The five stages of the church

There are five church stages

The church of Jesus Christ will go through five distinct stages prior to the Second Coming of Christ.

The first two stages happen during a period which I call, the times of types and shadows. During this period, the last days prophecies are fulfilled solely in shadow forms, as types, so that they never fulfill literally and completely, nor does their chronology ever perfectly match the chronology set out in the scriptures. To give an example of a shadow fulfillment, consider the prophecies of Nephi found in 1 Nephi chapters 13 and 14. The prophetic order is:

• The book of the Lamb of God appears and goes from the Jews to the Gentiles in purity
• A great and abominable church (GAAC) is afterward formed
• The GAAC alters the book of the Lamb of God and then sends it out to all the nations of the world
• The GAAC also slays the saints of God and tortures them and binds them down into captivity
• The saints of God go out of captivity, to the promised land, carrying the altered book of the Lamb of God
• Many Gentile churches stumble because of the altered book of the Lamb of God
• New records are brought forth, starting with the complete and functionally translated Book of Mormon

Now that’s a play-by-play of some of the end time prophecies as they are going to be literally fulfilled, and that is the actual prophetic order given in the scriptures. What happened in the shadow? This:

• The primitive church apostles are killed and the church apostatizes—the saints of God cease to exist
• The Great Apostasy ensues
• The scriptures are collected and the ones considered authentic and binding are compiled into a single book, called The Bible
• One of the many Christian churches punishes heretics (not saints, for they no longer exist) in harsh ways
• Joseph Smith brings forth an incomplete and word-for-word translation of the Book of Mormon, but the other records (plates of brass, etc.) are not brought forth

In the shadow, there is no book of the Lamb of God present on the scene; however, there is a type of the altered version of the book of the Lamb of God, which is called the Bible. In the shadow, there is no great and abominable church corrupting the book of the Lamb of God and torturing and killing saints; however, there is a type of the GAAC which tortures and kills heretics to their church. In the shadow, the Book of Mormon isn’t brought forth in its entirety, nor translated functionally and powerfully; however, a part of it is brought forth and translated word-for-word. And so on.

The third stage is a reset or correction stage, a sort of preparatory stage which sets everything back in order and lays the foundation for the literal fulfillment of all the prophecies, so that all shadows and types cease at this point. Finally, in the last two stages all end time prophecies will be fulfilled every whit, literally and in their exact scriptural order. Okay, so let’s get into the details of each stage.

Stage #1: The restored church

The church was restored back to the earth on 6 April 1830. Lots of heavenly laws were revealed and initiated during the administration of Joseph Smith, such as the law of consecration, the principle of united firms (united orders), plural marriage, the law of tithing, church organization, priesthood offices and duties, two types of temples (Kirtland and Nauvoo) and so on. Problems with living all these principles and laws began almost immediately, but on November 27, 1832, Joseph Smith received a prophecy by revelation in which he learned that “the house of God” would eventually be set in order:

Stage #2: The out of order church

And it shall come to pass that I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God, and to arrange by lot the inheritances of the saints whose names are found, and the names of their fathers, and of their children, enrolled in the book of the law of God; while that man, who was called of God and appointed, that putteth forth his hand to steady the ark of God, shall fall by the shaft of death, like as a tree that is smitten by the vivid shaft of lightning. (D&C 85:7-8)

Per this scripture, at some point the Father (who is the Lord God) will send the Josephite (who is the one mighty and strong) to set the house of God in order. The term “house of God” specifically refers to the temple (and thus church) priesthood records, but it can also refer in general to all the practices and beliefs and policies and organization, etc., of the church, so that after they are set in order they perfectly match the laws and revelations given in the scriptures. In other words, the term “house of God” can be taken to mean the “household of God,” which is composed of the saints themselves. This latter meaning is how Peter used the term:

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17)

For the purposes of this post, then, I will be using the general meaning of “house of God.”

Now, the house of God cannot be set in order unless it is first out of order, therefore the Doctrine and Covenants section 87 prophecy presupposes that that first condition must exist. Once the church is out of order, then at some point the Josephite restorer will show up and correct everything, top to bottom, using the power of God.

Getting out of order

The church began to get out of order during the time of Joseph Smith. Here are some examples of things that got out of order nearly from the get-go:

• The law of consecration. Its practice was abandoned, although the saints who go to the temple still covenant to keep it.
• The law of tithing. The initial practice of beginning tithing by consecrating one’s surplus was abandoned, and its original practice of paying $6 for every $1000 of net worth was abandoned and replaced with the current practice of one tenth of one’s gross income.
• United Firms (United Orders.) This practice was altogether abandoned.
• Plural marriage. The beginning of this practice was resisted by Joseph Smith from the time it was revealed to him (around 1831.) When he finally began practicing, after being threatened with destruction by an angel with drawn sword, it was limited to a select number of brethren among the leadership, instead of applied across the board to all members. Later the practice was altogether abandoned, but the sealing of multiple spouse has been continued upon the deaths of the spouses.
• The Word of Wisdom. Originally given without constraint and it allowed the membership to drink wine and beer. Later this was altered to prohibit consumption of all alcoholic beverages and the membership was constrained to follow it, otherwise be barred from entering the temple.
• Kirtland type of temples. The first temple to be built was of the Kirtland type. The saints had a huge outpouring of the Spirit at its dedication, and then many of them apostatized soon afterward. For the second temple, instead of building another Kirtland type of temple at Nauvoo, Joseph Smith introduced a new type of temple (the Nauvoo type), which has been used as the pattern for all subsequent temples ever since. The Kirtland type of temple is no longer existent.
• The quorum of the Twelve apostles as a missionary force. The original quorum operated as a missionary force to the world. It now operates as a regulatory quorum to the church.
• The high councils to settle all difficult matters between members. They now settle only matters of spiritual concerns.
• Preaching without purse and scrip. This practice has been abandoned. In its place the church provides for the missionaries.
• No priesthood ban. Originally there was no priesthood ban during the times of Joseph Smith, given that a black man, Elijah Abel, had been ordained to the priesthood. Later this policy was changed and the ban was implemented, and various doctrinal theories were invented to explain the ban. (In 1978 the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve all received a revelation for lifting the ban, and the policy was subsequently changed back to what it was previously. This technically was not a “steadying of the ark” because it was merely a church policy being altered. In other words, the Brethren were fully in their rights to prohibit giving the priesthood to whomever they wanted, but it still took 150 years and a revelation received simultaneously by all 15 men to get them to make the alteration. Prior to that, they all feared to sin by altering the policy.)
• Gathering to the land of Zion. This was abandoned and the saints were told to gather to the stakes found in their own lands.
• The building of the city of Zion. Abandoned.
• The building of stake cities. Abandoned.
• The Melchizedek Priesthood administering the sacrament when present. This practice was abandoned and now the Aaronic Priesthood administers the sacrament, even when an elder is present.
• The use of wine in the sacrament. Abandoned. We now use water.
• The ordination of men to the Aaronic Priesthood. Abandoned. Now pre-teens and teenagers are ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood.
• The various Melchizedek Priesthood quorums doing local preaching, even when they are married. Abandoned. Now unmarried 18 and 19 year old teen-aged elders go on two year missions, never again to go on a mission until they can go as a couple missionary when they are older.
• And so on and so forth.

Each abandoned or altered practice of the church that no longer exactly matches the scriptures and laws and revelations we have in the church covenants is yet another thing that is out of order. Nevertheless, inasmuch as the works of God continue, none of this indicates a state of apostasy, but merely a disordered state.

The standing orders of the Brethren

During the time period in which the church is out of order (which is prior to the arrival of the Josephite), the Brethren, who are the leaders of the Lord’s church, have the role of keeping the works of the Lord ongoing, so that the spiritual ark of God keeps moving in a forward direction. The Brethren, then, are guided by the following scripture:

And again, verily thus saith the Lord:

Let the work of my temple, and all the works which I have appointed unto you, be continued on and not cease; and let your diligence, and your perseverance, and patience, and your works be redoubled, and you shall in nowise lose your reward,

saith the Lord of Hosts. (D&C 127:4)

These works are likened to an ark on the backs of oxen:

And when they came to Nachon’s threshingfloor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:6-7)

And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God. (1 Chronicles 13:9-10)

The ark of God (the tabernacle of testimony) could only be handled by certain people: the Levites. Anyone else who came near to it or touched it had to be put to death:

For the LORD had spoken unto Moses, saying,

Only thou shalt not number the tribe of Levi, neither take the sum of them among the children of Israel: but thou shalt appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of testimony, and over all the vessels thereof, and over all things that belong to it: they shall bear the tabernacle, and all the vessels thereof; and they shall minister unto it, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle. And when the tabernacle setteth forward, the Levites shall take it down: and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death. (Numbers 1:48-51)

In like manner, the latter day spiritual ark of God could only be taken down and set up by certain people, namely, the two seers (Joseph Smith and Joseph-Nephi), and of the two seers, only one of them had authority and power to set it back in order (Joseph-Nephi.) All the other leadership in the church, as well as the membership, were likened unto the oxen, the leadership themselves being the lead oxen, who had nothing more to do than bearing the ark of God on their backs, moving it forward no matter what circumstance might come their way, and they were to use the spirit of expediency (which is the Holy Ghost) to accomplish that singular task.

Now, it doesn’t matter if the ark sways to the right or to the left upon their backs (thus getting out of order), as long as it is moving forward, that is all that God requires of the leadership of the church.

The Brethren, then, are not to concern themselves with how the ark is positioned upon their backs, whether it is exactly centered or diagonal or facing the wrong direction or leaning to one side. They are not to make any attempt at putting the ark centered perfectly back on the back of the oxen, for the ark is holy like God is holy, being a representation of His holiness, and thus cannot be touched by just any person, not even a person with priesthood keys. It takes a special kind of person, possessing the power of God, to approach and touch the ark, and to set it precisely back in order upon the backs of the oxen.

God the Father does not want the Brethren to die, therefore in order to protect them, so that they do not attempt to set the ark in order and perish, the Father expressly warns them of the destruction that will be theirs should they make the attempt:

And it shall come to pass that I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God, and to arrange by lot the inheritances of the saints whose names are found, and the names of their fathers, and of their children, enrolled in the book of the law of God; while that man, who was called of God and appointed, that putteth forth his hand to steady the ark of God, shall fall by the shaft of death, like as a tree that is smitten by the vivid shaft of lightning. (D&C 85:7-8)

Thus, the leadership is expressly prohibited from steadying the ark.

Now, the Brethren understand this scriptural warning. They understand that the warning is specifically addressed to them. And so they make no attempt, whatsoever, to re-center the ark. No matter how different the practices of the church become from the actual written laws of God, they will make no move, whatsoever, to bring the ark back into conformity with the scriptures. They are deathly afraid of this warning, and for good reason.

(This is why it took all 15 Brethren simultaneously receiving the same revelation for the priesthood ban to be rolled back. It was a “We all got the same revelation, right?” moment that allowed them to venture forth and alter the policy without fear of getting struck down by God. These men feared for their lives, probably because of all the doctrinal theories that had been put forth to explain the ban and show why it would be in place practically forever, but in that moment of revelation, they were assured by the Holy Ghost that they wouldn’t be killed, and could safely alter the policy.)

Not even Joseph Smith could do it

If you look at the practices of Joseph Smith, while he was still alive, he never attempted to set the house of God in order after it had gotten itself out of order. Instead, he introduced new principles, which would keep the work moving forward. For example, when the law of consecration was introduced, and the saints failed to live it, he was inspired to introduce instead the law of tithing. Joseph’s duty was as a pure seer, restoring and installing as much of Elias’s shadow as he could, but when things went wrong, like the apostasy at the Kirtland temple, he would just restore yet another thing and move on to build yet another temple (Nauvoo), of a different type. He never attempted to recover things, to set things back in order. To do that job required a gift he didn’t have: the working of miracles.

Moving the ark of God back to its original position is like moving God Himself. It simply cannot be done. God is immovable, and His ark is likewise immovable. God allows it to move forward on the backs of the oxen, but it cannot be re-positioned. Whatever position it settles into, is the position it will remain in, until it settles into another position, by the continual shifting and stumbling of the oxen. It settles into these various positions according to the will of God, and nobody can bend God’s will. To even attempt to re-position it is an affront to God and God’s will.

However, the working of miracles can do the impossible, and God allows miracles to re-position the ark, but it requires more faith than anyone has, because it is like moving God Himself. And nobody can move God, right? Well, almost nobody.

The miracle-working seer known as the Josephite will be a person capable of walking right up the Father, and have dealings directly with Him (without the intermediary of Christ), and this will greatly impress the Father:

And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them; and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me: for who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me?

saith the LORD. (Jeremiah 30:21)

The Father is impressed because the Josephite doesn’t know what impossible is. In other words, to this guy there is no such thing as impossible. His faith is so vastly great that the gift of the working of miracles can move even God Himself, and therefore, moving God’s ark is no sweat off his back. And he doesn’t wither and die before the Father, nor require hours of recuperation like Moses:

And the presence of God withdrew from Moses, that his glory was not upon Moses; and Moses was left unto himself. And as he was left unto himself, he fell unto the earth.

And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man; and he said unto himself:

Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed. But now mine own eyes have beheld God; but not my natural, but my spiritual eyes, for my natural eyes could not have beheld; for I should have withered and died in his presence; but his glory was upon me; and I beheld his face, for I was transfigured before him.

And it came to pass that when Moses had said these words, behold, Satan came tempting him, saying:

Moses, son of man, worship me.

And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said:

Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee? For behold, I could not look upon God, except his glory should come upon me, and I were transfigured before him. But I can look upon thee in the natural man. Is it not so, surely? (Moses 1:9-14)

Therefore only the Josephite can make the correction to the ark without perishing.

In order, then out of order, then back in order

To recap: the sequence of Elias’s shadow (Mormonism) is this: first it arrives on earth and Joseph Smith (the first seer) starts setting everything in order. But soon things start to get out of order. After Joseph Smith dies, they get ever more out of order with the passage of time, but the Brethren keep the ark moving forward, nonetheless. Then the Josephite (the second seer) is born and is later put into a spiritual box by the Father. Later he comes out of his box fully empowered and sets in order the house of God.

A natural seer, multiple office seers, then back to a natural seer

Again, Elias’s shadow starts out with a natural seer (Joseph Smith), who possessed the gift of seership independent of any priesthood office. This allowed him to use all the gifts associated with the gift of seership, including the gift of the word of wisdom, the gift of the word of knowledge and the gift to prophesy, even when there wasn’t any church of God established on the earth. Joseph Smith’s gifts weren’t tied to any priesthood office. They were merely natural gifts given of God.

Then the church of Christ was established and Elias’s shadow contained office prophets, office revelators and office seers. These were men called to various offices in the church who, in their respective offices, had access to the spirit of prophecy and the spirit of revelation. They could see visions, too, making them seers according to that definition. But outside of those offices, they no longer had these gifts. The gifts were tied to the office. Each man that entered the office got a bestowal of the gifts needed for that particular office, and made use of the modes of the gifts that likewise fit that particular office.

To put it another way, a natural prophet is a prophet regardless whether he is sustained as such or not, whereas an office prophet is a sustained prophet, only being a prophet as long as the church sustains him as such. Thus, Joseph Smith initiated the practice of sustaining stake leaders as “prophets, seers and revelators” in his day, and then later the Brethren adopted that practice and applied it to the 15 apostles, so that by sustaining their leaders in this manner, the Lord would pour out the office gifts that were tied to those offices. This reinforcing act would also give confidence both to the membership and to the Brethren, everyone remaining confident that the Lord would bestow the needed gifts.

But then the Josephite would be born, and this man would be, like Joseph Smith before him, a natural seer, except on steroids, having all the best spiritual gifts of God, as well as all the physical gifts of God (such as the Urim and Thummim.) Once out of his box, the fully empowered Josephite would then go to the church leadership, just as Moses went to the elders of Israel when he was called:

And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel: and Aaron spake all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed: and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped. (Exodus 4:29-31)

At that point, the church would again have a natural prophet, seer, revelator and translator guiding it, as well as multiple office prophets, seers and revelators.

“Out of order” is not “apostate”

Apostates like to use the “set in order” scripture of D&C 85:7 in order to show that the church was always destined to one day be apostate. They point to all the discrepancies found between the current practices of the church and the actual text of the Doctrine and Covenants, which prove that the church is currently (and has been for some time) out of order. Afterward, they conflate this state of being out of order with a state of apostasy.

Where the apostates go wrong in their thinking is that if the church were apostate, and not merely out of order, the scripture wouldn’t call it “the house of God.” The fact that the house is still claimed by God as His own, indicates that it is not apostate, but merely out of order. The two terms are not synonymous in the eyes of God. If the church were, in fact, apostate, the Josephite wouldn’t be sent to set it in order, but to destroy it.

All apostates, then, who hold to this false idea that the current state of the church indicates that the church is in a state of apostasy, are in error. The scriptures do speak of an apostasy, but that prophesied apostasy does not consist of the out of order state of the church.

Stage #3: The set in order church

When the Josephite goes to the church leadership, he will demonstrate the power of God to the Brethren, just as Moses did with the elders of Israel, showing them signs and wonders, and he will humble them to the very dust and begin correcting them. They will then give him all their keys. He will then tell them to “go tell the saints” all the things they have seen and heard and the leadership will stand up before the saints and apologize for all their errors and teach them of the corrections they have received from him.

This setting in order will consist, at the very least, of:

• Practicing the law of consecration and stewardship of properties
• The proper application of the law of tithing
• Establishment of United Firms (United Orders)
• Practicing plural marriage
• The proper application of the Word of Wisdom
• The saints gathered to Independence, Missouri
• The saints receiving their inheritances by consecration in Independence, Missouri
• Using wine in the sacrament
• Twelve apostles as missionaries
• Quorums of the seventies as missionaries
• Establishment of high council at Zion

It will not consist of:

• The building of the city of Zion (the New Jerusalem)
• The coming forth of the complete and functional translation of the Book of Mormon
• The coming forth of the plates of brass
• The coming forth of the large plates of Nephi
• The coming forth of the plates of Ether
• The coming forth of the sealed portion of the plates of Mormon

The Josephite will establish all the things that Joseph Smith attempted but failed to establish among the saints, except that the Josephite will succeed at everything. This “setting in order” will, essentially, reset the restoration, so that it is redone properly, the kingdom of God seed being replanted properly among the saints, so that it begins to grow and thrive and take root. Nevertheless, not everything Joseph Smith did will be accomplished during the “setting in order” phase, because what Joseph Smith did was a mere shadow (and shadows never follow the proper prophetic order of things), whereas the Josephite will perform this work in perfect order, according to God’s infinite wisdom:

Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. (Isaiah 28:23-29)

So the LORD will use His staff/rod (the Josephite) to re-do what Joseph did, not in the shadow order but in the correct literal order, so that this time everything sown in the hearts of the saints will fully germinate. All the abandoned practices, once practiced again under the ideal conditions the Josephite will establish, will rapidly nourish and germinate and transform whatever seeds are found there into their mature forms, be they seeds of wheat or seeds of tares.

Because the laws of the land prohibit many of these practices, the Josephite’s correction will also apply to the United States of America, in which he will restore us back to 1776 conditions, when we operated under the Articles of Confederation, by installing a new set of perfected articles of confederation as the law of the land. This new, revealed and perfected law will allow all church doctrines, laws and principles to be practiced.

He will also reset conditions back to where they were at during the 1830’s and 1840’s, thus resetting the prophecies themselves. The American Indians, then, will be gathered back onto the Missouri lands, as they were previously. All the prophetic shadows will cease, the prophecies will reset and will proceed literally from that point on.

In addition to all of the above, which deals with the church and the nation, he will perform yet another work of restoration, with application for the entire world. I will not get into the many details of that particular work, save to say that all of this “setting in order” business he will be doing will be so that he can obtain his carrot and perform his own work, without any legal or ecclesiastical obstacles. In other words, although these things will affect the entire world for the betterment of mankind, he will be doing these things as part of his own work, not the work of the Lord. It will be just the fully empowered Josephite making the world conform to his own image.

A glory age of prosperity

This setting in order of the house of God, and of the world at large, will shift the world into a glory age of prosperity, unheard of in modern times. Perhaps even unheard of in ancient times. It will happen rapidly, via a series of many mighty miracles, so that the inhabitants of the world will have their minds fully blown. Everyone will be dazzled and astounded and wondering if the great Millennium has been ushered in.

When the book of the Lamb of God appears

I do not exactly know when the book of the Lamb of God will appear. I know, per 1 Nephi 13:26, that it appears before the great and abominable church is formed (which is formed in stage #4), and I also know that it appears after the Josephite gets out of his box (which happens in stage #3.) It may be that it will appear while he is setting the church in order, or after he has set the church in order, or even during the time of the apostasy, but before the great and abominable church is formed. I suppose, though, that it will appear while Joseph-Nephi is setting the church in order.

Perhaps the Josephite goes away?

After the church has been set in order, the church will apostatize, but the presence of the Josephite seems to make that all but impossible, therefore I suspect that the Josephite, seeing that all his works have taken root throughout the world, and seeing the world prospering and the gospel going forth everywhere, etc., might just leave for a bit. In the previous post I wrote:

This means that the Josephite, once out of his box, will divide his time between both sides of the world, outside here with us, where he was born in America, and also inside where the kingdom he will establish will be. This is absolutely necessary, for he will be performing a work of salvation that must save the whole world, both inside and out, but it also means that from time to time the Josephite will “go missing,” and during these times nobody will be able to figure out where he’s gone to.

So, to me it appears likely that the Josephite will go missing for a time, perhaps for a long time, and during his extended absence we will get a repeat of the pattern of the molten calf apostasy that happened when Moses went to talk with God on the mount but delayed coming back:

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him,

Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

And Aaron said unto them,

Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said,

These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said,

To morrow is a feast to the LORD.

And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. (Exodus 32:1-6)

The apostate church, then, appears only after the church is set in order, and apparently only after the Josephite goes missing. During the time that the Josephite is gone, both the wheat and the tares finally ripen.

