spamlds

The LDS doctrine should not be altogether unfamiliar to Roman Catholics. Divinization is a Catholic doctrine. Here's an example from some of the Patristic writers (click here for Wikipedia link). Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296-373)"Therefore He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us"[Primary 11]"for as the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we men are deified by the Word as being taken to Him through His flesh."[Primary 12]"For He was made man that we might be made God."[Primary 13]​

In Jesus' time, who were the conservatives and who were the liberals? Most definitely, Annas and Caiaphas were the conservatives. They were trying to maintain a long-standing orthodoxy and resist reforms. Jesus was considered a dangerous reformer who had accumulated a group of misfits and ne'er-do-wells who were outside the system. When anyone with connections to the "Establishment" got involved with Jesus, they did so secretly like Nicodemus for fear. Those who accepted Jesus were put out (excommunicated) from the synagogues. In America today, the liberal party tends toward godlessness and secularism. The conservative party leans toward sectarian religion and denial of modern revelation. In essence, both sides believe in the same thing--a world in which there is no God who can speak now. To paraphrase Parley P. Pratt, there are two kinds of atheists: one who believes that NOTHING is God and the other who believes that God IS nothing. The end result is the same--when God speaks through revelation, both sides reject it. That's why Mormons ultimately never feel completely at home among liberals or conservatives.

The handbook gives sample agendas for what should be covered in the meetings, but it's basically up to the bishop to direct the PEC and ward council meetings as he sees fit. Both meetings allow the quorums and auxiliaries to organize their efforts to serve the members, plan activities, etc. Every ward and branch is different. I've spent over 12 years in bishoprics as a counselor, counselor in two branch presidencies, a branch president, and two times as a ward executive secretary. The meetings we held were different depending on the bishop or president. In one branch, the president was the chief operating officer of a Fortune 500 company. Those meetings ran like a high-level executive would run a meeting. The agenda and minutes were most definitely used every week. I learned a lot from him. In other wards, the meetings have tended to be more personal and less structured. In our ward now, the Relief Society president is invited to attend PEC. The only real difference on the agenda is that the PEC focuses more on young men, perspective elders, and home teaching with more emphasis. As a clerk or executive secretary, the job is to make sure that the administrative requirements of the Church don't get in the way of the leadership's efforts to touch others' lives. We try to take the burden off the bishop and his counselors so they don't get bogged down with paperwork, budgets, etc. Some bishops like to micromanage things. Others are hands-off about the administrative side of it. Record-keeping is particularly important. We recently had to re-ordain a brother who was previously ordained in another unit a few years ago. The ward where he was ordained failed to record the ordinance on his records and the ordination had to be re-done. Just keeping track of things like who has been set apart to callings and getting those things entered into the MLS system is incredibly important. The clerks have such an important job!

I wrote an article several years ago that dealt with situations like this. Almost all anti-Mormon literature and web sites draw material that come from apostates. In the Book of Mormon, we read of "dissenters" who go over to the "Lamanites" to stir up anger and persecution against the saints. They do this because they hoped their leaving the Church would damage it somehow. When they see that the Church continues on perfectly well without them, they begin to spread their bitter feelings among non-believers, hoping to cause the damage they failed to achieve by quitting the Church. The article I wrote is called "Believing Judas." Here's a quote from it that might be helpful here. There are modern-day Judases who walk among us. They are individuals who once saw, believed, and testified that they knew the Church was true. They made sacred covenants with God and participated in the programs and works of the Church. They beheld miracles and priesthood blessings. Some of them even took upon them the missionary mantle and went out to teach others the truths they believed. Then, at some point, they allowed their faith to wane and falter. They gave place to the Adversary in their hearts. They did not just fall into inactivity, but they turned to fight against that which they once honored and declared as true. They seek to kill something that still bothers their conscience, hoping that, if they succeed, at long last they will find peace. If you are not a Latter-day Saint, and you encounter anti-Mormon literature or media, please consider what the source of that information is. Would you accept the testimony of Judas Iscariot about Jesus Christ? If Judas had not killed himself, what would his opinion be of the work of Peter, Paul, John, James, and the other servants of Jesus? What would he have written about them? Would he have his words published by the Romans and circulated throughout the Empire? Would his words have been spread far and wide by the rabbis, chief priests, and elders of Judaism to undermine the threat of a rapidly spreading "cult." Would you accept as truth, the words of Peter and the other witnesses of the resurrection? Or would you heed the counter-message from one who had betrayed his Lord and his fellow apostles? Anti-Mormon literature is full of hostile rhetoric that has been solicited by apostates. Are the words of these turncoats any more reliable than the testimony Judas would have offered?

