Deep Waters: Having their Hearts Knit Together in Unity and in Love

DISCLAIMER:  This post has been tagged Deep Waters because is discusses human sexuality.  

I personally do not believe avoiding the topic of sex or that teaching sex-negative messages is advisable.  I think the hope is that doing so can keep people from having sex — but all that it appears to have done is keep people from having good sex:  From asking questions about it, from communicating with their partners about it — and from being fulfilled by it.  

I also think avoiding it or teaching a negative/shame-based view of it blurs the line between sex and rape by making all human sexuality this one, undifferentiated mass of “bad”.  If we’re taught to repress ourselves sexually, it doesn’t just go away.  The “uncontrollable” horny boy and the “good girl” syndrome are all caused by our current approach of teaching young men and women about sex.  It leads to either rampant breaking of the law of chastity — or depression and unhappy sexuality within marriage [which is why an LDS couple wrote And They Were Not Ashamed], both of which are exactly what Satan wants us doing.

In any event — there’s the disclaimer, so now I’ll start.

The unity of marriage:

Adam and Eve were married before they were ever aware of their nakedness or their sexuality [see, Intimacy as the Opposite of Sin].  The marriage union was in response to loneliness – not lust.

The sexual union is the chief means of physically expressing an existing connection of Love between two people.  Sex for both procreation and pleasure is not unique to being human — it is common to all other animals.  Our unique experience in sexuality is the bonding or social adhesion between two people.

When acting as animals, we may experience the two dynamics common to all life [procreation and pleasure], we conceive children and it can feel good – but only when acting as humans may be partake of the third [or ideally all three at once].

Reproduction and sexual union are distinct events:

The genitals have three distinct purposes:

• Urination
• Reproduction
• Unification

Thus, they may be considered as conduits of three things:

• Nitrogenous waste
• Reproductive gametes
• Social adhesion

These three are all physiologically distinct from each other.  Sexual union and reproduction are considered just as separate from each other as reproduction is from urination.

• The testes and the ovaries/uterus [reproductive organs] are not the ones involved in the sexual union
• Just as the urethra is not the organ involved in producing new life

The pleasure of sex arises entirely within one’s own body.  This is why the pleasure of it can be generated in solitude.  Thus, this aspect is better considered as the sequel to a sexual union, or the end-result of one.

Disconnected the pleasure from the union:

Often, a person who is going out for a “hook-up” is said to be “lookin’ for a woman” or “out to get a man”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

A woman is exactly what a man like that does not want.  What he wants is the pleasure for which a woman happens to be a desirable apparatus for obtaining.  If a bona-fide union with the other person is not the end you are seeking – then he/she is just the means to the end you’re really seeking, your own pleasure [just as if you were producing the pleasure in solitude].

This is not Love.  Actual union did not take place.  The other person will be regarded about the same as a drug addict would regard the used syringe after he is done injecting.

and Amnon said unto Tamar

bring the food into the chamber
that I may eat from thine hand

and Tamar took the cakes which she had made
and brought them into the chamber
to Amnon her brother
and when she had brought them unto him to eat
he took hold of her
and said unto her

come lie with me my sister

and she answered

nay
my brother do not force me
for no such thing ought to be done in israel
do not commit this folly
and what of me?
whither shall I cause my shame to go?
and as for thee
thou shalt be as one of the fools in israel
now therefore
I pray thee
speak unto the king
for he will not withhold me from thee

howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice
but being stronger than she
forced her
and had sex with her

then Amnon hated her exceedingly
so that the hatred wherewith he hated her 
was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her
and Amnon said unto her

arise
be gone

[2 Samuel 13:10-15]

Union is a “sacred-act” — or “sacrament”:

The “sacrament” of sex arises from the fact that, in Love, we are not merely our Self anymore.  We become representatives or proxy of the universal Male and Female.  In the temple, we are considered as if we were Adam and Eve.  In the pagan mysteries, the man acts in the role of the Father Sky-god and the woman the Mother Earth-goddess.  All that is masculine and feminine in the whole universe – all that exerts and all that yields – all form and matter, all spirit and element – is momentarily focused and present in that singular event [see, Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender].

The word “naked” originates as the past tense of the verb for peeling or stripping – meaning it referred to something that had undergone a “naking”.

In this sense, each of us are more our Self when we are dressed.  The naked person is not one who has abstained from wearing clothing – but is one who [for a specific reason] has undergone the specific process of removing clothes.  Nudity emphasizes the common human image we all bear [or would that be bare, pun intended].

Like the story of Inanna descending to the realm of the dead, passing the seven gates, removing an article of clothing at each [or Mary, being freed from seven spirits] – we strip off all that it means to be our Self, and put on nakedness as a ceremonial robe to re-enter the garden as the universal He and She [Adam and Eve] to re-enact the drama of creation.

Sacred symbolism in LDS temple liturgy:

In BiV’s post at Wheat & Tares, The Sacred Embrace as Five Points of Fellowship, she describes how [before this aspect of the ceremony was removed] the initiates were not allowed to enter the presence of the Lord until they had conversed with Him embraced in the Five Points of Fellowship.  The closeness symbolized in that act was to represent our oneness with God — a complete embrace of our Self into Him — and was presented as the way through which we all passed from death into celestial Life.

The Five Points of Fellowship were described as:

• inside of right foot by the side of right foot
• knee to knee
• breast to breast
• hand to back
• mouth to ear

In Wicca, there is a ritual of the “Fivefold Kiss”, which is another form of the Five Points of Fellowship.  The ritual involves kissing five parts of the body — each kiss accompanied by a blessing.

• Blessed be thy feet, that have brought thee in these ways
• Blessed be thy knees, that shall kneel at the sacred altar
• Blessed be thy womb / phallus, without which we would not be
• Blessed be thy breasts, formed in beauty / breast, formed in strength
• Blessed be thy lips, that shall utter the Sacred Names.

Greeting or saluting [aspazomai, “to draw into one’s self“] with a “holy kiss” was an early Christian practice referenced in the epistles of Paul [Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20, 2 Cor. 13:12, 1 Thes. 5:26].

And not only did the Five Points of Fellowship get cut from the LDS temple ceremony — but so did the complete ritual blessing of the naked body done part-by-part:

• The head, ears, eyes, nose, lips, neck, shoulders, back, breast, solar plexus, arms and hands, genitals, and legs and feet.

The ritual established by Joseph Smith was performed in a bathtub — washing with water and spiced whiskey [strong drink for the purpose of ritual washing, D&C 89:7] and anointing with olive oil:

Oliver Cowdery gave even more detail about one of these temple preparation meetings, noting how the Latter-day Saints followed Old Testament patterns in washing and anointing priests for temple service.

Oliver wrote that he met with Joseph and others at the Prophet’s house:

“And after pure water was prepared, called upon the Lord and proceeded to wash each other’s bodies, and bathe the same with whiskey, perfumed with cinnamon. This we did that we might be clean before the Lord for the Sabbath, confessing our sins and covenanting to be faithful to God. While performing this washing with solemnity, our minds were filled with many reflections upon the propriety of the same, and how the priests anciently used to wash always before ministering before the Lord.”

