By keeping its finances secret, the church removed the temptation of members to fall prey to the evil rationalization that the church didn't need the tithes and offerings of the members.

Thus, by concealing their wealth, members reaped the heavenly and temporal blessings of paying not only tithes, but offerings and supporting missionaries and doing free work for the church.

But wait, there's more.

A while back another reason for secrecy was given.

The church didn't want members to use Ensign Peaks portfolio as a model for their own personal investments.

Added fun fact:

Current apostle Gary E Stevenson was presiding Bishop from 2012 to 2015 and would have had full knowledge of what Ensign Peak was doing.

>
> Current apostle Gary E Stevenson was
> presiding Bishop from 2012 to 2015
> and would have had full knowledge
> of what Ensign Peak was doing.
>

There is a certain logic behind the notion that his service to ghawd while serving as Presiding Bishop was the key stepping stone to being elevated to apostle:  Ghawd does love money-makers.


While there is prior precedent, it's unlikely that in this era we'll ever see a fisherman even make bishop, much less apostle.

A tax collector should still be eligible.

Actually Ensign Peak told President Hinckley they needed to file the forms and the Hinckster didn’t want the forms filed because he didn’t want people finding out how much money the church had. So it was the prophet who made the call to break the law to hide money.

The paper trail shows Hinkley was told by Ensign Peak they needed to file forms on where the money came from. Hinkley decided to break the law to hide the money. This has been going on since 1997.

Ha! The solution to the problem is to make the church a non-profit organization.

Definitely already a non-prophet.