

For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God
[Romans 8:16]

The first is a prophecy given to St. Paul. The latter is not an unambiguous face to face witness, as Challoner comments the verse:

[16] "The Spirit himself": By the inward motions of divine love, and the peace of conscience, which the children of God experience, they have a kind of testimony of God's favour; by which they are much strengthened in their hope of their justification and salvation; but yet not so as to pretend to an absolute assurance: which is not usually granted in this mortal life: during which we are taught to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Phil. 2. 12. And that he that thinketh himself to stand, must take heed lest he fall. 1 Cor. 10. 12. See also, Rom. 11. 20, 21, 22.