Admittedly, these acts were obviously cut from our temple rituals because participants felt uncomfortable with the intimacy they suggest.  This was especially the case for women — who were not allowed to have priestesses ministering at the veil ritual for them, but had to be received by a male priest to whom they were not married.

Much like the intimacy suggested in the ritual washing and anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary [without which He was not prepared for His death and burial] …

then Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard
very costly
and anointed the feet of Jesus
and wiped his feet with her hair
and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment

[John 12:3]

and did wipe them with the hairs of her head
and kissed his feet
[…] Jesus said

seest thou this woman?

[Luke 7:38, 44]

she hath done what she could
she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying
amen I say unto you
wheresoever this gospel shall be preached
throughout the whole world
this also that she has done
shall be spoken of for a memorial of her

[Mark 14:8-9]

… many felt some “indignation within themselves” when presented with such ritual acts that were quite sexual in nature.

The reason these sacred acts were removed:

These rituals are inherently intimate in nature because they express the unity between men-and-women, humanity-and-God — that the gospel is designed to achieve.  Zion requires great intimacy and connection among the body of believers who comprise it.  The church currently lacks this intimacy and connection — so these rituals felt strange for most of the people who participated in them.

However, the leadership addressed the genuine feelings of discomfort in the wrong way.  Instead of getting at the reason why we all still feel like strangers at church and are not comfortable with the level of intimacy required to be comfortable in the temple rituals — they just axed the intimate parts out of the ceremony.

The only way to achieve Zion, or even a Zion-like atmosphere at church, is for the men and women to all be connected to each other through covenants.  As it stands, we are connected 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 conversations [and actions] will never approach the level of intimacy and sharing required of that ideal.

Knitting the estranged back together:

The experience of ecstasy [ekstasis, “to stand outside yourself”], the complete unification of two people expressed through the sexual union — is what exists beyond the concepts of separateness, beyond the concepts of God-and-humans, Self-and-neighbor, man-and-woman, or any of the other this-and-that’s we might split existence into.

This is the transcendent “mystical experience” present in nearly every religion or spiritual path.  One might immediately think of the New-Agey, Eastern religions [Zen, Yoga, Hinduism, etc.], but even the big three Abrahamic faiths have their own ecstatic, mystical sects [Kabbalah, Sufism, Gnosticism].

The fervor for which some Christian writers have described being given over to the ecstatic worship of God border on the sexual:

Only in God is everything pure, beautiful, and holy; fortunately we can dwell in Him even in our exile!  But my Master’s happiness is mine, and I surrender myself to Him so He can do whatever He wants in me.

[Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity]

I saw an angel beside me toward the left side, in bodily form. I saw in his hands a long dart of gold, and at the end of the iron there seemed to me to be a little fire. This I thought he thrust through my heart several times, and that it reached my very entrails. As he withdrew it, I thought it brought them with it, and left me all burning with a great love of God. So great was the pain, that it made me give those moans; and so utter the sweetness that this sharpest of pains gave me, that there was no wanting it to stop, nor is there any contenting of the soul with less than God.

[Saint Teresa of Avila]

A common monoplot in all human myth is this sacred act of the interplay between the aspects of God considered as a man and as a woman.  Their interplay manifested in:  Birth, Puberty, Marriage, Sexual Union, Death — cycling back to New Birth [or Resurrection].  It has been considered in various ways across human culture:

• YHVH and His covenant people Israel
• Christ, the bridegroom and His Beloved, the church
• Jesus and Mary Magdalene
• Sky-God and Earth-Goddess
• Inanna and Dumuzi
• Isis and Osiris
• Yin and Yang
• Shiva and Shakti
• Krishna and Radha
• Pan and Selene

But right now – The Father and Mother are estranged. The exalted Man sits up in the sky upon the throne. While the Woman is locked away in the tower.  As such, they can never be friends.

The Mother is nature and all of the physical elements – but that’s become everything we are supposed to deny in order to be “holy”.  Most religions go about separating the very things that is the purpose of religion to bring together – body and spirit, man and woman, sexuality and holiness, humanity and divinity.

I think people are scared of natural because it doesn’t seem as “self-sacrificing” — like the Catholic priest who feels his life of sexual restriction is “more holy” than a family-life.  Or a Buddhist who would run away to “find himself” on a mountain top, leaving anything “worldly” behind.  Or the monogamist who would insist that a polygamist ought to “deny their natural man” and get with one-on-one monogamy instead of a natural state of polygamous families.

But “natural” and “supernatural” need not be considered as separate things.  Let us bring back together the things that shouldn’t ever have been separated in the first-place – or perhaps it would be to realize that they were never separate in the first-place.  Just that a hardened mind, conceived in sin, perceives this-and-that, good-and-evil, heaven-and-earth, mental-and-physical, spirit-and-flesh, gods-and-humans, etc. as these separate and exclusive things – and our minds just need to be soften, or broken.

Next Article by Justin: The Concept of Race, in the Gospel

Previous Article by Justin:  Intimacy as the Opposite of Sin

[When Things Get Broken …]

…and I’m a Mormon

Maggie asked me:

“I believe in a similar fashion and lately I have been unable to call myself a Mormon because of it.  Is one a “true” Mormon if they do not take everything in the rigid literal?  I started to feel I couldn’t be much like I can’t call myself a vegetarian if I eat meat.  But now I’m not so sure.  Isn’t this what Mormonism is at its core, its base?”

I’ve also read similar sentiments – e.g.

“I [have x-y-z different opinion on this-or-that facet of Mormonism, yet still identify in some degree as “Mormon”].  As a result, when I speak to others [and] I say, “I am a Mormon.”  Am I being deceptive if I don’t reveal what that phrase means to me upfront?”

This represents my ~4500 word response to that.

The religious experience of the gospel of Jesus Christ — at its core, its base — is the subjective and transcendent experience of God:

I was once told in conversation that:

“Mormons just don’t drink alcohol – that is the least that is expected of them.”

And I thought – really, that’s the least that’s being LDS means – abstaining from alcoholic drinks?  I’m sure if we are talking about LDS youth, then that person would probably say that the “least” is something related to body modesty or not having sex.  But again – that’s our least?

For a religion proclaiming Jesus Christ – the “least” ought to be pretty straightforward.  Jesus called people to consider themselves the servants of all – and act accordingly.  Having the same mind in you that was in Him:  who did empty himself and take the form of a servant [Philippians 2:5-8].  That’s it.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is fluid.  It’s meant to be lived by every human who’s ever lived on the whole earth.  As such, it is flexible, adaptable to the variety of conditions that exist among people.  What makes nature so beautiful and awe-inspiring is its diversity.  Even though nature follows certain patterns, it is ever-new and always creating – never boring or monotonous.  [see, Going from Concrete to Flowers]

However, a “hardened” religious tradition cannot tolerate subjectivity and diversity.  So, when one’s mind is informed by such a belief system, God ceases to be the experience of the Supreme Being – and becomes instead This-Thing who sits Up-There in the sky ruling over nature and who must be related to according to in That-Way [see, Making an Image out of God].

