Musing on the Reliability of three alleged Divine Revelations.

The logic of the Muslim:* God has before him the Quoran, the angel reads it and has ipso facto then memorized it, the angel recites it to Mohammed who memorizes it and repeats it to the angel to make sure he has it perfectly, Mohammed then recites it to the scribes who write it on fragments of various materials, the scribes then read it back to Mohammed who then, if need be, corrects and certifies it, and then deposit the fragments in a guarded jar, the guardians later complied all the fragments and rendered seven perfect copies, the guardians then finally destroy the fragments, presumably to keep them from being tampered with later and thus causing questions concerning the seven perfect copies. The result is that when a person reads the Quoran (in Arabic, the most beautiful of all human scripts) he is reading word for word what is in the Quoran before God.

[* The premise is this: God has heretofore let men control the destiny of the many revelations of the Quoran in earlier times and in all nations. He has done this to show how inept the human is with such a task. He always ends up with either lies or confusion, and in all cases a distortion and loss of the revelation. Now in the same way that God can create a ceiling (the sky) which is so vastly superior to anything that even the Romans could do with their domes, in that same way God will produce a perfect rendering of the revelation available to all people. God is a master of production and will prove it now with the revelation as he proved it earlier with the sky dome.]

The logic of the Mormon: * God intending to reestablish his church waits until a sincere, young and confused Joseph Smith prays for guidance. An angel, Moroni tells him to avoid all of the existing churches. Later the angle shows him a divine book of truth written in “Holy Spirit script” which he is able to translate into English (when he is in his very early 20’s). Five witnesses are shown the golden plates from a respectful distance and swear of them on their souls. Joseph Smith meets from time to time with God and Jesus physically and obtains new revelations needed for the moment or occasion. God continues this today with authorized and dependable and sincere and truthful men who serve as apostles. Never again will the world be deprived of the apostle of God who has access to God physically and can present the needs of the people and obtain right guidance for the moment.

[* The premise here is that the original purity of the Christian religion was corrupted by the combined power of state and church beginning with Constantine. Thus there were saints in the first days, but then vanished under the corruption. But God has been busy preparing for the restoration of the original purity and presenting the gospel message to other peoples. The message was also corrupted and lost among these other peoples. Now God is prepared to act to make sure that this does not happen again.]

The logic of the Paulian:* By accepting Christ in the sense of trusting in him for salvation while practicing the three loves before all personal considerations, the convert comes to an experience what he perceives a growing satisfaction with giving without counting. By virtue of this experience the convert knows that he has been blessed by God and his formal love of God turns now into a substantiated love and adoration. This is attested to by the experiences of other people, including in Saul, the archenemy of Christ, who became Paul, the friend and lover of Christ and of all people for the sake of Christ. Paul’s letters have been preserved in various copies and are substantially unified. This textual unification is not as critical here as in other faiths, for here the first verification is personal experience of a new creation.

[* God created a perfect Adam and will settle for nothing less. Jesus is this perfect Adam and by virtue of him all people can become a new creature, sinless as was Adam. By virtue of vowing sincere allegiance to Christ a person is possessed of the Holy Spirit and counted as already righteous, even though plagued by a tendency to sin which slows the experience of righteousness. Thus in the Paulian the purpose of creation is provided.]

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