Critics are so busy trying to disprove the Book of Abraham--and when you talk to them, none of them know what's actually IN the book! Seriously. Try getting an anti-Mormon to talk about the actual contents of the Book of Abraham. It is one of the most stunningly profound revelations we have. I figured out a long time ago that Satan's minions love to attack the things that have the greatest potential to teach us light and truth. They absolutely go bonkers over the Book of Mormon, the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, temples, and the Book of Abraham. So the Book of Abraham must have something really important that Satan doesn't want us to know, I figure. That led me to study it and to just look at what the plain message of the book. What does it try to teach us? What important lessons does it impart? After doing so, I wrote this article a few years ago. You might enjoy it. It's too long to post here, unless the moderators want me to. What's in the Book of Abraham?

People always ask us why we send out 19 year-old missionaries with no theological training to be ministers of the gospel. This is because they don't understand the way we do missionary work. We don't send out missionaries to prove that our beliefs are true. We send out witnesses who understand what the voice of the Spirit sounds like. A truly effective missionary realizes that, when he's teaching,the Spirit will manifest itself to a person if he or she is "elect" in that moment. "Elect" means that it is God's chosen time to send the invitation to that individual. If a person isn't "elect" at a given moment, he won't receive the witness of the Spirit. He's not ready for it. When a missionary feels that Spirit is present, his job is to declare it. He declares it with the understanding that the investigator to whom he is speaking most likely doesn't know what it is that he's feeling. When the missionary declares it, it's startling to the investigator because they wonder "How did he know?" The missionary knew because his calling is to feel it and declare it. Missionary work is performed by revelation. His or her job is to help his hearers understand how God speaks to them. If they will receive that, they will begin the path of individually and personally coming to know the voice of God in their lives. Some people accept it quite naturally. Other people reject it because, even though they feel the Spirit, they are too busy "counting the cost" so to speak. They are thinking, "If I believe and accept this, what happens with my friends, my co-workers, my husband, my parents, etc.?" Everyone can receive revelation. Most people discount it or don't recognize it when it comes.

I think there is an expectation, especially on the part of outsiders who look at the Church, that a prophet stands up and either prophesies some future event or gives some "Thus saith the Lord" commandments. This limited understanding comes because they are unschooled in the way the Spirit works. They often are familiar with getting answers to their own prayers, but they don't think of that as revelation--but it certainly is. When God communicates, it is revelation. Sometimes it's a strong feeling that personalizes a passage of scripture during a time of spiritual need. Sometimes it's a flash of inspiration that moves you to action. Sometimes it's a prompting that warns you of danger or trouble. All of those things are revelation, just as much as hearing the voice of God or seeing a vision, although they are not as dramatic. Dreams can also be revelatory. Sometimes God speaks through a friend or a pastoral figure, which is just as effective as sending an angel. Thus revelation is constantly at work in all the councils of the Church, including ward councils, priesthood executive committees, Relief Society presidency meetings, Deacon's quorum meetings, etc. The Spirit may guide a Sunday School teacher as she prepares her lesson or prompts a youth to call and invite a friend to an activity. At the top levels of the Church, General Conference talks are often a way revelation and inspiration is imparted to the Church. In our time, it seems that the Spirit works very subtly. I think of President Hinckley's talk from October 1998 as a prophetic warning which was reiterated again in October 2001. He didn't come out and say that the economy was going to crash, but those who were in-tune heard the warning and acted upon it. There were several talks in the most recent conference that were similar in nature. This subtle nature of revelation was mentioned in the New Testament, in Luke 17. Jesus explained: 20 ¶And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. As a young missionary in France, I saw that the French version of this scripture adds new understanding of it's meaning. It says, roughly translated, that the kingdom doesn't come in a manner that is "striking to the eyes" (frappant aux yeux.) Jesus didn't tell the Pharisees that the kingdom was within them. The French uses the preposition parmi, which means among or amidst. He told them that the kingdom of God is subtle and that it was in their midst, but they couldn't see it. That's the way revelation often works. A person who lives by the Spirit can discern it. Those who don't can't. They go looking for prophets and prophecy based on a false notion of those things and they miss it when it's right in front of their eyes.

