Son doesn't want to serve a mission? Leave him in the desert

In my opinion, this story is evidence that God really has abandoned the church that professes His name, because they have abandoned Him. Charity (the pure love of Christ) is not the ruling factor. Neither is freedom to choose. There is no freedom to choose in the LDS Church anymore, it seems. The ruling factor is, what? What do you get out of this article? I get, "Force you to go on a mission, even if it means you can die." I mean, there was no guarantee that the kid would find someone to give him a safe place to spend the night. No guarantee that he would be able to get in touch with his grandparents.

I would recommend reading the comments. I doubt more comments can be added, as this is a cached version. It appears the original was taken down. Embarrassed the Corp? Scared the parents? I don't know, but I do know that the corporate Church relies heavily on public opinion polls. And they really hate negative publicity.

Note: I am not posting this to bash the Church, but to hopefully wake people up to the fact that this type of behavior is not okay. And that it is not good to "follow the prophet" at the expense of your child's sanity or mortal life. (Neither is it good to pay tithing if it means your family goes hungry, your electricity gets turned off, or you get kicked out of your house because your rent is not paid.  All but one scripture about tithing says tithing is for the poor, not to be paid by the poor - and especially not by the poor to a wealthy corporation that can afford to buy and build a city in Florida, build a billion-dollar mall with million-dollar condos on top, and so forth.)

Edit: I didn't realize the article was initially published on LDS Living. Here is a good post about the article, and its subsequent retraction/alteration on LDS Living. 
heres-why-a-mormon-website-published-the-least-inspirational-story-ever/

Feed the Hungry

No kid should go hungry is a thread on reddit that needs to be shared. The info in it, anyway.

The opening post:

With the recent reiteration at GC stating that people need to pay their tithing before buying food for their family, etc. and knowing that while this is insane and stupid there are those TBMs that will follow this and there also are just people in need in general, this will hopefully help at least one or two kids this summer from going hungry:

. . . .  Community post for UT area! Copying from a friends wall: edited I was told this is for the US in general!
"If you are financially struggling and you need help feeding your children this summer, or if you know of some hungry children, please text "food" to 877877.

No paper work, no questions asked, just show up and all children under 18 eat free all summer.
It will ask you to enter a zip code or address and will respond back with the nearest locations (school, community center, library, park, etc.) where meals are available throughout the day. Even if you aren't in need, someone else's kids are. No child deserves to go hungry, ever!
Please copy, paste, post or share!"

I think it is sad that a multi-billion-dollar organization that can afford to pay cash to build a high-end mall with condos, and who can build a whole city in Florida without going into debt preaches to the poor to give them money. Especially damning is the doctrine to give this rich organization money even if it means your kids go hungry, your utilities get shut off, and you get ousted (made homeless) because you can't pay your mortgage. If this is the teachings of their god, then their god is the devil.

Times they are a changin'

It seems like things have gone into a higher gear since September 2014.

I have always thought this restoration movement, this movement to preserve the restoration was so that people would have a place to come to when all hell broke loose in the LDS Church. Look at the prophecy below.

The restoration is about to be completely compromised by the institutional LDS organization. If we do not establish another way to avoid the coming catastrophe, the restoration will utterly fail. The movement begun now will seem very prescient in a few years. In coming days many people will want a place to land as the LDS Church undergoes changes to retain their standing, favorable tax status, popularity and wealth. People need a place to fellowship where they can function and learn how to preserve the restoration in a place that will be a refuge for those fleeing an increasingly corrupt organization.

What has begun may seem small, unnecessary and even rebellious at present. It will not be long before it is viewed very differently.

(Days, not literal, I am sure. But months? Maybe. Years? Without doubt.)

We have our work cut out for us. Are we sufficiently humble? Are we void of accusations and contentions? Do we return persecution and pain with kindness and meekness? Are we opening the doors of heaven with our faith?

Will we be found worthy to entertain angels and to be opening, welcoming arms for those whose faith in all things LDS has been shattered?

