Two Essays on Living Prophets

Living Prophets:

Evaluating, Interpreting, and Managing Them

The LDS Church claims that having living prophets is one of its great advantages, theoretically allowing it to answer new questions and adapt to new circumstances, perhaps including the ability of the church members to absorb and live more complex teachings, perhaps based on their greater levels of education. "Living prophets" sounds like a great resource to add to a religious tradition.

But what are the legitimate and inherent powers of a living prophet?  Is any living prophet empowered to completely rewrite or reinterpret the words of all the living prophets since the world began, including the words and writings of Christ himself?  Unfortunately, that is the interpretation of the meaning of "living prophets" adopted by today's living prophets of the LDS church.

At a minimum, a prophet is simply someone who speaks concerning the Word of God.  That person may take great care to never say anything which is not in accordance with the existing written scriptures, and could still be properly considered a prophet.  At the other extreme, where a prophet is claiming the maximum possible interpretive power, he might simply try to cancel out and replace everything that has been said before him by others who claimed they were prophets.

So, one might ask, are there any built-in constraints that can prevent or avoid any improper deviations from existing scriptures, or other evidences of the mind of the Lord?  The truth is, today there are no such built-in constraints operating, apparently by design.  There might have been a case where there were independent "dueling prophets" who were speaking as living prophets at the same time, but were operating individually and without any external organizational constraints.  It seems possible that these dueling prophets might say things that were inconsistent with each other, giving one the opportunity to straighten out the words of the other.

One might imagine that that could happen today when the LDS Church claims to have 15 "prophets, seers, and revelators."  However, if there is one who is greatest among them, according to organization, like the president of the church, then there would probably be little or no room allowed for any public discord or difference, so that they would all speak with one voice, even if there are internal disagreements.

In other words, that leaves the members of the church to decide for themselves whether their "living prophets" are always speaking by the power of God, or whether they are sometimes speaking on their own behalf as men or even as speakers for some other god or philosophical tradition than the one they profess to speak for.

It is easy to demonstrate that the "living prophets" today, that is, those who have been given the title of prophet since 1820, and more noticeably since 1896, have cumulatively adopted enormous changes from what the scriptures tell us, often leaving unexplained these great and important deviations.

Our federal government and its experience over the 251 years it has been in existence, slightly longer than the 197 years that the LDS church has been in existence, offers many enlightening insights about the difficulties of taking a constitution, defined by geniuses, and seeing what happens after it has been run by far lesser men for about 200 years.

One of the obvious logical difficulties with declaring that someone is a living prophet, unconstrained by any pre-existing principles or formulas, is that that is the basic definition for a philosopher-king, a dictator, or a tyrant. Such a person might begin with claiming authority over religious matters and organization, but there is no reason to think that his ambitions will be limited to that one area of life. Typically, dictators begin as warlords, and then add a suitable "warlord religion" and propaganda mill to help maintain their political power and to extend it, hoping to exercise some level of mind control. But it really doesn't matter whether a totalitarian leader began as a religious leader or as a warlord, if the process ends up in the same place.

So how do you tell whether a living prophet is being completely true to his assignment?  We are told that God will not let our prophet lead us astray, but how is that to be enforced, or how are we to know?  Will God strike him dead if he makes any significant mistake?  There are supposedly some minor examples of that in the Scriptures (remember Ananias and Sapphira, King Herod, Acts 5:1; 12:22), but I know of none today. And, in the case of the original church's morphing into the Roman Catholic Church, the church obviously went completely off the deep end, and became anti-gospel, but I have never read of any popes or would-be popes being struck down by God for leading people astray.

A government analogy

The judicial branch, topped by the Supreme Court, which is one of the three branches of the federal government, is an interesting example of what has happened to an autonomous and somewhat self-defining governmental institution.  Theoretically, the Supreme Court can be constrained by the Congress, but that seems never to have actually happened. Near the beginning of a Republic, the Supreme Court declared that it could nullify congressional acts based on claims of unconstitutionality, putting itself in the driver's seat, instead of the other way around, and no one has seriously challenged that early assertion of superior power. As a result, the Supreme Court has essentially declared itself a third legislative body which operates completely independently from the two legislative bodies that make up the Congress.

The political liberals in our country have discovered that by shopping for sympathetic judges at the entry level, the district level, and carefully considering the ideologies of the nine justices on the Supreme Court, they can get much "legislation" passed into law, even binding state law, which neither the federal Congress nor the state legislatures would ever be able to pass and enforce.  This has made the US Supreme Court a law unto itself, dominating the federal government and the state governments on many important legal issues.

