The following clips are from General conference, April 1962, Of the Council of the Twelve Apostles sputtering and spitting silly things which to my knowledge was never quoted or repeated again:
The Mormon prophets are able to see clearer and with greater vision and distance than modern scientists using modern equipment. Prophets have seer stones locked up in the Church offices. Should we trust them?ELDER SPENCER W. KIMBALL wrote:Astronomers have sought knowledge through study, but prophets through faith. Astronomers have developed powerful telescopes through which they have seen much, but prophets and seers have had clearer vision at greater distances with precision instruments such as the Liahona and the Urim and Thummim, which have far exceeded the most advanced radar, radio, television, or telescopic equipment.
Hell no!
Yes, students would be amazed to know. So where is this amazing information published? It's found in Mormon canon and in the Egyptian Papers that until recently had been hid up from the Church but is now available online thanks to a step in the transparency direction.ELDER SPENCER W. KIMBALL wrote:Students of the universe might be amazed to know how much Adam knew about astronomy; how much Enoch and Moses had of accumulated knowledge of this world in its beginnings, its history and of its projected end. Many would wonder at the great Abraham, living nearly forty centuries ago, who was such a world authority, not only on the earth, its movements, and its conditions, but on the universe itself, extending to the very center of it.
The scientific world is NOT impressed with Mormon revelations on astronomy as contained in the works of Mormonism. It's silly garbage. The Church hardly stands by those things today. How embarrassing! Especially the Explanations of Facsimile No. 2 which is some of the most embarrassing pseudo-scientific garbage the Church has ever published.
Folks, I'm not making this up. Kimball basically says that Abraham was a better astronomer than today's specialists. Yeah, I'd like to see Abraham take his Urim and Thummim and cure the common flu or build a rocket ship to go to the moon. What a freaking joke! Kimball is a freak-show! Mormons are bloody freaks! A weird people, indeed.ELDER SPENCER W. KIMBALL wrote:His supernatural knowledge was probably supplemented by research and observation in the clear, starry nights in the plains of Mesopotamia, but he must have received the major part through the Urim and Thummim which could have been far more revealing than the most powerful telescope in the most modern observatory. In his 175 brilliant years of life he accumulated knowledge in many fields, but especially in astronomy, in which field he seems to have excelled, and was perhaps equal or superior to even the highly trained Egyptian astronomers. At the altar near Bethel, close to Jerusalem, came his greatest scientific knowledge.
more later