LDS Suggestion Box

  

Observations and Suggestions on

The Future of Mormonism

 

In these days of the Internet, and enormously expanded social media systems, drawing in billions of participants, it has become a thriving cottage industry for people, nonmembers and members alike, to point out numerous supposed faults and failings with the LDS church and its leaders, including making "a man an offender for a word." Apparently, this sort of thing has happened before, without the Internet. See Isaiah 29:21, 2 Ne. 27:32

 

2 Ne. 27:31 For assuredly as the Lord liveth they shall see that the terrible one is brought to naught, and the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off;

32 And they that make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of naught.

 

If some ideas of "constructive criticism" were involved here in this new cottage industry, some of this chatter might have a good purpose. However, it would probably be very hard to find that rare person who is actually interested in building up rather than tearing down. Many alleged errors are based on faulty or fabricated history, and specious logic, making it unclear whether there really was a problem or not.

 

Of course, even if one did have a good constructive intent, how many people are there who thoroughly understand the original gospel which Christ taught, and can therefore reliably point out deviations from it, and ways to strengthen it?

 

I agree that the church today has many serious problems, and what follows is my attempt to point them out and suggest how to rectify them. The eternal gospel is surely a valuable thing, but who knows it's correct content these days? Here's one big problem:

 

 

We Can't Even Decide Who We Worship

 

Joseph Smith thought it was a good idea for us to know who we worshiped, and, besides all the scriptures, we also have The Lectures on Faith to give us a little extra help with that problem.

 

BYU is a great example of the jumble of seriously inconsistent ideas that make up the church today.  If you go to the religion department you will learn certain things about God and religion.  In that department, it is taught that God is an extremely powerful and personal being who created all things, including human life, while he himself is a handy example of exalted human life.  The Scriptures tell us that "worlds without number have I created" and "For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power."  Moses 1:33-40. One gets the impression that God can create whole universes and any number of Earths, complete with a complex biosphere, including humans, and do it all fairly quickly.  We count on God to provide us a very extravagant heaven where we can live for eternity, and also to resurrect our bodies so that we can go there and continue his work of providing earths and bodies for other spirits to inhabit and gain interesting experiences.  When Christ was on earth he performed his miracles in real time, that is, in human time, the time that we understand.  In an eyeblink he commanded "Lazarus, come forth," and a man who had been dead for four days was restored to life and left the tomb.  Christ himself was resurrected, and then thousands of other people were resurrected and seen in the vicinity of Jerusalem.  His many miracles, including restoring people to life, all happened very quickly, within moments or days at most.

 

We are told that God is the father of our spirits and the father of our bodies as well, through the indirect process of putting Adam and Eve on the earth here who then propagated their species and filled the earth.  We are told that the process of creation involves creating things first spiritually and then temporally, as in the case of the spirits and bodies of Adam and Eve.

 

The process of bringing a person back to life or the process of resurrecting them is rather similar in that the inanimate dust of the earth is organized into a living creature.  Presumably the process of resurrection might take somewhere between an eyeblink and a few days to accomplish.

 

 

In contrast to all of this, if we go to the biology Department of BYU, they may or may not reluctantly admit that there is a God somewhere in the universe, but if there is such a God, he must be almost unimaginably weak, having no management control of hardly anything.  It is hard to imagine him actually sponsoring a heaven of any significance.  It is inconceivable that the elements of the universe would obey his commands.  With their allegiance to materialism and scientism, they surely will not want to talk about the spirit forms of earths or people. 

 

As far as the physical forms of earths and people, God, if there is one, certainly does not have the power to overrule or direct the ordinary operations of physics and chemistry.  If one wants to have a universe or an earth or a human, these things can only come about through eons of geologic time where, through the processes of pure random chance, single molecules might gradually coalesce into proteins which then might accidentally form a cell, and so on.

 

From one department we learn we have a God who can resurrect someone from the dust of the earth in an eyeblink, but, in a different department, that same God supposedly has no power to create such a human being in the first place.  If he wants there to be such a thing as a human being on an earth, he must wait at least 2 billion years for the evolution process to inch forward, sometimes taking 100 million years to make a small change.