The most basic ideological issue is whether to interpret and enforce the Constitution based on its original intent, or to throw aside any attempt at divining original intent and just use the individual political attitudes of the current judges so that the Constitution becomes a "living document," meaning it has almost no binding significance. This is essentially ripping up the document that was the basis for our new Republic in the first place. That obviously strikes at the foundation of our political union and our original compact, but that rarely seems to be of concern to the Marxism sympathizers on the court.

Some mechanism of impeachment or some legislation passed by the federal Congress might be able to correct some of the worst excesses of the Supreme Court, but that seems never to have happened nor is it likely to happen in our society which is approximately equally divided between the liberal Marxists and the conservative constitutionalists.

The "LDS Supreme Court"

It seems useful to think of the LDS top leadership as the "court of the living prophets" who would be well advised to function very much like the US Supreme Court. That Supreme Court only exists because it was defined and implemented by a grand political covenant called the U.S. Constitution. Since its very existence is based on that critical founding document, the US Supreme Court ought to have the greatest respect for its content and intent, although it does not always do so.

Like the US Supreme Court, the "LDS Supreme Court" is set up to operate as a totally autonomous body. But in order to justify its position and its power, it ought to be completely respectful of and controlled by the gospel Constitution, the Scriptures and other church history, which defined and authorized it in the first place. But, as with the US Supreme Court, which can have faithless judges, the LDS Supreme Court can also have its faithless judges who think that their individual will and opinion and convenience should override all other prior events and opinions and considerations.

As a side excursion, it might be useful here to notice that the LDS top leadership have combined the executive, legislative, and judicial functions of a world government into one body. The dangers of a single body holding all those powers, with no separation of powers, was duly noted in the debates leading up to the U.S. Constitution, presented as a solution to this need for a separation of powers to avoid the tyranny which is essentially unavoidable over the long term when all powers are placed in the hands of one or a few men.

In practice, it appears that the "legislative" functions of the 15 can be kept quite secret, and the "judicial" functions of the 15 can be kept quite secret, and only the smallest aspects of the "executive" functions of the top leaders need to be revealed to the public, as when a new building or a new program is announced. It is a strange situation indeed when the legislative, judicial, and executive functions of the federal government can be very open and accessible to the public, and where that transparency is aided by armies of investigative reporters operating as intended under the First Amendment, but the government of God is a sealed book, with dire penalties for anyone who tries to understand what is actually happening inside the Church Office Building. In the days of Paul the apostle, he declared that "this thing [the restoration of the gospel] was not done in a corner," but today EVERYTHING is done in a corner where that is at all possible. (Acts 26:26).

A religious "two state solution" to a long-standing problem?

How do the LDS members rein in an out-of-control set of living prophets?  There is no obvious way for that to happen short of ceasing to support the physical empire they have built. Theoretically, that requires one to risk their salvation by being unable to hold a temple recommend, for not paying tithing. However, the church has deviated so far from the scriptural norm that the burden ought to be placed on THEM to demonstrate that they even still hold the authority they claim to hold. The Roman Catholic Church lost their authority at some point, and, for all we know, that authority has been lost again in our own time, for the exact same reasons, after a similar 200 year period. As seen in at least two other cases, where Christ restored the gospel personally in Jerusalem and in the New World, the whole religious enterprise eventually disintegrated.  In the case of the Jerusalem/Roman church, perhaps the members had no way to discipline and restrain their leaders/prophets, and perhaps that is a partial explanation for that church's demise. It appears we are on the cusp of that same thing happening again, apparently for all the same reasons.

It appears that unless the general membership of the church is willing to organize themselves separately from the current leadership and take action to greatly constrain and discipline the current leadership, the current church organization will soon expire itself, mostly being pulled apart by violently disagreeing factions within the current "big tent" church which tries to represent everyone, meaning that it actually represents no one, no one but the headquarters themselves.

An interesting article published May 29, 2017 essentially argues that when the church leadership goes along enthusiastically accepting all the progressive leftist policies of the current federal government, and someone states a more traditional and conservative opinion, that person can be accused of being a bad Mormon for not following their leaders.  In other words, at least according to the writer of the article, the revealed message of the living prophets is that the church is to always stay in tune with political Babylon, and anyone who dissents must be considered an apostate.  That seems like the perfect path to another Roman Catholic Church.

