20221104 Graphing
the church-V18-trim
The Biggest
Impediment/Enemy Today Of Spreading the Gospel, Gathering Israel, and Building
Zion Is The LDS Church Headquarters:
Writing Today's
Hireling and Priestcraft Playbook
Contents:
Church
growth stated goals versus reality
Four
pressures on the church enforcing no-growth equilibrium
Ending
the gathering and stopping the building of Zion, done for personal benefit
British
migration saved the church in the 1800s. It should happen again.
Grooming
members for a globalist world
Preventing
intellectual challenges to church ideology and leadership
Some
other big issues
We see many public organizations today
which have important effects on our society, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook,
etc., where the organization reflects the personal quirks, self-interest, and shortsightedness
of its founder(s). In one current ad concerning razors, the head of the company
humorously portrays himself as the "God-King" of that company, and
pretends that he can do no wrong. The LDS Church headquarters today is
following that same common pattern.
Simply because it pretends to be a religious organization first, although it is actually a for-profit business dabbling in religion as one of its major products at the moment, it must at least pretend to speak idealistically and pseudo-scripturally on many different topics. However, its actions speak far louder than its words. Almost everyone senses this basic tendency and conflict, but not everyone has the time and patience to collect the few scraps of data that are available to build an integrated picture of this organization.
Of course, the very first step in the
non-idealistic self-interest of this "business dabbling in religion"
is to make sure that it reports the absolute minimum of data to the outside. Just
like our federal government, it has many embarrassing secrets which it prefers
to keep from the country, forever if possible. [Seth Rich laptop – 66 years delay?]
Otherwise, if all of this data were widely available, almost anyone could comb
through it and reach the same conclusions I have reached, and they would have
the extra advantage of being able to more easily prove their points. Since this
organization does everything in its power to remain nontransparent, that makes
this project of "Kremlinology" – trying to study the internal
workings of an intentionally maximally opaque organization – quite a bit more
difficult and requires immense amounts of time and patience. Of course, that is
the exact strategy of this organization which wants to project images of
holiness and mysticism, but that is only possible as long as hardly anyone on
the outside knows anything about its actual activities and policies.
"FBI
Asks Judge to Delay Seth Rich Laptop Release for 66 Years"
https://nationalfile.com/fbi-asks-judge-to-delay-seth-rich-laptop-release-for-66-years/
I personally take the gospel very seriously and believe it is the answer to the world's problems. It truly can be the "stone rolling forth to fill the earth." However, as long as the church is led by people who are dedicated to the proposition that the church must NOT do any of those great scripturally-described things, because that would disturb their pleasant and carefree life, then nothing is going to happen beyond what we see already, unless we have a kind of revolt of the membership masses, demanding that the gospel receive it's scripturally-mandated opportunity to change the world.
Church growth stated goals
versus reality
The leaders often "talk a good fight," but then consistently do exactly the opposite of what they say for public consumption. That lack of sincerity used to be called being hypocritical, but in today's world it is considered a perfectly acceptable leftist political strategy to deceive and manipulate the masses for personal economic and political benefit. Here are a few nice-sounding words from the church's newsroom:
The
doctrine of the gathering of Israel has captured President Nelson’s attention
for the more than 36 years he had served as an Apostle, he said during October
2020 general conference. “Anytime we do anything that helps anyone — on either
side of the veil — to make and keep their covenants with God, we are helping to
gather Israel.”
...
The
gathering is “the most important thing taking place on earth today,” President
Nelson told youth during a worldwide devotional in June 2018, inviting them to
enlist in the Lord’s youth battalion to gather Israel. “This gathering should
mean everything to you. This is the mission for which you were sent to earth.”
28
September 2022 - Salt Lake City Featured Stories
"Invitations
President Nelson Has Given Since He Became Prophet"
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/invitations-president-nelson-has-given-since-he-became-prophet
Pres. Nelson presents an idealistic goal, but people might reasonably wonder how things are actually going in practice. (It also raises the question as to whether Pres. Nelson actually has any control over what goes on in the Salt Lake City offices.) We might look at the church's own published statistics to see how things are going on the living side of the veil. We are not really doing too well. And obviously, we have no idea at all what effect we are having on the other (opaque) side of the veil, but I suspect it is no better, in spite of the huge cost and effort invested.
(Although it does actually teach us an important gospel principle, I see this massive genealogy and temple work project as nothing more than a way to distract and neutralize the church members into being a very tame group socially and politically and religiously, and a lucrative source of income, a calm set of sheep to be sheared. The current church business model is to tell people to "pay your tithing, go to the temple to save the dead, while sending more money to Salt Lake City then they dare spend on gospel projects in the real world.")