 

The evolutionists cannot allow a personal God to exist, one who gives birth to spiritual or temporal children and places them on a specific earth which he also created.  That takes far too much of a powerful and personal God for them to allow to exist, since such a God could figuratively wipe out their entire profession in an eyeblink.  Their profession depends on getting God completely out of the process of bringing life into being.  If they were to quibble and allow God to exist, he must be someone with barely measurable powers, who cannot really have any effect on the world.  Otherwise, their profession makes no sense, if God can do in an eyeblink what they require 2 billion years to happen.

 

Obviously, they can't allow themselves to think beyond the individual cell level.  The idea that a God would have the power to bring worlds into existence, and cause them to pass out of existence, is just incomprehensible.  For one thing, it would disturb their concept of geologic time.  They would probably say that there has only ever been a single earth in the history of the universe where life has come in to being, and it is inconceivable that it could happen more than once, and especially, that it would follow the exact same course in each iteration. (If you get the exact same end result every time, then it is obviously not a random process.)

 

In their frame of reference, if there is a God who has any effects over the management of the universe, in every case where he creates a world, he would have to wait 2 billion years while life accidentally comes into being on that earth, and there's nothing he can do about it except wait for an extremely uncertain outcome, since, by definition, he has no control over the outcome of a totally random process.  Now, eternity is a long time, so perhaps taking 2 billion years to reestablish life on every new planet from scratch might not seem like a long time, but, at the same time we are told in the religion department that all of these things can happen in an eyeblink, as in the case of the many miracles of Christ.  The people in the biology department must directly or by implication say that there is no such thing as a miracle which might be an example of God directing normal low-level physics and chemistry towards some higher goal he has in mind.  And, of course, he could not be allowed to do these things in an eyeblink.  It must only be possible, if at all, through geologic stretches of time.

 

To take this time issue a step further, we are told that the temporal existence of the earth is only 7,000 years.  That itself is only an eyeblink in the supposed 13.7 billion years of the universe or the 4.5 billion years of our earth.  If entire cohorts of billions of spirits from the spirit world can come to an earth, live out their lives, and are sent to heaven, all in such a tiny amount of time, can we really imagine that such a busy God has the patience to unnecessarily wait 2 billion years every time just to get the first person going on a new Earth?  We can probably assume that we operate on a different time scale than does God himself, but still, if he deals in production units of 7,000 years for each earth, he could accomplish 285,714 batches of earthed spirits in every 2-billion-year segment, if he wanted to, but, in their pride, the evolutionists say that he cannot be allowed to do that. If we assume that about 100 billion people are assigned to each earth, that would mean delaying the progress of about 30 million billion intelligences (3x10¹⁶) for at least 2 billion years. God might think it was a bad idea to slow things down that much just to humor a few scientists who don't believe in him anyway.

 

So, a person is left to decide for themselves whether God has great power over multiple universes or if he has no more power and influence than a Japanese wood sprite might have in a tiny little corner of a forest.  Which is the God we teach about and worship?  It truly cannot be both at the same time, and there are huge consequences of making a choice.  As it is, someone has simply avoided making that choice which leaves us in a state of maximum confusion.  I guess that means we have to make these choices ourselves.

 

The form of humans is perfectly clear at all times since God is one of them, and presumably he has samples of all of his other creatures in heaven as well, so he doesn't have to start experimenting from scratch again concerning any aspect of life on earth.  So, it does seem extremely silly and wasteful to wait 2 billion years to develop a human body that is perfectly known and in existence, and has existed on an infinite number of worlds already.  Or perhaps there is some kind of labor union logic going on here where everything has to be done the hard way, just to entertain the evolutionary scientists. It does seem a little strange to have a few humans getting to define what God can do and when he can do it, just to preserve their craft, which mostly consists of defending the concepts of atheism.  Could this doctrinal confusion at BYU mean that some of the church leaders or employees who control BYU today believe in atheism or agnosticism themselves?  Stranger things have happened.

