Posted by:
ThinkingOutLoud
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Date: October 23, 2014 11:03AM
One or two I have spoken with have said to me, in essence, "Nope, not gonna look, and you can't make me!"
I think many won't know about them, many will know of them but not look at them, some will look at them but only with their "spiritual eyes". Some will read them and toss them aside, buying it all, hook line and sinker. A few discerning ones will be very troubled and will think of quitting but instead, put it all on a shelf, will want to discuss it with other LDS, and worry over it and study on it some more. A few more will simply read it, take in what it means, get up from the computer and bang! That's all she wrote. They are out.
But, if a lot of church growth now comes from other countries where polygamy is practiced and accepted or is part of their current or recent past, religious tradition already, even if not legal to do now, then the church may consider what they've done a very smart move. I don't, but that's beside the point.
Now, can anyone look at what is going on here and see the Early Christian church itself, as any different? Or the Christian church after its various correlations over the centuries?
It's real-time religion making, prophet and myth making and they are watering down what actually is, into what those who manage it want you to see.
We weren't there when people claiming to be apostles and early converts gathered up the legends and myths and fables of civilizations which had gone before them, and altered them enough to make them fit their beliefs, into the stories that the Bible came to be.
But we ARE here to see exactly how such mythmaking occurs, and is converted to a sort of spiritual truth, instead of actual truth, as is happening within the LDS church right now. We are seeing them separating the wheat from the chaff and changing both so drastically, that new schisms and offshoots of this sect will likely form. Just as happened in the beginning of the formation of Joseph's Myth once before, and happened and still happens in the mainstream Christian churches.
Joseph in the Jesus slot, being at first wholly believed and idolatrized, then vilified or thought of skeptically and having to be propped up and supported by lies that he communed with the divine and soon, wholly to be rehabilitated in a drastically altered form. More drastic even than when the modern LDS church started putting out all those Aryan-blond Joseph Smith depictions of him, making him handsome and noble looking and much taller, apparently, when in truth he was none of those things.
But today's LDS do think that is who he was, even in the face of all truth about him to the contrary. No one need convince them anymore, because they are on auto pilot now, fully capable of convincing themselves.
Then the true believers of the future, believing this new "reality" of their prophet even more than todays LDS believed the old, will sally forth and proclaim THIS Joseph from the rooftops. I bet at some point this figural death and rebirth of Joseph Smith will show up in some future LDS scriptures as "he died and was buried, but then walked out of a cave and then he lived again", just as in the Bible with Jesus.
The old documents disappearing, the archives being hoarded, pioneer diaries donated and never to be seen again, like similar things happening in the Catholic church, squirreled away for their own edification and understanding of the actual truth, but NOT for our understanding and certainly not for our eyes.
Soon all we will have is these essays and what the church and its members say and believe about them. For we and our thoughts and words will disappear too, when we die. And then who is to say and confirm what we say, is true? The church owns that website and the newspaper owns those comments we keep putting up, too. Who is to say that any digital archive will survive this, our own, age. Our books printed now are so fragile they won't last too much longer, either.
What will be the witness that there was something they omitted, altered, diluted, changed or lied about? Will we be, in a later time, the people whose writings cannot be found to verify that this prophet was not who his supporters say he was? The witnesses to the fact that this prophet's death and resurrection, never occurred?
Quick! Someone learn sculpture and bronze work and get really good at oil painting, and start making new monuments to the REAL truth of what's going on.