"Mormon blogger trumpets alt-right racial views, but is out of tune with her religion"

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5116879-155/mormon-blogger-trumpets-alt-right-racial-views

Obviously, these kinds of differences of opinion cannot go on very long until the church will naturally divide itself into two or more factions, one which is fashionably politically liberal, and one or more subdivisions that accept traditional morality, including the best rules for political relationships, at least one of those groups specifically adopting the principles of the U.S. Constitution which have been incorporated by reference into our existing Scriptures.

All of this kind of thinking points to the need for a "constitutional convention" for the LDS Church itself, where leaders either agreed to return to the original principles of the scriptures, or the members divided themselves up into subgroups and separate churches according to their own opinions, something which is the essence of freedom of religion as described in the U.S. Constitution.  In other words, it would be out of order for the current church leadership to try to claim any governmental or scriptural basis on which to forbid church members from choosing to associate with and cooperate with those who agree with them on basic ideologies and morals.

When Is A Prophet A Prophet?:

Is It Real Revelation Or Subtle Administrative Overreach?

One of the commonly expressed ways that church members can know that their leaders are acting under God's direction is that they can receive their own testimony of the value and correctness of any change.

But, for the last 120 years, many of the most critical changes to doctrine and policy have happened in secret, or at least without notification of the intended changes, without any explanation given to the public, and certainly without the membership being allowed to vote on it. Any legal or practical consequences of "common consent" behavior have been dead for about 100 years, at least as concerns church headquarters.

How can someone have a testimony of a doctrinal or policy change if they don't know about it or the consequences have not been explained to them?

It seems that the minimum of fairness requires that whoever is the current head of the church should explain carefully each change that is proposed and implemented. The living prophets should be expected to list all the issues which anyone looking at the situation might raise, and to deal with all those issues.

This is what the US Supreme Court does.  It has no armies or clerks or police to back up its decisions.  It must rely on the logical power of its decisions if it wishes to maintain respect and compliance among all the people for the decisions it makes.

In our case, the prophets have a lot of catching up to do. Hardly any important matter during the last 120 years has been dealt with openly in public – with members notified, fully informed, and given an opportunity to cast their vote, where appropriate.

It may be useful to expand the US Supreme Court analogy. The Supreme Court justices are a fairly close analog to religious prophets, as they are empowered to scan the universe for philosophical insights supposedly beyond the powers of ordinary men, and are given great powers to enforce their insights in the practical world.

We have the interesting case of the infamous Roe v Wade decision.  We find out after the fact that the entire decision was a fraud perpetrated upon the court and on the nation, and yet the case still stands, in the face of a continuing series of challenges, a continuing lie maintained by the fanatical power-seeking behaviors of the very influential political left.  The subject person, the plaintiff, was not seeking an abortion, so she could not be denied it, and so there was no issue to be adjudicated.  That person did not have standing to sue for something she did not want and was not denied. This set of actions was all based on the gross misbehavior of the attorneys involved who were willing to lie to the courts and to the nation to accomplish their self-assigned highly controversial political mission.

Naturally, the Supreme Court did not bother to admit and explain clearly that they were taking over the legislative powers and administrative powers of all the states in making this declaration of this new "right."  Apparently, in their virtual legal universe, if one can make something a "right," conceptually adding it to the original Bill of Rights, than that naturally trumps all state and federal law and no other clear explanation is needed. The levels of fraud willingly perpetrated by the plaintiff's attorneys and by the Supreme Court are truly breathtaking.

The Constitution reserves to the states all powers not specifically given to the federal government. This decision was in direct contravention of that aspect of the Constitution.  It was a naked power grab, forever delegitimizing the court itself in the eyes of at least half of the citizens of the United States.  As evidenced by the many states who have since legislated very serious constraints on that sweeping decision, the issue was not settled, and by its very nature could never be settled, by a pronouncement of a few staunchly committed Marxists on the Supreme Court.

Switching back to the religious realm, we might wonder whether if the prophets chose to make a naked power grab, and also conveniently invented some new theology to justify that power grab, would or could those actions serve to delegitimize the prophets in the minds of the members, and perhaps in the mind of God? Would that equal a loss of priesthood authority, including the power to perform all ordinances necessary for salvation? These are live questions in the situation of where we seem to find ourselves today.

