Vort

Thanks for your charitable attitude, Justice. Ha! Ha! I really put one over on him! I guess DapperDan missed out on warning Justice! Now he's MINE, ALL MINE! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Uh...did I just say that out loud?

You appear to have misunderstood me. Perhaps I explained it poorly. This question is all about the law of consecration, but has nothing to do with the united order. By all means, use all of the teachings on the law of consecration in your decision. Just don't confuse those teachings with specifications of living a united order. In the same vein, I might say, Use all scripture about living the law of chastity that you can find, but don't focus on specifics of the workings of plural marriage. We do not live plural marriage (or the united order), but we are fully under obligation to live the covenant of the law of chastity (and of consecration). No snark taken. The simplest answer is, you don't have to. If you did have to, it wouldn't make much of a question. This is a truly excellent question. I think that it really hits near the heart of what I'm trying to ask. Perhaps it deserves its own thread.

So that we can nurse our children?

Can you demonstrate this? So what happens when you express your concerns to the bishop, and he says, "Yes, I know, but this is still what I'm asking you to do"? Shortly after the birth of our fourth child, my wife was asked to teach seminary. She had a nursing newborn and three other children she was homeschooling. She explained this to the bishop, and he responded, "Yes, I know, but I really feel that you should do this." She accepted, and it was very, very hard for her. But it was also responsible for two years of the most amazing spiritual growth I have ever seen. Nor was that part of my hypothetical. Nothing about moving to Zion. Nothing about establishing a united order. Just a simple question: Will you sign over your house and property to the Church? My understanding is that you have already given over your possessions to the building of the kingdom of God. It's not a matter of "I'll do it if I am asked"; it's already done from the moment you made your covenant. If my understanding in this is correct, then the bishop is merely requesting a transfer of funds, not dissimilar to asking the high priest group to give $20 of their funds to the Primary.

Does the CHI really specify somewhere that bishops are never to ask their ward members for donations? Don't know that it is. Of course, praying about the Book of Mormon is something that the Book of Mormon itself instructs. And if your bishop told you to pray about going on a mission, then as an agent of God he was authorized to do so. I don't recall ever praying about whether I should serve a mission. What would have been the point? I knew my duty. That's the point, you can't.And THAT is my point. If you can't determine whether or not the bishop is within his "rights" -- all you know is that he's the bishop and he has made a request of you -- do you obey or do you not obey? I suppose some might say, "That's an impossible scenario. God would always answer in such a situation." Well, I disagree. But if you believe that, then the question does indeed become unanswerable, because it's impossible. But as I said, I don't believe it's impossible at all.

Sorry, I missed this one. Perhaps we don't. But since we are not talking about the united order (which I'm pretty sure is the topic of the scriptures you're referring to), it does not matter. We are not re-establishing the united order; your bishop has simply asked you to give your substance to the Church. Do you obey, or not?

No. I am saying that if the bishop asked to take my 19-year-old daughter as a second wife, that act would be adulterous. I don't know. I suppose I would ultimately leave that decision to my daughter. Yes. The move to taking off all your clothes and then getting in bed with someone is EXACTLY what sex is. That doesn't mean that when the doctor asks you to remove all your clothes, s/he wants to have sex with you. That was my original question. How is that "obsessive"? What on earth are you talking about? I never said what authority was "necessary". I asked if you would do as your bishop requested. Are personal insults really necessary, Faded? I'm rather sensitive about my thick skull, if you must know, and I would appreciate it if you didn't mock me for it. Please demonstrate this. It may be true, but I don't believe it on your say-so. If my hypothesis is in fact flawed, then you are right. Please establish that I am in error. Is not the bishop an agent for the Church? What level of agent for the Church would you require before deciding to obey?