I don't know about others, but for me, I feel I have so much to work on. There is so much I lack. I pray continually that I may stand, that I may be a shelter from the storm when people's faith in the restoration and even in Jesus Christ are compromised in the coming years.

My Testimony of Joseph Smith

I belong to a forum whose posts are open for anyone to read so I see no harm in quoting a post someone made there (they did not use their real name and I know nothing about who they really are). It was an opening post and included questions. I am quoting it and I am quoting my reply (which took two posts, then I added a postscript comment).

I view my reply as my testimony of truth. Because of that, I am making a blog post out of it.

1smartdog wrote:
From time to time I will hear or read about someone who claims to know all the dirty church history and yet believes. Frankly I do not know what to make of these people. Sometimes I think they really do not know everything, maybe some superficial stuff, but they have not explored it all. It is one thing to gloss over the BofA or polygamy, but when you dive deep you realize the very foundational stories you were taught all your life are suspect at best or more likely complete fabrications.

How does one stare so directly into the light and yet ignore it at the same time. For me and I think most people when they find the truth it takes but a short time to realize it is all a big lie. But there seems to be those few who can compartmentalize it enough to believe in spite of it all. What gives with this? Are they so vested in belief that nothing to the contrary can be contemplated? I just can not get my head around this approach.

I can accept that if you are ignorant of the facts you can believe. We all did at one point. But when faced with the evidence and you still choose to defend the church I wonder what scrambled thought processes you must endure.

My reply:
I can't say I know it all. I don't think anyone does. What I have seen, in my studies, is that people can lie about others even in the 1800s. I look at the evidence and make my own decisions. Some of what people on NOM accept as true witnesses, I do not.

However, I think one thing that is different about me is that my hopes and salvation are not hung up on Joseph Smith or any other leader of the Church. No one is perfect and it's the most damning lie we are taught - that Joseph and every president after him were perfect and that the Church is perfect. A lie equal to that is that it is ALL true or it is ALL false.

When one believes the leaders not only are perfect, but have to be perfect (except in very minor things), then they have to compartmentalize some of the things, say, Brigham, taught. In fact, for years, I denied he ever taught the Adam-God theory.

I read much of the CES letter. When I looked at the examples of the funerary pictures (facsimiles?) that were being compared with the one about Abraham we have in the Pearl of Great Price, I noticed that the funerary pictures had dead people who were acting like proper dead people, but the one of Abraham was the only dead person I'd seen or heard of who was kicking and hitting. Apparently, he didn't know how to act like a proper corpse.

As far as masonry and the temple, I see it this way: Joseph was a mason. He had seen into heaven. He knew he was going to die soon. The people weren't finishing the temple and he knew they'd receive the promised curses (being scattered, for one thing). He wanted to give them some clues to hold on to in regards to what he had been trying to get through their collective heads. (That they were each to see the Lord for themselves and not rely on him so much.)

I believe that he saw, in masonry, signs and tokens that could be used as clues if the people could figure it out. I'm not so sure he intended such an air of fear and secrecy to accompany the temple ordinances, though.

Here are some examples, and I hope I'm not telling too much. First sign. Casting out the devil so he cannot answer your prayers to God. (There is an example of this in the temple film.) Second sign. Keeping the devil at bay and coming to God as a beggar. Third sign. Even after Jesus has cast Satan/Lucifer under your feet (via the atonement and you accepting it), you are still a beggar before God. Fourth. You approach the throne of God, speaking to Him three times to signify that you are in the lowest realm (telestial, terrestrial, celestial).

Translating the Book of Mormon. I don't care that he used a hat and a stone. Sometimes I wonder why he didn't translate like I was taught, but perhaps his gift was not intended to be manifest in a typical way. What I do is look at the finished product.