The wheat and tares grow together and ripen, showing themselves

When the saints have received their inheritances by consecration, and entered into all the temple covenants, including the eternal marriage covenant and the principle of plural marriage, and have also entered into united firms (united orders), plus have witnessed the power of God manifested in the Josephite, and perhaps also had outpourings of the spiritual gifts upon them like what happened at Kirtland—if, after all of that, they apostatize, the following scripture will apply to them:

And we saw a vision of the sufferings of those with whom he made war and overcame, for thus came the voice of the Lord unto us:

Thus saith the Lord concerning all those who know my power, and have been made partakers thereof, and suffered themselves through the power of the devil to be overcome, and to deny the truth and defy my power—

They are they who are the sons of perdition, of whom I say that it had been better for them never to have been born; for they are vessels of wrath, doomed to suffer the wrath of God, with the devil and his angels in eternity; concerning whom I have said there is no forgiveness in this world nor in the world to come—having denied the Holy Spirit after having received it, and having denied the Only Begotten Son of the Father, having crucified him unto themselves and put him to an open shame. These are they who shall go away into the lake of fire and brimstone, with the devil and his angels—and the only ones on whom the second death shall have any power; yea, verily, the only ones who shall not be redeemed in the due time of the Lord, after the sufferings of his wrath. (D&C 76:30-38)

The Josephite, then, having set the house of God in order, brings them into the two-handed condition, in which from that point on they either get blessed for their righteousness or cursed for their iniquities and wickedness. While the Josephite is around, they remain righteous and the prosperity miracle goes out, so that the world’s riches endlessly increase, but once he leaves them to themselves, so that they no longer can rely upon him, but must now rely solely upon the Holy Ghost, it is at that point that all the planted seeds begin to ripen.

Once the Josephite has left, and all the seeds begin to ripen, we will finally find out who are the wheat and who are the tares. As the wheat and the tares must grow together until they are fully ripe, the law of consecration and other “growing together” or unifying laws that the Josephite will implement will allow just such a thing to happen.

Stage #4: The apostate church

At some point, iniquity will enter the church and the people will reject the office prophets, their leaders:

For behold, ye have closed your eyes, and ye have rejected the prophets; (2 Nephi 27:5)

Because of that iniquity, and because of the two-handed condition in which curses must go out immediately, the Lord will take away the leadership of the church, by covering them:

and your rulers, and the seers hath he covered because of your iniquity. (2 Nephi 27:5)

Now, as I have prophesied before on this blog, the break up of the church will occur by an earthquake which will destroy the conference center, covering and killing the Brethren and leaving the body of the church in disarray. The saints will then split into different churches, the remaining leaders vying for the top position. The church will then descend into a deep state of apostasy, entering into all manner of wickedness.

What causes the apostasy

I suppose that the initial reason for the apostasy will be a repeat of the Amalickiah situation and the rise of a new set of king-men:

And now it came to pass that after Helaman and his brethren had appointed priests and teachers over the churches that there arose a dissension among them, and they would not give heed to the words of Helaman and his brethren; but they grew proud, being lifted up in their hearts, because of their exceedingly great riches; therefore they grew rich in their own eyes, and would not give heed to their words, to walk uprightly before God. (Alma 45:23-24)

And it came to pass that as many as would not hearken to the words of Helaman and his brethren were gathered together against their brethren. And now behold, they were exceedingly wroth, insomuch that they were determined to slay them.

Now the leader of those who were wroth against their brethren was a large and a strong man; and his name was Amalickiah. And Amalickiah was desirous to be a king; and those people who were wroth were also desirous that he should be their king; and they were the greater part of them the lower judges of the land, and they were seeking for power. And they had been led by the flatteries of Amalickiah, that if they would support him and establish him to be their king that he would make them rulers over the people. Thus they were led away by Amalickiah to dissensions, notwithstanding the preaching of Helaman and his brethren, yea, notwithstanding their exceedingly great care over the church, for they were high priests over the church. And there were many in the church who believed in the flattering words of Amalickiah, therefore they dissented even from the church; and thus were the affairs of the people of Nephi exceedingly precarious and dangerous, notwithstanding their great victory which they had had over the Lamanites, and their great rejoicings which they had had because of their deliverance by the hand of the Lord. Thus we see how quick the children of men do forget the Lord their God, yea, how quick to do iniquity, and to be led away by the evil one. (Alma 46:1-8)

So, I must suppose that the prosperity miracle upon the saints, and upon the world at large, will heap the world’s riches right up into the stratosphere, and the saints in particular will become much richer than those who don’t belong to the church, and given this enormous wealth poured out upon the saints—the saints now being ripened into wheat and tares—the tares will finally make their move, showing themselves. And instead of imparting all this immense wealth to the poor, consecrating it, disbursing it through united firms, etc., they will want to retain it and lord it over their fellow man. The tares will not only set their hearts upon their riches, but they also will seek for power, desiring to alter the new articles of confederation to allow for a king.

And how will the church leadership react to this brazen dissent by the tares? By cracking down on them, calling them sinners in need of repentance, disfellowshipping and excommunicating them. And in response the tares will reject their leaders, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. Given the anger they will feel towards them, there might even be assassination attempts by the tares upon their leaders, just as Amalickiah and his people were determined to slay Helaman and the church brethren of his time. All of this dissent, though, won’t be done by a small segment of the church population, like what occurs today among Mormon apostates, but it will be the overwhelming majority, for the wheat found within the church will suddenly and alarmingly find that they are literally surrounded by ultra wicked tares, because the prophecies of Nephi and Moroni say that the humble followers of Christ during the coming apostasy will be few in number:

And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw. (1 Nephi 14:12)

They wear stiff necks and high heads; yea, and because of pride, and wickedness, and abominations, and whoredoms, they have all gone astray save it be a few, who are the humble followers of Christ; nevertheless, they are led, that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men. (2 Nephi 28:14)

And I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts, unto the wearing of very fine apparel, unto envying, and strifes, and malice, and persecutions, and all manner of iniquities; and your churches, yea, even every one, have become polluted because of the pride of your hearts. (Mormon 8:36)

Because the tares will hold the majority, having the voice of the people, they will have clout in the church, causing the church to descend into deep wickedness, repeating more Book of Mormon patterns:

And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land. (Mosiah 29:27)

And it came to pass in the commencement of the ninth year, Alma saw the wickedness of the church, and he saw also that the example of the church began to lead those who were unbelievers on from one piece of iniquity to another, thus bringing on the destruction of the people. Yea, he saw great inequality among the people, some lifting themselves up with their pride, despising others, turning their backs upon the needy and the naked and those who were hungry, and those who were athirst, and those who were sick and afflicted. Now this was a great cause for lamentations among the people, while others were abasing themselves, succoring those who stood in need of their succor, such as imparting their substance to the poor and the needy, feeding the hungry, and suffering all manner of afflictions, for Christ’s sake, who should come according to the spirit of prophecy; looking forward to that day, thus retaining a remission of their sins; being filled with great joy because of the resurrection of the dead, according to the will and power and deliverance of Jesus Christ from the bands of death.

And now it came to pass that Alma, having seen the afflictions of the humble followers of God, and the persecutions which were heaped upon them by the remainder of his people, and seeing all their inequality, began to be very sorrowful; nevertheless the Spirit of the Lord did not fail him. (Alma 4:11-15)

The iniquity entering the church might not be just among the general membership but also among the leadership, including even the highest councils (the Brethren.) There are scriptures that indicate that even the apostles will become infected with this apostasy:

Behold, vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth, a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation, of weeping, of mourning, and of lamentation; and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth,

saith the Lord.

And upon my house shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord; first among those among you,

saith the Lord,

who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord. (D&C 112:25-26)

The Lord, in the above passage, was referring to the quorum of the Twelve. Notice verses 14 and 27 to 30:

Now, I say unto you, and what I say unto you, I say unto all the Twelve:

Arise and gird up your loins, take up your cross, follow me, and feed my sheep.

Therefore, see to it that ye trouble not yourselves concerning the affairs of my church in this place,

saith the Lord.

But purify your hearts before me; and then go ye into all the world, and preach my gospel unto every creature who has not received it; and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not, and is not baptized, shall be damned. For unto you, the Twelve, and those, the First Presidency, who are appointed with you to be your counselors and your leaders,… (D&C 112:14,27-30)

Also, there’s this scripture:

Behold, I, the Lord, have made my church in these last days like unto a judge sitting on a hill, or in a high place, to judge the nations. For it shall come to pass that the inhabitants of Zion shall judge all things pertaining to Zion. And liars and hypocrites shall be proved by them, and they who are not apostles and prophets shall be known. And even the bishop, who is a judge, and his counselors, if they are not faithful in their stewardships shall be condemned, and others shall be planted in their stead. (D&C 64:37-40)

So, it may be that as the apostasy progresses, the tares will vote in a new class of leaders, an iniquitous class, like what happened with king Noah:

For he put down all the priests that had been consecrated by his father, and consecrated new ones in their stead, such as were lifted up in the pride of their hearts. (Mosiah 11:5)

And thus the leadership, perhaps, would become compromised as well, bringing about the fulfillment of the prophecies of Jeremiah and others which speak of pastors and prophets and priests who are entirely corrupt, such as what is found written in Jeremiah 23:

Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!

saith the LORD.

Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people;

Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings,

saith the LORD. (Jeremiah 23:1-2)

I must suppose, then, that all these patterns, as well as the appearance of king-men desiring to consolidate the confederacy into a kingdom, will repeat during this apostasy, and the iniquity of the tares, being widespread, and the Brethren (that part of them still righteous) unable to hold it all in check—for the tares will outnumber them by a long shot—will cause the Lord to bring a curse upon the church, hence the conference center falling via an earthquake, removing the Brethren in an instant and causing the church to break up. After the break up there will be many churches professing to be the Lord’s church, claiming to possess the priesthood and keys (and thus the power of God.)

The great and abominable church and the tribulation of the wheat

At some point during this ongoing apostasy—whether before or after the earthquake, I do not, as yet, know (but I suspect it will be prior to the earthquake)—the great and abominable church will form. This church will form, apparently, overseas, not upon the mainland of America, and I suppose it will be formed by the most diabolical of the Mormon apostates, who have become, themselves, sons of perdition. It will be a sort of state church, except that instead of it being under the control of the state, it will have control of the states under its jurisdiction. This great and abominable church will have the distinction of killing and torturing and binding down the saints, and bringing them down into captivity, overseas. It will also be perverting the word of the Lord, specifically, the book of the Lamb of God, taking away many plain and precious parts of it and then sending this now corrupted edition to all the nations of the world under its jurisdiction.

Here in this land of America the few remaining saints (the wheat) will be scattered off the land of Zion (just as they were scattered off during the time of Joseph Smith, for all prophecies reset and then fulfill literally.) Apparently they will also be placed into bondage, for the tares will be unhinged in their wickedness. This will be a time of tribulation for the wheat, for the Lord must test His saints, to see if they will obey Him even when they are placed in the midst of a population overflowing with murderous tares. But the tribulation will come to an end when the Josephite returns:

But verily I say unto you, I have decreed that your brethren which have been scattered shall return to the lands of their inheritances, and shall build up the waste places of Zion. For after much tribulation, as I have said unto you in a former commandment, cometh the blessing. Behold, this is the blessing which I have promised after your tribulations, and the tribulations of your brethren—your redemption, and the redemption of your brethren, even their restoration to the land of Zion, to be established, no more to be thrown down. Nevertheless, if they pollute their inheritances they shall be thrown down; for I will not spare them if they pollute their inheritances. Behold, I say unto you, the redemption of Zion must needs come by power; therefore, I will raise up unto my people a man, who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel. For ye are the children of Israel, and of the seed of Abraham, and ye must needs be led out of bondage by power, and with a stretched-out arm. And as your fathers were led at the first, even so shall the redemption of Zion be. Therefore, let not your hearts faint, for I say not unto you as I said unto your fathers: Mine angel shall go up before you, but not my presence. But I say unto you: Mine angels shall go up before you, and also my presence, and in time ye shall possess the goodly land. (D&C 103:11-20)

In addition to being placed in bondage, some of the saints (wheat) will be killed:

And the blood of the saints shall cry from the ground against them. (2 Nephi 28:10)

And some of the saints (wheat) will be tortured by the great and abominable church:

And the angel said unto me:

Behold the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down, and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and bringeth them down into captivity. (1 Nephi 13:5)

Also, given that the two-handed condition also enacts the anti-prosperity miracle, secret combinations will also be rampant, because these societies will be the only way for the wicked to obtain money and power.

Thus, apostasy will be widespread and rampant, throughout the world, just as Nephi prophesied:

But, behold, in the last days, or in the days of the Gentiles—yea, behold all the nations of the Gentiles and also the Jews, both those who shall come upon this land and those who shall be upon other lands, yea, even upon all the lands of the earth, behold, they will be drunken with iniquity and all manner of abominations— (2 Nephi 27:1)

This prophecy (and other scriptural prophecies of the apostasy of the latter days) is not speaking of The Great Apostasy that occurred after the death of the primitive church apostles—and which was ended by the three-fold restoration performed by Joseph Smith—but of this fourth stage church apostasy, which will infect the whole world, all nations, so that the now ripe wheat will be fully tested by the now ripe tares. Notice, for example, how the apostasy Paul speaks of in 2 Thessalonians ends:

Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled by letter, except ye receive it from us, neither by spirit nor by word, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means; for there shall come a falling away first and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work, and he it is who now worketh; and Christ suffereth him to work until the time is fulfilled that he shall be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, yea, the Lord, even Jesus, whose coming is not until after there cometh a falling away, by the working of Satan with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. (JST 2 Thessalonians 2:1-10)

So, this apostasy that Paul speaks of will end with the destruction of the apostates at the Lord’s Second Coming. It also has a “man of sin,” who is a “son of perdition,” sitting in “the temple of God.” When the stage #4 church of God is broken up, the temples of God will fall into the hands of apostates, allowing the literal fulfillment of this scripture. In the meantime, though, this passage is shadow fulfilled by The Great Apostasy.

The return of the Josephite

The Josephite, upon his return, will find that the church has been broken up, that there are now many apostate churches, that there’s a great and abominable church and that people have entered into secret combinations and into whoredoms and drunken revelries and all manner of abominations. He will also find that the saints who kept their covenants while this enormous apostasy was going down are few compared to all the rest, that they have been scattered off the lands of their inheritance, which he gave them (which was upon the land of Zion), and that they are now in bondage. He will also discover that some of them have been killed and others tortured. This will surely infuriate him.

On the other hand, he will also find that everything has ripened, and despite the land being full to capacity with tares, there is now beautiful, glorious wheat on earth, having been ripened by keeping their covenants throughout these tribulations. This will surely make him pleased.

These two conflicting emotions—one towards the tares and one towards the wheat—will cause him to act in a big way, shifting the church into its final stage.

Stage #5: The perfected church

In this stage, the following things will happen:

• The wrath of God will be upon the gathered Indian remnant in the promised land
• A man with the Spirit of God will travel upon many waters to the gathered Indian remnant
• The scattered saints will be freed from their captivity and travel upon the many waters
• The Indian remnant will be scattered off their lands and smitten by the Gentiles
• The Gentiles will inherit the land of promise

The Holy Ghost has not, as yet, told me who the man with the Spirit of God is. I had previously thought that maybe it was the beloved apostle John, but a lot of time has passed and the Holy Ghost never confirmed that. Now, as I look at these scriptures, I think that perhaps it may be Joseph-Nephi. The reason is because I was recently pondering over President Trump’s acknowledgment of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and while I was talking to a friend about it, the Spirit manifested something new about the Josephite, something that he would do in the future, something I had never considered. (And don’t bother asking me about it, because I don’t intend to reveal on this blog what the Spirit said.) Now when I read over the following passage of scripture, I cannot help but filter it through that manifestation:

And it came to pass that the angel said unto me:

Behold the wrath of God is upon the seed of thy brethren.

And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.

And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.

And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten. And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain. (1 Nephi 13:11-15)

The Josephite will be returning from a far away land, possibly even from the interior of the Earth. And there are many waters that separate the interior from the exterior, so his return from that place actually fits the scripture. Nephi says he “beheld a man among the Gentiles,” and I have previously taught that the Josephite will be setting up a kingdom in the interior of the Earth, and that he will be bringing Gentiles with him. Therefore, if Nephi saw the Josephite in his kingdom, he would have seen him “among the Gentiles.”

But even if Nephi saw the man on the exterior of the planet, among the Gentile nations that are overseas, it still could be the Josephite. The Josephite, returning from the interior, might not go first to America, but to those captive saints that are overseas, in order to liberate them.

The problem with this interpretation is that the saying, “and he went forth upon the many waters,” indicates sea travel, and nobody travels by boat anymore, except for transporting goods or taking a pleasure cruise. The standard mode of transportation for long distances across continents is the aeroplane, not the boat or ship. So, most Mormons reading this passage just chalk it up to Christoper Columbus’s travels by ship, which is its shadow fulfillment. However, there’s a lot more that I know about the Josephite, which I have not told on this blog, some of which I have told to a handful of people in private. What I will say here is that the Josephite will be restoring a lot of conditions that are no longer found in society. Boat travel will surely be one of them. If, in fact, the scripture does refer to the Josephite, then either it will be a boat of his own making, or it will be the very same boat that Nephi and his brothers constructed. And given that he is the restorer, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the latter one.

And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters. (1 Nephi 13:13)

This scripture doesn’t say how these Gentiles who have the Spirit of God working upon them escaped their captivity. If the Josephite is the man that had the Spirit of God work upon him, spoken of in the preceding verse, then surely once he finds out that the saints are in captivity, he will deliver them at once. The following scripture, which speaks of the Josephite, even says that he will do this:

Behold, I say unto you, the redemption of Zion must needs come by power; therefore, I will raise up unto my people a man, who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel. For ye are the children of Israel, and of the seed of Abraham, and ye must needs be led out of bondage by power, and with a stretched-out arm. (D&C 103:15-17)

The man with the power who delivers the people out of bondage is the Josephite. He performs this mission in the fifth stage of the church. Therefore, he seems the likeliest candidate to liberate the captive saints from the great and abominable church. Yet Nephi writes his vision in very general terms, almost as if he’s trying to hide the fact that a miracle-working seer is on the scene, so that people will read the text and mistake the shadow fulfillment for the literal fulfillment. It’s almost as if God wanted this whole thing to be a huge surprise. If Nephi had written, instead, “And I looked and beheld a miracle-working seer among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the power of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land,” that would have changed everything. Nobody, but nobody would have thought that that referred to Christopher Columbus, and everyone would have looked at this chapter as being a prophecy still future to us. His use of “man” and not “prophet” or “seer”, and “Spirit of God” and not “power of God” allows the shadow of Columbus to exist and keeps the Josephite hidden.

Again, when Nephi speaks of the Gentiles going forth out of captivity, he gives no details as to how they were delivered. If the Josephite and the power of God was involved, and he stated so explicitly, then the shadow of the Puritans could not exist. Writing what he wrote allows the Puritan shadow to exist, while keeping the Josephite hidden. And so it goes, throughout the narrative.

The text says that the Gentiles go “forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.” This indicates that they traveled by boat. Whose boat? Perhaps the Josephite’s boat. According to D&C 61, boat travel during the fifth stage will be dangerous, but God also said:

For I, the Lord, have decreed in mine anger many destructions upon the waters; yea, and especially upon these waters. Nevertheless, all flesh is in mine hand, and he that is faithful among you shall not perish by the waters.

Behold, I, the Lord, in the beginning blessed the waters; but in the last days, by the mouth of my servant John, I cursed the waters. Wherefore, the days will come that no flesh shall be safe upon the waters. (D&C 61:5-6,14-15)

So, it may be that these faithful saints, who have passed through the tribulation heaped upon them by the great and abominable church, and thus have ripened into wheat, may be brought across the many waters, in safety, by the Josephite.

Then we get the scattering of the Indian remnant off of the lands of their inheritance and them being smitten by the Gentiles:

And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten. (1 Nephi 14:14)

Why is God so angry with the Indian remnant? Nephi doesn’t say. But I find it awfully coincidental that a man appears and then right afterward the captive saints are freed and the Indians are scattered. The man seems to me to be the cause of all these things happening. God sees His saints suffering in captivity, being tortured and killed. Suddenly a man appears with the Spirit of God, and the saints right afterward are freed. God is angry with the Indian remnant, and right after the text says that “the wrath of God” is upon the Indians, the man with the Spirit of God shows up and goes right to the remnant, and soon afterward, they get scattered and smitten (by the Gentiles.) It is almost as if the man with the Spirit of God is the one causing the Gentiles to scatter and smite the Indian remnant, as if the man cursed the Indian remnant. The destroyer fits both as a person who has the power to perform such miracles, and who has the gumption to do it. So, maybe it’s Joseph-Nephi, after all?

The text then says that the Gentiles inherit the land, and this is something that the Josephite would actually do for the saints. They were scattered off their lands by the tares, and once he returns, he would put them right back onto their lands:

And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain. (1 Nephi 13:15)

Finally it says that the power of the Lord was with them, and it is my manifested understanding that at this point the Josephite is definitely on the scene with them:

And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles who had gone forth out of captivity did humble themselves before the Lord; and the power of the Lord was with them. (1 Nephi 13:16)

Okay, so I will continue with the list of things that occur during this fifth stage:

• The Josephite delivers the Gentiles out of the hands of all other nations
• The Josephite first translates the Book of Mormon
• The Josephite later translates the plates of brass, the large plates of Nephi and the plates of Ether
• The saints take these records to the Indian remnant
• The Indian remnant believe the records and repent
• Many of the Gentiles do not believe the new records, and ditch using the corrupt version of the book of the Lamb of God and they go back to using the Bible
• The Josephite gathers the righteous, splitting the world into two territories: those of the righteous and those of the wicked
• The city of Zion (the New Jerusalem) is built
• Other cities of refuge (stakes of Zion) are also built
• And so on.

After delivering the American Gentiles out of the hands of all other nations, the Josephite will then proceed to re-organize and gather the wheat, who are the remnant saints, into another church of Christ, calling them the church of the Lamb of God, initiating the last phase of the church. As part of his commission, he will bring forth the additional records, to prepare the wheat for their perfection and the tares for their destruction.

A furious Josephite

Joseph-Nephi, being the destroying angel, is by nature altogether destructive. Although he’s slow to anger, when he does get angry, it knows no bounds, and nothing sets him off quite like finding that his works have been undone in his absence by wicked tares, or that the saints he has been assigned to gather together, as the fold’s sheepdog, have been scattered, tortured and killed. All of this wickedness, done in his absence, will cause his anger to spiral out of control.

A normal servant of God would desire, in such a situation, to try to reclaim the apostates. A normal servant would want to show compassion and mercy and not do anything that would destroy the tares, for the tares will be found absolutely everywhere at that time, and given the two-handed condition which will be in place, any improper move on the part of a servant of the Lord and they would become fully ripened, and thus ready for destruction, and thus lost. So, a normal servant would shrink and not want to be the means of destroying these tare-ish souls.

But Joseph-Nephi is not a normal servant of God. Upon seeing all of this wickedness, Joseph-Nephi’s only desire will be to destroy the tares. And how do you destroy the tares? By fully ripening them unto destruction. And how do you fully ripen them? By performing the Lord’s strange work, His strange act. By releasing all the records, all of them, upon the population, so that they spiritually perish, thus ripening them for temporal destruction.

