A Two-Page Version of LDS History and Theology

[Leland41-2]

A Two-Page Version of LDS History and Theology

[Revised for clarity]]
The presidency of Wilford Woodruff was a disaster for the church, and we have not recovered yet. He did at least five important bad actions. 1) He started the practice of priestcraft by giving himself and all his associates salaries from church contributions, making the church his piggy bank. 2) He removed the sealing power from the stake patriarchs and centralized it so that the church could begin monetizing valuable sealing ordinances, which had previously been free, 3) beginning to add simony (the sale of ordinances) to the church's bad practices. 4) That meant that the church patriarch was out of a job and would eventually be terminated. 5) He ended the concept that man could become God because such a concept is completely incompatible with priestcraft profit-making logic. 6) He also ended polygamy, although he probably did not have much choice about that.

I want to focus here on Wilford Woodruff's most disruptive change: The most critical pivot point in LDS history and theology in this last dispensation occurred in 1896 at the moment when Wilford Woodruff decided to stop trying to implement the plan of God – that man could become like God – and decided to start implementing the plan of Satan – where no man could become like God, and might not even know to try. With one or two notable exceptions, his associates and successors have all continued to make the same choice. They have not yet completely implemented Satan's plan for the destruction of the children of the pioneers, but they have at least totally neutralized the LDS church as a force for good in the world. For me, that answers the question as to why the Church is not growing anymore.

So what was God's plan that Wilford Woodruff ended? That plan was that as many men and women as possible should become as God is, and continue his work in heaven, to expand the number of gods populating the universe. First of all, we have the great exemplar of Christ of how to live our lives on earth, but perhaps even more importantly, we also have the great exemplar of his father, and our father in heaven, God himself. Joseph Smith tried to explain that understanding God was the most important thing a human could do, but the quest for that critical knowledge of God seems to have faded away.

One of the things which God has done is determine "the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:26) for his children on earth. In other words, he has set up the conditions of their lives to accomplish his purposes in many often seemingly obscure ways, but which surely have a good purpose, often known only to Him.

I find it interesting that the gospel can be reduced to a single statement or concept, and then all of the rest of the gospel can be deduced from that single concept. It was once common knowledge that man could and should become like God, as famously mentioned in the King Follett discourse by Joseph Smith. There was also a statement common among the early Saints that "A religion which cannot save you temporally, cannot save you spiritually." That is because the principles involved are exactly the same in each case. Apparently, what was once commonly known and understood, has gradually become very mysterious over time as we have gradually been helped to forget nearly everything that was common knowledge during the life and times of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

So is this idea that man can become like God just some strange and freaky science fiction concept today? Or does it make perfect practical religious sense? If God wanted his children on earth to have the most interesting experiences, and to have an opportunity to demonstrate that they want to become like him, which would mean that they could live with him and do as he does, then he would set things up on earth in a certain fashion. His eager acolytes on earth would do everything in their power to act on God's behalf to help his children. That was once known as "building up Zion," something we rarely do anymore. A constant positive spiral in our society could lead us to Zion and the Millennium.

We have an interesting current event which may help to illustrate the thought here. We have the people of the Gaza Strip, governed by the Hamas political party, who have decided that their only purpose in life is to destroy the Jews who live next door to them. Their maniacal leaders, using Islamic concepts, have somehow convinced up to 2.3 million people that the way to get to heaven is to kill as many innocent people as possible through some murderous jihad operation. It is hard to imagine a more satanic purpose. Of course, the Hamas leaders are simply following their financial and ideological leaders in Iran who are even more insane and evil.

I read somewhere that only 40% of the people in Gaza voted for Hamas, but Hamas controls everything nonetheless, presumably through fraud and trickery, which surely are among their many skills. That might indicate that at least 40% of those people would rather not be there in this absurd 70-year-old "refugee camp."

If someone were thinking like God, they would perhaps arrive at the rather obvious conclusion that this madness which is Gaza should not go on as it is. One useful solution would be to move at least the 40% (or more) who are being kept there against their will, to some other place in the world where they could live a more normal life. Anyone who helped that process of relocating those people could be said to be acting in a way that God would approve of by improving the lives of those people who were moved.

We can probably guess that there is some percentage of the people in the Gaza Strip which cannot be rehabilitated and need to remain in a prison somewhere to prevent them from hurting anyone else. But the remainder ought to be moved where they can live a better life. A truly charitable person like God himself, would surely want to do that. And anyone who was a worshiper and devotee of God would want to help with that process. That would be the impulse of a person who was trying to be like God.

(Of course, there are many more "Gaza Strips" in the world, where the good people need to be rescued from the bad. That is part of what the "gathering" is for, but we canceled the gathering in 1977.)

But, of course, our church is not doing anything about any of this right now, and has never done anything in the last century to help the Jews. The church was restored to the earth to teach the gospel to the Gentiles and Jews, but, for some reason, we have never gotten around to the Jews (even though we have had many opportunities). We have helped them no more than anyone else on our planet has helped them, even when we had good reason to take action.

We might notice that one of the basic concepts of priestcraft, the route chosen by Wilford Woodruff in 1896, is that the first thing you have to do is to convince people that New Testament charity is a bad idea, that it is "robbing God" (the exact opposite of the truth), and people should stop doing that (even though that is the essence of godhood and is the only way to learn to become like God). To continue that flawed logic, in general, people should stop giving their money to other people who need it, thus executing the Golden rule on a daily basis, but instead they should give that charity money to the priestcraft people who don't actually need it. That is quite a rhetorical trick to convince people to make that huge switch in life goals and religious behavior, but the LDS Church, and many other priestcraft churches and televangelists, have managed it. One might guess that laziness and irresponsibility are parts of this "itching ears" syndrome among the members.

