I was just thinking...could the Mormons EVER end it all? I mean now that the facts and Internets and all the folks have quit. Do you think they could have a massive end?
The ones I know...would probably drink the Koolaid. Its very sad to even discuss but its truly a real possibility.
The are VERY hard to convince and change most of the time.
Who is to question the Leadership? They have LIED so many times about "Revelations" or WTF else. They could announce anything and MOST would do exactly as they were told!
We could have a bunch of folks piling up? I was astounded once talking to a guy in a Walmart about Mormonism. He was so freaking warped. Every issue I brought up was another denial or excuse. Every single time!
They are determined to go with the ship. There is no way out for them really. The Cult has covered so many bases and patched up so many issues. There is no way out.
If it would ever happen, it would happen in the temples.
It's a thought, HumanLeague, but a very scary thought.
Temple "blood oaths" carried to their logical extreme.
I went through the temple, when they still did the throat-slitting and disemboweling stuff. I was horrified, and I crossed my fingers, and I screamed in my mind, "God! I don't mean this!" but I still did it. I did feel intense family and peer pressure, and fear from all the Mormon threats.
I did feel that there was "no way out."
I would have drunk the cool-aid. Two years later, I would have not.
Amyjo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yeah, but they aren't suicidal. > > They'd resist before they'd do that. > > Mormons are patriotic. Blindly so. But not to > follow a death cult. > > It is not a death cult. Jim Jones was.
My dad sat in on a religion class at BYU shortly before he began teaching religious classes there, not long after the Guyana tragedy. A non-Mormon student in the class asked what all of the Mormons present would do if [then] president Spencer W. Kimball asked them all to drink poisoned Kool-Aid. The answers were "He would never ask us to do that" and "The Lord wouldn't LET him tell us to do that." Neither any student present nor the professor would articulate that he or she wouldn't drink poisoned Kool-Aid.
It's unlikely, but I wouldn't say "never" on that one.
Mormon Church membership has way surpassed the sociological definition of a cult. So, no we’re not going to see this.
Where a suicide pact could occur would be with closed, controlling offshoots of the main church—polygamous and/or fundamentalist groups with an insanely charismatic leader. Unfortunately, those within such groups would follow the leader.
Mass suicide is a possible outcome where a charismatic leader feels desperate and has little to lose. The church, by contrast, is run by uncharismatic bureaucrats who are subject to extensive checks and balances and control massive financial wealth.
Such organizations do not go supernova: they end entropically.
BYU Boner Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Mormon Church membership has way surpassed the > sociological definition of a cult. So, no we’re > not going to see this. > > Where a suicide pact could occur would be with > closed, controlling offshoots of the main > church—polygamous and/or fundamentalist groups > with an insanely charismatic leader. > Unfortunately, those within such groups would > follow the leader.
Check out Jeffrey Lundgren on Wikipedia. I saw a program about him and he started out in mainstream Mormonism And ended up being executed, claimed to be a profit and that god Told him to murder a family of five who were part of his Religious group. There are a lot of nut jobs who are like him but started out in the Mormon church and when they went off the deep end often took other members of their ward with them
Jim Jones ran his followers through "white night" drills, whereby they rehearsed the mass suicide. We'll never know (perhaps there are diaries?) what people thought as they practiced this.
"We'd never do it for real..." "I'm ready to die for this cause if I have to..." "It's just a test of loyalty..." Or what?
But when they time came, they knew just what was expected of them. Also worth noting is that Jones had armed men who were shooting people who refused, or trying to escape, such an insane and diabolical (take me literally there!) situation.
Pathological as LDS is, I don't see that, unless something really bizarre and unbelievable were to happen, say, a verified UFO invasion.
There were times when the Mormons might have engaged in mass suicide.
But those were back before it became an "established" power, for instance when Smith persuaded people to uproot themselves and move en masse to new places. But those days are long gone.
As BYUB says, today it would have to be a charismatic offshoot.
TSCC is a prosperity religion. More New Age than it is Christian when you consider the radical things it teaches from the pulpit.
But its focus is on prosperity, not charity, good works, or especially grace. Grace is a Christian concept. Mormonism really doesn't teach grace, if you noticed. It's a foreign concept to most LDS.
That's something I think the FLDS is capable of as the cult is pretty isolated, and the members are brainwashed from birth to follow their "prophet." The only times the mainstream LDS cult might have been capable of such a thing were in Smith's time when he had his followers move with him, and again when Brigham Young took them to what became Utah.
I don't think all the members would follow through.
But I think it's possible. What if the prophet had dementia or another mental disability?
Even in the event some of the council of 12 and counselors tried to stop it--some folks would be very hard wired to "follow the prophet." He knows the way after all!
I hope the madly delusional prophet scenario never plays out, because that's when I go into hiding from my relatives.
There's one sure way to know the truth and possibility of reality. Ask and ye shall receive. Inquire within. Save yourself - everyone else appears busy. DON'T DRINK THE COOL-AIDS! They aren't (either). Drink - and Think - for yourself. Or, for any reason.
I think it will be more likely that a new profit will take the office and take all the money and assets and laugh all the way to the bank. The way the corporation is set up one could do it.
They ALMOST DID! Look at the early church history in Nauvoo! After William Law's printing press was destroyed and the Army came to round up Joseph Smith there was a standoff between the US Army and the Nauvoo Legion. Joseph Smith decided to give himself up knowing that he could obtain a writ to extradite himself back to trial in Nauvoo (thereby getting off of on all charges). Joseph Smith gambled on being kept safe while away from Nauvoo and it didn't pay off.
That whole scenario looks a lot like Waco. The armed standoff and the siege that followed. It could have easily turned into a situation where Joseph Smith called for the ultimate sacrifice from everyone but he turned himself in thinking it would all work out.
Not even Jonestown pulled a "Jim Jones". Many of the victims complied only at gunpoint, or didn't comply and were shot.
Suicide pacts like Jonestown only happen in small isolated groups, as far as I can see. Think Jonestown, Masada, Waco. Mormonism is simply way too big and spread out for something like that to happen. Perhaps it could happen in sporadic offshoot groups, but they would be their own self-contained cult, though they may have started with Mormonism.
LDS Inc still has a few cult-like characteristics, but all of its male leadership and missionaries look exactly like 1950s American corporate executives for a reason. It is a corporation, and self-preservation is its prime directive. The greatest sin in Mormondom is making the organization look bad.
Mass suicide in Mormonism? Not a snowball's chance in hell.