Now, the records can safely be released upon the wheat, for the wheat are already ripened, and they won’t spiritually perish, but all others around them will either spiritually perish as tares, upon contact with the records, or the records will cause them to instantly repent, on the spot, so that they become instantly ripened wheat. Either way, the two-handed condition is kept intact, so that they will either be brought into salvation and exaltation, or into perdition and destruction.

So, the Josephite, in his anger against the tares, will push forward and begin the Lord’s work, even the great and marvelous work, and he will begin bringing forth the records, starting with the Book of Mormon, thus fulfilling 2 Nephi 27. And he will bring forth the large plates of Nephi, thus fulfilling 3 Nephi 21, and also the plates of brass, thus fulfilling 2 Nephi 29. And he will bring forth the plates of Ether, thus fulfilling Alma 37.

And in his anger, he will trigger the fulfillment of the prophesy of Isaiah in chapter 28, so that plagues of tempests of hail, destroying storms, floods of mighty waters overflowing, an overflowing scourge (a desolating sickness) and even eventually unleashing the Lamanite remnants upon the people so that the Gentiles are vexed with a sore vexation (see D&C 87:5) and are trodden down, all occurs:

Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: and the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. (Isaiah 28:1-4)

The whole of Isaiah chapter 28 is speaking of the return of the Josephite into this environment of apostasy, after he has set the church in order.

Now, the drunkards of Ephraim in this chapter are the apostate Mormons. In Isaiah 28 the Lord says He has given line upon line to the drunkards of Ephraim, but then they apostatized:

But the word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. (Isaiah 28:13)

The Lord only gives line upon line to the faithful, who are the saints, not to the unbelieving:

For he will give unto the faithful line upon line, precept upon precept; and I will try you and prove you herewith. (D&C 98:12)

Therefore these people are Mormon apostates that have entered into a pact with the devil, even into secret combinations:

Because ye have said,

We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: (Isaiah 28:15)

But this pact will be annulled by the Lord, because He intends to send the Josephite back, to destroy these people:

Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report. (Isaiah 28:17-19)

Given that the Lord’s servant is the destroying angel, when He sends the Josephite back to see all the ensuing apostasy, the Josephite’s anger will be kindled, and his destroying nature will manifest, and it is this fierce anger that will cause him to push forward right into the Lord’s work, which is the great and marvelous work and the restoration of all things, even the strange act and strange work:

For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act. Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth. (Isaiah 28:21-22)

The consumption is a destruction. So, the Josephite’s anger sends out these plagues upon the wicked and then, in his anger, instead of saying with mercy, “If I push ahead and restore all things, all these people will die, therefore I will not push ahead,” he says with justice, “I will push ahead and restore all things and whoever doesn’t repent and get in line, let them die.” It is the Josephite’s destroying nature that allows him to push ahead, even in the midst of worldwide apostasy. Any other prophet would have pulled back, not wanting to have so many people perish, but the Josephite is different, and will be motivated by anger.

It is the anger of the Father, through His appointed emissary of justice (the Josephite), that gets the ball rolling, that allows the strange act to occur:

And if the president heed them not, then will the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place, and in his fury vex the nation; and in his hot displeasure, and in his fierce anger, in his time, will cut off those wicked, unfaithful, and unjust stewards, and appoint them their portion among hypocrites, and unbelievers; even in outer darkness, where there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

Pray ye, therefore, that their ears may be opened unto your cries, that I may be merciful unto them, that these things may not come upon them. What I have said unto you must needs be, that all men may be left without excuse; that wise men and rulers may hear and know that which they have never considered; that I may proceed to bring to pass my act, my strange act, and perform my work, my strange work, that men may discern between the righteous and the wicked, saith your God. (D&C 101:89-95)

And it is the wrath of the Father upon the Gentiles that causes the restoration of Israel to happen:

And it came to pass that I beheld that the wrath of God was poured out upon that great and abominable church, insomuch that there were wars and rumors of wars among all the nations and kindreds of the earth. And as there began to be wars and rumors of wars among all the nations which belonged to the mother of abominations, the angel spake unto me, saying:

Behold, the wrath of God is upon the mother of harlots; and behold, thou seest all these things—and when the day cometh that the wrath of God is poured out upon the mother of harlots, which is the great and abominable church of all the earth, whose founder is the devil, then, at that day, the work of the Father shall commence, in preparing the way for the fulfilling of his covenants, which he hath made to his people who are of the house of Israel. (1 Nephi 14;15-17)

Now, notice Moses’s reaction when the Israelites made the molten calf:

And the Lord said unto Moses,

I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said,

Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say,

For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth?

Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them,

I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. (Exodus 32:9-13)

And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said,

Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them godsof gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. (Exodus 32:31-32)

We see from this that Moses tried to save them, whereas the Josephite will seek to destroy the wicked from off the face of the planet, via the great and marvelous work and the restoration of all things.

The Josephite’s anger will wax hotter and hotter and eventually even the Indian remnant will be sent to vex the Gentiles:

And it shall come to pass also that the remnants who are left of the land will marshal themselves, and shall become exceedingly angry, and shall vex the Gentiles with a sore vexation. (D&C 87:5)

All of this anger, and the ensuing curses and vexation, is what prepares the world for the Second Coming of the Lord, for it preps the wicked for their impending destruction, continuing to ripen them until they are finally fully ripened in iniquity and quite ready to be burned as tares.

The records unleashed upon the world, then, perfect the wheat, so that Ether 4 is fulfilled, so that they become sanctified like the brother of Jared was sanctified, so that the Lord is enabled to finally reveal all the records to His saints. In other words, the very sealed portion itself. And so the Josephite, after translating the Nephite records, will translate the sealed portion, the “vision of all,” so that all things are unleashed upon the world (i.e., the restoration of all things occurs), causing the wicked to fully spiritually perish, and bringing the righteous to the very heights of heavenly bliss.

The wicked Gentiles, on the other hand, will reject the gospel fulness found in all the new records:

And thus commandeth the Father that I should say unto you:

At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole earth, and shall be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations; and if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold,

saith the Father,

I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them. (3 Nephi 16:10)

Once the new records are rejected, the Josephite will initiate the “great division” of the people:

For the time speedily cometh that the Lord God shall cause a great division among the people, and the wicked will he destroy; and he will spare his people, yea, even if it so be that he must destroy the wicked by fire. (2 Nephi 30:10)

The fifth phase is when the separation and two-church status happens

The fifth stage of the church, in which it gets perfected, is when the separation occurs between the righteous and the wicked. In the first, second, third and fourth stages, the righteous and the wicked dwelt together, but when the Josephite returns and begins to perfect the church, he will split the world into two territories: the territories of the righteous, controlled by the righteous, and the territories of the wicked, controlled by the wicked.

This territorial division will cause all apostate churches to join the great church, it being an “umbrella” or “mother” church, in which will be found all apostate doctrines. At that point, there will be only two churches on the planet:

And he said unto me:

Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth. (1 Nephi 14:10)

Thus, the two territories will be ruled by two churches. Each church will have dominion over their respective territories:

And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the whore of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.

And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw. (1 Nephi 14:11-12)

All the wicked, who live in wicked-controlled territory, who repent, will become instantly ripened wheat, and like the wheat that ripened during the fourth stage of the church, in which they were surrounded by tares and had to go through a period of tribulation, so the newly repented and ripened wheat living in the territory of the wicked will be surrounded by tares and have to go through tribulation from them. The Lord puts them into the very same trial of faith, so that they can show themselves as true wheat, having endured persecution, torture and even death, by the hands of the tares. The following passage refers to this very event occurring in wicked-controlled territories during the fifth stage:

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying,

How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. (Revelation 6:9-11)

This tribulation continues until either the wheat can escape into the cities of refuge (the stakes of Zion) that the Josephite will build, which will be in righteous-controlled territory, or until the angels are sent to pluck them out from the cities of the wicked, just before the burning.

From few to many

Although the faithful saints who survive the fourth stage will be few, once the Josephite returns in the fifth stage and starts working his mighty wonders and convincing the world, both Jew and Gentile, through his powerful translation of the Book of Mormon and other scriptures, he will miraculously turn those few stalks of wheat into many stalks by his exceeding faith:

And now behold, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you; for I, Nephi, would not suffer that ye should suppose that ye are more righteous than the Gentiles shall be. For behold, except ye shall keep the commandments of God ye shall all likewise perish; and because of the words which have been spoken ye need not suppose that the Gentiles are utterly destroyed. For behold, I say unto you that as many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord; and as many of the Jews as will not repent shall be cast off; for the Lord covenanteth with none save it be with them that repent and believe in his Son, who is the Holy One of Israel. And now, I would prophesy somewhat more concerning the Jews and the Gentiles. For after the book of which I have spoken shall come forth, and be written unto the Gentiles, and sealed up again unto the Lord, there shall be many which shall believe the words which are written; and they shall carry them forth unto the remnant of our seed. (2 Nephi 30:1-3)

These many Gentiles who repent, along with all the house of Israel that repents, will be gathered together into either the city of Jerusalem, the city of New Jerusalem (which is the city of Zion) or into the stakes of Zion, which will not be like the current non-city stakes, but will be filled-to-the-brim cities of refuge stakes; and all these cities of refuge will be the territories of the righteous, into which these many righteous souls will be gathered. But compared to the territory of the great whore of all the earth, the dominion of the church of the Lamb will be geographically small and compact.

And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw. (1 Nephi 14:12)

This scripture shouldn’t be taken to mean that there will be few righteous on the earth at that time. It only means that the righteous will be gathered into specific cities of refuge that the Josephite will build, which will be places safe from the desolation and plagues that the Lord will pour out prior to His coming. The region outside of those specific cities will be inhabited by the wicked and will be vast in comparison, but the scripture is only giving a territorial comparison, not a comparison of population size. There will be many righteous on the earth at that time.

The city of Zion gets built in the fifth stage, after the records come forth

All the saints who are alive now, in this second stage of the church, who pine for Zion, long for it, and think it might be built some time soon, or when the Josephite gets out of his box, are mistaken. Zion gets built by the remnants of Israel, with whatever portion of the Gentiles that repent assisting, and that city will be built during the perfected church stage, which is the fifth stage. It won’t happen until after the church is set in order, until after the apostasy happens, and until after the Josephite gets back and begins perfecting the church and performing the great and marvelous work, bringing forth the new records:

And blessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day, for they shall have the gift and the power of the Holy Ghost; and if they endure unto the end they shall be lifted up at the last day, and shall be saved in the everlasting kingdom of the Lamb; and whoso shall publish peace, yea, tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be. (1 Nephi 13:37)

The last days prophecies of Gentile apostasy speak only of the fourth and fifth stages

Only the fourth and fifth stages contain the Gentile apostasy spoken of in the last days prophecies. Prior to those stages, any apostasy that happens among the Gentiles is a shadow fulfillment. The Mormon dissenters who have continually claimed (from the beginning of the restoration to now) that the LDS church is apostate have been deceived. They have no understanding of these scriptures, nor of these stages. Even the mainstream Mormon mixes things up, not understanding that we are only in the second stage, and this is merely a time of types and shadows.

The sealed portion pertains to the book of Revelation

The book of Revelation begins its narrative with the opening up of the sealed book, which contains the “vision of all.” In other words, chapter 4, 5 and 6 is when the book is finally opened, and then the prophetic events ensue. The sealed portion is the revelation of all things, followed by the restoration of all things, all performed by the Josephite. All of these events happen in the fifth stage of the church, after the other records have come forth, after the world has split into two territories and into two churches. With this post, then, there is no more need for anyone to wonder, “When will the sealed portion be opened?” I have just told you when that happens. It happens in the fifth stage. Nobody need be confused by any of these things anymore.

And nobody who reads and believes this post need wonder if the things written in the book of Revelation are happening around us, yet. They are surely not. We are merely in the second stage. Also, given this new information about the stages, nobody need harp on the church leadership as being “out of tune” with the signs of the times. The literal fulfillment of all these prophecies is still to come. All we see around us are mere shadows and types.

A key: always keep in mind the first sign

And his disciples asked him, saying,

Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?

And Jesus answered and said unto them,

Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. (Matthew 17:10-11)

As long as Elias has not gotten out of his box, we will continue to remain in the second stage.

Another key: the leaders will tell the people

Paul wrote:

Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled by letter, except ye receive it from us, neither by spirit nor by word, as that the day of Christ is at hand. (JST 2 Thessalonians 1-2)

The standard that the primitive church lived under was to not be shaken in mind or troubled by letter or by spirit or by word, as that the day of Christ was at hand, unless the Brethren of that time sent a letter to them informing them of the new condition. This principle—the leadership informing the membership of the prophetic timeline—is had among the latter-day saints, too. Yet I find very many Mormons shaken in mind and troubled, thinking the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is at hand. Many Mormons take the scriptural prophecies of the end times and apply them to our times, as if they have literally been fulfilled already or are literally being fulfilled before our very eyes, even though the Brethren have made no such pronouncements. Has the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve issued a letter or said that these times we are living in are the “end times?” No, they haven’t. All they say is that these are the last days and the latter days. The “last days” and “latter days” covers everything that happens after the resurrection of Christ, including the times of types and shadows. Saying we are in the “last days” or “latter days” does not necessarily mean we are in the “end times,” meaning those times in which the last days prophecies are fulfilled literally. The Brethren never use the term “end times” because they have received no information from God that we are in the end times. Why haven’t they received such information? Because we aren’t in the end times. If we were in the end times, they would receive the information and then tell us, per the principle given by Paul.

The Brethren will receive such information from the Josephite. When the Josephite comes out of his box and makes his announcement, he will afterward go to the church leadership to set the house of God in order and he will make the Brethren eat humble pie. He will demonstrate the power of God to them, in mighty signs, that will astonish them so that they are convinced that he is “the one mighty and strong” that was prophesied to appear, just as Moses and Aaron did to the elders of Israel:

And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel: and Aaron spake all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed: and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped. (Exodus 4:29-31)

He will receive all their keys from them, and then he will make his corrections, setting the house of God in order from top to bottom, teaching them things they never knew, explaining things they misunderstood, and so forth, and then those now humbled to the dust leaders will stand in front of the pulpit in general conference, and they will admit all their errors, in doctrine and in practice and in policy, and they will confess all their sins and faults, and they will say that a new era has officially started, that the times of types and shadows has ceased and now the prophecies will proceed literally. They will tell the saints each and every detail of the correction, as they receive it from the Josephite. And thus, the end times will be officially announced from the pulpit when it begins, for the Josephite will tell them, “The end times has now officially begun. Go and tell the saints.” So, nobody needs to guess at these things.

The Lord will not make the saints guess at the signs of the times, but will very clearly tell them these things, so that no one is left with any excuse that they didn’t know.

Call ye, therefore, upon them with loud proclamation, and with your testimony, fearing them not, for they are as grass, and all their glory as the flower thereof which soon falleth, that they may be left also without excuse—and that I may visit them in the day of visitation, when I shall unveil the face of my covering, to appoint the portion of the oppressor among hypocrites, where there is gnashing of teeth, if they reject my servants and my testimony which I have revealed unto them. (D&C 124:7-8)

What I have said unto you must needs be, that all men may be left without excuse; that wise men and rulers may hear and know that which they have never considered; that I may proceed to bring to pass my act, my strange act, and perform my work, my strange work, that men may discern between the righteous and the wicked, saith your God. (D&C 101:93-95)

And perhaps a committee can be appointed to find out these things, and to take statements and affidavits; and also to gather up the libelous publications that are afloat; and all that are in the magazines, and in the encyclopedias, and all the libelous histories that are published, and are writing, and by whom, and present the whole concatenation of diabolical rascality and nefarious and murderous impositions that have been practiced upon this people—that we may not only publish to all the world, but present them to the heads of government in all their dark and hellish hue, as the last effort which is enjoined on us by our Heavenly Father, before we can fully and completely claim that promise which shall call him forth from his hiding place; and also that the whole nation may be left without excuse before he can send forth the power of his mighty arm. (D&C 123: 4-6)

Therefore, they are left without excuse, and their sins are upon their own heads. (D&C 88:82)

All the people who have left this church believing that the end times are upon us—for a recent example, consider those who have held up the teachings of Denver Snuffer—have not understood the principle that Paul wrote about. They have thought that the church leadership is out of tune with the Spirit, out of line and unaware of the signs of the times. They have supposed that they know better than the leadership and that the end times are now upon us and have looked at the leadership as out of touch, for they say nothing concerning the end times signs. But they say nothing about this because we are not in the end times! If we were in the end times, our leaders would open their mouths, because as the above scriptures explain, it is a gospel principle that the Lord must leave all men, including His saints, without excuse.

Wrapping up the post with a stage review

Here’s a breakdown of some of the last days prophecies according to the church stage in which they will be literally (not shadow) fulfilled, and notice that not a single one of them pertains to Stage 2, which is the stage we are currently in:

• 1 Ne. 5:17-18.—Stage 5.
• 1 Ne. 13:21-25.—Possibly the beginning of Stage 4, but more likely Stage 3.
• 1 Ne. 13:26-32.—Stage 4.
• 1 Ne. 13:1-10.—Stage 4.
• 1 Ne. 13:33.—Possibly the end of Stage 4, but more likely the beginning of Stage 5.
• 1 Ne. 13:11-15.—Possibly the end of Stage 4, but more likely the beginning of Stage 5.
• 1 Ne. 13:16-20.—Stage 5.
• 1 Ne. 13:34-41.—Stage 5.
• 1 Ne. 14.—Stage 5.
• 1 Ne. 22:8-28.—Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 26:20-22.—Begins in Stage 4 and continues in Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 26:19.—Possibly the end of Stage 4, but more likely the beginning of Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 26:14-16.—Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 27:5.—Stage 4.
• 2 Ne. 27:1-4.—Begins in Stage 4 and continues in Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 27:6-35.—Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 28:1-32.—Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 29.—Stage 5.
• 2 Ne. 30.—Stage 5.
• Alma 37:3-4.—Stage 5.
• Alma 37:21-25.—Stage 5.
• 3 Ne. 16:4-20.—Stage 5.
• 3 Ne. 20:11-46.—Stage 5.
• 3 Ne. 21.—Stage 5.
• Mormon 8:16-41.—Stage 5.
• Ether 4:6-19.—Stage 5.
• Ether 8:23-26.—Speaks of conditions found in both Stage 4 and Stage 5.
• Revelation 6 to the end of the book.—Stage 5.
• Isaiah 28.—Speaks of apostate conditions which begin in Stage 4 and continue in Stage 5, and of the curses and judgments of God upon the apostates in Stage 5, put upon them by a very angry Josephite.

Complete List of Articles authored by LDS Anarchist

What It Means to Bind Up the Testimony and Seal Up the Law

The outer vessel

It is the word of God that saves:

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.  (John 5:39)

When it is planted in our hearts as a seed, and nourished with great care, it takes root and springs up as a tree of everlasting life, bringing forth lots of good fruit. This requires, then, that we be “doers of the word” (James 1:22), and not just hearers of it, giving place in our hearts by our belief, that the seed can be planted, and then living the word, allowing it to transform our lives accordingly.  The Christians understand this part of the gospel, as well as many Mormons who have become “Christianified,” meaning they have taken the fulness of the restored gospel and reduced it down to a single requirement: the word of God must be found in us.

The truth of the matter is that the word of God must be found in us as well as upon us.  There is an inner component of the gospel—which applies to the inner man, the inward man, the inward vessel, the inward parts, the hidden part, the heart—that deals with inward performances, such as justice, mercy, faith and love, and also inward ordinances, such as the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost:

And thus he [Adam] was baptized, and the Spirit of God descended upon him, and thus he was born of the Spirit, and became quickened in the inner man.  And he heard a voice out of heaven, saying:

Thou art baptized with fire, and with the Holy Ghost.  (Moses 6:65-66)

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.  (Psalms 51:6)

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel;

After those days,

saith the Lord,

I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.  (Jer. 31:33)

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.  (Matt. 23:23)

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.  Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.  Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.  (Matt.23:25-28)

And the Lord said unto him,

Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.  Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?  (Luke 11:39-40)

But if ye would rather give alms of such things as ye have; and observe to do all things which I have commanded you, then would your inward parts be clean also.  (JST Luke 11:42)

But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.  (Luke 11:42)

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:  (Romans 7:22)

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.  (2 Cor. 4:16)

That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;  (Eph. 3:16)

And now I read unto you the remainder of the commandments of God, for I perceive that they are not written in your hearts; I perceive that ye have studied and taught iniquity the most part of your lives.  (Mosiah 13:11)

Do ye suppose that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also.  (Alma 60:23)

But there is also an outer component—which applies to the outward man, the outer vessel, “the outside of the cup,” “that which is without”—that deals with outward performances, such as tithing, and also outward ordinances, such as water baptism:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.  (Matt. 23:23)

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.  Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.  Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.  (Matt.23:25-28)

And the Lord said unto him,

Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.  Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?  (Luke 11:39-40)

But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.  (Luke 11:42)

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.  (2 Cor. 4:16)

Yea, and they did keep the law of Moses; for it was expedient that they should keep the law of Moses as yet, for it was not all fulfilled. But notwithstanding the law of Moses, they did look forward to the coming of Christ, considering that the law of Moses was a type of his coming, and believing that they must keep those outward performances until the time that he should be revealed unto them.  (Alma 25:15)

Do ye suppose that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also.  (Alma 60:23)

The power and authority of the lesser, or Aaronic Priesthood, is to hold the keys of the ministering of angels, and to administer in outward ordinances, the letter of the gospel, the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, agreeable to the covenants and commandments.  (D&C 107:20)

Man, then, is like a potted plant.

Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. (D&C 38:42)

The pot (or vessel) has an inside surface and an outside surface.  Within the pot is our heart-sol, into which the good seed of the word of God is supposed to be planted.  But no one hides a seed into a pot of soil without making sure to identify what kind of a seed is growing in the pot.  Therefore, our outer* vessel is used by God as a label, to write the identity of the plant growing in the soil, its purpose, and any other instructions pertaining to it.  These words of God, attached to the outer vessel of man via priesthood power, authority and ordinances, constitute the outer component of the gospel.  Both inner and outer components of the gospel must be present for salvation to go forth:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.  (Matt. 23:23)

But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.  (Luke 11:42)

*Note: We are dual beings, composed of spirit and element, which two bodies are connected.  Although there are two bodies, or two vessels, the connection makes them act as one body, or as one vessel with an inner and outer surface, yet it is still spoken of as two vessels.  Thus, the inner surface is the “inward vessel” and the outer surface is the “outer vessel” or “outward man.”  Hence, the inward vessel holds things on the inside, whereas the outer vessel holds things on the outside.

