Orson Pratt Quotes
It is a grievous sin in the sight of God for any man to presume to baptize, unless God has authorized him by new revelation to baptize in his name.
Pratt, Orson. Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon. No. 2, Liverpool, R. James, 1850, p. 22.
This is one of the passages of the Bible that Christian Kings cited in expecting obedience. Most of the monarchs took this passage to mean that God had selected and appointed them to rule.
Justinian, like many civil political leaders before and after him, took great pains to minimize the civil authority of the church. Separation of church and state is not a modern notion, though it was harder to accomplish in antiquity. Rulers would want to coopt the religion to help legitimize their rule, but tried to keep the church as weak as they could unless another religion was challenging for supremecy.
The Creation Museum makes the Christian Fundamentalist Case for their alternative view of the creation of the earth and man. In the process, they make claims that are proven incorrect every day in science, like the earth is only about 6000 years old {641849} , and all the species on earth were then separately created in their immutable form with no evolutionary process. There are many deeply religious Christians who do not take the Bible literally and have no problem with evolution as the mechanism which God selected to create and develop life. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, does not maintain that the Bible is literally true and Evolution did not account for the development of life on earth. The major difference between most modern scientists, philosophers, and theologians, is that some believe that God of other Supreme Being had nothing to do with the evolution and development of life forms and those who believe that Evolution was the mechanism that God created and used. See {641848} for an example of the former.
Although a conservative, he had a great tolerance for and understanding of other points of view. For this some people thought him a radical.
The monetary corruption of the Church and many of its priests did not go unchallenged by Catholics of the day.
Orson Pratt Sr. was an American mathematician and religious leader who was an original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and was a leading Mormon theologian and writer until his death.
