Apostasy Archives - FAIR: Recent Episodes
FAIR
The Deadly Lie of the Old Prophetby Autumn Dickson
There are major themes throughout the stories we read in the Old Testament. Some of the more negative themes are idolatry, fear over losing power, disobedience, and corrupting influences. The Old Testament does not shy away from showing the fallibility of humankind. There is great hope in faithful stories in the scriptures; there are also important warnings in the stories of people who were not obedient to the Lord.
One of the stories we read this week shows themes of obedience and disobedience. We see people who have a connection to God and follow Him, but we also watch them choose against God and find themselves in deep water because of it.
There are a lot of details for our story in this post, but stick with me. They are important because they set the stage for our principle.
In 1 Kings 13, we read about a man of God and an old prophet. Those are the only “names” we receive for these men, and these titles can get confusing especially when you’re reading the details of the story. Though they were labeled as a man of God and an old prophet, we see their fallibility on full display.
For some quick background, Israel has split into two kingdoms: Judah and Benjamin in the south and the rest of the ten tribes in the north. The man of God was from Judah where the true temple was. The northern kingdom had fallen into idolatry. The man of God was commanded to go to Bethel (in the northern kingdom) and condemn the idolatrous practice. He does so and performs a couple of wonderful miracles as well.
The Lord warns and commands the man of God to not eat or drink in Bethel. The man of God originally follows this command very well as he works to return to Judah. Unfortunately, another man, the old prophet, comes along and finds the man of God resting under the shade of a tree. The old prophet offers the man of God some food and drink, and the man of God refuses. The old prophet says this.
1 Kings 13:18 He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him.
The man of God listens to the old prophet and partakes in food and drink. While the man of God eats, the old prophet tells him that he won’t make it home because of his disobedience. On the way home, the man of God is killed by a lion. The old prophet collects the body, gives the man of God an honorable burial, and requests to be buried next to the man of God when he dies. The old prophet calls the man of God a brother. He testifies that the prophecy made by the man of God earlier regarding the idolatrous altar in Bethel will come true.
There are a lot of confusing details. I don’t know if this was one of those parts of the bible that was translated incorrectly or whether it’s simply highlighting the fallibility of real people who sometimes follow the Lord.
Who was the old prophet? Was he an actual prophet to the Lord? He was in the idolatrous kingdom so when they called him a prophet, was he a false prophet? Was he trying to tear down the man of God for prophesying against the northern kingdom? We know that the old prophet received some revelation from the Lord. He prophesied of the death of the man of God, and he testified of the prophecy given by the man of God. So why did he lie? Was he threatened by the man of God or did he see no harm in his white lie? Was he trying to just nourish the man of God? Was he wicked but then received a testimony while he watched the man of God come and eat?
There is a lot of ambiguity. Oftentimes, I’ll try to take one biblical theory and talk about true principles from it regardless of whether the details are perfect. This time, I’m going to embrace the ambiguity.
The man of God listened to the old prophet and found himself dead because of it.
I’ve seen a pattern on social media. This is a pattern that has existed for a long time, but I’ve seen it more readily because of its prevalence on social media.
On social media (and in real life), we find people who are disgusted by the church. They hate it. They actively fight against it. Their entire online persona can be defined by, “I hate the church.”
But there is another group of people. They claim to be part of the church, to receive revelation, and to love the Lord. Some of their posts are uplifting and encouraging, but some of their posts teach things that can be found in direct conflict with the Lord’s commandments. Some of their posts might not necessarily be in direct conflict, but they are critical of the church in the name of their love for the Lord.
These people are much more ambiguous. What are their true motives? What does it mean that they call themselves members? Because heaven knows you can call yourself a member without actually following Christ.
I don’t have any real desire to discover their motives. If they are sincere, the Lord will work with them and hopefully they will listen. If they are not sincere, then the Lord can handle all of that. I don’t need to know their motives or even condemn them.
Rather, I’d like to highlight a warning from this story. The man of God died because he followed the ambiguous old prophet who had some claim to God but also lied.
I don’t think we’ll get killed by a lion if we follow these accounts, but I do think it can spiritually deaden us. It can blind us.
Isn’t that funny? The rest of the world would call us blind and accuse us of drinking the Kool-aid, and yet, either side could be logically labelled as propaganda. Both sides label themselves enlightened. Everyone thinks their version is the closest one to the truth.
So how do we know whether we can trust the old prophet? How do we know whether we should whole-heartedly follow the prophet of our church?
I can’t answer that question for everyone. All I know is that I talk to the Lord, and He responds. I can’t answer for other people, but the more I study the gospel and the church, the more I see the Lord’s perfect hand working with the imperfection of mankind. I have watched some of my loved ones listen to these posts and believe they can disobey the Lord in little ways and be fine, and I have watched some of my loved ones turn these voices off. With the experiences that I’ve had in the gospel, I have no desire to follow anyone (real or on the internet) who tells me that I can disobey the Lord. It’s not just about avoiding dying either. I have found too much joy in the protection and safety of the Lord, and I refuse to lose that joy.
I testify that being obedient to the Lord provides safety and warmth and true happiness. I testify that even in the darkest times, following Him is where we will find respite. I testify that He teaches us through powerful stories in the scriptures, and that His patterns reflect across all generations on the earth. I testify that there is safety in joy in following the word of the Lord as given from Him directly.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – 1 Kings 12–13; 17–22 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson appeared first on FAIR.
End of the Kirtland period; revelations in Missouri, 1838by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Class Notes
Additional Reading
- BMC Team, “Why Was Martin Harris Cut Off from the Church?”, Book of Mormon Central, 1 June 2021. This brief article explains why Martin Harris, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, was excommunicated from the Church in late 1837 during a period of mass apostasy.
- Stephen C. Harper, “The Tithing of My People,” Church History: Revelations in Context, last modified 13 January 2016. Harper, a historian for the Church History Department, explains how the Saints in Missouri understood how to calculate “one-tenth of all their interest annually” as tithing. (D&C 119:4)
- Dennis B. Horne, “Reexamining Lorenzo Snow’s 1899 Tithing Revelation,” Mormon Historical Studies – Fall 2013, Vol. 14, No. 2. President Lorenzo Snow did not prophesy an end to the southern Utah drought at the time he received his famous tithing revelation in St. George in 1899 (as portrayed in the church-produced movie “The Windows of Heaven”). The tithing manifestation was indeed true and real, but President Snow’s son LeRoi C. later created an accompanying fiction of a prophecy that if the locals paid their full tithing it would yet rain that very season and save their livestock and crops. President Snow uttered no such prophecy and there was no end to the drought for two years.
- Elder Boyd K. Packer, “The Least of These,” General Conference, October 2004. “I remember my servant Oliver Granger; behold, verily I say unto him that his name shall be had in sacred remembrance from generation to generation, forever and ever, saith the Lord.” (D&C 117:12)
- Elizabeth Kuehn, “Finances and Faith in the Kirtland Crisis of 1837,” 2017 FAIR Conference.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 111–112, 114–115, 117–120 – Mike Parker appeared first on FAIR.
Avoiding Confusionby Autumn Dickson
Leman Copely was a convert to the church who wanted the gospel preached to his former congregants – the Shakers. The Shakers held some beliefs that were different from our’s. Here is some of what the Lord said regarding that:
Doctrine and Covenants 49:1-4
1 Hearken unto my word, my servants Sidney, and Parley, and Leman; for behold, verily I say unto you, that I give unto you a commandment that you shall go and preach my gospel which ye have received, even as ye have received it, unto the Shakers.
2 Behold, I say unto you, that they desire to know the truth in part, but not all, for they are not right before me and must needs repent.
3 Wherefore, I send you, my servants Sidney and Parley, to preach the gospel unto them.
4 And my servant Leman shall be ordained unto this work, that he may reason with them, not according to that which he has received of them, but according to that which shall be taught him by you my servants; and by so doing I will bless him, otherwise he shall not prosper.
The Lord calls Sidney, Parley, and Leman to go preach the gospel as they have received it. The Shakers want the truth in part, but they don’t want the whole truth. Sidney and Parley have been called, and so has Leman. However, it’s important to note that Leman has been called to teach the Shakers according to what he has received from the restored gospel and not what he has received from the Shakers.
I’m not 100% sure what the Lord was saying when He told Leman to teach the Shakers from the perspective of a believer of the restored gospel, but it definitely stuck out to me. When I write these posts, sometimes I get immensely wrapped up in defending the gospel to those who have left. Those are the people that I’m thinking of, and I try to approach the gospel by looking through their lens. I think there is merit to this. It’s definitely helped me to examine my beliefs more closely, but I believe that there are some topics that simply can’t operate from that direction. Some topics have to be taught unapologetically and while it may not reach the audience that I believe needs it most, there is no other way to truly teach it. Sometimes, you have to teach the truth and people are simply going to have to choose whether they believe it.
Part of the truth
From my perspective this week, this is one of those topics. The Shakers only wanted part of the truth. There are two perspectives I want to cover specifically about this idea of “part of the truth.”
First perspective. I once came across a post on social media. It was either posted right before General Conference or right after. The lady recommended listening to conference and taking the parts that spoke to you. If there was something that hurt you or caused problems in your mind, she recommended leaving those parts and simply holding to the parts you could connect to.
As you can imagine, there were wildly different reactions to this post. Some were thanking her profusely for making them feel heard. Others were condemning her and quoting General Authorities about not cherry-picking the gospel.
I found myself somewhere in the middle. I believe in the entirety of the gospel. The more I study it, the more I find myself saying, “Dang…God knew what He was doing. This is so perfect, and I’m so grateful that He continues to work with us. All of this makes so much sense.” I believe that eventually, we will have to accept the entirety of the gospel in order to receive the entirety of happiness that is available.
On the same note, I rather have people accept as much of the truth (since from my perspective, this IS the truth) as possible. Perhaps they can’t bring themselves to hold to everything taught over the pulpit. Though I believe that accepting the entirety of the gospel is eventually going to be required of all of us in order to be prepared for exaltation, I also believe that it’s better to listen to conference and take as much as you can in comparison to not listening at all.
So that’s my first perspective. The gospel is true. The Savior leads this church and eventually, all of His choices are going to make sense. In order for us to find our way and become the kind of people He wants us to become, we will eventually need to accept every portion of the gospel.
But in the meantime, I rather you accept at least part of the truth if you’re not ready to accept all of it.
Accepting all of the gospel
But here’s my unapologetic part and the second perspective I want to teach today.
When Christ declares that these people only wanted part of the truth, I don’t picture Him condemning them. I don’t believe the Lord was trying to tell the Saints that the Shakers were bad people. I believe that the Lord was trying to tell them that accepting only part of the truth brings only part of the blessings.
When we’re operating on false beliefs, we’re going to make more mistakes, get hurt, or miss out.
This is an absolutely ridiculous example, but it teaches the gist of what I’m trying to say.
If you are super convinced that gravity isn’t real, then you might make some poor choices. You’re not a morally bad person for not believing in gravity, and having a good heart and righteous intent can go a long way. But you can still get hurt if you decide to try and live your life as if there is no gravity.
Let’s look at it from a religious perspective.
The Shakers believed in celibacy over marriage. I believe that marriage, intimacy, and having children have brought me closer to God than anything else. I have learned more about the character of God. I have learned more about joy. I have experienced small glimpses of heaven as I sit in bed with my five kids and hold an extremely chaotic Come Follow Me lesson before church on Sundays.
The Shakers were missing out. In fact, I believe they were missing out on some of the most beautiful parts of life. I’m sure they were very good people, but operating as if there is no gravity can cause problems. It can prevent you from receiving blessings that might otherwise be yours.
Modern-day equivalents
I think there are a couple of different ways that this can manifest in our day, and I want to talk about two.
This wasn’t the modern-day equivalent I was thinking of when I first began this post, but the Spirit had other ideas. The modern-day equivalent that I feel led to talk about is when we try to downplay eternal truths in the name of sensitivity.
I originally shied away from using the particular belief of marriage and celibacy as an example because I know there are a lot of members who ache for what I have. I have family and friends who have yearned for happy marriages and children and so hearing that they’re missing out on these blessings can be painful. I don’t believe it’s immoral to step back for a minute and focus on other parts of the gospel when the disappointment of unfulfilled blessings feels too great. I believe there are times when the rest of us can be more sensitive; there are ways that we can make sure that we’re that everyone feels included even if they’re not married.
But I also believe that we wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors by ignoring or downplaying this powerful, eternal truth. Marriage and parenthood are incredible blessings, and everyone who is righteous will receive that crowning blessing eventually. It may feel painful sometimes to hear about it too much, but it would be even more painful to reject those beliefs because you have yet to see their fulfillment. It would bring even more pain and sorrow to not teach this eternal truth: marriage and parenthood are divine. The Shakers were missing out.
Embrace your God-given desires for companionship and children, and simultaneously embrace the promises of the Savior to fulfill those desires. There is so much goodness coming.
The second modern-day equivalent actually seems like the opposite of what I just taught, but it’s actually just an extension of what I just taught.
If you’re watching Come Follow Me videos, chances are, you believe in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. So how does this apply to you?
What truths are you not accepting? What partial truths or traditions are you clinging to? This can manifest in a million different ways.
Sometimes we’re taught the truth but still cling to our original interpretations of the truth. For example, I used to cling desperately to the idea that God was mad at me whenever I made a mistake. I’m not sure if this was self-sabotage or a weird motivational factor I tried to cling to, but either way, it was holding me back from some of the most incredible blessings I’ve ever experienced, namely the grace of Jesus Christ.
What partial truths do you refuse to give up and what do these partial truths take away from you?
I testify of a Savior who disperses truth as many places as He can. If you’re not ready to accept Him as a Savior, He is going to try and teach you about the character of God as much as possible. If you’re not ready to accept the reality of God, He is going to try and teach you Christlike principles about loving your neighbor and choosing gratitude as much as you allow Him. I testify of a Savior who is actively pushing truth in any form that we are willing to accept because He wants us to experience as much heaven as is available in our day. I also testify that clinging to and operating on partial truths, whether inside the church or out, can lead to more pain than is necessary and less happiness than is available.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 49–50 – Autumn Dickson appeared first on FAIR.
by Meagan Kohler
The doctrine of personal revelation is elevating and powerful. When I first joined the church I received profound spiritual witnesses through the Spirit that God was aware of me and loves me, that the Book of Mormon is true, and that modern prophets speak for him. These experiences left me with deep impressions about how God feels about me, his church, and his children. Less dramatic whisperings of the Spirit have guided me to others in need, helped me parent better, and pointed me to things I can do better to draw closer to God.
But sometimes I encounter church members whose relationship to personal revelation is just weird. It’s weird in the sense that something seems off but it’s difficult to describe at first. The way they talk about the Holy Ghost, for example, makes it sound more like an intrusive thought than a sacred witness of truth. We’ve all been in testimony meetings where people chuckle at the mic about how they just had an argument with the Holy Ghost in their head telling them to get up and bear their testimony. I’ve felt the Spirit nudge me to bear my testimony, too, but these jokes make it sound like the gift of the Holy Ghost is akin to having multiple personality disorder. Imagine what it sounds like to someone outside of church culture who hears you say you are arguing with God in your head.
This is an example of being a weirdo that’s basically a harmless cultural quirk, but it seems to invite a casual attitude toward the Holy Ghost that can develop into something weirder. For example, sometimes the Spirit does prompt us to do things we’re hesitant about, and that can initiate a real inner struggle. But some people use this idea of an inner “struggle” with the Holy Ghost to obscure their own desires and motivations–even from themselves. If you only bought that timeshare or joined that MLM because you felt the Spirit pushing you to do it, well, you’re not imprudent, you’re obedient.
This version of the Holy Ghost tells people to keep making purchases even when they end up bankrupt. It tells single women to place their romantic hopes on a man who doesn’t return her feelings. It overlooks tax evasion but prompts you to build a bunker. It wants you to make YouTube videos about yourself, but never urges you to visit the widows.
Not only would such an attitude abdicate responsibility for your choices, it would seriously hinder your ability to learn from them. If your spending habits or impulsive business decisions are sanctioned by the Holy Ghost, then even if things go wrong, it’s not because you’ve done wrong or need to change. If your due diligence only extends as far as getting the Holy Ghost’s stamp of approval, there’s no reason to look seriously at your own habits and desires, or what you are becoming.