The sealing and binding power

Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. (Isa. 8:16)

The church of Christ, with its authorized, valid priesthood, is the instrument by which God attaches his word to the outer vessel of man.  The sealing and binding power of the priesthood refers to the ability of the priesthood to bind or seal the word of God to the outward man, or to the outer vessel of man, so that when God looks upon us, He sees His word.  If God looks upon us and sees His word, which is sealed to our outer vessel, and if He then looks within us and sees His word, in our inward vessel, and the two match, then we will appear to Him to be like His Only Begotten Son, who is the Word of God:

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.  (Moro. 7:48)

Jesus is fully the Word, both in His inward and outer vessels.  We must also be likewise.  This is how salvation and exaltation is obtained.

Joseph Smith wrote:

It may seem to some to be a very bold doctrine that we talk of—a power which records or binds on earth and binds in heaven. Nevertheless, in all ages of the world, whenever the Lord has given a dispensation of the priesthood to any man by actual revelation, or any set of men, this power has always been given. Hence, whatsoever those men did in authority, in the name of the Lord, and did it truly and faithfully, and kept a proper and faithful record of the same, it became a law on earth and in heaven, and could not be annulled, according to the decrees of the great Jehovah. This is a faithful saying. Who can hear it?

…

And as are the records on the earth in relation to your dead, which are truly made out, so also are the records in heaven. This, therefore, is the sealing and binding power, and, in one sense of the word, the keys of the kingdom, which consist in the key of knowledge.  (D&C 128:9,14)

When a person is baptized with valid priesthood authority, the word of God is bound to the person’s outer vessel.  Specifically, the gospel law is bound or sealed to the outer vessel.  The law, which is a written form of God’s word, has promised blessings associated with obedience to it.

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.  (D&C 130:20-21)

There are also promised curses associated with non-compliance.  Both the law, its blessings and its curses are bound up to the outer vessel, making a covenant between God and the man.  If God looks in the inward vessel and sees conformity to the word of God that is sealed to the outer vessel, He is bound to bestow the promised blessing.  Contrariwise, if He sees non-conformity, He is likewise bound to bestow the curse.  This is how we bind God.

I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.  (D&C 82:10)

The promise referred to in the above scripture does not come from the inward vessel word alone, but consists of the outer vessel law sealed by priesthood power and then complicity with that law by application of the word found in the inward vessel.

And again, verily I say unto you, that which is governed by law is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same. That which breaketh a law, and abideth not by law, but seeketh to become a law unto itself, and willeth to abide in sin, and altogether abideth in sin, cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice, nor judgment. Therefore, they must remain filthy still. (D&C 88:34-35)

Only the word of God is eternal, therefore, to inherit eternal life, we’ve got to be bound to it.

And everything that is in the world, whether it be ordained of men, by thrones, or principalities, or powers, or things of name, whatsoever they may be, that are not by me or by my word,

saith the Lord,

shall be thrown down, and shall not remain after men are dead, neither in nor after the resurrection,

saith the Lord your God.

For whatsoever things remain are by me; and whatsoever things are not by me shall be shaken and destroyed. Therefore, if a man marry him a wife in the world, and he marry her not by me nor by my word, and he covenant with her so long as he is in the world and she with him, their covenant and marriage are not of force when they are dead, and when they are out of the world; therefore, they are not bound by any law when they are out of the world. (D&C 132:13-15)

Binding the promises of God’s word to our outer vessel, then, is essential to our salvation.  Without the word of God on the outside, as well as on the inside, we are doomed.

There’s also testimony

In addition to binding or sealing up law upon the Lord’s disciples, which is the written form of His word, there is also testimony, which is a spoken form given by the power of the Holy Ghost:

And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me,

See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.  (Rev. 19:10)

The man, then, speaking by the power of the Holy Ghost, testifies that such-and-such a thing is going to happen, or that such-and-such a blessing is going to be received, and these prophecies, which are also promises, are bound or sealed to the outer vessel, as attachments or addendums to the initial sealing of the law there.  Thus, after baptism, we have hands laid on our hands to get the Holy Ghost and additional promises can be attached to the individual’s outer vessel, according to the inspiration received by the one speaking.  A patriarchal blessing is also a sealing of testimony, as are other priesthood blessings.

Frontlets and phylacteries

These priesthood sealings of promises upon our outer vessel is what Peter was referring to when he wrote, “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises” (2 Pet. 1:4.)  No promises are extended to anybody via the inward vessel alone, therefore the Christians, and any Mormons who think likewise, who think that confessing Jesus and living a Christian life of service is sufficient for salvation, i.e. that the word on the inside alone is sufficient, is going to be sorely disappointed, for no one can be saved by works alone, and the grace of God is only activated by obeying His commandments, which includes getting His word attached to our outer vessel, so that He essentially “sees Himself.”  Even the language of the marriage sealing attests that the promises are attached only to the outer vessel: “it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant hath put upon them” (D&C 132:19.)

We also have a type of this principle with the practice of frontlets and phylacteries:

(Bible Dictionary entries follow)

Phylacteries

(See Frontlets.) Amulets fastened on the forehead or on the left arm. They were small strips of parchment inscribed with texts (see Ex. 13:1–10, 11–16; Deut. 6:4–9; 11:13–21) and enclosed in leather cases (see Matt. 23:5).

Frontlets or phylacteries

Strips of parchment on which were written four passages of scriptures (Ex. 13:1–10, 11–16; Deut. 6:5–9; 11:13–21) and that were rolled up and attached to bands of leather worn (as an act of obedience to Ex. 13:9, 16; Deut. 6:8; 11:18) around the forehead or around the arm. The Jews called them tephillin. The Pharisees wore them broader than other people in order to make them as conspicuous as possible (Matt. 23:5).

These are the four passages of scriptures that were written in the strips of rolled up parchment:

#1: (Ex. 13:1–10)

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

Sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine.

¶And Moses said unto the people,

Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten.  This day came ye out in the month Abib.

¶And it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month.  Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to the Lord.  Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quarters.

¶And thou shalt shew thy son in that day, saying,

This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt.

And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth: for with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt.  Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year.

#2: (Ex. 13:11–16)

¶And it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, as he sware unto thee and to thy fathers, and shall give it thee, that thou shalt set apart unto the Lord all that openeth the matrix, and every firstling that cometh of a beast which thou hast; the males shall be the Lord’s.  And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.

¶And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying,

What is this?

that thou shalt say unto him,

By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage: and it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem.

And it shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes: for by strength of hand the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt.

#3: (Deut. 6:4–9)

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.  And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.  And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.  And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

#4: (Deut. 11:13–21)

¶And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,

that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.  And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.

Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; and then the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you.

¶Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.  And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.  And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.

God’s word was literally bound to the outside of their bodies, and it contained promised blessings and curses, according to their obedience.  The sealing and binding power of the priesthood, then, is a sort of spiritual frontlet or phylactery.

Conditional promises

And unto every kingdom is given a law; and unto every law there are certain bounds also and conditions.  All beings who abide not in those conditions are not justified.  (D&C 88:38-39)

Sealing up the law and binding up the testimony among the disciples can be of two types of promises: conditional and unconditional.  Conditional promises require that a condition be fulfilled before the promised blessing is bestowed.  For example, we must keep our baptismal covenant in order to obtain the promised blessing of eternal life, yet baptism also contains the unconditional promise of the Holy Ghost, just for being baptized, which we receive at confirmation.  Another example is the endowment and marriage sealing, which are all conditional promises.

Unconditional promises

Some promises are given unconditionally, because the conditions for the fulfillment of the promise have already been met.  The more sure word of prophecy falls into this category:

The more sure word of prophecy means a man’s knowing that he is sealed up unto eternal life, by revelation and the spirit of prophecy, through the power of the Holy Priesthood. (D&C 131:5)

Non-priesthood sealings

God has power to seal additional promises to the outer vessel without using a priesthood administrator, merely by using the power of the Holy Ghost, through revelation and prophecy.  These additional promises are obtained by faith and are attached to the law or testimony already found sealed to the outer vessel, or to that which will be found sealed there in the future.  (There is no getting around the necessity of a priesthood administrator and this sealing and binding power.)  Thus, Joseph obtained promises of a righteous branch of his posterity, of Moses, and of the Josephite, and the Nephites obtained promises of the restoration of the Nephites, etc.  Also, Joseph Smith had his exaltation unconditionally sealed upon him:

For I am the Lord thy God, and will be with thee even unto the end of the world, and through all eternity; for verily I seal upon you your exaltation, and prepare a throne for you in the kingdom of my Father, with Abraham your father. (D&C 132:49)

None of this was done via a priesthood administrator.

Past, present and future

“The” more sure word of prophecy is nothing more than an unconditional promise given through a priesthood administrator by the power of the Holy Ghost in which a present condition or state is manifest.  In other words, it means that you have successfully endured to the end, passed the test of mortality, overcome the world by your faith in Christ and made your calling and election sure.  You can now die, confident that all will be well in the last day for you.  But there is also “a” more sure word of prophecy, or “other” more sure words of prophecy, which are likewise unconditional promises, but concerning the future or the past.  To illustrate the future type, I will use my wife as an example.

About two years after my wife was baptized, and more than a year after I met her, and in the very instant that I began pursuing her, the Holy Ghost manifested a prophetic revelation to her, in which she was told that I would be her “eternal companion.”  This was the second time she had received a manifestation of the Holy Ghost—the first being a knowledge that her sins had been remitted, received after her baptism—and she was unfamiliar and inexperienced with the gift to prophesy, and so she kept it to herself, thinking that if it were a true prophecy, nothing could stop its fulfillment.  It was many years later that she finally told it to me.

Her revelation is exemplary of an unconditional promise—for no conditions were attached, the Holy Ghost merely declaring the future—yet it was remarkable in that it essentially guaranteed that not one, but two people would be sealed up to their exaltation.  In order for the prophecy to come to pass, three things would have to happen: 1) the two people in question would have to be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity, 2) the two people in question would have to be saved, and 3) the two people in question would have to enter into their exaltation.  Her prophecy, then, was unconditionally guaranteeing that all three things would occur.

Notice the similarity of her prophecy to Joseph Smith’s definition of the more sure word of prophecy.  Her revelation certainly wasn’t “the” more sure word of prophecy, for although it was given by revelation and prophecy, it was not done by the power of the priesthood, nor was it a declaration that nothing else needed to be done.  It wasn’t a declaration of a present state, but of a future state.  It wasn’t “the” more sure word, but it was certainly “a” more sure word.

Unconditional prophecies are given after conditions have been met.  The man receiving “a” more sure word of prophecy has already set in motion the sequence of events, through the exercise of his faith in Christ, that will inevitably lead to the fulfillment of the prophecy.  No conditions are attached to the promise because the necessary condition—a sufficiently mighty exercise of faith—has already occurred, and so God Himself guarantees the prophecy’s fulfillment, for when there is faith, it binds Him to act in the man’s behalf.  Thus, regardless of the agency of the two individuals in question in my wife’s prophecy, God would use His almighty power (His own agency) to get those two together, sealed, saved and exalted, by pushing the appropriate “buttons” that would cause them to act in the manner required for them to “get together, be sealed, saved and exalted.”

Was this a true revelation?

In order to be true, faith must have been exercised prior to the Holy Ghost uttering the guarantee, and in point of fact, that is exactly what had happened.  Unbeknownst to my wife, I had been earnestly pleading with God, for over a year, for Him to give her to me as my wife forever, fully believing I was going to get what I was asking for (and never realizing that God would have to guarantee us exaltation in order to grant my petition.)  So, on my own part, there appeared to be present the required condition of faith.  Also, a few months later I received my own prophetic revelation concerning her, which confirmed that I had, indeed, prayed in faith.  And my prophecy turned out to be yet another more sure word, without conditions.  As for her, I only know what I perceived in her by the gift of the discerning of spirits when I first met her, which caused me to immediately begin asking God for her—for I perceived a degree of faith I had never seen in any other woman—and I also know that she has always claimed to have done “everything that was required” of her by God during the first two years of her membership in the church.

This shows that God is not limited in declaring more sure words of prophecy.  He can unconditionally declare a present state, as well as a future state, and, in fact, all of the many promises that I have obtained from God directly, via revelation and the spirit of prophecy, without priesthood administration, have been more sure words, declaring a future state.  But God can also declare a possible past state:

I saw Father Adam and Abraham; and my father and my mother; my brother Alvin, that has long since slept; and marveled how it was that he had obtained an inheritance in that kingdom, seeing that he had departed this life before the Lord had set his hand to gather Israel the second time, and had not been baptized for the remission of sins.  Thus came the voice of the Lord unto me, saying:

All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God; also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom; for I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts. (D&C 137:5-9)

Here we see that Joseph received a more sure word of prophecy concerning his brother Alvin, not due to a condition of faith that Alvin presently fulfilled, or one which he would fulfill in the future, but one which he would have fulfilled in the past, had he lived.  Alvin’s disposition to receive the gospel with all his heart caused the Lord to view him as if he had a “seal of righteousness” upon him.  Alvin still needed the ordinances of salvation and exaltation—in other words, a priesthood administrator still needed to seal up the law and bind up the testimony, upon Alvin’s outer vessel, vicariously—but this more sure word concerning him was attached to those future sealings regardless of their futurity in point of time.

The Holy Spirit of promise

Being sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise is required for exaltation:

And again we bear record—for we saw and heard, and this is the testimony of the gospel of Christ concerning them who shall come forth in the resurrection of the just—they are they who received the testimony of Jesus, and believed on his name and were baptized after the manner of his burial, being buried in the water in his name, and this according to the commandment which he has given—that by keeping the commandments they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins, and receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power; and who overcome by faith, and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, which the Father sheds forth upon all those who are just and true. (D&C 76:50-53)

Paul also wrote of this sealing:

In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.  (Eph. 1:13-14)

The NKJV render it, “the guarantee of our inheritance.”  Concerning the Holy Spirit of promise, the Lord said,

Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you who have assembled yourselves together to receive his will concerning you:

Behold, this is pleasing unto your Lord, and the angels rejoice over you; the alms of your prayers have come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and are recorded in the book of the names of the sanctified, even them of the celestial world.  Wherefore, I now send upon you another Comforter, even upon you my friends, that it may abide in your hearts, even the Holy Spirit of promise; which other Comforter is the same that I promised unto my disciples, as is recorded in the testimony of John.  This Comforter is the promise which I give unto you of eternal life, even the glory of the celestial kingdom; which glory is that of the church of the Firstborn, even of God, the holiest of all, through Jesus Christ his Son—he that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth; which truth shineth.  (D&C 88:1-7)

John, who was mentioned by the Lord in the revelation, did, in fact, write that the promise they received was of eternal life:

And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.  (1 John 2:25)

So the Holy Spirit of promise is the promise or guarantee of eternal life, or, to put it another way, it is the Holy Ghost promising or guaranteeing eternal life.  This promise or guarantee can be conditional or unconditional, and it can be bestowed via priesthood administration or without such, being given merely by revelation and prophecy.

The Holy Spirit of promise, administered (or sealed upon us) via priesthood is done through the temple marriage ceremony, and such sealings are all conditional:

And verily I say unto you, that the conditions of this law are these:

All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations, that are not made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, of him who is anointed, both as well for time and for all eternity, and that too most holy, by revelation and commandment through the medium of mine anointed, whom I have appointed on the earth to hold this power (and I have appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred), are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in and after the resurrection from the dead; for all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead.

And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife, and make a covenant with her for time and for all eternity, if that covenant is not by me or by my word, which is my law, and is not sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, through him whom I have anointed and appointed unto this power, then it is not valid neither of force when they are out of the world, because they are not joined by me, saith the Lord, neither by my word; when they are out of the world it cannot be received there, because the angels and the gods are appointed there, by whom they cannot pass; they cannot, therefore, inherit my glory; for my house is a house of order, saith the Lord God.

And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood; and it shall be said unto them—Ye shall come forth in the first resurrection; and if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection; and shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths—then shall it be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that he shall commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, and if ye abide in my covenant, and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant hath put upon them, in time, and through all eternity; and shall be of full force when they are out of the world; and they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man marry a wife according to my word, and they are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, according to mine appointment, and he or she shall commit any sin or transgression of the new and everlasting covenant whatever, and all manner of blasphemies, and if they commit no murder wherein they shed innocent blood, yet they shall come forth in the first resurrection, and enter into their exaltation; but they shall be destroyed in the flesh, and shall be delivered unto the buffetings of Satan unto the day of redemption, saith the Lord God.  (D&C 132:7,18,19,26)

Such priesthood administrations, however, actually cause the people being sealed to be written in the Book of Life (which is found in heaven), and their names remain there unless they violate the conditions:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man marry a wife according to my word, and they are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, according to mine appointment, and he or she shall commit any sin or transgression of the new and everlasting covenant whatever, and all manner of blasphemies, and if they commit no murder wherein they shed innocent blood, yet they shall come forth in the first resurrection, and enter into their exaltation; but they shall be destroyed in the flesh, and shall be delivered unto the buffetings of Satan unto the day of redemption, saith the Lord God.

And verily, verily, I say unto you, that whatsoever you seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever you bind on earth, in my name and by my word, saith the Lord, it shall be eternally bound in the heavens; and whosesoever sins you remit on earth shall be remitted eternally in the heavens; and whosesoever sins you retain on earth shall be retained in heaven.  (D&C 132:19,46)

This conditional promise of eternal life allows them to weather the storms of temptation and adversity, giving them comfort during the trial of mortality, hence it being called another Comforter:

First, I give unto you Hyrum Smith to be a patriarch unto you, to hold the sealing blessings of my church, even the Holy Spirit of promise, whereby ye are sealed up unto the day of redemption, that ye may not fall notwithstanding the hour of temptation that may come upon you.  (D&C 124:124)

It is entirely appropriate, then, for endowed members fo the church who have received the marriage sealing to say that they have been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.

Unconditional manifestations of the Holy Spirit of promise can come via priesthood administration, such as “the” more sure word of prophecy, or merely by revelation and the spirit of prophecy, without any priesthood administration.  Doctrine and Covenants section 88 is an example of the latter form.  D&C 88:1-7 (quoted above) unconditionally guarantees eternal life to the people who were present with Joseph Smith when he received that revelation.  It is stated that their prayers “are recorded in the book of the names of the sanctified, even them of the celestial world.”  During the rest of the revelation, they are always associated with the celestial glory, but when speaking of other glories, the Lord associates other people:

And they who are not sanctified through the law which I have given unto you, even the law of Christ, must inherit another kingdom, even that of a terrestrial kingdom, or that of a telestial kingdom.

They who are of a celestial spirit shall receive the same body which was a natural body; even ye shall receive your bodies, and your glory shall be that glory by which your bodies are quickened.  Ye who are quickened by a portion of the celestial glory shall then receive of the same, even a fulness.  And they who are quickened by a portion of the terrestrial glory shall then receive of the same, even a fulness.  And also they who are quickened by a portion of the telestial glory shall then receive of the same, even a fulness.  And they who remain shall also be quickened; nevertheless, they shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received.   (D&C 88:21,28-32)

Yet despite this unconditional guarantee of eternal life, they were not perfect.  They were deficient in their thoughts, even though their actions were more or less right before the Lord.  Therefore, the Lord gave them further commandments and instructions, so that they could become perfect, both inside and out, and He continued to remind them of the promise of eternal life which they had just received:

And again, verily I say unto you, my friends, I leave these sayings with you to ponder in your hearts, with this commandment which I give unto you, that ye shall call upon me while I am near—draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.  Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you; and if ye ask anything that is not expedient for you, it shall turn unto your condemnation.
Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him; for he will unveil his face unto you, and it shall be in his own time, and in his own way, and according to his own will.  Remember the great and last promise which I have made unto you; cast away your idle thoughts and your excess of laughter far from you.
And I give unto you, who are the first laborers in this last kingdom, a commandment that you assemble yourselves together, and organize yourselves, and prepare yourselves, and sanctify yourselves; yea, purify your hearts, and cleanse your hands and your feet before me, that I may make you clean; that I may testify unto your Father, and your God, and my God, that you are clean from the blood of this wicked generation; that I may fulfil this promise, this great and last promise, which I have made unto you, when I will.  Also, I give unto you a commandment that ye shall continue in prayer and fasting from this time forth.  And I give unto you a commandment that you shall teach one another the doctrine of the kingdom.   (D&C 88:62-65,68-69,74-77)

So this was “a” more sure word of prophecy, in which they were promised that they would eventually obtain eternal life.  There still were more things they needed to do, yet the faith they had already exercised was sufficient to get the Lord to manifest the Holy Spirit of promise unconditionally.

The Josephite’s role in this

Some people think that sealing up the law and binding up the testimony is something that does not happen today, but will happen when the Josephite, and others who are prophesied to appear, show up.  But they are wrong.  These things are done routinely in the church, via the priesthood, but much of it is conditional in nature.  The advent of the two-handed condition may cause unconditional sealings to be the norm during the ministry of the Josephite, simply because faith will increase among the righteous.  Also, the sealing of the 144,000 may be more than just a spiritual sealing; in fact, it may be the re-introduction, or restoration, of actual frontlets and phylacteries.  We shall see.

In conclusion

Sealing up the law and binding up the testimony is something that happens to those in the gospel, via priesthood administration, and allows other promises to be attached to the outer vessel according to one’s faith.  This is how Christ is able to seal us as His.

Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all. Amen. (Mosiah 5:15)

These sealings do not occur among the wicked.  Instead, it is the devil who seals them as his own, using his own seal.

For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked. (Alma 34:35)

This shows that the church’s emphasis on getting these ordinances is the correct stance and that all those who downplay the importance of these things have no idea of the requirements of salvation.

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$6 for every $1000 of Net Worth Is the Proper Tithe

The heading to section 119 of the Doctrine and Covenants says the following:

Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Far West, Missouri, July 8, 1838, in answer to his supplication:

“O Lord! Show unto thy servants how much thou requirest of the properties of thy people for a tithing.”

…The Prophet asked the Lord how much of their property He required for sacred purposes. The answer was this revelation.

Here is the text of the revelation:

^{D&C 119:1}Verily, thus saith the Lord,

I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church in Zion, ²for the building of mine house, and for the laying of the foundation of Zion and for the priesthood, and for the debts of the Presidency of my Church.  ³And this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.  ⁴And after that, those who have thus been tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever, for my holy priesthood,

saith the Lord.

⁵Verily I say unto you,

it shall come to pass that all those who gather unto the land of Zion shall be tithed of their surplus properties, and shall observe this law, or they shall not be found worthy to abide among you.