The fundamental aspect of the gospel is people having a transcendent experience of God – one that experiences God as a continuous happening that we are all a part of.  It’s that experience of Joy that all our myths, stories, and rituals are telling about and pointing to – so that we may come to that same place where we too relate to God with an I-Thou relationship framed in terms of family and covenant [see, Taking our Myths Literally].

That relative experience is expressed outwardly in a material sense in various ways:

Now – the gospel does manifest itself outwardly as a physical space-and-time institution according to the doctrine of expediency.  Suiting itself to the conditions found among the people at that time and place [see, There are no “higher” or “lower” laws; there are only expedient laws and D&C 46:15].

But the base-layer, the common experience is always about coming to relate to the Power of the created universe in terms that break-down the left-brain sense of separateness and open-up the right-brain sense of complete continuousness and connectivity.

There may be behavioral or moral implications of a covenant with God – but it is not the jurisdiction of the gospel to lay down specific “hither thou shalt come and no further” fence-posts for human behavior that have a universal application across space-and-time.

So, within Mormonism, there is a wide range of possibility for diversity in belief and practice that can be characterized by having different people fill in the following blanks:

• A Mormon is known for at least always ___________.
• A Mormon is known for at least never ____________.

We should not be ashamed to display a bit of a bell-curve variability with respect to what a Mormon looks like, especially considering the subjective morality and the generally ambiguous nature of the standard works [see, Methods of Scriptural Interpretation].

But institutions patterned after the doctrines and commandments of men [such as corporations] generally dislike such variation — seeking instead to streamline and control naturally variable situations.  So, in Mormonism we see things like correlation, the CHI, etc.  But that’s a different matter entirely.

Specific manifestations of a common subjective experience express natural diversity:

The point is – [to go back to Maggie’s vegetarian who eats meat example] is there nuance within vegetarianism?  Certainly.

Is it animal meat only?  What about organs, or fish, or mollusks, or crustaceans, or dairy, or eggs – or is it all animal products altogether?  Is it only about the eating, or is it also about using them too?  Or is it really about a protest against the industrialized rearing conditions of the modern food system?  Or is it about choosing to only eat plants?  I’ve known vegetarians who could go a whole day and not eat a single vegetable – what with soy burgers, breaded tofu nuggets, and pizza.

There’s variation among a community that is informed by a common impulse – i.e. something is wrong with our current way of relating to the Life that we eat.

Fundamentally, all that matters is if you experience the miraculous works of the Father or not:

Being of this-or-that religion, practicing this-or-that model of worship, conforming to this-or-that belief system – none of that gives any indication about whether a person has experienced Jesus or not.  And therefore doesn’t matter.  The only standard for determining that a person is a true believer in Christ is the presence of the miraculous works of the Father, or signs that follow them that believe [D&C 84:64-72], in their life.  Anything else is not a righteous judgment [John 7:24] – but is a judgment based on the outward appearance or the works of men.

Telling me you read the scriptures, participate in the rituals, are active in the church, etc. – tells me nothing about the experiences you’ve had with Jesus.  Those things are just the retelling or reenactment of someone else’s story.  It is all pointless and vain unless it is pursuant to you having the same experience — seeing eye-to-eye with the seers who have laid down those stories before you.  Their stories will not save you.  Reenacting events from their stories as a ritual will not generate Joy in you.  Such things are meant to motivate you to get on the same pathway, to receive a similar connection with God, and to see eye-to-eye with them [see, The role of angels in Nephite preaching and How to receive what you ask for].

I don’t want to hear anything about what system of stories a person believes in their brain to be “true”.  Whether those stories “happened” or not is completely irrelevant to me – because what matters is what “happens”, right now – in you.  I don’t care if you believe in the stories about Adam or Abraham or Moses or Lehi or Joseph Smith having real experiences with the Father – I care if you’ve had them.

The only thing that discerns a good thing from a bad thing is its relationship to the thing that Alma termed the ever-good seed [Alma 32:28]:

the Son of God
that he will come to redeem his people
and that he shall suffer
and die to atone for their sins
and that he shall rise again from the dead
which shall bring to pass the resurrection
that all men shall stand before him
to be judged at the last and judgment day
according to their works.

Anything that persuades you to believe in and plant this ever-good seed into your right-brain-heart is itself a good seed.  While anything that persuades you not to believe and plant this ever-good seed is not a good seed.

Nothing in the gospel is based on the merits and works of men.  Righteous judgment has nothing to do with having mainstream LDS beliefs.  All things are judged to be good or evil with respect to how they measure up to the ever-good seed and whether they point people towards, or away from, it [Moroni 7:13-19].

Everything in the gospel is based on the merits of Christ and whether we harden or soften our hearts in response to the experience of His love.

The presence of miraculous works should be our only concern:

What should characterize LDS and be our over-riding passion is the experience and the celebration of the stories of people who’ve experienced faith as a principle of power, instead of action [see, The seeds of the powers of godliness] – which are the examples of the miraculous works of the Father being manifested.

The scriptures are our collective stories of such events.  But we should be celebrating the experience [nothing more, nothing less] – and with an emphasis on the newest miraculous experiences.  Because a proper celebration of the spiritual works of God invites others to receive the same experiences for themselves – so there would be no need to hold on to the stories of a by-gone generation.  Every country, culture, and local group needs to have their own body of miraculous works of the Father among themselves to celebrate.

It is dangerous to celebrate non-miraculous works [the works of men] and call that “faith.” All it does is encourage drudgery, or the non-miraculous works of men.  There are plenty of people of all religions who sacrifice for their beliefs and religions, but who have no works of the Father in their lives.

I’ve met people who receive multiple visions or prophecies, who’ve spoken in unknown tongues on demand, and who’ve been ministered to by angels.  On the other hand, I’ve also met people who’ve never received a revelation in their entire life.  In either case, every one of those people professed to believe in Jesus and came from different churches and belief systems.  The only substantial difference between the two groups is that the former manifested the works of the Father – while the latter manifested the works of men.

Someone who has denied their Self, experienced the transcendent joy of the Supreme Being, and received Christ will be totally obsessed with Jesus.  And only the truly obsessed have faith – and only those with faith demonstrate the manifestations of the fruits of the Spirit in their life.

Being a “good Mormon” or Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan – or any “faithful” [add-Religion-here] only tells me whether a person adheres to the creeds of their respective belief system.  That says nothing about whether they have faith in Christ or not.

We should only be concerned with having faith in Christ and experiencing the miraculous works of the Father.  Unless one has communed with God, been ministered to by angels, seen visions, received prophecies and revelations, etc. – all incessant talk that professes belief in Christ is just mental masturbation, feeling good but not producing any fruit.

The all-important, saving faith in Jesus Christ that we should be obsessed with is centered in Jesus only: 

With sufficient faith, a believer can come to know the truth of all things [Moroni 10:5].  But faith in this-or-that true doctrine does not blossom into experiencing the miraculous works of the Father.  If faith is ever transferred from Christ to true things about Christ – then even though what’s spoken may be true, there is no faith there.

Mormons have much truth – but they have essentially transferred all faith to the truths, and thus none of it is on Jesus.