When people have a relationship with the Holy Ghost that’s kind of thoughtless to the point that it’s constantly spitting out answers to things of dubious spiritual relevance, it makes me think of a Magic 8 Ball. If you shake a Magic 8 Ball enough, you’ll eventually get the answer you’re looking for. When personal revelation amounts to finding a way to feel good about doing whatever it is you want to do, then how long until you go from being a personal revelation weirdo to a personal revelation whacko? If you are unwilling to engage in the difficult work of learning where your emotions and desires end and divine whisperings begin, then the concept of personal revelation becomes worse than no revelation. It becomes a way to feel good about doing things that your conscience and your personal judgement would otherwise protest.
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction,” wrote Pascal. What’s terrifying about the Jodi Hildebrandts and Chad Daybells of the world is that they believed what they were doing was sanctioned by God. There is no simple answer for why this happens, but we know it didn’t happen overnight. I have wondered whether the “skill” of discerning God’s favor and approval in every feeling and happenstance played a role. Even being arrested was a kind of martyrdom. “The devil’s been after me for years,” Ruby Franke told her husband shortly after being booked for starving and tormenting their children. Perhaps that was true, if not in the way she thought.
My guess is this belief in God’s approval of evil is usually sincere. But when you spend years casually assigning the hand of providence to the silly and the selfish, perhaps you become so adept at making your will into God’s will that you become a victim to your own sleight of hand. You have developed an unbridled certainty in your own judgement because you’ve convinced yourself it’s not your judgement at all. At this point, the degree to which your inspiration diverges from what’s normal becomes a feature rather than a bug–a testament to your uniquely strong faith and penetrating knowledge.
So, how do we avoid this?
The simplest answer is following the leaders of the church–both what they teach and how they live it. This is a simple answer that has many complexities in application, not because the guidelines are complicated, but because there are so many ways to circumvent them without “breaking” them.
President Renlund recently called our attention to some red flags concerning personal revelation. He warned about “improper motives to promote our own agenda or to fulfill our own pleasure,” revelation that is outside of our purview or “within the prerogative of others,” revelation that is not “in harmony with the commandments of God and the covenants we have made with Him,” and seeking revelation about questions God has already answered.
This list of revelation no-nos is probably not exhaustive, but what stands out to me is how these items reveal what’s in our hearts. If we are pestering God about questions he has answered or praying about get-rich quick schemes, then we are not using revelation as a tool to open us to God’s will, we are asking God to place his divine stamp of approval on our will. Claiming revelation outside our purview does something similar in that it seeks to place the divine stamp on our will for other people–people for whom we have no divinely sanctioned responsibilities and whose pains and burdens we do not carry.
Most talks about personal revelation deal with how to obtain it. Relative to the number of talks about all the things God wants to reveal to us, the talks about what he doesn’t are pretty few. Maybe that points to something important but easy to overlook: that one of the best ways to know when you’re not getting real revelation is to be deeply familiar with the real thing. When we have experienced how the Holy Ghost works in our lives–how it changes us, allows us to help others, and points us toward the Savior–then the self-serving “revelation” becomes less convincing and less interesting.
This kind of revelation does not make us weird. It does not make us inscrutable, it does not make our motives or calculations more mysterious, and it does not make us sound mentally ill. It opens us up and connects us more deeply to the people around us. It makes us approachable and helps us relate better to those in need, rather than making us more insular and cult-y. Being in the world but not of the world still implies being in this world, not inhabiting an alternate reality.
In summary, if you’re doing it right, personal revelation should not make you a weirdo.
Meagan Kohler is a Latter-day Saint convert who studied philosophy, French and Latin at BYU. She writes about faith and culture at the Deseret News and lives in Utah with her husband and four sons.
The post Are you a personal revelation weirdo? appeared first on FAIR.
by Matthew Sailors
Introduction
Church history provides many cautionary tales of people who apostatized for various reasons. Today in the Church, the adversary is stirring up apostate movements similar to their historical predecessors, threatening the spiritual lives of some Church members. Yet God has not left us defenseless against the adversary’s counterfeits, such as the philosophies of men mingled with scripture.1 By learning from Church history and nurturing our testimonies of the restored truths contained in official Church proclamations, we can avoid deception and lay a firm foundation for our faith on the “rock” of Jesus Christ (see Helaman 5:12).
I take my definition of “apostasy” from the Church’s General Handbook:
“As used here, apostasy refers to a member engaging in any of the following:
- Repeatedly acting in clear and deliberate public opposition to the Church, its doctrine, its policies, or its leaders
- Persisting in teaching as Church doctrine what is not Church doctrine after being corrected by the bishop or stake president
- Showing a pattern of intentionally working to weaken the faith and activity of Church members
- Continuing to follow the teachings of apostate sects after being corrected by the bishop or stake president
- Formally joining another church and promoting its teachings (Total inactivity in the Church or attending another church does not by itself constitute apostasy. However, if a member formally joins another church and advocates its teachings, withdrawing his or her membership may be necessary.)”2
Based on that definition, it appears that the greatest dangers of apostasy do not consist only in believing false doctrine, but relate to attitudes and behaviors that engender enmity,3 or opposition, towards God and other people. The Prophet Joseph Smith recognized the oppositional spirit manifested by apostates when he responded by letter to a rash of apostasy in Kirtland, Ohio, U.S.A.4 In that letter, he taught that faith in and love of God should govern relationships between members and leaders of the Church. Joseph’s description of apostasy in that same letter reveals a vicious spiritual cycle in which apostasy both proceeds from and leads to violations of the First and Second Great Commandments.5 My intent in this article is to expose what I call the apostate mindset and contrast it with the principle of faith in Jesus Christ,6 which includes faithfulness to the leadership of His restored Church.7
Learning from Apostasies in Church History
A book that I have studied recently is Divergent Paths of the Restoration by Steven L. Shields, who is a member of the Community of Christ. In his book, Shields documents over 500 “expressions” of the Restoration from 1830 onward. Some of these expressions involved large groups of people who formally organized into churches, while others consisted of just a few individuals or families who put their own schismatic spin on the Restored Gospel. Most of these movements have long since died out.
I learned a wealth of lessons from my study of Shields’s book and other materials used as I prepared this article. I encourage the reader to check out the footnotes if you want to do further research. As I read Divergent Paths, something I noticed was that most of the apostate individuals and groups that Shields describes displayed common behavioral patterns:
- Criticizing Church leaders as uninspired, possessing invalid authority, or “fallen”8, 9, 10
- Exaggerating their self-importance through grandiose delusions, sensational claims of revelation, and aspiring to leadership positions11, 12, 13
- Exploiting other people for gain by using intrigue, fraud, and in some cases violence 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
- Revising Church history narratives to justify their dissent from the Church.19
Each of these patterns manifest the apostate mindset of opposition to God and our fellow beings. Many scriptural and prophetic counsels can be cited that reveal the dangers of each of these patterns.20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Current apostate trends in the Church generally follow one or more of these four patterns of criticizing Church members and leaders, exaggerating one’s self-importance, exploiting other people for gain, and Church history narratives.
It is also worth noting that some LDS-oriented online communities frequently attract apostates to their circles because they share many worldview assumptions with them. These worldviews may serve as “red flags” for possible apostate trends. They include the following:
- Fundamentalism,26 which can contribute to a variety of doctrinal, historical, and intellectual errors, including denying Joseph Smith’s involvement with plural marriage, engaging with conspiratorial thinking and fringe ideologies, and exaggerating the capacity of science to answer non-scientific questions.
- Politicizing the Gospel,27 which includes elevating ideologies and causes on both the political left and right over the Gospel.
- Mormon Gnosticism,28 which refers to an obsession with so-called “deep doctrine” or “hidden messages” in scripture, often dismissing the mainstream Church as spiritually deficient in the process.
- Syncretism, which means mixing the teachings or worldviews of different religions (syncretism may have contributed to Nephite apostasies recorded in the Book of Mormon29).
The Protective Power of Official Church Proclamations and Declarations
We modern Latter-day Saints have a huge advantage in the struggle against personal apostasy because we have the benefit of several landmark Church statements that distill, synthesize, and summarize core doctrinal truths that can help us avoid being deceived by modern apostate trends. To constitute official Church proclamations and declarations on doctrine for my purposes here, sources must meet the following criteria:
- They must be official Church statements, endorsed by the united First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
- They must be doctrinally rich (some official Church proclamations from the past are more historical in nature rather than doctrinal)
- They must be consistently used to teach Church doctrine since they were first published.
By that measure, we can include several official Church statements such as
- The Articles of Faith (published 1842, canonized 1880)
- The Family Proclamation (published 1994)
- The Living Christ (published 2000)
- The Bicentennial Restoration Proclamation (published 2020)
The power of the truths contained in these sacred prophetic statements to protect us from deception becomes clear when we consider how Church leaders have regarded them and taught from them through time. According to them, these proclamations and declarations are
- “authoritative interpretations of scriptures” because they are official teachings of the President of the Church30
- “statement[s] of eternal truth… tests for this generation”31
- “our benchmark for judging the philosophies of the world”32
- best understood with “an eye of faith” and “the intent to obey”33
- intended to help guide us to salvation and exaltation through Jesus Christ.
It is also important to note what official proclamations and declarations are not.
- They are not creeds in the sense that Christian orthodoxy regards traditional creeds. John Welch and David Whittaker once wrote of the Articles of Faith, “Unlike creeds which are delimiting and dogmatic, the Articles of Faith are living and open. They invite further thought…. They enhance our understanding of certain principles and give us simultaneously a commitment toward living the same.”34 This commentary is equally true of other official statements of Church doctrine such as the family proclamation.
- They are not “changeable statement[s] of policy”35
- They are not intended to attack or dismiss people who have sincere doubts or whose family situations are not ideal.
It is important for each of us to consider how we can use these proclamations and declarations to respond to apostate trends and move the Lord’s work forward now and in the future. The prophet Alma declared,
“For what shepherd is there among you having many sheep doth not watch over them, that the wolves enter not and devour his flock? And behold, if a wolf enter his flock doth he not drive him out? Yea, and at the last, if he can, he will destroy him. And now I say unto you… [the good shepherd] commandeth you that ye suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed.”36
We likewise have a duty to resist spiritual “wolves” such as doctrinal pollutions and dilutions through living, teaching, and testifying of the Gospel of Christ in its simplicity and purity.37 Official Church proclamations and declarations should be an integral part of that endeavor. Not only should we understand them and bear our testimonies of them, but we should also share them, teach with them, find people with them for the missionaries to teach, and minister with them. We should reflect on how we can more fully utilize these sacred teachings:
- The doctrines in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” seemed taken for granted when it was published in 1995. Nowadays, this official statement stands validated as prophetic and protective against the flood of secularist philosophies and shifting cultural and legal views of morality. How can we use the Family Proclamation in defense of truth and virtue?
- “The Living Christ” was published in 2000, when a large majority of Americans still affiliated with Christianity. Presently, an increasing number of churches are retreating from belief in Jesus’ divinity, and the numbers of those religiously unaffiliated has almost doubled.38 How can we use “The Living Christ” to build people’s faith in the risen Savior?
- The “Bicentennial Restoration Proclamation,” published in 2020, affirms truths that most members of the Church currently cherish. Will we be able to say that in a generation or two from now? How can we proactively use The Restoration Proclamation to share and defend the message of the Restoration of Christ’s Gospel and Church?
I believe that receiving answers to these questions by inspiration from the Spirit and putting those answers into action will affect our capacity to avoid deception, resist personal apostasy, and build our spiritual foundation on the rock of Jesus Christ.
References
1 Members of the Church, especially those endowed, will recognize that one of Satan’s most effective tactics is preaching false religion by mixing scriptural truths with human error.
2 General Handbook, Section 32.6.3.2, “Apostasy,” cited 8 October 2024.
3 See President Ezra Taft Benson, “Beware of Pride,” April 1989 General Conference
4 Letter to Oliver Granger, between circa 22 and circa 28 July 1840, p. 159, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 15, 2024, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-oliver-granger-between-circa-22-and-circa-28-july-1840/1#historical-intro
5 See Matthew 22:35-40.
6 See the 4th Article of Faith.
7 Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt has taught, “…distrust [of human nature] is the very opposite of the faith the Lord requires of His covenant people in Himself, His prophets and apostles, and those they direct. He established His apostles as an extension of Himself…. [C]riticism of the Lord’s prophets is actively working in the minds of some to decouple prophets from the prophetic line that runs from Joseph Smith to President Nelson.” See Corbitt, “Activism VS. Discipleship: A Message for Chaplains of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” 4 October 2022.
8 See entry for Wycam/Wycom Clark in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 40
9 See entry for James Collins Brewster in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 94-95
10 See entry for Samuel Eastman in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 211-212
11 See entry for Warner/William McCary in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 75
12 See entry for Gladden Bishop in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 78
13 See entry for Elijah Schwackhammer in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 98
14 See entry for John H. Koyle in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 204
15 See the article about Nathaniel Baldwin, written by Will Bagley at The Salt Lake Tribune, 8 July 2001; cited from web.archive.org.
16 See entry for Ervil LeBaron in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 267-268
17 See entry for Arvin Shreeve in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 444-445
18 Dan Ellsworth, “The Seductive Power of Apocalyptic Ideas in Mainstream Religions,” Public Square Magazine,8 May 2024. https://publicsquaremag.org/faith/gospel-fare/chad-daybell-faith-apostasy/
19 Gregory L. Smith, “Passing Up the Heavenly Gift,” parts one and two. Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. 2013. https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/passing-up-the-heavenly-gift-part-one-of-two/ and
https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/passing-up-the-heavenly-gift-part-two-of-two/
20 History of the Church, 3:385; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on July 2, 1839, in Montrose, Iowa; reported by Wilford Woodruff and Willard Richards.
21 See Alma 30:53.
22 See 2 Nephi 26:29.
23 See 2 Nephi 26:21-22.
24 See Ether 8:19.
25 Travis Ewell, “When I Felt Deceived about the Church,” July 2020 Ensign https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2020/07/when-i-felt-deceived-about-the-church?lang=eng
26 Wikipedia, “Fundamentalism,” cited 23 September 2024 from en.wikipedia.org.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism
27 Dan Ellsworth and Jeff Bennion, “Has Politics Become Your New Religion?” Public Square Magazine. 19 July 2022
28 Carol Rice and C. D. Cunningham, “How Susceptible Are You to the Allure of Divergent Doctrine?” Public Square Magazine. 15 November 2023
29 Mark Alan Wright and Brant A. Gardner, “The Cultural Context of Nephite Apostasy,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, 1(2012):25-55. 10 August 2012
30 Boyd K. Packer, “The Twelve Apostles,” October 1996 General Conference
31 Dallin H. Oaks, “The Plan and the Proclamation,” October 2017 General Conference
32 Bonnie L. Oscarson, “Defenders of the Family Proclamation,” April 2015 General Conference
33 Neil L. Andersen, “The Eye of Faith,” April 2019 General Conference
34 John W. Welch and David J. Whittaker, “We Believe,” Sept. 1979 Ensign
35 See Dallin H. Oaks, “Kingdoms of Glory,” Oct. 2023 Gen. Conf.
36 Alma 5:59-60
37 See Henry B. Eyring, “Simple Is the Doctrine of Jesus Christ,” October 2024 General Conference.
38 See Pew Research Center, “Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe,” 24 January 2024.
Matthew Sailors is an adult convert to the Restored Gospel and has been a member of the Church for 9 years. He recently graduated from Brigham Young University – Idaho with a bachelor’s degree in marriage and family studies. He is married, currently has one precious baby daughter, and is enjoying life as a stay-at-home dad (for now) in Texas.
The post Apostate Patterns Show Our Need for Prophetic Proclamations appeared first on FAIR.
A Tiny Hingeby Autumn Dickson
In the chapters of Ether this week, we watch kingdoms rise and fall with few details. There were plenty of general patterns of righteousness and wickedness, and we likely missed a great many details in the abridged version. On the flip side, there were certain stories that Moroni chose to include. Recognizing which stories and details he prioritized can help us understand the gravity of certain principles.
In one of the stories that included more of the detail, we read about a girl who wanted her father to be happy again. Of all the stories that Moroni likely could have chosen from, he wanted our day to read about a critical juncture in the history of the Jaredites where secret combinations were reintroduced among the people. Considering the ability of these secret combinations to destroy entire nations, it’s no wonder that Moroni would want to include this story.
