markharr wrote: ↑December 4th, 2021, 2:58 pm
Niemand wrote: ↑December 4th, 2021, 2:23 pm
markharr wrote: ↑December 4th, 2021, 7:12 am
What is worse? The evil, or that good people are standing by and doing nothing. I think at minimum we should all be fasting and praying for deliverence.
Some of us are doing that already.
Last year when some people were praying for vaccines, I said in an online talk that people should be praying for God to improve this situation. I used neutral language, but reminded people that a jab* would not solve all the problems caused by lockdown e.g. economic.
* This was before people took reactions in large numbers.
This is wisdom. If you pray and ask for a specific solution, you may get that solution but miss out on a better solution that the Lord would have provided if you had used neutral language
Fasting and prayer is good, but I don't think it's enough anymore. What's called for is repentance. Actually repenting.
People on this forum have asked, "What should I repent for?" I've also asked that of God.
Perhaps we start with our perverse form of idolatry.
I don't think we generally understand just how wicked our membership has become. It doesn't even really pale in comparison to the wickedness of the world in general anymore. We're just like them. We fill our time with filthy movies, filthy music, immodest images, immodest thoughts, and immodest deeds. Our homes are filled with graven images, both literal and figurative. We participate with babylon in just about all her pleasures, either directly or through vicarious intermediaries (like movies). Many of our mothers teach their daughters to be immodest, to flaunt their bodies for attention, and to paint their eyes like sexual-attention-seeking sluts, etc. Our fathers...who knows what our fathers are doing. I don't. Maybe they're too busy looking at porn to pay quality attention to their kids. Maybe they're too busy absorbed in earning enough money. We failed to build "parallel" non-babylon entities, and we treat those who try like they're blinking nuts. Those who have succeeded only succeeded because they filled it with babylon. Our money, representative of our time, goes to all the pleasures of babylon, and then some. We talk like there's just no getting away from it. "Boys will be boys, girls will be girls," which is like saying, "We've broken the covenant and no longer want to be sons and daughters of God."
Maybe Bruce Gilbert would consider this a negative rant, I don't know, but it's the truth. I'll join in a fast, that's for sure, but only if it's in connection with repentance, because God has tenderized my heart to the truth that so many of us fast and pray with blood on our hands, having not repented, and earning the unwanted response of God's closed ears, closed to our cries for help.
I'm tired of the evil too, but I'm less tired of the evil coming from government than I am of the evil going on in the lives and homes of latter-day saints. I'm tired of the refuge being a snare. I'm tired of bishops and stake presidents teaching false doctrine. I'm tired of priesthood holders failing to stand firm in their households, and letting their female counterparts walk all over them in their leadership role. I'm tired of porn being used by members of the church. I'm tired of the immodesty EVERYWHERE in Utah. I'm tired of our church being a bunch of hypocrites as we cry out agains the evil of tyranny while being oblivious to the idolatry going on in our own lives.
This is getting long.
Here's an idea. What if instead of a fast from food, we call for a fast from idolatry. We challenge the forum to go through their house and get rid of EVERYTHING that offends God. All graven images, regardless of whether we kneel before them or just hang them on the wall; all movies with immodesty and nudity and gratuitous violence, etc.; all the immodest clothing in our closets; all the immodest clothing in our children's closets; all that Isaiah warned about in Isaiah 3; and then we replace all this with new lives, new habits, new traditions, and new faith? My family has been doing this for 2 years now, and we keep finding stuff to change in our lives. We destroyed all our graven images after the instruction in God's commandment, and we gave away a bunch of our excess to the poor. We deleted videos, altered clothing, threw out clothing, and more. It was a great cleansing. Not because we're special and better, but because we had a problem and needed to feel clean before the Lord. When the judgment comes, let's be those who can say there is no idol in our households or in our loyalties.