The vast majority of our conversations at church are centered on prophets and apostles, obedience to leaders and commandments, blessings of paying tithing, attending church and the temple, and every other conceivable topic that has nothing, whatsoever, to do with Jesus Christ’s suffering, death, resurrection and judgment upon all mankind.

In fact – a good test is to ask how much of our religious conversations are devoted to the relative, periphery matters and how much is devoted to the experience of God’s love.  How comfortable are we in talking about this-or-that issue of the day in light of Mormonism – and how comfortable are we talking about our spiritual contacts with Jesus Christ.  With the latter, I’ve found we stumble, are vague, express doubt, and likely just say nothing at all because most people have nothing to say.

Any church not based on the miraculous work of the Father may potentially be a true church, but will be a dead and blind church:

We may have true stories and properly authorized rituals – but they are not enlivened with the Spirit of God because none of them are experienced eye-to-eye as shared experiences.  Our standard for judgment is informed by outward appearances instead of by the light of righteous judgments informed by the fruits of the Spirit. [see, What does the phrase “only true and living church” mean?]

This has made the LDS successful in being exactly like the rest of Christianity.  There may be true doctrines, disciplines, and rituals – but such things have been made into absolutes and pedestalized as ends unto themselves – instead of being the means to an end – which is obtaining the experience of the miraculous works of the Father.

To convert a bona-fide revelatory experience with God into a prescribed system of creeds and approved practices dodges the real issue.  It’s easier to tell ourselves that the important thing is keeping certain rules and believing certain doctrines – instead of turning ourselves over to the transcendent idea that the fundamental nature of Reality [God] reaches into human history to covenant with humans and gather them into a family.

The basic purpose of what we call “the church” is to take unrelated believers in Christ and knit them together by covenant into a single body or family:

When people see a problem with their group worship dynamic – the temptation is always to get together with some like-minded and “do church” more scripturally.  However, this often will just create a slightly smaller, less-controlled replication of the same dynamic they were trying to get away from.

The problem lies in the fundamental way we feel towards God, towards the earth, and towards ourselves.  It is a model based on the underlying concept of separateness [see, Split-Brain Model of the Gospel: The Fall of Man]:

• God as the male-figure seated on a throne exerting control over nature,
• relating only to a certain in-group by virtue of their religious behavior towards Him,
• living as separate islands of skin-encapsulated centers of will that are plopped onto a earth of otherwise disorganized, inherently-flawed stuff.

The very ideas that are informing our relationship with the world and with other people has to change – the pattern or model of a hierarchy of religious rulers and approved ways of thinking is [itself] broken.

Putting different people in power can’t change a problem that exists because there are people in power.  Power must instead be pulled down [Alma 60:36].

You can’t have meetings with an instituted body of the like-minded become “more scriptural” – when the gospel is tribal in nature and meant to be experienced by a group of kin who naturally meets.

One can use religion to serve their Self or to serve God.  If you believe that only your collection of stories is the One, True Way of experiencing God – then you are using it to serve your Self.  This is the hardened or atrophied religare that creates feelings of superiority and maintains a sense of separation and conflict with others.

On the other hand, when in the service of God, a fluid religare is just the stories left behind by men and women who have had miraculous experiences with the governing Power of the universe that direct the community to receiving that experience for their selves, eye-to-eye.

Effectively, what we call the “Great Apostasy” represented a hedge that had been built up around an individual person and the experience of God.  The whole essence of a religious life was reduced to a commodity that needed to be brokered by a male-dominated priestly class.  And the “Restoration” was about taking scattered and disconnected people and gathering them – not by virtue of what they believe in the mind or confess with the mouth – but by covenant into a family.

But instead of having a passion for this tribal notion of a separate people-group bound by covenants, gathered out from their scattered state among the tribes of the earth – leadership patterned after the works of men care more about uniformity of thought than about making actual tribal connections between individuals.

Focusing on these outward appearances [which include prescribing behavioral standards and acceptable doctrines] is a manifestation of the current state of the church being guided by the doctrines and commandments of men.  While the gospel could be said to prescribe a certain approach to human problems and decisions – any ethical component is but a consequence of a person’s genuine relationship with God – not the basis for receiving one.

The mission of the church of God is to be the ministerial support for individual members becoming Kings and Priests, Queens and Priestesses in their own right – to teach them the word of God, explain and offer the covenants of the gospel, and then allow them to organize themselves accordingly as their local circumstances dictate – helping them as they go from an unrelated body of like-minded and knit them together into a bona-fide family.

As long as a part remains in the body – it is the body:

Most LDS speak about and relate to “the church” as this entity that exists outside of them or separate from their selves.  But there is no such thing as a group without the context of the individual people.  You cannot have a body without all the components that make it up all together.  A group is the sum-total of the individual units that make up that group.  The whole is the parts as they are arranged.

Thus, each person is the church.  You are the church – and so long as you remain in the church, your views are representative of what the church believes.  You are Mormonism — as it is lived out or as it is taken literally by you.  The only time that ceases to be true is when you cease to identify as a member of the church.

That’s why I would never advocate someone leaving the church.  The group is [hands-down] always better served if everyone who’s ever left over this-or-that doctrinal/history/etc. issue didn’t leave – but rather stayed and lived out their own story in the community.

By most estimates, there are at least as many, if not more, of them than there are of the toe-the-line, mainstream Mormons.  So, at this point, if they’d all stayed — they could potentially outnumber the rest, and we’d have an entirely different dynamic in the church.

You represent you – and that is representative of what it means to be Mormon – if it happens to be that you are Mormon.

Now, the Church [as it is organized currently as a corporate entity] is something altogether different.  None of us are their representative for what that group is or believes.  For that purpose, the Church has official Church spokesmen.  You can identify them by the corporate logo they wear on their name-tags.  If we all were official representatives of that corporate entity and what it says, then there would be no need to have a group of specially-called official representatives, now would there?

But when people tell me that they no longer find any value in the Mormon experience and want to leave – I get it.  I see in many respects how the church is laden with the doctrines and commandments of men, leader-worship, female repression, etc.  I truly empathize with people who feel disaffected with church because they’ve increasingly found the three-hour Sunday block [and all that comes with active participation] to be more of an obstacle, instead of a vehicle, for them experiencing the Lord.

I get why they don’t speak up to church leaders in an attempt to change things too.  There is no real platform for open and honest discussion among members without getting the:  “Well this is the way that the brethren have approved — so like it or leave it”-rhetoric.  I wouldn’t expect open and honest disclosure from people who feel put-out [even though I admit it would be better if they all did speak-up].

The environment provided by leaders at church leaves them with no voice and no room to have non-mainstream opinions [at least in some open and honest capacity] – so many don’t see how speaking-up matters.  They’ll just be told:

“Look here, if you do not want to subscribe to our form of worship of the Savior, then there are many other Churches to try out until one finds the one that provides that appropriate outlet or none may suffice.”

So they throw-up their hands and leave.  I get that.

Imagine a marriage relationship in which every time the wife brings up a certain issue she has with her husband, he gets defensive, he belittles her and yells, etc. — and nothing ever changes.

