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Date: December 07, 2019 07:07AM
My close relative was in the First Presidency. He was intelligent, loving, and sincere. WE had many deep, heart-to-heart conversations. He was a favorite speaker at General Conferences. Looking back, I realize that he was quite liberal. He )and the church President) did not agree with the fundamentalists, like Joseph Fielding Smith, and he seemed frequently troubled about his church work. The church robbed him of his health. Of course he, and all of us progeny, were greatly blessed, monetarily. He had some horrible tragedies happen in his life, and I often wondered why the Mormon God allowed these bad things to happen to one of His servants.
It was this GA, himself, who told me that the apostles and Prophet did NOT have a direct line to God. He would become angry, whenever someone referred to his "walking and talking to Christ in the temple." He said it made the church President furious, too. He made it clear to us kids that no one had ever seen God or Christ.
He also made it clear that no one--not even Joseph Smith, nor any of the Prophets--knew any details about the Hereafter. No one had ever died, gone to Heaven, and returned back with a detailed report. My family was free from all that CK hierarchy, and visiting rights between kingdom-levels, and forever families, polygamy and slaves in Heaven, and threats of outer darkness, and everything the Mormons claimed would happen in the hereafter! It was like living a kinder, gentler Mormonism, but got a lot of criticism for it.
Half of our GA family weren't involved with temple work at all. Half became more involved after my GA relative died, and became temple presidents. I felt they succumbed to the cult's new emphasis on the temple. My own family and I ended up moving away from Utah, for career reasons, and became more involved in community charity work. We paid tithing and held stake callings, and enjoyed working with the children, etc., but we seemed happier, without the Mormon death threats and the onus of the temple hanging over us. I thank him for that.
None of the GA's family, including the most intelligent ones, figured out if the cult was wrong about visitations and directives from Christ and God, that it was probably wrong about a lot of other things. That came a generation later.