 

Based on the mission that God has assigned himself,

 

Moses 1:39 For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man

 

and assuming that there are nearly an infinite number of intelligences who would like to make the transition to spirits and embodied beings, it doesn't seem hard to imagine that God might feel some sense of urgency about getting on with things. That might be one of those things which God is limited by -- he may want to instantly redeem an infinite number of intelligences, but even he has limits concerning what he can accomplish by the power of his word. But apparently, there are some eternal processes which it can only take place in human time, and cannot be speeded up or slowed down.

 

In other words, assuming God has that mindset of urgency, he might consider a 2-billion-year delay or a 4.5-billion-year delay, in getting a new cohort of spirits onto an earth to gain experience, to be a terrible and unnecessary waste of time. Obviously, since he, and almost everyone he knows, has a perfected body, figuring out how to get a proper body onto a proper earth is something he can accomplish in an extremely short time. He has absolutely nothing to be learned or gained from some kind of 2-billion-year evolution experiment. The desired outcome is already fully and completely known and available for replication. For all we know, one trillion trillion trillion years ago an evolutionary process is what got everything started. But it can surely have nothing to do with what goes on in our particular world, under the direction of our God.

 

The main scriptural sources for the above thoughts are found in Moses 1.

 

Moses 1:33 And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.

34 And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many.

35 But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.

36 And it came to pass that Moses spake unto the Lord, saying: Be merciful unto thy servant, O God, and tell me concerning this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, and also the heavens, and then thy servant will be content.

37 And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine.

38 And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.

39 For behold, this is my awork and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

40 And now, Moses, my son, I will speak unto thee concerning this earth upon which thou standest; and thou shalt write the things which I shall speak.

 

The Acts 5 Story of Ananias and Sapphira:

How one scriptural word can make all the difference

between corruption and incorruption

 

In Acts 5:13, Joseph Smith changed the word "rest," which appears in the New Testament, to the word "rulers." That seemingly microscopic change was actually an inspired and critical change, but a fair amount of background study, analysis, and commentary is necessary to demonstrate how this change of one scriptural word effectively turns the current-day church completely upside down as far as its principles of organization. It also massively revises, and often reverses, many of the doctrines now taught which have been initiated by the seriously corrupt priestcraft mindset over the last 126 years. The actual words of Acts 5 are very important, so some of it is presented here:

 

3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?

4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.

…

10 Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.

11 And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.

12 ¶ And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.

13 And of the rulers [previously "rest"] durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.

14 And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.)

15 Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them.

16 There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one.

 

A very big lesson from a seemingly small revelation

One of the cornerstones of the logic which priestcrafters spin out to convince people by using the Scriptures that church leaders should be supported and paid as professionals by the mandatory payments of their members comes from Acts 5 and the story of Ananias and Sapphira. As the story is usually told, to benefit the priestcraft line of logic, Ananias and Sophia, and all other members, supposedly discovered that they were required to pay over all of their income to the church collective on pain of death, because when that couple held back part of the income from the sale of property, they were both struck dead within hours of each other.

 

One clue that today's interpretation of these scriptures is wrong on many points appears in Acts 5:3-4. There Peter himself explains basically that the couple had no duty to pay anything to anyone, and it was only that they had lied about the details of the intended transaction that justified their death. So, if they had no duty to pay anything whatsoever, why did the lie become important? Apparently, the lie is all that mattered, because that lie, correctly understood, plus the related treachery, is what the story is all about, not the money.

 

A careful reading of these few verses should reveal to almost anyone that the story, as written, is massively internally inconsistent. In verse 10, the woman quickly dies and is buried near her recently deceased husband. It is not surprising that "And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things." Certainly, the quick deaths of two apparent converts would be frightening to everyone, and everyone would want to know the reasons behind it. But, in almost the same breath we hear that, "and believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women." Apparently that first wave of fear was extremely short-lived, and was followed immediately by the masses being exultant about the new religious organization. How did that fear so quickly become jubilation? The answer lies in who died and why. Would-be infiltrators died for their treachery and mockery. Sincere people would have no risk whatsoever, regardless of how they handled their money. Verse 13 is especially incomprehensible, as written. How does it happen that "no man durst join himself to them," but, at the same time, "the people magnified them." Those two opposites make no sense at all until one gets the story straight that it was only impostors with evil intentions who had anything to fear.