Now, there is a lie, by inference, going around. That lie is that Joseph translated the book perfectly and it needed no editing. Not one stitch. Well, I've been reading the 1830 version of the book and sometimes his grammar makes me cringe. And, when they "fixed" it in later versions, they changed some things that I wonder if they ought to have - like changing "Mary the mother of God" to "Mary the mother of the Son of God."

Because of stuff like that, I figure I have a right to look at the book as if it was a typical book by a typical author. Errors in the first edition. It doesn't have to be perfect. Not really.

I find the book useful. I find that I get closer to God by studying it. I have stopped studying it with a Mormon paradigm. I search to see what the book, itself, is saying.

For example, it comes down hard on the Gentiles. Moroni says, "I've seen you." Then he says, "Why have you polluted the holy church of God?"

We are taught that these references are to the Catholic church. Why would he say that to a church that was polluted a thousand years before the people he saw and knew would read the book.

The book damns us, the followers of Joseph Smith's religions. Reading that book with the idea that most of the references to gentiles mean us is a real eye-opener and fits what we have been and what we have become. It even gave a special warning about polygamy.

Part Two -

I believe that Joseph didn't have sex with all of those women he was accused of having sex with. If he did sealings at all, I think it had nothing to do with marriage and marital relations. I think there are a lot of holes in the women's testimonies. They gave one witness while Joseph was alive and another witness after he was dead and they had something to lose by not lying for the Lord for Brigham.

I believe Bennet accused Joseph to cover up his own sins.

The precedent had already been set for altering scriptures when a committee embellished the Book of Commandments when they wrote the Doctrine and Covenants - and I believe that some of D&C 132 was altered by the man who claimed to have written it for Joseph originally, because he was loyal to Brigham - and they had to prove to Joseph's sons that Joseph had had lots of sex with lots of wives - and to keep polygamy, they had to convince the gov't that it had been practiced since Joseph's time so they could keep it under the clause of freedom of religion. (Apparently, if it was an innovation by BY, the courts would have rejected it. They did anyway, but that's beside the point.)

Now, I don't expect you guys to believe me or to accept my point of view. I'm not interested in debating your evidences against mine. I'm no scholar and I'm not into debate. I only replied because the op was wondering something and I thought I would give a reply because I fit somewhat into the paradigm he was addressing.

But I don't fit into the paradigm completely, because I hold the opinion that only Joseph was a prophet, that he didn't have to be anywhere near perfect to be so, that the books he translated did not have to be perfect. I hold that the reason Joseph came was to share the revelations and books, and to tell us that we, too, could connect directly with heaven. In fact, that it was vital for us to be able to bear the Lord's presence in the flesh. Otherwise, there could be no Zion. And without Zion, the whole earth would be utterly destroyed because no one would be able to stand in the Lord's presence without sizzling.

I believe that a formally organized church was not intended by God, but was pushed by Sidney Rigdon and others. I believe that one can be baptized and accept the Book of Mormon without ever becoming a member of one of the offshoots descending from Joseph Smith.

I think Baptists can stay Baptist. Catholics can stay Catholic. And so forth. They may have to change some of their thinking to accept the new stuff, but there is no need to leave their own formal religion. I think God wants no formal religion, with hierarchies and "holy men" who boss people around and tell them what underwear to wear.

I think religion is deeply personal and no person has a right to tell you what to believe, how to approach God, or make a set of rules (no tats, wear white shirts, pay money to attend temples, follow a man or be kicked out, and so forth).

I know that most everyone here disagrees with my beliefs. I also know that we share some beliefs. I don't have a problem with you not believing me. I'm fine with you choosing your own path and accepting what makes sense to you. That's the way it should be.

*steps down from soapbox*

Quote:
I hold the opinion that only Joseph was a prophet,

This means that I don't think BY down to and including TSM are true prophets. These men may have held the title, but they were not and are not the real thing.
#

End

Oh that I were an angel and could have the wish of my heart.

New Order Mormon is full of people whose shelves have broken. Their eyes have been opened, and they are right about so many things.