⁶And I say unto you,

if my people observe not this law, to keep it holy, and by this law sanctify the land of Zion unto me, that my statutes and my judgments may be kept thereon, that it may be most holy, behold, verily I say unto you,

it shall not be a land of Zion unto you.

⁷And this shall be an ensample unto all the stakes of Zion. Even so. Amen.

The individual judges what is surplus property

An excerpt from “The Tithing of My People”:

Shortly after Joseph received the revelation in section 119, he assigned Brigham Young to go among the Saints “and find out what surplus property the people had, with which to forward the building of the Temple we were commencing at Far West.” Before setting out, Brigham asked Joseph, “‘Who shall be the judge of what is surplus property?’ Said he, ‘Let them be the judges themselves.’” (“Discourse,” Deseret News, June 20, 1855, 117; punctuation modernized. )

That covers “the beginning of the tithing of [the Lord’s] people,” now what about the standing law, which concerned the meaning of interest?

Interest = interest; (plain and precious knowledge lost)

Apparently, the revelation said what it meant and meant what it said.  In other words, the words were plain to the understanding of the men who lived in the day in which the revelation was given.  As Joseph had asked regarding “how much the Lord required of the properties of His people for a tithing,” he received an answer regarding their properties, and this is why we find Bishop Partridge explaining the plain and precious meaning of the words in terms of property in a letter written a few days after the revelation was received:

“Bishop Partridge understood ‘one tenth of all their interest’ annually to mean 10 percent of what Saints would earn in interest if they invested their net worth for a year,” Harper wrote. He cited an example from Partridge who was reportedly in the room when Smith received the revelation.

“If a man is worth a $1000, the interest on that would be $60, and one/10. of the interest will be of course $6. thus you see the plan,” Partridge wrote in a letter just days after the revelation was received.

According to Harper, six percent was a common interest rate at the time.  (New historical information reveals original meaning of LDS tithing – KUTV.com)

Unfortunately, the saints apparently did not obey the law of tithing, as evidenced by Lorenzo Snow’s much later administration, in which the church found itself in dire financial straits.  As a result of this disobedience on the part of the saints, a gospel principle was invoked:

^{Alma 12:9}And now Alma began to expound these things unto him, saying:

It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God; nevertheless they are laid under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men, according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him.  ¹⁰And therefore, he that will harden his heart, the same receiveth the lesser portion of the word; and he that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full.  ¹¹And they that will harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion of the word until they know nothing concerning his mysteries; and then they are taken captive by the devil, and led by his will down to destruction. Now this is what is meant by the chains of hell.

^{1 Ne.13:26}And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church, which is most abominable above all other churches; for behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away.  ²⁷And all this have they done that they might pervert the right ways of the Lord, that they might blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men.  ²⁸Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God.  ²⁹And after these plain and precious things were taken away it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles; and after it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles, yea, even across the many waters which thou hast seen with the Gentiles which have gone forth out of captivity, thou seest—because of the many plain and precious things which have been taken out of the book, which were plain unto the understanding of the children of men, according to the plainness which is in the Lamb of God—because of these things which are taken away out of the gospel of the Lamb, an exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them….⁴⁰And the angel spake unto me, saying:

These last records, which thou hast seen among the Gentiles, shall establish the truth of the first, which are of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, and shall make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them; and shall make known to all kindreds, tongues, and people, that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world; and that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved.

^{2 Ne.28:30}For behold, thus saith the Lord God:

I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say,

We have enough,

from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

^{D&C 1:33}And he that repents not, from him shall be taken even the light which he has received; for my Spirit shall not always strive with man,

saith the Lord of Hosts.

^{D&C 43:8}And now, behold, I give unto you a commandment,

that when ye are assembled together ye shall instruct and edify each other, that ye may know how to act and direct my church, how to act upon the points of my law and commandments, which I have given.

⁹And thus ye shall become instructed in the law of my church, and be sanctified by that which ye have received, and ye shall bind yourselves to act in all holiness before me—¹⁰that inasmuch as ye do this, glory shall be added to the kingdom which ye have received.  Inasmuch as ye do it not, it shall be taken, even that which ye have received.

^{D&C 60:3}And it shall come to pass, if they are not more faithful unto me, it shall be taken away, even that which they have.

^{D&C 83:39}And that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers.

So the Lord took away from His saints the plain and precious meaning of this scripture, removing this light from them, because their minds had become dark, through disobedience.

Interest = increase; (from Brigham Young onward)

After Joseph Smith’s death, we find this new meaning of the revelation’s use of the word interest among the saints.  This is the meaning that I used for my 4-part tithing series on this blog, it being the earliest meaning I could find to Joseph’s time.

Interest = income; (1970 First Presidency statement onward)

Here is the part of that First Presidency letter that deals with tithing:

What is a proper tithe?

For your guidance in this matter, please be advised that we have uniformly replied that the simplest statement we know of is that statement of the Lord himself that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their interest annually, which is understood to mean income. No one is justified in making any other statement than this. We feel that every member of the Church should be entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord, and to make payment accordingly. (First Presidency Statement, 19 March 1970)

Interest = interest; (plain and precious knowledge restored*)

On 13 January, 2016, the scholars broke the news of their new historical research, which essentially restored the light we had at the first.  So, now we are posed with a question, even the same question that the First Presidency of 1970 asked in their letter: In the light of this newly restored knowledge, what is a proper tithe?

6% is the divinely approved rate for calculating tithing

I suppose it will be tempting for people to think that since interest rates fluctuate, that one can use whatever is the current interest rate to calculate tithing, whether it is smaller or greater than 6%, and still be in full compliance with this law.  But not necessarily.  We don’t know whether the Lord approved of any other interest rate for calculating tithing, other than the one which was had among the saints in the day the revelation was given.  So, using any other interest rate would be using an unknown variable.  In other words, you’d just be guessing.  It may be that the Lord would be okay with using fluctuating interest rates to calculate tithing, but it also may be that the Lord would not be okay with that.  So, why venture into unknown territory?

What we know is this: the revelation was given according to the circumstances of the people of the day it was given in.  During that day, 6% was the common interest rate, and this is the rate that had divine approval for calculating tithing.  Regardless of what the current fluctuating interest rates may be, six percent will always be a known, divinely approved rate for calculating tithing.  So, use it!

The individual judges what is net worth

Just like the surplus property, you, the individual, must be the judge as to what is your net worth.  This assessment must be made on a yearly basis, for all stewards must and will give an accounting of their stewardship, and assessing is one of the functions of stewards.  This, then, is the only part of the equation that may fluctuate from year to year.

Once you know your net worth, you just multiply that number by 0.006, and that is what you give to your bishop as tithing.  That will satisfy the law of heaven and you can then answer truthfully to your bishop, “I am a full tithe payer,” without either under-paying or over-paying.

What is a proper tithe?

To recap: you first assess what is your surplus property, and give that to the bishop.  Then you assess, on a yearly basis, your net worth, and for every $1000 of net worth, you give $6 to the bishop.

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*This same “light given, light removed, light restored” pattern and process can also be seen in regards to D&C 89, which is the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom.  When that revelation was given, it was understood to be, in its entirety, a revelation of God.  Later on light was removed and the first three verses were thought to be “originally written as an inspired introduction and description by the Prophet.”  Thus, when Brigham Young used the law of common consent to cause the church to make D&C 89 a commandment of God, the saints could (and did) conveniently ignore those first three verses.  But then light was restored, and we now know that those verses were and are part of the revelation, which verses (and knowledge) nullify the common consent commandment the saints made, reverting the revelation back to a word of wisdom, and not a word of commandment!

Learning of the Real Meaning of Tithing Should Be like Finding the Book of the Law

I am a little late to this party.  I found out just yesterday that there has been new historical research done and published on the church web site (lds.org) about the original meaning of the word interest as found in the revelation on tithing (D&C 119).  I have come across three online articles about this, so far:

“The Tithing of My People” – LDS.org, posted on January 13th, 2016

Understanding “Interest” in Joseph Smith’s Original Tithing Revelation – Juvenile Instructor, posted on February 2, 2016

New historical information reveals original meaning of LDS tithing – KUTV.com, posted on February 9th, 2016

Here is a relevant quote from the KUTV news article:

“Bishop Partridge understood ‘one tenth of all their interest’ annually to mean 10 percent of what Saints would earn in interest if they invested their net worth for a year,” Harper wrote. He cited an example from Partridge who was reportedly in the room when Smith received the revelation.

“If a man is worth a $1000, the interest on that would be $60, and one/10. of the interest will be of course $6. thus you see the plan,” Partridge wrote in a letter just days after the revelation was received.

According to Harper, six percent was a common interest rate at the time.

Each of the articles above are quick to note that this has no bearing, whatsoever, on modern Mormons, who practice the law of tithing in a different way, according to how their leaders currently dictate and understand it.  In other words, they treat this revelation as just an interesting historical note, of no possible bearing on the current crop of LDS.

Compare that response to king Josiah’s reaction to the finding of the Book of the Law.

Josiah

(1) King of Judah, 641–610 B.C. (see 2 Kgs. 22–24; 2 Chr. 34–35). While still young, he made, under the guidance of Hilkiah, a thorough religious reformation, which extended to the northern tribes. He restored the temple, destroyed idolatrous images and the high places, put down the idolatrous priests, and celebrated a great Passover (2 Kgs. 23:21–23). During this reformation a book of the law was found by Hilkiah (2 Kgs. 22:8–9; 2 Chr. 34:15–16). It made at once a great impression and led to the centralizing of all sacrificial worship at Jerusalem and the abolition of local idolatrous sanctuaries or high places.  (Bible Dictionary entry on Josiah.)

2 Kings 22:8-13 says,

¶⁸And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe,

I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.

And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.  ⁹And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said,

Thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the house of the Lord.

¹⁰And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying,

Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book.

And Shaphan read it before the king.  ¹¹And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.  ¹²And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah a servant of the king’s, saying,

¹³Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.

So then king Josiah sets to work getting the people to covenant to obey the laws found in the newly discovered Book of the Law, so that their forms and rites of worship would exactly match what the Lord had previously revealed.

Again, compare that to the current situation among the latter-day saints.  The very best understanding of the original intent and meaning of how the law of tithing was intended by the Lord to operate among His latter-day saints is discovered and published last month (Jan. 2016), and we get a *ho-hum* and yawn.

My take on this

There are factions who are trying to “take back the restoration” and create a reformation of some sort among the saints.  But, I have been expecting not a reformation, but an actual restoration.  And it seems to me that this historical research publication is the hand of the Lord, starting to work a restorative preparation among the saints.

Remember the new research on the Word of Wisdom revelation, where we learned that the first three verses were as much a part of the revelation as the rest?  And the implication of that was that now we could partake of all those “prohibited” things mentioned in the revelation?  That, also, in my view, was the hand of the Lord, beginning to do a Josiah and Book of the Law thing among the saints.  (And I suppose that all of this, and perhaps more stuff to come, is a preparation by the Lord for the appearance of His Josephite restorer among us, perhaps as a sort of new Josiah to set us right in the eyes of the Lord again.)

So, everything I said about the meaning of the word interest on this site, is now null and void.  I wrote with limited understanding and knowledge, just as everyone else did. We now have a fuller and more complete understanding, due to better facts.  My recommendation to the saints, then, is to conform to Bishop Partridge’s understanding, and not to the one I put up on this blog previously, nor to anyone else’s.

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Tithing the Widow’s Mites

It may be because tithing settlement is upcoming in my local ward, but I recently had my attention drawn to a particular story in the scriptures.  To be frank, I know that my position with how I relate to the church is idiosyncratic.  My opinion about the present order of things is far too critical for most of my mainstream peers [I admit they’re problems with how Mormonism is governed by the men in Salt Lake and I admit there are alternate ways for people to legitimately be “LDS”] — but I’m far too generous for any among the critical crowd [I believe that the LDS church is literally the true church of Jesus Christ and don’t support an “All is lost, corrupt-apostasy, JUMP ship” view of things].

In any event, this last week I was reminded of the story of the widow and her two pennies.  At a point when Jesus had already condemned the religious establishment of his day as corrupt,

woe unto you
scribes and
pharisees
hypocrites!

and when he had already tossed his hands up in derision at the apostasy he saw present in the management of God’s temple,

behold
your house is left unto you desolate
and truly I say unto you
you shall not see me
until the time come when you shall say

blessed is he
that comes in the name of YHVH

the scriptures say that:

he looked up
and saw rich men casting their gifts into the treasury
and he saw also a certain poor widow
casting in two pennies
and he said

truly I say unto you
that this poor widow has cast in more than they all
for all these have given
of their abundance unto the offerings of God
but she
out of her poverty
has cast in all of the living that she had

Here we see Jesus referring to what was obviously an abused receptacle of money as “the offerings of God”.  Here we see Jesus approving of an impoverished widow submitting what little money she had into the coffers of a corrupt and wealthy religious establishment.

To me, the same applies to the criticisms that people make about things like the encouraging of leader-worship, relying on the corrupt works of our own efforts, the lack prophecy and revelation coming from the men sustained as prophets and revelators, using the tithing funds to have sufficient for our needs and then investing the difference for usury, etc., etc.

Do I think such concerns are valid?  Absolutely.  But it is my belief that it is still the church of God that is doing those things.  We have not ceased to be the Lord’s people because of these condemnable works.  The church of Christ can remain “true” while being “dead” and “damned” [see D&C 84:54-57].

For the last couple years, there’s been a lot of attention on blogs about the “corporate Church”, [the “Church™” as opposed to “the church”, etc.] — and more especially since the whole City Creek Center things was announced, built, and opened.  Although it is true that none of us [except Thomas Monson] is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints™ corporation — it is my understanding that every latter-day saint was confirmed a member of “the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints.”

While we know how to spell the name of the corporate Church, including where the capitalization and the dash goes [it’s a trademarked letterhead and defined in the corporate charter] — on the other, the name of the Lord’s true church is never spelled, it is only spoken as hands are laid on a person’s head and they are confirmed a member of it and commanded to receive the Holy Ghost.  This latter church may, or may not, contain a dash and capitalization — we don’t know.

When the Lord refers to his “church”, it is always in reference to a living body of people — not to some non-existent, non-living, non-corporeal, legal corporate entity.  That’s why you see Jesus not giving a hoot whether the temple treasury where the widow was submitting her pennies was “corrupt” or not.

Of real concern to me, is not the corruption and break-up of the corporate LDS Church — but the corruption and break-up of the latter day church [meaning seeing the members dividing into a plurality of separate, wicked churches].  That is where my focus is, on the LDS church — on the people.  We cannot call the LDS church [people] out of the LDS Church [the corporation], because they were never a part of it to begin with [the Church President is always ever the only member].

We, like the widow that Jesus observed, must assert our rights as confirmed members of “the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints” and turn the tide in the Lord’s favor — allowing for the wicked and corrupt influences to be exposed in the open light, right smack in the middle of the church, where observant people can be influenced, so that they can make an informed decision as to who they will follow [whether that be Jesus Christ or other men].

Next Article by Justin:  Master, Master, We Perish

Previous Article by Justin:  Judging

Should I produce a silver “tithing” coin?

Recently the silver bartering currency has again been on my mind.  Specifically, the production of a “tithing” coin, meaning a silver coin that latter-day saints could use to pay their tithing, instead of using U.S. currency.

Since the production of the first silver bartering currency coin (the 1/2 oz piece) in 2008, until now, I have taken an “if you build it they will come” approach.  I designed and ordered the creation of the first coin and then I essentially sat back to see what would happen.  Not much did happen.  Some people bought coins as part of their silver collection.   One guy promoted the currency by making a secular web site and developing a valuation model for it, but other than getting a few businesses to say they would receive it as payment, no coins circulated.  Also no one, other than myself, was paying tithing using the 1/2-oz coin.  And that was that.

The vision that I had in my head, remained there, mostly unfulfilled.    (Now, that’s okay,  since I like to operate by faith, so this stagnation hasn’t and doesn’t phase me one bit.)

Back in 2012, after pondering the currency and that promoter’s model, I got an idea about producing a very small tithing coin that I saw could jump start the currency and launch it into the stratosphere, allowing me to make all the dies and distribute and circulate the coins potentially around the entire world.  On October 2, 2012, I wrote a comment about it:

I have been tempted, of late, to create a 1/100th ounce silver coin, based on the above design, specifically for people to pay tithing, but I do not know that there would be enough interest in it to sustain the investment in the dies. A 1/100th ounce silver coin would cost around $400 for 100 coins. That is likely within the tithing budget of many LDS couples. (Because silver has gone up in price so much, the 1/2-oz coin is too expensive to purchase 100 coins. You’d need around $2000 for 100 coins.)

The 1/100th oz coin would be specifically for tithing for two reasons: #1, because it will be within the tithing budget of many people and, #2, because it would deal a financial blow to the corporate Church. This is because although you would pay around $4 per coin, the silver content in the coin would only be worth 30+ cents. So, although you would have fulfilled the law of tithing, thus keeping your good standing before the Lord, you would have simultaneously reduced the tithing revenue of the corporate church. How’s this for a campaign?:

Reduce the tithing revenue of the corporate Church by paying your tithing in silver!

(Using the 1/2-oz coin or any other silver coin won’t reduce the tithing revenue much, since the price of the coin so closely matches the value of the silver content.)

If anyone is interested in paying their tithing with such a 1/100th ounce coin, let me know via Wireclub and I will consider making the dies. If enough people decide to make the switch to silver for tithing payment, I will have to create the dies.

One last thing: for those who are currently paying tithing in silver or gold, assuming there is anyone out there doing that, I recommend that you only pay tithing in silver, not fast offerings. Pay your fast offerings in U.S. currency, since that goes to the poor in your ward, and they need all the value they can get.

It has been about a year and a half since I had that “temptation.” No one ended up contacting me about it on Wireclub and I let it drop, although it stayed in the back of my mind ever since.  If it was bona fide inspiration, given of the Spirit, and not just my own idea, there would come a time that it would be used, so I didn’t worry myself about it.

Recently I got that “tithing coin” feeling again, and never one to wait on impressions, I immediately contacted the mint to get the details concerning making a 1/100-oz coin. That’s when I found out that it can’t be done. That is, not for a 1/100th of an ounce coin. But it can be done for a 1/20th-oz coin.  (Now, don’t get me wrong.  I still have a plan in place to produce a 1/100-oz piece.  But that will have to wait.  The expedient coin is the 1/20 ounce.)

The mint has told me that the mold to the original dies for the 1/2-oz coin, which was made in the last quarter of 2008, is still good, and can still be used to make all the other sizes, so that everything matches up perfectly.  It also turns out that there may be some potential distributors who would be willing to invest in purchasing the coins in bulk (100 or more pieces), so that they can sell them to the public individually.

I’ve run the numbers and it looks like if you buy 100 or more pieces, it’ll cost (in total) about $4.25 a coin. So, a distributor would invest around $425. If the distributor turns around and sells them for $5.25 a piece (which is what I recommend), he or she gets a small profit and people get themselves a tithing coin, which potentially could fund the creation of all the dies of the entire currency, in both gold and silver and in both coin conditions and in all languages.

The reason why it could fund everything is that tithing is ten percent and Mormons typically pay it every time they get a paycheck. That is a very steady source of income which, to a potential distributor, reduces the risk of investing in the tithing coin considerably. After selling 425 coins, they would have covered their initial investment money completely, so that there would be no more risk involved, whatsoever.

In the case of a tithe-payer, let’s say he had a minimum wage job and his income was $320 a week, or $640 every two weeks, contributing $64 to tithing every paycheck. If he sent that money to the distributor, instead of directly to his bishop, he could purchase 12 of these 1/20-oz coins (at $5.25 a piece) and then he could give those coins to the church as tithing. As this is tithing, this routine would be repeated every paycheck for as long as he is employed. Multiply that by ten people, all earning minimum wage, and the distributor would sell his entire supply of coins every time within a two-week period. If the tithe-payer is not a minimum wage earner, but makes a lot more money, then the stash gets bought up that much more quickly, allowing die creation to proceed at a much faster rate.

Working after this fashion takes away the need for anyone (other than the distributor) to fork over enough money to purchase 100 coins. Any tithe-payer would be able to convert money into silver for as little as $5 and some change. If enough people started doing this, the church would begin to be starved* and the prophecies** concerning contributing to the church in silver would start to be fulfilled. Also, the bartering currency*** would take off in a big way.

———————–

* Although it is true that the wheat and tares must grow together until they are ripe, at some point there will be a real division and the tares will become angry with the wheat.  For all I know, one of the reasons for this anger will be because the wheat will engage in a monetary practice that does not contribute greatly to the church coffers, such as paying tithing in silver.

** For example:

And all moneys that you receive in your stewardships, by improving upon the properties which I have appointed unto you, in houses, or in lands, or in cattle, or in all things save it be the holy and sacred writings, which I have reserved unto myself for holy and sacred purposes, shall be cast into the treasury as fast as you receive moneys, by hundreds, or by fifties, or by twenties, or by tens, or by fives.

Or in other words, if any man among you obtain five dollars let him cast them into the treasury; or if he obtain ten, or twenty, or fifty, or an hundred, let him do likewise; and let not any among you say that it is his own; for it shall not be called his, nor any part of it. (D&C 104:68-70)

The revelations of Joseph Smith equate “moneys” to “dollars.”  A “dollar” at the time of these revelations was defined as a certain amount of silver.

***  There are also prophecies concerning the great and abominable church of the Gentiles, and the widespread use (and accumulation) of gold and silver:

And it came to pass that I saw among the nations of the Gentiles the formation of a great church…And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abominable church; and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it.  And I also saw gold, and silver, and silks, and scarlets, and fine-twined linen, and all manner of precious clothing; and I saw many harlots.  And the angel spake unto me, saying: Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church.  (1 Ne. 13:4,6-8)

For all I know, it may be that this prophecy will be fulfilled only when gold and silver are once again used as the medium of exchange.  If so, the bartering currency may the catalyst for its eventual fulfillment.

———————–

Recent blog trends

There have been, for quite some time now, on very many blogs, many negative posts concerning the Church’s use of tithing funds, such as its for-profit investments.  I am concerned about these posts, not that they are not giving accurate information, but that people as a result of this information have been choosing to stop paying tithing and thus are violating their covenants.

My hope is that people will continue to pay their tithing, to the church as they are supposed to, but if they are concerned about all these church expenditures, then starve the Church of money while still contributing silver, as I explained in the quote above. It may be that this reasoning will not be good enough for many latter-day saints who are upset at these things, but perhaps some will accept it.

