Dear Reader,


A Latter-day Saint who believes that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its leaders are authorized of God doesn’t necessarily accept whatever the church puts forth as “gospel.” On the contrary, anyone who wants a better church tomorrow really ought to speak up today. We aren’t potted plants. Let's face it: Theological malarkey will continue to thrive in the church if members say “amen” to it all.

That is the main reason this site exists.

It also exists because I want to encourage wavering Latter-day Saints not to leave the Lord's restored church merely because of its flaws and the errors of its leaders.

Each article is listed below with a title, short synopsis and a link. They were written by Steve Warren (bio below).

Keep the faith.

Steve Warren
West Valley City, Utah

“God is actually trying to create a much more profound relationship with us. We can only do that if we are actually wrestling with issues at hand.”
--Fiona Givens

Christ moves closer to us as we move from dogma toward truth.

Steve Warren was raised in Heppner, Oregon, and has lived in Utah for 46 years. He attended Ricks College for two years, served a mission to Colombia and Venezuela, and graduated from BYU in 1973 with a degree in communications. He and his wife, JaNiece, have two sons and a daughter. He wrote and published Drat! Mythed Again, Second Thoughts on Utah in 1986 and was a copy editor at the Deseret News from 1988-2008. He wrote and printed 100 copies of a novel, Beyond the Finish Line, but has not found a real publisher in spite of good reviews.
Knowing, believing, seeing Insights into our borderline dysfunctional LDS relationship with the word “know.”

Pathway to heaven The Scriptures show one sure way to return to God’s presence: possess a heart that pleases him.

Obedience gone awry Strictly following the prophet is an excellent idea—at least as long as he’s right.

Falling short, staying put Living prophets constantly err, but that’s not a good reason to leave the Lord’s church.

What in the world? Certain strange features of the Book of Mormon add to its credibility.

Some kind of miracle Fiction. An invitation to speak in sacrament meeting begins a Utah couple’s wild ride.

The cross = victory The cross is a worthy, positive symbol because it reminds us that it is the dying Christ who saves us.

Pilate tried Jewish religious leaders sought to kill Jesus; Pontius Pilate sought to set him free, so let’s give the man a break.

Father, Father, Father Why do we repeat the name of Deity so often in prayers these days?

Witnesses Multiple witnesses provide a compelling reason for anyone to ponder the claims of Mormonism.

Who is God? The Book of Mormon and other scriptures clearly teach that Jesus Christ is God and that Heavenly Father is God the Father.

In the beginning If we didn't allow speculation and guesswork in lessons on the Creation and Adam and Eve, classes would be really short.

Short takes Brief quotes, comments and reflections on a variety of gospel topics.
A few heresies... that would make for a more interesting sacrament meeting.
Oopsy-daisy 40 foul-ups by top LDS authorities.
Appreciating Christ
It's a miracle
The certainty of life after death
Farewell to temple ordinances



Thursday, March 16, 2017

Oopsy-daisy



As I have noted elsewhere on this site, I believe that prophets, seers and revelators are authorized of God and deserve our prayers and support.  When it comes to praying for our leaders, one prayer worth offering is that their decisions not be unduly or incorrectly bound up in the chains of incorrect traditionschains that tend grow a bit tighter on a person the older he gets.

As I have also noted, prophet leaders aren't infallible and don't claim to bealthough claims made in their behalf often tiptoe along the borders of infallibility.  The prophet-related errors listed below underscore that we should prayerfully consider whether to follow their counsel, then do what we believe is right. 

A couple of dozen of the more significant foul-ups are listed under the heading Oopsy.  They are followed by an Oops list that contains another 20 or so items that may be less serious but that are also either mistakes, highly questionable and/or contrary to what is widely believed in the church today.  (Naturally, just because something is not widely believed doesn't automatically make it false.)

Oopsy 
 
In the mid-1830s, Joseph Smith predicted a bright economic future for Kirtland, Ohio, and promised members that if they continued to build up and invest in Kirtland, they should be rich. Instead, the panic of 1837 devastated the area, the church's undercapitalized quasi-banking enterprise collapsed and many who lost money understandably viewed Joseph as a fallen prophet.

