pablosocool

Clearly you are missing the point of my opinion. That’s okay. I won’t try and convince you further as you don’t seem open to try and understand

What I'm stating is that the decision to raise the level of the Word of Wisdom to a 'Commandment' has varied over the years. The prophet Joseph was known to have an occasional glass of wine. Different leaders varied on their opinions and it has been enforced differently over the generations (i'm sure this would be much to the surprise of many members). My main statement relates to the fact that even though hot drinks were defined at early times as being 'coffee & tea' as well as later by President Heber J Grant, if you look closely at the historical records, the church hasn't always stressed this in temple recommend interviews. Now that the church is more global, coffee and tea don't constitute all the hot drinks that are available and consumed by people worldwide. Some of these hot drinks are found to have some stimulants in them (kava, matte, etc). So why aren't they banned. And now that the church has stated that it's never been interested in prohibiting caffeine - but you still have orthodox members that won't drink it - like it's some 'higher law'. I'm not saying that the church will all of a sudden say that it's okay to drink coffee or tea, but what i'm saying is that they may change the way that the Word of Wisdom is regulated and turn it back to 'counsel' and not make it a temple recommend question. It just gets too complicated with all the substances that are available and consumed worldwide. Can you imagine what would happen if in the temple recommend you were asked a question like, "do you have your food storage" or "are you free from consumer debt". Certainly we have heard much counsel about these issues over the years. Obviously we don't hear those questions, but we certainly have been counseled repeatedly. Also, don't you get tired of hearing members justify what kinds of tea are supposedly ok (herbal is ok - but green tea isn't??), i mean really, it gets kind of ridiculous to listen to.

I agree with many of e-eye's points. I would include a couple of additional ones to the list: -Word of Wisdom clarifications -more leadership opportunities for women in the different areas of the church The reason I think that there might be some updates to the way that the Word of Wisdom is defined is that it was never originally intended to be elevated to 'commandment' level, and wasn't lived as such until the early-mid 20th century. Also, there is too much loose interpretation on what an appropriate vs. inappropriate 'hot drink' means. Around the world, a lot of different hot drinks besides coffee and tea are consumed (kava, matte, etc) and they aren't expressly forbidden by the church. However, often members in those parts of the world use that as a way of defining a more robust level of faithfulness (those who don't drink kava vs. those who do), and it causes a lot of judgment, misconceptions, etc. After all, we have other prophetic counsel (staying out of debt, food storage, etc), that aren't given the same 'commandment/temple recommend question' status. I can just see that the modern day interpretation of the Word of Wisdom is steeped in a lot of the 'Utah' church tradition and not really in what it was originally intended to be. Anyway, my prediction is that in the globalization and de-centralization of the church that is happening now under President Nelson's leadership, I can see this Word of Wisdom clarification/update as being one of the changes. My two cents...