When we zoom out from some of the included details, we can find parallels in our day of which we can choose to be wary and cautious.
Details surrounding the daughter of Jared
Let’s cover the story of the daughter of Jared (not to be confused with the brother of Jared we covered in the last video) in a manner that can allow us to draw out these parallels. It all begins with the daughter noticing the unhappiness of her father.
Ether 8:7-8
7 And now Jared became exceedingly sorrowful because of the loss of the kingdom, for he had set his heart upon the kingdom and upon the glory of the world.
8 Now the daughter of Jared being exceedingly expert, and seeing the sorrows of her father, thought to devise a plan whereby she could redeem the kingdom unto her father.
Her plan included reintroducing secret combinations through a man named Akish. She would marry him in exchange for Akish killing her grandfather, Omer, and putting Jared back on the throne.
For all the tragedy that occurs in this specific story as well as its repercussions, it seems like a small enough beginning. We don’t know everything about this daughter. We don’t know how much she was motivated because she wanted to be the daughter of a king again. We don’t know the exact manner in which she was raised. Was she truly just trying to make her father happy or did she value the same things he did because that was the environment she had been given? Did she understand the consequences of what she was bringing into the world she lived in? Maybe she didn’t care about certain consequences, but if she had been allowed to observe that last battle of her people, would she have reconsidered putting it into the heart of her father?
It starts in the heart
Great wickedness doesn’t start out as great wickedness. It starts out as problems in the heart. These grow and develop. They can lead to actions that can tip the scales of tragedy in an entire nation or even just in our own lives.
I believe in the power of righteous disciples of Christ, but I also recognize the fact that our individual decisions to reject the idea of secret combinations (or any other tempting crossroads) may or may not have an effect on whether they take hold in the countries where we live. So let’s take a second and simply look at the daughter of Jared and what these secret combinations brought about in her own life.
Her father desired power, and she wanted to give that to him. She danced before Akish and achieved her wishes. Akish brought about secret combinations and delivered the kingdom to her father. Akish then swiftly turned on his father-in-law by the same means he had utilized to uphold his father-in-law. It’s ironic, but this daughter lost her father because of what she brought into his life to make him happy.
And the story doesn’t get better from there. Her father was killed by the husband she had sought out to kill her grandfather. Then her husband starved her son to death, before the rest of her sons went to war against their father. This war killed everyone except 30 souls who fled to Omer. Omer was once again placed on the throne. More patterns of wickedness and secret combinations follow after this specific timeline, but even when we isolate this specific story, we find the patterns of eternity.
The daughter of Jared swung the door of destruction on a very tiny hinge. It wreaked havoc in her own life, among her people, and for generations afterwards.
A crossroads
Recently I came to a bit of a crossroads myself. I made some mistakes this past week that I won’t go into detail about. I’ll simply teach what I learned from the experience.
After these mistakes, I recognized that I wasn’t really experiencing consequences. It wasn’t hurting my life. It wasn’t hurting anyone around me. I knew what I had done was wrong, and yet, it’s difficult to flip around and do what’s right when the negative consequences haven’t sunk in. Luckily, I’m old enough now to recognize the tiny hinge. I was at a crossroads. I was not hurting myself yet, at least not to any truly visible degree. But I also fully recognized that continuing on could lead to long-lasting problems that would dramatically affect me and my family.
I knew that I never wanted to get to the point where I was experiencing those consequences. I didn’t want to have to live the rest of my life with consequences. I wanted to make the right choice now before any real harm was done.
So I prayed for help. I prayed for help recognizing what my life could turn into if I gave in and continued down this path because I figured it would motivate me to get it together. I also just prayed for help in general in moving forward. I ended up having one of the most spiritual Sundays I’ve had in a very long time, and I believe it came as a result of how hard I was trying to repent proactively. There were frequent moments throughout the day that I would be surprised by the forcefulness of how strongly I was feeling His love for me.
Great wickedness doesn’t start out as great wickedness. It starts out very small in the heart. In the case of the Jaredite secret combinations, it started out as a man who couldn’t appreciate the fact that he had been given so much after causing so many problems within his own family; I mean consider his context. Jared had put his father into captivity so he could rule. His brothers got mad at him, beat his armies back, spared his life, and even allowed him to get his own house. It also started in the heart of a daughter who wanted to help her father gain his power back rather than recognizing what that road held in store for her.
Recognizing the hinge
I have observed that the hinges we usually start out with happen in relation to the words of the prophets.
Oftentimes, we sacrifice obedience to the words of the prophets because we do what we want and find that we aren’t experiencing any consequences. It’s natural for humans to act and observe what the actions bring them before adjusting their next actions accordingly. We do this as children, and oftentimes, we do it as adults. We think, “Hey I did this even though the prophet said not to, and I still feel really good. I still feel close to God, and I still feel my testimony. I still believe in the church so Heavenly Father must be fine with me doing this. I can handle it.”
In some cases, this may be true. The nature of prophetic warnings is to provide a fence between you and a cliff. Climbing over the fence and taking a couple steps towards a cliff doesn’t mean you’re going to immediately free fall over the side. You may climb that fence and still feel your testimony. You may live your whole life playing on the land between the fence and the cliff and never fall off. You may entertain your pride, just as the daughter of Jared did with her father, and you may never bring about the destruction of a nation or the destruction of your family.
But one of the things I have learned from delving deeply into Come Follow Me each week is that you are missing out when you ignore the words of the prophets, no matter how small or silly or unnecessary or outdated you may believe they are. You are missing out on privileges that were meant to be your’s.
Life is not just about avoiding hell; it’s about experiencing heaven.
There are aspects of heaven that you miss out on when you ignore the prophets. These small hinges may not bring about devastating destruction, but they can still close doors to blessings that you didn’t even know were available to you.
I testify that these small hinges wield great power. Not only do they protect you from the possibility of specific tragedies you would not otherwise have to experience, but they catapult you further towards privileges. You have a Lord who is willing to reveal all things to you, just as He has to His prophets. He is simply waiting for you to be ready, and whether we like it or not, a huge portion of that readiness is developed by being mature enough to recognize the hinges and act before experiencing consequences. A huge portion of that readiness to receive is developed when you have the faith to utilize those hinges instead of doing what you want with them because they are not destroying your life as they did with the daughter of Jared.
I testify of a Heavenly Father who has far more to offer than the cliff, or even just that little spot of land where you can look at the cliff. I testify of a Heavenly Father who works through His prophets, who promised us to work through prophets. I testify of a Heavenly Father who rewards faith in the smallest principles by bringing huge miracles. He wants us to trust Him in everything, and He offers so much in return.
Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives.
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Ether 6–11 – Autumn Dickson appeared first on FAIR.
Alma contended with Korihor & led a mission to reclaim the Zoramites(Alma 30–35)by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best. This post will cover the content for the next two weeks.)
Class Notes
Additional Reading
- Gerald Lund explored Korihor’s teachings in “Countering Korihor’s Philosophy,” Ensign, July 1992, pp. 16–21.
- Who were the separatist Zoramites₂ and where did they come from? Sherrie Mills Johnson suggests some answers to those questions in “The Zoramite Separation: A Sociological Perspective,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 74–85, 129–30.
- Matthew L. Bowen, assistant professor in religious education at Brigham Young University–Hawaii, has argued that the syllable ram—found in both the names Zoram and Rameumptom—could come from the Hebrew for “the one who is high/exalted,” which fits both the Zoramites₂’ pride and the high tower upon which they prayed. See his article, “‘See That Ye Are Not Lifted Up’: The Name Zoram and Its Paronomastic Pejoration,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 19 (2016): 109–43.
- Which spirit is the “spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life”? (Alma 34:34) See John A. Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper, “Do Not Procrastinate the Day of Your Repentance,” Insights 20, no. 10 (October 2000): 4.
Mike Parker is a business and marketing analyst with over twenty years’ experience in the financial services and cellular telephone industries. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management Information Systems from Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University) of St George, Utah. He also has eight years’ experience in corporate training and currently teaches an adult religion class in southern Utah. Mike and his wife, Denise, have three children.
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Alma 30-35 – Mike Parker appeared first on FAIR.
Hey, guys. Long time, no see! This week should hopefully mark the return of weekly segments of this blog series. My life has been insane this summer, and I apologize for being so absent. My dad was dying of pulmonary fibrosis, and then miraculously, got a new set of lungs a few weeks ago that saved his life. He just came home from the hospital a week ago, and is still very weak. During that same time period, I also had to move, and there were two FAIR conferences, work and family obligations, and boy drama to wade through. Some of you have asked why I’m still single—it’s because I’m a magnet for Crazy. Things do appear to finally be settling back down, though, thankfully.
Speaking of the two FAIR conferences, the digital one on the Book of Mormon was a lot of fun. The talks from that one will be put into a book which should be coming out soon. The videos are being released on the FAIR YouTube channel every other Wednesday, alternating with the talks from the main conference this past August.
We’ve already begun planning next year’s main conference, and it’s shaping up to be a great conference. We’re talking about changing things up a bit with some interesting new ideas, and I will be presenting for the first time. I think I’ll be speaking on ways to navigate a faith crisis, or helping loved ones work through theirs. This will probably include subtopics like responding to anti-LDS material, studying with the Spirit, evaluating sources, and reputable resources you can turn to help you find answers to your questions. It’s a topic I’m passionate about, and unfortunately, it needs to be addressed often. It’s still very much up-in-the-air, though, as I’m still praying about what to say. I hope all of you can either come to the conference in person or catch it online afterward, because there are always some excellent talks at those conferences.
In addition to this series and that presentation next summer, I have an exciting new project in the works for FAIR that I’ll be doing alongside some of my friends, Jennifer Roach and Zachary Wright. We aren’t ready to talk about it openly yet, but if you follow me on Facebook, you probably saw me ranting recently about some of the more frustrating research the project required. We’ll have some trailers out at the beginning of the year, and hope to launch the project in February.
My lovely friend DeLayna is also planning a project that I’m very pleased with. It’s still in the early stages, but I really love and admire her, and can’t wait to see what she comes up with. So, keep your eyes open, because there are a lot of fun, exciting new projects coming to FAIR over the next year!
We also just lost our dear President Ballard. I just wanted to take a brief moment to share my love and gratitude for him. He has been an Apostle and member of the Quorum of the Twelve for as long as I can remember, as he was called just a few weeks before my fifth birthday. It absolutely will not be the same without him. He was a quiet, steady presence in my life, and he will be greatly missed. His last testimony of the Restoration, given last month at General Conference, was beautiful. I look forward to the day when we can all see him and learn from him again.
So, with all of that being said, let’s dive in, shall we?
This week, the Letter For My Wife moves into discussing blood atonement. This is one of my favorite “weird” doctrines, just because it led to so many ridiculous myths about our ancestors. Some of those myths are horrifying and some are hilarious, but all of them are absurd.
Thomas Faulk begins with a quote from Joseph Fielding Smith:
“Joseph Smith taught that there were certain sins so grievous that man may commit, that they will place the transgressors beyond the power of the atonement of Christ. If these offenses are committed, then the blood of Christ will not cleanse them from their sins even though they repent. Therefore their only hope is to have their bloodshed to atone, as far as possible, in their behalf. This is scriptural doctrine, and is taught in all the standard works of the Church.” (President Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1954, vol. 1, pp.135-136)
Yes, he did say this. What Faulk doesn’t say is that the passages before and after this paragraph list different scriptures and expound teachings that discuss capital punishment for those who know the commandments of Christ and still commit murder.
While today, we disagree with the phrasing that anyone could be “beyond the power of the atonement of Christ,” we do know from the example of King David that there are sins we can commit that mean we will lose some of the glory we may have qualified for had we not committed them. David was fully forgiven for his sins, but some of the blessings he would have received in his exaltation were conditional. That seems to be what President Smith was talking about here in this section of the book.
This is a common interpretation of blood atonement, and it’s important to understand that during the second half of the 1800s when this kind of rhetoric was common, it was exaggerated and meant to encourage repentance and to keep outsiders hostile to the faith from staying in Utah territory. Brigham Young and other leaders at the time specifically said not to practice it, and always encouraged repentance rather than vigilante justice. It was a rhetorical device. While some individuals may have taken matters into their own hands in a few instances, this was not sanctioned by the Church. The state execution of John D. Lee for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre is cited by some as an example of blood atonement, but again, that was capital punishment more than anything else.
The idea behind blood atonement is that, when you murder someone, you can’t make restitution for that because you can’t restore someone’s life to them. So, you would voluntarily allow your own blood to be shed by the government as a way to repent for what you’d done. Obviously, we can’t atone for our own sins, only Christ can do that. But the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary entry for “atone” talks a lot about making amends for something you’ve done and answering for your actions. Those are both necessary parts of the repentance process.
Brigham Young took the doctrine of blood atonement even further. While Joseph might have emphasized the practice of blood atonement against sinful Mormons, Brigham inspired his followers to murder in God’s name both Mormons and non-Mormons alike.
That is a pretty tall claim, and Faulk doesn’t do much to back it up. During the Utah War, there were certainly killings in defense and out of necessity, as in all wars. There were executions of spies and informants, and there were harsh judgments made that might not have been made during a period of peace. But that’s a far cry from saying that a prophet of God was calling for premeditated murder in God’s name.
The Saints who came West and settled Utah and other surrounding areas were not living in a Rage Against the Machine song. There was not widespread “killing in the name of” going on, and Brigham Young was certainly not calling for it over the pulpit.
He was employing a rhetorical device common during periods of religious “Great Awakenings” called hellfire or fire-and-brimstone preaching. The basic idea was using exaggerated and terrible imagery to scare someone straight. It was popular during both the First and Second Great Awakenings, but much less so now. It’s strange to our ears today, but it was very common in the 1800s.
Most of the following quotes are taken from the Journal of Discourses, so the usual caveats about the accuracy and reliability of the JoD apply to them all.
- Brigham Young
- “Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin through both of them. You would be justified, and they would atone for their sins, and be received into the Kingdom of God. I would at once do so, in such a case; and under the circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands…. There is not a man or woman, who violates the covenants made with their God, that will not be required to pay the debt. The blood of Christ will never wipe that out, your own blood must atone for it.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol.1, pp.108-109)
You can read this quote in context here, but these all say basically the same thing so I’m going to address them all at once at the end of the batch.
- “All mankind love themselves, and let these principles be known by an individual, and he would be glad to have his blood shed. That would be loving themselves, even unto an eternal exaltation. Will you love your brothers and sisters likewise, when they have committed a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood? Will you love that man or woman well enough to shed their blood? I could refer you to plenty of instances where men have been righteously slain, in order to atone for their sins.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pp.219-20)
Again, you can read this full talk here.
- “There are sins that men commit for which they cannot receive forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to come, and if they had their eyes open to see their true condition, they would be perfectly willing to have their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins; and the smoking incense would atone for their sins, whereas, if such is not the case, they will stick to them and remain upon them in the spirit world … I know, when you hear my brethren telling about cutting people off from the earth, that you consider it is strong doctrine; but it is to save them, not to destroy them.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol.4, p.53)
To read this one in context, you can find the talk here.
- “This is loving your neighbor as ourselves; if he needs help, help him; and if he wants salvation and it is necessary to spill his blood on the earth in order that he may be saved, spill it.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol.4, p.220)
And this one, which is from the same talk as the second quote, can be found here.
Now, despite the exaggerated nature of the rhetoric, he was not saying that we should murder other members of the Church whom we know are sinning. In fact, just a few paragraphs before this comment, Brigham said:
“And I will say that the time will come, and is now nigh at hand, when those who profess our faith, if they are guilty of what some of this people are guilty of, will find the axe laid at the root of the tree, and they will be hewn down. What has been must be again, for the Lord is coming to restore all things. The time has been in Israel under the law of God, the celestial law, or that which pertains to the celestial law, for it is one of the laws of that kingdom where our Father dwells, that if a man was found guilty of adultery, he must have his blood shed, and that is near at hand. But now I say, in the name of the Lord, that if this people will sin no more, but faithfully live their religion, their sins will be forgiven them without taking life.”
He was saying that we should remain true to our covenants and utilize the Atonement in our lives. Moreover, we should not just be concerned with ourselves and our families, but should love our brothers and sisters in the Gospel enough to help them repent of their sins, too. We should work together to keep all manner of sin out of our societies.