 

Of course, this story, as usually interpreted, is not consistent with anything else of the sort in the New Testament concerning member duties, but a fanatical rhetorician would never allow that to weaken a good political talking point. It is a little bit hard to imagine that Christ would set up a system which required people to hand over every penny of what they have to the church on pain of death. If that were true, one might expect that to be a great impediment to the church growing after his death. A careful study of all of the situations involving Christ and material goods shows that he never required anything of anyone. He only gave; he never required anyone else to give anything. He expected himself and any other disciples to either live off the land, with help from the heavens, or to benefit from free-will gifts from church members. Getting rid of the mandatory tithing which was so corrupting to the Old Testament church was one of the things that Christ died to accomplish.

 

The truth of this oft-misused story of Ananias and Sapphire is that those two people were part of a group from among the leaders of the Old Testament church who wanted to infiltrate the new church and reestablish and continue their priestcraft controls and benefits. Their deaths were warnings that this kind of infiltration of the new church would not be tolerated, and it appears to have had all the effects intended. The old leaders were frightened away from trying any of those tricks again, and the new members who were feeling liberated by the new gospel could rightfully feel that they were being protected and assured in their joining of this new church that it would not quickly deteriorate into the dreaded Old Testament Mosaic church with its myriad of oppressive taxes and regulations.

 

Without clearly saying so, the leaders today seem to imply that the Acts 5 story tells us that we really owe all of my resources to the central church, and that it is only by their good graces that we only have to pay 10%. But that is a terrible lie. We own nothing to the central church at all. We may owe something to our neighbors, but only we can determine how much. It is called charity.

 

One group of Christian researchers figured out the meaning of the Acts 5 story mostly using pure gospel logic, plus perhaps a little history. That is quite an impressive accomplishment, and it solves an important puzzle concerning the workings of the New Testament church, but it was nonetheless a marvelous and welcome surprise to discover that Joseph Smith had understood the Acts 5 situation correctly and had made the substitution of a single word which completely upended today's nonsensical priestcraft rendition of the meaning of this story. By changing the word "rest" in Acts 5:13 to "rulers" he made it clear who it was that should get the threatening message about keeping their hands off this new church organization and its new members. The sincere members rejoiced, as it tells us in v.12-14, as they were well justified in doing.

 

This original barrier against priestcraft described in Acts 5 protected the original church from immediate corruption. It was only much later, long after the death of Christ, that priestcraft became the rule instead of the exception. Joseph Smith started out the same way, and it was not until three prophets later that priestcraft corruption was reintroduced. It seems extremely likely that the fall of the church in the New World as described in the Book of Mormon followed exactly the same course. When the church itself began to not only tolerate social classes but help to enforce them through religious teachings and priestcraft, that is the point where the process of serious social and religious disintegration began, just as we see it today.

 

As the above discussion should demonstrate, this one tiny part of the Joseph Smith Translation of the New Testament would have made all his efforts worth it. It would be interesting to know whether Joseph Smith suspected that priestcraft would later creep into the church he restored. Perhaps we should consider this Acts 5 adjustment to be one small effort on his part to prevent that from happening.

 

 

The Rich Young Ruler

 

There is another scriptural story which seems to be regularly embraced by the priestcraft mindset and rhetoric for their own purposes. Since this story also has to do with money changing hands in a religious setting, naturally there is a huge temptation to twist the circumstances around to somehow support members giving all their money to church leaders. It is actually very difficult to use this story as effectively as the [corrupted and backwards] Acts 5 story to support priestcraft, but the effort seems to continually be made. Here is the story:

 

Luke 18:18 And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

19 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

20 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

21 And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up.

22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.