The following data presents the growth
rates of the church over time, in this case, from 1960 to 2021. The year 1960
is especially interesting because that is approximately the time at which the
church began to enforce the policy that no one could attend the temple without
having first paid a full tithing to the central offices. The growth rates
generally looked better before that time, but after that time they obviously
have been taking a deep dive. If the quickly falling trendline were extended
out until it crosses the X axis, that would indicate that even by the church's calculations,
it would hit 0% growth in about 2039. And we should keep in mind that this is a
very optimistic presentation by the church itself. A more realistic
interpretation of the church statistics would probably indicate that we have
already reached or have gone below the zero-growth mark. There is certainly not
the slightest indication that some remarkable growth spurt is about to happen.
The question then becomes Why, in spite of endless preaching and cheerleading concerning the gathering of Israel, the results keep getting worse, at least among the living?
The next graph, created by myself as an
illustration, indicates some of the opposing pressures which are likely to keep
the current-day church locked into its current dismal statistics forever.
Four
pressures on the church enforcing no-growth equilibrium
In
this diagram I present two pairs of pressures which basically cancel each other
out, meaning that there can be no significant changes in the size of the
church. It is in an eternal equilibrium state, which is most likely to end in a
decaying state at some future time.
Box
1 – grow to get more money
In
Box 1 we have the leaders and staff at church headquarters naturally wanting the
church to grow, but that growth is for the purpose of getting more money for
the central unit, not to serve the members of the church or of the peoples of
the world. Ever since Wilford Woodruff and Lorenzo Snow and most of the other
leaders of the time secretly decided in 1896 to pay themselves a salary out of
church funds and to work towards getting the largest possible unencumbered "free"
tithing income for the central church organization, maximizing potential income
has always been the controlling factor in any decision. (Only 10 apostles voted
for this critical change. One dissenter was ejected from the quorum, and others
were not added because they would not agree with the majority.)
Box
2 – the world pushes back
In
Box 2 we have the equal and opposite force presented by the civil governments
and religious governments of the world pushing back against what they see in the
LDS church as a potential competitor for the hearts and minds and money of the
world's peoples. It is possible that this force is only recognized
unconsciously by the leaders and staff, but, far more likely, it is fully
realized and fully taken into account in planning any activities by the church.
Since the church is operating in perhaps 200 different political jurisdictions
around the world, it surely must find it necessary to coordinate its own
actions to be consistent everywhere, lest someone misunderstand the intentions
of the church leaders. For example, even though the church could easily engage
in pro-freedom activities in the United States, it dare not do it even in the United
States because every other country in the world would reasonably assume that it
would likely do the same things in their own country, something which would be
completely unacceptable there. The church is in somewhat of a precarious
position at this point, since it has up to $200 billion in the bank as a war
chest, and no one knows what the church may decide to do with that money,
making the situation somewhat unstable. That would tend to make the church
extremely careful about taking any new initiatives whatsoever anywhere in the
world. Certainly, any sudden growth spurts would immediately pop up on the
radar of 200 different jealous governments around the world.
Box
3 – members want growth
In
Box 3 we have powerful pressures from the members to see some church growth.
They read in the Scriptures and hear at annual conference that the purpose of
having the gospel on the earth is to have an immense influence on the peoples
of the world and to be the "stone that rolls forth to fill the
earth." Many people find that concept of the gospel "winning"
quite captivating. Obviously, as shown in the first graph, there is none of
that "stone rolling forth to fill the earth" business going on at
all. The truth is that the gospel project is stalling and decaying, showing not
the slightest hint of going anywhere, anytime soon.
The
number of babies being born to church members is approximately 27% of the
number needed to hold the church size steady, as perhaps 200,000 members die
each year from age and natural causes. There were 89,069 children of record added
in 2021, who are obviously not members, but many eventually will be. Typically,
about 60% of those children of record are baptized when they turn eight, giving
us a future addition to the church of 53,441. I find that to be a very
depressing set of numbers, indicating that we cannot even maintain our numbers
without an aggressive missionary program. We claim to believe in families, but
apparently we don't actually have many children in those families. Just
insisting on tithing on top of all the massive existing government taxes serves
to greatly depress the number of children which families imagine they can
afford to bear and raise. Instead of adding to that family burden, the church
ought to be working to lower government taxes after eliminating tithing
themselves.
In
2021 we had 54,539 full-time missionaries who were actively seeking converts.
They baptized a total of 168,283 converts for a total of 3.083 converts per
year per missionary. In total, we had 53,441 likely baptisms of children, plus 168,283
converts for a total of 221,724, indicating that we slightly more than replaced
the likely 200,000 deaths among 16.8 million members. None of this is very
exciting, nor does it indicate that we are quickly "gathering
Israel."