“Upon my house shall it begin”

We all are familiar with the prophecy concerning the order of God’s judgments, (or at least we should be), namely that they are going to start with God’s people:

Behold, vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth, a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation, of weeping, of mourning, and of lamentation; and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth, saith the Lord.   And upon my house shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord; first among those among you, saith the Lord, who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord.  (D&C 112:24-26)

This is spoken concerning the judgments of God, but the same principle may also hold true concerning God’s blessings, that they will first be poured out upon the Lord’s people and then go forth to others.  What we latter-day saints do, or do not do, may end up having a world-wide effect, the world mirroring our actions, according to this principle.  Thus, if we start using silver to contribute church offerings or as currency, the world may indeed follow suit.

Checking to see if the time is right

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to find out if anyone wants this church monetary starvation and prophecy fulfillment to happen and so wants to pay their tithing in these silver coins.  If so, please leave a comment and I’ll contact you by email. If one says, “I can buy 10 coins every two weeks” and another says, “I can buy 15 coins on the 1st and the 15th of every month” and so on and so forth and it becomes obvious that a distributor could easily recoup his investment, it should be quite easy to find someone to become a distributor. In fact, if you yourself want to be a distributor, then leave a note about that and I’ll email you, too.

(Please keep in mind that the dies are not yet made for the 1/20th ounce coin. This is just a preliminary “blood pressure” check, to see if the time is right for the introduction of a “tithing” coin…)

Following the example of the corporate Church

Denver Snuffer once wrote the following:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a three-year system for collecting and spending tithes.

In the first year the funds are collected.

In the second year the funds remain invested while a budget is prepared for spending the tithing.

In the third year the funds are spent.

During the time when the funds are collected (first year), they are put to use in investments or deposits which yield a return. Similarly, while they remain invested during the second year, they also yield a return. When the third year arrives, and the funds are being spent on budgeted expenses, until the day they are spent they continue to collect interest or a return.

The amount of tithing collected in the first year is the amount designated “tithing” contributions. This is the amount that is budgeted and spent in the third year. All of the return on tithing yielded in the form of interest or return on investments is treated as “investment income” not tithing.

When the church spends “tithing” on temples, chapels, publications, etc. those monies are confined to the original amount collected as “tithing” only.

When the church spends “investment money” those include the interest, return, etc. collected on the tithing money during the three year cycle from when originally collected until the time it is spent. It also includes the returns on the returns as they accumulate over the years.

Therefore, when the church announces that a project (like the large reconstruction of downtown Salt Lake City) is not “tithing” but is “investment income” of the church, this is the distinction which is being made.

Now, taking this as a pattern, a network of tithing coin distributors can be easily set up.  From January to December, those who wish to distribute the coins to others would set aside their monthly or bi-weekly tithes until they have enough to purchase 100 coins (about $425.)  After they purchase 100 coins, (which is now their tithing), they would list themselves as a distributor, and invest the tithing coins by selling them to others at a $1 profit.  The profit ($1) from these coins is treated as “investment income,” not “tithing,” and is re-invested by buying more coins to distribute.  After 425 coins have been moved in this way, only “investment income” (and not “tithing”) could be used to purchase 100 coins to distribute.  The initial accumulated tithing (of 100 coins) and any other tithing converted into these silver coins afterward, would be considered the tithing to be payed by the distributor to the church at the end of the year (December), or whenever the distributor wanted to pay it during the year.  Also, at the end of the year, the stash of investment returns, in the form of silver coins, could also be tithed, meaning one-tenth of them could be given to the church.

Using this strategy protects the tithing a distributor has set aside at all times, because even if only part of the stash of 100 coins (or however many coins you’ve set aside as your tithing) are sold, and you don’t have enough money to buy another set of 100 coins, you can still pay your tithing, part of which will be in silver coins, and part of which will be in U.S. currency.

That’s all for now.  Let the comments roll.

Complete List of Articles authored by LDS Anarchist

SPIRITUAL GIFT GIVING AND RECEIVING

Preface –

I have taken the liberty of writing on such a sacred topic but doing it in the typical banal style and cheesy tone of today’s consumer culture. I do not do this to make light of very real and very sincere things. But by the juxtaposition of something so heartfelt with something so mindless, I hope to bribe and trick our selfish minds into passing along a meaningful message to our imprisoned hearts. Enjoy!

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEINGS – EARNEST LIVING

What to wear? Where to go?  Who to be with?  Life is full of so many questions. Sometimes it’s hard to know how to make the best impression. One thing is for sure, we should place the most importance on people. “People, places and things,” we will remember from back in our school days, are all nouns. But only people and places are pronouns. So, if we want to be a pro at things, we should literally and figuratively CAPITALIZE on people and place.

“Without People You’re Nothing.”- Joe Strummer

People and place work together to produce things. So when you see something you want, know that it will take a combination of people and place to get it. Everybody wants to be hip to the latest and greatest, so keep your eye on everyone. Everybody is the same, but every body is different. Everyone wants to feel accepted but we also want to stand out in the crowd. This shared desire to get our share is a common bond between all of us. Unfortunately it is commonplace to see people get all bound up with things. These days, charity and giving are all too uncommon. People are trying to take it with them like Tut-ankh-amen. But that’s what happens when you get wrapped up in it like ancient mummies. Chasing money is not where it’s at. Keep your eye on the people! That’s where it all starts. So don’t just look at the cool clothes that come and go. Look at the people wearing and look at the people who are making those clothes. Get the big picture. Otherwise, in your attempts to be noticed as an individual you will end up being just another indy-visual.

Looking at only the clothes we will miss the bodies. And if we’re attracted only to the bodies then we will be distracted from the beings  which inhabit those bodies. The beings out there are in reality the only ones with anything to offer us. Refusing to look at the being because you’re hung up on the behavior; sells others and yourself short. Besides, when it comes to behavior, all you can do is be-have yourself. When you look past another’s behavior you will find what you’re looking for. Seeing beings — always a good look!

Earnest living or living honestly is not the same as making an “Earnist Living.” Are you an Earnist? Do you like to pay or overpay for things to let other people know or think that you spend and have a lot of money? Maybe you don’t even care what other people think but you feel like you’re getting a better product if you always pay the maximum marked up price. Perhaps you’ve seen someone who had something and got caught in the thought that they didn’t deserve it. If your main focus is on money and markets, you are probably an Earnist. When you’re too busy earning a living you are not learning from living. Existence has its own type of economics.

GENIUS / GENIE – US

In the economy of existence there are two camps  – Flesh/Corporeal and Spirit/Ethereal. But unlike Capitalism/Corporatism vs. Socialism/Communism, which work together to create chaos; the dual nature of existence promotes order.

Spirit is thankfully not confined to the same laws as the flesh is. That’s what makes it possible for God to send or leave a “portion of that spirit” to dwell in us. (Alma 18:35) The LDS sacrament prayer for the water/wine/spirits is almost identical to that which is uttered over the bread/bodies, except that any mention of commandments or obedience to them is conspicuously absent. In high-school, you might have learned a little bit about physics but you probably weren’t taught anything about metaphysics. But don’t worry. You don’t have to be an expert to understand it. In fact, a lot of so called experts don’t get it. It’s not about trying to be a genius. Just know what genius is.

Genius is a genie in us. Solomon the Wise, who knows a thing or two about working with Djinn (Genies) says: “With all thy getting, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7) This is the best thing you can get or give this season or any season for that matter. You want exclusive? You can’t get this gadget from The Apple Store. Technically, it’s available to anyone but so few posses it. And it’s the perfect gift for the man who thinks he has everything. It will appeal to your desire to fit in with others and your urge for uniqueness. It is the ultimate networking tool. And the settings can be completely personalized. It’s more than just the latest technology from Silicon Valley. It is the spirit of Silicon Valley and the soul of the Indus Valley, where Steve Jobs went to get his original inspiration. Trace the products (things) that inspire you, back to the places and people that came together to man-u-facture them. That way you will secure a life-time supply of treasures.

By now you’re probably wondering how you can take advantage of this incredible offer. I’ll tell you. But first you need to understand something about daemons. Despite what the Big Three companies advertise in their desperate, orthodox scams, designed to keep you in lifetime customer relationships which favor the middle man and preach that the customer is never right (unless of course he does what he’s told) – Dæmons are benevolent forces – not so much devine beings but rather a non-personified, peculiar mode of their activity. They can also assume the form of guardian beings who dispense “riches” among mortals. If you order any of the Gifts of The Spirit from God’s catalog of free goodies, it is one of these guys who will deliver it. So if you’re tired of paying up to 10% charges for your current church service, then you are ready for a direct relationship with God, and ready for what I’m going to tell you.

Rub that magic lamp. Everybody has an old lamp (pineal gland), stashed away in their attic (head), just collecting dust. Don’t be fooled by those merchants that advertise “new lamps for old.” They run commercials to try to con the general public into turning in their magic lamps for shiny gimmicks. Your old lamp will work just fine. It only needs to be cleaned up a bit. Don’t be a Foolish or Fuel-less Virgin. Rub it, decalcify it and then make sure to put oil in it! Wise virgins use E.V.O. (Extra Virgin Olive Oil), Skate Liver Oil, Cod Liver Oil. Any of these will have your light “so shining,” that men and women who see you will consider you a distributor of God’s Gifts to the world. Don’t be bashful. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!

Warning –We’re talking about unlocking and releasing your god potential, so you need to be fully prepared and even expect that people will one day form cults around your name. Hopefully they will eventually look past the persona and catch the vision themselves. Certainly your closest friends will. Then multi-level miracle campaigns will spring up everywhere you go. But even in the humble initial stages of your accumulation and distribution of gifts, you have to be comfortable with being emulated. When we magnificently magnify our callings in life we do not feel threatened in the slightest by copiers or even freeloaders. We respect them as equals and care for them as we would a newborn baby, who cries and eats and does not contribute in the same ways an adult would but is no less valuable in our sight.

TURN SHOPPING LISTS INTO SWAPPING LISTS – SHARING WITH THE STARS

Some of the best, shining examples we have available to us are the celebrities or stars of our day. Many of them put it all out there into the Universe. Yeah, sure they may have their faults, but don’t we all? Remember what we said about getting self-righteously stuck on critiquing others’ behavior. Look past those character flaws to the essence. It might be helpful to make a list of attributes you bring to the table and combine it with a list of characteristics you admire in a particular singer, actor or even historical figure. They can be dead or alive, male or female. If you can establish any type of strong mental/emotional link to that person, you can merge and make it work. Jesus Christ, the biggest Super Star of them all understood this very well. As Lord Jesus Krishna, He left us with an ancient Indian text called the Bhagavata Purana, that catalogs many of the toys available to children of the Most High. He dipped into the magic sack of good gifts often to make use of such cool tricks as anūrmi-mattvam: Being undisturbed by hunger, thirst, and other bodily disturbances, and sva-chanda mṛtyuh: Dying when one desires. He showed that He possessed these two particular powers when He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” (Luke 4:4) and when He spoke the words, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.”(John10:18)

George Bernard Shaw said:

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

Ideas can be so much more than the metaphorical light bulb or flash of inspiration. Spirit is made of consolidated ideas. Letting ourselves be inspired by our fellow man is the self same act as letting our light shine. You literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

There’s a famous song by Earth, Wind & Fire that says: “You’re a shining star – no matter who you are – shining bright to see – what you can truly be.” Musicians are magicians and I always wondered why EWF, omitted the magical element of Water from their band name. But if we think of this Aquarian Age outfit’s masterful music as the water that they bear to the world, we can learn much about the way this spiritual gift giving and receiving works.

F*I*L*E  SHARING  IS  L*I*F*E  SHARING

Osmosis is: The tendency of a fluid, usually water, to pass through a semipermeable membrane into a solution where the solvent concentration is higher, thus equalizing the concentrations of materials on either side of the membrane – A subtle or gradual absorption or mingling. When you get that pineal cone secreting, what you’re doing is properly consecrating. Once your lamp is lubed up and consecrated, then your efforts will be concentrated more equally among both camps of the Economics of Existence – Spiritual and Physical. Genius is also known as the activating spirit. It is downloadable and dilutable. In the mundane market of mammon, non-dilutable shares are preferred. But in the mundus spiritus, the more diluted, the more desirable. To get the ball rolling with that activating spirit, it can’t remain still. It needs to be dis-stilled. The idea is, that disturbance of the vital force concentrates the spirit-like, essence of any substance, situation or abstract idea. Osmosis is the wave of the future. Concepts like College Courses and Social Security are so passé. Why spend thousands of dollars and hours on something which will never give you an immediate return and in many cases will never pay out as much as you put into it? But even though Osmosis is being applied in exciting, cutting edge ways today; it is by no means a new science.

Moses, one of history’s most famous self-made men, employed the art in some very impressive dæmon-strations. ‘Moses’ means ‘Son of’ in ancient Khemetian and can be seen in names like Ramses (Son of Ra) and Thutmose (Son of Tut). Are we expected to believe that the single most important role of the Old Testament is played by a guy  named simply “Son of”? How is it that he has only half a name? This child of destiny who was passed back and forth from the king’s court to a people in poverty, similarly to Nathan Jr. in the Cohen Bros. classic, Raising Arizona, should we call him Nothing Jr.? Or is it more likely that the Judeo-Christian re-writers of history purposely masked the man’s moniker in mystery, to demon-ize the real power by which such amazing miracles were performed? We’re told that Pharaoh’s daughter named him Moses because she “drew him from the water.” The Nile was thought of as the backbone of Ausr, who the Greeks called Osiris. Might then Moses’ real name be Ausrmoses or Os-moses?

On this side of the impregnable veil between worlds we may find materials lacking but on the other side there is abundance. Going from lack to luck? The secret is in ‘U’. Let’s say you need a new house. You may not be able to pull a house out of your magic hat (pineal gland), but you can pull out the idea of a new house from that region. And that will pull the desired house and yourself into the same space. Here’s how to order: Fill out the thought form with as much information as you can without worrying about every last detail. All requests should be like a woman’s skirt – long enough to cover everything but short enough to keep it interesting. If you like, you may include images, audio/video files, text, whatever. Simply attach them with the thought form and “submit.” (James 4:7) It is not necessary to address them to any particular department but if you know the name of someone who works on the other side and feel to bring the matter to their attention for a faster response time, then please, feel free to do so.

If you follow these general guidelines and let spirit flow, you should receive what you ask for. If your genie brings curses instead of blessings then the problem is with the application process. Remember, you should be maintaining a lovely feeling of the “I” and the “We” together. When the moon hits your I ‘Am’ coinciding with what We ‘Are’ – that’s Amare (to love).  Unless you are asking from that in-between place of Am-Are then you are asking Am-Is (amiss). (James 4:3) Do you sometimes have difficulty shaking that “me vs. the world” mentality? Do you feel like you’ve been souled a lie? Just calm down, play some soulful aRe&Be one -with everyone… One with everything he or she wants and needs!

You will start to develop, by osmosis, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. According to followers of the Coven of Covey, these fit into 3 imperatives which start with Independenceor Self-Mastery, progressing to Interdependenceor Unity with Others, and finally looping back around to Self Renewal. This corresponds very well with our universal desire to experience simultaneously the synergy of the group and the power of the individual. Whether the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the 5 Siddhis of Yoga and Meditation, the 8 Siddhis of Hinduism or the Christian Gifts of the Spirit with their 2 complimentary groups of 7 each combining for a grand total of 14 – the point is not to get stuck in this ideology or that tradition but to “covet earnestly the best gifts.” Hey I thought we weren’t supposed to covet. I’m telling you, this is the “more excellent way” (1 Cor.12:31) of the new æon of Ma’at. The trends are all moving toward a balance between collectivism and individuality.

If you haven’t done it yet, don’t get left behind, get updated, and upgraded in heart and mind. If you’re like most of us, you have been a member of one of the many file-sharing communities that are buckling and breaking up, under the pressure of the State. You feel the life-sharing that you crave starting to cave under ever tighter controls. Don’t fret and definitely do not delay. Link into the saving network of our common spiritual lineage now. At this point the institution is working endlessly to keep a F–I–L–E on you+your kindred dead but is itself, almost entirely devoid of L–I–F–E. When we see such a dire dearth of the Spiritual Gifts in The Church, it’s like watching a poisoned puppy die a slow painful death. That poor D–O–G is in need of men who heed G–O–D and can, with love, fulfill the wise purposes of the Generator Operator Destroyer of Heaven and Earth.

DON’T BE ASHAMED – KEEP IT MOVING WITH NEW ASHE!

It is impossible or at least silly to speak of the Spiritual Gifts without talking about that which keeps all the Gifts in circulation.

Ashé! is the power to make things happen, the spiritual life force. Ashé! takes the foundational energy of the other world and ((BAM)) makes it available in this world. But wait, that’s not all! Ashé!’s versatile nature also makes it possible to effect change in the realms beyond from the comfort of your own home.

Are you tired of the same old religious routine? So many churches claim to be true and living but they’re all rigor and no vigor. Stop settling for rigormortis! Get out of that annoying contract with Death & Hell and get into Ashé! Or should we say let Ashé! get into you. Ashé! provides an amazing body/mind workout. Just listen to this satisfied practitioner….

“I do a lot of traveling, from Jerusalem to Thessalonica, from Corinth to Rome. I’m always on the road. I take Ashé! with me wherever I go. Since I started using Ashé! back in Damascus, I’ve felt this deep connection both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. I make connections between Jew and Gentile, male and female and [it] keeps me connected, that I may be comforted together with my friends by the mutual faith of both them and me. It’s great! I just make a request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey and the results are astounding every time. Ashé! makes a great gift. I impart it to all my family and friends. For I am not ashamed of the testimonial of Jesus Christ that is in me…ASHE!”

–  Paul, Apostle of the Lord

The word ‘Ashé’ is Yoruba but the actual energy it describes is universal. Whereas in the ancient Afrikan tradition the tendency is to internalize the Holy Spirit, today’s Christ-Shun culture clings to a “hitherto shalt thou come, but no further” attitude as touching (or should we say, almost but not quite touching) any matter of the spirit. Hence, Christ-Shuns, as well as a sad group of saints who actually have genuine desires to follow the Christ to the fullest, are tempted to attempt to divide the indivisible. Don’t they wonder why their God remains invisible to them when He is supposed to be invincible in their lives and through their bodies? As long as we persist in perverting AsHé into As He, obsessed with doing as he would do, trying to live as he lived, then we will be truly living in sin, which is not living at all but constitutes the committing of slow spiritual suicide. No wonder so many people of the world, whether of European, Afrikan or Asian heritage are ripening for destruction.  They’re so miserable, so removed from the roots (or to paraphrase Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon: Burdened by lofty branches) that they practically beg the posthumously deified king, Xangô (Shango) to intervene with his double-bladed axe (aXé) via his earthly and earthy devotees.

THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY WITH HIS DOUBLE EDGED SWORD WHICH IS CALLED ASHE

Before one can continue in the Circle of Life, he or she must commence the Spiritual Gift Exchange for themselves and their household. But if one refuses to personally participate in the very power by which that flow is generated and labels such spiritual/paranormal activity as voodoo or native superstition, saying it is of the Devil, all the while promoting a soulless version of family history record keeping and lame, stiff dance steps, to replace the spontaneous movements of the dance of life, then I ask you….Who is the devil, who is the zombie? Once you have hardened your heart to such a point; once you’ve set your heart like a flint against H.I.M (His Imperial Majesty); that’s when, in the symmetry of the universe, the poetic justice of the Lord, He will set His face like a flint against you. You’ve probably seen Him staring you right in the eyes and didn’t even know it. Traditional Afrikan art often depicts the carved figure of a woman holding her bosom as a gift to God with a single double-bladed axe sticking up from her head. Yep, just like He did through the “foreheads” of His prophets Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:9) and Isaiah when He possessed them and made them unashamed to preach against the rebellious House of Israel. (Isaiah 50:7)

Here is where the gloves come off. A-SH-E becomes A-CH-E. And the Ori’shas – literally ‘owners of heads’ – become a headache if we deny them. This has a very real physiological effect that is not to be ignored. Neurotransmission is the process by which spiritual signals get propagated throughout the physical body. It is necessary for the regulations of bodily secretions and organ functions critical for the long-term survival of multicellular vertebrate organisms such as mammals. There is an enzyme called AChE (Acetylcholinesterase). This is a perfectly appropriate name for it, since it functions like a “small axe” that cleaves peptide bonds by means of hydrolysis. If it becomes inhibited in its function, it creates serious problems for the flow of important spiritual messages across the synapses. AChE is specifically intended to aid in the smooth flow of a neurotransmitter called Acetylcholine (often abbreviated ACh). ACh has a variety of effects as a neuromodulator upon arousal and reward. ACh has an important role in the enhancement of sensory perceptions when we wake upand in sustaining attention. If AChE is not able to function correctly, the ACh and the messages it carries, literally clog up the synapses. Irreversible inhibitors of AChE may lead to muscular paralysis, memory deficit and Alzheimer’s disease or even death by asphyxiation.

If that sounds bad, check out the drastically negative spiritual effects: When ASHE turns to ACHE, the softer, even soothing sound of consolation, signified by the letters ‘S–h’ and whispered by Our Mother to quiet fears in our formative years, now changes to the harsher, chastising sound of the ‘C–h’, from The Father. Shango retains cool self-control but subtly shifts to Chango.  Suddenly, Ere we are aware, our vain shopping for shoes at City Creek Mall turns to chopping block blues for any and all cocky heads that refuse to ‘choose the right.’ One of Shango’s sacred colors is white. It symbolizes the logic He gets from His Grandfather, Obatala. Oh, but alas He will not spare the stubborn head that has not inherited some of Aganyu’s blood red. Past all feeling and passion, unrepentant hearts will wither. Like the Lion of Zion, Bob Marley, sings in the song “Small Ax,” It is the small acts of the righteous that eventually “cut down” the “Big Tree”. And in a Jamaican accent ‘Big Tree’ could be understood to mean ‘Big Three’. Let the pride of the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims fall like a great and spacious building in an earthquake! The Lord of the Vineyard uses Aché like a hatchet to prune and cast into the blaze, all lofty branches who do not acknowledge the roots. If this seems un-fair to ye so called ‘fair-ones’ remember, Nephi said, “If ye ask not….ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark” (2 Nephi 32:4) In other words, “If you don’t aks, you get axed.” Brethren, are we therefore justified in lingering while the Spiritual Gifts fall completely out of use for fear that some might misuse them? Seems to this author, that the Master employed the metaphor of money in the parable of the talents to show us that, abstaining from using them is in fact (ab)using the Gifts of the Fathers.

