LDS Freedom Forum

Can The LDS Church Think Celestial! After 127 Years Of Thinking Terrestrial?


This title, of course, refers to the admonition of President Russell M. Nelson in the October 2023 LDS Conference to "Think Celestial!"

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young showed us how to vigorously and almost impossibly Think Celestial! and "build up Zion" as they gathered believers from around the world and created multiple gathering spots, culminating in establishing the new state of Utah under LDS control.

However, at the exact moment in history when the LDS Church was finally securely established and could start reaching out to change the world for the better, it was cut off at the knees by a small-minded group of leaders who "joined the opposition." Since then, the members of this group of self-appointed priestcraft theologians have worked hard to keep all the earthly benefits of the Gospel for themselves. And they have been quite successful, to the point of embarrassment.

As shown graphically below, since 1896 about 95% of a healthy version of the restored church has been cut away by the church leaders for their own convenience, leaving about 5% left. Recently, the church has made a big production out of emphasizing that its proper and complete name should always be used, perhaps because essentially all that is left of the original restored church IS the name. All the action doctrines and programs for improving society have been officially ended. The Gathering was officially ended in 1977, and its corollary, the concept of Building up Zion on the American continent, was also canceled.

In order to truly "Think Celestial!" once more, we will have to accept God's plan for man, not man's plan for man. Since 1896 God's plan has been put on hold and man's plan for man has been in control. That needs to be rolled back. Going in reverse order, the gathering and the building up of Zion need to be reinstituted so that it looks much more, as far as vigor and scale, like it did during the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

God's plan for man is basically to work hard to save each other temporally and spiritually. Only the kind of people who will do that consistently ought to be given the powers of a truly celestial being, continuing on in the exact footsteps of God.

The church today is clearly not attempting to save man, either temporally or spiritually. It does not even teach that one needs to do that sort of thing to get to the celestial kingdom. In other words, the Gospel we teach today is a terrestrial Gospel. It teaches people to do only what is necessary to get to the terrestrial kingdom. One of the interesting quirks of the situation today is that the church teaches that one must have all the temple ordinances to get to the celestial kingdom, but it doesn't teach or exemplify any of the other live-action aspects of human life that are necessary to get us to the celestial kingdom.

In other words, if we follow just the teachings of the church today, all of our temple ordinances for ourselves and others are a complete waste of time and money, because there is only an infinitesimal chance that, based on our behavior here, we could qualify for the celestial kingdom. (It may be true that if we have those ordinances, and we accidentally behave and perform far outside the church's teachings, and do wonderful amounts of good, then we could be qualified for the celestial kingdom, all this in spite of what the church tells us to do today.)

We have spent much time and money on creating temples and doing genealogy research and doing ordinances, but all of that is done in the context of not making any other serious efforts to reach the celestial kingdom. (It just indicates that we are foolish in imagining that we can get to the celestial kingdom on the cheap, almost for free.) All of this central collection of money helps the earthly church leaders, but it doesn't help anyone else. It doesn't help the church members because they will never get to the celestial kingdom by following the church's current plan, and it doesn't help even the spirits in heaven since it is unlikely that they can make up by their behavior in heaven for what they didn't do here on earth. (If the Gospel they are taught in heaven is the same as the Gospel taught here, then there is no possibility that they can ever get to the celestial kingdom. It is only if they finally learn the truth there, and are able to make up some huge deficits, that they can change their future possibilities.)

That makes our whole temple effort here on earth counterproductive. It keeps us from doing the things we need to do to be qualified to go to the celestial kingdom, and our example and our teachings here will not influence anyone else to take the actions needed to get to the celestial kingdom. All we have managed to do is keep people from doing good works during this life. It is only those good works which would get them to the celestial kingdom, and the church takes positive action to prevent them from becoming eligible for the celestial kingdom by taking away people's extra money that they might have used for charity, and convincing them those aggressively charitable actions are not necessary anyway.

What we have now is just another variation of the Protestant doctrine of grace which is interpreted as meaning that Christ will take care of absolutely everything concerning salvation, and man needs to do absolutely nothing to be saved in heaven. Of course, that is technically true, except that the heaven they are going to is simply the terrestrial kingdom. The Protestant doctrine can never get them to the celestial kingdom, and it is certainly not intended to. There might be a few who personally decide that good works are really important, and they work with all their might and main to improve things, and they might succeed in being eligible for the celestial kingdom, but it would not be because they followed the teachings of any existing earthly church which taught them these important things.