23 And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.

 

Using what we learned from the Acts 5 story as a beginning point, I believe we should assume that we have approximately the same situation in progress, although this story obviously happened before the Acts 5 events. The main difference is that we have someone who is acting in a straightforward manner rather than being tempted to become an imposter, and, as many learned later, potentially becoming worthy of death because of his fraudulent behavior. Just as we found people trying to transfer from the old church and infiltrate the new church to continue their priestcraft lifestyle in Acts 5, here we have a rich young ruler, presumably having lived an abundant priestcraft lifestyle in the old church, who is probably thinking to himself that the way to continue to be a rich young ruler, after the religious revolution then in progress, is to join the new church of Christ and continue to be a priestcraft-style ruler in that setting.

 

I have often wondered why Christ took offense at the young man calling him "Good Master." My current answer is that Christ already knew what this young man was hoping to accomplish, and was scornful of his intent while still trying not to be too harsh. The young man was apparently trying to use flattery in introducing himself, hoping that would help him accomplish his goal. It does not seem to be explicitly mentioned, but there is the possibility that this young man hoped to buy himself a position in the new church. In the young man's culture, that would probably seem to make sense, although Christ could not allow any such apparent impropriety.  Christ probably did not much care what happened to his riches, as long as this young man could essentially take an oath of poverty, fully realizing that he would have to live off the land or live off the free-will contributions of supporters to avoid any charges of priestcraft. What he definitely could not do was ever hope to make another shekel or mite from his position as a religious leader using priestcraft principles.

 

As I mentioned, it is hard to imagine how this story could be used to argue that members should give all or most of their money directly to church leaders, simply because they were church leaders. The best we can say is that this young man was told to give up all his riches for some good purpose, and perhaps, through some fancy footwork and word spinning, that good purpose might end up being contributions to the leaders. Perhaps just this example of possibly separating members from their resources for religious purposes (even though it didn't actually happen in this story) is all the priestcraft theologians think they need to help fabricate their spurious arguments.

 

 

The Scriptural Test For Priestcraft Intent,

As Established By Christ Himself,

To Prevent Any Kind Of Priestcraft

 

Here is the story of the three temptations of Christ:

 

Matt 4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,

6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

9 and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

 

Christ is first tempted to use his special powers to meet his personal needs for food, perhaps to make it unnecessary for him to actually experience the difficulties that humans normally experience. Christ is then tempted to use his special powers and position to gain fame and notoriety among the people. Finally, he is tempted with great temporal power over people, money, and property. He resists them all, and tells Satan to go away.

 

Christ followed this pattern throughout his entire life, making sure that he never said anything that people might interpret as requiring them to give him money for any teachings or blessings or leadership. He never taxed anyone or tithed anyone, especially not to use any such monies to create some kind of centralized religious bureaucracy that might have the slightest connection with the old Sanhedrin. He essentially took an oath of poverty, and required all of his disciples, those who traveled with him, and who acted as his agents, to do the same. They either lived off the land with blessings from God, or received contributions from their supporters, but never attempted to separate believers from their money through any priestcraft arguments.

 

Joseph Smith continued the same practice, and it continued through Brigham Young and John Taylor. At one early point, it was voted that the first presidency should receive a salary, but they later thought better of it and rescinded that rule.

 

I personally believe that the three temptations of Christ also happen to be perfect tests concerning a leader's intent as to whether he will engage in forbidden priestcraft or avoid it. As we can see, every "prophet, seer, and revelator" beginning with Wilford Woodruff has failed the priestcraft tests as they have taken church contributions to meet their own personal needs, and have planned to build a religious bureaucracy and temporal empire driven by required church contributions, issuing rules about required contributions even when they are not authorized to make such rules.

 

The Great High Priest tolerated no priestcraft, as indicated by the Acts 5 story, and the story of the rich young man, and many other scriptures in the New Testament and in the Book of Mormon. The only mystery is why He tolerates it in our time. I, for one, would consider a central church calling to include a constant threat of death under current circumstances. Certainly, I would not dare accept a dollar of priestcraft-derived money from the central church administration.

 

 

Thinking about solutions

 

We need an active suggestion box

The extreme secrecy and insularity of LDS church headquarters seems to preclude any meaningful consideration of suggestions from the members by the leaders. In fact, I believe the instruction of Elder Boyd K. Packer to new general authorities was that it was not their role to represent the members to the leaders, but rather to only represent the leaders to the members. This fairly extreme version of a top-down, authoritarian bureaucracy, the complete opposite of any kind of representative democracy, the lack of any serious common consent, at least at the central level, is one of the hints that the church has problems in its relationship to the gospel which Christ taught.

