Keeping the cosmic view -- continuing the war in heaven, and winning it on earth.
Posted: April 10th, 2022, 8:11 pm
Keeping the cosmic view -- continuing the war in heaven, and winning it on earth.
The current church leaders have succumbed to many of the world's philosophies and are enjoying the promised temporary earthly benefits of peace and prosperity for themselves from that surrender. However, I expect the harsh reality is that they will be cast aside as soon as their usefulness is gone, and their desired freedom from persecution will end.
Christ completely resisted all of the three temptations of Satan, but the current church leaders have enthusiastically embraced those exact same temptations of ease, money, fame, and power. Their current assignment as undercover agents for the gospel opposition is to neutralize the pro-freedom power of the gospel and of LDS church members, and they are quite effective. They have actually convinced us that our job is to do nothing and just wait as our world disintegrates. Perfect.
Here is the first set of new goals to be declared and achieved:
Reinstitute active support for freedom, the real first principle of the gospel as demonstrated by the single issue of the war in heaven as it continues here on earth.
Reinstitute individual charity, as in the New Testament, meant to constantly improve society. End the destructive Old Testament tithing and priestcraft system.
Reinstitute the gathering to benefit the honest in heart in the world as a help toward
Reinstitute the movement toward Zion and the millennium to improve the world.
These are simple but powerful changes in direction that can quickly have a huge positive effect on society, as Christianity was intended to do. This gospel IS the weapon to achieve these goals. Other lesser and more detailed goals may be needed later.
The current church leaders are doing none of these things, to their great shame, I argue.
In other words, what we have is a fake, almost meaningless "Christian" church, and it can never do anything more than it is doing now, and quite likely will gradually do less. In order to understand the current situation, you will have to be as cynical as you can possibly imagine, and then multiply times 10. (See my genealogy computer story.)
The Future of Mormonism – a New Testament LDS Church?
There seem to be at least a few people on this site who are not completely happy with the way the current LDS church is being conducted. Perhaps this group is ready to start discussing some solutions to the problem. I think many people assume there is no such thing as a solution to this problem, and just give up and leave, or stay and remain unhappy. It surely is a big problem, but "preemptive surrender" doesn't seem like the right answer, at least not for me. Hopefully, this is one of those situations where enough information and enough thought will uncover a workable solution. There are many issues on which more basic research should be helpful.
I want to propose the outlines of such a solution:
As I see it, since the time of Joseph Smith, the church has receded from its high point of exemplifying the original New Testament content and status, gradually moving backwards to the pre-Christian era of an Old Testament content and status. They endlessly claim to be following Christ, concerning the content of his personally formulated New Testament church, but they very clearly are not following that path. That implies that one way to fix the problem is to simply and gradually move the church from its current Old Testament status back along the upward theological path to becoming a real New Testament church as it started out.
To begin that process I would simply mentally separate the old from the new. The existing church would become known – at least to the internal activist crowd, the New Testament saints – as the Old Testament LDS church or OTLDS church. The desired new version of the church would then become known as the New Testament LDS church or NTLDS church.
In the spirit of low-impact gradualism, there appears to be no particular reason to immediately cause a split and go through the confusion and dissension of creating a whole new organization.
Instead, what we would have, for a time, is an overlay of NTLDS-thinking people operating mostly within the confines of the existing OTLDS people, organizations, and facilities. (Hopefully, that is what we have already, just without acknowledging it.)
Usually when we think of a secret combination, we think of an organization to do evil. However, there have been, and could be again, secret combinations whose intent is to do good. There have been numerous movies made about the organization of spies which George Washington set up to help him understand how to conduct the American Revolutionary War. That was a good cause which brought about a good outcome, but it did have to remain quite secret in order to be effective.
Let's say, for discussion's sake, that at least 51% of what the current OTLDS church is doing would be acceptable and beneficial to committed NTLDS thinkers. That would allow those NTLDS people to operate within the current system most of the time. Nothing very jarring would have to happen anytime soon.
There would really only be one clearly noticeable change, and that could happen gradually over a period of two years or more. That would be in the redirecting of church contributions, those funds now called "tithing." These "social improvement" funds would go to a different entity for honest and serious New Testament administration. Of course, even there, a large part of this social improvement money would be spent directly by those who wish to make those contributions, and only after taking care of the needs immediately around them would they wish to send the rest of their contributions to a slightly more centralized location as part of a group effort to be used in previously determined and always transparent ways.