Because of the dangers of making long-term errors in the area of religion, one might expect that the living prophets would go to great lengths to make sure that they do not deviate from the proper course, including avoiding every possibility of even giving an appearance of evil. Events caused by inexperience or bad judgment would need to be quickly rectified, the church headquarters itself accepting repentance as a recurring activity, but none of that concern for crystal-clear accuracy seems to be part of the traditions at church headquarters. The leaders might personally take great care to not be seen alone with a woman who is not their wife, lest the members get the wrong impression. As with the wife of Caesar, they must always be beyond reproach in these practical situations. The question then becomes how they can wander into disreputable areas of theological thought without their personal alarm bells sounding. They would never go to a city's red light district, but they seem perfectly comfortable letting a little Marxism or atheism affect their thought patterns.

Especially if there is money or political or economic power involved or affected by some decision-making process conducted by the living prophets, then the members would be completely justified in being suspicious and requesting a complete explanation. On the other hand, if there are no apparent options for some of the prophets to have any personal or general practical effects, then there may be little or no basis for member suspicions.

It always seems useful to remember that Christ went to extreme lengths to make sure that neither he nor any of his disciples had even the slightest economic or political power over men. The only way to be safe from the temptation of these worldly influences was to own and control nothing except the clothes on their back, and always remain subject to the charity of the people and the generosity of God.

Testimony versus blind faith

If one does not have enough information on which to base a solid testimony, then all one is left with is blind faith.  Although blind faith can give the leaders some room to experiment, it can also be quite dangerous by allowing the leaders to veer very far off course without any obvious correcting mechanism. The blind faith of the last 120 years has gotten us very far off course, so far, that it seems almost impossible that we could ever get completely back on track.

Blind faith, once betrayed, is almost impossible to reestablish

It seems perfectly plausible that many of those who are objecting to the church today are coming upon critical policy questions that they never heard of before, and they often make the point that much of church history is news to them. Perhaps what they are really saying is that they thought they were safe in having blind faith in their leaders who seemed to be so thoroughly supported and trusted by those around them, so that they need not spend any of their own time investigating the behavior of the living prophets, but could treat them as a reliable force of nature, such as gravity, which is perfectly predictable, and they could safely go on about their lives with only minimal attention to concern about the truths embedded in religious matters.

Suddenly these church members find out the frightening truth that the church headquarters is exactly like every other man-made organization on the Earth. It has its own agenda of manipulating and exploiting all other persons and organizations in society and has to be watched carefully for trickery and misbehavior. The one thing they thought was perfectly safe, all of a sudden is not so safe.

In the normal marketplace, the law tells us to "let the buyer beware." There is every imaginable kind of fraud or error or mistake which can occur in the marketplace of things or ideas, and in most situations, the buyer is well advised to be quite suspicious and careful and to only purchase or accept something they have thoroughly examined and evaluated first.

It is quite a shock to discover that a member would be wise to maintain an arms-length competitive relationship with church headquarters, carefully examining every product or bit of counsel they offer. The tendency among members is to assume that the church leaders only have the members' best interest at heart in everything they do. Our Scriptures tend to support the belief that church leaders will always act in good faith as leaders of a people, a modern Israelite tribe, even sacrificing their own interests upon occasion for the benefit of the members. But what if they are found to NOT be acting in good faith in such a role, but, like all other humans, are always looking to their own interests first?

How does one heal that enormous and legitimate loss of faith, once it happens? In our situation today, it would require a truly heroic effort.

The truth is that the leaders have operated in a stealth mode for about the last 120 years. They have played the empire-building religious entrepreneur (some might say robber baron) as they have showed the minimum of respect to all the prophets who went before, including that great prophet Christ himself, as they have excluded or rewritten whole sections of the Scriptures, including the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants. Each of these rewritings ought to be explained in great detail.  It is not enough for someone to offer what appears to be their opinion in a church talk, even a General Conference talk, and then claim that that unsubstantiated opinion is binding Revelation on the entire church, subject to no objection or discussion. Without a public vote of the members, or an extremely clear statement by the leaders, how is a member supposed to know what is homily and what is Revelation?

Here is a road to hell, paved by good intentions, if there ever was one, and this deplorable situation is not likely to fix itself. Elder Holland has expressed anger at the members' lack of sufficient blind faith, but he seems to offer no path back to earlier times where the leaders were more comfortable and unchallenged.

Just as the Supreme Court has produced a medium-sized library full of decisions over its about 250 year history, with many of those entries being extremely lengthy and detailed, the church owes its members and the world the same kind of issue-specific discussions of changes made to church policy and practice and doctrine so that a member could seek his own knowledge and testimony on an issue if he so wished.