 

We have no fixed theology

I believe insufficient studies have been done concerning the exact content of the gospel which Christ taught his followers during his life, and which those followers implemented after his death. Multiple researchers have noted that the LDS church actually has no fixed theology, but only a history, that is, a history of a constant series of important changes to doctrines and policies. This is an unexpected, counterintuitive situation, since, on the one hand the church headquarters claims to represent the eternal gospel which has been unchanged since the foundation of the world, while at the very same time feeling free to make massive changes to doctrines and policies at any time, apparently based mostly on convenience to church leaders and their personal preferences and ambitions.

 

There have been many strikingly different versions of the gospel in the 200 years since the 1820 beginning of the revelations to Joseph Smith. This makes it impossible to create a complete description of the gospel in an English publication, for example. There obviously can be no comprehensive description of the eternal gospel if the version of the gospel which we see in effect, and as presented to the world, can change radically every decade. This seems to mean that we can never have anything more than the two extremes, either only major generalizations which avoid the details, or a focus on individual small details of the gospel, but never anything with a detailed, comprehensive sweep, since any such comprehensive treatment would have to deal explicitly with the dozens of major inconsistencies between past and present versions of the gospel. By now, in our information-age scholarship, one might expect to see some wonderful treatments concerning all elements of the eternal gospel, but that is impossible with so many built-in conflicts such a study would necessarily uncover and be required to reconcile.

 

These constant, sometimes radical changes to church doctrine and policy have created wide gaps between the gospel as taught by Christ, and the gospel as administered by current church leaders. It is my observation and opinion that the LDS church in 2022 is much smaller then was intended by its scriptural mission, and that under current doctrines and policies, there should be no expectation of the church ever getting any larger. Indeed, it actually shrank in living, active members in 2020 (deaths exceeding converts plus births) and is likely to continue shrinking in future years, at least relative to world population, if not absolutely. I attribute this disappointing and faltering performance to its deviations from the gospel which Christ taught. His version of the gospel grew explosively throughout most of the known world, while the current LDS version is small and is barely able to avoid shrinking.

 

The problem of the Gathering

In fact, if the LDS church in its current form had wider influence in the world today than it has, I believe that could actually be a negative and detrimental influence. I see it as a close case whether people would be better off or worse off to accept the gospel as it is presented today. The negative and antifreedom elements of today's version of the gospel could end up being a net loss for many people. (At least, many Protestant churches actively promote freedom, rather than suppressing it for their own purposes and benefit as does the LDS church.)

 

Why would the people of the earth want to "gather" to a deeply flawed church, especially one which has explicitly deleted the "gathering" principle from its catalog of doctrines? With the doctrinal "gathering" principle having explicitly been dead for at least 40 years, I'm not sure how mentioning it again a few times in general conference, as has been done recently, can amount to reinstituting it and getting all the attendant benefits and blessings. Bringing it back into effect would seem to require explicitly overturning the last 40 years of preaching against it and canceling it out. That potential flip-flop in doctrine, which is apparently now in the trial-balloon stage, would certainly be noticeable and would probably raise a large number of questions. Many other policy changes would also need to be made to reinvigorate it.

 

I read the Scriptures as designating the restoration of the church as the mechanism by which a millennial condition will be ushered into the world, as an expansion of the "Zion" society to be first created by the Mormons. We have actually seen only the barest beginning of this kind of renovation of the world in our time, and there is currently no obvious mechanism in place to take any further steps.

 

 

My goal here is to outline some of the major steps which need to be taken to adjust the gospel back to its original highly successful form.

 

An online suggestion box for the LDS Church:

1. Unequivocally support creationism. At this point BYU, under church supervision, vigorously and triumphantly supports atheistic organic evolution, where God is either completely absent or is hardly more than an onlooker. Certainly, God is not credited there with being the miraculous creator of all things. (The basic problem is that it is rather difficult to fully support Satan's philosophies and, at the same time, fully support Christ's philosophies, as BYU tries to do in its different and competing departments.) We need to decide which God we worship.

