When you've got a good scam going -- and are devoid of integrity -- you might as well keep going. They have lots of posterity they need to set up financially.
As Bill Mayer says: "Selling an invisible product -- it doesn't get better than that!"
Yeah, methinks the 15 made their choice years ago to ignore the parts of Moism that bothered their hearts, and now their hearts fail to get bothered at all.
Instead, the 15 placed plush security, fancy cars, lovely big homes, family, fans and posterity adorement, and cash at their fingertips to be their religion of choice.
I would be shocked if any of them could ever break free from the shackles that now bind them.
No matter who defected... Wait! See, that's the word that would be used by mormons! Defect (noun) an error... Thus 'defector' is someone in error. So it wouldn't matter to the rest of the church, the TBMs, who 'defected'; they would be seen to be in error.
And of course, "...in the last days even the very elect shall be deceived..."
So someone like Mitt Romney, who is already wealthy and has experienced life, isn't going to be on the council of the twelve.
That means the Brethren are just figureheads and the "prophet" is just the figurehead in chief -- so the real power lies with the unseen bureaucrats who run things behind the scenes where the money is.
I think the OP is referring more to former church leaders and other big-wigs. Of course there have been hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file members to leave the church, including most of us who post here. The Tanners were a young, newly-married couple when they left in the early '60s. They didn't really achieve notoriety until after they had left and started printing old historical material.
Remember that the "defectors" (smart ones who left with some integrity in tact) decades ago -- or a 150-plus years ago -- probably weren't making the big bucks the GA's do today. The church wasn't wealthy until the 1950's/60's.
I've come to believe that the 15 oldies completely know it's a fraud
The main reason for not defecting is that they are completely devoid of empathy. Let me repeat that, they are devoid of empathy.
They have no heart, no integrity, act like the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees of the NT.
They care about their own fame, money, power, being admired.... And in the past you can add women, and lots of them of all ages regardless of marital status, to be used for sex, not courtship and love and raising a family
I've met people like that, and they were also Mormon.
I imagine that the main reason the bigwigs are *chosen* is that they are corporate men, and will never admit that smoking is bad for you....ummmmm....that TSCC is a load of crap.
And how many people on RFM have related that their life was relegated to living hell when they found the real world truth about TSCC?