Is this the same Skousen that wrote “Strategic Location?” It is a guide about the best places to go in event of a nuclear attack. The book say the inter-mountain west is. Utah, etc.
Btw, Dr. W. Cleon Skousen once declared that God could "cease to be God" if ever He lost the support of other gods...
Interesting, eh?
Here, I'll let Dr. Cleon Skousen speak for himself: Through modern revelation we learn that the universe is filled with vast numbers of intelligence's, and we further learn that Elohim is God simply because all of these intelligence's honor and sustain Him as such...since God 'acquired' the honor and sustaining influence of 'all things' it follows as a corollary that if He should ever do anything to violate the confidence or 'sense of justice' of these intelligences, they would promptly withdraw their support, and the 'power' of God would disintegrate...'He would cease to be God'“ (The First 2,000 Years, pp. 355-356).
Hmm...and yet Glenn Beck first cited Dr. Cleon Skousen in his 2003 book The Real America: Messages from the Heart and the Heartland and then later started pitching Skousen’s 1981 book The 5,000 Year Leap on air in December, 2008. Beck then wrote a preface for a new edition of the book issued a few months later and in his March 2009 kick-off of the 9/12 movement declared Skousen’s book to be “divinely inspired.”
Well, what do you expect? Both Beck & Skousen, part of the same Mormon "brethren," espouse the Mormon belief that God was once a man and "acquired" godhood; and that, you can do that, too. And that the Mormon god is part of a broader "council of gods" (Skousen's "intelligences" who "honor and sustain" that god as a "fellow god")
I still wonder if Beck believes Skousen's "pro-family" view on parenthood? (That parenthood = godhood???)
Dr. Cleon Skousen: “Mortality made it possible for us to be endowed with the powers of procreation for the first time…The divine power of procreation is described by the Lord as being a fundamental quality of Godhood. In fact, eternal parenthood is Godhood” (The First 2000 Years, pp. 39-40).
To unpack Skousen, what's he saying here?
Perhaps you've seen the Lds bumper sticker, "Families are forever." Lds get that from Joseph Smith's Doctrine & Covenants D&C 132 re: "eternal (celestial) marriage."
Well Skousen used the same section --vv. 19-20 to teach eternal parenthood. (The thing is those verses also teach polygamy)
What did Skousen mean by his reference to "mortality" and "procreation for the first time"?
Well, Lds believe that by Adam & Eve sinning, it wasn't simply a "fall" -- it was a "fall upward" -- an event to be "celebrated." (see quote below)
Why? Because they believe that it was only by mankind sinning that they could die -- becoming "mortal." And that by becoming "mortal" they could rise to godhood. (They get this in part from the Book of Mormon -- a phrase that reads, "Adam fell that men might be..." [it doesn't say be what...Mormons fill in the blank on that]
Anyway, Skousen didn't believe that God made Eve able to reproduce until she fell; hence, obeying Satan the tempter was to Mormons a "good thing."
In this way, Mormons have the absolute wacky understanding that the world's evils were something the Mormon god wanted man to do:
The Lds church in one of its priesthood manuals calls the Fall a "Great Blessing" while one of its general authorities, "apostle" Dallin Oaks, wrote:
"Some Christians condemn Eve for her act, concluding that she and her daughters are somehow flawed by it. Not the Latter-day Saints! Informed by revelation, we celebrate Eve's act and honor her with wisdom and courage in the great episode called the Fall." ("The Choice that Began Mortality" Lds Church official publication Liahona, 2002)