The relevant remarks are from zero to about 22 minutes of the video. He seemed to entirely switch topics at this point away from anything Mormon related so I stopped watching the video at that point.
This is a great rundown of the burning down building that is institutional/corporate LDSism by a kind, well-meaning Christian. He touches on a lot of similar topics we discuss. We are insiders walking out of a dilapidated barn that clearly is not what it used to be. He's an outsider watching that barn burn down. If he can see what is going on, there is no way he is the only one. If he can see the writing on the wall, you can be sure others can see the writing on the wall.
Believers of the Book of Mormon that have waken up to the naked king that is the LDS church should have room and voice, because if we don't, sincere believers (and rightly they should be) of the Book of Mormon are going to throw the baby out with the bath water as institutional LDSism gets worse.
I've quoted the key remarks from this speaker, tried to organize them by topic:
Introduction:
wrote: We are in Southern Utah, now you need to understand, Southern Utah is a world unto its own. I remember when we first drove up here, we crossed the border into Utah and we felt we were entering into foreign mission work and in many ways we were. You have a lot of what we call 'Jack Mormons' in Southern Utah. They're cultural and as you know they could be far more emotional about things because they don't really practice it but it's something they identify themselves by. Certainly you have a lot of polygamous groups down in this area. Big time. It's a very difficult area to plant churches in. That's why when we had 100 people show up for my talk on the trinity three weeks ago, that was huge. It was massive. Very encouraging to the
Christians here.
And so it's fitting in this area to take a few moments to talk about the massive shift and change that has been seen in Mormonism just over the past 15 years.
Unable to battle the world on secularism, it's clear morals/doctrine will change to get along with secularism coupled with too many varying views and interpretations of theology among members despite the rigid chain of command:
wrote:Every time Brother Wallace sends me more articles from what's going on in Salt Lake City and in Mormonism, at first I was just stunned. Because I was standing outside the temple in Salt Lake City when the first Gay Mormons group showed up and I saw what kind of reaction they got and I remember thinking at the time "well that's one perspective that could never make much headway in Mormonism. Because in Mormon theology, God is a physical, gendered being. He's got all of the equipment and it works. And so does his wife and all the other wives. And they have little spirit babies and little spirit diapers and everything else. And so one group that will not give in on this--and of course this was back in the early or mid 90s, I think late 90s--this will be the one group that is going to stand firm. I was completely wrong and it's obvious now in hindsight why that was. In fact it's fairly obvious. Just because you have a gendered deity, who looks like you, acts like you, once was you. You're the same kind of being, same genus and species. Same category in Mormonism, just a different level of exaltation. You don't have a coherent, historical and most important, objective theological foundation to pass that on to the next generation.
wrote: The RLDS church, which many decades ago was a force to be reckoned with. They had missionaries, they made arguments for their understanding of the Book of Mormon and their version of Doctrine and Covenants. What happened to them? Interestingly enough they've become in essence a liberal-protestant denomination. You can never be truly protestant as long as you have extra scriptures and things like that but that's what's taken place in that context.
wrote: To talk to a Mormon today and compare it to what it was like, say back in the early 90s, I would give talks on Mormonism, JWs and I would say when you deal with Mormons, I would draw a long, thin rectangle. Lots of subjects but you don't need to know them in depth. Then I'd turn the rectangle on its side, narrow range of subjects, need to know it in depth for a JW..... When I'd write to a Mormon elder, it communicated to every Mormon--yeah Sunstone had started--but there was still a clear consistency as far as beliefs in the Mormon church. But in my decades of ministry I've seen a massive expansion of the range of beliefs in both groups. Less wide among the Witnesses, but especially among the Mormons. It's amazing just how massive the expansion has been. I don't see how this system can survive it.
The bit on temples is something we've observed here. You can have a networth of $1 trillion, but you can't create more members. You can flood the world with missionaries for decades and see you're never able to really move the needle on creating an extensive enough amount of new members to create significant church growth. But when you have money (and theology that so beautifully lines up with this concept) you can build buildings to posture and throw your weight around.wrote: If it goes the way of the liberal, mainstream denominations, just look at what's happening to them. All of them that had hundreds of thousands, millions of adherents in the middle of the last century will be either completely defunct and extinct by the middle of this century or shortly thereafter. It can't survive that. So who gets all the money? That's a lot of power. It really is. There's still Mormons who believe the old stories. That's why I keep saying, it would take just one charismatic leader. If one of the 12 decided to say "hey, I know what's happened from the inside out and God told me to take over the reigns of this church", especially if he was a young, charismatic type, you could see a major split. Will we see just a slow death over time? When you've got billions and billions of dollars you can prop things up. And in fact at the last general conference, there was an announcement of what, 19 temples they're building? Why? They're not getting much attendance at the ones they've got now. So that's almost a desperation move. And it was interesting, Albert Muller mentioned a couple weeks ago after the conference, he gave some quotes, even from the current prophet basically saying "we can not change our doctrines and we're not going to change our doctrines on human sexuality but we're forging alliances with the LGBTQ community", you can't have your cake and eat it too. I mean it would be a MASSIVE redefinition of Mormonism.