It is ridiculous that members and nonmembers can both say that the LDS church does not have a fixed theology, simply because the living prophets can change anything at any time. A more precise database and formulation of church beliefs would be the basis for a truly exhaustive treatise on LDS theology, something which is sorely lacking today. Honestly, how can the church declare itself to be the true church, when it cannot even fully explain its own beliefs?

As an example of an early stealth operation, when Wilford Woodruff decided that the Law of Moses tithing concept was going to be reintroduced and radically changed and enforced in a new way, eventually leading to the use of coercion and a unique kind of spiritual extortion to collect tithing at the central offices from the members, on pain of their losing the benefit of their temple covenants, those built-in tendencies should have been noted and fully explained.  But, of course, no one can actually explain that with a straight face when the issues are clearly pointed out.  That is why all these important things were done in secret without ever notifying the world as might be done in a government economic regulation proceeding, and certainly never taking comments and never offering a decision, a clear decision, as the Supreme Court might do after receiving briefs from all interested parties.

In other words, in the Supreme Court we have a perfect example of the procedure which the prophets should follow, but the prophets have not followed that.  They have preferred to operate in secret, always a very questionable religious practice.  "[T]his thing was not done in a corner" -- to quote Paul the apostle, speaking of the restoration of the gospel in his time, (Acts 26:26) -- but in our time changes to it HAVE been done in a corner.

The Joseph Smith papers versus the never-created papers

Joseph Smith went to extreme lengths to record his experiences with the heavenly world and with the practical world so that church members and leaders would be able to learn and understand the gospel as it was presented to Joseph Smith and through Joseph Smith.  However, it appears that many of the prophets that followed him were a great deal less intent on recording and making public critical events that could affect the content and trajectory of the church.

The Journal of Discourses in 26 volumes proved to be a pretty good substitute for a continuation of a more formal church history, simply because almost every conceivable topic of interest to the church members was discussed in general conference during those years.  Whether it was national politics that affected the saints or more individualized spiritual matters, almost everything was discussed in that forum.  The various speakers, especially Brigham Young, would present their thoughts and feelings and plans, and explain the reasons.  In order to survive, the Saints had to be successfully acting as a group on a wide variety of topics, and there was no better way to inform everyone and seek their allegiance and their cooperation than through these discourses.

Apparently, since we are now under no threats, and the leaders only need our money and not our physical defensive powers as actual soldiers, there is now no reason to keep us acting as a cohesive group to defend ourselves and our leaders. This is a little bit like Stalin changing his policy on the church in Russia, seeking to use religion and loyalty to the motherland to improve the defense of his beleaguered country then under German attack. In the earlier more peaceful times, Stalin was happy to be blowing up churches and generally subverting and destroying the influence of religion on the Russian citizenry. In other words, in our peaceful times, social cohesion appears to be of minimal value.

It seems likely that almost everything of importance that was discussed and decided and done by the church leaders has been recorded in some form or another and exists in church archives.  However, the strong tendency has been over the past 120 years to keep all the important discussions and decisions and actions as secret as possible and only inform the members of those things that the church's hired public relations professionals think that the church members need to know.  There has developed a two-class system, an us-versus-them attitude, where the concerns and the events of the church headquarters are one world and what the members are told is a completely different world.  Once upon a time there was such a thing as a Mormon people, where the leaders and the members were all engaged in the same enterprise.  But gradually church headquarters and the membership have gone their separate ways and the membership became just a group of clients or a vague constituency to the central headquarters managers.

At this point, allowing the members to be involved in any important decisions would just muddy the waters and constrain the freedom of the church leaders to do whatever they wish.

The church magazines have become a place for happy talk, not any serious administrative matters.  A house organ could serve to let church members know about all the important affairs of the kingdom as they arise, as was true in the time of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, or that house organ could also become just a carefully selected collection of fluff that becomes almost a sales brochure or a propaganda rag.

The conference talks have been largely reduced to homilies, or a social advice column, where serious church concerns and strategies have no place. Even the doctrines taught there are usually greatly watered down.  For example, nothing is said these days about the current plague on our society of atheistic philosophies, including evolution, apparently lest those in control of the thought and opinion centers of our society be offended.

There are many people besides the 15 top leaders of our church who care a great deal about how the gospel can and should be managed in our time.  That is one of the great untold stories of our time.  The going forth of the gospel to fill the earth ought to be almost an obsession with the church leaders, including describing things which were tried which were either successful or failed.  But this administrative history of the Church, and any related strategies and opportunities or threats, are kept as deep dark secrets.  No errors can ever be admitted. If a church member, not of the top 15, is interested in the detailed affairs of the kingdom, it has been declared that it is simply none of their business. 