—Based on the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, it appears that Joseph Smith and the church believed God the Father was a personage of spirit.  It reads: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power, possessing all perfection and fullness. The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man . . .  (A few years later, Joseph Smith stated that the Father has a physical body.)

In an April 1843 conference, Joseph Smith said, There are those of the rising generation who shall not taste death till Christ comes.” 

—In 1875, Wilford Woodruff said, I believe there are many children now living in the mountains of Israel (Utah) who will never taste death; that is, they will dwell on the earth at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  

Before the 1890 Manifesto revoking plural marriage, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff and Lorenzo Snow, all of whom served as church president, stated that God would never revoke the law of plural marriage.  Brigham Young observed that “the only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.”

Many LDS leaders taught in the early decades of the church that the earth was created 6,000 to 7,000 years ago and that there was no death on the planet until after Adam and Eve partook of the fruit.  Doctrine and Covenants 77:6 puts the temporal existence of the earth at 7,000 years.  Even our current Bible Dictionary states: Latter-day revelation teaches that there was no death on the earth for any forms of life before the fall of Adam.” (In other words, our temple films/illustrations would better reflect latter-day revelationand would be more excitingif they showed dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.  And if there was no death for any forms of life before the Fall, we are left to wonder whether creatures in the Garden were prohibited from eating fruits and vegetables.)  

We now accept that the 126-year prohibition of black males holding the priesthood was wrong from day one.  But in 1947, the First Presidency stated: From the days of the Prophet Joseph even until now, it has been the doctrine of the Church, never questioned by any of the Church leaders, that the negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel. (Italics added.  Note:  It is very doubtful that Joseph Smith supported a priesthood ban on blacks.  The prohibition most likely began in 1852 with Brigham Young as church president.)  In addition to preventing males from holding the priesthood, the doctrine kept black families from participating in temple ordinances that the church views as necessary for exaltation. The Church repeatedly called the prohibition a revelation from God.  (See, for example, the Dec. 15, 1969, statement by the First Presidency.)

Brigham Young declared that if whites marry blacks, the penalty under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.  (He likely was speaking of spiritual death rather than physical death, because there are no reports of brides or grooms dropping dead after saying I do” nor of whack-job, 2nd Amendment-loving Utahns gunning them down.)  Until the mid-20th Century, subsequent church presidents agreed that interracial marriage was forbidden by God.  Some called it a doctrine. Church leaders also supported racial segregation in public places including redlining of real estate and a policy that required blacks to ride freight elevators in the Hotel Utah.

—In 1979, the First Presidency declared, The Lord will never allow the president of the church to teach us false doctrine.” (Gospel Principles, p. 46. This statement came just a year after a revelation that, in effect, asserted that many presidents of the church had taught false doctrine related to blacks and the priesthood.)  

On May 6, 1843, Joseph Smith said: I prophecy in the name of the Lord God of Israel, unless the United States redress the wrongs committed upon the Saints in the state of Missouri and punish the crimes committed by her officers that in a few years the government will be utterly overthrown and wasted, and there will not be so much as a potsherd left for their wickedness . . .  (The U.S. government did not redress the wrongs, did not punish Missouri officials and was not utterly overthrown in a few years.)

Brigham Young stated that God revealed to me that Adam and God the Father were the same person.  He taught Adam-God on multiple occasions.

Elder Orson Pratt said, “it will be seen that the great Messiah who was the founder of the Christian religion was a polygamist . . . the Messiah chose . . . by marrying many honorable wives himself, to show to all future generations that he approbated the plurality of wives . . . ”

In 1862, perhaps frustrated at the slow pace of construction on the Salt Lake Temple, Brigham Young said: There will not be any temple finished until the one is finished in Jackson County, Missouri, pointed out by Joseph Smith.

On Nov, 7, 1900, President Lorenzo Snow said, There are many people now under the sound of my voice, probably a majority, who will go back to Jackson County and assist in building the temple.”  (As of 2018, the  church has no temple in Jackson County, but the Kansas City Missouri Temple in nearby Clay County was dedicated in 2012.  It is the church's 137th temple.  The Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized LDS Church, dedicated a temple in 1994 in Independence, Jackson County.)