We
often hear of missionaries who spend their entire missions in the field and
never actually baptize anyone. Even the average of about six converts for every
two missionary years seems very small. It appears that it makes little sense to
waste that vast number of missionary years of effort in places where no one is
ever baptized. It seems obvious to me that there are many places in the world
where missionaries could baptize large numbers of people, bringing them the
gospel, even if they are learning of the gospel in their poverty. (The gospel
typically helps people get out of poverty.) I believe such an experience of
visible success would demonstrate to missionaries that the gospel really is a
valuable and powerful thing, as opposed to the impression they get in many
countries where there essentially are no baptisms, that the gospel has no power
and is not important. If missionaries are very often discouraged by their
efforts, it seems like an easy cure for that would be to simply send them to places
where they can see large amounts of success. One might even think that the
church leaders are intentionally doing all they can to minimize the growth of
the church worldwide, as we will discuss below.
Box
4 – leaders want to shrink church
In
Box 4, we recognize that the church leaders have enormous pressures and self-interests
in not only avoiding church growth, but it actually causing it to shrink to
about one-half the size it is today. However counterintuitive that may seem, it
seems to be very real.
Through
trial and error, and constantly changing conditions, it appears that the ideal
size for the church for the personal preferences of the church leaders is about
one half the size it is today. Since we are supposedly reading the same
Scriptures, one might think that the church leaders would be excited to see the
church grow and have its appropriate and prophesied level of influence on the
Earth. However, it appears that they do not feel that way at all. Their only
interest is in having a high-paying, high-status job that requires little of
them and has lots of interesting benefits like traveling freely around the
world on the church's expense account. With many of the attorneys making $1
million a year as a salary, one might see why they would want to keep their
jobs and also keep their jobs as simple and quiet as possible. They may talk
about the church members sacrificing for the kingdom, but they don't see any
need for themselves to do the same.
I
believe 100 years ago the church leaders thought that they had a good chance to
become a latter-day version of the Catholic Church, having vast political
power, allowing them to cause nations to come and go at will. Some of their
activities during World War II seemed to indicate that they would consider
themselves a winner no matter which side won that war. That is a very cynical
and realpolitik view of the world, which is most definitely not a gospel view
of the world, where individual good should always be emphasized, not potential centralized
political power. I believe they have since realized that they cannot keep their
solid constituency of the descendants of Utah Pioneers at the same time they go
off and try to play international power politics. Perhaps the civil governments
in 1896-1923, at least in the US, certainly the infant civil government of
Utah, were tiny shadows of what they are today, in their level of power and
control over their populace, making it seem that a church temporal empire could
grow almost without restraint. Somewhere along the way, they seem to have
learned that rather than trying to become a world temporal empire and power
themselves, their best strategy was to just allow the church to grow a little,
up to the point where it could supply all the money they dare spend on their
relatively small Salt Lake City headquarters, and try to make that "soft
job" situation last as long as possible.
Having
perhaps inadvertently overshot their "sweet spot" of having a church
about one half the size of the one today, they are experiencing the problems of
a business which has gotten bigger than they wanted it to be, but have no way
to spin off an extra division or two. As we can see today, they are constantly
being pummeled by lawsuits concerning such things as fraud concerning
historical representations, misuse of tithing, sexual abuse, etc. One of the
consequences of having the church become twice as big as they wanted, is that
they have up to $200 billion in the bank which they dare not do anything with.
They can't give it back without destroying their tithing system. They can't
spend it on charity in the world without getting in trouble with civil
governments for interfering. And if they keep it in the bank, they are
constantly pummeled by members and nonmembers who can't see the wisdom or the
justice of simply holding that money, much of it taken as the "widows mite"
from all over the world
They
do have the means of nearly absolute control in preventing the church from growing
in any new directions. With their tithing policies and procedures in place,
they can simply say that no one can be permitted to officially operate the
gospel in any location unless they have the authorized priesthood power and the
mechanism for sending tithing to Salt Lake City. So to keep the church from growing
any further, all they have to do is make sure the church cannot spread into new
parts of the world.
One
might then ask who made them God so that they can control who has access to the
gospel of the world? That surely was not the intent of Christ, and certainly
was not the result seen from the vigorous worldwide spread of his version of
the gospel. Of course, he wasn't trying to collect a penny in any headquarters
place to run some giant bureaucracy. He gave the gospel and his atonement to
everyone in the world for free, the exact opposite of what the church has done
in our time, of making it extremely expensive and constraining to be considered
an authorized member of the church.
The
last thing the greedy lawyers in Salt Lake City want to do is to give the
gospel away for free, in true charitable fashion. If they can't make a huge
profit on selling ordinances that cost them nothing, then they want nothing to
do with managing his church. This should make it fairly clear that the first
thing that needs to happen to repair the damage we see today is that we have to
get rid of all the lawyers. This surely would not be the first time in history
that someone has concluded that a large portion of the problems of the world
were created by lawyers for their own benefit.