Perhaps, instead of thinking of this as spiritual and physical, in terms of the body, it would relate more to physical action and spiritual action. For example, we have the doctrine from James that grace without works is dead, being alone and that we should be doers of the word, not hearers only. Then we have Paul's saved by grace, not by works lest any man should boast. These could be considered yin and yang regarding grace. Grace and works cannot be separated. They have to be balanced. We can't walk away from feeding the poor, for example, and just spend our lives in prayer and meditation. Likewise, we can't work our way to heaven relying solely upon good works. We see examples of the grace/works thing being out of balance with some Protestant sects. The Westminster Confession of Faith goes so far as to say that good works done by "unregenerate" men are actually offensive to God. Martin Luther called James the "epistle of straw." They've gone so far to one side that they actually oppose doing good! On the other hand, I have known latter-day saints who have gone so far in doing good works that they became obsessive and lost the peace that comes from grace. There has to be a balance to be spiritually healthy. The focus in the earlier parts of the thread on the mind/spirit and the physical body gets too close to Gnosticism. The Gnostics went so far as to downplay the role of the physical body that they couldn't accept that Jesus was a physical being. That led to the belief that he was an Aeon and that the physical resurrection could not have happened. Thus Paul wrote with such urgency in 1 Corinthians about the reality of the resurrection. Mind/spirit and body have to be balanced.

I always understood Yin and Yang as simply a symbol of duality--what we think of as "opposition in all things." Agency and perception depend on duality. If we don't have the contrast, choices don't exist. The two abide together in one. Without agency and opposition, there is no existence.

I was talking to my wife about this topic. Anti-Mormons try to set up a false dichotomy. Would we follow the Prophet or would we follow the Bible? My sweetheart always has a way of succinctly getting to the point. She said, "Would you obey Noah and get on the ark or would you argue with him because God didn't say anything to you?" That's a good way to approach it. Modern sectarians would stand there with previously given scripture in hand and argue with Noah, telling him that they couldn't find anything about building an ark or a flood before it came. Indeed, if they followed today's pattern, they would try to stop the ark's construction via the zoning board saying that it was too tall, had inadequate parking, disrupted traffic, and harmed the residential character of the neighborhood.

Oops! Sorry for the double post.

Call me superstitious, but prophets are "big medicine," to put it in Native American parlance. God stands by them in remarkable ways. Miriam, Moses' sister got stricken with leprosy for criticizing him. Dathan, Korah, and Abiram got swallowed up in the earth for challenging Moses' authority. A bunch of children mocked Elijah and 23 of them were eaten by a she bear. Ananias and Saphira lied to Peter about their donations and were struck dead. Korihor defied Alma and was struck dumb. Jacob Haun disregarded Joseph's warning to move the saint at Haun's Mill and a bunch of saints died. I want to honor God's messengers and stick as close to their teachings as I can get. That's the safest path through this life.

Call me superstitious, but prophets are "big medicine," to put it in Native American parlance. God stands by them in remarkable ways. Miriam, Moses' sister got stricken with leprosy for criticizing him. Dathan, Korah, and Abiram got swallowed up in the earth for challenging Moses' authority. A bunch of children mocked Elijah and 23 of them were eaten by a she bear. Ananias and Saphira lied to Peter about their donations and were struck dead. Korihor defied Alma and was struck dumb. Jacob Haun disregarded Joseph's warning to move the saint at Haun's Mill and a bunch of saints died. I want to honor God's messengers and stick as close to their teachings as I can get. That's the safest path through this life.

