Well I can't fall asleep due to some abdominal cramps and so some thoughts came to my mind.
I was just wondering if any of you really ever believed that Jesus himself will appear in the SLC Temple to chit chat face to face with the old geezers every now and then?
Have you ever wondered what they are talking about?
Maybe like: Look at all these suffering folks who are praying for relieve hahaha too funny lets help Sister Doe find her carkeys.... again..... She's a good one she paid some extra bucks and only ate oatmeal .... Hey Tommy nice tie you got from that bucks hehe.

I thought about and I actually never believed such BS. For me Jesus always was the guy who reached out for the people in need, a guy who suffers with the threatened, a true friend, like he's described in the Scriptures. Hanging out with hoes and hobos, catching those who are fallen - not the arrogant snob T$CC has made out of him.
Maybe this was the earliest crack in my shelf. I never saw Jesus the Morg way I guess. I never had the idea to hang such a portrait of that Jesus on my walls, (leave alone Profits or temples) but loved to paint Jesus talking to the folks.

Why should he appear in the temple to talk to the profits and they never ever came up with some breaking news? Not a single one... Yes of course its sacred but not secret .... blech.
But hey compare them to the old Prophets - None of them is even charismatic - okay maybe Dieter but not in the prophetic but in the "wanna get laid?"- way for the grannies. Maybe even Ol'Joe and Brig had way more charisma than all of the guys, who showed up in the past 30 years.
Haven't you ever wondered about that when you were a TBM?

I'm not sure I ever actually "believed" that -- I'm pretty sure I did simply accept uncritically when other people said that.
Now I don't.
Because it's nonsense without a shred of supporting evidence, and a fallacious premise :)

That's the thing about mormonism, at least for me: I'm not sure I ever "believed" it. I was taught it, by everyone around me, and I wasn't taught any alternatives. So I didn't know any better, and I just went with what I was taught was "true." Until, that is, I was old enough, mature enough, and courageous enough to decide to determine facts not by "belief," but by what evidence showed -- even if evidence showed what I'd been taught was wrong, and that all those people I'd loved and admired all my life had been lying to me. Which largely turned out to be the case.

I think there's one simple fact that the moneymen who run the church figured out: you can't trust charismatic people. So you create a charismatic church! As in a 'fun' church! Which at one time it was.

As for Jesus, I think there was a time in my life when I wanted him to exist. A hazy, nebulous Jesus was interesting and seemingly very informative. But mormon jesus, the product of an earthly woman and an alien (think, son of Mork & Mindy), was way too personal and intrusive. He was watching me!

Shedding my belief in him was simple and amusingly interesting.

President Heber J. Grant answered a letter of Mrs. Claud Perry,
on 13 April 1926. The letter is found in the First Presidency
Letterpress Copybooks, Vol. 72, CHD, and reads as follows:

"Dear Sister: Answering your letter of the 12th. I know of no
instance where the Lord has appeared to an individual since His
appearance to the Prophet Joseph Smith, Sincerely, your brother,
(signed) Heber J. Grant"



Mar 25, 1950 - President George Albert Smith writes, "I have not
seen the Father or the Son, neither have I heard their voices in
an audible way, but I have felt their presence and have enjoyed
the whispering of the Still Small Voice that comes from them,
the result of which has given me a testimony of the truth."

I find Grant's letter interesting.

Grant himself spoke in 1919 about the organization of the first presidency of Lorenzo Snow.

Grant related that in a meeting of the 12 after the funeral of Wilford Woodruff, Snow asked how the 12 felt about establishing the first presidency at the meeting. After all agreed, he then related having been visited by Christ in the Salt Lake Temple in the hallway leading to the Celestial Room.

To be clear Lorenzo Snow was the that claimed to seen Christ.
the date would have been 2 or 3 Sept 1898.

Whether you believe in the God of the Bible or not, the prophets were mostly obnoxious, offensive, uncompromising in-your-face zealots who had something to say, and damned well said it! They hardly had accountants, PR men, property administrators, or subordinate henchmen and minions.