The
basic process of taking over the church and making it an extremely lucrative
business, was to gradually end the New Testament process of charity and replace
it with the Old Testament mandatory tithing tax. As a general matter, mandatory
tithing replaced free-will charity, essentially gutting the main principle of
the New Testament church, which was, of course, free-will charity. Having
gradually established that huge influx of money, then the church leaders could
do other things to make their lives as easy as possible, which included
spending all that money essentially on themselves, and rarely, if ever, on
anyone else.
We
might notice that in the rare cases where the LDS church does spend money on
charity, they do it in a very curious way. They prefer to give their money to
established non-LDS charities such as the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, or some specific
fund for hurricane damage. The whole point of this is to make sure that this
money is not actually handled by any LDS administrators, and that there is no
effort made whatsoever to teach the gospel along with providing this charitable
assistance. Obviously, if Catholic Relief Services is doing the work with LDS
money, they will promote Catholic principles. If the Red Crescent is doing the
work using LDS money, they will promote Islamic principles.
By
always using this basic outsourcing principle, the church makes sure that it
takes none of the heat that civil governments might bring to bear on potentially
competing religious charitable activities, and, probably more importantly, makes
sure that no one ever has the idea that they could send money directly to an
LDS charity and bypass sending it to Salt Lake City. Of course, it would be
perfectly feasible for the LDS church to operate such large-scale charitable
activities. It certainly has no trouble operating a very large worldwide
building program. It should certainly not be any more difficult to operate a
worldwide charity organization, if one wished to do so. But, obviously,
understanding the many conflicting goals of the LDS church makes it clear that
they prefer to give no charity at all anywhere. They typically spend about 0.4%
of their income on charity. They prefer to let the government take care of all
charitable functions, through its taxes, so that the church can keep all its
tithing money. But if the church does have
to do charity work grudgingly to placate their members, then they are going to
do it through agencies which will not cause the LDS church any conflicts with
any civil governments, and will not further tend to increase the size of the
LDS church. Both of those results would be bad in the eyes of the current
church managers. None of these results seem to make an ounce of sense based on
what our Scriptures tell us, but that is certainly where we are.
Ending the gathering and stopping the building of Zion, done for
personal benefit
In 1977, Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, on a trip to Peru, announced that the gathering was officially over, and that in every one of perhaps 200 different countries, the "gathering" would now consist of building up groups of saints in each of those perhaps 200 different locations, to be called "centers of strength."
It is not explained exactly why a lone apostle in a faraway land would first make this earthshaking announcement that the church was completely abandoning its main responsibility. Why was it not first announced by the prophet in general conference in Salt Lake City? This appears to be what one would call a "trial balloon," a common technique in business and politics, where somebody announces and tries out an idea that seems desirable to the management, and then waits to see if the fallout and pushback from that announcement are small enough that they dare go ahead with it. Otherwise, exercising "plausible denial," it is presented as a mistake and everyone forgets about it.
Why would they do such a thing? The simple answer is that they see no personal value to themselves in the church organization – meaning them personally – trying to accomplish some heroic scripture-based goal of changing the world. All they see is personal struggle and grief in attempting such a thing with their current set of beliefs and practices, focused on their continuing to receive a huge flow of tithing money and having no responsibility for producing any significant results, and they see no reason to put themselves through that difficulty. Being a hireling or a gospel coward would be one strong way to put it. They had long ago decided that the only thing that matters is how pleasant and comfortable it might be to operate a little company, a kind of family business, which pretends to be pro-gospel to rake in the tithing contributions, but is really anti-"spreading the gospel" because that is too much work.
It is this "feathering their nests" impulse which has
now apparently gained absolute and total control in Salt Lake City (over most
of the last 100 years). As we can see from the above growth graph, they fully
accomplished their task of lowering expectations and lowering the actual growth
rate of the church down to a much more pleasant and "sustainable"
level. They essentially stopped almost completely the growth of the church.
Come: Let Israel Build Zion
By Elder Bruce R. McConkie
Of the Council of the Twelve
The following sermon was given by Elder McConkie on 27 February
1977 in Lima, Peru. President Spencer W. Kimball was desirous that it be
printed for the membership of the Church.
We
are in the midst of a period of change and realignment where one of the basic
doctrines of the Restoration is concerned.
We
were directed in the day of Joseph Smith to do one thing with reference to the
gathering of Israel and the building up of Zion. Today we are counseled to turn
away from the past and do something entirely different.
