Hugh Nibley: "...succumb to the blandishments of false teachers. The fate of the vast majority of Christians was not to be overcome by a frontal attack—true martyrs were relatively few—but to be led astray by perverters. The spoilers do not destroy the vineyard, but seize the inheritance' for themselves; we read of betrayal, disobedience, corruptions; of deceivers, perverters, traitors; of wresting the scriptures, denying the gifts, quenching the Spirit, turning love into hate, truth to fables, sheep to wolves; of embracing "another gospel," and so forth. The offenders are not pagans but loudly professing Christians. As, once the prophets are dead, everyone paints their tombs with protestations of devotion, so `when the master of the house has risen up and shut the door,' shall the eager host apply for admission to this company—too late. The apostasy described in the New Testament (& 2Nephi 28) is not desertion of the cause, but perversion of it, a process by which `the righteous are removed, and none perceives it.' The Christian masses do not realize what is happening to them; they are `bewitched' by a thing that comes as softly and insidiously ...(Mormonism and Early Christianity, pp. 171-172)
"The scriptural term "pseudo-prophet" designates one who is not a prophet, but who occupies the place that rightly belongs to a prophet, regardless of whether he has been put there by himself or by his followers. Fool's gold, the glittering yellow pyrites that one finds sometimes on the beach, is so called not because it pretends to be gold, but because fools take it for gold. A pseudo-prophet is one to whom foolish people accord the obedience and attention due only a true prophet, whether he or they actually take him for a prophet or not." (The World and the Prophets, p. 254)
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