Thursday, October 3, 2024

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

The Plight of the LDS Church Today

View a 6-page paper on the 3 big problems that face church members today. The church was restored about 200 years ago, and such restorations always disintegrate after about 200 years, and the entire host society disappears soon after.

20240903 Plight of the Church today.pdf

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Monday, June 17, 2024

View paper on LDS Priestcraft.

View paper on LDS Priestcraft. (This still a rather rough draft, with lots of extraneous material, but there are some nuggets to be found there.)

20240606 LDS Priestcraft-V24.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l-wYSACDgqnZhBCtKxJHO6QUMRorllpy/view?usp=sharing

Friday, March 29, 2024

Introducing my (free) "A Small Library of Religious Research - Restoring The Restoration

Restoring The Restoration

Introducing my (free) "A Small Library of Religious Research" 

After 60 years of focused effort (out of my 82), I make the bold statement that I have the LDS church situation all figured out, historically and theologically, at least "close enough for government work." There are many passionate people who have their own views of the current and historical situation, and what should be done about it, but I hope at least some of them will investigate what I have to say. If a large number of us could agree on a large number of things, then we could actually change that situation -- change current reality into something much better. The real gospel is wonderful, but today's implementation of it is terrible.

I consider an "educated populace" to be the only way we are ever going to fix this very messed up LDS church situation.

By my measure, the church has been diluted down to having only 5% left of the original New Testament gospel. All of this has happened since the church went officially priestcraft in 1896, turning the church into a religion business to generate income for the top leaders. Essentially all of the membership has been tricked because the process was gradual, and no one was paying attention. It was a big mistake to have so much faith in their leaders. It is interesting that Brigham Young worried about this exact thing happening, which makes him a bit of prophet in my view. Of course, now we have hundreds of thousands of church members who are quite confident that there is something wrong with the church, even if they can't exactly describe what it is. What I hope is that these hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied and disgruntled people will grasp onto what I am saying and be the activist, moving force to get the church back on track.

Understanding and re-creating the missing 95% is a huge task for everyone involved, but it will be worth it. What is my educational preparation for what I claim to have accomplished? I have two law degrees and then spent most of my life as a computer consultant working on the design of large-scale computer systems. (One project had 900 programmers.) Finding all the missing but critical factors has been my job for most of my life, and that turned out to be a very useful preparation for trying to understand the many secrets and intricacies of today's church. 

To see all of this for free, and make your own judgment, click the link below to download the searchable PDF document which contains 5 books and 12 articles, and is 2462 pages and 22MB, entitled:

20240328 Restoring The Restoration, A Small Library of Religious Research, V.01.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FZxHfGn8OUZ3PeqphrDoDnNCBNw2hnO7/view?usp=sharing

The Priestcraft Gradual Dilution Graph

What follows is a brief summary of what the church leaders have done to the gospel since they adopted full-blown priestcraft policies in 1896:

 

Description of points on the dilution graph:

1830 Full gospel restored +100%

1896 Officially (but secretly) installed priestcraft, started leader salaries -50%

Once priestcraft is officially installed, all other aspects of the gospel will eventually be analyzed for whether they add income to the church or increase its expenses. In almost all cases, the idealistic gospel principles require the expenditure of valuable resources to carry out those works, so that those principles must be terminated as soon as possible to maximize the net income of this new priestcraft business unit. And any rationalization for the changes that comes to mind seems to be good enough for the naïve and lazy church membership who have been lulled to sleep. 2 Nephi 26:31 "for if they labor for money they shall perish."

1899 Justify priestcraft, drop charity, add tithing, facilitate all future changes -2%

Lorenzo Snow requested that tithing be paid to the central offices as a short-term Christian courtesy. Later, that requested temporary gift was turned into a permanent mandatory tax on religious activity.

1910 Declare disavowal/cancellation of Christ's original gospel -1%

The church leaders today often press the argument that the gospel which Christ restored almost immediately apostatized so that there is nothing we can learn from that time about church doctrine and administration. This supposedly then leaves today's leaders with a clean slate on which they can write anything they want. Of course, this is not historically accurate. The 2.2 billion Christians today and the rise of Western civilization are all part of the massive good effects of Christ's original gospel. Joseph Smith's implementation of the gospel was intended to be a second-stage booster to take Western Civilization to new heights, known as Zion or the Millennium.

1923 Drop common consent, take all property -10%

The members were dispossessed of all ownership in any previously commonly owned church property, and the option for them to vote on churchwide measures was ended.

1935 Drop US constitution, fully abandon charity -10%

The church officially abandoned the last vestiges of New Testament-style charity by supporting the new "government charity" tax-and-spend Social Security system without even attempting to implement an explicitly allowed substitute. In effect, the central church executed a bait-and-switch strategy and now gets to keep and squander ALL tithing receipts, with no charity expense demands whatsoever, having outsourced all charity/welfare responsibilities to civil governments. 

1938-1942 Church goes globalist, abandons freedom -5%

By implication, the church officially removed from the Book of Mormon the story about Captain Moroni and his constant quest for freedom for church members, and thus officially declared the end of LDS central support for the US Constitution. The First Presidency’s 1942 statement on war in effect declares the central church’s intent to operate above all scriptural and worldly laws. Also, by implication, the church declares a "United Nations-style" global kingdom that accepts Satan's goals of centralizing all control, not Christ’s goals of universal freedom.  The church chooses to support all the tyrants of the earth as possible future supporters of a (Satanist) one-world government and related state religion (which the LDS religion business hopes to supply for a nice fee).

1909-1978 Take all money and power from women's organizations -2%

All property and money and charity initiatives were taken from the women's organizations, part of thoroughly canceling New Testament-style charity.

1960 Enforce tithing with recommends -5%

Enforce permanent mandatory tithing with recommends/temple licenses. Make the local leaders tax collectors for the central offices.

1977 The Gathering and building up of Zion ended -5%

Canceled Article of Faith 10 concerning building up Zion in America, the Gathering necessarily being a big part of that process.

2010 Cumulative smaller debilitating changes -3%

2020 Current status – only 5% left of the original action-oriented, works-oriented gospel.

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A 5% remainder does not give us much to work with, but that is where we are today, by intentional design.

Reinvigorating Church Growth -- What it will take

 A general formula for fixing the LDS church. 20241020 Reinvigorating Church Growth-trim.pdf