 

2. Fully, actively, and unequivocally support the U.S. Constitution and freedom in the United States and elsewhere. Pandering to tyrants wherever found may seem like good international business, but it is terrible religion. It teaches and exemplifies all the wrong principles. I believe Capt. Moroni would be disgusted today with our irresponsible pacifism.

 

3. End tithing and the selling of priesthood ordinances, condemned as priestcraft in the Book of Mormon, but reinvigorated today presumably because it was so lucrative for the Levites and Aaronites of the Old Testament church. What we have today is an Old Testament church, not a New Testament church. Christ died to end tithing and priestcraft and all its evils, and we have brought it all back. Remove the supposedly mandatory nature of tithing and replace it with the original free-will, member-directed contributions. The net amount directed to spiritual and social improvement would probably be much larger than it is today without the religious tax and regulations that are so restrictive and discouraging to Christian observations and impulses.

 

4. Actually respect the teachings of the Scriptures rather than turning so many of those teachings upside down through reinterpretation and policy changes.

 

5. Become an active force for good, mostly through charity channels that improve society, where members are in charge of directing their charity as they see fit. The Old Testament concept of tithing and the New Testament concept of charity are mutually exclusive doctrines, policies, and attitudes – one necessarily excludes the other.

 

6. Push back against the typically satanic/Marxist state religion rather than accepting it and joining with it. The church today seems to want to be the cooperating partner and state church of every government no matter how corrupt and anti-freedom those state governments might be.

 

7. Push back against the people who call themselves progressive Mormons, who might more accurately be called "pagan Mormons," who want to make the church a pagan church, including taking over or merging with the existing church. This is exactly the same process by which the church was damaged in earlier times, when it merged with the pagan Cult of the Emperor Constantine, combining elements from each religion.

 

8. Distribute most ownership and administration and priesthood powers and options back to the local level -- the ward and stake level -- as they once were, so that they could operate autonomously as before. This would accomplish numerous improvements. The church has obviously found it convenient and profitable to centralize almost everything, including charging enormous sums for ordinances which should be free, and that has allowed them to do such things as accumulate the $100+ billion in liquid assets without bothering to mention to the members what was going on, or what they planned to do with those resources. We can probably assume that the headquarters decided that if they told members what they were doing, the members would complain and lower their contributions accordingly.

 

If the local members had control of their ward buildings and real estate again, as in the past, they might very well choose to use the buildings for educational purposes, partly to counteract the destructive ideologies and practices of so many of the public schools that affect the children, and partly to better teach and advise the adults on how to counteract those same ideologies and practices of today's corrupt governments.

 

Presumably, one of the important reasons why the church chose NOT to return control of the buildings to the local members was to prevent this very freedom-promoting kind of activity. If American church members make it obvious that they are interested in promoting freedom for themselves and others, that might make the church less welcome in many countries where freedom is greatly constrained. But, of course, with the church refusing to promote freedom in any way, in Utah as well as in the rest of the world, they are distorting the meaning of the gospel to a very critical extent. In my opinion, freedom is the first principle of the gospel, and nothing else works without it, philosophically or theologically. If the church administration is willing to go along with every bad policy of every tyrant in the world, that makes the church leaders complicit in those anti-freedom policies and actions.

 

There could actually be a benefit to the central church if that $100 billion in liquid assets were distributed away from the central church. As it is, no matter how much the church leaders might enjoy counting their gold in their counting house, the amassing of all that wealth in one place makes the church a natural target for endless lawsuits from church members and outsiders alike, especially including greedy and lawless governments. It appears that the church's total political passivity is mostly a consequence of its trying to maintain its accumulated wealth safe from the predations of people outside of church headquarters, even though by doing so it badly warps the teaching of the gospel, through bad precept and example. I assume most of those lawsuits and attacks would never happen in the first place if there were no significant assets available, as would likely be true in a local ward or stake where contributions were quickly distributed to those in need rather than held in vaults for the sheer joy of looking at them by the leaders.