There are some sins we can commit that, if left unrepented for, can have serious eternal consequences, not just for ourselves but for others. Sometimes, those sins require a temporary removal from the membership of the Church of Christ. This is both for our own protection (our covenants are canceled so that if we backslide, we won’t be held responsible to the same degree that we would otherwise) and for the protection of the rest of the Saints (so that we don’t pull others away with us).
It’s a meme in our society today that a true friend is one who would help you bury the body after you commit a terrible sin. In reality, a true friend is one who would help you repent and make amends to the best of your ability.
Obviously, that doesn’t mean we should murder each other to speed along the repentance process, but that was the analogy that Brigham Young used to make this point. We shouldn’t tolerate and approve of sin, but help each other eradicate it from our lives. We should support and encourage each other to become the best versions of ourselves that we can be, to stretch and grow and to become as sanctified as it’s possible for a fallible mortal being to become. A real friend would help you become that person, not help you run from it.
Along with Porter Rockwell, William Hickman was bodyguard to Joseph Smith then Brigham Young. In his autobiography, Hickman confessed that he was often tasked by Brigham to take the lives of men.
“I found him, used him up, scalped him, and took his scalp to Brigham Young … He took it and thanked me very much. This was my first act of violence under the rule of Brigham Young.” (William Hickman, The Autobiography of William Hickman, Brigham’s Destroying Angel: The Life Confessions and Startling Disclosures, Salt Lake City, 1872, p.47)
After feeling remorse later in his life, Hickman confessed his crimes to R. N. Baskin, mayor of Salt Lake City and member of the Utah Supreme Court. Justice Baskins states,
“The Danites were an organization in the Mormon church. Its existence was stated by Bill Hickman in his confession made to me. He stated that the members were bound by their covenants to execute the orders of the priesthood, and that when a direct order or intimation was given to ‘use up’ anyone, it was always executed by one or more of the members. Hickman confessed to me that he personally knew of thirteen persons having been murdered, some of them by him … that at one time he murdered a man by the name of Buck at the personal request of Brigham Young.” (R.N. Baskin Reminiscences of Early Utah, 1914, p150)
William “Wild Bill” Hickman was a pretty controversial figure in Utah history. He served under Brigham Young during the Utah War, but later led a gang of horse thieves and murderers, was denounced by Brigham, wrote a tell-all book exaggerating his exploits and naming Brigham as the mastermind behind all of them, and was excommunicated over it all.
Taking his words at face value when he was known to exaggerate his crimes and Brigham’s involvement in them is poor scholarship. Obviously, not all sources who are critical of the Church are wrong in everything they say. There are certainly some things in his book that are true, just like there are some things that are true in William Chase’s book and in Ann Eliza Webb Young’s book. But just like in both of those other books, there are also a lot of things in Hickman’s book that are untrue. You can’t just accept everything he says uncritically if you want to find out the truth.
According to a biography on Hickman by Hope Hilton, there was some correspondence between Hickman and Young after the excommunication. Hickman was looking to secure a railroad contract, while Brigham wanted a confession and an apology, and offered rebaptism if Hickman would meet those terms. Hickman claimed ignorance of any wrongdoing at the time, though according to his descendants, he did later admit to lying over Young’s involvement. He was eventually rebaptized by proxy in the mid-1930s, some 50 years after his death, on the strength of that apparent confession.
While it’s impossible to know exactly how much of his story is exaggerated, we know for a fact that some portions of his autobiography are exaggerated. If the Church leadership had evidence to believe that he had confessed to lying about Brigham and eventually rebaptized him because of that confession, why should we believe those earlier accusations instead? That doesn’t make any sense.
- Heber C. Kimball
- “If men turn traitors to God and His servants, their blood will surely be shed, or else they will be damned, and that too according to their covenants.” (Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol.4, p.375)
I’m going to do the same thing with Heber C. Kimball’s quotes and give you the links to read them in context, then discuss them all at the end. This quote from comes this talk.
- “Judas was like salt that had lost its saving principles—good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men…. It is so with you, ye Elders of Israel, when you forfeit your covenants…. I know the day is right at hand when men will forfeit their Priesthood and turn against us and against the covenants they have made, and they will be destroyed as Judas was.” (Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol.6, pp.125-26)
This quote can be read in context here.
- “These are my views, and the Lord knows that I believe in the principles of sanctification; and when I am guilty of seducing any man’s wife, or any woman in God’s world, I say, sever my head from my body.” (Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol.7, p.20)
And this one can be found here.
With these three, the first two quotes are talking about something completely different than the last one is. Faulk lumps them all together here as they’re talking about the same thing for some reason. The first two are about how the enemies of the Church of Christ will one day have to face the consequences of their actions. Unless they repent they will be destroyed, whether physically or symbolically, according to the Lord’s promises. That’s obviously not something we want to happen to anyone, but unfortunately, some people earn that reward.
The final quote was Heber saying that he would rather die than fail to live up to his covenants. The entire talk about was standing strong and apart from the rest of the world, and living up to our responsibilities as children of God. We have been called to a righteous calling, and it takes sacrifice and dedication. But if we fall short and succumb to the temptations of the world, and we fail to repent whenever that happens, we disappoint our Father and we potentially lose some of our blessings. When we take the Lord’s great sacrifice in vain, there are eternal consequences for that. Heber would rather lose his life than his integrity. That’s something to admire, not something to attack.
- Jebediah M. Grant
- “I say, there are men and women that I would advise to go to the Presidency immediately, and ask him to appoint a committee to attend to their care; and then let a place be selected, and let that committee shed their blood. We have amongst us that are full of all manner of abominations, those who need to have their blood shed, for water will not do, their sins are too deep a dye … I believe that there are a great many; and if they are covenant breakers we need a place designated, where we can shed their blood … Brethren and sisters, we want you to repent and forsake your sins. And you who have committed sins that cannot be forgiven through baptism, let your blood be shed, and let the smoke ascend, that the incense thereof may come up before God as an atonement for your sins, and that the sinners in Zion may be afraid.” (Apostle Jebediah M. Grant, 2nd counselor to Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol.4, pp.49-51)
This quote can be read in context here, in a talk fittingly titled “Rebuking Iniquity.” This talk goes directly after those hypocrites who engage in all manner of things that are against the commandments, including attacking the Church, but who come to meetings on Sundays and claim to be faithful, recommend-holding members of the ward. We all know people like that. They even have a name on Reddit: PIMO, or “physically in, mentally out.” The Savior had some pretty harsh words for hypocrites during His earthly ministry, too.
President Grant was saying that we needed to stay vigilant against those wolves in sheep’s clothing, to keep them from preying on the vulnerable among us. Was his phrasing sharper than what you’re likely to hear today? Yes. Was his ultimate message any different from talks we hear today? No. We all know what’s eventually going to happen to those who spend their time trying to lead the Saints away from God, especially those who do so in secret.
- Joseph Fielding Smith
“Joseph Smith taught that there were certain sins so grievous that man may commit, that they will place the transgressors beyond the power of the atonement of Christ. If these offenses are committed, then the blood of Christ will not cleanse them from their sins even though they repent. Therefore their only hope is to have their blood shed to atone, as far as possible, in their behalf. This is scriptural doctrine, and is taught in all the standard works of the Church.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1954, vol.1, pp.135-136)
This is the same quote from Joseph Fielding Smith he quoted before, so we’ve already covered this.
This is horrifying!
Why? Obviously, it’s not rhetoric we employ today. There’s a reason why Church leaders today are a lot more cautious in their phrasing, and it’s because people like Thomas Faulk deliberately misconstrue their meaning. But there’s nothing horrifying about understanding that people taught lessons differently 150 years ago than they do today.
Lives have been taken under the direction of the Church and in the name of the Lord.
Name one. You’ll notice that Faulk didn’t do that, and that’s because he can’t. While there was certainly violence and vigilante justice in the American West, and Utah was no exception to that, if there was any credible evidence at all to suggest that Brigham Young ordered the death of anyone, Faulk would have presented it here and hammered that point home repeatedly. He’d have gloated over it for pages, and yet, he hasn’t come up with a single name. The only name given by anyone at all is “Buck,” aka Horace Bucklin, a man Hickman killed as part of the Aiken massacre, and Hickman’s account can’t be fully trusted or corroborated. Faulk doesn’t even mention “Buck” by name or claim that Brigham Young directly ordered his murder or anyone else’s. Ask yourselves why that is.
Does merely claiming divine authority give someone a free pass to murder?
Obviously not, but contrary to common refrains of the day, words are not violence. Nothing Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Joseph Fielding Smith, or any of the other past or present Church leaders said was equivalent to murder. If critics could provide any actual proof of our Church leaders murdering anyone, don’t you think they would have done so by now?
If so, many terrorist organizations around the world that commit horrific acts in the name of God should also get a free pass. Should we feel that the Prophet Brigham Young and the early saints are justified for their actions?
And what terrorist activity did Brigham Young engage in? Give specifics that are backed up by actual proof. We’ll wait.
Imagine if Thomas S. Monson were to preach this at general conference and task local authorities to follow through with this council.
Where’s the evidence that any of the other prophets ever asked local authorities to have anyone in their stakes murdered for their sins? Brigham repeatedly taught that blood atonement wasn’t something to be acted upon in this life.
It is obvious why the Church would not want this part of the history to become common knowledge. Does this practice sound like it was truly the will of a loving Heavenly Father?
How is blood atonement not common knowledge? It’s repeated in the Journal of Discourses, it’s published in a Gospel Topics Essay on the Church’s website, Saints volume 2—also on the Church’s website—discusses it, the Brethren have discussed it in interviews, there have been multiple statements made by the Church denouncing it as a practice, etc. It hasn’t exactly been hidden.
As for the second question, many people today seem to forget that while God is loving and merciful, He is also just. The demands of justice are equal to the demands of mercy. He perfectly balances both sides of the equation. Remember, the same Savior who selflessly sacrificed Himself to grant salvation to all of mankind also came to bring a sword instead of peace. And the Savior does the will of the Father. Our Heavenly Father is a loving God, but He is also a just God. If we’re unrepentant for our sins, we will lose out on many of the blessings He has offered us.
It is a prophet’s duty and calling to warn of us that. Different prophets have different styles of teaching, because we each learn in different ways. Different styles appeal to different people. If you don’t like Brigham’s brash, hyperbolic technique, there are a lot of other prophets to choose from. They’re all teaching the same message: that the only way to return to our Father’s kingdom in full glory, reaching our highest potential, is through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Sarah Allen is relatively new in her affiliation with FAIR. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
The post Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 24: Blood Atonement appeared first on FAIR.
Some Old Testament scriptures tell about a latter-day “Davidic King,” “Davidic Servant,” or “Marred Servant.” The consensus of mainstream scholarship and teaching from leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that this refers to Jesus Christ, when He rules the earth after His Second Coming. But some claim the “Servant” will be a mortal man who may or may not be a regularly-ordained Church leader. Because of the name “David,” some speculate Apostle David Bednar will be the Servant, and the same was said decades ago about the prophet David O. McKay.
Many who are not Apostles or Church leaders have claimed to be the “Davidic Servant.” Recently it was reported a woman and her brother kidnapped her teenage son because they believed him to be the “Davidic Servant.” The belief in a “Davidic Servant” is controversial and has been associated with criminal and tragic outcomes. To an unstable individual who feels entitled to power or special spiritual gifts, the “Davidic Servant” belief can be used to justify immoral and unscriptural actions. To an ordinary member of the Church, belief in a coming “Davidic Servant” can cause frustration with actual Church leaders, a feeling of spiritual superiority to them, and an eventual loss of faith in the restored gospel altogether.
A Mortal Davidic Servant: Refuting the ArgumentsBelievers in a coming mortal “Davidic Servant” use several arguments to support their claim. Most are completely wrong.
Continued Here
The post A Mortal Davidic Servant? appeared first on FAIR.
While traveling to western Missouri in the fall of 1830, Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer Jr., and Ziba Peterson made a stop in Kirtland, Ohio to preach the gospel to some of Parley’s friends and former religious associates. While there, they taught and baptized more than a hundred individuals! They then ordained some of the men as Elders and placed them in charge of the affairs of the Church in that area. The missionaries then continued on to their assigned mission in Missouri.
Left to their limited understanding of the restored gospel, which included a renewal of the gift of the Holy Ghost and spiritual gifts, a few of these newly ordained Elders and members began experiencing unusual spiritual phenomena during their worship services. These included ecstatically jumping up and down, swinging from ceiling joists, falling into trances and unconsciousness, seeing visions of parchments with written messages from heaven, crawling around like snakes on the floor, preaching in tongues to invisible congregations of Lamanites, wielding invisible swords of Laban, and so forth.
Of course, these practices drew the ridicule of outsiders in the community, including in the local press, and gave plenty of fodder for the first anti-Mormon book, Mormonism Unvailed.
Partly in response to the large conversion in Kirtland in the fall of 1830, Joseph Smith and his family moved there the following February. After attending worship services in Kirtland and seeing some of the practices that had developed among these new members, the prophet wrote a letter to his brother Hyrum Smith, stating, “the devil had made many attempts to overthrow” the church there. It is in this context that he received the revelation recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 46 which warns the members to “not be seduced by evil spirits, or doctrines of devils, or the commandments of men; for some are of men, and others of devils. Wherefore, beware lest ye are deceived” (Doctrine and Covenants 46:7).
Two months later, he received another revelation on this topic:
Hearken, O ye elders of my church … and attend to the words of wisdom which shall be given unto you. … Behold, verily I say unto you, that there are many spirits which are false spirits, which have gone forth in the earth, deceiving the world. And also Satan hath sought to deceive you, that he might overthrow you. Behold, I, the Lord, have looked upon you, and have seen abominations in the church that profess my name. … [W]o unto them that are deceivers and hypocrites, for, thus saith the Lord, I will bring them to judgement. Behold, verily I say unto you, there are hypocrites among you, who have deceived some, which has given the adversary power; but behold such shall be reclaimed; But the hypocrites shall be detected and shall be cut off, either in life or in death, even as I will; and wo unto them who are cut off from my church, for the same are overcome of the world. Wherefore, let every man beware lest he do that which is not in truth and righteousness before me” (Doctrine and Covenants 50:1-9).
The Lord then laid forth how “the elders of his church” could discern between deceiving spirits that are “not of God” and the “Spirit of truth,” so that they could “chase darkness from among [them]” and “overcome all things which are not ordained of [the Father]” (vv. 10-34).
Later, Joseph Smith would state,
A man must have the discerning of spirits, before he can drag into daylight this hellish influence and unfold it unto the world in all its soul destroying, diabolical, and horrid colors: for nothing is a greater injury to the children of men than to be under the influence of a false spirit, when they think they have the spirit of God” (1 April 1842, Joseph Smith Papers).
It should come as no surprise that these “false spirits” are still “abroad in the earth” today and are “deceiving the world” (D&C 50:1-2). Unfortunately, as Joseph Smith warned, these “abominations” sometimes show up “in the church” among those “that profess [God’s] name” (v. 4), and members may “think they have the spirit of God” when, in fact, they are “under the influence of a false spirit” that is “diabolical.”
These false spirits lead to controversy, confusion, and division among church members. And, like in 1831, this gives plenty of fodder for critics and the media to ridicule the restored Church of Jesus Christ. Thankfully, although some Latter-day Saints may at times be misled by “deceivers and hypocrites” who are under the influence of false spirits, the Lord has promised that “such shall be reclaimed,” but “the hypocrites shall be detected and shall be cut off, either in life or in death” (D&C 50:7-8).
The use of the term “hypocrite” in this revelation is interesting.
The word hypocrite ultimately came into English from the Greek word hypokrites, which means ‘an actor’ or ‘a stage player.’ The Greek word itself is a compound noun: it’s made up of two Greek words that literally translate as ‘an interpreter from underneath.’ That bizarre compound makes more sense when you know that the actors in ancient Greek theater wore large masks to mark which character they were playing, and so they interpreted the story from underneath their masks” (The Origin of ‘Hypocrite’).
In other words, these “hypocrites” aren’t individuals who fail to live up to what they believe, but they are spiritual “actors” who hide behind masks with the intent to deceive. Thus, “there are hypocrites among you, who have deceived some” (v. 7).