I think it was Nibley who suggested that the Maji were descendants of people whom Lehi may have had contact. They knew to watch for a star as the sign of the Messiah's birth. Lehi saw that detail. Maybe he bore that testimony to others along the way to Bountiful.

I studied anti-Mormon activity for about four years, cataloged their activities, documented the networks of relationships between anti-Mormon ministries, and categorized their tactics. I can say with a great deal of experience, that anti-Mormon web sites are dangerous, dishonest, and ill-intended. There isn't an original thought on any of them. All of them are using doctrinal, logical, or historical arguments which have long been discredited. They prey on the ignorant and the uninformed. They present their arguments in such a way that it is impossible to have a reasonable discussion. When you begin to answer one argument, they will pivot to a different topic. They are not interested in truth at all. If they can damage a person's faith or implant the seeds of doubt with a 140-character tweet, they believe that is worth more than a 10,000-word study of the topic using scripture and reason. Let me relate a couple of findings I encountered in my research. Although I did write some "defense of the faith" articles, my primary interest was understanding how anti-Mormonism works as a phenomenon. I found that there is no integrity among them. For example, I discovered one anti-Mormon ministry supposedly based in Africa was actually run by a well-known anti-Mormon "ministry" in Arizona. They registered the address of the site to an Internet service provider in Canada to try to hide the connection. This supposed African ex-Mormon ministry was run by a couple of white guys in America. They were pretty hostile when I exposed that. One of my studies of another anti-Mormon web site revealed that it was run by a woman who claimed to have a Master's degree in theology. I researched her educational credentials and proved they were from a degree mill without accreditation. (That is the case with many anti-Mormons.) When I exposed the facts about her education, she linked up with a vicious ex-Mormon-turned-atheist on another anti-Mormon forum I monitored to share notes on how to best attack the Church. Imagine that: an evangelical teaming up with a person who denies God's very existence to figure out the best way to attack Mormonism! What fellowship does light have with darkness? Another of the newer anti-Mormon ministries online was revealed to be soliciting donations, but it was in fact a for-profit business. It did not have a current business licence. It was not a legal non-profit or charity. It was operating off an expired incorporation application with its home state. In essence, it was an unlicensed business selling books for a profit and soliciting donations without meeting the proper state and federal tax requirements. There are over 800 such ministries and parachurches that publish and re-publish the anti-Mormon lies. Many of them are for-profit companies. When you get to see the links between them and how they operate, you come to see that they are intentionally deceptive and insidious. They intentionally misguide people who are uneducated in the tenets of their own faith and incite prejudice against our faith. It's a shame they have the influence they do. Stay away from these web sites. They are nothing but cut-and-paste factories for lies and misrepresentations. There is nothing honest, praiseworthy, or of good report in any of them.

Go watch the movie "Interstellar." It's not just a great movie, but it does a good job of explaining the way gravitational fields affect time. Abraham's lesson on Kolob and other heavenly bodies is not only a marvelous metaphor, but it also contains some interesting content from a scientific viewpoint. How would God explain to a nomadic tribesman how velocity and distance have an impact on time? I have learned in my years in the Church that Satan and his subjects always attack and discredit important and powerful truths. The Book of Mormon and the Three Witnesses are perpetual targets. Thus, when I see how vigorously our critics attack the Book of Abraham, it tells me that there is something very important and very true in it. BTW, here are a couple of pieces I wrote on the Book of Abraham a few years ago if you'd like to read them. What's in the Book of Abraham? What the heck is 'Kolob?'

I'm tossing out there as a lighthearted topic, not for heavy doctrinal analysis. It's just something I like to ponder sometimes. When we read the scriptures, there are also stories and testimonies of real, average people who weren't prophets or apostles. For example, Luke's narrative of the Nativity tells us about the shepherds who were abiding in the fields with their flocks. They saw the heavenly manifestation of the angels and received the sign of the newborn King lying in a manger in swaddling clothes. They went to go see it and somehow the story came down to Luke, who included it in his gospel. I always wonder who they were and why they were selected for this manifestation? Perhaps they were Luke's relatives or someone in his family. Did they eventually join the Church when Jesus grew up, connecting the dots to this experience and the story came to Luke. Perhaps Mary told him of it, because he relates things that only she would have seen or known. Anyways, I sometimes like to ponder that God gave this merciful manifestation to some plain old people who weren't kings, priests, prophets. Kinda cool.

