Author: Denver

It’s YOUR eternal salvation

When it comes to the subject of one’s eternal salvation, I can’t understand why someone would simply trust others and leave it to them to tell them what is necessary. I should think everyone would study this matter night and day, and reach their own conclusion about what is important, what is not, what will save, and what is simply foolishness.

Joseph said he advised all to go on and search deeper and deeper into the mysteries of God. Alma said about the same thing in Alma 12: 9-11.

When it comes to sacred knowledge, the absence of curiosity and relentless inquiry is evidence of apathy and indifference. Joseph posed the question in the Lectures on Faith of how we can hope to inherit the same reward as the ancients without following the same path as they did. Great question, that. Brings to mind Abraham’s description of his own relentless search to find God in Abraham 1: 2. I think that is the formula. As is also D&C 93: 1.

Judgment

Since the Lord reserves to Himself alone the final judgment (3 Ne. 27: 27) I think we overstep our privileges when we presume our judgment of others is our right.  In fact, the irony of judging while holding priesthood office is that the one judging may be the one really on trial.  They hold office, are given “keys” and are upheld by other saints to see whether they will execute the assignment in conformity with D&C 121, using gentleness, meekness, persuasion, kindness and love unfeigned.  If they don’t, they fail the test, and in the process establish the criteria and means by which they will be judged.

Ironically, the one judging is the one really on trial, and the one being judged will be a witness against (or for) them.

Things are different than we think.  And that is as it should be.  Otherwise the hearts of men could not be put on display here in this life, and the proving that this estate was designed to accomplish would fail.

We should be afraid to hold office over others.  We should have pity or compassion for those who are called to these positions.  Instead, we envy those who hold offices in the church. Nephi counseled against this.  (2 Ne. 26: 21.) 

Now is the great day of deception when darkness covers so much of the social order that madness reigns.  If you just turned the light on and saw our day as clearly as Nephi did you’d marvel at the abundant foolishness, vanity and errors we entertain.  To do that you only need to read what Nephi wrote and realize he’s talking to and about US; not those who will never read the book.

We’re being tested.  More importantly, I’m being tested.  So I need to “work out my salvation with fear and trembling before the Lord” just as Paul suggested.  (Philip. 2: 12.)

Do we have a guarantee?

I’ve been thinking about the “guarantee” we have as Latter-day Saints that God takes peculiar delight in us.  We’re His “chosen” and He looks down from heaven and grins broadly when He considers our enlightened advantage over our fellowman.  I’m not sure I can reconcile that happy view of our circumstances with His frank assessment of us in D&C 112: 23-26.

I’m thinking that the first order of the day for me is repentance.

Patriarch

When I first joined the church we sustained the Patriarch of the Church, along with the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve as a “Prophet, Seer and Revelator.”  I would expect that at some point Patriarch Smith will be succeeded by his oldest, direct, descendant, unless there is still a living sibling of his upon whom the office would devolve (which I doubt).
 
When the office was established, it formed an independent line of priesthood authority. This line was not be dependent upon selection by temporary office holders drawn from many family lines.  Instead the Smith family, through whom the church was restored, would hold this hereditary office forever.  It will be interesting to see how this office is handled in the future.

Seriously

There’s an article which estimates that 16% of the population (teens to 49 yrs.) of the United States has genital herpes.  You can read it here:http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0923528620100309

 
Now there’s an advertisement for the law of chastity….
or anti-itch Gold Bond…
or a wire hair brush to scratch with….
 
The woman/man has not been born who is worth forfeiting what is lost by breaking covenants with the Lord.

Powerful doctrines

I’ve been reading Alma’s teachings on priesthood in Alma 13.  There are some startling things in there.  We underestimate the depth of doctrine preserved in the Book of Mormon.  Pre-earth life is unmistakably taught there. 
 
Ordination to the high priesthood reckons from before the foundation of the earth.  Power in that priesthood is derived from heaven (as D&C 121 teaches). 

These powerful doctrines are not even imagined by other faiths or traditions.  Among us it is hardly understood, and we possess the scriptures that teach it.