It is quite remarkable what a long string of church leaders have managed to do in this particular religious confidence game. They just deny responsibility for doing anything at all to improve our society, and yet they still collect large amounts of money, while pretending it will be used for real and effective charity. This has got to be the best scam that anyone has ever thought of. They have made far more money than Bernie Madoff ever made with his famous $64.8 billion pyramid scheme.

To keep this introductory section short, I am providing a link to a longer version of this document which includes two sections: 1) a section on how the church was gradually dismantled, which also implies the proper way to build the church back up to where it once was, by reversing the process, and then 2), the overall philosophical basis for the mission, goals, and processes of the true church on earth, which have been completely lost since 1896. My other writings, equaling about seven books, go into more detail, and cover many other related topics. That extra information is available to anyone who wishes to dig in deeper. For all this, see FutureMormonism.blogspot.com
Description of points on the graph:

1830 full gospel restored +100%
1896 officially installed priestcraft, start leader salaries -50%
1899 justify priestcraft, drop charity, add tithing, facilitate all future changes -2%
1910 Declare cancellation of Christ's original gospel -1%
1923 drop common consent, take all property -10%
1935 Drop US constitution, fully abandon charity -10%
1938 Church goes globalist, abandons freedom -5%
1909-1978 take money and power from women -2%
1960 Enforce tithing with recommends -5%
1977 Gathering and Zion ended -5%
2010 cumulative changes -3%
2020 current status only 5% left

Do you have links or citations to all of this? For example- "1910 Declare cancellation of Christ's original gospel"- what is this referencing exactly?

p8riot wrote: ↑October 31st, 2023, 1:57 pm Do you have links or citations to all of this? For example- "1910 Declare cancellation of Christ's original gospel"- what is this referencing exactly?

If you were to look at my approximately 7 books (links to them) on the FutureMormonism.blogspot.com site, somewhere in that mass of material you would find a chapter on that question. It would be nice if I could go back and re-edit and completely integrate and index what I've done over a lifetime, but I may never get to that task. I am 82. If I live to be 100, I might be able to finish the job.

One of the chapters in my book "Is the Church As True As the Gospel?" relates to my admittedly somewhat speculative interpretation of the work by James E. Talmage in writing the book "The Great Apostasy." After 60 years of thinking about this problem, my impression is that his book "The Great Apostasy" really amounts to an announcement, however subtle, that the church leaders are going to take great pains to make sure they never look at the history of the Church which Christ himself started. The reason for that is so that they can give themselves the widest possible latitude in deciding whatever policy choices they want to make now today. I have to say that this is one of the more obscure conclusions I have reached, but I still believe there is good basis for it.

10. James Talmage and The Great Apostasy -- An argument for replacing one
divergent religious empire with another. p.107

By 1910, the church leaders had already decided to implement tithing as a mandatory tax on people. Their version of "tithing" is totally nonscriptural. It has the same name as what was going on during the law of Moses, but it has no practical connection at all. Under the law of Moses, only 1% went to the church headquarters, and 9% was kept locally for actual welfare. The always-ambitious church leaders wanted the full 10%, with no deduction for charity or welfare.

There is a book by a woman who teaches at BYU where she and her associates basically try to give a great deal more weight to the history we have of church administration during and after the life of Christ. Where the church leaders today want to pretend that the church died immediately after the death of Christ, and that we have no data to go on about how a church should operate, that is simply not true. They want to claim that law of Moses tithing continued after the life of Christ, but that is simply not true.

See, Miranda Wilcox, "Standing Apart"

Here is something interesting I just ran across:
12 Questions for Miranda Wilcox and John Young, Editors of Standing Apart—Part II
http://archive.timesandseasons.org/2014 ... rtpart-ii/

I should acknowledge that in most cases, there is NO ONE to cite on any of these issues, because no one has done the research themselves. I am striking out on my own on this. If I were 140 years old, maybe I could remember it myself, but unfortunately, everyone who lived in 1896 is long gone.

This turnover of generations and loss of memory is what seems to be the main reason why every restoration of the church self-destructs after about 200 years, just as ours is doing.

Leland41-2 wrote: ↑October 31st, 2023, 2:50 pm

p8riot wrote: ↑October 31st, 2023, 1:57 pm Do you have links or citations to all of this? For example- "1910 Declare cancellation of Christ's original gospel"- what is this referencing exactly?

If you were to look at my approximately 7 books (links to them) on the FutureMormonism.blogspot.com site, somewhere in that mass of material you would find a chapter on that question. It would be nice if I could go back and re-edit and completely integrate and index what I've done over a lifetime, but I may never get to that task. I am 82. If I live to be 100, I might be able to finish the job.

