Chapter 1

The Problem

Today, simply accurately defining the problems faced by the LDS church may be almost enough to imply the correct answer:

Throughout recorded history, all other restorations of the gospel have begun to seriously deteriorate by the 200-year mark. We are at the 200-year mark, assuming we start counting at 1820. How stands the restoration? In my opinion, we have deteriorated at least as much as the other two restorations carried out by Christ himself in Jerusalem and in the New World. My goal here is to point out the difficulties as I see them, and hope that everyone else who has an interest in maintaining and promoting the gospel will help make any changes necessary to bring us back into conformance with Christ's true gospel as lived by him and his followers in Jerusalem and the New World.

Some people who are not church members, but who have studied the LDS church and its history, have concluded that the LDS church does not have a theology but only a history. That was a shocking and puzzling statement when I first read it. I have been puzzling on that statement for many years. In retrospect, it appears that outside researchers are simply saying that the numerous major changes in doctrine and practice over the life of the LDS church, starting in 1820, must indicate that the church has no stable doctrine and practice, but has had a long history of making major changes to the church teachings and practices over the decades. In other words, they conclude that the church has no dependable "constitution," but is whatever the current church leaders choose to say it is on any particular day.

This naturally brings up the question as to whether the gospel consists of a set of eternal unchanging principles and practices, or whether that church's leaders have full authority to make major changes at any time according to their individual viewpoints and preferences.

One might initially expect that the church leaders would be totally bound and constrained by the unusually large amount of scriptures which they have received and presented to the world. But it is easy to show that the church leaders actually feel bound and constrained by almost nothing which is in the written scriptures, but indeed do feel free to make major changes as they see fit.

We might express this thought in another way: What is the purpose of thousands of pages of carefully preserved scripture if every new church president can feel free to ignore all that has gone before and make any changes as might seem convenient, often with little or no explanation for the changes? The words of all the previous prophets, as recorded in scripture, may be interesting as guidelines, but they are not binding in any way? That appears to be the church position today. "Living prophets" might seem like a good idea for maintaining church guidance, but are those "living prophets" authorized to override anything and everything that has gone before as part of their church assignment?

As concerns the U.S. Constitution, we have a few Supreme Court justices who are considered "originalists" who strive to always apply the Constitution as the founding fathers intended, if that is possible. We have other Supreme Court justices who prefer to believe that the Constitution is a "living document," meaning that it can be changed in any way that seems convenient to a small number of activist judges if they simply have enough votes on their side.

The LDS church has exactly the same question come up on a regular basis. Are the writings of all the previous prophets, which we might call the "original intent" of the scriptures, an "original intent" which goes back perhaps 6,000 years (or beyond that to the beginning of eternity?), to be binding in almost every conceivable case, or are those scriptures highly plastic and malleable, to be used or ignored as current leaders prefer?

In national politics today, it is considered important to "follow the money" to understand what is actually going on in political maneuvering. Perhaps the same principle applies just as well to religious matters. The single largest change which has occurred to the LDS church in its 200-year history is the re-adoption of the law of Moses principle of tithing, supposedly making it a part of the gospel of Christ. The original tithing was devoted to supporting an entire tribe of Levites, a professional priesthood. In a similar way, today's tithing supports tens of thousands of "Levites," members of a new professional priesthood consisting of church employees, even though a critical part of Christ's new gospel was to make every man his own priest, so that no professional priesthood was required whatsoever. This new professional priesthood even includes a "Sanhedrin," a large and all-powerful headquarters unit which controls every aspect of the religion, as was done under the law of Moses.

It is interesting to realize that the religion which Christ instituted during his life was extremely efficient, making it suitable to provide guidance for any people at any time at any place, giving them every needful priesthood blessing at no charge. It required no payment of tithing and had no need for any temples or paid clergy or even any chapels. In fact, it did not even require a central headquarters of any kind. There was a requirement that the members look after each other and share each other's burdens, but that was the complete extent of their practical commitments. Being a member of the church thus added no financial burdens at all to those burdens which might already have been imposed by any aggressive tax-and-spend secular government organizations. 

This very efficient arrangement leaves room for some large "extra credit" charitable projects specifically designed to repair a damaged society, done with or without the involvement of top church leaders. Often it would be better done without their involvement, again following the pattern Christ set. Such programs would be especially attractive to all charity-minded people if there were zero or minimal program overhead costs to administer them since most administrators would be volunteers.

This latter-day reversion to law of Moses tithing and paid ministry is especially puzzling, since Christ went to such great lengths to end every aspect of the old law of Moses, especially including the principle of tithing, with its paid priests. One might think that if Christ himself thought that his original gospel was faulty in some way, and that it should revert to including many prior law of Moses practices, then he would likely make it extremely clear that he was amending his gospel. One would not expect that this was something that a restored church would merely drift into by incremental administrative steps as opposed to receiving new scripture, probably delivered by Christ himself, concerning such a momentous change to reembrace Old Testament concepts and mix them in with New Testament concepts and expectations, making the new mixture internally inconsistent and incoherent.

One might reasonably expect that the dramatic events surrounding the occasion of Moses giving the children of Israel the law of Moses for the first time would be at least partially recreated on the occasion of reinstituting the law of Moses at a later time. But, as far as I know, none of those bombastic events have ever happened.

But perhaps that reversion to the lucrative law of Moses religious economic system is not really so puzzling when we observe that, at least according to appearances, all prior restorations have gone through the exact same steps of adopting a paid ministry, complete with the creation of a class system, where at least some of the leaders choose and demand to live off the resources of the members. It inevitably ends badly as the entire society is corrupted and disintegrates as it is infected with a pathologically self-centered and non-idealistic view of life, beginning with the church itself, leaving no good examples and leadership for the rest of society. No one is paying the maintenance costs of keeping a vigorous and spontaneously cooperative society intact.