It
is somewhat with us as it was with the disciples in the meridian of time—Jesus
first commanded them to preach the gospel to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel only; they were forbidden to take the message of salvation to the
gentiles. Then he reversed his direction and commanded them to go into all the
world and to preach the gospel to every creature, Jew and gentile alike.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1977/04/come-let-israel-build-zion?lang=eng
Although the sermon speaks of building Zion, what he is actually saying is to let the church NOT build Zion, the exact opposite. He is pushing that responsibility into the far distant future, generations away, so that the leaders have no responsibility now to do much of anything. Reading the entire address is quite instructive. Christ first established the basics of his early church, and fulfilled some original prophecies, and then expanded it to all the world. In the case of Elder McConkie's thought, even though the church is well-established, he is telling us we must greatly restrict the reach of the church, something which seems exactly backwards from what one would expect.
The church membership in 1977 was reported to be 3,969,220, or about 4 million. That apparently was approximately the perfect size for the church to be, if the goal was simply to have enough money coming in to live very well and comfortably, without facing any stress whatsoever as far as growing the church further. In other words, in 1977 they had already accomplished their mission of creating a lovely lifetime job, and they saw no reason to grow things any further. Based on the growth graph, they probably should have made that announcement a little bit sooner, because the church continued to grow after that time, even though at a fast-decreasing rate, until it is now reported at 16.8 million, although the real, active membership is still in the range of 3 million to 4 million. Still, they came pretty close in their estimate. We have hit about zero actual growth at this point in 2022, and the only problem they have caused themselves is having nearly $200 billion in the bank, matched with the expectations of the members that they should do something good with that $200 billion. Of course, they tried very hard to keep that $200 billion secret and quiet, which represents their overshooting their "feathering their nests" goal.
So, in 1977, and continuing until today, what they had remaining was the lovely situation of having established hundreds of places they could fly to around the world and have wonderful adventures and vacations, all paid for by the naïve members back home. They had just announced that they no longer had any responsibility to cause anything to grow beyond where it was, removing all anxiety and pressures.
Still, at any moment, if they wanted to let the gospel rage across the world, truly becoming a stone which would roll forth to fill the earth, all they would have to do is turn off their central command-and-control system which demands a tithing tax or a franchise tax before the church is allowed to operate in various new places. But then, they would be in the worst of all possible worlds because they would only receive money if church members were convinced that what they were doing at church headquarters was really such a good thing that they wanted to support them individually year-to-year with contributions. Otherwise, they would be nothing more than poor itinerant preachers with no way to demand money from anyone, just like Jesus Christ. The million-dollar salaries of so many lawyers in Salt Lake City would disappear overnight, and the church would have to get a whole new staff that was willing to work for free. The gospel might actually return to its normal New Testament form, but where would be the profit in that?
As it is, they have multiple benefits. They can make up reasons to fly to any place on the planet at any time they feel like it, attending conferences, acting important, meeting with world leaders in grand style, etc. And they continue to take care of this important function of being the way that these 200 different church locations are tied together through a large central staff devoted to that diplomatic task.
Of course, if they let the gathering go ahead, and not try to stop these scattered members in their tracks, as they do, by shaming them, and even sometimes forcing them, into staying so that these interesting outposts can still appear to be large enough to be worth visiting, millions of these people in these other countries would gradually move from their various despicable freedom-hating political Babylon's to the United States where they could take care of themselves economically and politically in freedom, and there would be little need for an enormous and expensive Salt Lake City diplomatic corps to maintain contacts with and control over these Israelites spread all over the world. Also, the very fact that a few million of these good people gathered to the United States would mean that the Mormons would become a very significant voting block, a Zion voting block, instead of an almost insignificant and ineffective voting block today, so that the principles of the gospel could have a real impact on the society in the United States, actually bringing about Zion there through the simple process of gathering millions of good people into one country where they can control the laws and make sure that freedom is retained. (We could easily predict that this new Zion coalition would frighten the current church leaders since this would be interfering with their plans to suppress all freedom movements of the members). In other words, allowing the gathering to proceed would mean that the central church as we know it today would become nearly meaningless, and that would be another good reason for the members not to send them any money – there should be no good reason to pay someone to control you and maybe enslave you. That would be a terrible outcome for the non-idealistic self-centered people in Salt Lake City, so they cannot allow that to happen.
British migration saved the church in the 1800s. It should
happen again.
It is very instructive that during the 1860s, many thousands of British citizens moved to the United States to join in the church exodus to Utah. At one time, the British converts represented about 82% of the church-related people in Utah, indicating the overwhelming importance of that mass migration. Many of those people came there explicitly because of the opportunity to experience freedom from their constraining class society in England. Some of them who made that trek had not even become church members yet, but simply joined in this mass movement toward freedom. The overwhelming attraction of freedom basically saved the church in those times, and it could do it again. Yes, it is nice to be able to live the gospel with your friends, but it is even nicer to live the gospel where you can be free, and the United States is the place designated for the free exercise of the Christian religion under the rules set by the U.S. Constitution.