Minimal disruptive effects of bottom-up changes
We know that if every last dime which the church is now receiving from the church members were suddenly cut off and redirected to some other use, it would make almost no difference at all at Salt Lake City headquarters since they have enough money in the bank that they could live off the interest indefinitely with barely any noticeable change in their level of activity or "operational tempo."
In fact, that could actually provide an ideal solution to the current OTLDS church. As it is, that church has more than $100 billion in liquid assets which it can't easily give back, can't easily spend, and can't easily keep. All of the usual options work very badly in this situation. On the other hand, if the church were living off the interest or even slightly drawing down the principal, that would at least stop that hoard of cash from increasing, and might cause it to gradually shrink a little bit. That would be a good thing. It would actually let the OTLDS church very slowly reverse itself out of the cul-de-sac it has gotten itself into by taking and keeping all of that money in the first place.
So, think of it this way: by turning off the money spigot from the members to the simple church, we are actually solving a central church problem. And, more importantly, we would be doing the most effective thing possible to gradually transition the OTLDS church into being a true NTLDS church, fully embracing principles of Christian charity. I will list a number of other gradual changes which need to be made – e.g., reinstitute the quest for Zion and the Gathering – but none of them can begin to compete with the need to switch from the Old Testament/tithing/Levite/Pharisee/Sanhedrin centralized financial model to the New Testament/charity/decentralized financial administration model. Once that process is underway, the other less time-critical items can begin to fall into place.
These charitable activities mentioned above would take over instead of all that money going to Salt Lake City in Old Testament fashion to be almost entirely used up in extravagant and largely unnecessary administration costs, with about one half of it simply going into the bank where it is not used for anything at all, with smaller but still significant amounts being spent on unnecessary buildings, including chapels, and, especially, temples, and with only a microscopic amount going to obscure welfare services to obscure people, done in that way explicitly to make sure that spending that money makes no political or social difference that any political entity would notice or be concerned about in any way.
Other issues
See full 10-page article here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ym5swvni1sujx ... m.pdf?dl=0
For all the available background on this post see:
https://futuremormonism.blogspot.com/
The current church leaders have succumbed to many of the world's philosophies and are enjoying the promised temporary earthly benefits of peace and prosperity for themselves from that surrender. However, I expect the harsh reality is that they will be cast aside as soon as their usefulness is gone, and their desired freedom from persecution will end.
Christ completely resisted all of the three temptations of Satan, but the current church leaders have enthusiastically embraced those exact same temptations of ease, money, fame, and power. Their current assignment as undercover agents for the gospel opposition is to neutralize the pro-freedom power of the gospel and of LDS church members, and they are quite effective. They have actually convinced us that our job is to do nothing and just wait as our world disintegrates. Perfect.
Here is the first set of new goals to be declared and achieved:
Reinstitute active support for freedom, the real first principle of the gospel as demonstrated by the single issue of the war in heaven as it continues here on earth.
Reinstitute individual charity, as in the New Testament, meant to constantly improve society. End the destructive Old Testament tithing and priestcraft system.
Reinstitute the gathering to benefit the honest in heart in the world as a help toward
Reinstitute the movement toward Zion and the millennium to improve the world.
These are simple but powerful changes in direction that can quickly have a huge positive effect on society, as Christianity was intended to do. This gospel IS the weapon to achieve these goals. Other lesser and more detailed goals may be needed later.
The current church leaders are doing none of these things, to their great shame, I argue.
In other words, what we have is a fake, almost meaningless "Christian" church, and it can never do anything more than it is doing now, and quite likely will gradually do less. In order to understand the current situation, you will have to be as cynical as you can possibly imagine, and then multiply times 10. (See my genealogy computer story.)
The Future of Mormonism – a New Testament LDS Church?
There seem to be at least a few people on this site who are not completely happy with the way the current LDS church is being conducted. Perhaps this group is ready to start discussing some solutions to the problem. I think many people assume there is no such thing as a solution to this problem, and just give up and leave, or stay and remain unhappy. It surely is a big problem, but "preemptive surrender" doesn't seem like the right answer, at least not for me. Hopefully, this is one of those situations where enough information and enough thought will uncover a workable solution. There are many issues on which more basic research should be helpful.