—Oliver B. Huntington recorded in his journal that as far back as 1837, I know that he [Joseph Smith] said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we dothat they live generally to the age of 1,000 years. The Journal of Discourses records that Brigham Young believed the sun was also inhabited: Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain.

Brigham Young, Joseph Fielding Smith, Elder Bruce R. McConkie and others taught that Mary became pregnant with Jesus as a result of sexual relations with God the Father.  (Begotten means begotten; and Son means son. Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers, wrote McConkie.)

—Joseph Smith and others traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1836 after he reported receiving a revelation that large amounts of money would become available there. And it shall come to pass in due time that I shall give the city unto your hands, that you shall have power over it . . . and its wealth pertaining to gold and silver shall be yours. (D&C 111:4)  When no money was forthcoming, they returned to Kirtland, where the church soon experienced what some view as the worst monetary crisis in its history. 

In 1838, Elder Parley P. Pratt said, I will state as a prophecy, that there will not be an unbelieving Gentile upon this continent 50 years hence; and if they are not greatly scourged, and in a great measure overthrown, within five or ten years from this date, then the Book of Mormon will have proved itself false.

President David O. McKay called the Roman Catholic Church one of the two great anti-Christs in the world. Communism was the other.  (David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, p. 120.) Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote in Mormon Doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church was the great and abominable church.” Today's Latter-day Saints use neither great nor abominable in describing the Catholic Church, although false is acceptable. 

At least three church presidents have said it would be better for females to be killed by an attacker rather than to be raped by him.

—Wickedness. A crime. An evil practice worthy of punishment.  Until the 1980s, these terms were used by church presidents to describe birth control and limiting family size.  In 1998, however, the Church Handbook stated, The decision as to how many children to have and when to have them is  extremely intimate and private and should be left between the couple and the Lord.  Prophets have reversed or revised their position on other women's issues such as women in the workplace, dress standards and certain limits on female participation in church meetings. For example, women didn't offer a prayer in General Conference until 2013.

—Many top authorities, including Presidents Wilford Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith, knowingly made false statements (sometimes under oath) relating to the continued practice of plural marriage after the 1890 Manifesto. (See Plural Marriages after the 1890 Manifesto, by D. Michael Quinn.)

Oops

Joseph Smith and subsequent prophets believed that all American Indians were Lamanites.  However, the introduction to the Book of Mormon was revised in 2007 to say that the Lamanites are among the ancestors of the American Indians.  In the Doctrine and Covenants, American Indians are still referred to as Lamanites. 

—Today's church does not believe Brigham Young's statement that God the Father is a developing being and is still progressing in knowledge and wisdom.

Elder Orson Hyde taught that Jesus was the bridegroom in the marriage of Cana and that his wife later bore him natural children.”  (In ancient Israel, couples married young.  If Hyde is right and Jesus did indeed have children, it is likely those children were entering their teen years during his ministry.  This may partly explain why the Lord spent long periods of time away from home and was known to be a winebibber.) 

President Lorenzo Snow's teaching, As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be,” has fallen on hard times and today is often greeted with roughly the same enthusiasm as poor relatives who show up unannounced at the front door. (The lack of enthusiasm may be related to scriptures saying that God is unchanging.)
Similarly, Joseph Smith taught that God the Father is an exalted man who once dwelled on a planet as we do now. 

—The church allowed multiple members to drink from the same large cup in sacrament meetings. When health problems arose, the practice was discontinued.

President Heber J. Grant and other leaders supported Prohibition in 1919, opposed Repeal of Prohibition in 1933, and opposed Social Security and other New Deal programs.

While European nations and Jews were under assault by Nazi Germany, the First Presidency supported isolationism as late as 1941.  (When Utah native Marriner S. Eccles, chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve, received a copy in early 1942 of a 1941 First Presidency letter supporting isolationism, his response to the sender  (another government official) about the letter was that I found it every bit as unenlightened as I had expected.)

President Anthony R. Ivins of the First Presidency said that the lost Ten Tribes were in the British Isles, where we have always known them to be.

—Authorities have taught that children who die in infancy will be reared to adulthood in the celestial kingdom. (This teaching is greatly complicated by the fact that the church also teaches that most earthly parents are not bound for celestial glory and by the fact that some worthy parents do not die until 90 years or more after their child died, leaving us to wonder if the child remained a child for all those decades.)