wrote: Cedar City here, has a university. And the contrast between the university vibe; homosexuality, transgenderism, it really stands out within this context. The real amazing thing is, Mormonism just doesn't have the internal moral and ethical foundation to be able to withstand these things. So, it's going to be ugly how the church goes. It's going to be ugly. They (Mormons, specifically LDS) need people who know the gospel.
Previous 'Prophets, seers, revelators", McConkie, institutional/corporate sterilization, leadership problems/Salt Lake Temple/Massive underground tunnels:
wrote:And so, early on Mormonism was much more, well like it was in the 1980s when I first started encountering Mormon missionaries and studying Mormonism. I think Bruce R. McConkie was probably one of the last apostles that really reflected the old style Mormonism. The old, orthodox Mormonism. He was bold, clear, understandable and wasn't overly concerned about "nuancing" things. The fact that today you can hear so many young missionaries just dismiss McConkie or not even know who he was, tells a lot about where Mormonism has gone. Especially in the post-Gordon Hinckley era. I don't know this but I would have a gut feeling that Hinckley and McConkie didn't get along very well.
I think what he is saying here is that you've gone through a train of dozens and dozens of people claiming PSR as a title for decade after decade after decade after decade. And you just have no real prophetic fruit to support these PSR titles being thrown around by so many. There isn't substance to support this sort of talk, therefore, the system is unraveling. The world is falling apart and the only direction is "build temples, sustain the PSRs".wrote:So you have that "We have the truth" element in historic Mormonism but that was always somewhat inconsistent with and contradictory to the very subjective nature of the Mormon testimony for example and what has happened, I think, is the subjective element has outrun the objective element by a long shot and what you have now is a system that is simply unraveling. It has no leadership, it has no direction, and it seems to be completely incapable of defending itself from cultural onslaught. Oh, sounds like Liberal Mormonism. Isn't it interesting?
wrote:You really have to wonder what's going to happen. You have a system with billions and billions and billions of dollars stashed away. And, for example, they are in essence rebuilding the Salt Lake City temple right now but what most people don't know and what I found out in my trip up here and I can't tell you all my sources... A couple years ago, 2020 I believe it was. There were a number of earthquakes in the SLC area, primarily out in Magna. But there was a big one in SLC, remember Moroni fell off the temple. Well they downplayed all of that but the reality is that place almost went down. And they are in essence rebuilding The SLC temple from the inside out. They have to. It's the very symbol of Mormonism and they are digging down and there are evidently tunnels, massive tunnels under that building going different directions (which may be part of the problem of its instability). But they are rebuilding that place from the inside out.... So I know some people who have been in it and seen what's going on. It's not just renovation. It is fundamentally rebuilding that building while keeping it standing. They are spending 100s of millions of dollars to do this. And they have it. They've got the money.
wrote:But what do you do when you have a massive organization, and it basically becomes decapitated? The current prophet is what? 97? I think he's like 97. And this has been one of the biggest problems, is the system that developed under Brigham Young--I don't think Joseph Smith intended this at all--but the system developed under Brigham Young curses the church to constantly be led by a doddering old man and they're stuck with it.
Christians see an opportunity to save LDS members who are leaving the LDS institution:
wrote:What should Christians be doing? You should be praying for opportunities to speak to Mormons. Because there are a lot of them who are really confused right now. They're disillusioned. Mormons have always needed knowledgeable Christians to speak the truth to them, but never more than now. Because, if they're becoming disillusioned, they need to know there is something else to go to.
wrote:This is certainly not something that we ever saw coming when we started Alpha and Omega Ministries so many years ago. We wanted to witness to Mormons, most definitely. But we couldn't have imagined that coming up on 40 years down the road, the Mormonism we'd be dealing with, it'd be next to impossible to get a Mormon to actually stand up and defend what they believe. So be very sensitive to have opportunities to reach out to the Mormon people.
He sees the decline of Mormonism as a stage of an unavoidable path to the fall of the LDS church. He sees this as a chance to help Mormons accept traditional Christianity. Others might be able to help these sort of members retain their belief in the Book of Mormon if we break through the false tradition that the truth of the Book of Mormon is linked to the truth of the institutional claims of the LDS church.