SHARING IS PREPARING

Do we need to be commanded in all things? What are we, a bunch of high-school girls (foolish virgins) before prom? Don’t wait to be ‘axed out.’ Ask for your gifts today and start giving and getting in the United Order right away! There have been many, many groups who have sought to live as one and establish Zion. The Oneida Community in New York, New Harmony in Pennsylvania and Nauvoo in Illinois are only three of endless defunct examples from the past. There is no shortage of people trying today either. From southern Utah to Canada, California to Russia, gathering for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment and good living is ‘in’. Organization and reason figure heavily into the planning of these communities. Polygyny and even polyandry in some cases are working themselves into mainstream culture as polyamory peaks the public’s interest. Everywhere, the word ‘Share’ is in the air.

Even within virtual realms so far detached from physical people and places, there is a great meeting of the minds taking place. If you know how to read the signs you will find memos from God popping up in the strangest of spaces. Key words are everywhere surging up from the collective consciousness to clue you into the New Multidimensional Jerusalem where all are intimately linked. Verizon Network has recently revealed a “Share Everything” plan for the family. Could the Logos spell it out any more plainly for us? A whole generation of ambitious and admirable attempts at community based on sharing were spawned by Napster, who lived up to its name as it succeeded in its purpose to stir us from our napping. And speaking of naps, extremely esoterically coded messages, probably with deeply intended dual meaning, appear before our eyes and ears in the advertisements for the new feature film, Paranorman. It is an animated zombie [movie] set for release right on the day of the new moon (8-17-2012). Norman Babcock, a misunderstood boy who speaks with the dead, takes on ghosts, zombies and grown-ups to save his town from a centuries-old curse. One specific ad being run is not your ‘normal’ preview. Only spiritually awake and alert audience members will notice what the foolish and sleepy virgins fail to see. The young hero, who symbolically represents the hearts of the children that must be turned to the hearts of the fathers to avoid the curse, tells us that he is promoting something called NAPZ (National Alliance of People and Zombies). He says, “Life shouldn’t just be for the living.” Nap time is over folks!

MAKING THE CHOICE BETWEEN DECREES OF DECAYING DEATH AND LAWS OF LOVING LIFE

You don’t have to be a fan of the band to agree that ‘The Grateful Dead’ sounds a lot better than the ‘Ungrateful Undead.’ In “Friend of The Devil,” Garcia gives some good advice on how to nec-romance the nasty nuisance of not so kindred dead by killing them with kindness. He suggests keeping it moving but never running in fear from the ghosts of our past. Spending “a night in Utah, in a cave up in the hills,” while lighting out on the lamb, wending our way from one wife to the next, as the lyrics indicate, might just transform any shy man into a Sha-man. Without shamanic elders after the likes of Alma, how would we understand that, “that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.” (Alma 34:34).  To the same degree that a man or woman was a terror or a tyrant to his or her own family and fellow man during life, that same foul spirit will resume reeking, and wreaking havoc from the great beyond. At this very moment you and your family most likely have relatives, both dead and alive, who are involved in your life either as a help or a hindrance. If you do not recognize them, then you can not fully accept the goods they bring, nor fully reject the garbage they bring. What non-tribally structured utopians do not grasp is the firmness of the grip that spirit holds on flesh and the irresistible draw that the flesh holds for the spirit. Upon death, the disembodied spirit becomes very clear in his understanding of this fact as he can clearly see how the flesh is unable to wield any influence independently of the spirit. When we love our bodies right, we do indeed become one with them but if we aint’ lovin’ ’em right,  then we will feel  unable to resist the evil urge to break that eternal law of our Mother Matter who says – “Love Me Or Leave Me.”

Mother Earth moans and groans under oppression of evil spirits who buy up false priests to exercise unrighteous dominion over the elements. (D&C 123:7) Afflicted since the dawn of civilization along the Indus Tributaries by men of renown and their giants of in–dus–try who, in dust, try to subjugate the womanly wilderness under their man-ipulation. The saints will in dust, cry against the monstrous men strewing their blood like a morbid menstrual cycle of mortal combat. But the beautiful body of Christ is starting to exercise her rights and exorcise the demons who torment her. Just as Jesus said through Isaiah:

“Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.”  – Isaiah 52:2

Or as Jesus said through a young, full of life, Michael Jackson in a chiasmic channeling during the break down of one of the most popular songs sung by him and his brothers:

“Sit down girl, I think I love ya? No, get up girl, show me what you can do Shake it, shake it baby, come on now. Shake it, shake it baby” – Jackson 5:ABC 1:50

Alma, (Soul in Spanish) tells us that, though all gifts are by definition freely offered some are automatically received in this life due to prior arrangements. But even the great gift of resurrection is made available by and through LOVE which must be accepted before the gift takes effect for the individual. He also mentions that, meanwhile, the soul who did not accept part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord will be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing its teeth. (Alma 40) And the reason he gives for this is that, due to their wicked choices and also their abdication of choice, the spirit of the devil enters into them and takes possession of their house.

THE TRUE LAW OF THE JUNGLE – CHOOSE OR LOSE

Possession must be thought of as a neutral term. It is up to us as individuals to choose between demonic or angelic influences. But remember that demons are only fallen angels. Nothing can compensate for a lack of personal righteousness. So while a proper understanding of possession opens us up to an endless universe of possibilities, if we decline to work consciously with cohorts and instead hand over our will to another, we are left with zero excuses. The Real King of The Jungle has clearly delineated the True Law to us. He will gladly work with us if we are either hot or cold, But if we won’t choose, the Conquering Lion chews us up and spews us out. When we gingerly nibble and sip at the Body and Blood of Christ rather than being enthused (en “in” + theos “god”), literally possessed of God, then we eat and drink to our own condemnation.

Possession is nine tenths of the law. But still, many would-be inheritors of Zion focus all their attention on the one tenth of the law of tithing. And this they usually pay out to others in cash or kind as a religious duty rather than a natural, free and fractal continuance of the fractions of infinity. It is said that a human being typically only uses ten percent of his brain, leaving nine tenths to be possessed by whatever entity has a mind to do so. We must allow ourselves to be spatially and specially occupied by the Spirit of Christ. Because, “charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.” (Moroni 7:47)  The true church of Christ is waking up to the power she alone holds and the people have taken to occupying places from Wall Street to Oakland. And yet, these well meaning 99 percent masses have not fully realized that no one mighty and strong like moses can or will free them from the 1 percent masters. Until we all step up to fulfill our role as saviors on Mount Zion, our sad state will be reflected in both ecology and economy. Millions in debt could be instantly transmuted into millions in death benefits through the death of the ego. From ego, we go to a mutually beneficial, cooperative relationship with our dead, a simple symbiotic bond with nature and a planetary paradise. To achieve this, we have to stop waffling and just ‘leggo’ our ‘eggo’. This truly is eternal life insurance. The verb insure derives from the Latin word securus, meaning “safe” or “secure,” which itself derives from se, meaning “without” and caru, meaning “care” – literally “without care or worries.” Before the Lion King of The Jungle can reclaim his throne and restore the Circulation of Life’s Gifts, he must learn to live the law of “Hakuna Matata!”

RICH-U-ALL – SNACKRAMENTS & BATHTISMS

It is good to get. It is good to give. The two actions are really one and the same as they form a balance. There is absolutely no need to obsess over rules, traditions or laws, even good laws can turn bad real quick if they are not kept simple. Love is the law and sharing of our own volition is how we show our love. You should know that the only reason for Lucifer’s fall was because he did not want to share. In essence, the only thing we have to share is our will and that is freely given to us and must be allowed to operate freely through and around us. So Lucifer had to invent a scenario wherein we are conned into giving up our will and thereby limiting love.

There are endless ways in which we can share love. Rituals as seemingly unimportant as a midnight snack or a shower after work can serve to revitalize the individual. And that vitality can be shared with the group through meals or sexual intercourse. But how do our routines regain that vital spark that transforms rote ritual into rich-u-all? How can a snack become a snackrament and a bath become a bathtism? We have to make our spiritual intent more intense. Many have hoped to establish a heaven on earth and have failed because their focus was on arranging the external in such a way, in hopes that following formula would provide security and comfort. I’m not saying that it doesn’t work from the outside inward at all, that fractal alignment of temporal things can not draw down the blessings of heaven. I’m saying if we are going to have all things in common, let’s not skip any steps. That we must meet the Lord halfway is true but unfortunately when only a trickle came through, as opposed to the pouring promised in scripture no one seemed to notice. And why did they not notice? Because they had never done the internal work of wanting, desiring, dreaming and imagining heavenly blessings. They relied and focused too much on ‘laws unto themselves’ rather than eternal law. They followed the double-minded tradition of their fathers  – “Pray as if it all depended on the Lord, but work as if it all depended on you.”

The Law of Consecration outlined in canonized LDS Church scripture and its attempted implication in the early days of the Church, provide a perfect example of an imperfect understanding of spiritual law. D&C tells us to “consecrate our properties” and that this will help God’s people to establish equality and bring security, then prosperity to all. We could start with money, cars, and canned goods in an honest desire to care for one another and tend to the poor. But if we never take consecration to a deeper level then all our efforts will be temporary in their effects. Why don’t we read “properties” as a scientific term, as in our physical and chemical properties? Is it because we do not believe it possible to share such things? Is it that we are SELFish and are happy to give away extra cash as long as we can remain detached from the poor “in spirit”? If we can donate so called non perishable food items at the drop of a dime, then why not move one step closer to the truly non perishable qualities of the spirit? Would ‘sister wives’ in a polygynous situation or ‘brother outlaws’ in a polyandrous family structure, be more likely to share and share alike, not only their spouse, but material things as well, out of an external expectancy to comply with household rules? Or do you think maybe a greater motivation would be heart to heart spiritual connection, which would dispense with the need for any lists of do’s and don’ts ruling over their minds. This is why men seem to so easily set aside differences and assimilate when they are told that it is for the defense of women and children. This is why women more naturally share in the role of raising children than in the sharing of the clothes of their wardrobe (providing they are the right size). But I have seen strange and wondrous shape shifting override our physical programming. With my own eyes, I have witnessed how one superconscious size fits all. What if I told you it was possible to share physical attributes by uploading the pre-seeding spiritual attributes and participating in a non jealous potluck of properties?

The term potluck is very similar to potlatch. The potlatch was a big celebration among Native Americans of the northwest, which involved some serious gift giving and receiving. Often the host would give all his possessions away. This continued until European settlers outlawed the practice. The settlers’ problem was in their settling for less, for a world view severely lacking connection to the unseen world, instead of hanging on to their own lucky tribal traditions extending back before the Middle Ages, in Europe. Going from lack to luck, as it turns out, actually has a science to it. Remember it’s people coming together in a place that produces things. Viewing ‘luck’ as some kind of arbitrary thing, will not get us anywhere. Anytown U.S.A. would be wise to wake up to distinctly American mixes of Afrikan, European, and Native spiritual sanitation practices like Hoodoo, which are extremely practical in their applications and will serve the people in the approaching Greatest American Depression. In order to weather the stormy times ahead we will need to make sure we are on the right side of the right law.

LEGAL MATTERS & LAWFUL SPIRITS – DON’T MISS THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE…DIVORCE THE DEVIL

In a 1973 interview, when asked his opinion of all the crime and violence going on in the world, Bob Marley stated that it was laws that caused crime and violence and that any man could know that fact. The Pharisites tried to ensnare the prophet by asking him if there were any of man’s laws in particular which he wished to publically decry. To which he responded: “Every law! The only law which is law is the law of life.” That same year, Marley demonstrated his knowledge of and love for the law of life when he recorded the infamous “I Shot The Sherriff.” IF you want to SHARE in “all that the Father hath,” (John 16:15) then you will have to shoot the ‘SHARE-IF.’ He is the impish being who enforces the “death & taxes” mode of business among men to stifle and kill good will. There is only one real way you can steal; and that is to uphold a policy of force. And a police force does just that. The Share-If will only let you share IF, your papers are in order, IF you are a member of the club, IF his masters don’t decide to completely mono-polize it. The Sherriff is an enemy to Zion. While this single track eventually served to make a mixed Marley sound militant and look iconic, the following year, it provided a caucasian, cowboy-hat clad Clapton with an ironic #1 hit on the charts. Both versions had their own lives. Both came from the same divine creative spark. Bob deserves praise for the original revelation. Eric deserves credit for bringing the message in some level of purity to other sheep in the fold. This is how The Good Shepherd works. Linking through Christ Consciousness is ultimately The Way we are gonna’ run the devil outa’ town. Of course, the Sherriff is always trailing strong, long-haired types like Sampson, Jesus and Bob with his hellhounds. The head imp himself sent imposters with a devilish counterattack.

Ashé is a chain that, if unbroken, ensures eternal connection between the creator and the creation. While writing the preceding paragraph, the spirit of Bob Marley, who was guiding my hand, reminded me of a personal revelation regarding “I Shot The Sherriff” which had impacted me as a teenager. In part of the lyrics, Bob explains that the Sherriff always hated the singer and he tells us:

“Everytime I’d plant a seed, He’d say, Kill it before it grows.’ He’d say, ‘Kill them before they grow.”

When I first heard those lines, my mind supposed that they could very well be a thinly veiled reference to cultivation of marijuana plants. But from behind the innermost veil, the Holy Spirit bore witness to my heart and mind, that there was a deeper meaning. The seeds referenced were unborn children.

The creator in this case, had guided my hand from the beginning paragraph of this section, when he cited the correct year of these scenes from his life, leading my fingers to type it in spite of my skeptical mind, which was sure they must have occurred later. Now as the doubting Thomas in me double checked the date online, the consciousness of the creator indulged me and then whispered that there was more he wished to reveal to me at that time. So, having brought this previously released information about the scripture of the song to my memory, and I having brought myself to an online search engine for the purpose of proving the more subtle and recent received details; my mind was sufficiently humbled to hear a still small voice.

It told me to enter the words “birth control” alongside the numbers of the year in question, “1973.” To my surprise, this resulted in the discovery of an obscure prog-rock band from Germany whose name directly related to the prior revelation regarding the slaughter of innocents and gave me a foreboding feeling. Birth Control came out with a song that very year entitled “Gama Ray.” The name of the song was equally scary since gama-rays have everything to do with those decrees of decaying death which we spoke of above in contrast to the law of loving light and life. Gama-rays are associated with radioactive decay and DNA damage. In addition to radioactive decay, there are also some non-nuclear sources that are known to produce gama-rays, for example, thunderstorms. This then is a summoning of Shango’s bad side, since apart from his axe, Shango is known to throw lightning bolts. Shekinah is a Hebrew word that means the dwelling or settling, and is used to denote the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God, especially behind the veil in the Temple. Shekinah is a parallel idea to Sophia (wisdom) in Christianity. Imagine the Shekinah or Shock n’Awe I felt come over me when I clicked on the video clip before me and saw images of mass destruction. Even more awesome was the wisdom which distilled upon me as I heard and read between the lines, a not so cleverly disguised eugenicist message calling Afrikans out by name. Then most chilling of all, was the music. The notes of the transitional breakdowns were slightly off but nonetheless unmistakably close to the famous chords in the transitions of Marley’s lively anthem. The notes contained, hidden within them, the indisputable evidence that this had been the Devil’s direct response to the Reggae Renegade, who must have been to the forces of evil, a devastating Bo[m]b Marley, on the battlefield of spiritual warfare in that year of 1973.

The immediate seizing upon the powerful life force which was born into the world with this one Bob Marley song, is a perfect example of the truth that: Even in the humble initial stages of your accumulation and distribution of gifts, your journey to godhood, you have to be comfortable with being emulated. I know we expressed these things earlier but it is worthy of bearing bolder witness again and again. When we magnificently magnify our callings in life, we do not feel threatened in the slightest by copyright infringers, freeloaders or even detractors. We respect them as equals and care for them as we would a newborn baby, who cries and eats and does not contribute in the same ways an adult would but is no less valuable in our sight. Even when those babies become annoying adolescents, willfully rebelling against us as creative beings and sometimes hijacking our dear creations to serve nefarious purposes for which they were never intended; we remain calm knowing that truth & righteousness always prevail. For so persecuted they the prophets and righteous men that came before us. Why should we be afraid? We stand on the shoulders of the ancestors. We maintain perfect clarity on this point, that we are where we are today, and forever, because we were allowed the complete freedom to emulate or rebel against God according to our wills. Then why not see good and perfection in ourselves? We know and we understand that mighty God is a living man. We have been granted a glorious vision from Heaven, wherein we can see ourselves simultaneously as God’s and as GODS. Yes, we know that all things shall work together for our good. AMEN.

 

Special Thanks –

I would first and foremost like to thank God/Christ for making this special, spiritual collaboration possible. As for God’s specific aspects who’s combined efforts helped to write this piece, I sincerely thank my good friends, Frederick Douglass, Joseph Smith Jr., Robert Nesta Marley and The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

P.S. Hugh Nibley, if that was you, then I thank you for your brief appearance and pointers.

THE DAMNATION OF INACTIVITY

What does it mean to be inactive?

The word ‘inactive’ can be used to mean dormant. When someone or something is sleeping we say they are inactive because we do not detect much activity on their part. In more scientific terms, ‘inactive’ can mean inert. In these cases it is often used to talk about dead matter with no inherent power of motion. Inactive can also mean lazy or slothful. In LDS jargon, being inactive means that you are not attending church at all or your attendance is very sporadic.

In order to understand inactivity it is useful to analyze its opposite. Opposites are merely special relationships; so special that we can really only come to understand one side by understanding the other.

Church Activity

Active LDS regularly attend a minimum of 1-3 hours of church meetings a week. The vast majority are involved in far more activities beyond the minimal Sunday services.

Active LDS:
1. Attend various meetings throughout the week.
2. Are assigned monthly visitations among the membership.
3. Plan and execute cultural and community activities on an ongoing basis.
4. Perform certain rituals in temples which serve as dedicated space for these ceremonies.

Sounds pretty active, indeed LDS are generally very busy people. Not all are necessarily physically active in the sense of getting plenty of exercise, but they keep themselves busy. So what are the specifics of their activity? What exactly do they do? It may be useful to employ a recent trend in social commentary to dissect this subject.

WHAT ACTIVE LDS THINK THEY DO vs. WHAT ACTIVE LDS ACTUALLY DO

Active LDS think they show devotion to God by attending a myriad of meetings.

In these meetings one can expect to find pretty much what you would find at any meeting in modern society. That is, lectures, books, notes, reports, a few people talking, a lot of folks listening and some sleeping while many more are daydreaming, thinking about being somewhere other than where they are in that moment.

The active LDS think they are loving their neighbor when they make assigned monthly visits (or phone calls if busy schedules do not permit an in-person visit) to other LDS people in their vicinity.

What actually happens is that two adult men or two adult women will drop by a particular residence to engage in a bit of ‘friendly banter’, after which the visitors read a message dictated from the Saltican City and end with a short prayer. At any point in this visit the assigned Home Teachers or Visiting Teachers, as they are called, will insert a key question. This question may be worded in any number of ways but what is always inferred is “Is there anything you need?” or “Is there anything we can do for you?” The customary response is “Oh no, nothing I can think of right now, but thank you.”

In familiar scenes such as this the action of the active LDS is revealed to be mere acting, in the sense of Hollywood actors. This is the sad truth behind such action because, as Justin has written in The Written Records post –

“ethics only teach us how to live as though you were one with your neighbor. You learn the modes of ACTION that imply a compassionate relationship with another person. It offers you incentive to ACT in a certain way – but it cannot generate the genuine feeling of it.”

Active LDS think that they serve people through their constant cultural and community events.

In reality LDS people serve the interests of corporations. Whether it be a cultural activity as small as a Singles Ward dance or a local Christmas Pageant, or a huge community effort like Mormon Helping Hands preparing the giant metropolis of Rio De Janeiro for the Olympics or a Historic Vaccine Rollout in Africa. It all serves to reinforce Babylonian deathstyles masquerading as righteous lifestyles.

Corporation is a word that comes from the Latin word for body. The corporations that are served by the LDS people are only the vehicles through which Satan, or the conglomerate of souls who followed Lucifer and denied themselves the opportunity to inhabit tabernacles of flesh , work to force the ways of the World onto the Earth. Corporations according to today’s laws are granted more rights than humans and this was done so that the angels to a devil who take these legal fictions on as their personas can feel themselves superior to man even though they know that cooperation between spirit and matter will always remain the highest ideal in the universe. Incorporation is the act or process of combining of substances; absorption of light or moisture. This should be noteworthy to believers who seek to better understand how a spirit, can either possess or become one with a temporal body –the former being an action of evil spirits and the latter the glorious work of good spirits. In more recent times ‘incorporation’ has been used to mean: The act of uniting several persons into one fiction called a corporation. In 1885, Ambrose Bierce said:

“A, B and C are a corporation. A robs, B steals and C (it is necessary that there be one gentleman in the concern) cheats. It is a plundering, thieving, swindling corporation. But A, B and C, who have jointly determined and severally executed every crime of the corporation, are blameless.”

In this way the definition of a corporation matches that of a Secret Combination as we read in the Book of Mormon.

Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills—(Hel 7:5)

Active LDS think they are doing the Lord’s Work when they perform rituals in their temples.

These actions in the modern day church have not received the Lord’s seal of approval and are in fact meaningless in many cases. Of course the rituals can be effective on a case by case basis. But alas the Holy Places have become corrupted by the money changers who charge a 10 percent entrance fee in exchange for what they claim are “saving ordinances”. Some churchgoers who gain entrance to the Celestial Room in one of these LDS temples believe that they are then guaranteed entrance into the Celestial Kingdom of God. But even worse than the mind state of those who assume they have obtained some kind of golden ticket, is the awful state of the millions more who believe they have to “keep working at it.”

The first category is comprised of the blind who will end up being leaders within the ranks of the Church and World. The second category is made up of the blind followers who are led by the blind. Both are necessary components of Satan’s gory work. Jesus tells us that both will end up in the ditch. While willfully ignorant Mormons perform vicarious work for the dead they never once suppose that they are the dead. Their awful situation is reflected by Malcolm, the main character in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. In their pride these individuals fail to see that they are performing dead works in a whited sepulcher. The active member is told that he/she has obtained the highest honor by simply being in the temple. And thus the Devil cheateth their souls. In this way the temples which have now been streamlined and dot the land, function as factories for the continuance of Secret Combinations. Their secretive dispensing of esoteric handshakes and whatnot lay the foundations for the murdering kind of bands that later form using the self same set of symbols. We know this to be the case because this scenario has already played out in every dispensation and is repeating once again. Man-made or should we say Mason-made temples are only stone structures after all. There is a stone that the builders always seem to refuse. As highfaluting symbols of the body, these temples are equally, nay, more susceptible to becoming training grounds for apprenticeship under the Fallen.