If local church leaders can serve without pay, so can any more general leaders. It is not that they need no resources at all to operate, it is just that they should not demand any, leaving it to the generosity of God and church members to spontaneously supply whatever may be needed. Christ and his disciples demanded nothing of the members by right of their priesthood positions and yet they had what was needed. This system at least prevents any of the waste, fraud, and abuse typically associated with many secular governments' tax-and-spend social programs.  Worst of all, and a sure path to complete corruption of the church, is its direct participation in any of those secular government tax-and-spend programs.    

Alma 1 points out how dangerous it is to allow the church and its good influence on society to deteriorate as far as it already has:

12 But Alma said unto him [Nehor]: Behold, this is the first time that priestcraft has been introduced among this people. And behold, thou art not only guilty of priestcraft, but hast endeavored to enforce it by the sword; and were priestcraft to be enforced among this people it would prove their entire destruction.

(In case someone wishes to quibble that the church uses no force in its demand for tithing, we need only notice that members are completely kept from the benefits of the higher saving ordinances unless a lifetime of full tithes are paid to the central offices. Putting an earthly price on eternal salvation, which everyone naturally desires and deserves, is itself a very improper use of force or prevention, blocking or cutting off free access unless a fee is paid. "Freely ye have received, freely give." Matt. 10:8. One might need to do something to be worthy of receiving those ordinances, but the payment of large sums of money every year to the church central offices cannot be one of those criteria.)

From the account in 4 Nephi, it appears that that particular prophecy was fulfilled completely at about 300 A.D., as not only the church was destroyed, but the entire associated nation disappeared. It seems logical to assume that we face the exact same danger at this point. The church today is very weak and may actually be shrinking in size and influence, and the nation around us is rushing towards its own destruction. Hardly anyone is doing anything about it, or perhaps even can do anything about it if they cannot present solutions based on the principles and religion of Christ.

The level of political discord is so striking today that people often wonder about the possibility of another civil war. Of course, it was a civil war that destroyed the New World church. There have been plenty of religious conflicts and wars in Europe, and the true church was also lost there, as it was in the New World, but at least some Christians and Christian principles were able to survive the centuries of conflict, at least in the form of writings, and finally succeeded in creating the remarkable Western Civilization, culminating in the rise of the United States with its inspired Constitution.

It seems obvious at this point that the only way to sustain a permanent and complete restoration of the gospel is to take the "constitutional" approach of carefully defining all the important elements of the gospel, and then coming up with an auditing system which makes sure that no one deviates from that specification without the most rigorous of explanations and verifications. One might protest that this sounds too much like the law of Moses, if we have to specify everything in detail. However, men are by nature foolish and corrupt and self-centered so that, given the opportunity, they will veer off course every time if there is not some system to keep them on the straight and narrow path, and, unfortunately, they will often take many others with them. Every church member should wake up every morning and ask themselves the question, "Is The Church As True As The Gospel?" That should put a brake on inappropriate changes.

The following chart is intended to be a beginning point on what principles the correct gospel includes, plus a comparison with how today's church has modified those basic gospel principles. Making these major repairs would move us a goodly way toward getting back to the true religion of Christ.

A Partial Gospel "Constitutional" Summary and Comparison
Gospel principle/theme	Christ's church	Today's church
Freedom is first principle of heaven. If the institutional church acts in any way to limit any kind of freedom, it is almost certainly wrong.	Observe inspired US Constitution as part of scripture. Maintain consent of governed. Maintain all freedoms -- religious, political, economic.	Ignores US Constitution. Ignores consent of governed. Interferes with freedoms -- religious, political, economic. Constantly promotes exact obedience to central church bureaucracy, limiting member freedom, damaging the spread of the gospel.
Required contributions	None. All ordinances and services are free.	Reinstituted Law of Moses tithing and paid ministry, charges large fees for all higher ordinances
Charity	First practical responsibility of members.	Charity is minimal and is mostly ignored. Tithing and charity are mutually exclusive concepts, and the church consistently chooses tithing.
Creation	God created earth and all life. Man is literal offspring of God	Church accepts and promotes all atheistic organic evolution speculations, including the origin of man, concerning which much ambiguity is maintained.
Grace and works	Grace covers many things concerning salvation, but grace alone is not sufficient to qualify a person for the extensive responsibilities that come with exaltation.	Accepts Protestant formulation of grace and works and its links to the nature of heaven.
Nature of heaven	Qualified, exalted beings continue the eternal advancement of souls. All others have no responsibility for anyone but themselves.	Largely accepts Protestant formulation of heaven, although it adds its own version of universal salvation involving various levels of heaven, and essentially removes the "hell" option.  Ignores or waffles on extra duties and opportunities of qualified, exalted beings.
Marriage	Joinder of a man and a woman to bring souls into the world and teach them the correct gospel so they can gain valuable experience and serve others in turn.	The definition is becoming more fluid. The church seems to have recently compromised with gay activists on same-sex marriage, opening the path for a new kind of gay-pagan-Mormon to be welcomed into the church to further dilute its ability to be a standard and an influence for good. This is apparently part of a commercially oriented "big tent" strategy to maintain church income.
Amending the gospel	Extremely difficult and rare. Requires direct heavenly intervention with new scripture, formally accepted by church members. Most apparent "changes" are simply the result of getting a better understanding of the original gospel.	Leadership whimsy and convenience is all that is required, as in the case of initiating tithing, charging for priesthood ordinances, ending the literal gathering of Israel, ending vigorous support for freedom, and embracing evolution.