Unfortunately, the church has decided that it is better for their leaders personally if church members remain in these places ruled by disgusting tyrants, simply because that result is most favorable to the leaders, who are living a very free and prosperous life in the United States, which makes them able to travel at will throughout the world, while they deny that same freedom to any church members outside the United States. These leaders are pandering to the leftist globalist groups who want to take over the entire world, partly because they agree ideologically that there should be a leadership class and an underclass to support those leaders in the style to which they would like to become accustomed. In other words, it is to the personal benefit of the church leaders to discourage freedom throughout the world. And since all countries are linked together, especially with today's worldwide communication systems, the church dares not encourage freedom even in the United States lest members elsewhere get the idea that they should also be promoting freedom in their home countries. Any such agitation could be very beneficial to the members, but could hurt the pleasant life of the leaders, so they must suppress any agitation for freedom in any of these remote places. I believe the first principle of the gospel is freedom, and that is the first principle which the church leaders wish to cancel for their own benefit.
Grooming members for a
globalist world
it appears that the LDS church is grooming its members worldwide to become good obedient citizens in a globalist world, something which is the exact opposite of moving toward Zion and the Millennium which would emphasize personal freedom and a gospel-based society. Perhaps the central church, in its inner sanctum, expects that it will become one of the recognized and government supported churches in this new brave new globalist world. As we see with the Russian Orthodox leader fully endorsing Russia's brutal and unjustified attack on Ukraine, even atheist totalitarian governments find a value in both supporting and manipulating religion. Apparently, the LDS church sees itself as gradually adopting that role.
A clear sign of the decline of the early church was when it started receiving grants from the Roman government. Obviously, it is difficult to be ideologically pure as a New Testament Christian church when that church receives its basic sustenance from a pagan source. The LDS church today benefits from significant amounts of government money, at least as relates to its education system, and some of its research efforts, such as in the realm of biology, which must necessarily totally accept atheist organic evolution in order to be in tune with the basis for government grants. Whether the church is receiving money even more directly and more generally from the US government already is something we can't know because of the near-total lack of transparency about where the LDS church gets its money and where it goes. For all we know, the church was paid a large fee for supporting the poorly tested and dangerous government-supported vaccines related to COVID-19. Accepting such a fee would be consistent with the other apparently globalist ideologies and goals adopted by the LDS Church headquarters today. As history shows, money is certainly a quick and easy way to subvert religion, as it has been in our case.
Preventing intellectual
challenges to church ideology and leadership
One might guess that after nearly 200 years of vigorous and successful operation that many impressive intellectual feats would have been accomplished by the LDS church. We say that the Gospel is eternal, but we still don't have a complete definitive description of exactly what that Gospel is. Some might object that we should not write these things down because that would mean that we have a "creed," but that is a silly argument, because that implies that it is a bad and inconvenient thing to actually know exactly what you believe. If it is true that you don't know exactly what you believe, and so a "creed" is a bad thing (perhaps because it is a man-made and politically negotiated substitute for the original gospel), then what you need to do is do more study and get more revelation so that you can flesh out the real eternal Gospel so that no one can misunderstand what the meaning and principles of the Gospel really are. In other words, we ought to have a Gospel Constitution that can last throughout the ages, rather than be subject to constant deviations through man's deviousness, as we see today. Those constant deviations lead to the end of the true Gospel and to the end of the society itself, so there is a huge reason to keep it accurate and stable.
Based on the "creed" logic, one would never try to write on paper ANY interpretation of the Scriptures or even prepare a talk about the Scriptures, interpreting the Scriptures. One might have a single Torah for a single synagogue and that is all the writing that would be allowed, although someone might read it multiple times quietly alone or vocally in public
As it is, we have many tens of thousands of pages of public pronouncements by church leaders, and perhaps millions of pages of pronouncements by various teachers within the Gospel structure. One might take that vast body of writings and try to call it a creed, but the problem with that is that there are vast inconsistencies and ambiguities floating around to that huge database of attempts at describing the Gospel. It would be very much worth it to have clear statements on the most basic principles, and the logical connections spelled out between those basic principles and the more detailed aspects of the Gospel and its execution.
But instead, as several people, serious scholars, have noticed, the LDS Church does not have a fixed theology; it only has a constantly changing history, and even that history is subject to constant revisionism. In other words, we are "driven with the winds and tossed" on our theology. And that is "a feature, not a bug," as today's cynical software people would say, because it allows the current church leaders absolute freedom to change the Gospel (and thus the scriptures) in any way that they want to at any time. That is exactly what those leaders should NOT be able to do. That has always led to the end of the Gospel and the end of the society which once believed in and supported that Gospel -- which was a "world religion," at least for a time. That is a catastrophe, and that is the reason it can happen. The Scriptures define the eternal Gospel, but if the leaders find that eternal Gospel inconvenient, they simply change it, as in the case of adding their own version of a new taxing program which they called tithing, but which has almost nothing to do with the highly complex tithing system of the Old Testament, designed for an agrarian society. It is simply a rhetorical device designed to cause the members to pay the church leaders to buy salvation and give the leaders more money than they dare spend on themselves.