In the Church, these hypocrites may be people who pretend to have special spiritual gifts, like happened in Kirtland in the winter of 1830-1831. Perhaps they claim special spiritual manifestations such as receiving the Second Comforter or seeing visions of the future like those recorded in the extremely problematic book, Visions of Glory. These hypocrites may also be those who pretend to have special insight into the scriptures or doctrines of the church, or they may claim divine authority outside of the divinely established order of the church (See FairMormon Conference Speaker Identifies a Spiritual Threat on ChurchofJesusChrist.org). Latter-day Saints should not be “seduced” by such “false spirits” and “hypocrites” since the Lord has clearly revealed how we can discern truth from error.
For example, we should never forget the Lord’s rebuke of David Whitmer, saying, “you have not given heed unto my Spirit, and to those who were set over you, but have been persuaded by those whom I have not commanded” (D&C 30:2). Safety comes from giving “heed unto [God’s] Spirit, and to those who [are] set over [us]” while rejecting the seductive voices of “those whom [God] has not commanded.” And how can we know if they are commanded of God?
And this ye shall know assuredly—that there is none other appointed unto you to receive commandments and revelations until [Joseph Smith] be taken. … And this shall be a law unto you, that ye receive not the teachings of any [other] that shall come before you as revelations or commandments; And this I give unto you that you may not be deceived, that you may know they are not of me. For verily I say unto you, that he that is ordained of me shall come in at the gate and be ordained as I have told you before (Doctrine and Covenants 43:3, 5-7).
The apparent antecedent to the phrase “as I have told you before” is in the previous revelation:
[I]t shall not be given to any one to go forth to preach my gospel, or to build up the church, except he be ordained by some one who has authority, and it is known to the church that he has authority and has been regularly ordained by the heads of the church (Doctrine and Covenants 42:11).
This is an unambiguous “law unto” the members of the Church.
In 2017, M. Russell Ballard taught,
Today I repeat earlier counsel from Church leaders. …
- Do not listen to those who have not been ordained and/or set apart to their Church calling and are not acknowledged by common consent of the members of the Church. (See Doctrine and Covenants 26:2; 28:13; 43:6–7.)
- Be aware of organizations, groups, or individuals claiming secret answers to doctrinal questions that they say today’s apostles and prophets do not have or understand” (M. Russell Ballard, The Trek Continues!).
As I’ve written elsewhere, “if we are to avoid deception, we are commanded by God to not listen to anyone who purports to reveal his doctrine or his will other than the properly called, sustained, and ordained leadership of the church. Nobody talks for God but God and those properly called by Him, sustained by the membership of the church, and regularly ordained by those in authority.”
In our day of social media influencers and instantaneous mass communication, there are many individuals that are like Almon Babbitt, of whom the Lord said, “he aspireth to establish his counsel instead of the counsel which I have ordained, even that of the Presidency of my Church; and he setteth up a golden calf for the worship of my people” (D&C 124:84). It does not matter whether these individuals have impressive scholarly training or insight, or whether they profess to have visions, manifestations, or dreams — if we “give heed” to “those whom [God] has not commanded,” we will be deceived (D&C 30:2).
Any individuals who proclaim that they have special, revealed insight, or who try to supplant the direction given by church authorities, are simply deceived and/or deceiving. They are the “deceivers and hypocrites” we were so clearly warned of in Doctrine and Covenants 50.
“Wherefore, beware lest ye are deceived” (Doctrine and Covenants 46:7).
Recommended Reading
- “Try the Spirits,” Joseph Smith
- “Spiritual Gifts,” Dallin H. Oaks
- “Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall,” Dallin H. Oaks
- “Alternate Voices,” Dallin H. Oaks
- “The Trek Continues!,” M. Russell Ballard
- “Beware of False Prophets and False Teachers,” M. Russell Ballard
Andrew I. Miller is a FAIR volunteer from Crystal City, Missouri. He has served as a bishop and currently serves as the stake young men president. By profession he is a High School teacher.
The post “Beware lest ye are deceived” appeared first on FAIR.
Evangelical Questions: What Apostasy?by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC
Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about The Great Apostasy. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand.
Our jumping-off point is 2 Thes 2:1-4. This is in the English Standard Version:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone unfamiliar with The Great Apostasy you are probably familiar with the look on their face that says something like, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” And I imagine that is rather confusing to you, Latter-day Saint friends. The signs of it seems so obvious to us it’s barely something that needs proving. You might as well ask someone to prove that air exists. But it’s different for Evangelicals. So, what are the issues?
Well, first, they don’t deny that apostasy with a lower-case “a” has happened many times in history. You can see it in the Bible and in every generation since. However, they will always couch it in terms of being individual apostasy, not collective. This forces the conversation into an awkward corner because the natural response might be something like, “Oh no, it wasn’t just one person, it was the whole thing.” And now you’ve got a problem. Because it wasn’t the whole thing. You’ve just conflated 2 different ideas about apostasy. Let me explain.
What does, “complete apostasy” mean? And what doesn’t it mean? Well, it can’t mean that there were no people who loved God, had the desire to serve him, and patterned their lives after Jesus Christ. We know from history that this is not true. So Evangelicals have a rough little piece of logic to work through here – and sometimes we make it harder on them by over-playing our hand. The Evangelical who knows even the basics of history can point out plenty of people who are examples of faithful believers throughout the ages. So, even being able to point out 1 counterexample seems to discredit the claim.
But the claim of The Great Apostasy is not that no one loved and followed God to the best of their ability. It’s that the priesthood power was taken from the Earth. Those are 2 very different things. The Great Apostasy is an institutional situation, not an individual one.
All that to say, when you’re in a conversation with an Evangelical about the apostasy try to stay out of the trap of “the apostasy means no one loved Jesus Christ at all during that time.”
Second issue. Evangelicals absolutely believe in a great apostasy. But, like many times, they’re not talking about the same thing we are. They would define the great apostasy as something that will happen at some future point in time. GK Beal, an Evangelical Biblical scholar says it this way, “The point Paul appears to be making is that the visible church community, within which true saints exist, will become so apostate that it will be dominantly filled with people who profess to be Christian but really are not. The church will continue to profess to be Christian but most in it will actually not be true believers.” Dr. B. J. Oropeza, an Evangelical at Azusa Pacific University has written 3 volumes, 800 pages, on apostasy. And every single one of those pages deals with the apostasy of the individual. Not the removal of priesthood power.
So, we’re on the same page that there is such a thing as a great apostasy. They just think it is a future event while we believe it is a past event. But this nuance brings up an interesting layer. Some of the pushback Evangelicals give on the concept of an apostasy (as we define it) is that God wouldn’t do that to us humans – why would he send Jesus and then let the whole thing fall apart? Well, interestingly enough they are perfectly okay with believing that is a possibility – a future possibility, but a possibility nevertheless. The only difference between their thinking on this and ours is that we think it happened quickly after the Apostles were gone, and they think it won’t happen for a long time to come.
In this 2 Thes passage, we also get Paul warning the reader to not let anyone deceive you. Which is a very good and helpful thing for him to be saying – but it also sets up the Evangelical way of thinking – that apostasy an individual matter. The person who becomes apostate has been tricked or fooled out of proper belief. And it is their responsibility alone to right their ship. Apostasy happens to individuals and must be fixed by individuals. The closest they can probably get to apostasy being the removal of priesthood power is looking at the Catholic church in the middle ages – if they know much about history they can probably point to that time period and say that the whole project seems to be off the rails. But Evangelicals and Catholics have an uneasy relationship. A very typical response here would be something like, “Well, those were Catholics.” The implied message is, “they aren’t real Christians like us.”
So what do you do with all of this? They see apostasy as an individual matter. And while we certainly can also see it in individuals, when we use the term The Great Apostacy, what we mean has to do with priesthood power, not individual behavior. And while they agree that a great apostasy is going to happen in the future, they don’t think its happened yet. Are we just at a stalemate? No, I don’t think so.
It gets tricky because they tend to see the concept of priesthood as a burden, not a gift. They think it is an unnecessary barrier between an individual and God. All they know are “false priests who oppress.” So one path you could go down is talking about how having the priesthood restored actually helps you get closer to God, not further away. I have experienced this in my own life, I’m sure you have too.
But another way to talk about this is to think about apostasy as they do. Accept their definition for a moment – that apostasy only has to do with the individual holding incorrect beliefs and has nothing to do with the lack of priesthood power. That it only happens to individuals and not all humans together. How does someone come to understand that they hold an incorrect belief? Your Evangelical friends hold incorrect beliefs – I did when I was an Evangelical. But, most good people who hold wrong beliefs really have no idea that they’re wrong. They’re not trying to be wrong, and they have nothing else to go on that might help them see that some things are off here. Some very simple questions about epistemology would come in handy here – how do they know what they know? How do they know they’re not wrong?
If you know and love Evangelicals you probably already know where this goes – they point to the Bible as the source of what they believe. And I trust them when they say that. But here is the thing….the Bible doesn’t lay flat. What does that mean? It means that some passages are given more emphasis and importance than others. And this is true in a way that makes people “blind” to certain passages. They can quote and believe the ones they like, and ignore lots of other verses that add more information. The solution here? You are not going to like it….You need to know your Bible better than you do. I know. I teach Gospel Doctrine and it’s only October and I can already hear the sighs of relief that people have about getting to do Book of Mormon year next year. -And I’m excited too – but as a people, we don’t know the Bible very well, so conversations with folks who are basing literally everything off the Bible are difficult because they can outwit you. I know you’re antsy to get to the BoM but I implore you, if you have a missionary heart toward Evangelicals at all please don’t run out of energy on the New Testament yet. We’ve still got 10 weeks left of the New Testament and one of the best things you might be able to do for the Evangelials you care about, is learn the Bible better.
Alright, that is that. Next week we get the wonderful phrase, “husband of one wife” and all the worries Evangelicals have about the history of polygamy in our faith. See you then.
More Come, Follow Me resources here.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 1 and 2 Thessalonians appeared first on FAIR.
This post will be the last in the section about race and the Priesthood restriction. I apologize for not getting this up sooner. My offline life has been a little crazy this summer, and I just didn’t have the time to do this post justice until today. It’s an important topic, and I wanted to make sure I was able to treat it with the respect it deserves.
The bulk of the conversation this week is about the idea that the prophets can never lead the Church astray:
- Follow the Prophet
The Church reminds us to give strict obedience to the prophet because he speaks for God and is incapable of misconduct.
No, the Church absolutely does not teach either of those things. If you run a search on the Church’s website for the phrase “strict obedience,” do you know what you find? A whole bunch of scriptures, talks, and lesson manuals advising strict obedience to the commandments of God and the covenants we make with Him. I went through several pages of search results and didn’t find a single entry teaching strict obedience to the prophets.
For my entire lifetime, multiple prophets and apostles have counseled us to pray over their words for confirmation from God that they’re speaking the truth. In fact, when I wrote my response to the CES Letter last year, I spent a decent chunk of one post listing multiple quotes by Brigham Young, saying that he fearedthat the Saints would trust him without bothering to ask the Spirit for confirmation that he was teaching them correct doctrine. Here are some of the things he had to say about blindly trusting your leaders:
- “Ladies and gentlemen, I exhort you to think for yourselves, and read your Bibles for yourselves, get the Holy Spirit for yourselves, and pray for yourselves.” (Source)
- “What a pity it would be if we were led by one man to utter destruction! Are you afraid of this? I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not. This has been my exhortation continually.” (Source)
- “I do not wish any Latter–day Saint in this world, nor in heaven, to be satisfied with anything I do, unless the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spirit of revelation, makes them satisfied. I wish them to know for themselves and understand for themselves, for this would strengthen the faith that is within them. Suppose that the people were heedless, that they manifested no concern with regard to the things of the kingdom of God, but threw the whole burden upon the leaders of the people, saying, ‘If the brethren who take charge of matters are satisfied, we are,’ this is not pleasing in the sight of the Lord.” (Source)
- “The First Presidency have of right a great influence over this people; and if we should get out of the way and lead this people to destruction, what a pity it would be! How can you know whether we lead you correctly or not? Can you know by any other power than that of the Holy Ghost? I have uniformly exhorted the people to obtain this living witness each for themselves; then no man on earth can lead them astray.” (Source)
- “It is your privilege and duty to live so that you know when the word of the Lord is spoken to you and when the mind of the Lord is revealed to you. I say it is your duty to live so as to know and understand all these things. Suppose I were to teach you a false doctrine, how are you to know it if you do not possess the Spirit of God? As it is written, ‘The things of God knoweth no man but by the Spirit of God.’” (Source)
- “… [B]e faithful, live so that the Spirit of the Lord will abide within you, then you can judge for yourselves. I have often said to the Latter-day Saints—’Live so that you will know whether I teach you truth or not.’ Suppose you are careless and unconcerned, and give way to the spirit of the world, and I am led, likewise, to preach the things of this world and to accept things that are not of God, how easy it would be for me to lead you astray! But I say to you, live so that you will know for yourselves whether I tell the truth or not. That is the way we want all Saints to live. Will you do it? Yes, I hope you will, every one of you.” (Source)
- “Now, let me ask the Latter-day Saints, you who are here in this house this day, how do you know that your humble servant is really, honestly, guiding and counseling you aright, and directing the affairs of the kingdom aright? … [H]ow do you know but I am teaching false doctrine? How do you know that I am not counseling you wrong? How do you know but I will lead you to destruction? And this is what I wish to urge upon you—live so that you can discern between the truth and error, between light and darkness, between the things of God and those not of God, for by the revelations of the Lord, and these alone, can you and I understand the things of God.” (Source)
- “… ‘How are you going to know about the will and commands of heaven?’ By the Spirit of revelation; that is the only way you can know. How do I know but what I am doing wrong? How do I know but what we will take a course for our utter ruin? I sometimes say to my brethren, ‘I have been your dictator for twenty-seven years—over a quarter of a century I have dictated this people; that ought to be some evidence that my course is onward and upward.’ But how do you know that I may not yet do wrong? How do you know but I will bring in false doctrine and teach the people lies that they may be damned? Sisters can you tell the difference? I can say this for the Latter-day Saints, and I will say it to their praise and my satisfaction, if I were to preach false doctrine here, it would not be an hour after the people got out, before it would begin to fly from one to another, and they would remark, ‘I do not quite like that! It does not look exactly right! What did Brother Brigham mean? That did not sound quite right, it was not exactly the thing!’ All these observations would be made by the people, yes, even by the sisters. It would not sit well on the stomach … [i]t would not sit well on the mind, for you are seeking after the things of God; you have started out for life and salvation, and with all their ignorance, wickedness and failings, the majority of this people are doing just as well as they know how; and I will defy any man to preach false doctrine without being detected; and we need not go to the Elders of Israel, the children who have been born in these mountains possess enough of the Spirit to detect it. But be careful that you do not lose it! Live so that you will know the moment the Spirit of the Almighty is grieved within you.” (Source)
- “How often has it been taught that if you depend entirely upon the voice, judgment and sagacity of those appointed to lead you, and neglect to enjoy the Spirit for yourselves, how easily you may be led into error, and finally be cast off to the left hand?” (Source)
(And, just as a quick caveat, most of those were taken from the Journal of Discourses, so be careful about accepting them as word-for-word quotes.)
So, because of multiple statements just like these ones described here, I reject Faulk’s framing here. The prophets themselves tell us they’re fallible and that they want us to seek their confirmation from the Spirit that what they’re teaching us is true.
In fact, when President Spencer W. Kimball heard that Sister Elaine Cannon had taught the young women of the Church that when the prophet speaks, “the debate is over,” he was so alarmed that he met with her the very next day and asked her not to say things like that again. She explained what she actually meant, but he worried that people would think they wanted to take away their agency, because that wasn’t at all true.
Remember, it was Lucifer’s plan to leave us as choiceless automatons who did everything we were told to do. God’s plan was one of free will. And because we do have free will, none of us mortal humans are free from making the occasional error.
Faulk then quotes some statements about prophets never leading the Church astray:
- “The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty.” (President Wilford Woodruff, General Conference, October 1890)
- “Keep your eye on the Prophet, for the Lord will never permit his Prophet to lead this Church astray.” (President Ezra Taft Benson, General Conference, October 1966)
- “Follow your leaders who have been duly ordained and have been publicly sustained, and you will not be led astray. (Elder Boyd K. Packer, General Conference, October 1992)
- “Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, Follow the prophet; don’t go astray. Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, Follow the prophet; he knows the way.” (Children’s Songbook)
This quote was initially taken from Official Declaration 1, the Manifesto officially ending plural marriage in the Church.