 

The local leaders are not paid, in contradistinction to the self-appointed professional priests assembled in Salt Lake City. That means the local leaders live very close to the real teachings of Christ. Their main problem is being required to enforce the rules issued by the central headquarters, even when those rules are out of step with the real gospel.

 

Philosophies of men and mingled (or mangled) scripture

I think Christ would be disappointed and perhaps even disgusted with the church as it stands today. It is now the epitome of a church which "teaches the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture," with those scriptures taken indiscriminately from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and intermixed, in spite of the radically different doctrinal paradigms involved from the two eras. The church currently has doctrines made of Jell-O which can be stretched in any direction desired. One might expect the eternal gospel to have fixed principles, applicable to every time and place in the Earth's history, but because those supposedly fixed principles have indeed been stretched in every direction, the church today cannot present a fixed theology to the world. Presumably that is why we spend so much time talking about history. As several scholars have noted, "the LDS church does not have a theology, but only a history." But being embroiled in detailed history seems to make it difficult or impossible for us to raise our vision enough to understand the correct eternal principles.

 

Seeking and distributing all truth

I believe the purpose of the gospel is to bring us all truth.

 

John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

 

D&C 93:23 Ye were also in the beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth;

24 And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;

25 And whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning.

26 The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth;

27 And no man receiveth a fulness unless he keepeth his commandments.

28 He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.

 

It is certainly useful to be reminded occasionally that we should read the scriptures and have faith in Christ, but if that is all that the church does, it is doing the absolute minimum, in my opinion. In order for the church to be an instrument of bringing us all truth, and leading us to all truth, as I think it ought to be, it would have to be doing at least 100 times more than it is today. The church at least ought to be competing with Oxford Press and the New York Times to bring church members and the world all the truth it is possible to supply. As it is, the newspapers in Utah have been taken over by the anti-freedom political left, and BYU does not even have a publishing organization. BYU Press died decades ago, ending one important avenue for publishing truth. Deseret Book basically controls the market for religious literature about the Mormons, so that even in the religious realm, the options to seek after truth are very limited.

 

 

Suggested Research and Actions:

Hundreds of major projects are needed:  

-- on Building Up Zion, and

-- on Truth and Righteousness, generally

 

Most of our social institutions need to be renovated or replaced, or competing institutions created.

About $2 trillion in Christian charity is needed in the USA annually (about 10% of GDP, replacing corrupt and wasteful government functions). Someone needs to organize it.

 

A few examples:

 

●Health

– Provide verified COVID information and treatments

– Minimize abortion and maximize adoption so earth can be home for as many as were assigned.

– Encourage mental health improvement through offering new social direction and purpose

 

●Ideology

– Contrast the communist manifesto and the U.S. Constitution

– Analyze identity politics/cultural fascism

 

●Social Improvements

– Support freedom everywhere vigorously

– Improve moral and ideological education at all levels

– Greatly lessen inner-city dysfunction ("The poor are always with you" and there are bad political effects for everyone if the poor are not lifted up.)

– Integrate migrants into gospel programs to maintain freedom and prosperity in the US

 

●Education

– Renovate BYU, then other schools

 

●Government

– End all corruption in Utah, then elsewhere

 

●More esoteric topics

– Should the Millennium have started 22 years ago in the year 2000, i.e., 6000 years after the beginning?

– Will the human race end in 100-200 years from a degraded genome, and related massive genetic disease and chronic illness? Could/should the church intervene?

– Christ's church imploded sometime before the 300-year mark. After just 200 years, the latter-day church seems to have imploded already.

 

As in the days of Enoch, the Gospel once had the power to move mountains. Why is it so feeble today that it cannot change a single thing of importance to improve our society? Does it need to stay that way? Can we really do nothing of significance ourselves in Christ's name? But instead, we need to have him come and do absolutely everything for us? I don't think that intentional passivity was the intent of the gospel we have been given.

 

 

For more information concerning the church's shortcomings today, and thoughts on how to resolve them, see the 2020 book Is the Church As True As the Gospel? A Constitutional Approach available on Amazon.