When I was running the Society for the Prevention of Anti-Mormonism, I was particularly interested in documenting the process by which a faithful member of the Church turns into an anti-Mormon apostate. There are people who drift away from the Church because of depression, unworthiness, discouragement, worldliness, or because life's trials overwhelm them, just as Jesus described in the Parable of the Sower. However, there is a peculiar process that I documented whereby many exMormons fall away and try to take others with them. Like Prisonchaplain said, it begins in college for many of them. A very typical case was a guy who joined the S.P.A.M. social network back around 2009 who went by the screen name "Ishmael." Ishmael wrote on our site: "Fast forward a few years. I'm home from my mission, I've graduated from BYU, I'm married with a couple of kids. I'm a little battle-worn, some of my illusions about the mission, BYU, and the Church itself have been shattered, but that's all part of growing up. My testimony is still strong. I probably don't need to tell you that it wasn't long before I was delving in the world of online Mormonism and anti-Mormonism." Ishmael became a sort of case study because he evinced a pattern that showed up over and over. He had some illusions about his faith that were challenged and didn't hold up. Instead of praying and studying for further understanding and truth to correct his errors, he begins to let go of the iron rod. He allows men to instruct him instead of the Holy Spirit. You have to realize that, when S.P.A.M. was functioning, it became a target of anti-Mormons. Many former members joined us with the intent of either trying to shake us in our faith or justifying their own apostasy. Ishmael was one of them. When you give these guys a chance to tell their story, they start "monologuing" and it always falls into this pattern. 1. Establish rapport 2. Establish credibility 3. Build sympathy 4. Tell of an "awakening" 5. Rationalize the loss of commitment, disobedience, etc. 6. Reveal the deception that snared them 7. Issue either a disclaimer that excuses them or a hateful rant that vindicates their choice to leave, blaming others. Very often, these former members seek out those who are struggling and try to take them down with them. You have to understand that there are people who are active "wolves" who are seeking to prey on the flock. When an innocent person who might be struggling with some doubts encounters one of these apostates, they are unaware that there is a careful, manipulative process being worked against them. What amazed me is how consistent this pattern was. I had to wonder if the consistency of it was because of the adversary's influence over them or whether it was rehearsed. If you want to read the whole article called, Ishmael's Monologue, check it out on the S.P.A.M. archives at: http://spamldsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/05/ishmael-monologue.html It's not my intent to "pimp" my old blog, but I think it's an important aspect of understanding "shaken faith syndrome." There are over 800 anti-Mormon parachurches and ministries out there. They publish web sites, videos, and distribute their products (often for a profit) through Christian bookstores and pastors of other denominations. There are also atheists who are dedicated to undermining all faith and they seem to take a special interest in destroying the faith of people who claim belief in modern revelation. When you realize that the opposition is active, it takes on a whole new dimension.

As a missionary in France, there was always a barrier to teaching the amazing uniqueness of the First Vision because of the vision of Saint Bernadette in Lourdes. If you're not familiar with the history, a shepherd girl named Bernadette claimed to have received a series of visitations from the Virgin Mary in 1858. You can read the details here: http://www.medjugorjeusa.org/lourdes.htm Every French Catholic knew of the story and, when they were taught the First Vision, they immediately compared it to the apparitions at Lourdes. I don't discount that Bernadette could have seen Mary (I try to keep an open mind), but the nature of the messages delivered by this apparition, compared to something like Section 88 of the D&C, are fairly insubstantial. To the French, you either believed it or you didn't. There was no consideration of asking God for a witness of it. French atheists ridiculed all revelation because of it. To me, the body of revelation that Joseph Smith received is consequential. That's why it receives so much opposition. You don't see evangelicals forming anti-Bernadette ministries (although some are fairly anti-Catholic) and you don't see them protesting out in front of Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach like they do at our General Conference sessions. Related to the topic, when other religions discuss "revelation" as a term, they are either critical, hostile, or dismissive because the term has been watered down because of what other denominations have done with it.