I wish I could help them. I wish I could help them understand that not everything negative they read "proves" the Book of Mormon false, that Joseph Smith Jr was a lecher, and so forth. I wish I could open up their eyes to the incredible information in the Book of Mormon. I wish I had more knowledge - and the power of convincing people to believe and know the truth. Below is one of my recent attempts to share.

[name of poster]: Why would any loving personal god allow truth to be mixed up with lies and pollution to the extent that "his children aren't even aware and have no method of waking up" except randomly a few may wake up?  That is an unreasonable definition of a "loving god" at least for me. 

How exactly are we supposed to discover mysteries for ourselves if we can't tell truth from the lies we are swimming in?  How do we wake up?  Are we supposed to rely on god's special messengers?  If so why aren't we all special messengers so we don't have to be confused by special messengers who are murderers in their hearts?  In your assertions (in my unlearned opinion) the result is god is either a trickster who mixes truth and error for fun, an absentee watchmaker, or not at home.  But maybe I am too blinded by the error I am swimming in to see another alternative.

You have a lot of good questions.

I think we are given inklings that things are not right, but we ignore them because we think the church is right and we are wrong.

I think if we read the BofM, doing all we can to ignore everything we have been taught it says and means, that we will probably understand God better.

Some things that come to mind:

Lehi was not a "special messenger" even though we are taught at church that he was a duly appointed prophet of God, legally put into the hierarchy of his day. In fact, he was an apostate (which is probably why two of his sons kept wanting to kill him). The people at Jerusalem were righteous, according to Laman and Lemuel. "Our father hath judged them."

I see a parallel to us. The LDS people are righteous. The NOMs have judged them.

"Why have you polluted the holy church of God?" Moroni asks us who believe the book (e.g. "Mormons"). He calls us wicked, perverse, and stiffnecked, and asks, "Why have ye built up churches to yourselves to get gain?" "Why have ye transfigured the holy word of God, that ye might bring damnation upon your souls?"

He says we walk in the pride of our hearts. Mentions very fine apparel, envying, strifes, malice, persecutions - that every one of our churches have become polluted because of the pride of our hearts.

I have been quoting from Mormon 8, and in verse 35, Moroni tells us he's speaking to us as if we were present because he has seen us. Us. Mormons. Us. All of the offshoots that hold the BofM to be a sacred book.

If we read that as it says, we see that our church is polluted, greedy, and changing God's words. We, according to the book as I read it, are about to lose the gospel because we have rejected the truth, we have rejected the fulness.

It is a scathing rebuke. So is some of what Nephi says when he notes that in our day people will say, "All is well in Zion. ... Zion prospereth." He knew full well it wouldn't be Zion, but that we would consider ourselves as such. (2 Nephi 28)

I honestly believe that the answers to your questions lie in the book that tells us (all who are offshoots of JS) we are not as good as we think we are, and answers lie in realizing that there is no middle-man between you and God. False prophets in sheep's clothing, even if they think they are not, are never going to give us true answers. They don't know the true answers - or feel threatened by the true answers.

And, in regards to the sanitized idea that God will never speak to a man outside the duly organized hierarchy: Jesus was considered apostate. Samuel the Lamanite was a total outsider. Abinadi was not part of the religious hierarchy. Abraham looks to me like he started his own church. Joseph Smith was outside that church (the last "duly authorized" one being what became the Catholic church, near as I can discover, and all other Christian religions being offshoots of that church).

Anyway, the answers are inside of us, if we can cut out the jibber-jabber. We each are connected to God, and it doesn't matter if someone disagrees with our path.

The actual right each person possesses is the right to live and believe as they think God (however they determine who or what s/he is) would have them live and believe, and no more. I should not be telling you what to think or be. Neither should a church - or any individual or entity be telling you that. The idea that there is a man who has all the answers has caused a tremendous amount of damage, both physical and spiritual/emotional.

I don't know if I have answered your questions, but that is the best I can do.