If people are doing good to each other and helping each other, that seems to help keep the charitably-minded people cheerful and healthy. If you take away charity as a principle of the gospel, even though that is the first and most important and most eternal principle of the gospel, then apparently you have to give them some bad substitute in return. One of the things that seems to work is an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) substitute, where people focus on doing one or more small and meaningless things, but then are somehow convinced that if they do those small and meaningless things perfectly, that will make them pure and therefore worthy of salvation. The truth is that only constantly acting on the impulse to help other people is useful to a god-like person in heaven, and anything else is a very poor substitute. One does not learn how to be a generous and loving God by focusing only on oneself or on meaningless little compulsive gestures as a substitute for actually helping someone else.

We have the case of the good Samaritan where the worship of personal purity (and priestcraft), instead of God's priorities, kept the priest and the Levite from doing anything to help this person in need. They imagined that their personal purity was more important than his life, when in fact, of course, their personal purity was of no significance whatsoever. It was a fraud, a mental trick. Today in the church we have many people who have the exact same mindset as the priest and the Levite. They say that "I will pay my tithing and then I don't have to do anything for anyone." "Paying my tithing is the OCD gesture which will save me," when what it really does is prevent them from learning about charity and learning about how to be God. It actually makes it impossible for them to learn how to be God. Being willing to accept this OCD substitute for godly behavior is a strange quirk of human nature. Apparently, the world's priestcrafters figured this out many centuries ago, including in life under the law of Moses, and it still seems to be effective.

If a church were teaching that man could and should become like God, then one might expect that the leaders of that church would be presenting good examples every day of themselves trying to become like God by helping other people in the world on a grand scale, trying to stretch their accomplishments almost beyond human capabilities. If, instead, they are focused only on themselves, and charity has been basically discontinued, except perhaps for an occasional small demonstration project for public relations purposes, and their heart is not really in it, then we should be fairly certain that those people are not trying to implement the plan of God. Rather than vigorously teaching and showing and helping people to become like God, they say "we don't know much about that." Obviously, engaging in godlike behavior, and constantly trying to change the world for the better would probably make their lives more complicated (although surely more interesting), and might threaten the size of their personal incomes, so they simply decide not to do it. Satan obviously had a better idea for how a successful religion should operate.

[BigT]

Sorry, anything that says the plan of God is spiritual wifery doesn’t deserve a full read.

[Leland41-2]

Sorry, anything that says the plan of God is spiritual wifery doesn’t deserve a full read.

I hate to seem so dense, but I don't know where the "spiritual wifery" comment came from. I had not thought that was anywhere in my post. Maybe someone could explain this to me.

I do have to admit that I came of age in 1959, so my views of "current topics" is quite a bit different from people today, but I thought someone would at least know what I was talking about.

[blitzinstripes]

Didn't Woodruff abolish polygamy? Isn't that the point you were alluding to when you accused Woodruff of abandoning God's plan and following Satan?

[Leland41-2]

Didn't Woodruff abolish polygamy? Isn't that the point you were alluding to when you accused Woodruff of abandoning God's plan and following Satan?

Thank you for the clarification. It really helps.
But no, I had never even thought of that. One of the other important things which Wilford Woodruff did was to instigate official priestcraft, begin to take a church salary, and turn the church into his piggy bank. And everyone except Moses Thatcher and B. H. Roberts agreed with him.

He also ended the concept that man could become like God. Continuing that "men can become God" concept causes a huge problem for church leadership, because God is the most charitable person in the universe, and the church leaders are now among the least charitable people on this particular planet. That is a huge conflict and represents an inversion of the gospel. Continuing to teach and practice the gospel concepts of the gathering and of building up Zion would mean that the church leaders would actually have to do something, and they haven't the slightest desire to do anything at all besides travel around, collect money, and be honored.

[BigT]

Didn't Woodruff abolish polygamy? Isn't that the point you were alluding to when you accused Woodruff of abandoning God's plan and following Satan?

Thank you for the clarification. It really helps.
But no, I had never even thought of that. One of the other important things which Wilford Woodruff did was to instigate official priestcraft, begin to take a church salary, and turn the church into his piggy bank. And everyone except Moses Thatcher and B. H. Roberts agreed with him.

He also ended the concept that man could become like God. Continuing that "men can become God" concept causes a huge problem for church leadership, because God is the most charitable person in the universe, and the church leaders are now among the least charitable people on this particular planet. That is a huge conflict and represents an inversion of the gospel. Continuing to teach and practice the gospel concepts of the gathering and of building up Zion would mean that the church leaders would actually have to do something, and they haven't the slightest desire to do anything at all besides travel around, collect money, and be honored.

I, too, thought you were referencing Woodruff’s manifesto to officially end polygamy. My apologies. See, I’m 2 years older than you but I can make mistakes, too.

Brigham Young’s finances and the church’s were essentially the same thing. Some here have said the same about Joseph Smith, but I don’t recall seeing any supporting references. Joseph’s misdeeds in this area would have been done in the Nauvoo era, while his eyes were being covered.

Here’s a quote about BY:

LDS historians James Allen and Glen Leonard observed:

"It was finally determined that his estate was worth approximately $1,626,000, but obligations of more than a million dollars to the Church plus other debts and executor's fees reduced the family's claim to $224,000. When seven of his dissatisfied heirs challenged this settlement, however, that matter was settled out of court and the Church agreed to give the heirs an additional $75,000." (The Story of the Latter-day Saints, by James Allen and Glen Leonard, second ed. 1992, Deseret Book, p.385)

http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bri ... estate.htm