However, it was a teaching that actually originated with Joseph Smith. In a 2014 post on the Ether’s Cave blog, Matthew Roper cited multiple accounts of people remembering Joseph and also Oliver Cowdery teaching that by following the majority of the church membership and the majority of the Twelve, who kept the records of the Church, a person would never be led astray into apostasy.
President James E. Faust elaborated that this is because the Twelve hold the Priesthood keys.
And in an excellent devotional given to students at Ensign College last year, Keith Erekson said:
“In its complete original context, Wilford Woodruff’s teaching emphasized that the prophet would not … lead people ‘astray from the oracles [or revelations] of God and from their duty.’ Prophets will not lead us away from their true witness of Jesus Christ, from His revelations or from the path, however hard it may be, to follow Him.
If you follow these thoughts to their natural conclusion, you arrive at President Woodruff’s statement in the Manifesto. If the main body of the Church was ever led too far astray, the Priesthood keys would be lost and removed from the Earth just like they were back during the Great Apostasy. Because the Lord has promised us that the Priesthood would never again be taken from the Earth, this means that the prophet and the majority of the apostles can’t lead us astray.
So, as you can see, the way that Faulk presents that line is not the way that the Church treats it. It’s not that prophets can never make a mistake. It’s that prophets can never lead the Church into such deep apostasy that the Priesthood keys will again be removed from the Earth.
In that same devotional cited above, Erekson also taught some wrong assumptions people have about prophets, which I think is worth repeating here. This is a bit long, but I thought it was important to share because we see all of these things throughout this letter:
Erekson asked his listeners what expectations they might have about prophets, how those expectations might be influenced by their upbringing and culture, and if they are assuming things that are incorrect.
“Admitting the errors in our own thinking is sometimes the most difficult part of understanding Church history because it takes humility to change our expectations and assumptions after we learn they are incorrect.” … Many oversimplify living prophets to a simple binary of being inspired or uninspired….
Many cultures have models of prophets. For some, a prophet is a sphinx, riddler or soothsayer who speaks in anonymous riddles. For others, a prophet is a “lone voice who speaks out against all evil and oppression” and denounces every wrong. Another model is that of a cable news pundit who pins the blame for tragedies on the sins of an enemy group, offering harsh condemnations.
Some Latter-day Saints come to expect prophets to act like these models. “Then, if prophets speak too clearly in favor of vaccination, or if they fail to stand with or against the internet’s outrage of the day, or if they offer kindness instead of criticism of refugees, some turn away in rage like Naaman,” Erekson said.
Another unhelpful expectation is a distrust in a person who is influenced by culture. Every human is shaped by the language, customs, knowledge and experiences of individuals, families and societies, making it impossible for anyone — including prophets — to not be influenced by culture….
“Prophets do not urge us to follow or imitate them, but to follow and imitate the Savior,” Erekson said.“Stated another way, the prophets do not teach us to follow them, but to ‘hear Him’!” …
Why do prophets need the grace of Christ? “For the same reasons that you and I depend on His grace — to forgive our sins, succor our infirmities, mitigate our shortcomings, expand our capabilities, turn weaknesses into strengths,” Erekson said.
Prophets make mistakes and they disagree. In extreme cases, their differing perspectives can lead to disputes. “Most of the time,” Erekson said, “the differences of opinion serve to bring all perspectives on issues into the discussion.”
The only person to ever live a mistake-free life was Jesus Christ. Prophets are aware of their own shortcomings, Erekson said, citing Moses who worried over his speaking inadequacies, Moroni who felt the same about his writing, and Joseph Smith who published his errors and divine rebukes. … Simply citing the many instances of when prophets disagreed, made mistakes or were tricked is incomplete, Erekson said, “without understanding that prophets serve ‘through the … grace of [our] Lord Jesus Christ.’ His grace is sufficient to bring them to unanimity, refine their souls and succor them.”
Prophets don’t know everything about the future. “While it is true that God reveals some of His secrets to prophets, and that some prophets including Moses, Enoch and Nephi received sweeping visions, that does not mean that every prophet knows everything about everything,” Erekson said. The things they do know are not always spelled out for them.
“As the ‘mouthpiece’ of the Lord, they do not simply open their mouths and the word of God flows out,” he said. “Sometimes revelation has come as dictated wording, but prophets also receive inspiration, feelings and impressions that they must put into words and actions. Sometimes they explore paths that don’t work out.” …
Prophets work to be inspired of the Holy Ghost because they don’t know everything, and they gain light and truth from the Lord line upon line…
“We should rightly expect prophets to be called through the will of God and the grace of Jesus Christ and receive ongoing guidance through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,” Erekson said. “As we do so, we can, like Naaman, shed incorrect expectations and assumptions about prophets that both impede our ability to be blessed and prompt divisive anger.”
There are a lot of incorrect assumptions given about prophets and their roles and abilities in this section of the LFMW. We need to be able to spot them and to know how to challenge them, because if we don’t ward against this kind of manipulation, it’ll eventually infect our minds. It’s how we sway from righteous teachings and beliefs into unrighteous ones.
Today the Church says the past leaders were in error because their statements were just “theories”.
Not exactly. Church leaders today say that those statements were theories because they were speculative statements based on opinion and ignorance rather than revelation. They may have thought at the time that they were preaching revealed doctrine, but we know today that they were not.
It’s okay to make mistakes and to be wrong occasionally. Most of us know what it feels like to receive personal revelation from God. He doesn’t often appear to us in person and dictate word-for-word what we record in our journals. He points us in the right direction and nudges along, and He gives us inspiration and understanding, but He also often gives us the basics and lets us figure out the details. It’s how we learn and grow, by stretching ourselves and discovering how to recognize His direction. Sometimes, we get those details wrong, because we’re still learning how to recognize His voice and what He’s saying to us.
It works the same way for our prophets. They may occasionally hear God’s voice or meet with the Savior face to face, but most of the time, their spiritual experiences are just like ours. They need to figure out what their impressions and directions mean, the same way we do. Sometimes, that involves trial and error. Sometimes, it means making the wrong choice before correcting their mistake and making the right one. Sometimes, it means relying on assumptions and inferences that turn out to be incorrect once more light has been shed.
We’ve all been there. We know what it’s like. We know that we’re not perfect and that sometimes, we get things wrong even when we’re trying our hardest to get it right. So, we need to grant our prophets and apostles that same level of understanding and grace. They’re trying their hardest to get it right, too. And you know what? They usually do get it right.
But expecting perfection from fallen, mortal men is an exercise in futility. Why do we insist on holding our prophets and apostles to an impossible standard that even God Himself doesn’t hold them to?
When I ask this question, the response I usually get is, “They’re prophets of God. They’re supposed to be better/smarter/wiser/more attuned to the Spirit than the rest of us.”
Well, where did they ever get that idea? Have they ever even read the Old Testament? Those prophets surely made their fair share of errors.
Yes, there are many areas in which President Nelson is more knowledgeable than I am. He knows considerably more than I do about the way the human body works, particularly the heart and lungs. He also has nearly 60 more years of experience in recognizing and following the Spirit than I do. He has a lot to teach me.
But if I don’t allow him the chance to be human and to make mistakes sometimes, I do both of us a huge disservice. It holds him to an impossible standard he can’t possibly live up to. For me, it weakens my capacity for charity and gives me a distorted view of not only the Priesthood keys but also personal and prophetic revelation, and even the Atonement itself.
Another common refrain is, “What do you expect when the Church teaches us songs like ‘Follow the Prophet, he knows the way’?”
What we expect is that when we teach kids simple, black-and-white concepts, their understanding will expand and deepen as they grow older.
For example, we teach kids not to talk to strangers, but as they get older, we expect them to realize that sometimes, they have to converse with strangers. When you buy something at the store, you usually have to talk to the cashier. When your internet goes down, you have to talk to the guy who comes out to fix it. When you take your car in for repairs, you have to speak to the mechanics. You have to speak to strangers in job interviews. Some of us have to engage with customers at work. Etc.
We teach children by degrees, the same way that the Spirit teaches us. We give them basic concepts when they’re young, and as their maturity and understanding grows, so does the way we discuss these topics.
So, if your thinking on this particular topic hasn’t grown or expanded since you were four years old and singing simplistic songs in Primary, that’s a problem. You should probably talk to somebody about that, because that isn’t normal cognitive function.
Applying the idea that the priesthood ban on blacks was just a theory also doesn’t make much sense when considering what Pres. David O. McKay stated, “…discrimination by the Church toward the Negro is not something which originated with man; but goes back into the beginning with God.”
This is dishonest framing with a cherry-picked and cropped quote. If you read the full statement, a very different picture of President McKay’s words appears. I’ll quote the relevant portion here:
From the beginning of this dispensation, Joseph Smith and all succeeding Presidents of the Church have taught that Negroes, while spirit children of a common Father, and the progeny of our earthly parents Adam and Eve, were not yet to receive the priesthood, for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which he has not made fully known to man.
Our living prophet, President David O. McKay, has said, “The seeming discrimination by the Church toward the Negro is not something which originated with man; but goes back to the beginning with God…
“Revelation assures us that this plan antedates man’s mortal existence, extending back to man’s preexistent state.”
President McKay has also said, “Sometime in God’s eternal plan, the Negro will be given the right to hold the priesthood.”
Until God reveals his will in this matter, to him whom we sustain as a prophet, we are bound by that same will. Priesthood, when it is conferred on any man comes as a blessing from God, not of men.
We feel nothing but love, compassion, and the deepest appreciation for the rich talents, endowments, and the earnest strivings of our Negro brothers and sisters. We are eager to share with men of all races the blessings of the gospel. We have no racially segregated congregations.
Were we the leaders of an enterprise created by ourselves and operated only according to our own earthly wisdom, it would be a simple thing to act according to popular will. But we believe that this work is directed by God and that the conferring of the priesthood must await his revelation. To do otherwise would be to deny the very premise on which the Church is established….
We join with those throughout the world who pry that all of the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ may in the due time of the Lord become available to men of faith everywhere. Until that time comes we must trust in God, in his wisdom, and in his tender mercy.
They were in error regarding the Priesthood restriction coming from the days of Joseph Smith, but these are not the words of hateful racists trying to hold Black people down. They believed they were following the direction of God, and we can’t say for certain that they weren’t.
Brigham Young said that this was ordained/decreed by the Lord and that he could not change it until the Lord Himself did. We don’t know if that belief came from a direct revelation or not, because Brigham believed that all knowledge or belief was revelation from God, whether it actually was or not. That muddies the water and makes it very difficult for us to figure out exactly what happened.
It does seem clear that however it began, the Lord did need to reverse it by revelation. Remember, President McKay told a room full of witnesses that he prayed for it repeatedly until the Lord told him to stop asking because, while it would change someday, it wouldn’t be under his tenure.
After that experience, I think the First Presidency was justified in saying in the statement above that it needed to be changed by revelation and that they couldn’t do it themselves. Whether that was just the Savior using a man-made policy for His own purposes or not, I don’t know.
I can’t say that the Priesthood restriction came about because of a revelation, and I can’t say that it didn’t come about because of a revelation. There’s conflicting, unclear information. What I can say for certain is that before 1978, multiple prophets believed it came from revelation and that the Lord would not allow them to change it.
If prophets claim to speak the will of Heavenly Father when their words can be later disavowed, then how was it that they were prophets at all?
What makes someone a prophet is not their ability to reason, to be infallible, or to always say everything exactly the way God would say it. A prophet is a prophet because he was called of God and holds all of the Priesthood keys to direct God’s church on Earth.
Part of a prophet’s job is to correct misunderstandings that have crept in—even if those misunderstandings came from a prior prophet who shared information that he believed was true before more light and knowledge was given to clarify the situation.
Prophets preach the Gospel according to their own understanding of the scriptures and their personal revelation. They go into their new calling the same way we all do, with our prior knowledge and beliefs backing us up. They aren’t suddenly gifted with infinite knowledge and wisdom when they’re set apart.
We can trust that these are men who love the Lord and are doing their utmost best to serve Him the very best they can. We can’t trust them to be perfect in all they say or do or think, but we can trust that they take their callings seriously and are doing the very best they can with the knowledge and light they have.
I trust them, and that’s why I’m willing to follow them. I don’t do it blindly, but I choose to do it, even knowing that they may make an occasional mistake.
This completely undermines the ‘prophet will never lead us astray’ principle.
No, it doesn’t, because “the prophet will never lead us astray” does not mean “the prophet will never make a mistake about anything.”
As we discussed above, that statement was regarding Priesthood keys and prophets leading the Church into widespread apostasy to the point where those keys were taken again from the Earth.
What doctrines currently attributed to God by today’s prophet can be discredited as just “theories” by future general authorities?
I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? That’s the beauty of a church led by modern-day prophets and ongoing revelation. As more revelation comes to light, older beliefs are clarified and corrected or deepened, depending on the situation.
We’re not members of a church that clings to revelation given to a specific group of people 5,000 years ago pertaining to their specific circumstances. Universal truths are still taught in every dispensation, but for revelation specific to our society and world today, we look to our current-day prophet. We don’t look to prophets who have been dead for decades, centuries, or millennia.
That’s a feature of our church, not a bug. If new light, knowledge, and understanding wasn’t waiting to come into the world, we wouldn’t have needed a single prophet since Adam.
It’s weird that Faulk is pushing the idea that revelation shouldn’t change over time. Do you see how manipulative that is? If he can cement that idea into your head, and you think about it for even two seconds, you start wondering what the point is of having prophets at all. Don’t fall into that trap. You’re smarter than that.
God sends us prophets because He still has much, much more to teach us. We just need to open ourselves up to embrace it. If we refuse to listen to our current prophets because we prefer the teachings of dead ones, He won’t give us any new revelation. If we don’t read the scriptures we already have, He won’t give us the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon or any other records He has waiting in the wings for us. If we won’t embrace His way of teaching us line by line, He won’t continue to teach us anything.
I’m not personally willing to give that up for Thomas Faulk or Jeremy Runnells, or any of the other ex-Mormon “prophets” out there. I prefer to listen to real ones.
Sarah Allen is relatively new in her affiliation with FAIR. By profession, she works in mortgage compliance and is a freelance copyeditor. An avid reader, she loves studying the Gospel and the history of the restored Church. After watching some of her friends lose their testimonies, she became interested in helping others through their faith crises. That’s when she began sharing what she’d learned through her studies. She’s grateful to those at FAIR who have given her the opportunity to share her testimony with a wider audience.
The post Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 23: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [D] appeared first on FAIR.
Evangelical Questions: What IS an Apostle anyway? by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about apostles. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that […]
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Acts 1–5 appeared first on FAIR.
Evangelical Questions: Views on Atonement by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about Atonement Theories. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals […]
The post Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19 appeared first on FAIR.
by Amber Johnson
When I returned from my mission in late 2015, all eight of my siblings, as well as the strong majority of my friends and co-workers, were active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Over the past seven years, more than forty of my friends and family have left the Church – some very visibly, others more quietly, but nearly all without any intention to return.
During the recent events of Hurricane Ian, I was drawn to a photograph of four tall palm trees, standing upright near a house that had been ravaged by floodwater. This image was oddly comforting. I understood that feeling of loneliness after a relentless storm, but it was mixed with a sense of surprise – confused, as it were, at the grace which so fully He proffers;[1] that Grace which allows a tree to withstand a hurricane.
At first, I assumed their fortitude was mainly due to deep roots, which is the easy metaphor – but it’s wrong. The roots of a palm rarely extend below three feet. Nor could their endurance be ascribed to maturity: a palm takes twenty years to be considered fully grown, and between 2000 – 2017, the state of Florida endured 79 major tropical storms, roughly three per year.[2] The real question isn’t how a mature and healthy tree survives a hurricane; rather, we should be asking how any trees at all manage to reach maturity in an environment that is so obviously hostile.
As I began to do more research, I found a recent study by Mary L. Duryea & Eliana Kampf,[3] which evaluated the aftermath of tropical storms and asked, “What makes a tree more wind resistant?”
I’d like to share a few of their findings here and draw four parallels to maintaining a strong belief system despite adversarial winds.
