Group worship in the church of Christ

Group worship prior to the resurrection of Jesus Christ: The pattern for communal/group worship of God before the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was outlined in the law of Moses.  It was the system of offering sacrifices and burnt offering [Mosiah 2:3], called the “observances of the law”. It was expedient that these outward observances [...]

Zion will not be Established by Unrelated Persons

My text for this post is Acts 2:37-47 37 Now when the people heard Peter preach the word of God, they were pricked in their hearts and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” 38 Then Peter said unto them, “Repent, and be baptized every [...]

The Baptism of Fire

The following is my current understanding of the baptism of fire. One baptism in three parts The gospel of Jesus Christ has one, tripartite baptism consisting of the baptism of water, the baptism of fire and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The purpose of baptism is to witness that there exists a covenant between [...]

The Tribal Church

Rebecca [from the-exponent blog] once asked me: In your ideal world, I’d assume there is no church outside of the family unit.  Is this the primary appeal of anarchy within the LDS context for you? It is evidence of the “Catholic-ization” of the LDS church that members refer to the leadership in Salt Lake as [...]

CHI #6

The focus of this post is to examine the policies established by the CHI for the worthiness interview required for baptism. Section 16.3.3 covers interviews for convert baptisms. Mission presidents are given the keys for administering baptisms of new members of the church over the age of 8 or for 8 year old children whose [...]

An alternate view of the keys

Note: This article is 22,421 words long. As a result, I highly doubt anyone will read it in its entirety, therefore I am hyper-linking all the section headings so that you can quickly jump to any section you may be interested in. Section Headings THE KEYS OF THE PRIESTHOOD The current view – The divine [...]

Seeing Apostasy from Within

“…we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses; wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people…” 1 Nephi 17:22 After nearly a decade of wandering in [...]

The Only and True Doctrine

In my previous posts, I discussed the definition of the gospel according to the scriptures; a definition that stands at odds with the prevailing opinion expressed from the pulpit. Another area that bears consideration is the ‘doctrine of Christ.’ As with the gospel, there are three specific scriptural references that are of interest in understanding [...]