Now, the husband is doing that particular behavior one day and the wife has that look that women get when you know something’s wrong — she’s obviously bothered.  So he asks, “Honey, what’s wrong?”  And if you’re married, then you know her answer is, “Nothing.”

Now — it’s not nothing, it’s most definitely something.  Why does she say “nothing”?

• Because she’s a liar who doesn’t care about getting the marital issue resolved.
• Because of her experience with her husband, she knows that bringing the issue up will only result in a fight and nothing will be resolved.

Are their marital problems her fault because she won’t be forthcoming about what’s wrong when asked?  Or are they his fault because he has failed to provide an environment where his wife feels comfortable talking about her issues in emotional-safety?

The key for me is that the church doesn’t belong to such people.  It belongs to Jesus – and He says you have a place in it:

To make that distinction further – each member was baptized into the church of God, not the Church.  None of us are listed on the corporate charter of that agency, and are therefore not their agent.  The scriptures only describe us as agents “unto ourselves”.  As believers in Christ – we ought to also consider ourselves to be agents “unto Him” – and act accordingly.

But our fundamental allegiance is to Christ and to the word of God – thus there is very little concern for whether this-or-that aspect is considered contrary to “general Church-approved practices”, the “long-standing traditions”, etc.

The assumed state of things in the church is to trust no one until you know them well enough to open-up and share your story with them:

Now, I’ve acknowledged that the leaders do not provide a platform for open and honest discussion among members – and there’s no outlet for the disaffected to express their nuance of opinion or their concerns about certain issues.  As such, church leaders cannot reasonably expect open and honest disclosure from people who are feeling on the outs.

In fact, in my experience, leaders are often witch-hunters [taking the “judge in Israel” thing to the extreme], always looking for someone to judge as unfaithful, apostate, etc.  The only valid reason, in their minds, for “contrary” points-of-view or “unapproved” behavior is worthiness issues.  And so although the scriptural law is innocent until proven guilty – according to my experience, when leaders see dissension, they take a guilty until proven innocent stance.

Which is why I’ve taken Alma’s admonition to “trust no one…” [Mosiah 23:14] to be my marching orders and usually keep my mouth shut.  I’ve seen that those who implicitly trust the leadership [not living Alma’s admonition to “trust no one” unless you know beyond a reasonable doubt that they are men of God], will often say more than is expedient to say and quickly get into trouble.

I’ve been protected by a revelation I received some years ago that the word of the day for me is, “Shhh” — or that it is always best to be silent, to say nothing, to openly answer no questions to church leadership — sticking with “Yea” for yea and “Nay” for nay if I am ever asked.

But whether you choose to remain in the church and identify yourself as “Mormon” has nothing to do with what the approved practices and long-standing policies of the corporation that runs the church:

“Mormon” is a lot like the term “Christian” — it is more about what the person professes to believe.  It is not a term that can be brokered by a particular class of rulers “in charge” of the word.

For example, LDS insist that we are Christian just like everybody else, based on our professed belief in Christ.  Others would claim that our more nuanced understanding of Christ, the Godhead, etc. are beyond the leeway allowed for by orthodoxy.  But since we profess to believe in Christ – we generally call ourselves “Christian”.

Likewise, the Church has a hard time with professed Mormons who practice polygamy – thinking the term “Mormon” belongs to the corporation.  However, polygamist Mormons are Mormons.  The Community of Christ are Mormons.  Everyone has a professed belief in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith.  We may have more nuanced approaches to certain things [polygamy being the key example], but [like “Christian”] the term is general and correctly identifies all of us [in a general sense].

A person that hears me identify as “Mormon” starts viewing my actions and words as representative of the church.  This is why the Church – as a corporate entity – is big on the members considering themselves walking “advertisements” for the Corporation, carefully monitoring the public image that the members “sell”, etc.

But I am not their spokesperson.  I am not a broker for their religious product.  I am Me.

People do not exist as Platonic Ideas — pure representations of terms or concepts.  Being Me means that I represent the unique symphony that is the arrangement of my Life.  I can’t pour the entirety of Me into your brain all at once.  Each human being is a storytale that has to be shared in order to be known.

We come to know people as we interact with each other.  The “whole truth” doesn’t come by “telling” – but by coming to know the real You through experiencing.  It cannot be shown all at once – but people do come to see it.

So I’d say, “I’m Mormon” is generally not a bad start for me.  Granted, my family does understand certain things differently and holds a bit more of a nuanced opinion on things like what church authority means, what the role of the church with respect to our family is, the priesthood keys and common consent, marriage and family relations, etc.  But those views aren’t applicable to every relationship we have with every other church member — just like my entire set of views on things like politics, diet, marijuana, vaccination, homeschooling, etc. don’t need to be put all out on the table every time I meet someone new.

Should the particulars come up, I don’t hide or obscure them — but I don’t hand them out like business cards either.

We should treat our religious identification like we would any other interpersonal interaction – we start basic and progress towards the more specific/personal as [or if] the relationship goes that way.  To attempt to disclose the whole picture of the entirety of the specific nuances and peculiarities all at once at a first meeting or in casual interactions is both impractical and unhelpful.

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Previous Article by Justin:  Taking our Myths Literally

Taking our Myths Literally

Myths are our Stories:

“Myth” is usually contrasted to “true” or “fact”, as in – “Oh, that’s just a myth.”  However, the “mythos” were ancient man’s stories about gods – they were their experiences with the governing powers of human nature, the earth, and the universe.  The myths were only declared “false” when the Christian religion conquered the nations who told the stories – and decreed that their way of relating to the natural world [their gods] were “false”.

They weren’t true-or-false or factual-or-inaccurate – in the way that we currently use those words.  The myths were just a different way for humans to speak about truth and about facts.  They were a metaphorical or poetic way of expressing true and factual things about life.  Myths would not have persisted as an integral piece of human culture if they failed to accord with reality and didn’t accurately describe the world.

Those who formulated the myths were not attempting to lay down historically-sound, verifiable, and literally-true presentations of what actually took place in a physical sense.  They were how people conveyed true facts about human nature and the natural world.  The myths are the poetic story-language by which those who’d had actual experiences with the governing powers of nature and of the universe [God] brought that transcendent experience back to the community.

Myths were how the community explained to its new members how the world in its present form came to be, how a human being ought to relate to the powers of the world, and what is expected of members of the community.

However, while myths may admittedly be stories – we cannot say that they are not true, real, or literal.  What’s missed [when “myth” gets labeled as “not real”] is that the stories were never meant to convey “history” with all the scientific rigor we’ve developed centuries after the stories were first told.  They were meant to convey the story of how this or that person experienced God – in a language that was metaphorical, poetic, or image-based – to bring that experience back for the community at large.

True Stories and False Stories:

All the ancient language gods were the magic gods as well [Mercury, Odin, etc.] because language shapes our whole consciousness and how we put ideas together [how we tell stories] – and that’s magical.  Casting a spell is really nothing more than spelling – or changing reality through the manipulation of symbols, forms, and images.

All such “magic” is drawn from our imaginations – the right-brain-heart [the spring of living waters inside each of us] – which is patterned after the eternal right-brain-imagination of God, from which the universe has been created [by the will of His left-brain-mind].

