How could it be doctrinaire when they refuse to tell me what their doctrine is ?

Bob Sheets - Three Shell Game

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2018 12:16AM by anybody.

By staying as backward as they are now, they could lose members who just want to be Christians. Young people are quitting in droves. Here in California, wards are closing. We've had several wards close in the Sacramento area alone just recently. The best generation the church probably has now is the so-called silent generation, and they're dropping like flies. When baby boomers get in charge, they'll liberalize it somewhat, but later generations know better than to accept a fraud they can check on the internet.

Many of us Baby Boomers didn't stick around. Most BB converts were recruited in the pre-internet years. The church looked so honest and wholesome back then! Who would have known?

THIS

Smaller? Yes but the rest? No. Maybe in the immediate future, but not down the road.

Why? The age of the men who run it. Get past Nelson, Oaks etc, and into the "younger" age bracket, and I see it, just to survive, to become less " traditional Mormon", (we have already seen that) and more Christocentric.

It certainly can't go back to the Kimball/Benson years of major focus on the BoM and be viable for any length of time.

The Mormon cult is the legacy religious division of LD$, nc. It only serves to provide tax exempt status for the corporation and is not the primary profit source.

How few members do they really need nowadays?

That's the question.

They'll have to decide between a fanatical few or keeping the numbers up by modifying the doctrine.

You nailed it, anybody!

I would go saw far as to say that the cult doesn't depend as much on tithing money, as it used to. I don't mean that the Big 15 doesn't love-love-love to get more money from the sheeple--it's just that the LD$ businesses are doing well. LD$ Does depend on free labor, to maintain its real estate properties and work the shams, such as the temples, visitors centers, BYU's, resorts, etc. we know that missionaries and senior missionaries are used as teachers, computer experts, Lawyers, ticket-punchers, money-changers, office workers, builders, laborers. Converting third world members and immigrating them to the USA is a calculated move for the LD$ business conglomerate.

LDS is always going for the numbers.

Ha-ha! When has LD$ ever been truly attached to any concrete principle? In the cult, doctrine is unimportant.

Mormons will continue to be in the dark, not knowing who or what God and Christ and The Holy Ghost are, if the BOM is true or not and if it came from golden plates or a seer stone, or why God chose a con-man son of a con-man and adulterous criminal to be Gos's holy prophet, and keep secrets such as the temple rituals for the dead and secret handshakes.

I see Mormonism moving farther and farther away from Christ and charitable love for mankind. The cult will attempt to promote itself as "Christian" to win political favor.

Already, we see less and less mention of (ridiculous and ever-changing) doctrines. I think the leaders want these lies to just fade away, with the death of those older members who still remember the ban on Blacks, and the old lessons about the Curse of Cain, polygamy, MMM, the shootout at Carthage Jail, Brigham Young's autrocities, and many other infamous historical events in Mormonism's last.

The cult has burned the evidence--my ancestors' journals included, and "Old Mormonism" will die.

"New Mormonism" will be just as full of lies and threats and PR-hype. Whatever it takes to keep the businesses tax-free, and the MONEY coming in. Ugh.

A church that is more doctrinaire will keep the true believers who give them 10% of their incomes. That is all they need to continue for quite awhile. In my mind this is what they are doing already -- let the people who want to center on Christ leave in favor of those who are spell-bound by Joseph Smith. The more they emphasize Christ the less likely people are to put up with the Joseph Smith craziness. That is why they are emphasizing reading the Book of Mormon instead of the Bible.

The mormon church can never take back what they have said in the past. Most of it has been recorded and will last for as long as humans keep historical records. Some people will look the other way and give them a pass. Most people won't do that. The more intelligent people, those with more money and better leadership skills have left and won't be coming back. Those who gain those skills in the future will figure out the scam and will also leave. So with a few exceptions, the poor, the less educated, those fewer leadership skills, those people will be running the church in the local communities, and being the average members.

It's not just that you'll be talking about your life's biggest challenges with a plumber (your Bishop), you're more likely to be talking about your life's biggest challenges with a plumber who lakes any leadership or relationship skills and probably has more problems in his life than you have in yours... until you then resign. This is how the house of cards collapses.

That is not my experience. Many educated Mormons remain Momon for life. Doctors, lawyers, dentists,successful businessmen, college professors, engineers, computer geeks -- the LDS Church is full of them. They are well educated in their professions, but will only consider pro-Mormon literature. The leadership of LDS wards (especially outside of the Mountain West) is manned by educated transfers from Utah and Idaho. They are usually Mormons with family names going back to Nauvoo. They consider themselves descended from royalty. Christ is nice, but Joseph Smith is King.

What I care about is ensuring that the future of Mormonism is built upon a foundation of unquestionable complete honesty. How else are we ever going to get people to buy in to the idea that the Church is true unless people see us being super honest/transparent.

Thus I find myself at war with anyone suggesting that we can be both TBM and Dishonest. If people have questions then its an opportunity for us to shamelessly tell the truth, whole truth, nothing but the truth, and strongly encourage people to study everything in-depth and ask all the questions they can. Why we do missionary work is to help them get to the Celestial Kingdom so they can be omniscient. Well the first step to becoming omniscient is to learn all we can.

I think one of the best ways to approach women on the Church is to help them learn all they possibly can about that great husband-prophet Joseph Smith Jun :) Once women learn everything they can about how Joseph Smith conducted himself in marriage, being a devoted husband, and everything then it is a wondrous good first step to gaining a stronger testimony of truth.

I think one of the best ways to approach men on the Church is to help them learn all they possibly can about how the Lamanites are blossoming as a rose in the latter-days. As soon as they learn all that's possible to learn about the great discoveries in genetics, archaeology, anthropology, and what's known about the living descendants of Father Lehi then their lives will be blessed with the truth.

For everyone of course its helpful to look at all the links where they can see how honest/transparent the Church is on its history, finances, statistics, and doctrines :) Gosh if people ever got the idea that the Church has ever been anything less than completely honest/transparent about having solid official doctrines then they'd never join and they'd leave the Church because it would be a Fraud. But thank heavens that none of the Church leaders have ever dreamed or seriously considered being anything less than completely honest/transparent :)

I don't want to fall victim to my own wishful thinking. I want numbers in statistical format showing LDS decline. At this point, I don't have that. Slowed growth? Yes. Decline? I hope it's on the horizon, but the numbers available to me so far force me to acknowledge that's not where we are today. If anyone has solid statistics to paint another picture, I'd love to see it.

I’m thinking this, rather:

The future of Mormonism: smaller, less doctrine, more Christian.


Here’s an anecdote (true story):

Young girl, early 20s, living with a man AND active in church, church callings etc. She becomes pregnant. Man does not want to marry, but will continue living with young girl and raise kid. So:

What should her Bishop do? Disfellowship, excommunicate? Court of Love mandated counselling?

In this case, nothing. The reason: “we have to do everything we can to keep these kids in the church, no matter what.”


The church can no longer recruit, so they must retain the followers they have now. To achieve this, the church on the local level will drift more and more to laxity...just as long as the 10% is still coming, which is the criteria that LDSinc uses to judge Bishops and Stake Ptesidents anyway.

I wonder how the fundamentalist groups will fare in all this.

From a historical standpoint Mormonism is one of the weirdo religions that America produced including Christian Scientists, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormonism has had its day, and it is in decline. External growth is dead in developed nations because of the internet, and the internet and books available through Amazon will even peel off some member's children. Effectively, Mormonism has been dumbing down for a couple of decades now, and this will continue into the future. It will "bore" itself to death.