One of the chapters in my book "Is the Church As True As the Gospel?" relates to my admittedly somewhat speculative interpretation of the work by James E. Talmage in writing the book "The Great Apostasy." After 60 years of thinking about this problem, my impression is that his book "The Great Apostasy" really amounts to an announcement, however subtle, that the church leaders are going to take great pains to make sure they never look at the history of the Church which Christ himself started. The reason for that is so that they can give themselves the widest possible latitude in deciding whatever policy choices they want to make now today. I have to say that this is one of the more obscure conclusions I have reached, but I still believe there is good basis for it.

10. James Talmage and The Great Apostasy -- An argument for replacing one
divergent religious empire with another. p.107

By 1910, the church leaders had already decided to implement tithing as a mandatory tax on people. Their version of "tithing" is totally nonscriptural. It has the same name as what was going on during the law of Moses, but it has no practical connection at all. Under the law of Moses, only 1% went to the church headquarters, and 9% was kept locally for actual welfare. The always-ambitious church leaders wanted the full 10%, with no deduction for charity or welfare.

There is a book by a woman who teaches at BYU where she and her associates basically try to give a great deal more weight to the history we have of church administration during and after the life of Christ. Where the church leaders today want to pretend that the church died immediately after the death of Christ, and that we have no data to go on about how a church should operate, that is simply not true. They want to claim that law of Moses tithing continued after the life of Christ, but that is simply not true.

See, Miranda Wilcox, "Standing Apart"

Here is something interesting I just ran across:
12 Questions for Miranda Wilcox and John Young, Editors of Standing Apart—Part II
http://archive.timesandseasons.org/2014 ... rtpart-ii/

I should acknowledge that in most cases, there is NO ONE to cite on any of these issues, because no one has done the research themselves. I am striking out on my own on this. If I were 140 years old, maybe I could remember it myself, but unfortunately, everyone who lived in 1896 is long gone.

This turnover of generations and loss of memory is what seems to be the main reason why every restoration of the church self-destructs after about 200 years, just as ours is doing.

I have enjoyed this book so far. The ancient church was very dissimilar to the "restored" church.

https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Christia ... 154&sr=8-1

I have enjoyed this book so far. The ancient church was very dissimilar to the "restored" church.
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Christia ... 154&sr=8-1

Sounds like a fascinating book. My main question would be whether this new book is detailed enough to be able to compare the ancient church point by point with the modern church.

If you were to look at my approximately 7 books...

... *Sighs*

Think Celestial...sure...

D&C 105:1 Verily I say unto you who have assembled yourselves together that you may learn my will concerning the redemption of mine afflicted people—

2 Behold, I say unto you, were it not for the transgressions of my people, speaking concerning the church and not individuals, they might have been redeemed even now.

3 But behold, they have not learned to be obedient to the things which I required at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil, and do not impart of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them;

4 And are not united according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom

5 And Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself.

Great summary

marc wrote: ↑November 3rd, 2023, 8:24 am Think Celestial...sure...

D&C 105:1 Verily I say unto you who have assembled yourselves together that you may learn my will concerning the redemption of mine afflicted people—

2 Behold, I say unto you, were it not for the transgressions of my people, speaking concerning the church and not individuals, they might have been redeemed even now.

3 But behold, they have not learned to be obedient to the things which I required at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil, and do not impart of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them;

4 And are not united according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom

5 And Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself.

And now, what have we done differently? Radio silence from Jesus since then. Maybe... Maybe that's why He's not speaking anymore to our church leaders... We're not doing any better.

I have enjoyed this book so far. The ancient church was very dissimilar to the "restored" church.
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Christia ... 154&sr=8-1

I got a copy of the book, and my searches in it show that there are zero occurrences of the word "tithing" and only one occurrence of the word "tithes," and even in that case, the book is referring to church practices today, not to the time of the early Christians.

Four other books I consulted give the exact same result, with the books having been written for the exact purpose of demonstrating that there was no concept of Old Testament-style tithing during the times of ancient Christianity.

There are two other LDS-based books that I want to check, that deal with ancient Christians, and I assume they will show the same thing. One question is, how many witnesses does one need to demonstrate that the tithing regime today is totally fake? The old tithing concept was the stopgap measure, the schoolmaster, of Moses. It was not the gospel of Christ.

When the church leaders today don't even try to conform to the original gospel of Christ, and thus are not listening at all, it is no wonder that we have "radio silence."