I want to propose the outlines of such a solution:
As I see it, since the time of Joseph Smith, the church has receded from its high point of exemplifying the original New Testament content and status, gradually moving backwards to the pre-Christian era of an Old Testament content and status. They endlessly claim to be following Christ, concerning the content of his personally formulated New Testament church, but they very clearly are not following that path. That implies that one way to fix the problem is to simply and gradually move the church from its current Old Testament status back along the upward theological path to becoming a real New Testament church as it started out.
To begin that process I would simply mentally separate the old from the new. The existing church would become known – at least to the internal activist crowd, the New Testament saints – as the Old Testament LDS church or OTLDS church. The desired new version of the church would then become known as the New Testament LDS church or NTLDS church.
In the spirit of low-impact gradualism, there appears to be no particular reason to immediately cause a split and go through the confusion and dissension of creating a whole new organization.
Instead, what we would have, for a time, is an overlay of NTLDS-thinking people operating mostly within the confines of the existing OTLDS people, organizations, and facilities. (Hopefully, that is what we have already, just without acknowledging it.)
Usually when we think of a secret combination, we think of an organization to do evil. However, there have been, and could be again, secret combinations whose intent is to do good. There have been numerous movies made about the organization of spies which George Washington set up to help him understand how to conduct the American Revolutionary War. That was a good cause which brought about a good outcome, but it did have to remain quite secret in order to be effective.
Let's say, for discussion's sake, that at least 51% of what the current OTLDS church is doing would be acceptable and beneficial to committed NTLDS thinkers. That would allow those NTLDS people to operate within the current system most of the time. Nothing very jarring would have to happen anytime soon.
There would really only be one clearly noticeable change, and that could happen gradually over a period of two years or more. That would be in the redirecting of church contributions, those funds now called "tithing." These "social improvement" funds would go to a different entity for honest and serious New Testament administration. Of course, even there, a large part of this social improvement money would be spent directly by those who wish to make those contributions, and only after taking care of the needs immediately around them would they wish to send the rest of their contributions to a slightly more centralized location as part of a group effort to be used in previously determined and always transparent ways.
Minimal disruptive effects of bottom-up changes
We know that if every last dime which the church is now receiving from the church members were suddenly cut off and redirected to some other use, it would make almost no difference at all at Salt Lake City headquarters since they have enough money in the bank that they could live off the interest indefinitely with barely any noticeable change in their level of activity or "operational tempo."
In fact, that could actually provide an ideal solution to the current OTLDS church. As it is, that church has more than $100 billion in liquid assets which it can't easily give back, can't easily spend, and can't easily keep. All of the usual options work very badly in this situation. On the other hand, if the church were living off the interest or even slightly drawing down the principal, that would at least stop that hoard of cash from increasing, and might cause it to gradually shrink a little bit. That would be a good thing. It would actually let the OTLDS church very slowly reverse itself out of the cul-de-sac it has gotten itself into by taking and keeping all of that money in the first place.
So, think of it this way: by turning off the money spigot from the members to the simple church, we are actually solving a central church problem. And, more importantly, we would be doing the most effective thing possible to gradually transition the OTLDS church into being a true NTLDS church, fully embracing principles of Christian charity. I will list a number of other gradual changes which need to be made – e.g., reinstitute the quest for Zion and the Gathering – but none of them can begin to compete with the need to switch from the Old Testament/tithing/Levite/Pharisee/Sanhedrin centralized financial model to the New Testament/charity/decentralized financial administration model. Once that process is underway, the other less time-critical items can begin to fall into place.
These charitable activities mentioned above would take over instead of all that money going to Salt Lake City in Old Testament fashion to be almost entirely used up in extravagant and largely unnecessary administration costs, with about one half of it simply going into the bank where it is not used for anything at all, with smaller but still significant amounts being spent on unnecessary buildings, including chapels, and, especially, temples, and with only a microscopic amount going to obscure welfare services to obscure people, done in that way explicitly to make sure that spending that money makes no political or social difference that any political entity would notice or be concerned about in any way.
Other issues
See full 10-page article here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ym5swvni1sujx ... m.pdf?dl=0
For all the available background on this post see:
https://futuremormonism.blogspot.com/