Hugh Nibley pointed out the ancient meaning of temples as universities and universities as temples. As a university professor he was thus a temple worker. He also pointed out to active LDS the dangerous route they were actively pursuing. Working hand in hand to bring about the awful state of affairs spoken of by Moroni, The Nazis and The Niceys, The future fools alongside the Gadianton Robbers of tomorrow don cap and gown and graduate. Neither group is fully aware of the fact that they collectively form that combination which is most secret of all, even hidden from its own members.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who remain active as such, do so at a terrible risk. But then again so do Americans, Mexicans, Canadians and basically all people across the planet who consider themselves actively engaged in modern society. Inactivity, meaning infrequent or terminated church attendance, may very well be a part of the solution for you and your family right now, as it will most certainly be an eventual step for all humble followers of Christ in the eternal perspective, but it obviously is not THE answer. We are eternal spirit children of eternal Heavenly Parents, so ‘inactivity’ is never an option for eternal beings. It is rather a question of how and where our eternal flame of activity is directed. As we can see, activity in the church is not what it seems. Activity according to Saltican City is inactivity, slothfulness, trapped potential and misdirected energy according to the Spirit of Truth. What was once a lively body of saints is essentially being rapidly reduced to a Combination of pride and busy-work. The apostasy/atrophy is spreading and the Spirit is quickly vacating. We stand witness along with Moroni of old, to the death and decay. Know this. The LDS church will not recover. Know This, That Every Soul Is Free. Take the good, leave the bad and Press Forward Saints!

ACTIVATE GOD’S POWER WITHIN YOU

Jesus said plainly, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” But that leaves us with a very good question. How in the Hell can we let the Heaven out? Well, questions and answers are opposites. As stated previously, opposites are special relationships; two things so close that they are intimately linked. And ironically we find that the best and truly the only way to learn about one half is to learn from or through the other. So let’s look at two principles which we will term ACTIVE & PASSIVE. There is a much more comprehensive list touching on both of these principles in LDSA’s Split Brain Model of the Gospel post. These correspond to your Left and Right brain so I would strongly suggest reading that entire post. Here I will only list a few key operations.

PASSIVE                        ACTIVE
Reading                          Writing
Listening                        Speaking
Exhaling                          Inhaling
Feeling                            Thinking
Mudra                             Mantra
Love                                Will

It may become increasingly difficult to mentally separate these two states, the more deeply one examines their relationship to each other. This is as it should be, all in one. But God does not want us to be confused so we must learn to combine and utilize both in unison. Our confusion comes only in comprehending these two as separate states. And our insistence that ‘never the twain shall meet’ cuts us off from God. Justin has written a post called “The Tree of This and That,” which is a must read for anyone who is serious in their devotion to God and wishes to overcome this division. If and whenever we find ourselves feeling far from our Heavenly Parents we have to locate some kind of starting point to go from cut off to connected. So we start by making that compartmentalized view which we hold into a positive teaching tool to reverse the effects of having eaten the forbidden fruit. If, as we say in Mormonism, we are to find our way home to God and return with honor, we must stop seeing the passive and active, internal and external aspects of ourselves as existing APART from each other and instead see them as A PART of each other. This looking at the mark is the only way for us to set ourselves apart from the waning world and make ourselves a part of God’s Eternal Work and Glory.

So to gain our bearing once having admitted and let go of our misguided ways, we should begin to see our turning away from the institutionalized church not as inactivity, but a glorious opportunity for inner activity. This would be a good saying to keep in mind and use when people come to try and question or pressure us into returning to the ways of the church-world. Tell them, “My inactivity is inner activity. Dispute not because you see not.” Proper understanding of the passive side of life, will come through breathing exercises, scripture study, meditation and prayer. And this understanding will bring personal revelation. No one can tell you exactly what to do. But when the Holy Spirit brings suggestions and solutions to your heart and mind, you must then apply them actively in your life. For that reason it was given. The inspiration will come as it is sought. IF PERSONAL REVELATION IS NOT SOUGHT OR NOT PUT INTO ACTION WHEN RECEIVED THEN DAMNATION AND DEATH WILL FOLLOW.

I know this is not what we like to hear, but it is true. There are really only two things in the universe. Those two things are things to act and things to be acted upon, energy and matter, father and mother. In this way life has been and will continue for ever more. Eternal life is happening right now. It is granted unto men to choose or reject it according to their wills.

Think about this. For the last 2000 or so years of the Piscean Dispensation humanity has been evolving with the Revelation expressed by the Christ that God is Love…for the next 2000 or so years of the incoming Aquarian Dispensation, humanity’s contribution to the plan will be to realize the next imminent Revelation by the Christ which is the Will aspect of God and this time Jesus will come in power and great glory. The Soul itself is pure electricity arising from the Father Spirit connecting with Mother Matter and all in creation, seen and unseen, exists because of this. We as souls are self conscious electricity and our energy follows thought. In the years approaching the Millennium we will see with more and more clarity that we are not the field of knowledge, nor the knowledge, but the Knower; that we are the Thinker (not the thought). Even Einstien’s great equation is the equation of Spirit in Matter. That is all there is to it. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother want naturally to be together to cleave to one another. They are eternally sealed. If we will accept this simple fact we too may be sealed for time and all eternity with them as their offspring.

Love and will, can only be understood together. Aligning our will with His will does not mean doing something we don’t particularly want to do just because we think it is what God would like us to do. This is in fact the way of the Devil and should alert us to the truth about so much so called service performed vainly in Jesus’ name. Aligning our wills necessitates knowing. We will only come to know God’s will when we know our own will and this can not happen while following rules set by anyone else. Much of our experience within the church was backwards. So we simply need to flip it around to realize the great purpose of life. Life is to be given and shared in love. Life without love serves no purpose and love without life is nothing.

In Sunday School, Seminary or Gospel Doctrine we have all heard it taught that we have spirit bodies. But only now are some of us awakening to the fact that our eyes, ears, mouths and noses; as the primary song goes, are not without their spiritual counterparts. The five physical senses are only the tip of an iceberg of pre-seeding spiritual faculties. As members of the corporate church we wandered around thinking of ourselves as human beings trying to have ‘spiritual experiences’. But when we stop partaking of the Kool-Aid just long enough to start waking up, we REMEMBER THAT WE ARE SPIRITUAL BEINGS TRYING TO HAVE HUMAN EXPERIENCES. I realize that this is a popular and perhaps cliché phrase these days but think about the word ‘trying’ and how it implies that THIS LIFE IS what our spirits aspire to not some next life. Eternal life starts for you when you say it does. The eternal union, the mystic marriage of flesh and spirit is what it’s all about. There are many paths but they all lead to this. Many of them are much more exciting than Church Activity ever was or could be. This is an exciting time for you and your loved ones as paths that were formally forbidden open up you can feel the Spirit of Christ Triumphant, the tingling of the Holy Spirit. And if at this point you can not be sure whether that sensation is of God or of the Devil well then you have two options before you. Either press forward with faith in God or GO BACKwards TO the CHURCH Wards.

Going From “You Owe Me” to “Money”

The history of money:

Standard economic theory is that once upon a time all transactions were exclusively barter:  e.g., 20 chickens for your cow, a basket of corn for your basket of wheat, 3 animal furs for your spear.  Then inconveniences arose when your neighbor didn’t need that many chickens right now but you still needed his cow – so then money was invented as an arbitrary medium of exchange that you both could agree had value.

However, anthropologists have never found places where everyday transactions look like Adam Smith’s theory of the exclusive barter system – the place where everybody in the community does business via on-the-spot trades.  What anthropologists do observe among primitive communities is an exchange system more like:  “Take the cow and now you owe me one.”  If these communities are tribal [e.g., Native Americans], there is often no exchange at all – rather things are shared commonly or allocated by a tribal council, etc.

In other words – the story doesn’t go:

barter –> money –> debt

rather, it goes the other way:

debt –> money –> barter

There was never a community of on-the-spot traders that sought out a medium of exchange, that then became money.  There was a “Just take it and now you owe me one” system of tribal-sharing that turned into a system of measured obligation [called debt – where money is the unit of measure].  And then on-the-spot trading and bartering systems only appear among people in money-based systems where the currency has collapsed.

The role of the state:

What made the “Just take it and now you own me one” turn into a system of measured obligation and money?  For millions of years humans organized themselves according to their tribe and their tribe’s land – and nothing else.

Advancements such as monoculture and city-states created large groups of largely unrelated persons living together – humans began “bonding” through commerce or business or information.  While civilization has undoubtedly caused great benefits for the human species, having larger communities bound by principles other than kinship created a greater potential for war [leading to plunder and slaves to be divided up] and a greater interest in taxation.

We observe complex financial systems of measured credit and debt at the beginning of recorded history.  Meaning, by the time historical records began to be written, humans had already come to a point past the tribal-sharing model, and were full-swing into a monetary-based system such as:  “just compensation shall be 20 heifers of the finest quality, if not he shall be put to death.”

In Egypt, a strong centralized state excised taxes from everyone else.  In Mesopotamia, the state emerged rather unevenly – beginning first with large temple-districts [e.g., Gobekli Tepe], and then later palace-complexes.  In any event, the state is where money begins as a unit of measure – used to allocate resources within these new systems of human organization.

Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

There three ways to understand this scripture:

• Nothing belongs to Caesar because all things are God’s.  So render nothing.
• Some things do belong to Caesar, but the United States is not under a “Caesar”, but is a representative democracy.  “We the People” are “Caesar”.  So you don’t have to render, but you can/should.
• Money belongs entirely to Caesar and God has nothing to do with it.  Render it all.

Now show me some tribute money — and what is the image and superscription you find?  All money pertains to Caesar.  There aren’t legitimate parts of the state that have claim on some of our money and illegitimate parts that do not.  Legal tender belongs to the state alone and those who want to be free of its control can’t be half in Caesar’s game and half out.

Meaning you can’t charge money for your labor, spend money to buy the fruits of another’s labor, and lay-up your money for a rainy day, etc. — and not expect to fall under the jurisdiction of Caesar who wants his due rendered to him.  Caesar’s is a money-based community.  God’s is a money-free community.

Once you convert something of real value [e.g., your time or your labor] into something of no value [like dollars] – it is lost forever.  The only way to retain the value is to stay in Caesar’s game.  Find someone else who plays and trade with them.

Dollars are like inches. They are only a unit of measure [dollars = value, inches = length].  We know we don’t carry around inches in our pocket – yet many actually believe dollars to be something.  And money falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state.  As such, once you work for dollars, the thing of value disappears and is replaced by the thing of no-value.  The only way to get back value is to find someone who plays the same game and do a value-for-no-value trade with them – perpetuating the whole thing.

The role of the gospel:

Jesus’ ministry cost very little – a couple taxes paid via miraculous means.  God finances His operation in His own way.  However, the Gentile LDS church has not been able to recreate this.  We instead maintain a significant financial operation – making it obvious to any outside observers that it’s the power of money [not of the priesthood] that carries the work forward in these latter-days.  We have sufficient for our needs and invest the difference.

To be poor and join the church — one will be immediately confronted with the image of a wealthy group with certain expectations.  It is a wealthy church with a self-perpetuating financial arm that is able to use interest profited off of tithing contributions to fund for-profit ventures that “fund the work of the Lord”.

While it could be argued that, practically-speaking, currency is just simply required to “spread the gospel” and that leaders are just being “good stewards” — I don’t think anything about the gospel reads as being “practically-minded”.

The corporation that carries the trademarked name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is, like any other business, dependent on money.  It must play Caesar’s game.  No operation playing that game can sustain itself without engaging in at least a bit of for-profit venturing, shrewd investing, and fund-raising here-and-there.  And I would not expect them too.  I do not fault that corporation for it’s handling of and dealings with money – I find fault for the claim that it is the same organization that existed in the primitive church, but not doing it.

One can never be free while still playing Caesar’s game:

Jesus and the kingdom have no use for money.  Jesus taught His disciples to live contrary to the principles of surplus economics and instead rely alone on God to provide [not self-reliance and provident living].

There is a reason Jesus sent missionaries out without purse or scrip – commanding them to take no thought for food, drink, or clothing – to freely give miraculous works to any who receive them – to rely on the mercies of the world to provide for their needs.  It is because only the poor are intended to teach and preach the gospel.

And only the poor [who are meek] will inherit the abundance of spiritual manifestations and the Earth.  Zion is to be a money-free community where all members live together and have all things common – where all mine are thine and we are glorified together.

When humans lived in the Edenic state of multihusband-multiwife tribes – money did not exist.  The idea of “having any money” was foreign to Adam, who only kept the tokens associated with his priesthood.  Any return to such a paradisaical lifestyle will only be associated with complimentary return to the manner of connectedness and cooperation humans shared before statism, monogamous family-units, and monetary-based systems of exchange.

Want to start a real revolution this new year?  It takes a revelation…give it a try…

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Community, Intimacy, and Connection

The Mormon Archetype of Zion:

And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.

The ever-present archetype in Mormon culture of the “City of Enoch” – of that first city of Zion that was taken up into heaven:

Zion, in process of time, was taken up into heaven.

and that is promised to return at a point when there is another city of Zion on the earth to meet them:

And the Lord said unto Enoch: As I live, even so will I come in the last days, in the days of wickedness and vengeance, to fulfil the oath which I have made unto you concerning the children of Noah; And the day shall come that the earth shall rest, but before that day the heavens shall be darkened, and a veil of darkness shall cover the earth; and the heavens shall shake, and also the earth; and great tribulations shall be among the children of men, but my people will I preserve;

And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; […] and righteousness and truth will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood, to gather out mine elect from the four quarters of the earth, unto a place which I shall prepare, an Holy City, that my people may gird up their loins, and be looking forth for the time of my coming; for there shall be my tabernacle, and it shall be called Zion, a New Jerusalem.

And the Lord said unto Enoch: Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there, and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us; and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other; And there shall be mine abode, and it shall be Zion, which shall come forth out of all the creations which I have made; and for the space of a thousand years the earth shall rest.

This romantic archetype is played out in various historical instances throughout the scriptural record.

After Alma fled into the wilderness, the community of believers that joined with him:

were called the church of God, or the church of Christ, from that time forward. And it came to pass that whosoever was baptized by the power and authority of God was added to his church.

And it came to pass that Alma, having authority from God, ordained priests; even one priest to every fifty of their number did he ordain to preach unto them, and to teach them concerning the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.  And he commanded them that they should teach nothing save it were the things which he had taught, and which had been spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets.  Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people.

And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.

And thus he commanded them to preach. And thus they became the children of God.

[…]

And the priests were not to depend upon the people for their support; but for their labor they were to receive the grace of God, that they might wax strong in the Spirit, having the knowledge of God, that they might teach with power and authority from God.

And again Alma commanded that the people of the church should impart of their substance, every one according to that which he had; if he have more abundantly he should impart more abundantly; and of him that had but little, but little should be required; and to him that had not should be given.  And thus they should impart of their substance of their own free will and good desires towards God, and to those priests that stood in need, yea, and to every needy, naked soul.

And this he said unto them, having been commanded of God; and they did walk uprightly before God, imparting to one another both temporally and spiritually according to their needs and their wants.

After the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the community of believers in Judea:

continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.  And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.  And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

After Jesus’ visitation with Lehi’s descendents in the Americas, the disciples of Jesus there:

had formed a church of Christ in all the lands round about. And as many as did come unto them, and did truly repent of their sins, were baptized in the name of Jesus; and they did also receive the Holy Ghost.

And it came to pass […] the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another.  And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.

Joseph Smith’s Desire for Zion:

These “Zions” where there are no rich and no poor, where all impart of their substance freely with one another, having no contentions, and having all things common [not “in common”, I think there’s a difference] have been a big part of Mormon history and collective culture.

The passion for that kind of community is behind a lot of what Joseph Smith was doing while he was alive – trying to get a united order of unrelated believers in Christ bound together by covenant into a whole new people-group.  A tribal community bound by covenant, in an effort to get away from the traditional order of a “church” of unrelated believers in this-or-that set of creeds.

For verily I say unto you, the time has come, and is now at hand; and behold, and lo, it must needs be that there be an organization of my people, in regulating and establishing the affairs of the storehouse for the poor of my people, both in this place and in the land of Zion — For a permanent and everlasting establishment and order unto my church, to advance the cause, which ye have espoused, to the salvation of man, and to the glory of your Father who is in heaven;

That you may be equal in the bonds of heavenly things, yea, and earthly things also, for the obtaining of heavenly things.  For if ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things;

For if you will that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, you must prepare yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you.  And now, verily thus saith the Lord, it is expedient that all things be done unto my glory, by you who are joined together in this order;

[…]

Wherefore, a commandment I give unto you, to prepare and organize yourselves by a bond or everlasting covenant that cannot be broken.  And he who breaketh it shall lose his office and standing in the church, and shall be delivered over to the buffetings of Satan until the day of redemption.

But history has shown the Gentile church of God to be a hard-hearted and faithless bunch.  They are content with having one man sit atop the power-pyramid and habitually obey what he says – they receive equal “experience quotient” from images and representations compared to what’s being imaged and represented.

They rejected this consecration and never really got around to plural marriage as a genuine priesthood order of joining groups of like-minded strangers into bona-fide tribes of Israel – but rather kept it only as a social convention.

Polygamy became required for polygamy’s sake alone.  Polyandry was also out-right rejected, without which polygamy does not build joint-stewardships – just enlarges any one man’s single stewardship.  And so:

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

Failed Attempts to Recapture Zion:

Mormon history is full of examples of believers going off to form “United Orders” – communal groups where they attempt to live the “higher law” of consecration, meaning to share all that they have with everyone else in the community.  These endeavors have always met failure, and it’s because of one common feature that connects them all – they have always attempted to do so while keeping many small, separate families.

If they are monogamous LDS, then they’ll keep many small, separate monogamous families – and if Mormon fundamentalists, then it’ll be many, small separate polygynous ones.  But the separate-family feature is always the same.

However, without a covenant-based structure in which I may bind myself as a joint-steward with another to share our all commonly with each other according to the principle of charity – such a celestial, “Zion” community will never happen.  It’ll all go well so long as the circumstances go well, but by-and-by the end cometh.

For less-radical LDS, a common goal is to stay where they are and try to get their local ward to be the vehicle that produces a celestial community, or Zion.  One may see sacrament meeting talks and lessons on using fast offerings to “impart of our surplus”, on reminding us that there is no prohibition from leadership against using Welfare Services to live the “higher law” of consecration at a time when we’re only required to live the “lesser law” of tithing, and on trying to come up with way to make our church experience a more open place and have more of a “Zion-like” atmosphere.

Zion requires great intimacy and connection among the members.  The church lacks this intimacy and connection because we are all still strangers.  The only way to achieve Zion, or even a Zion-like atmosphere at church, is for members to all be connected to each other through covenants.  As it stands, the church only connects us to Christ through covenants, but not to each other.  As long as we remain unfettered by covenant relationships with each other, we will never achieve Zion and our words and deeds at church will never approach the level of intimacy and sharing required of that ideal.

So we may arrive at the point where we are no longer:

strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

People desire this sense of community, connection, and intimacy – yet we are all still strangers.  I received this as a revelation last week, and I’m willing to state it here as a prophecy – and it’s that:

nothing we are currently doing with church will ever produce the kind of Zion-like community we read about in the scriptures.

The gathered body of believers is supposed to be the result of these feelings of community – it can never be the means we use to achieve it.

Why does he always end-up talking about polygamy?

The level of intimacy and connection required to have the kind of community where what’s mine is yours [and yours, mine], where we all deal with each other based on the principle of charity, having no contention, imparting of our substance freely one with another, etc. – is something only arising out of kinship [or family-bonds].

For example, my entire paycheck goes into one bank account that my wife is free to spend on whatever she feels will satisfy her needs and the needs of our children.  Her and I already share all things common, I impart of my substance [and my time, my attention, my affection, etc.] freely with her and our children, etc.  In other words,

The family is the basic unit of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the most important social unit in time and eternity…

meaning, living in such a Zion-like community starts the moment a man marries a woman.  The two are gathered in Christ’s name, there He will be in the midst of them [Matthew 18:20] – and the twain shall be one flesh [D&C 49:16].

This connectivity is the key.  However, if such a community starts with the basic-unit of a man marrying a woman – then how can we expect to grow the community on any different sets of principles [other than men and women marrying]?

So that– if I had two wives, then the second wife would receive just as free of access to my time, talents, resources, and love as my current wife does.  If my wife receives a second husband, then I expect his entire paycheck to go into that same account – and for him to devote that same level of intimacy to my wife and her children, as I do.  Because this is the covenant-obligation we place ourselves under in marriage.

While I don’t think plural marriages need to be a “hill-to-die-on” for this whole idea [I’m all for anarchy, local solutions to local problems, letting people tailor their situation to particular circumstances, etc.] – I can state declaratively that any group that would out-right and from the get-go forbid plural marriages will always be limited — will always approach but never arrive.

Admittedly, one does not just generate a new spouse out of thin-air.  So I can agree that it’s good to start [perhaps] with a focus on getting people getting unplugged from wires and satellites, on getting outside more, on getting together with real human-beings more, etc.  That’s approaching a real kind of community with people in a positive way – people, who can then come to know each other well enough to begin to desire courting and joining together as plural spouses.

If the church actually wanted Zion, then I think most would be surprised over the number of both LDS and non-LDS who would be ready to sign on for it — if it meant living for a higher purpose.  But they don’t.  Marching orders are to get as much education as you can, so you can make as much income as you can, so you can pay more in tithes and offerings.  It’s to just stay where you are and live out as normal of a life as you can — but with just a bit of Mormon flare to it [e.g., serve a two-year mission, civilly marry in a temple, pay 10% of your paycheck to the church, do your home and visiting teaching, keep a current temple recommend, etc.]

Eternity is NOW, and we can make a heaven of it or we can make a hell of it:

The “idea of Zion” [just wanting to talk about Zion] is keeping us separate.  We see a paradisaical, Zion community as this pie-in-the-sky utopia that we can just sit around, occupy our time, and wait for Jesus to return and have it all fall in our laps.  We think our separateness is just fine to settle for here-and-now because one day we will have Zion in which to be together.  Just having the “idea” of it all is what’s keeping us apart and wasting all the life that we could be living, right now.

When I think Jesus has been the one just waiting –waiting on us to get a culture of heaven established here on earth – to have things “on earth” as they are “in heaven” – so He doesn’t end-up killing us with such a culture shock.  One should learn to swim before being plopped out in the ocean.  It would be best to know how to drive before getting behind the wheel of a car.

Instead of thinking, “Oh, we’ll just get it all figured out after we die [or after Jesus returns, etc.]” – we’re supposed to be doing it all here, all now – otherwise we’ll drown when we’re immersed in Zion in the future.

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