This means that there are millions of able practical and spiritual managers who are kept in the dark and could not coordinate their personal activities with those of the church even if they wanted to. Like all bureaucracies, the church headquarters bureaucracy keeps many secrets, since keeping secrets is one of their main sources of power.  If no one knows what they're doing, there are many things they could do that they could otherwise not get away with.  At the federal government level, much of what is "classified" is kept secret for the very reason that it would be embarrassing to those involved.  "National security" very often gets confused and mixed up with "job security" and personal power for those who are on the government payroll and are misusing their positions in various ways. 

The church ought to be sensitive to that particular form of bad behavior, and take steps to make sure that it doesn't happen there, but it appears to happen there just as much as in our federal government, if not more.  Our laws about First Amendment rights are actually much more effective in the political realm than they are in the religion realm.  At least investigative reporters are not usually charged with heresy and apostasy (a good medieval Catholic technique – as in the Inquisition) if they seek out embarrassing and inconvenient secrets of government leaders.

Keeping lots of secrets is something that a private corporation would feel perfectly justified in doing as they plan their profit-making activities in a world of competition.  But there should be very little secret-keeping in a public government or in the church of Christ.  The very fact that all those secrets are kept by the Church today is a strong indication that it sees itself as a small closely held group of leaders, in constant potential conflict with its membership "political and economic" constituency and everyone else in the world.  That is certainly not the way one builds a movement and a people, although it is a way of pursuing self-aggrandizing behavior, probably wrongfully imagining that one can build great personal power through that mechanism.  But it is exactly that building of great personal power in the temporal world which is not part of the gospel.  We certainly did not find Christ measuring his success by the size of the worldly bureaucracy he could build up.

Are the living prophets weaning us from the Scriptures?

Have we somehow found a way to become the first post-scriptural Christian church on the planet, easing toward something perhaps like the Unitarian Church which I am told believes in everything and nothing at the same time? I was once asked to prepare a lesson for priesthood meeting, and was somewhat shocked to see that the references listed at the end of the conference talk consisted of five citations to the talks of other general authorities. Not a single Scripture appeared there, although there were a few scriptural citations sprinkled throughout the talk itself.

This alerted me to the possibility that we might be drifting even further off the path than I had imagined. Are the church leaders and their clerical support staffs actually trying to create a separate bubble of religious wisdom, completely derived from and extracted from and separate from the Scriptures? That seems to be what they are doing as a result of the correlation program. If it is just too difficult to manage a church which has deviated to a large extent from the Scriptures we were originally given, and difficult questions keep arising about the doctrinal drift, one creative solution might be to simply declare all the Scriptures obsolete, and replace them with an online database which is infinitely malleable and completely subject to incremental correlation.

The Catholics achieved a similar result in a non-information age by making sure that no one had a Bible to read. If only the priests could read Bibles, then the priests could say anything they wanted without fear of contradiction. If people are continually noting the inconsistencies between the Scriptures and the correlated gospel as it is presented today, then why not simply break free from the ancient Scriptures and create an entirely new and internally consistent religious database or creed, something that would look a great deal more like a typical Protestant church might subscribe to today, with all the unusual and inconvenient doctrines blotted out?

In the case of the conference talk which only cited other conference talks, it might be difficult for a member to determine whether or not there were any new teachings or doctrines discussed in that conference address. The very fact that there was very little scriptural logic included in the talk might alert one to an attempt by a general authority to deviate from the Scriptures without making it too obvious. In this particular case, I did not notice any such thing, but then I was not focused on that possible issue either.  

As a helpful study aid, every new conference address might be required to certify whether or not they intend to be introducing any new doctrines or practices.  That would assist any serious student of the Scriptures in questioning any specific assertions and perhaps seek clarification if it appeared that some change of policy is claimed or implied.

Where does faith come from? How is it established?

In the times of Joseph Smith, when Joseph Smith had regular consultations with heavenly beings, and shared those consultations with numerous other people, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of other people, as in the case of the experiences at the Kirtland temple, it is obvious on its face that these things are approved by the heavens.  When those kinds of widely known and spectacular heavenly influences are no longer commonplace, then at least the constitutional processes are honoring all the prior Scriptures and Prophets and Christ himself by explaining a change, at least in that situation a person can receive their own testimony that the proper actions were taken.