Interstellar--it was amazing!

Perhaps it is the apostasy itself that caused the downplaying of the evacuation to Pella. Several of the early Church leaders and gospel writers were dead by 70 A.D. The irony to me is that Josephus says that the fatal error of the Jewish leaders was reliance on scripture alone (sola scriptura) and uninspired interpretations, especially when there were living revelators available, if they'd only accepted them. It seems all too familiar!

This is an article I wrote for the Examiner a few years ago. I mentioned the evacuation to Pella in a thread earlier this evening and I thought some readers might want some more info. I hope this cuts-and-pastes from the Examminer OK. If not, the original article is found here: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-evacuation-to-pella-the-value-of-continuing-modern-revelation The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem, by David Roberts (1850).David Roberts (1850). In Matthew 24, we read the prophecy of Jesus Christ against Jerusalem, uttered in 33 A.D. Because the Jewish nation, particularly its religious leaders, had rejected Jesus, he knew that a terrible judgment would come upon them. The astonishing specificity of the fulfillment of this prophecy was recorded by Josephus after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. I would like to use this prophecy to illustrate the relative limitations of written scripture compared to current revelation from living oracles in our day. The passage in Matthew 24 addresses questions posed by the disciples of Christ after Jesus prophesied the utter destruction of the Jewish Temple. They inquired, "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world." There are three distinct concerns they have: 1) When will the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple occur, 2) What is the sign of the Second Coming , 3) and the end of the world. Thus this prophecy has as much to do with the last days as it did with the preservation of the Church in the fall of Jerusalem. After the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection of Jesus, the gospel spread throughout the Middle East and eventually into faraway lands. Some of the apostles and other church leaders were martyred. The first of the gospels were written perhaps as early as 54-59 A.D. The early Church would have had the Jewish canon (which was still not finalized and wouldn't be until the Council of Jamnia in 90 A.D) and other texts considered sacred like the Book of Enoch. Various epistles and apocalyptic books were also circulated, but the New Testament wouldn't be constituted until the fourth century With that understanding, we can acknowledge that the ancient Church had a body of written scripture, although it was not, and would not be completely formalized for some time. It was guided by living revelators who had authority from Jesus himself. The Church of Jesus Christ had apostles and prophets for its foundation, with Jesus being the chief cornerstone. The Bible as we know it was not available to them. However, the Jews who rejected Christ believed they had all the revelation they needed for that day and for future needs. They had a closed canon of scripture, though it would be several decades before it was finalized and the last of the disputed texts rooted out and discarded. Certainly, someone had written down the prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem before the Gospel of Matthew was written, which most scholars believe was between 70-100 A.D. Even with the written word, there was no date, nor time specified when Jesus said his followers should flee Jerusalem. It is apparent that the center of the Church remained at Jerusalem until just shortly before its destruction. However, the believers escaped while some two million Jews in Jerusalem perished in the siege and battles, and some 97,000 carted off as slaves. How did the Christians know when to flee? In 325 A.D., Eusebius, commenting upon Josephus' account of the destruction Jerusalem, marveled that the Savior's prophecy in ever aspect was fulfilled so literally and completely. Josephus gives his assessment that the reason for God's judgment upon Jerusalem was because the Jews had succumbed to false messianic movements and clandestine groups of robbers that preyed on Romans and Jews alike. These analogs to the secret combinations described in the Book of Mormon are uncanny. Josephus also said it was the Jews' own confidence in their written scriptures that made them overly confident that God would deliver them, though they were steeped in wickedness and false, corrupt religious traditions: An "ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred scriptures" was the cause of their pride, arrogance, and overconfidence. Does this not describe the