Patriarch Smith

The Patriarch of the Church is Eldred G. Smith, now aged 103 years.  His office used to ordain the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints using the hereditary priesthood line running back to Father Smith, Joseph and Hyrum.  
Eldred G. Smith was made Emeritus in 1979, but continues to have an office in the Church Office Building.

a little leaven

Sometimes it is the thinnest of threads which keeps a people from judgment.  A “little leaven” or a “little salt” can save a whole lump.  The want of “five righteous” has and can destroy a whole city.  When you consider so thin a thread as that, you must surely realize there are no private sins.  Each life has cosmic meaning.

Ordinances

Oddly, ordinances were intended to communicate an inner message of redemption and holiness.  Instead, they get looked upon as credentials.  They aren’t.  Possession of ordinances without inner holiness is meaningless.  On the other hand, D&C 137 shows that possession of inner holiness, while lacking the ordinances, will not be an impediment.  (We can send anyone with a card to the temple to take care of the ordinances.  But how infrequent it is that we produce a redeemed and acceptable soul to our God and Father.)

All things bear tesimony

In reflecting back on John Pratt’s recent article on Venus and its tie to the Lord’s life, I have concluded that the phrase “under the earth” as used in Moses 6: 63 is referring to the cycles of the “wandering stars” or planets.  It does not refer to the subterranean composition of the earth’s mantle.
 
Venus disappears on the horizon, taking it “under the earth.”  Then it reappears again, symbolizing the resurrection of the Lord.  Venus being the great symbol of Christ, as John Pratt has shown.
 
As Val Brinkerhoff has also shown in his The Day Star – Reading Sacred Architecture volumes, the orbit of Venus tracks a pentagram in the sky over it’s eight year cycle. 
 
Toyotas and light beer are of more interest to us than the procession of the equinoxes through the zodiac.  All things do bear testimony of God.  But we prefer the billboards on the side of the highway. 

Equinox

The Vernal Equinox is Saturday, March 20th.  It is that moment that arrives every year where everything is in balance, light and dark are balanced and nature everywhere from pole to pole is showered equally with the light and life of heaven.  It occurs twice a year, and not again until the Autumnal Equinox in the Fall.
 
The First Vision aligned with the Spring, the date of which is not recorded.  However, as Michael Quinn noted in his work (using borrowed research), the Smith family in general and Joseph in particular, would have associated power with the event.  It is not unlikely that the First Vision occurred on the Vernal Equinox, just as Moroni’s visits always coincided with the Autumnal Equinox.
 
For our day, the Autumnal Equinox is the more significant.  The Vernal is associated with life, birth, beginnings, restoration and newness.  The Autumnal is associated with death, closing, judgment and endings.  We live on the cusp of the end times.  Though there remain a great many things to be done, our era is the time when history is about to close out.

Observing the Vernal, Autumnal and Solstices was something done from ancient times, in ceremony and in ritual.  Whole cities were built aligned to the cardinal directions of the compass and the lights of heaven.  The lights of heaven were given to us first as “signs” and secondly as “seasons.” 


Don’t let them pass by unnoticed.  Otherwise you note less than even the plants and the animals whose life cycles and behavior acknowledge the passing of such events.

Raising the Bar

The name of the policy which eliminates a large population of desirous young men from serving a mission was really unfortunate.  “Raising The Bar” implies that these young men do not measure up.
Repentant young men who have been involved with serious sexual transgressions during their teens are by and large denied the opportunity to serve.  So, also, are young men with medical conditions which require significant treatment or medications. 
As a result of this program, there have been tens of thousands of young men who have not served.  The missionary force dropped from the high 60,000’s to the low 50,000’s and has remained there.  Those who have been excluded who wanted to serve have quite often felt judged and alienated as a result.  Many have either left activity or left the church altogether.  They form a body numbering now in excess of 100,000, and as they marry, have children, and raise their posterity outside the church they will eventually number in the millions.

Calling this  program “Raising The Bar” has essentially precluded a change.  You can’t “Lower The Bar” without seeming foolish, or to invite ‘ner do well’s. 

I’ve seen what this program has done to young men who wanted to serve, and who would have been allowed to serve before the program was announced.  I’ve tried to overcome their sense of rejection by the church, and have succeeded in only one case.  The others have essentially all told me that the church had rejected them and therefore they intended to stay away.