Otherwise, as we have seen, without this clear brake on the impulses of man to take actions for their own convenience, there is no reason for church members to have blind faith in their leadership.  Blind faith is a very dangerous thing, and it is not part of the Gospel, at least as to new policy pronouncements and actions by our leaders.

The current leaders owe their respect to all prior prophets and Scriptures which have been compiled and retained at such great personal and financial cost.

The idea that a serious student of church history and theology can say that the concept of living prophets completely obliterates any concept of theology is simply outrageous.  If that is true, as it seems to be, then it is beyond outrageous.  It is itself a form of apostasy, or at least a matter of extreme carelessness.

I believe the very idea that Mormons have no theology, but only a history, is an enormous stain on the history of the Church. It is said that the Mormons cannot have a stable theology because of the continuous wildcard options of having "living prophets." But we should notice that having no fixed theology offers the opportunity for leaders to veer off the path for their own convenience, as has indeed happened.

In other instances, when the Twelve are defining apostasy to mean any deviation from their commands, as though they were firing rebellious employees, and then refuse to explain themselves, and even use the subterfuge of requiring local leaders to act in their stead "spontaneously," they only compound the illegitimacy of their decisions and their doings.  These local officers are probably operating under the implied threat of themselves being subject to a church court because of their lack of obedience.  That kind of fear and coercion has no place in the church.

The term is extortion for what the church is doing on the issue of tithing and temples.  It is a clear crime against the Scriptures and there should be no great surprise that there is a great deal of dissent and discord among church members and those who have already left.

If they want to heal this ongoing schism, this rolling schism, then they need to start over at the beginning and explain themselves and make the corrections.  Obviously, it is extremely unlikely that they are going to explain themselves and make those corrections because they have become accustomed to considering themselves unchallenged monarchs in this particular realm.

We have lawyers and even Supreme Court justices among the Twelve who are going along with this charade and who ought to know better, Elder Oaks being a specific one who ought to realize that what they are doing is not justified.

Every one of the deviations which I have identified elsewhere needs to be fully explained in Supreme Court form.  Of course, it cannot be explained convincingly in that form, indicating that it is a fraud which has been perpetrated upon the members and the world.  Unless the church leaders are willing to repent and repair this last 120 years of damage, the church will certainly remain as crippled as it is, if it does not in fact disintegrate because of all the built-in subterfuge and lies and bad policy.

To regain and maintain legitimacy for now and for the long haul, they will have to invent a new form of church history.  Joseph Smith took as much care as he could to record the revelations and the situations and the reasons for them. That mostly ceased after his death. That intellectual history, that policy history of the Church, needs to be reinstituted and brought up to date and all errors corrected before we continue on.  Obviously, that would make an enormous change to our current organization.  A few staff from outside might be commissioned to write this very history and react to comments and offer decisions.  But this payback is awful.  Catching up for 120 years is an enormous effort, but the church cannot go on without doing it.

We should not have to be satisfied with a vague history and an incomplete and undecided theology.

The church needs to make itself very clear on a whole host of issues so that its history and theology are kept perfectly in sync and in tune at all times because of the explanations which are provided and comments are taken and dealt with.

Perhaps this needs to be in a new blog form where church members can comment, and the brethren will be duty-bound to respond appropriately.  Joseph Smith labored very hard on his history, but today's leaders apparently can't be bothered. That might be a sufficient discipline.  It should be.  This century of secrecy and implacability must end.  We have a weeping God but we have an implacable leadership who has assumed the monarchical attitude of "never apologize, never explain."  That is not a Gospel attitude or behavior.

The apostles are ordinary men

They may be unusually good men, but they are still just men. They do not become superhuman beings just because they are chosen and ordained as apostles. They entered the world like anyone else with no recollection of their life before this. All they can have in their head is what they have learned during this life. If they have gazed into heaven for 5 minutes, as Joseph Smith spoke about, then they would know more than anyone here on earth. But I don't know that any of the men today even claim that they have gazed into heaven for 5 minutes.

They are subject to all the same foibles as any other human. If they are given unusual opportunities to have physical or religious power or to change policies, they would be really unusual people if they did not bend to those forces. Most especially, over the last 120 years, there have been a large number of incremental changes, perhaps none large enough to destroy the church, but the accumulated effect has been very powerful.

Is God less tolerant of error today?