attitude of modern Christendom, who use the Bible to determine who is saved and who is not, who is Christian and who is not? Like the ancient Jews who used their scriptures to reject Jesus and his apostles, so do modern "scribes and Pharisees" among Christian sects base their rejection of living prophets and apostles based on their man-made creeds and errant Bible interpretations. The very nature of written scripture makes it an "ambiguous oracle" subject to the interpretations of uninspired men. "...what more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred scriptures , to the effect that at that time one from their country would become ruler of the world. This they understood to mean someone of their own race, and many of their wise men went astray in their interpretation of it." (Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Harvard University Press, 1976, 111: 351—354. Vol. I—III, published in 1976; Volumes IV—VII published in 1979.) "Thus it was," said Josephus, "that the wretched people were deluded at that time by charlatans and pretended messengers of the deity." Yet, "as if thunderstruck and bereft of eyes and mind, [they] disregarded the plain warnings of God." The Jews had embraced false teachers and false messiahs who led them to their destruction. What were the plain warnings of God that came to them? It was these warnings that preserved the Christian Church in Jerusalem from utter destruction. Let's examine how those warnings arrived. Eusebius tells us: "...the people of the church at Jerusalem, in accordance, with a certain oracle that was vouchsafed by way of revelation to approved men there, had been commanded to depart from the city before the war, and to inhabit a certain city of Peraea. They called it Pella. And when those who believed in Christ had removed from Jerusalem, as if holy men had utterly deserted both the royal metropolis of the Jews itself and the whole land of Judaea, the justice of God then visited upon them all their acts of violence to Christ and His apostles, by destroying that generation of wicked persons root and branch from among men. (Eusebius: The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine, III.7.6 trans. Hugh Jackson Lawlor and John Ernest Leonard Oulton, London, S.P.C.K., 1954, p. 74.) The body of the Christian Church, which believed in living prophets were warned by revelation to "approved men" to relocate to a safe place. This is the function of the priesthood of God in the Church then and now. In 375 A.D., Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, wrote of the nature of this warning the Church received: "For when the city was about to be captured and sacked by the Romans, all the disciples were warned beforehand by an angel to remove from the city, doomed as it was to utter destruction. On migrating from it they settled at Pella , the town already indicated, across the Jordan . It is said to belong to Decapolis " Four years before the sacking of Jerusalem, an angel of God was sent to the living revelators in the Church of Jesus Christ, to tell the saints specifically when to flee and to where they must gather in order to survive. Every latter-day saint is familiar with the procedure. Men, called by prophecy and the laying on of hands, who serve without salary, possessing the gifts of the Spirit of God, are among us today who receive these warnings from God for our time. The destruction of Jerusalem is a type and shadow of things to come. In a day when men's hearts will fail them, when destruction threatens all people, those who follow a God to whom they have denied utterance, will parse scripture passages, seeking a place of escape and safety. They will wonder why no "Rapture" has lifted them up from the tribulation at hand. They will vainly seek to command in the name of Jesus, only to be overcome by the events of the times. In the midst of all this, a group of believers, who follow a line of living prophets, descending from Joseph Smith in the 19th century to the present day, will receive timely warnings, instructions, counsel, and commandments to prepare. Inasmuch as they follow those warnings, they will prevail as did the saints who escaped the destruction of Jerusalem. There is a world of difference between an "ambiguous oracle" of scriptures interpreted at the hands of people who say God is mute and will never speak again and the "more sure word of prophecy" to "approved men" who hold the keys of the kingdom of God on earth. This is the difference between the limitations of ancient, written scriptures and the power of current, modern day revelation to unambiguous, living oracles. Among the various sects of Christendom, only the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is led by living apostles and prophets of the Lord Jesus Christ today.

