Words of Mormon
From CleanPosts
Until now the Book of Mormon has been proceeding chronologically from Lehi all the way down through the line of his son Jacob until his seed fails and the plates are given to King Benjamin in about 130 BCE. Now we jump to about 385 CE and meet the prophet Mormon for the first time. Mormon is in the process of organizing the plates and handing them off to his son Moroni, and he imagines that Moroni will witness the complete destruction of the Nephites.
This very short "book" serves as a kind of bridge linking the "small plates" of Nephi with much more extensive plates that serve as the bulk of the remaining Book of Mormon. Besides the "words of Mormon" which is really just a footnote, Mormon gets his own book later, and the whole collection of books is called the Book of Mormon too.
Mormon writes that King Benjamin stood against the Lamanites wielding the very sword of Laban which had been snagged by Nephi after he killed Laban to get from him the brass plates that said things like "Thou Shalt Not Kill" on them. With his efforts, and wisdom, the help of the prophets, and by slaying thousands of Lamanites, King Benjamin established peace in the land. And that's pretty much everything that happens in The Words of Mormon, the last of the really short books.
When people get together to talk about new religious movements like Mormonism, too often the word "cult" is tossed around as a pejorative to mean any religious movement they don't like. Never mind that Catholicism has been around for 2,000 years and has over 1 billion adherents, it's called a cult by people whose own particular religion was started in 1984 and might claim a total of 75 adherents. What is sorely lacking is an objective standard by which we can identify something as a cult.
The crucial moment for any new religious movement is the death of its founder. If the movement was centered around one strong figure merely to allow him to exercise power over the men and get sexual favors from the women, then it most likely will shatter upon that leader's death. If there is at least a core of truth in the movement, it will survive the death of its leader, such as the lynching of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, and perhaps rally around another one, such as Brigham Young, who led an LDS remnant from Missouri to Utah.
So we can define a cult as any new religious movement whose founder has not died. And by death, we're not talking about those close calls in the operating room where the heart stops for a few moments, we're talking about someone who is whipped to within an inch of His life, nailed to a cross all day, then buried in the ground over the weekend. So right away, Christianity is not a cult because Christ has died.
Overcomer Ministries in South Carolina, however, is a cult because founder R.G. Stair has not died (going to jail doesn't count). Jehovah Witnesses are not a cult because Charles Taze Russell, who founded the movement in 1877, died long ago. Calvary Chapel is a cult because Pope Chuck Smith has not died, but the Worldwide Church of God is not a cult because Herbert W. Armstrong has died.