Apparently God WILL let the leaders lead us astray, simply because he obviously has. He has done it before. I don't know why he would change the basic rules in our day. I don't know of any mass deaths concerning the Roman Catholic Church being set up. Popes may have died through violence, but it was from the violence of their earthly competitors.

Apparently God is quite tolerant, to the point of there being no immediate personal consequences for serious deviation. If the opposite had been true, then Wilford Woodruff would have been struck dead when he first decided to take tithing for personal use.

It may sound nice that the Lord will never let us go astray, and it may sound nice that Daniel had a good prediction and prognosis for us, but that is not in fact the way the Lord works.

In fact it may be a form of deception to quote these kinds of scriptures in support of building a religious empire which might otherwise obviously carry the risk of failure, as has happened before. Those scriptures should not be used to encourage people to support leaders no matter what they decide to do, even if they indulge in a kind of spiritual extortion.

Two Supreme Courts

Although the Supreme Court has adopted a fairly moderate level of self-discipline, this self-imposed practice of explaining the decisions they make, notice that the court has still gradually veered far off the constitutional path in many areas of the law, especially in their lack of respect for state's rights and in their overly aggressive agreement with the expansion of federal powers. The Roe v Wade and Affordable Care Act (ACA) cases are examples. As a practical matter, the only discipline or punishment the Supreme Court justices might experience for their misbehavior is simply the social opprobrium they would receive and deserve for moving so far away from the original intent of the Constitution. The Constitution was designed by geniuses, but it has been often interpreted by idiots, often by those who are living today who subscribe to the philosophies that the Constitution was specifically created to counteract, especially including the monarchist or dictatorial or totalitarian attitudes of King George the third.

In a similar fashion, the LDS living prophets have gradually veered very far off the gospel constitutional path, the path of the Scriptures, and more general philosophies consistent with the Scriptures, which we might call theology. Almost certainly they have moved much further than they probably would have gone if they had faced strong pressure from the members to explain their conclusions and reasoning at every step of the way for any changes they introduced. At the top of the list are issues concerning tithing, paid ministry, freedom, evolution, education, etc.

The existence of these major deviations should make it easy to understand why the church headquarters is so committed to maximum secrecy on every issue and at every level. They would have a potentially explosive situation on their hands, perhaps even a massive scandal, if church members ever realized how far off the path the church headquarters has wandered on a very long list of important issues.

I assume that observation summarizes the overwhelming bulk of members' objections to the current church leaders these days - that they explain very little and hide a great deal. They occasionally talk about transparency, but their compliance with that transparency concept seems very minimal and appears to only be done with great reluctance in an attempt to lessen outside pressures. Obviously, in this spring-loaded situation, real transparency could lead to too much general knowledge which could result in the kind of explosion and scandal I just mentioned. I'm sorry to say that it appears that a good scandal is exactly what the church needs right now to cleanse it and get it all the way back on the track it should have been following for the last hundred years.

To rub salt in the wound on this issue of transparency, the current church leaders often behave as though they consider themselves as having monarchical powers, the divine right of kings to rule over the members and claim their time and resources as a matter of right. The monarchist attitude of "never apologize, never explain" seems to be their style on all things administrative.

How can our theology not be stable?

If God and the eternal gospel are unchanging, how can our theology not be stable? Is it really only our understanding which is flawed and incomplete?

It seems to me that our theology should not be changing like the weather on a daily basis, or even with the seasons, on an annual basis, or even like climate change which might move around on the charts over the decades or the centuries. Without degenerating into a mass of detailed laws like the old Law of Moses, the essentials of our theology still ought to be set in stone, something like the 10 Commandments. We should not be waking up some morning in the middle of our lives and finding out that the gospel we learned when we were children has been gradually changed almost beyond recognition, changed by the society we live in and even by the church organization we belong to. The church headquarters ought to be more like the keepers of the eternal flame of gospel truth, not the main source of changes in concepts for the convenience of the current leaders.

It is true, that our theology can essentially only be derived from our history and our experience, but that should in no way give us reason to change the gospel continually, simply because we have some new history and some new experience.  All those events should be things which are incorporated into our theology, not to change it in any way, but to enrich it and more carefully define it. In most cases, there really is only one gospel truth, and we should be approaching that gospel truth asymptotically as we gain more knowledge, not veering off in either direction, pulled away by the "next new thing."

A continuing formal process of establishing and verifying our theology should be going on. There should not be a continual process of "simplification" wherein the most basic underlying concepts such as freedom and personal responsibility are degraded to supposedly help us become better citizens of Babylon.