Sunday, February 12, 2006

Something Interesting

I'm reading this book called "The Democratization of Christianity" for my history class this semester. Tonight I read a little about Joseph Smith and the start of Mormonism and I found something interesting that I thought I would share.

So Joseph Smith apparently had something called a "seeing stone" that he would use to see God's revelations to him and all that good stuff. Kind of hokey right? Then I read on. Listen to Smith's description of what hew would see when he looked into this stone:

  • ..."at his trial, Smith testified that when he looked at the seer stone he "discovered that time, place, and distance were annihilated; that all the intervening obstacles were removed, and that he possessed one of the attributes of Deity, an All-Seeing Eye" ".

Does this sound familiar? It should if you have ever read The Lord of the Rings. Remember the seeing stones? They removed "time, place and distance" allowing, people to see each other over large distances and to see into the future. And the "All-Seeing Eye"? Yep, that was Sauron (the "Deity", the Great Eye who saw everything the went on on Middle Earth. And remember what Saruman saw when would look into the Seeing Stone? He saw the Great Eye of Sauron, and thus communicated with him that way, much the same way that Joseph Smith claimed to communicate with "The All-Seeing Eye" through his own seer stone.

So my question is this: Did J.R.R. Tolkien take Smith's idea/testimony of a seer stone and an All-Seeing Eye and adapt it to his own story? I have not researched it, but I think it is a very good possibility. The wording is so similar that it is eerie to read. If it is the case that he used Smith's claims as a part of his story, I wonder what else may have influenced his writing...

Anyway, I just thought I would share that. Most of you probably don't care, I know. But I am a nerd and I found this pretty interesting.

Also........

I am pleased to announce that, after a long search, I finally managed to track down "The Commercial" on the Internet. Some of you know what "The Commercial" is, but for those of you who don't, here's the skinny: this is the best commercial of all time. Troy and Andy will agree. I first saw it before a movie in 2003, then later on TV. See it for yourself here, then read below.

Did you like it? The strand of beach amidst the clear ocean, the soothing music, the beautiful lady, the waves, the cool birds flying around and then turning into a perfume bottle.....they all come together to make the perfect commercial.

posted by Wes @ 10:39 PM

4 Comments:

At 2/13/2006 09:17:00 AM, Blogger JTapp said...

I want to lay down on a wave.... beyond paradise.

 
At 2/13/2006 10:02:00 AM, Blogger Justin said...

you know what is even more interesting is the way Smith "recieved revelation from the Stone." He stuck it in a top hat and put his face in it. Then he would translate what he was "recieving" to some dude. This dude though ended up destroying the first translation and had to go bck and do it again. Only this time Smith was giving him some different "revelations" then what was originally "revealed".

 
At 2/13/2006 11:06:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

no connection..... just Hollywood.

 
At 2/13/2006 12:31:00 PM, Blogger JTapp said...

I subscribe to the hypothesis that Smith used a manuscript for a fictional book of the times written by Solomon Spalding which was possibly stolen from the printing press by Sidney Rigdon (who later became a co-leader with Smith after "Mormonism" was founded), as the text for the Book of Mormon.
It was written as a popular fiction for the "lost tribe of Israel," and later witnesses came forward to claim that the Book of Mormon was just a plagiarism of that stolen manuscript.

If you do a google search for these names, you'll find it, and maybe some info on how the LDS church refuses to release the manuscripts they have of the original Book of Mormon to see if it matches Solomon Spalding's handwriting.
There's also a book "Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?" that talks about this.
check out www.mazeministry.com

 

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