President David O. McKay told a 1961 general conference audience that the church was grieved and shocked that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow federal and state governments to make belief in God a requirement for all officeholders. He and others favored requiring prayer in public schools.

Church leaders have called homosexuality a crime, a mental illness and learned behavior.  They have approved the use at BYU of weird aversion-therapy techniques to cure gays of their gayness.

Church leaders have supported very strange Utah liquor laws and later opposed (or declined to support) the same laws.

President Harold B. Lee, President Spencer W. Kimball, President Gordon B. Hinckley, Elder James E. Talmage and, in 2014, Elder David A. Bednar are among those who have cited modern revelation in declaring that Jesus was born on April 6.  Their assertions were based on a single verse of scripture, D&C 20:1, which said that the church's April 6, 1830, organization occurred one thousand, eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the  flesh.  However, the Joseph Smith Papers Project has recently shown that this verse was not revealed to Joseph Smith as part of Section 20 but was added by scribe John Whitmer merely to preserve the date of the church's organization. Whitmer used similar language elsewhere for dates other than April 6.  Moreover, even if Jesus had been born on April 6, the date in the manger would have been March 27 as 10 days were added to the Julian calendar centuries later by Pope Gregory.

Elder Joseph Fielding Smith predicted in 1958 that it is doubtful that man will ever be permitted to make any instrument or ship to travel through space and visit the moon or any distant planet. . . . All this talk about space travel and the visiting of other worlds brings to mind vividly an attempt long ago made by foolish men who tried to build to heaven.

First Presidency declaration of Jan. 5, 1982, described oral sex as “an unholy and impure practice.” Subsequently, the church stated it is up to couples to determine for themselves which sexual practices to engage in and is no one else's business.

In conference, Elder Gordon B. Hinckley said that it is a negative thing to be reminded of the dying Christ. He observed that Latter-day Saints do not use the cross as a symbol of our faith because  “for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the living Christ.”  However, the sacrament hymns and the Scriptures repeatedly remind us that the death and suffering of Christ achieved victory over death and opened the doors of heaven to us.  See The cross = victory on this site.

In general conference, President Hinckley supported the 2003 Iraq War: “Those of us who are American citizens stand solidly with the president of our nation.”

—Church leaders supported three anti-gay marriage laws that likely contributed to the eventual legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states.  In 1996, LDS leaders backed the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was ruled unconstitutional in 2013.  In December 2013, Judge Robert J. Shelby ruled that Utah's Amendment 3 outlawing same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.  Two years after Shelby's ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriages legal throughout the nation in 2015. The court's ruling cited California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage and had been strongly supported by the church.  It can be argued that the passage of DOMA, Amendment 3 and Proposition 8 all contributed to the momentum to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states that occurred with the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling. With Republicans in 2018 in control of the White House and Congress and with two right-wing justices joining the Supreme Court since the election of President Donald Trump, same-sex marriage might still be illegal in many states had the court not acted in 2015. (Also, in 2015 church leaders announced an apparent revelation that children living with gay parents could not be baptized, but this action was reversed in 2019.)

—Many of today's church members likely disagree with an Aug. 18, 1894, First Presidency recommendation that Latter-day Saints faithfully devote their energy and influence to the University of Utah rather than to BYU because they expected that the U. would become the great intermountain center for the diffusion of knowledge.

Last but not least is a well-intentioned whopper by President Thomas S. Monson in which he stated that in the all-church basketball tournament the most coveted prize was not to be adjudged first-place winner but rather to receive the sportsmanship award.


Related articles on this site: Obedience gone awry,” Falling short, staying put

Failed to make the top 40:

Although the church supported the execution of John D. Lee for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, it failed to push for the execution of other members who actually killed the 120 emigrants.  (Lee said he killed no one.)

—Following is an example of one of the many passages of scripture that conflict with other passages and/or with teachings of church leaders:  D&C 20:19 asserts that, for those who live on earth, God the Father is the only being whom they should worship. Not only do many passages show we should also worship Christ, President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in 2002 that Christ is the central focus of our worship. (italics added).

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