MORMONS T/F: A personal testimony must be "nurtured" or you may lose it.

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Comments

• OK . . . but if you've passed the test and can "give witness" (which is what the word "testimony" means, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony#Etymology ) why does a testimony needs to be "nurtured"?
  
  It seems at odds with witnessing to an experience that one's experienced, or an event that one's observed.

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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on February 14th, 2012

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• Thank you for your answer.
  
  However, as usual, your "facts" are based on Mormon dogma not reality:
  
  All citations are from the neutral source Wikipedia:
  
  Oliver Cowdery
  By early 1838 Smith and Cowdery disagreed on three significant issues. First, Cowdery competed with Smith for leadership of the new church and "disagreed with the Prophet's economic and political program and sought a personal financial independence [from the] Zion society that Joseph Smith envisioned."[25] Then too, in March 1838, Smith and Rigdon moved to Far West, which had been under the presidency of W. W. Phelps and Cowdery's brothers-in-law, David and John Whitmer. There Smith and Rigdon took charge of the Missouri church and initiated policies that Cowdery, Phelps, and the Whitmers believed violated separation of church and state. Finally, in January 1838, Cowdery wrote his brother Warren that he and Joseph Smith had "had some conversation in which in every instance I did not fail to affirm that which I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deserted from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself." Alger, a teenage maid living with the Smiths, may have been Joseph Smith's first plural wife, a practice that Cowdery opposed.[26]
  
  On April 12, 1838, a church court excommunicated Cowdery after he failed to appear at a hearing on his membership and sent a letter resigning from the Church instead.[27] David Whitmer was also excommunicated from the church at the same time and apostle Lyman E. Johnson was disfellowshipped;[28] John Whitmer and Phelps had been excommunicated for similar reasons a month earlier.[29]
  
  Cowdery and the Whitmers became known as "the dissenters," but they continued to live in and around Far West, where they owned a great deal of property. On June 17, 1838, President Sidney Rigdon announced to a large Mormon congregation that the dissenters were "as salt that had lost its savor" and that it was the duty of the faithful to cast them out "to be trodden beneath the feet of men." Cowdery and the Whitmers, taking this Salt Sermon as a threat against their lives and as an implicit instruction to the Danites, a secret vigilante group, fled the county. Stories about their treatment circulated in nearby non-Mormon communities and increased the tension that led to the 1838 Mormon War.[30]
  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cowdery#Excommunication ; retrieved date of post )
  
  CONCLUSION: I think that if I found the founder of the religion having an affair with his teenage maid AND the founder had me excommunicated for confronting him on it AND if the Mormons were threatening my life after I was already out of the religion I would find it pretty hard to "nurture" a testimony of the man and his movement.
  
  Wouldn't you Whew?
  
  - CONTINUED -

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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on July 20th, 2011

• David Whitmer
  Whitmer continued to live in Kirtland and his counselors, W.W. Phelps and John Whitmer (David's brother) presided over the church in Missouri until the summer of 1837. After the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society bank, Smith and his counselor Sidney Rigdon, battered by creditors and hauled before several courts, moved to Far West, Missouri.
  
  The ensuing leadership struggle led to the excommunication of the presidency of the church in Missouri — David Whitmer, W.W. Phelps and John Whitmer — as well as other prominent leaders, including Oliver Cowdery.
  
  Whitmer and the other excommunicated Latter Day Saints became known as the "dissenters." The dissenters owned a great deal of land in Caldwell County, Missouri, which they wanted to retain. The church presidency, however, publicly called for their expulsion from the county. A number of Latter Day Saints formed a secret society known as the Danites, whose stated goal was removal of the dissenters. Eighty prominent Mormons signed the so-called Danite Manifesto, which warned the dissenters to "depart or a more fatal calamity shall befall you." Shortly afterward, Whitmer and his family fled to nearby Richmond, Missouri.
  
  Whitmer and the other dissenters complained to the non-Mormons in northwestern Missouri about their forcible expulsion and the loss of their property, and they began to file lawsuits to recover it, raising alarm among non-Mormons and contributing to the 1838 Mormon War. As a result of the conflict most of the Latter Day Saints were expelled from Missouri by early 1839.[10]
  
  Whitmer used his position as one of the Three Witnesses to condemn Joseph Smith's church. "If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon," wrote Whitmer, "if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens and told me to 'separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints, for as they sought to do unto me, so it should be done unto them.'"[11]
  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Whitmer#Excommunicated_as_a_.22Dissenter.22; retrieved date of post)
  
  CONCLUSION: If I and my friends had lost our personal fortunes due to a fraudulent and illegal banking scheme from the founder of the religion and his First Counselor AND then got excommunicated so the founder and his First Counselor could regain control of the religion AND then had that First Counselor preach a sermon that implied that I should be killed AFTER I was already out of the religion, I would have trouble "nurturing" a testimony in said founder and religion.
  