If one were to take on this grand intellectual project of producing a complete and detailed description of the history and the principles of the Gospel, perhaps collecting together historical materials from all times and all places in the world, hopefully including what are likely to be today's independent remnants of the original "seven churches of Asia," known today as the autocephalous churches, that would require the building up of a major body of knowledge collected and curated by a large group of highly knowledgeable scholars and theologians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocephaly
But for a group of leaders who have deviated a great distance from the truth, they really cannot allow such a group of highly knowledgeable people to ever be trained up and formed in the first place or to produce and publish any usable written summary and critique of their collective knowledge. The first thing that would happen would be the comparison of the statements of the leaders with the statements of these subject matter experts, and there would immediately be found a very large number of errors and deviations and ambiguities, all crying out to be resolved.
In other words, the church leaders must make sure that no one actually takes the Scriptures seriously about wanting to know all truth in every field. In order for the cabal to be successful over the long term, they must place thousands of constraints on what truth can be known and recognized, because if they are living a lie, almost any kind of truth can be a major threat if it points out the foolishness and injustice of what they are doing.
Apparently, the current church leaders are fully aware of that danger to their legitimacy, and so they have made sure in the last 100 years that no such group of subject matter experts have been allowed to be created, certainly not within the bounds of the education system which the church sponsors. What we really have then is a church education system designed to promote a particular brand of priestcraft propaganda fully supportive of all the convenient errors and adjustments the church leaders have made to the original Gospel.
In other words, straightening out the Gospel situation we find ourselves in would require that action be taken outside the current corrupt system, with hopes that getting that correct viewpoint established somewhere could be used as a lever to correct the behavior of the church bureaucracy.
At one point in my life, I found it
shocking that the LDS church really has no collective expertise in general
church history and theology at its primary education center. One might think that Brigham Young
University, or something like it, might become the new Oxford or Vatican, where
all the most important doctrinal matters are explored and documented and
presented in a form accessible to the whole world. We ought to have all of the religionists from
all over the world coming to the BYU to learn every imaginable useful thing
about the Gospel at every time in the history of the world. Instead, for example, the dean of the
religion department had his Ph.D. in engineering as his qualification to teach in
that department and to lead it. I
believe most of the teachers in that department have degrees that have nothing
to do with the study of religion. If
there are a few people who have advanced degrees in religious topics, they
probably got them at some Catholic or Protestant University where we can be
sure that they were taught and tested on all the wrong things concerning the
history of the Christian Church since the time of Christ. This seemed so
bizarre that I could hardly grasp it when I first heard it. And then it finally
occurred to me that all of this was by design, since the current church
headquarters is so vulnerable to valid historical and theological criticism,
that they cannot afford to have a group of knowledgeable and respected people
built up who can have the knowledge and the stature to challenge them on many
aspects of the self-centered foolishness they have led the Gospel organization
into.
Obviously, they would never willingly help pay the educational bills or salaries for building up such a group who would, in the end, show them to be so deviant from the original Gospel taught by Christ. And then, strangely enough, this also points out the direct ideological existential threat to the present church leadership if they let the church grow to be any larger than it is now. One of the characteristics of the Catholic education system is that there are many situations where advanced scholars can publish their work on any topic imaginable, and there is no effective way for that central church to discipline them. This stage of lack of control over all elements of the university level educational system, caused by system growth, cannot be allowed to be reached by the LDS church.
This basic logic would also cause the church to resist any Mormon-heritage-based university-level organizations to spring up that were not under the direct control of the current church leadership. If the church got any bigger than it is today, the demand for such semi-independent universities might become overwhelming, and there might be nothing that the church leaders could do about it except complain and badmouth and perhaps mistreat and threaten these new organizations who themselves, probably unknowingly, threatened to eventually overturn the current central church leadership. Of course, the church leaders could never let it slip out publicly that the existential threat against them was one of their basic arguments against allowing the entrepreneurial expansion of education for LDS students.