However, the mind of God is immeasurably greater than our own – which means there isn’t anything that we can think of that He hasn’t already thought of.  So what we do is take things that He’s imagined, represented, and given purpose [creating it by bringing it from His infinite imagination into the sphere of the created universe] – and run these through our right-brains to imagine, create, and give purpose to them anew [in our own life].

Some of the representations of things in play here on earth have a counterpart that will endure beyond death [a true/real image] – and some representations are empty [vain] and carry only an image of reality [a false image].

And that’s the probation [the test] of mortality – to see, when presented with various images, forms, and representations of things – if we will live out the ones that are of an enduring nature [e.g., power by persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, and meekness] and shun the ones that carry only the image, but no reality [e.g., power by compulsory means, coercion, or force].

God desires to inspire people by sending the Holy Spirit into their right-brain-hearts with images for them to create with.  Satan’s desire is that people be inspired with images that lack any enduring reality behind them.  God desires the Holy Spirit to be what’s found in our right-brain-hearts, from which our left-brain-minds draw inspiration from to create things in our world with – instead of us using the doctrines of devils or the commandments of men to create with.

Discerning True Stories from False Stories:

It all starts with someone’s story.  A man or woman experiences a manifestation of God.  By the power of the Holy Ghost:  they have obtained faith unto repentance by having a broken heart and contrite spirit, have wallowed in the fear of being cast-off from God forever, have trembled under a full-on awareness of their own guilt – and what they’ve sown in tears, they’ve reaped in Joy.  Experiencing the complete redemption of their soul from hell and forgiveness of their sins.

This person is now free from the power and captivity of the devil, is free from the separate-Self consciousness that sin causes, has denied their Self and identified with Christ, and has experienced God as a continuous aspect of their own being.

Now this seer [person who has seen] comes back to his or her community with the desire that everyone else experience this same thing.  They no longer perceive separateness among others the way that a mind still ensnared in sin does.  So once free from sin, the seer now fears and trembles for others.  She suffers for the sins of others.  He desires for all others to have the same privilege to be born of God, free from sin.

But it’s an experience, or a happening – it’s like a dance or a song.  To only come back to the community with a “telling” wouldn’t help anyone else see eye-to-eye with them.  They need to be able to sing the Song – so that other people will hear it – and will sing It along with them.

I may be able to break a dance apart into its rhythm, steps, and movements around the floor – I may be able to describe a song in terms of its meter, key, rhythm, tempo, notes, scale, and harmony – but that’s just putting a grid onto something wiggly so it can be perceived and described.  It’s just a “telling”.

The only way to have someone really know the dance or the song – is to dance it or sing it.  Then they’ll know.

Adam knew Eve
and she conceived

[Moses 5:16]

The scriptural euphemism for husbands and wives coming together is “knowing” for this same reason.  Eternal life is to “know” God – because unless something is experienced [is known] – then the people will not see eye-to-eye, but will see instead through a glass, darkly.  They will only know about the experience in part, not fully [see 1 Cor. 13:12].

Musical notation [the myths, the story] has its place in telling people about a song – but one should not hand a person a sheet with musical notes on strings of lines when they really desire the Song.

This is what a false priest [not a seer] does.  A false priest simply re-tells the stories of a previous time.  He only administers in the images of an experience with God who was there before he came along — just putting on a show up on his stage every week.

A false priest is handed-down [by tradition] something that was originally experiential and relative — and because he has no first-hand relationship with this story, it get’s turned into something dogmatic and absolute.  He takes someone who was a preacher — and turns them into the preached.  Making a message out of a messenger by pedestalizing those who’ve had genuine experiences and who tried to tell others about it [so they could have it too].

This is why false priesthoods are obsessed with tracing the lines of authority:

Satan
we command you to depart

by what authority?

and

and it came to pass
that on one of those days
as he taught the people in the temple
and preached the gospel
the chief priests and the scribes
came upon him
with the elders
and spake unto him
saying

tell us, by what authority doest thou these things?
or who is he that gave thee this authority?

[Luke 20:1-2]

because their authority has no true basis in the reality of an actual experience – it’s based only on social convention and tradition – having the all the form but denying the reality.

On the other hand, the authority of a true and prophetic seer comes out of that person’s own experience.  He or she has been somewhere that I haven’t and comes to explain it to me.  Now, they may use ritual [right-brain gesture language] or use scripture [left-brain word-based language] to convey this inner experience in an outward form/image for me – but the key to discernment is that the true messenger speaks from his own experience and a false messenger speaks the stories of someone else.

I’ll Make Discernment Even Easier:

The scriptural standard is that if a person does not have the spirit of prophecy and revelation, then they “shall not teach” [D&C 42:14] — or in other words, they should keep silent.

So when anyone interprets the scriptures, presents a doctrine, or is in any other manner “teaching” — ask them:

• Are you a prophet?
• Do you have the spirit of prophecy and revelation?
• Are you a seer?
• Did you actually experience this manifestation for yourself?

If they say that it’s their own idea, their own guess, or they defer to some other authority, etc. — then stop listening.  You are free to just take it or leave it as you would if anyone else would have said something about any other subject. You can learn nothing extra-ordinary from such people.

If they say that they do have the spirit of prophecy and revelation or that they actually did experience a miraculous work, then listen closely to what they say — because now that means only one of two things:

• They are true prophets sent from God
• They are false prophets trying to deceive

A true prophet, when asked if they have the spirit of prophecy and revelation, will always answer in the affirmative.

A man giving his honest, but non-prophetic opinion [“inspired counsel”] will not claim to be a prophet or a seer – because he fears to speak a false prophecy and be called-out as an imposter.

However, a deceiver will also always say that he has the spirit of prophecy and revelation.

So once someone claims to be a prophet or a seer [comes out with a “Thus saith the Lord…”, for example], now the burden is on me, to compare what the word of God says to what the professed prophet has said and do as the Spirit indicates.  If he is declaring a miraculous work, then:

ye shall ask of the father
in the name of Jesus
and if he give not unto you that spirit
then you may know that it is not of god

[D&C 50:31]

Ritual is the Enactment of a Story:

The performance of rituals is an integral part of all religions.  It is through the reenactment of a shared story [a common myth] that the mind of the community is focused towards the same end.  It provides an element of shared experience that facilitates bonding between community members.  The performance of a ritual connects the participants to the specific morphic field that’s associated with that ritual and then each initiate can share the collective memory that is stored there.

The LDS temple endowment follows in this same tradition.

Joseph’s first “endowment” was the experience of seeing two heavenly personages face-to-face.  He went on to behold various ministering spirits, resurrected angels, Jesus Christ, etc. — all personal appearances, face-to-face.

After the Kirtland temple was dedicated and the ordinances there were administered, Joseph wrote:

The Saviour made his appearance to some, while angels ministered unto others, and it was a pentacost and enduement indeed, long to be remembered for the sound shall go forth from this place into all the world, and the occurrences of this day shall be handed down upon the pages of sacred history to all generations, as the day of Pentecost.