  Wouldn't you Whew?
  
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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on July 20th, 2011

• Sidney Rigdon
  [After the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri] Smith and Rigdon's relationship began to deteriorate. Rigdon's participation in church administrative affairs was minimal during the Nauvoo period. He did not reside in the city and served in a local church presidency in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was also in poor health. In 1843, Smith intended to place Amasa M. Lyman in the presidency and release Rigdon. However, during his address at the October 1843 general conference, Rigdon asked that he remain in the Presidency. The congregation then voted to retain him as first counselor, contrary to Smith's expressed wishes. After the vote, Smith stood and stated, "I have thrown him off my shoulders, and you have again put him on me. You may carry him, but I will not."[3]
  
  When Smith began his campaign for the presidency of the United States in 1844, Rigdon was selected as his vice-presidential running mate. In April 1844, William Law, the second counselor in the First Presidency, was excommunicated and his position was not filled.
  
  Consequently, after Smith's death, Rigdon was the only remaining member of the First Presidency. During this time, Rigdon's strong opposition to polygamy and other issues within the church[4] decreased his popularity within the church membership at large.
  
  1844 succession crisis
  After Smith's murder in 1844, contention arose over the leadership of the Church. Factions, based sometimes on doctrine and sometimes on administrative position, developed and church members began to align themselves with various leaders. (See Succession crisis (Latter Day Saints)) Some members assumed that Rigdon, as the senior surviving member of the First Presidency, would succeed Smith as church president. Others, however, believed that Smith's young son, Joseph Smith III was the rightful heir. Smith's wife, Emma, argued for the claims of the President of the central stake, the presiding High Council, William Marks. Marks, however, supported Rigdon.
  
  Before a large Nauvoo congregation meeting to discuss the issue on August 8, 1844, Rigdon argued that there could be no successor to the deceased prophet and that he should be made the "Protector" of the church."[5]
  
  Brigham Young, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles opposed this reasoning and motion and asserted a claim for the primacy of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints asserts Smith had earlier recorded a revelation in section 107, verses 23-24 of the Doctrine and Covenants that the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were "equal in authority and power" to the First Presidency, so the decision of Smith's successor fell back to the Apostles even though Rigdon believed he was rightly next in line.[6] A story eventually evolved that many in the congregation had witnessed Brigham Young's voice take on the sound of Joseph Smith's voice and that Brigham Young's face and mannerisms also appeared as the face and mannerisms of Joseph Smith.[7] This occurrence, however, was not recorded in any of the contemporary journals or records from the meeting, and only emerged years after the succession crisis.[8]
  
  The Quorum of Twelve Apostles were scattered throughout the United States and Europe, many on missions, at the time of Smith's death. The five members of the quorum available in Illinois voted to deny Rigdon his claim for Church leadership. Rigdon felt this action was done without proper order. One month later, on September 8, Sidney Rigdon was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by a Common Council of the Church which had been convened by Presiding Bishop Newel K. Whitney.[9] Sidney Rigdon refused to attend this trial[10] after which he, in turn, likewise excommunicated the members of the Twelve and fled Nauvoo, claiming that he felt threatened by Young's supporters.[11] He relocated to Pittsburgh where he continued his own faction of Mormonism.
  
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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on July 20th, 2011

• CONCLUSION: So if I'd once been the #2 man in the religion and then was slowly but surely pushed down by first the founder and then his successor (someone who was known to use violence and hold grudges) for disagreeing with them on things like polygamy. Then I was further insulted and disrespected by being excommunicated by the founder's successor simply for daring to oppose him in the succession battle 4-years after the founder's death, I think that I would have a hard time "nurturing" a testimony of the institution and the "new and improved" polygamous religion.
  
  Wouldn't you Whew?
  
  (source for "Sidney Rigdon" section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Rigdon ; retrieved date of post)

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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on July 20th, 2011

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• Thank you for your answer.

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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on May 19th, 2011