You have pervious prophets spending a lot of money on a huge “I’m a Mormon” campaign. Before that there was a huge push to fill the earth with the Book of Mormon.

Now the church is doing all it can do to erase the word Mormon and put Jesus front and center. But there’s a twist to this new Jesus focus. The LDS temple and the covenant path is the way to Jesus.

We live in a day where Christians are the most persecuted people on the planet. Also in the western world Christianity is waining. The traditional Protestant churches are losing membership. Church’s are disappearing.

Islam seems to be the growing religion these days. Europe will become Islamic simply because Muslims have more children.

So you have Christian pockets. The Mormons in the Intermountain west. The evangelicals in the south and the orthodox Christians in Eastern Europe and Russia. Those are the strong holds of Christianity but none of those groups like each other.

The thing is when one LDS prophet makes many extreme changes, that increases the probability of following prophets to change more things or change things that didn’t work back.

I get the changes. It’s a desperate attempt to survive in a world where your organization is becoming less and less relevant. So the LDS church is trying to get the other Christians to join. The problem is the other Christian’s don’t like Mormons. They are a wired cult. Hence the desperation to erase “Mormon” but it’s not going to work.

Christ said our bodies are temples. He did not mention Masonic like modern Mormon temples. Jesus simply said come follow me. The church is trying to inject it’s temples into the equation which will only piss off other Christian’s more.

When an organization does NOT have any divine guidance .....after falsey claiming to be based on direct divine guidance..... then they are forced to poke into the dark .....or hire a Jewish PR consulting firm....... in order to promote their MORmON version of "Christianity"...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kkema-oqtM

When has this ever not been the case?

Russ has sped up the music a lot more. Even with COVID the game is faster than it used to be.

From 33 to 78

The (FKA) Mormon Church trying to become a mainstream Christian denomination reminds me of when Sears merged with KMart. One failing organization connecting with another. Sort of like one sinking ship throwing ropes to another sinking ship.

Ha! Ha!

CrispingPin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The (FKA) Mormon Church trying to become a
> mainstream Christian denomination reminds me of
> when Sears merged with KMart. One failing
> organization connecting with another. Sort of like
> one sinking ship throwing ropes to another sinking
> ship.

So it's not like musical chairs.....

It's much more like tying people together who are treading water to survive, to make sure that no one drowns.... BRILLIANT!!!

I don't discount the idea that Russ is tired of the "Mormons aren't Christians" claims that are so common...

In his position as the one and only earthly representative for Jesus, I imagine that he is intensely vexed by his placement at the bottom of the totem by the unauthorized-by-jesus imitation christians.

He might just want his rightful spot at the top, and in his hubris he's making the moves he thinks will get him there.

I would love to see them fall on their backs as they tried to sit down.

And if they got hurt, I would love to tell them that they are not hurt. And to get over it!

Just the same message they tell the victims who have been bruised and hurt by the abusive church.

Maybe someone will steal the chairs while they are busy dancing around to their own bullshit. When the music stops it will be a great comedy.

I once spent five years as the first counselor in an Elders' quorum presidency.
I didn't agree with some of the decisions the president made.
More than once I thought, "As soon as they make ME president, we're going to do things the RIGHT way."

They didn't make me president. They made the Elders' quorum secretary the new president.

It was arrogant of me to think MY way was the BEST way.
But, I've seen new bishops and stake presidents completely rearrange things the way THEY like them.
I almost think church culture encourages that kind of mentality.

Why would we expect Pres. Nelson to be any different?
Or the guy after him?
Or the guy after THAT guy?

Does it work that way with mormon ghawds?

When mormons become ghawds and set up their own worlds, does there come a time when "Kingdom & Majesty" Magazine comes around to rate what you've done with Time & Matter/Energy?

Could there be a hill-billy heaven?

Who among us hasn't thought, "Just wait...when I'm a god you're gonna see some animals that will BLOW YOUR MIND"?

