HAVE ANY 2000-YEAR-OLD MEN PREACHED TO YOU?

(Investigator 136, 2011 January



Investigator (#61, 65, 66 & 70) reported Mr Doug Davies' search for four 2000-year-old Mormon men.      

Davies had told Mormon missionaries that their prophet Joseph Smith (1805-1844) was a false prophet because he predicted the erection of a Temple on a designated plot of land in Missouri within one generation and it didn’t happen.

The missionaries responded with the Mormon doctrine that four first-century men are still alive — the apostle John and three others; therefore Joseph Smith's generation had not died out and the prediction is unrefuted.

That's what set Mr Davies on his search. Government pension departments do not give out information on individual pensioners, not even their ages. Davies, therefore, interviewed Mormons on whether they’d met the four oldies and asked how to find their names in Mormonism’s International Genealogical Index.

Mormons promote genealogy to identify deceased people of previous generations and baptize them by proxy. Mormon doctrine also encourages marriage and having children. That's why Mormons have the IGI and why Davies sought evidence for the four oldies therein.

The 2000-year-old-men doctrine is also used to explain how Jesus' prediction of the Gospel being preached in all nations can be fulfilled when 29 countries including China have no Mormons. The book Latter Days (2000) by Coke Newell (a convert to Mormonism) considers this problem and explains that the four oldies are active in ministry! :
It would appear that the Latter-day Saints trust in several more decades passing before the gospel has been preached in all the world. Wouldn't it? Not necessarily. We do not claim to know all that the Lord may be doing in the hands of other minsters. Firstly, there is the apostle John, he who was translated without tasting death, whose desire (granted) was to remain on earth and preach the gospel in many nations. Additionally, three Books of Mormon disciples made the same request and received the same promise. Where are they, and how effective, after two thousand years of practice, have they been? (pp 226-227)

Newell doesn't answer his question "Where are they…?" and Davies' search for them ultimately failed.

If any 2000-year-old men have preached to you you're invited to report it in Investigator.


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