Back in the early 1990's I was contracted to provide the organ for a regional LDS conference at our local university's giant basketball arena that seats about 12,000. I was there at 10pm Saturday night prior to the Sunday morning event.

The visiting GA would be the President of the Q12, who became the next church president.

The organ took all night long to install with about 45 huge speaker cabinets and subwoofers. It would accompany a choir of 350 and the congregational singing.

By 5am on Sunday the installation was complete and the organ was voiced to the room for volume.

I went home to clean up and returned about 7am to find a host of security walking through the entire building. One such individual was a local police offer with his German Shepherd dog. I recognized him and he told me that he was walking every isle and row looking for explosive devices.

It dawned on me right then and there that if the Q15 were true apostles of Jesus Christ then there would be NO NEED for such a security sweep. All that would need to happen would be a communication from Jesus or the HOLY GHOST to the apostle who would then direct security to the exact seat number etc. where any such explosive device was located. But of course, that didn't happen.

Truly that would be the case IF and REALLY IF these apostles were truly being guided minute by minute by Jesus.

It took me another 20 years to finally learn the truth about the church and leave permanently. I could have saved a boat load of tithing if I had left TSCC that day in the 90's.

When did you first realize any one of the Q15 is not in touch with Jesus? I'd like to read your story.

When I eagerly lined up to shake Monson's hand at conference and he looked through me with eyes as dead and sharklike as my psychopathic father's. I could feel that gaze pass through the back of my skull almost. My skin rippled with goosebumps. I was a great believer in signs and portents at the time and that visceral disgust was the first big chisel against the white and delightsome tomb I'd encased myself in. I KNEW this creature didn't speak to God. I sure liked Grandfatherly Gordy though and was finally able to understand the cult was a non-prophet organization when be had the stuffing to say, 'I don't know that we teach that " Pathetic dissembling from one supposedly able to hear God's authentic voice.

ptbarnum Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I eagerly lined up to shake Monson's hand at
> conference and he looked through me with eyes as
> dead and sharklike as my psychopathic father's. I
> could feel that gaze pass through the back of my
> skull almost. My skin rippled with goosebumps. I
> was a great believer in signs and portents at the
> time and that visceral disgust was the first big
> chisel against the white and delightsome tomb I'd
> encased myself in. I KNEW this creature didn't
> speak to God. I sure liked Grandfatherly Gordy
> though and was finally able to understand the cult
> was a non-prophet organization when be had the
> stuffing to say, 'I don't know that we teach that
> " Pathetic dissembling from one supposedly able to
> hear God's authentic voice.

Tommy had to shake thousands of hands that day. You'd probably end up zoning out too.

The Mormon prophet and apostles are all on automatic pilot 24/7. Reminds me of a royal with the pasted on smile and the hand wave that seems like a motorized fake arm standing in cleverly as they drive by.

The Big 15 could do an Episode of the "Walking Dead" without a script or makeup just being themselves.

Actually, it wasn't a zoned out zombie look, although I have seen that on GAs and I know what people mean by that. I also did the shakey handy with Maxwell and I could've been a fat version of Dobby the House Elf for all he knew as he stared at a space two feet up and 50 feet behind me.

This was a focused attention and to give poor, beleaguered servant of God and Man Thomas a fair break, maybe he was having a rough day. We're all just people after all.

All I can say is, the look he gave me was one of intense unempathic disapproval and my highly developed mirror neurons gave me the same readout they always did right before my father decided it might be a good day for a beatdown.

I had been encouraged to build an idealized concept of the GAs by my TBM in-law family. That holy gloss fell away when I shook Monson's hand and got the skeevies. I had the sudden realization that there were no tiers of holiness, this was just a man, and not very happy to be squeezing my hand that day, either. Come to think of it, I was a very new to the conference experience and was wearing my nose stud and three pairs of earrings, maybe that was it, I don't know, but I do know the Shark Look when I see it, and that look is entirely incompatible with someone who talks with the Prince of Peace on the regular.

Look, no offense to anyone's family memories, literally everyone can present different faces to different people. They can be different men at home away from the pressures of the job. Perhaps many of them struggle, deep down, with the con they're perpetuating and may be loveable guys in many ways. Only a handful of individuals are irredeemably vile, the rest are a mix of dark and light. But the GAs ARE publicly, at the very least tacitly, and often blatantly, endorsing the fraud that they have access to divine power and insight that the rest of us do not.

That's wrong.

I one time had occasion to talk with Monson. I fabricated a story about an ancestor that had hand carted it accross the plains.
It was stake conference. He stood up and repeated my fairy tale completely without verification.

So much for inspiration = = NONE

HA! What I would've given to have seen a GA spout off some fiction of mine.

But wait a minute...
You revealed something to a prophet.
He then told the people...

thedesertrat is GHAWD!!!

"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."

No, I don't buy this. If the Pres/Profit and others within the great 15 are REALLY upset that people think they "walk and talk" with Christ, then they would say as much during a conference talk.

They WANT their cult followers to believe this nonsense, so they do nothing to discourage people who believe and spread this nonsense.

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.

Interesting. I wonder what his thoughts were on Lorenzo snow seeing JC in the SL temple in 1900. Or what his thoughts were on Joeseph F Smith 136 section vision of the spirit world. Then there was Heber J Grant having some vision of JC as a young apostle while on a horse somewhere in Salt Lake County.

hallucinations are not uncommon among religious zealots.
Food for thought

When I met President Eldon Tanner, I was actually expecting to feel or sense something...or when he spoke at my aunt's funeral (he was family through marriage) and there was Nothing. At. All. But I could tell he loved the rock star treatment he was getting from the sheep.

Jesus' actual disciples (later apostles) all suffered martyrdom. Paul was beaten up by mobs, arrested, flogged, chased out of cities, and shipwrecked before he was executed.

VIP security measures were prudent: there are dangerous people out there.

They require trials of members faith. I've got missionaries in harms way. Their claims and their security measures don't seem to fit their martyred prophet. If they don't fit you have to quit.

I think it was the moment that I realized that the Church itself was 100% not true and therefore all of the Church leaders were just ordinary men placed in an extraordinary position by other men.

Not to hard with an open mind.

Temples are closed most days; don't run 7/24

No revelation and reluctant to change policies/doctrine of men.

Their leaders run the risk of being sociopaths.

They look to data, studies and surveys to make changes.

BOTTOM LINE

What is this going to cost the church?

It's all about money!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2019 10:31AM by messygoop.

The Mormon Gerontocracy, even with the very God Heavenly Father Master of the Universe on their side, are losing ground. They even own a state and still can't make their agenda work; can't make a dent in the world's game of religion. If they are receiving revelation then the revelation is coming from a fool or out of their own puckered . . .