Posted on 12/27/2013 8:33:08 PM PST by Colofornian
...For eight years, I had been a professor at Brigham Young University...
I looked down on Christians...They had part of the gospel, but I had the fullness of it. I kept the laws and ordinances of Mormonism.
Three weeks before the end of his two-year mission, Micah called to tell us he was being sent home early—a horrific disgrace in Mormon culture. He had been reading the New Testament. There he encountered a different Jesus than the one I was taught about in Mormonism—a God of grace, not of works, so that no one can boast...
To a roomful of missionaries at his parting testimony, Micah had professed faith in Jesus alone and not the Mormon Church. He told them he had found a deep and genuine faith—one that didn't include Mormonism. It did not go over well. Church leaders told us that Micah had the spirit of the Devil in him, sent him home, and subsequently, back in Utah, invited us to bring him before the high council...
Micah pleaded, "Mom and Dad, please read the New Testament." We commenced. As I read, I became increasingly consumed by reading about the God of grace. I barely ate or slept. It's all I wanted to do.
...In John's gospel, I read, "These are the very scriptures that testify of me yet you refuse to come to me to have life." Salvation did not require the Mormon Church, only Jesus...
...on a chilly October evening in 2006, Michael and I settled in with Katie in our basement to watch the movie Luther. My heart pounded as I learned of the reformer's struggle against the Catholic Church. I seemed to be facing a similar struggle: Did I believe the Mormon system of obedience to laws and ordinances would secure my forgiveness?
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
“And of course not being able to watch family get married, unless they escape too...”
If the other family wants to stay in that is their business, not yours.
” 1877 “
OK, got anything more recent? Posters are making it sound like no one can leave the Mormon church, as in it is a current event.
Ultimately, it’s not about politics. It’s about our relationship with Christ.
“If the other family wants to stay in that is their business, not yours.”
Whoa, you couldn’t be more wrong. The Gospel of Grace is meant for everyone - including you. Will you accept it and let go of the cultic gospel?
“If the other family wants to stay in that is their business, not yours.”
Whoa, you couldn’t be more wrong. The Gospel of Grace is meant for everyone - including you. Will you accept it and let go of the cultic gospel?
Worth a second post!
A possible one in 1984 (American Fork, Utah).
But certainly as you read accounts of this murder -- like in Jon Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, the motives of the Mormon Lafferty Brothers became complex.
The potential link? ...a link to temple ritual in the 1984 killing of an American Fork, Utah mother and daughter by Ron and Dan Lafferty (the throats were cut from ear to ear)."
Source: Penalty (Mormonism)
For example, a NY Times review of the book says: "Brenda Lafferty, a spunky 24-year-old, had been bad-mouthing polygamy and in other ways impeding the fundamentalist mission that had seized Ron and Dan" [Lafferty]. [And then adds]: "Parallels between the Lafferty brothers and Islamic terrorists aren't obvious, and Krakauer doesn't explore them very explicitly. The author of ''Into Thin Air,'' the best-selling account of death on Mount Everest, he is essentially a narrative writer. He mentions Osama bin Laden near the beginning and end of the book and leaves it for readers to draw their own conclusions, with some help from the book jacket's reference to ''Taliban-like theocracies in the American heartland.''
Source: Thou Shalt Kill By Robert Wright Published: August 03, 2003 UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN: A Story of Violent Faith By Jon Krakauer
Btw, Brenda Lafferty's infant daughter was also murdered.
And the Lafferty brothers can't simply be explained away as "fundamentalist Mormons"; their parents were mainstream Mormons and one of the Lafferty brothers (Ron) was a city council member in Highland, UT, a first counselor to a mainstream Lds bishop, and Lds youth activities' leader.
As mentioned above, Brenda Lafferty's 1984 murder was one where her throat was cut ear-to-ear. Why is that significant for a Mormon victim?
Because through early 1990, Mormons made such a promise to be exposed to such a death in Mormon Temple endowment rituals:
On May 4, 1842, Joseph Smith, Jr. instituted the Endowment ritual in Nauvoo, Illinois. At three different stages of the Endowment, participants were asked to take an oath of secrecy regarding the gestures of the ceremony.[citation needed] The participants promised that if they were ever to reveal the gestures of the ceremony, would be subject to the following:
Stage 2: The participant placed his or her hand in a cup form over the left breast. The execution of the gesture was made by pulling the hand-cup swiftly across the breast, then quickly dropping the hand and arm to the side of the participant's body.
Stage 3: The participant placed his or her right hand palm-down with the thumb extended and the tip of the thumb on the left of the torso, just above the left hip. The execution of the gesture was made by drawing the thumb swiftly across the stomach until the thumb was just above the right hip, and the hand and arm were quickly dropped to the side of the participant's body.