So Vanhin has weighed in with a straightforward answer: He would not obey the bishop's request, because he does not believe the bishop has any authority to make such requests. Thanks, Vanhin. I appreciate your forthright response. What makes you think the bishop has no such authority? As I understand it, the bishops were responsible for setting the ward budget donations in times past. Do you believe that authority was taken from the office of bishop/ward presiding high priest? Or do you believe that the bishop never actually had authority to set dollar amounts, and that the Church was acting contrary to divine law? Perhaps more to the point: Is there any man on earth who does have authority to ask you for $10 more per month? If so, who? The way I know what is counterfeit, Vanhin? What is the antecedent to "it"?

I specified that his direction was that you sign over your house to the Church, not to him personally. (Though I am not sure this makes a bit of difference in what the reaction should be, but to reduce listener interference, I included that stipulation.) And you may well be right. Regardless: What happens if you do not receive an answer to your query, even when you are convinced (as I was) that you are asking within your rights and that you should receive an answer? If no answer is forthcoming, how do you proceed? Do you tell the bishop to wait indefinitely? Do you say, "No answer means no donation"? Or do you say, "My default is to obey unless I have sufficient reason not to"? I don't understand. How would you determine from my scenario whether or not the bishop was "within his rights"?

Of course not. That would be a violation of covenant, of the law of chastity. I am no adulterer, and would certainly not willingly allow my precious daughter to be one. This has nothing to do with living the united order. I never mentioned anything about that. In the hypothetical situation, your bishop has not invited you to join any united order. He has just requested that you sign over your house to the Church. You are making unwarranted assumptions. No one has said anything about the united order. You do not know this. In any case, it's irrelevant. I'm asking a hypothetical question. Answering it with, "Well, I don't think that's really very likely" is just another way of not answering it.

So then, are you saying that you would do as the bishop requests and sign over your house?

Agreed. Yet while he was alive, your grandfather was still a spirit, was he not? Yet he was still a physical being, as well. Same is true with you, with me, and with six billion other people on the earth. Then why not with God? Why does God's being "a spirit" somehow preclude him from having a body -- a thing which we already know is true, because the Bible clearly witnessed of Christ's literal, physical resurrection? And Jesus Christ himself is God. Ergo, God has a body. I think "spirit" is a form of matter. As Joseph Smith taught, "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter." I think that a spirit is an individual, a creation (child) of God. This is a question of mechanics. You are asking, in effect, "How does God create your spirit?" I do not know the answer, as I'm pretty sure you don't, either. So I can't tell you whether my spirit has a belly button. Why do you think it must be either/or? Why couldn't it be both?

If the bishop told you that the stake needed more fast offering money and that he wanted you to give ten dollars more this month, would you tell him to get back to you in a week, after you had fasted and prayed about it, contacted the stake president and area authority Seventy, and confirmed to your satisfaction that it was in fact the Lord Jesus Christ who was really asking you to pay extra money for fast offerings? Or would you pull out your wallet and hand him ten bucks? This is the same question, just on a larger scale.

I have tried many times to clarify what I was asking. If it's not clear by now, I don't think there is much else I can say to ameliorate the situation. I didn't say anything about "prior approval through the line of the priesthood authority". Look, it's quite simple. Every believing Latter-day Saint on this board would give up all s/he owned if an angel from God appeared to him/her and told him/her to do so. Those who did not obey would either be fools or so attached to their earthly garbage that they in effect care nothing for God. Most of us would do the same if the prophet himself required it of us. Most of us wouldn't bother going through great spiritual gymnastics to determine whether the prophet was acting as a prophet and speaking as a prophet and breathing as a prophet and eating fried chicken as a prophet before obeying his words. We would, most of us, simply do as instructed. We would consider it part of our covenant duty. The prophet wants our house? Here's our house. Some would balk, certainly, and others would require extensive proof of God's direct involvement before ever consenting, but most of us would simply obey based on our faith (what Miss½ calls "blind faith" or "blind obedience"). But God and the prophet are both, in a sense, remote beings of unquestioned authority. The bishop is a all-too-local being of often-questioned authority; if God's angel or Thomas Monson in person requested that we accept a calling, almost all of us would, yet how many people feel perfectly comfortable turning down their bishop when he issues the calling? As far as I understand, the bishop by virtue of his position is indeed fully authorized to ask us for any amount of money -- consider the ward budget assignments of yore. We are always free to choose whether to obey or not, but the authority is the bishop's. Could the bishop abuse that authority? Certainly. But that is not the question. The question is: If your local ward's presiding high priest and prophet, aka your bishop, required your earthly stewardship of possessions, would you give it to him? Is that part of your covenant duty, just as surely as if the prophet had asked? I believe it is. Others disagree. Dan has kindly pointed out that I'm a hypocritical apostate for even asking, which is pretty hard to argue against. Yes, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. I understand that. But this is not about whether or not you are capable of grasping a circumstance when this would happen. This is about whether it's part of your covenant duty to obey the counsel and request of your bishop in temporal matters. You may assume whatever you like. Again, this is not about your assumptions. This is simply about whether you believe it's part of your covenant duty to do as the bishop asks.