"We live in a day where Christians are the most persecuted people on the planet."

Tell that to the Uyghurs and the Rohingya.

Meanwhile in Murica, christians are priming themselves to have even more influence over the US government after the midterm elections later this year. Texas has provided a blueprint and SCOTUS is expected to be on board.

Christians always think they're the most persecuted people on earth, even while they're working to legislate their own beliefs into law.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2019/11/30/recognizing-the-phenomenon-of-the-persecution-of-christians-globally/

In terms of numbers Christians are the most persecuted group.

>
> Christians always think they
> are the most persecuted people
> on earth, even while they are
> working to legislate their own
> beliefs into law.
>


Well, it's for your own good!  You be sure to thank them when you wind up in heaven, cuz you'd have never made it on your own, ya heathen.

No, it's always played that.
It's not a cake walk!

It's just that now, the chairs are digitally projected on the floor and can disappear with a keystroke.

It's a GAME.

Mormonism is a Cat...
Chasing it's tail!

It doesn't know where it's going so it grasps at straws. It's tired of constantly being on defense and never having a chance to run the ball. It has no game plan. It plays games with the members. It teases them and tricks them, and uses them ("callings").

Mormonism is lost. It is eternally looking for itself. It can't find itself because it doesn't exist!

They're just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I agree, as Rubicon said they put the temple and covenants as the way to Jesus. This really is the problem with mormon leaders is that theve added to the new testament christianity they undo the former progress protestants made during the reformation by adding more stuff, that conveniently puts them on top in a sort of theocracy-monarchy with divine right of kings and members are slaves. Mormons are going back to catholic ideas of priestcraft, 7+ sacredments. Right to rule for aristocrats, overpasses the working class, the common man, for credentialed people with money. Catholics have 7 confusing sacredments that are unbiblical then protestants got it down to two, but then mormons came along and added it to 9 ordinances. They've become what they first set out to fight, their own enemy.

"In June 2018, the Pew Research Center stated that over the course of 2016 Christians suffered harassment in 144 countries. By this calculation, Christians emerge as the world’s 'most widely targeted' faith group, slightly ahead of Islam.” Similarly, Open Doors' World Watch List 2019 shows an increase in the persecution of Christians in 73 countries (affecting 245 million Christians). It says that Christians faced extreme, very high and high levels of persecution in 2018."

I don't have the time/patience to do a deep dive into the numbers. However: (a) the # of countries isn't the best metric to use. The number of people actually being persecuted are. (b) Simply because 245M Christians reside in these countries doesn't necessarily mean that all 245M are being persecuted.

From Pew (a Forbes source):

https://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/21/global-uptick-in-government-restrictions-on-religion-in-2016/

"Government actors – whether political parties or individual public officials – at times used nationalist, and often anti-immigrant or anti-minority, rhetoric to target religious groups in their countries in 2016."

The first table is a list of countries where "nationalist political parties or politicians targeted religious groups in 2016." Christians were targeted in 5 countries, Jews in 5, Muslims in 19 (including the US).

The second table lists countries where "nationalist social groups targeted religious groups in 2016."

Christians were victims in 1 country, Jews in 13, Muslims in 24 (the US targeted Muslims and Jews).

https://www.opendoorsuk.org/persecution/

Open Doors (the other Forbes source) looks to be a Pentecostal advocacy group. Although most of the activity takes place in the Third World and Muslim countries, OD also reports anti-Christian activity in Mexico, which represents 130M Christians ("life is not getting easier for Mexican Christians" – I guess Catholics aren't Christian?) and Colombia, another 47M or so ("Most Colombians are Christians – 95 per cent of the population of 50.2 million. But Christians still aren’t safe in Colombia."). The harassment is from criminal gangs and cartels, not because of their Christianity.

Open Doors says that 5,898 Christians were murdered for their faith last year. Sure, I can accept that. It's terrible, and the total ought to be zero. But that's a far cry from being the most persecuted group on the planet.