I think we judge ourselves, to an extent. When we stand before Christ, we will be accountable for all the truth he has given us and what we did with it. It doesn't matter if that truth came from Moses or Paul or Joseph Smith. However, if we reject the truth from the prophet God has sent, we will find ourselves standing outside the light, ashamed to enter in. Think of the Pharisees and scribes who, having accepted Moses, rejected Jesus and the apostles. When they rejected the gospel, they rejected the saving ordinances. They rejected the messengers and the warnings they brought from God. For example, four years before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the priesthood officers in the Church were warned by angels and revelations to evacuate the Church to a nearby town called Pella. Jesus had warned them that there would come a time when they would have to flee, but when the revelation came, it came to local Church leaders. Those who didn't believe in Jesus or the apostles also disregarded the inspired warnings of the local Church leaders they appointed as shepherds over the flock. When we stand before God in judgment, those who rejected Joseph Smith will have necessarily rejected the priesthood that was given to him. They will have rejected ordinances of baptism by proper authority for the remission of sins--and their sins will not have been remitted. They will have rejected the ordinances of the temple that would have sealed their families to them and qualified them for exaltation. The judgment doesn't involve Joseph, Moses, or Peter judging individuals. It involves God assessing whether or not they obeyed the gospel as it was preached to them by his servants. Those who reject the voice of God through his servants reject the God who sent them. They won't enter into his rest. That's what the Telestial and Terrestrial Kingdoms are for.

If you want to read an excellent book about Native American religion, read "The Soul of the Indian" by Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa). Eastman's father sent him off to the white boarding schools and told him to master the whites' language and become educated so he could tell them what they were destroying. It was his way of being a warrior, to become learned in the white way and then teach the Indian way. Eastman became a medical doctor and was a "first responder" at the Wounded Knee massacre. It is also an interesting study for LDS people to study the first and second "Ghost Dance" movements among native Americans. The Paiute Prophet Wovoka taught that the Ghost Dance would unite the spirits of the living and the dead and help bring cooperation and peace between the whites and the First Peoples. Another really interesting parallel is the brother of Tecumseh, the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa. He was nearly destroyed by alcohol and, following an accident where he fell drunk into a fire, he lay in a coma for several days and then emerged "Alma-like" and began to teach the people of a vision he had. He began to call the people to repent, to forsake drinking, and to return to their traditional ways. He said that the Great Spirit was preparing to restore them and their land. This paralleled the Restoration to some extent. His vision occurred in 1805, the year Joseph Smith was born. He died in 1836, the year the Kirtland Temple was dedicated. There is a sort of synchronicity in the message of the Shawnee Prophet and the Prophet of the Restoration--both men received messages telling them and their followers to forsake the false, sectarian Christianity of their time and to return to something revealed and fundamental. The reaction of the white Christian Americans was to try to destroy both messengers. If Tecumseh and his brother had been successful, they might have stopped Manifest Destiny in its tracks. If Wovoka's message had not been so badly misrepresented, Native Americans and European Americans might have established some sort of equilibrium that would have resolved in a more positive way. Personally, I think the Spirit of God was working on many fronts in the 19th century to prepare the way for the fulfilling of the promises made to Lehi's posterity. Although early Mormon converts brought some of their prejudices about Native Americans westward with them, the teachings about the Lamanites and the promises made to them in the Book of Mormon moderated our approach somewhat. I would recommend reading Eastman as a start of your studies, if you haven't already read his books.

Reading Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" seemed to be an interesting admission of sorts. If you saw the movie, it didn't exactly reflect what was in the book. In the movie (spoiler alert!) the agnostic scientist goes out into the universe in an alien-designed/human-built spacecraft and meets with the aliens, who appear to her as her own father. When she returns after 18 or so hours, she finds that the observers didn't see and experience what she did. All they saw was the vehicle falling into the water after a few seconds. She had seen and experienced an amazing thing that she could not prove. All she could do is testify of it without the benefit of evidence--but what she saw was real. The only "evidence" that remained was 18 hours of static on the head-mounted video camera. In the book (if I recall it correctly), it was a dozen scientists, not just one--12 witnesses. To me it was an admission about the ancient 12 apostles. They had seen (with the exception of Judas) amazing things that they could not prove. It seemed to me that Sagan was admitting that it was possible for them to see what they did and that, even thought there was no physical, tangible proof that everyone could see and touch, their experience was nevertheless true. In his final years, Sagan seemed to, in that book, leave the possibility open that he and his fellow scientists could have been wrong to dismiss what they couldn't measure through empirical means.