Seeing the Lord and ministering angels face-to-face is the foremost purpose of the temple ritual.  Such an eye-to-eye experience was key to what was formulated as “the endowment”.  It’s why temple-goers are taught the order of prayer and prepared in all things to receive further instructions at the veil.  It was all given with the assumption that a real experience would follow the image [or enactment] of an experience.

and inasmuch as my people build a house
unto me
in the name of the lord
and do not suffer any unclean thing to come into it
that it be not defiled
my glory shall rest upon it
yea
and my presence shall be there
for I will come into it
and all the pure in heart
that shall come into it
shall see god

[D&C 97:15-16]

and

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

[D&C 88:68]

Essentially — that was the endowment Joseph was trying to give the church of God [not special underwear and secret hand gestures] – but the same experience that was had by all the ancient prophets.  Bringing us eye-to-eye with them, connecting them to us by a common experience, a common morphic field.

That’s what all rituals do – establish a morphic field that anyone connects to when the ritual is done according to the same pattern.  That’s why the ordinances of the gospel are strictly described in terms of the manner and wording of the ritual.

Paul warned the Corinthian church that their failure to administer the ritual of the sacramental meal in the worthy/appropriate manner was the reason there were many sick and dying among them.  There is a healing effect associated with the sacrament ritual — but it must be reenacted according to the pattern given by the Lord in order for us to be connected to the proper morphic field.  The same is true for the other ordinances of the gospel and their respective effects as well.  [See, The Healing Gifts]

The reverse side of this is seen in the hidden symbols, catch-phrases, etc. that are put into movies, TV, pop music, advertising, bank notes, buildings, orchestrated world events, etc. – where satanic secret combinations are working to achieve the same end.  Just like there are wars over physical land here in the material world — the mental world likewise has its own battles for control over the common-space there.

The more people connect to a certain idea – myth, story, system, etc. – the more powerful it becomes.  Were enough people to connect to a single morphic field [were it to ever reach a sort of “critical mass”] it could end the world.  The historical “Zion” communities have done such a thing [Enoch, Melchizedek, Nephites, etc.].  The latter-day Zion will in fact bring a complete end to this world – a revelation sufficient enough to melt away our current systems, politics, economics, and ideas about the world – and usher in a new earth.

Having Images with no Reality:

I think that it’s common for LDS to take little instruction from the current temple ordinance.  It is my opinion that this is because we have reached the point where the meaning of the images have been lost long enough ago — that even the priesthood among us have no idea what to make of the thing and what it’s all about.

However, it is not the jurisdiction of the priestly-class to give form [or life] to the images of our stories.  Is it be reasonable to expect church leaders to initiate members of the community into the meaning of the images and display what it’s like when they’re brought to life — rather than just initiating them into the empty-images themselves alone?  Sure.  But that’s simply not the state of affairs we have right now, in a church of God informed by and operating under the doctrines and commandments of men.

All that means is that it’s on you [not them].  They administer the forms — but you must then go on to make that word flesh – you must bring the forms to life, give the image reality.  To just take the empty forms they administer and do nothing with them only perpetuates the whole problem.  Our calling is to take the images and create with them.

Bringing Them to Life:

Religion, myth, stories, ritual, etc. – it’s about the experience.  It all begins as an attempt to tell stories about a connection with God – of an experience of the transcendent level of being called Joy – the communion of a human being with The Supreme Being or Ultimate Doing.

In this form, it’s fluid – like poetry or metaphor.  Apostasy and false priesthoods come in as the story gets reduced to a creed, as the relative gets hardened into the absolute, as the poetry is taken as prose.  The reality behind the image, myth, or story is lost — and only thing that remains is the the empty shell what what’s left after meaning or purpose departs from something.

The religion itself, the actual stories, the stage show-like enactments of ritual – they are purely functionary.  When it has nothing to do with actually having the experience — if it becomes an empty-image, a form without life – then it’s as harmful as additions to processed food, pornography, or social media can be.

Religion is the religare – the connecting bonds of ligaments and tendons that knit us together.  When the ligaments remain fluid [the relative, right-brain, poetic form], then we relate to God as a continuous experience, as a state of Supreme Being.  We don’t prescribe ethical or moral codes – but act out of expediency and charity.

But when they atrophy [harden into the absolute, left-brain, creedal form] – instead of knitting us together, religion binds us down – God becomes the This-Thing that must be related to in That-Way, that you must now believe/do accordingly to get Him to respond to you.

Reading the scriptures, participating in the rituals, etc. – they are just the retelling or reenactment of someone else’s story.  It is in vain unless it is pursuant to you having the same experience – connecting to the same morphic field and seeing eye-to-eye with them.

We cannot look to another to give the ideas and forms of our religion life because that is our job.  The scriptures are just the stories of Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Lehi, Nephi, Abinadi, Jesus, Peter, Paul, Moroni, John, etc.  They are simply their stories about their experiences with God.

Their stories will not save you.  Reenacting events from their stories as rituals will not generate real Life or Joy in you.  Such things are meant to motivate you to get on the same pathway, to receive a similar connection with God, and to see eye-to-eye with them.

However, history has shown the Gentile church of God to be a hard-hearted and faithless bunch — content with having one person sit atop a hierarchal power-pyramid and habitually obey what he says.  They largely receive equal “experience quotient” from images and representations compared with the reality of what is being imaged and represented.  It’s why advertising works, it’s why industrial food is so widely consumed, it’s why people enjoy pornography so much, it’s why social-media is so popular.  But that’s receiving the image with no reality behind it.

When Life and Joy are about the happening — about human beings being about the same thing as the Supreme Being.

Next Article by Justin: … and I’m a Mormon

Previous Article by Justin:  Going from Concrete to Flowers

The Keys to Prophecy XI: Prophecy and the Restored Gospel

781 words

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005

The Keys to Prophecy XI:
Prophecy and the Restored Gospel

This series has identified several keys to prophecy in the restored gospel.

When we let our scriptures speak for themselves, without imposing our own ‘modern,’ ‘scientific’ preconceptions upon them, an entirely different picture of the past emerges than the one we’ve been taught.

It was in Earth’s ancient heavens-the Creator’s most spectacular canvas-that all ancient imagery originated.  It is there we must look for the source of all the symbols used by the ancients to depict their gods.

Thus we see that the imagery of the scriptures as well is reflected in the religious, astral icons of the past.  The symbolic icons give meaning to the scriptural imagery, and the scriptural imagery gives meaning to the symbolic icons, as is the case with the Egyptian facsimiles and the Book of Abraham.  They complement and illuminate one another.

With that revised picture, ancient texts become accurate, eyewitness records of marvelous astronomical manifestations that we can only remotely comprehend.  The images carved on the walls of ancient tombs, temples and monuments come alive with meaning.

With this improved perspective, explanations of prophecy, offered by Joseph Smith and all the prophets, turn from metaphorical niceties to accurate, detailed descriptions.

The only way that planets or stars could so profoundly influence peoples of the ancient world-an influence sufficiently strong to give rise to the religious traditions and symbolism of their cultures-is if those orbs were manifestly closer than they are today.  Unlike the mere pinpoints of light we see in our night sky, they must have stood in overwhelming proximity, dominating the ancient sky watchers’ view, giving rise to the primary symbolic themes of those past cultures.