1 – Protect your central belief system
So, let’s start with something simple: not all trees are equally resistant to wind damage. If a pine tree loses its ancillary branches, it dies; it can’t gather or store energy. But “palms grow differently than other trees because they have one central terminal bud. If that bud is not damaged, palms may lose all their fronds and still survive.”
Dureyea and Kampf reference an image of a palm tree pierced through its trunk with a steel beam. Despite an obviously traumatic experience with the debris of a tropical storm, the tree still stood, because the central bud had remained intact. And I think this is an important point to acknowledge: When our central terminal bud of belief is faith in Jesus Christ, we can withstand personal distress and drop our ancillary beliefs without being destroyed.
2 – Drop the ancillary beliefs that are causing spiritual instability in your life
Which leads to my second principle: Don’t use ancillary beliefs as a replacement for faith in Jesus Christ. A palm tree drops its boughs because it knows it can regrow them, and it knows that the important thing is to protect the terminal bud.
As Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf says, “The gospel is so expansive that we could spend a lifetime of studying and scarcely scratch the surface. Imagine a target as tall and wide as the side of a barn that could represent the breadth of the gospel. We all have our favorite gospel hobbies – things that interest us, periods of history, church programs, doctrinal topics, or even single verses of scripture. And we might be tempted to mainly focus on these favorite topics of ours, but as large as the target of gospel teaching is, the bullseye […] is small. […] It is, love God and love others. Other things may be interesting to us; they may even be important. But they are not the center.”[4]
So, if you’re undergoing a stormy season in your spiritual life, consider temporarily dropping some of the ancillary beliefs that are causing instability. If your faith is being challenged by the actions of a leader whom you trusted, or if you can’t reconcile an obscure fragment of Church history with current practice and policies, perhaps set it aside for a time, and focus instead on building faith in Jesus Christ through obedience to His commandments.
3 – Don’t split your hierarchy of truth
My third suggestion: To increase your resistance to the winds and storms of the last days, don’t split your hierarchy of truth. Dureyea and Kampf found that trees with a split trunk, which diverged at the same point to form two equally strong arms, were highly susceptible to hurricanes. A tree with a split trunk might make it through several tropical storms, but when a hurricane came through, they were the first to go. And I think there’s a reason for that.
When God tells us we cannot love God and Mammon, I think He means it literally. He isn’t saying, “You shouldn’t love Mammon;” He’s saying, “You can’t.” It is agonizing to try to hold two opposing belief systems simultaneously, with equal depths of conviction. In many ways, belief in Christ is very congruent with widely held beliefs: religion doesn’t contradict science, or ethics and morals, or basic norms of community behavior. However, there are some aspects of modern thought which are indeed in conflict with the restored doctrine of Jesus Christ. It’s possible to coexist with these alternate value systems as long as we accept that they are fundamentally divergent. Yet when we can’t let go, when we try to balance two opposing ideas on the clear sharp edge of a single point, we’re in a dangerous and fragile position.
If you are aware that you are holding two mutually exclusive ideas in your mind, take the time to do the work and identify which you value more highly, and then, work with God to understand His position on these thorny issues better. He knows and empathizes with our confusion and pain over aspects of the gospel that can seem hard to reconcile. He has promised ‘a time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld,’[5] and I believe He means it literally. I trust that answers will certainly come in the hereafter, but I also have found that God bestows peace liberally in the here and now.
4 – Regrow after the storm
Finally, in order to remain steadfast and immovable, actively work to regrow your faith after a storm. Duryea and Kampf extensively detail specific actions that communities should take in order to protect their urban forests, before and after a tropical storm. It’s essential that we prioritize regrowth in our own lives as well.
The last days are after all still days – not the endless night before our Lord and Savior redeems us all. There’s still light – and I still have a responsibility to obtain that light, to put out new growth, to reach further and add to the truths that I already cherish. I’m still responsible to nourish my own faith until the day that Christ comes again, and we see him as he is. I have to assume that in three or six or twelve months another hurricane will blow in and cause more damage to my ancillary beliefs. But I do believe, I have to believe, that Jesus Christ will redeem us, will save us, will in fact wipe the tears from off our faces and bring us home to him.
I am convinced that there is hope and healing to be found. There is a way to balance every paradox and comfort every aching heart. There are answers and balance and an infinite number of ways to say yes in the Plan of Happiness. Regardless of your sexuality, political orientation, personal preferences, or past choices, there is a place for you in the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. He accepts you as you are today, and He extends a path for a stronger, braver, better tomorrow. His great gift, of change in this life and lasting change in the world to come, is within the grasp of each person who chooses to exercise faith in Jesus Christ. It is available to you. He is waiting to heal your soul and pour out peace.
———
-
Gabriel, C. H. (1985). I Stand All Amazed. In Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (p. 193).
-
Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, November 5). List of Florida hurricanes (2000–present). Wikipedia. Retrieved November 5, 2022.
-
Duryea, M. L.; Kampf, E. F. (2017). Wind and Trees: Lessons Learned from Hurricanes . The Urban Forest Hurricane Recovery Program, FOR 118, 1–17.
-
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Teaching in the Savior’s Way with Elder Uchtdorf. Retrieved November 5, 2022.
-
Doctrine and Covenants 121:28.
Amber Edgecomb Johnson graduated in 2017 with a degree in Communications from Utah Valley University. She subsequently worked as a city librarian, teacher, and high school speech and debate coach. Amber currently resides in Utah County with her husband and three children.
The post Wind & Trees: Remaining Steadfast and Immovable in the Storms of Life appeared first on FAIR.
A Gourd, a Worm, and an East Wind: Discovering God’s Extensions of Love in the Book of Jonahby Matt Crawford
Jonah called Gath-hepher home—a town which was west of the present-day Sea of Galilee (see 2 Kings 14:25). When the Lord called Jonah on a mission from his comfortable home to the Assyrian city of Nineveh,[1] he did not hesitate to act. Jonah immediately “rose up to flee unto Tarshish” (Jonah 1:3).[2]
Jonah may have run away from the mission call to Nineveh because one of Israel’s enemies, the Assyrians, lived there. The Assyrians were known to regularly torture and kill their captives, and then gruesomely desecrate their bodies.[3] While we do not know if Jonah was afraid of physical pain, we do know that he hated Assyrians and was afraid that they would repent and receive God’s mercy if he fulfilled his mission (see Jonah 4:2).
Rejecting God’s call, Jonah “paid the fare” (Jonah 1:3) for passage on a ship to Tarshish. One commentator notes that Jonah probably paid a considerable sum of money because the journey to Tarshish could take up to one year—“evidently because of the need to restock provisions frequently at ports along the way, wait for favorable winds, and trade the cargo.”[4] At one point Jonah slept soundly below deck while the ship’s crew thrashed through a storm (see Jonah 1:5). The storm was so brutal that the sailors expected the ship to sink, unless they prayed to their gods and tossed trade goods overboard to lighten the load (see Jonah 1:5). When the shipmaster found Jonah asleep, the captain woke him up and asked him to pray to God (see Jonah 1:6). When prayer did not lessen the intensity of the storm, the crew cast lots.
Proverbs 16:33 declares that “the lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof [the outcome] is of the Lord” (see also Proverbs 18:18). Casting lots was a trusted source of divine intervention during Old Testament times because it allowed the Lord to guide who was chosen—He could order the pieces so that a certain person was picked. Pieces of rock or wood were placed in a container, and, either by rolling all the pieces out of the container or inviting each participant to take a piece out of the container, led to the Lord’s decision (see Joshua 21:4–8; Nehemiah 10:34; 1 Nephi 3:11). In more recent times we might liken lot casting to drawing straws—whoever draws the shortest is the chosen one.[5]
When the sailors aboard the ship cast lots, “the lot fell upon Jonah” (Jonah 1:7). Despite his efforts to run from God’s call, the Lord is not giving up on the reluctant prophet. God continues to reach out toward Jonah through a storm and the lot. Jolted, Jonah confessed to the sailors that the storm was because he ran from God. Surprised, the crew questioned: “Why hast thou done this?” (Jonah 1:9). The sailors asked what could be done to still the storm. Fully realizing that his poor decision to run from the Lord was now affecting others, Jonah came to the following conclusion: “Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you” (Jonah 1:12). The sailors initially refused to comply with his wish. Instead, they “rowed hard to bring [the ship] to the land,” but in the end, “they could not” (Jonah 1:13). Thus, the men “took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging” (Jonah 1:15).
When Jonah hit the water, he recalled, “billows and . . . waves passed over me. The weeds were wrapped about mine head [and] I went down to the bottoms” of the sea (Jonah 2:5–6). Fearing that this was the end, Jonah’s “soul fainted” but then he “remembered the Lord” through prayer (Jonah 2:7). It appears that the prayer brought the great fish—potentially some type of whale—and it swallowed the prophet. The scriptures reveal that this was no ordinary experience: “The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” (Jonah 1:17; emphasis added). To prepare this great fish for Jonah, the Lord knew when the great fish needed to be born, He knew the great fish’s habits, He knew that the great fish had to be in the vicinity when the men threw Jonah overboard, and He needed a creature big enough to complete the job. Such preparation for one frightened missionary begs the question, If the Lord will prepare a great fish, a game of lots, a storm, or a mission call for a rebellious disciple, what will He do for each of us?
After Jonah is swallowed by the great fish he continued to pray: “Out of the belly of hell cried I” (Jonah 2:2). Like Jonah, we may at times be headed in the wrong direction, but change is possible. The book of Jonah is an extremely detailed case of the Lord’s multiple maneuverings to save a single soul. Jonah acknowledged his own “lying vanities,” his selfishness, and “vowed” to be more faithful to the Lord’s will (Jonah 2:8–9). After three days and nights “the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:10).[6] Once free from the fish “the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh. . . . So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh” (Jonah 3:1–3).
The prophet promptly enters the city and prophecies that in forty days “Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). The inhabitants of the city, including the king, listened to Jonah’s teachings and began to repent. The people fasted, wore sackcloth as a demonstration to God that they were humbly pleading for forgiveness, and the king issued a decree which encouraged the entire populace to repent (see Jonah 3:5–9). The measures proved successful because “God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way and repented; and God turned away the evil that he had said he would bring upon them” (JST Jonah 3:10).[7]
We expect Jonah to be doing back flips of joy, but the final chapter begins: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry” (Jonah 4:1). What displeased him? How can he be angry? Jonah prayed while upset and explained his reason: “When I was yet in my country . . . I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness” (Jonah 4:2). In other words: “Lord, when I was at home I knew of Thy goodness and patience toward even the most despicable of people. That is why I headed toward Tarshish and not Nineveh. I did not want Thee to forgive and bless the inhabitants of Nineveh.” Jonah vehemently hated the Ninevites—they were not part of covenant Israel and what is more they were Israel’s sworn enemies. Jonah did not want them to change and be blessed, he wanted them to sin and suffer. Jonah then concluded his prayer by asking the Lord to “take . . . my life from me; . . . for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:3).
After Jonah’s audacious reply, the Lord, once again, shows Jonah mercy and patience—mercy and patience the Lord just demonstrated toward those of Nineveh, but which Jonah spurned. The Lord utters the simple question, “Doest thou well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4). There is no harsh rebuke, no flash of lightning which sizzles Jonah’s flesh, no thunder from heaven to scare Jonah into a feeling of gratitude, but a simple question which may, if the prophet allows, work on his heart.
After the Lord asks Jonah if his anger is justifiable, the prophet refuses to respond. Was Jonah stung by the question or pierced by the Lord’s keen insight? The question seemed to infuriate Jonah so much that he gives the Lord the silent treatment. Like a teenager mad at his parents, or a husband after a tiff with his wife, Jonah turns and walks away from the situation, refusing to respond.
Jonah exited the city proper and headed east (see Jonah 4:5). Then he probably scaled part of the hills located in that direction and waited and watched Nineveh.[8] Jonah seems unconvinced that the repentant state of the people of Nineveh is permanent. He is waiting, hoping, for the city to “be overthrown” after “forty days” as he originally prophesied (Jonah 3:4). While he waited, he built himself a booth or hut to provide shade—perhaps fashioned of overlaid sticks and branches, as was done for a feast required by the Law of Moses (see Leviticus 23:42; Nehemiah 8:14–15). The booth or hut evidently provided some shade, but it was probably hastily constructed from errant sticks from the vicinity. If so, Jonah’s comfort level and shade was minimal—sunshine would have streamed through the sticks. Whatever its construction, the booth was probably intended to be a physical, non-verbal sign that the Lord was wrong, and Jonah was right. Jonah’s thoughts may have ventured into this line of reasoning: If I wait here long enough the Lord will see Nineveh destroyed. Despite the almost worthless hut and Jonah’s constant moodiness the Lord provided a miracle.
While the booth provided a minimal amount of shade from the blazing sun, the “Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd” (Jonah 4:6). We do not know the specific type of plant[9] which grew overnight to such a mass that it shaded Jonah (see Jonah 4:10). Yet, as was the case with the call, the storm, the game of lots, and the great fish, this “gourd” was “prepared” for Jonah (Jonah 4:6). The Lord knew that Jonah would go up on the hill and pout, and so the seed of this plant was in the right place at the right time to provide physical comfort for the prophet. God really does know our moods and routines. Despite Jonah’s gladness for the shade—the only positive emotion Jonah shows in this book—the shadow would not last.
As was the case with the storm, the lot, the great fish, and the gourd, the Lord had “prepared” other things for Jonah (Jonah 4:7). A worm “smote the gourd that it withered” a day after its astonishing growth, and a “vehement east wind” probably knocked over the booth[10] and the “the sun [once again] beat upon [Jonah’s] head” (Jonah 4:7–8). While the “vehement east wind” seems to indicate the Lord’s displeasure with Jonah’s behavior,[11] God still does not give up on this angry, uncomfortable child. Ultimately, the quick growing leafy plant served as tangible evidence of the Lord’s mercy—His constant readiness to forgive Nineveh and Jonah—while the equally fast demise of the gourd and the blasts of hot air presented proofs that without God’s goodness ruin follows.
To underscore these eternal truths, the Lord pointed out the folly of Jonah’s anger toward the inhabitants of Nineveh by asking, “Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?” The prophet retorted, “I do well to be angry” (Jonah 4:9). Patiently, the Lord connected the dots for Jonah: “Thou has had pity on the gourd…should not I spare Nineveh, that great city…?” (Jonah 4:10–11). In other words, “Your appreciation and love for the gourd is but a shadow of the care and love I have for you and the Assyrians of Nineveh.”
In short, every person is valuable to God. He simply will not give up or stop trying to save His children. From a city of Assyrians to a frustrated, bitter servant sitting next to a withered gourd, God cares for, watches over, and strives to bring everyone back home to heaven.
More Come, Follow Me resources here.
[1] Nineveh was probably located in modern-day Iraq Pictoral Bible Dictionary, ed., Merrill C. Tenney (Nashville, Tennessee: The Soutwestern Company, 1976), s.v. “Nineveh.”
[2] It is likely that Tarshish was located in modern Spain and known for its successful trade industry (see Ezekiel 27:12); Pictoral Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Tarshish.”
[3] Erika Belibtreu, “Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death,” Biblical Archaeology Review, 17 no. 1 (1991): 51–61, 75.
[4] Uriel Simon, The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999), 6.
[5] For more information regarding casting lots see Joh. Lindblom Lund “Lot-Casting in the Old Testament,” Vestus Testamentum 12, facs. 2 (April 1962): 164–178.
[6] Where the great fish “vomited out” Jonah is a matter of debate. One tradition holds that the great fish deposited Jonah to a spot south of Jaffa—the port city where Jonah boarded the ship days earlier (see Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Atlas of the Crusades [New York: Facts on File, 1990], 43; see also John MacArthur, The MacArthur Bible Commenatry [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2005], 1011). Others suggest that the fish put Jonah in ancient Alexandretta—now İskenderun in modern-day Turkey (see The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, ed. George Arthur Buttrick, 5 vols. [Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1962–1976] s.v. “Jonah, Book of,” 2:965). The ancient historian Josephus reported that Jonah was disgorged on the shore of the Euxine or Black Sea (see Josephus: Complete Works [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1960], 208).
[7] One commentator notes that the Hebrew text implies that the Assyrians only ritually repented. That is, they repented the only way that they knew how: through sackcloth and fasting. “Ritual response and ethical tidying up are precisely what one would expect from pagan Assyrians—and from every indication, they are still just that, despite the fact that they have taken a step in the right direction.” John H. Walton, “The Object Lesson of Jonah 4:5–7 and the Purpose of the Book of Jonah,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 2 (1992): 53–54.