One might easily guess that the Perpetual Education Program might receive the same treatment. There is certainly a huge need in the world for better education so that people can better understand and live the gospel and live more prosperous and charitable lives. However, along with that general improvement in educational levels comes the threat that the church will become too large and the church members will operate too independently from the central church so that, again, the great number of serious deviations of the current church leadership from the original Gospel of Christ might become painfully evident. The current solution is simply to kill off any programs which might have that effect, so even though the world is crying out for a better education system, one which would improve the lives of the world's citizens immensely, the LDS Church cannot allow itself to become part of that solution, lest it destroy itself in its current form. Apparently, there are small groups of people who can safely be allowed to partake of these extra educational benefits, but it has to be very rigidly controlled lest it get out of hand and cause serious organizational problems for the priestcraft central offices. Instead of a benefit to them, as one might originally expect, the general spread of truth has become the most serious threat against the central church. Someone, somewhere, will finally wake up and point out that this particular "king" is wearing no [gospel or priesthood] clothes, as the children's story goes.
Some other big issues
One might expect that the authorized church of God on earth would work very hard to act as a true representative of a heavenly father who was worried about the success of his children on earth, and so his representatives on earth would willingly and enthusiastically act as fiduciaries for that group of people. However, what has really happened is that this group of people which has taken control of the LDS church today prefers to exploit this church for the benefit of that small group of people rather than try to do all in their power to improve the human condition.
1. Our coming Fourth-Nephi-style
collapse
As we can all see in progress right before us a Fourth-Nephi-style collapse of the true Church and of the nation in which it mostly resides, one might expect that the appointed church of God on earth would do all in its power to reverse that rapid and deadly deterioration, having been forewarned of how these things have turned out in every preceding dispensation. However, there is no money profit in doing that, since fighting these terrible headwinds of ideological evil is a good way to actually lose money, so the choice has been made to simply continue to exploit the church for that limited time remaining before the whole system collapses. It is not clear how a group of priestcraft exploiters could take $200 billion in net profits, perhaps turn it into gold, and hide in the hills while the entire surrounding society goes up in smoke, but apparently they feel comfortable in thinking that they will find a way to preserve their ill-gotten gains when the time comes. Speaking like the true royalty they imagine themselves to be, like the French king Louis XV, whose reign preceded the bloody and ruinous French Revolution, their motto is “Après moi le déluge”: After me, the deluge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge
2. The collapse of the human genome
As if our political deterioration were not bad enough, we are also seeing the quick deterioration of the human genome itself. With a limited species life in the range of 300 generations for large complex creatures, the human species is nearing the time of its predictable extinction. This can be traced and demonstrated statistically by the enormous and steady and inexorable increase in the number of chronic diseases experienced by every group of people in the world. Those chronic diseases include heart disease, diabetes, a huge increase in cancers among adults and especially among children, etc. The rapid advance of autism among children, a brain irregularity related to cancer problems, seems perhaps the most frightening of all. The accumulated load of millions of deleterious mutations within the human DNA has reached the point where within a few more generations, as that mutation load increases inexorably, there will come a point at which children cannot survive birth, and a huge number of adults will find trouble just keeping themselves alive, without having to worry about caring for chronically ill children with even more problems. Of course, the theory of the atheistic organic evolutionists is that man can go on to become a Superman, even while their own scientists point out that the most amazing thing is that our entire species has not died out already from overwhelming deleterious mutations. One might expect that a set of representatives of God on earth would be at least recognizing this huge and growing problem and doing what they can to understand it and alleviate the effects. But, like nearly everyone else, they are happy to take the short-term government grants that refuse to recognize this problem of the deteriorating genome since it goes against the prevailing ideology and the myth of atheistic organic evolution.
The LDS church did once sponsor a system of hospitals, but presumably they decided that they should spin off those businesses since it was not very profitable to operate a nonprofit health system. With the central church's approval of the deadly vaccines sponsored by the US government, the church seems to have confirmed that it is intent on always exploiting the masses, rather than helping them in any way. Profit (and political approval and power) is king.
3. Exploiting genealogy work for maximum
continuous profit
The basic business model of the LDS Church, which brings in perhaps $20 billion a year in nearly-effort-free tithing profits, representing basically about twice what the church leaders dare spend on themselves, is based on making sure that genealogy research is never finished. As long as that research is going on, the church can collect their $20 billion a year as they build a few temples and encourage church members to retreat to those monastic centers and take no action in serious missionary work which would cause the church to grow and cause the church leaders problems they don't want to have.
The truth is that with today's
information technology, by now the LDS Church could have easily finished all
the basic genealogy work for the United States 20 times over, and for the
entire world 2 times over, all with no increase in effort or cost. However, finishing that clerical work and
allowing the world to benefit from a greater feeling of family connections, and
the peace and harmony it might foster, would be treated as a catastrophe by the
current church leaders. That "temple work and continuous tithing"
connection is the essence of their current business model, and disturbing it in
any way, such as by spending that enormous amount of time and money on
charitable and missionary activities which would improve our society, but would
almost certainly lower the amount of money received every year by the central
church, cannot be allowed to happen.