If we allow the traditions, symbols and rituals of the past to speak for themselves, that is the message they convey.

Thus we see that the stories from ancient cultures the world over of astral gods and goddesses who performed marvelous feats and engaged in heaven-spanning battle may have been based in the appearance and movements of these same planets in a near-Earth environment-a concept flatly denied by modern science and rejected by orthodox Christianity, yet supported by Joseph Smith’s observations.

The reason all these images are an enigma to us can be found in relatively recent history when our culture swerved away from their use and adopted a ‘rational’ view of ancient history, as is taught in educational institutions everywhere in the world today.  Cultural, religious traditions that once taught of recent, dramatic changes in the heavens-accounts held sacred by our ancestors-became myths and fairy tales.

We divorced ourselves from our cultural roots.  We cut ourselves off from the message the ancients struggled to convey, the one they assumed would be universally understood: They had seen “marvelous wonders” in the heavens.

The odd thing is that we don’t understand that.  In fact, we believe just the opposite: the heavens have always appeared as they do now.  That flawed, myopic belief prevents us from seeing what the ancients sought mightily to convey.

Also, this is why the imagery of prophecy and mythology are remarkably similar.  They derive from the same source: our early cultural and religious tradition from which we divorced ourselves in the Age of Enlightenment.  It is for this reason that the Bible was rejected by the emerging cult of science and scholasticism.  We really threw the baby out with the bath water!

The oddity in all this is that the guardians of religious traditions fell victims to the same thinking.  They rejected that same imagery, saying it had nothing to do with the proper practice of Christianity.  That left us without the touchstone we need to interpret the imagery of prophecy throughout the scriptures, until Joseph Smith restored that knowledge.

To unravel the mystery that is prophecy, you must first learn the symbolism of antiquity and the cosmological images from which it sprang – prodigious, heaven-spanning displays of awe-inspiring plasma phenomena generated in a neighboring conjunction of planets that produced a monumental sound and light show seen the world over.  This dramatic celestial phantasmagoria dominated Earth’s skies in the earliest epoch of history and indelibly impressed itself on the mind and spirit of all early cultures.

According to Philo Dibble, Joseph Smith’s bodyguard, this is the Prophet’s illustration of the planetary arrangement that existed in Earth’s ancient heavens.  This “stacked” arrangement in common, polar alignment caused them to appear stationary in the heavens.  The Prophet even included the apparent “connections” between planets caused by the plasma phenomenon, as depicted in the adjoining artist’s conception.

These astral events gave rise to the cryptic icons that adorn the walls of ancient monuments, temples and tombs — virtual snapshots, in many cases, of things seen in those ancient skies.  Appropriately, they also decorate modern temples-a testament in stone to the restoration of truth.

The metaphorical language of the prophets also arose from those events.  The rhetorical counterparts of those enigmatic symbols fill the revelations of both ancient and modern prophets.  They are the keys to most scriptural symbolism.

Knowing this makes prophecy plain and easy to understand, as Joseph Smith said.  It also touches on every point of doctrine in the restored gospel revealed through him in these latter days.

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The Keys to Prophecy X: What Joseph Taught

784 words

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005

 The Keys to Prophecy X:

What Joseph Taught

Certainly, some will say that discussions of ancient myths, gods, goddesses and pagan beliefs have little to do with the restored gospel.  To others, perhaps all this analysis of prophetic symbols, planets, stars, beasts and dragons seems a bit removed from core gospel principles.

Most Saints pay little heed to such things in their gospel study, seeing it as irrelevant and therefore largely valueless.

After all, if reading the scriptures and praying are sufficient to understand the gospel, why not leave the study of planets and stars to the astronomers and analysis of pagan gods and goddesses to the mythologists?

The reply to such dismissive notions is the evidence that Joseph Smith taught these things.

It was Joseph who first wrote and spoke of planets and stars in connection with both ancient and prophetic events.  It was Joseph who placed the Egyptian documents alongside modern revelation and then included explanations.  It was Joseph who gave the pattern for those icons collocated on modern temple walls-not as mere décor, but as teaching tools.

Isn’t that incentive enough to look into these keys?  Indeed, the fact that Joseph taught these things makes it incumbent upon every Latter-day Saint to learn all they can about them.

If he deemed them important enough to reveal, we ignore them at our own peril.

These keys bear directly upon otherwise arcane aspects of the restored gospel, successfully explaining what has heretofore remained a mystery to most Saints-things such as temple symbols, the Pearl of Great Price facsimiles and a uniform system for interpreting prophecy.

Who would have thought that a systematic approach to the symbolism of prophecy would also explain such divergent elements as temple icons and Egyptian facsimiles?

A few examples that amplify one theme should suffice to convince us.

We have already seen Joseph’s “planet, comet” description of the “grand sign” of the last days and the second coming, recorded in his own journal, History of the Church.  That puts cosmic phenomena squarely under the prophecy heading.

In keeping with Joseph’s statement, in a 1951 General Conference talk, Elder LeGrand Richards reinforced the concept, saying that the latter-day signs will be caused by “some great phenomenon in the heavens, (a) misplacement of planets ….”

An interview with Homer M. Brown, a past Patriarch of the Granite, Utah, Stake, father of Elder Hugh B. Brown and grandson of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Brown, who gave Joseph Smith sanctuary from a mob in Nauvoo one evening, more fully explains the role of this misplaced planet and its effect on our Earth.

According to Patriarch Brown, these are Joseph’s words to his grandparents regarding a future encounter between a rogue planet and our Earth.  “Now, let me ask you what would cause the everlasting hills to tremble with more violence than the coming together of the two planets?

“Now, scientists will tell you that it is not scientific, that two planets coming together would be disastrous to both.  But, when two planets or other objects are traveling in the same direction and one of them with a little greater velocity than the other, it would not be disastrous because the one traveling faster would overtake the other.”

Corroboration comes from the journal of another early Saint, Samuel Hollister Rogers.  He paraphrases the prophet thusly:  “Not that the planets will come squarely against each other, in such case both planets would be broken to pieces.  But in their rolling motion they will come together … which will cause the earth to reel to and fro.”

Further confirmation is found in the Charles Walker journal, wherein he recounts learning from Eliza R. Snow that Joseph had taught her “the coming together of these two bodies or orbs would cause a shock and make the ‘Earth reel to and fro like a drunken man.'” 

The prophet obviously elaborated on this theme on many occasions, as we learn from yet another journal.

Wandle Mace described the same planetary conjunction scenario, adding this anecdote from the prophet:  “Some of you brethren have been coming up the river on a steamboat, and while seated at the table, the steamboat (ran) against a snag which upset the table and scattered the dishes.  So it will be (when these planets come together).  It will make the earth reel to and fro like a drunken man.”

Without the keys presented in this series, such remarkably consistent statements, attributed to Joseph Smith by early church members, have been discounted as extravagant and speculative by LDS scholars and all but forgotten in recent years by church members.  Yet, when seen as corroborative, they argue eloquently for Joseph’s view of the role that a vagabond planet will play in our future.

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