The oaths and their accompanying gestures resembled certain oaths performed in a particular Freemasonry tradition in Western New York at the time, in which participants promised:
Oath of an "Entered Apprentice Mason": "…I will…never reveal any part or parts, art or arts, point or points of the secret arts and mysteries of ancient Freemasonry. . . binding myself under no less penalty than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the roots…" (Morgan 1827, pp. 21–22). "This is given by drawing your right hand across your throat, the thumb next to your throat." (Morgan 1827, p. 23).
Oath of a "Fellow Craft Mason": "…I…most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear, that I will not give the degree of a Fellow Craft Mason to any one of an inferior degree, nor to any other being in the known world,…binding myself under no less penalty than to have my left breast torn open and my heart and vitals taken from thence…to become a prey to the wild beasts of the field, and vulture of the air" (Morgan 1827, p. 52). "The sign is given by drawing your right hand-flat, with the palm of it next to your breast, across your breast from the left to the right side with some quickness, and dropping it down by your side" (Morgan 1827, p. 53).
Oath of a "Master Mason": "I…most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear, in addition to my former obligations, that I will not give the degree of a Master Mason to any of an inferior degree, nor to any other being in the known world,… binding myself under no less penalty than to have my body severed in two in the midst, and divided to the north and south, my bowels burnt to ashes" (Morgan 1827, p. 73–75). "The Penal Sign is given by putting the right hand to the left side of the bowels, the hand open, with the thumb next to the belly, and drawing it across the belly, and letting it fall; this is done tolerably quick. This alludes to the penalty of the obligation: 'Having my body severed in twain,' etc." (Morgan 1827, p. 77).
...
Beginning in 1919, church president Heber J. Grant appointed a committee charged with revising the Endowment ceremony, which was done under the direction Apostle George F. Richards from 1921 to 1927. Among the changes that were instituted was a modification of the oaths. While the execution of the penalty gestures remained unchanged, the church replaced the verbal description of the penalty with the phrase, "rather than do so, I would suffer my life to be taken."
In April 1990, the LDS Church eliminated the oaths and the penalty gestures from the Endowment.
Source: Penalty (Mormonism)
IoW, Mormon temple participants thru 1990 essentially invited a throat-cutting penalty should their endowment promises be broken.
“Whoa, you couldn’t be more wrong. The Gospel of Grace is meant for everyone - including you. “
What someone else doe sis their business. You are trying to claim if they want to be in a group that excludes you that you somehow have authority to stop them.
Still doesn’t reach a level whereby one could claim the Mormon church prevents anyone from leaving.
Plenty of Christians have killed in similar fashion in the name of their religion but we don’t claim no one can leave Christianity.
To date the only religion legitimately claimed as preventing leaving is Islam. We have nearly daily accounts of murders happening when someone tries to leave it.
The Mormon religion has its issues, like being closely related to Islam in that its founder sought Earthly sexual gratification with multiple women and with children, but they certainly don’t have a problem with anyone leaving it.
“What someone else doe sis their business. You are trying to claim if they want to be in a group that excludes you that you somehow have authority to stop them.”
I do have a responsibility to share the Gospel with people trapped in this cult. In that sense, it is my business.
I know you gave me a narrow window to operate in, but off hand I can't.
Would any deaths while the victim was still IN the MORMON religious organization suffice?
Which onbes have been corrected?
I see a lot of complaints ABOUT 'falsehoods'; but the actual falsehood itself seems to have escaped my limited attention.
For this he was CONDEMNED?
Good analogy!
(It's get's us ready to be a politician someday...)
Leave iff'n ya want; we'll still keep ya on the books!
The things you listed before are NOT found in any thing that Mormonism calls 'scripture'; so I guess GOD does not have to communicate his desire for changing them thru the Living Prophet© and the 12 yesmen; right?
Legalistic but I still don’t see a loaded gun pointed at the head.
In fact the only religion I see that in is Islam. There it’s a sword. You leave they freaking chop off your head. Now you show me Mormons doing that and I’ll say yea you have a killer cult on your hand. Otherwise she was free to come and go as she pleased on SHE did not know this.
I did and my church leaned on the legalistic side.
Excellent pointes teppe
Teppe you do not need to wrestle with lambs who insist they have no blemishes.
You know that "loaded gun" or "active sword" theory applied to a LOT more early Muslim converts than it even happens now.
For a high % of those Muslim descendents, well, they're already spiritually "locked in."
Frankly, it doesn't make current-generational Muslims have their eyes open any greater than their ancestors...they are STILL in spiritual bondage as much as those ancestors who may have undergone the "forcibly-proselytized-or die" routine of conflict.
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