It could also happen in blackmail. That doesn't mean the bishop is blackmailing you. A bishop asking such a thing does not indicate a return to the united order. That's just your inference. Reasonable, perhaps, but not necessary. This is simply false. We DO practice the law of consecration. It's one of the covenants we make in the temple, along with the law of chastity. Are you suggesting that, since we no longer live plural marriage, we don't follow the law of chastity? If not, then by the same token, not following the united order has nothing to do with whether we follow the law of consecration.

Why do you think that a spirit is somehow intangible? What do you think spirit is?Why would God being a spirit preclude him from having a body? You and I are spirit, yet we have bodies.

Why would being a spirit preclude God from having a belly button?

Apology accepted. :)

I would be interested to see that timeline and the reasoning supporting it. I was supposing Jacob's birth to be more like 595 BC and Enos to have been born at around 520 BC to perhaps 515 BC.

The core issues I was trying to hit are 1) whether people recognize their temple covenant of consecration as meaning that they literally give all they own and ever will own, as well as their time and very lives, to the building up of God's kingdom on earth, and 2) whether people recognize the bishop as holding the keys to such an instruction, even though he's "only" the bishop and even though he's the guy who, a month before he was called to be bishop, was being instructed by his high priest group leader to be more faithful in his home teaching duties because his families hadn't been visited in two months.

Not at all. I simply do not agree with the stark separation of a man from his calling. As long as the bishop is not asking me to sin, my understanding is that I should sustain him in his calling by obeying him. True enough, I suppose. So let me ask you: When the First Presidency announced in around 1981 that missions were being shortened to 18 months in length, should we have boycotted them? Many today claim that was not a divine decision -- after all, Church mission forces plummeted in number, and after a couple of years the Church went back to 24 month missions. My feeling has always been that it really doesn't matter whether Jesus Christ instructed President Kimball to shorten missions to 18 months. Presidents Kimball, Tanner, and Romney were the First Presidency, and therefore they had the authority to make such a decision. The requirement to submit to that decision didn't have anything to do with whether the Father and/or the Son spoke those words to the Prophet. No, you are missing the point of my example. Some have suggested that they would simply pray about it and then follow what the Lord revealed to them. My point was that, sometimes, the Lord lets us choose which path we will follow. My marriage partner was MY choice, not God's. The same might also be true with my decision to sustain my bishop. Look, I might be wrong. My understanding may well be defective in this area. But it seems that few in this thread have understood and answered the question I have been trying to ask. (Well, except for Dan, who immediately saw me for the lying hypocrite that I am and wisely alerted everyone else.)

Charlyc is far from the first to be taken in by my clever ruse. :)

How do you see this as a change in the law of consecration? How do you see this as having anything to do with the law of tithing?

Endowed members have made a specific covenant to dedicate their substance and their very lives to the building up of the kingdom of God on earth. Non-endowed members have made only a more general covenant to obey God.

Nope. I intentionally left that part vague. This is not a question about re-instituting the united order among the Saints, for example. It's mostly a question designed to find out whether people think of their temple covenants the way I do, and if not, how they think of them.