[8] See The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed., Ididore Singer, 12 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1901–1906), s.v. “Nineveh,” 12:311.
[9] The most likely was a type of giant castor bean or oil plant. Jules Janick and Harry S. Paris, “Jonah and the ‘Gourd,’ at Nineveh: Consequences of a Classic Mistranslation,” 349–357; paper presented at North Carolina State University’s Cucurbitaceae Conference September 17–21, 2006. See also Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., 22 vols. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), s.v. “Castor-Oil Plant,” 4:516.
[10] See Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 304.
[11] Alonzo L. Gaskill, The Lost Language of Symbolism: An Essential Guide for Recognizing and Interpreting Symbols of the Gospel (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 153–154.
Matt Crawford is a husband, father, teacher, and writer. He resides with his family in Layton, Utah.
The post Come, Follow Me Week 48 – Jonah; Micah appeared first on FAIR.
Amos and Prophets*by Daniel Ortner*
Amos is considered one of the “minor” prophets. But Amos 3:7 is a verse that is one of the more frequently cited in General Conference. According to the BYU Scripture Citation Index, it has been cited around 109 times. That’s more than any single psalm in the book of Psalms (not more than the whole book of Psalms). More than whole books of the Old Testament such as Judges, Ruth, and Esther. More than a lot of well known verses in the New Testament or Book of Mormon. And even about as frequently as 1 Nephi 3:7. It is a pretty big deal. Ultimately the popularity of this verse says a lot about our devotion to following the Lord’s prophet and apostles.
The context of Amos can enrich our appreciation for the Lord’s guarantee that “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7). In the first verse of the book, we read that his prophecy was received “two years before the earthquake.” (Amos 1:1). Scholars believe that this quake took place in around 750 B.C. and measured around an 8.2 on the richter scale, which is more intense than the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
Amos’s words are filled with warnings of this massive destruction that the Lord would bring to Israel and to the neighboring nations, including allusions to quaking and shaking that seem eerily prophetic (Amos 9:1). Through his servant, God offers a desperate plea for repentance. But unfortunately we know that the people did not repent and that by the time these words were compiled into a book the warnings of Amos were fulfilled. God of course does not reveal every single tragedy or disaster to his prophets with this degree of specificity. Natural disasters, war, and disease occur without warning. And it isn’t clear whether Amos knew exactly what would happen and when it would occur. But if we listen to the words of our prophet and apostles, we will be prepared for the disasters that come our way and we will be able to stand firm.
Those principles apply with full force in our day. I absolutely adored a recent devotional at BYU-Hawaii by Sister Sheri Dew entitled “Prophets Can See Around Corners.” Her talk was a powerful declaration of how God speaks to his Prophets and Apostles to help warn us of danger.
Sister Dew pointed to countless examples of where prophetic inspiration was ultimately prophetic such as the effort to bring smartphones to missionaries which was executed just in time for the COVID-19 Pandemic or her decision to follow President Hinckley’s advice to get out of debt shortly before the 2008 financial crisis. The point isn’t that President Nelson or President Hinckley knew precisely about the COVID-19 pandemic or about the 2008 financial crisis anymore than that Amos necessarily knew the exact date and time of the earthquake that was coming. But God spoke through his servant and revealed what was around the corner. Those who followed their advice were blessed with protection and preparation. Those who didn’t were left unprepared and suffered the negative consequences.
As Sister Dew explained: “Prophets see things we cannot see because the Lord does ‘nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.’ This is why prophets make us smarter than any other leaders or influencers on earth. Prophets help us see dangers we cannot yet see and opportunities we can’t even imagine.”
Many of us have friends or family members who have expressed their concern that as Latter-day Saints we put too much trust in the prophet and apostles and that we are going to be led astray. But as Sister Dew explained, it is ultimately not President Nelson at the head of the Church but Jesus Christ who speaks through his servants the prophets and apostles:
Brothers and sisters, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, acting unitedly, will never send the Church in the wrong direction. And here is why: Because even THE prophet is not the head of this Church. Jesus Christ is, and He is perfect. Prophets take their instructions from Him who knows all, sees all, and understands all things. . . .
In this Church, we are never dependent solely upon mortal men, as inspired as they may be. When we follow the prophet, we are actually following and placing our trust in Jesus Christ. For He has promised that His words will all be fulfilled, ‘whether by [His] own voice or by the voice of [His] servants, it is the same.’
It is vital that each of us have an abiding testimony that we are being led by a living prophet and apostles. Our spiritual safety desperately depends on it.
Sister dew discussed several powerful principles that can help us gain confidence in the teachings of the prophets:
First, we can trust that prophets do not have their own personal agenda. Instead, “[t]heir agenda is the Lord’s. And yet, too often we listen to them last.”
Second, we can trust that prophets will teach divine truth even when it is unpopular:
Apostles are under divine mandate to teach truth, even when truth is unpopular. They are pressured to change the Lord’s doctrine to make it more palatable, but the doctrine doesn’t belong to them and is not theirs to change. They’re accused of being out of touch, but I know of no group who is more in touch with the realities and complexities of life.
I promise you that no leaders on earth are more honest with you than prophets are. And no leaders care more about you and your future.
Third, we can pay close attention to the powerful spirit that testifies to us when a prophet speaks:
The Holy Ghost is eager to bear witness of prophets, seers, and revelators and the priesthood keys they hold. It is the presence of the keys we feel so profoundly when a prophet enters the room. But you don’t have to be in the presence of a prophet to gain a spiritual witness of his divine mantle.
If you want to know if fifteen prophets walk the earth today, pray to know. Ask humbly and sincerely, and the Holy Ghost will bear witness to you. I promise you that.
Prophets, seers, and revelators are, very simply, one of God’s greatest gifts to His children.
Fourth, we can try to implement the principles that the Prophet teaches us. We can take it seriously and experience the positive dividends of following his counsel.
Fifth, we need not be surprised if prophets and apostles are unpopular or rejected: “When prophets refuse to embrace the disintegration of morals championed by a rabidly secular society, that does not mean prophets are wrong. Sustaining prophets in today’s world takes faith—but not faith in them, faith in Jesus Christ, who called them.”
We likewise must not “be deceived by activists who believe their passion for a cause gives them permission to censure prophets. Don’t turn your back on those who have all priesthood keys and who can help you see around corners.”
Finally, we must let prophetic teachings be our spiritual anchor. If we do so the promises are powerful and profound:
Your greatest spiritual safety will come by following the prophet. My dear friends, there may be times when you find yourself wrestling with teachings from prophets. But this isn’t rocket science. I can promise you two things: First, you will question your testimony all your life if you do two things: break your covenants and turn your back on prophets. But the reverse is also true: You will enjoy a growing testimony all of your life if you keep your covenants and follow the prophet. That is a promise.
I personally have a strong testimony that we are led by a living Prophet and that God reveals to President Nelson and other Apostles everything that is needed for our spiritual peace and safety in these latter-days. Nothing is being withheld that is needful for us to be able to stay faithful on the covenant path. I have tragically seen too many people I care about wander off that path by first beginning to question and turn their back on prophets and then eventually beginning to break their covenants. I hope that Amos’s prophetic promise and Sheri Dew’s inspired words will help us recommit to following the Lord’s anointed as they help to illuminate the way back to the Savior.
More Come, Follow Me resources here.
Daniel Ortner is a public interest lawyer who focuses on the First Amendment. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an undergraduate from a Jewish background.
The post Come, Follow Me Week 47 – Amos; Obadiah appeared first on FAIR.
Seven years ago, a FAIR conference presentation identified a harmful ideology among some members of the Church of Jesus Christ. It claims that God gives revelations, visits, and special priesthood ordinations to individuals outside of church leadership, and that faithful church members should follow and obey those individuals, and believe the truth of their purported […]
The post Evaluating Claims that Contradict the Prophets appeared first on FAIR.
Websites critical of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are popping up regularly, some gaining more traction than others. FAIR has responded specifically to some of them, like the so-called “CES Letter,” “Letter to My Wife,” and MormonThink. There are many other similar websites that FAIR has not responded to, partly because the […]
The post Yet another critical website pretending to be something it’s not – “LDS Discussions” appeared first on FAIR.
The Asked King and the Beloved King-to-be: Saul, David, and Ancient Israel’s Rejection of the Lord’s Kingship by Matthew L. Bowen The names of ancient Israel’s first two major[1] royal figures, Saul and David, have clear, distinctive meanings. Saul (šāʾûl) means ‘asked’ and David (dāwid or dāwîd) means ‘beloved.’ The Deuteronomistic editor and narrator[2] of […]
The post Come, Follow Me Week 25 – 1 Samuel 8–10; 13; 15–18 appeared first on FAIR.
Friends, Today a new television series has been released titled Under the Banner of Heaven. It is based on a best-selling book by that same name, published in 2003, written by Jon Krakauer. The book, and now the television series, talks about the 1984 horrific murders of Brenda Lafferty, and her 15-month-old daughter Erica, by Dan […]
The post Under the Banner of Heaven: Fact vs Fiction appeared first on FAIR.
by Scott Gordon This week, with Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Currently, 63% of Americans identify as Christian. This is down from 75% just 10 years ago. Those who are religiously unaffiliated, sometimes referred to as “nones,” has risen to almost 30% of the US population. This is […]
The post Come, Follow Me Week 16 – Easter appeared first on FAIR.
by Robert Hill Every six months, dating back to 1840, Latter-day Saints gather as a worldwide congregation to worship, sing and learn at the feet of leaders we consider living prophets. It’s a wonderful time full of the Spirit of God. But recently, I can’t help feeling I miss the way General Conference used to be. […]
The post Come Listen to a Prophet’s Voice appeared first on FAIR.
The world is full of delightful people pursuing delightful accomplishments, and the gospel promotes love, hope, and unity. How blessed the day when we’ll be able to think only of lovely and praiseworthy things! Unfortunately, scripture’s plain warnings about sin and wickedness are still relevant, and we can’t just ignore them no matter how hard […]
The post The Motte, the Bailey, and the Gospel of Instagram appeared first on FAIR.
This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. John Gee, Lessons on Doing Apologetics John Gee’s books are for sale in the FAIR bookstore. John Gee is […]
The post FAIR Conference Podcast #75 – John Gee, “Lessons on Doing Apologetics” appeared first on FAIR.
This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. Keith A. Erekson, Real Vs. Rumor Keith’s book is available in the FAIR bookstore. Keith Erekson is an award-winning […]
The post FAIR Conference Podcast #68 – Keith A. Erekson, “Real Vs. Rumor” appeared first on FAIR.
Doctrine and Covenants 124 includes instructions to the prophet Joseph Smith to “show” selected others “the keys whereby [they] may ask and receive” blessings (D&C 124: 95, 97). This seems to be an allusion to “the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the holy Priesthood” that are taught in the endowment (Brigham Young, […]
The post “The keys whereby he may ask and receive” (D&C 124) appeared first on FAIR.
This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2021 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. Jeffrey Thayne, Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim A transcript is available here. Jeffrey’s book, […]
The post FAIR Conference Podcast #64 – Jeffrey Thayne, “Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim” appeared first on FAIR.
By Cassandra Hedelius In 1840, John C. Bennett was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. His wife and children didn’t come with him to Nauvoo, and it’s not clear what his original motive was for posing as a bachelor instead of being truthful about his family status. His eventual motive was extremely […]
The post Come, Follow Me Week 44 – Doctrine and Covenants 124 appeared first on FAIR.
In the summer of 1830, while The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was yet in its infancy, Oliver Cowdery, “the second elder of [the] church” (D&C 20:3), wrote Joseph Smith, saying, “I command you in the name of God to erase those words, that no priestcraft be amongst us.” Oliver Cowdery was referring […]
The post Lessons from Oliver Cowdery for Today appeared first on FAIR.
[Cross-posted from Mike Ash’s personal blog.] My first book attempted to assuage the faith-crisis concerns of struggling Latter-day Saints. The work continues. The First Step At the risk of sounding boastful, I’ve authored three books (with a fourth on the way) and hundreds of articles (both in print and on-line) in the hopes of reinforcing […]
The post Shaken Faith Syndrome: Early to the Party, But Still Relevant appeared first on FAIR.
A House of Order, a House of God: Recycled Challenges to the Legitimacy of the Church by Cassandra Hedelius (This is from a presentation given at the 2015 FairMormon Conference) I. Introduction to Mormon Gnosticism Apologetics is a very broad field and different topics can involve extremely different audiences. My topic today is a little […]
The post Come, Follow Me Week 18 – Doctrine & Covenants 45 appeared first on FAIR.
Thomas Marsh and the Individualized Instructions of Doctrine & Covenants 30-36 by Steve Densley Various sections of the Doctrine and Covenants consist of instructions to specific individuals. It may be that this is illustrated no better than in sections 30 through 36. In these sections we read about individualized revelations directed to various men […]
The post Come, Follow Me Week 15 – Doctrine & Covenants 30-36 appeared first on FAIR.
What is Enduring to the End? Once we have entered into the covenant path that leads to eternal life, what more is there to do? We “must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men;” we must “endure to the end” […]
The post Enduring in Faith to the End: “Take Heed That No Man Deceive You” appeared first on FAIR.
This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!) We are also now selling tickets to the 2020 (Virtual) FairMormon […]
The post FairMormon Conference Podcast #58 – Elder Bruce C. and Sister Marie K. Hafen, “Faith is Not Blind” appeared first on FAIR.
In recent news coverage of Chad and Lori Vallow Daybell, such as this article in the East Idaho News, people within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may look at the situation as a warning against looking beyond the mark. However, it is important that those outside of the Church realize that they […]
The post In the News: Chad and Lori Daybell and Gospel Extremism appeared first on FAIR.
As my contribution to your home centered study of 1 and 2 Thessalonians this week, I theorize about what happened to early Christianity after the death of the apostles. As leadership in the early Church transitioned from apostles to local bishops, the priesthood keys[1] bestowed on Peter(Matthew 16:19) and the apostles (Matthew 18:18) were lost. […]
The post A Guide to the First Century Apostasy appeared first on FAIR.
by Delisa Hargrove, cross-posted from LDS Blogs In much of the northern hemisphere, September begins a season where many transformations occur. Leaves change colors and fall from the trees. Many plants and flowers lose their vibrant leaves and petals and become dormant. The morning chatter of birds gives way to wind’s blustery chatter. Warm weather […]
The post Transforming Themselves to Be Apostles appeared first on FAIR.
This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming. Lynne Hilton Wilson, Peter and Paul’s Paradoxical Passages on Women Transcript available here. Dr. Lynne Hilton Wilson lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband […]
The post FairMormon Conference Podcast #32 – Lynne Hilton Wilson, “Peter and Paul’s Paradoxical Passages on Women” appeared first on FAIR.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). We take this literally for the words “way” and “life,” but what if we also took it literally for the word “truth”? In their book Who What is Truth? Reframing Our Questions for a Richer Faith, that is exactly what authors Jeffrey […]
The post Book Review – Who is Truth? Reframing Our Questions for a Richer Faith appeared first on FAIR.
This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This episode is a presentation from our conference earlier this year. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the 2018 conference, you can still purchase video streaming. Elder Kevin W. Pearson, A Sacred and Imperative Duty Written talk available here. Elder Kevin W. Pearson was sustained as a […]
The post FairMormon Conference Podcast #19 – Elder Kevin W. Pearson, “A Sacred and Imperative Duty” appeared first on FAIR.
This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This episode is a presentation from 2017. If you would like to watch the presentations from the conference we had earlier this month, you can still purchase video streaming. Scott Petersen, Jesus Christ, the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever: A Restoration of Primitive Christianity Transcript available here. Scott is […]
The post FairMormon Conference Podcast #12 – Scott Petersen, “Jesus Christ, the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever: A Restoration of Primitive Christianity” appeared first on FAIR.
Cross-posted from Truth Will Prevail by Dennis B. Horne We now look as far as history allows into the lives and doings of three largely forgotten men (and their associates), to tell a story of strange doctrine, misplaced loyalty, and exasperated concern. In 1881, Bishop Orson F. Whitney was called on a mission to England, where […]
The post The Strange Saga of a False Prophet: Charles W. Stayner, Orson F. Whitney, and George Q. Cannon appeared first on FAIR.