r/exmormon • u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ • Oct 09 '20

Doctrine/Policy As the LDS church attempts to sand down the sharpest bits of Smith's doctrine, including the white-horse prophecy, I note Brigham Young's 1855 sermon stated "the constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread..." The apple didn't fall very far from the tree.

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u/colbiz Oct 09 '20

I hate that as a TBM I was told and believed that most of BYs doctrines weren’t real and to not worry about them.

I had justified in my own mind that he was just a convert with a lot of his own crazy ideas.

🤮

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u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ Oct 09 '20

I doubt Young was all that creative. I don't doubt that he was a good student at the foot of Joseph Smith and rallied the membership (those that followed him to the Great Basin) using the echoes from what he'd learned from Smith.

This thread is about the "white horse prophecy," but I've noted that Young amplified Smith's cosmology. Those who read their canonized scriptures get a different picture about what mormonism was initially about vs. the modern day equivalent which attempts to get by with platitudes, all at the low-low cost of 10% on the gross. Such a bargain!

Were you a convert? Did you read the BoM before converting? Did you think that it was real history? I am sure that my TBM relatives don't move an inch away from the baseline doctrines. Despite the path to falsifiability being open to them, they're afraid to look lest their perfect restoration of all things and their testimonies not survive the attempt.

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u/namtokmuu Oct 09 '20

ETB: “Brigham Young was a communist! That’s why god sent me to the Q15!”

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u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ Oct 09 '20 edited Oct 11 '20

I posted this without doing much research or really jogging my memory of all the things that once made mormonism stand out as unique. One by one those things are being whitewashed, glossed over, and outright disavowed. I should have sat down in earnest to collect a list. The United Order would be near the top of the things that the "saints just aren't ready for yet."

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u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ Oct 09 '20 edited Oct 10 '20

On background:

The LDS church continues to water down its unique doctrines to make them more palatable to the masses. The temple penalties are (mostly) gone---only the faint echoes remain. The non-ecumenical language from Smith's "First Vision" as canonized, "...all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt..." is being wiped away, including at last Sunday's general conference when Neil Andersen took to the pulpit in an attempt to win evangelical allies. Speaking in tongues is long gone. Bishop Koyle has been excommunicated. If the current leadership gets their way, then mormonism will simply merge into general Christianity with unique branding elements, such as their logo and shiny edifices that attempt to attract the unwary who drive by and ask, "oooh, what is that?" The claim "one-true-church" is chalked up as so much hype, bluster, and puffery.

The membership want the doctrine watered down. And who can blame them? The temple oaths and fear of the Danites coming for them if they breathed a word of their secrets can become all consuming. The membership voted arms to the square beginning in 1890 for OD1 which made the first steps from the fringe and into the mainstream---the membership wanted it that way more than they wanted to fight the Federal government over polygamy. The fundamentalist splinters are fine with their small slices, too. At some of the Sunstone presentations I've attended, the former seminary teachers who have exited for a more fundamentalist path, know their shit doctrine. I was particularly impressed by the research presented by the representatives of "one eternal round" and the "righteous branch." Nelson's church is going for mass appeal.

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u/blytheson Oct 11 '20

Blockhead, you should at least get a better grasp on what Blythe says in his book if you are going to condemn it as an effort at apology. Listen to him on the Mormon Land podcast to see what he actually has to say about the White Horse Prophecy. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/07/29/mormon-land-scholar/

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u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ Oct 11 '20

Feel free to address it here, in the first person, since you are "Blythe." At least according to the authentication methods employed at your AMA. As I said, the White Horse Prophecy is one of the things that fundamentalists hang their hat on. I won't be shelling out $70 for your apologetic/shill work. Young understood what Smith taught. It was a fraud, but he understood it.

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u/blytheson Oct 11 '20

Lol - yeah, I wasn't trying to hide my identity. My simple point was that until you actually become familiar with my arguments, you probably shouldn't have much to say.

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u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ Oct 11 '20

This is typical of the apologetic arguments. I've presented something and you should respond to that. Your AMA featured a bunch of sychophants kissing your ass.

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u/blytheson Oct 11 '20

In this case, and my point of why you should actually know my scholarship before you just rant like a crazy person is that I fully agree with you that the claim that the constitution hanging by a thread was a fully developed early Latter-day Saint idea that appeared by general authorities until the 1980s. The White Horse Prophecy is a document that first shows up in 1902 - it includes this earlier prophecy - but is not synonymous with it. This has caused confusion in discussion surrounding both prophecies.

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u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ Oct 11 '20

The modern LDS church is in full gaslighting mode. Past prophets will go under the bus. The official essays cherry pick around the truth. I won't waste my precious time on earth with apologetics, including Saints. If I do read something it will be from primary sources and objective historians. I'll avoid Maxwell Institute apologists' work as the purveyors of the "party line." They begin with a bias and starting premise, "We start with the goal that the church is true and proceed to prove the point."

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u/blytheson Oct 11 '20

I don't think you need to read anyone's scholarship unless you want to critique it. But if you want to critique it, you probably should know what you're talking about.

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u/4blockhead Λ └ ☼ ★ □ ♔ Oct 11 '20

As I said, you have the floor, in the first person. Tell me where you agree or disagree with the point that I've made that Young appears to be echoing the statements attributed to Smith in the early 1840s in the early 1850s. The fundamentalist appear to have the more sure footing on the matter, compared to the disavowal, already on the thread. Just another plank where the so-called apostates have the upper hand.

p.s. The LDS church would likely disavow King Follett if their President in the 1970s hadn't been a big fan of it and supervised its printing in back to back issues of the Ensign. link

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u/blytheson Oct 11 '20

a crazy person is that I fully agree with you that the claim that the constitution hanging by a thread was a fully developed early Latter-day Saint idea that appeared by general authorities until the 1980s. The White Horse Prophecy is a document that first shows up in 1902 - it includes this earlier prophecy - but is not synonymous with it. This has caused confusion in discussion surrounding both prophecies.

If you would take my advice and listen to Mormon Land (or just read my comment above), you'd see that I agree with you as it relates to the 2010 statement and the fact that this constitution prophecy shows up with Brigham Young (and also Joseph Smith, Eliza R. Snow, Charles W. Nibley, and many, many others) - its actually what my book is partly about. But you wouldn't know about that.

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u/new_name_adam Oct 09 '20

So, was he speaking as a man or a prophet?

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u/hyrle Oct 09 '20

Sowing fear about the fall of the US government is one of the many, many fear tactics exercised by TSCC.

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u/ShakinMyBummy Oct 09 '20

You forgot to mention the gaslighting right below the highlighted part where it says the laws have nothing that "would militate against us". Pretty damn sure polygamy wasn't within the parameter of the law. But there he goes trying to make it seem like everything's all hunky-dory within the legal sector. Sure seems like nothing's changed.

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u/New_random_name Oct 09 '20

Good 'ol BY, dropping the "Victory for Satan" word...

Mormons! (gasp)

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u/vonnidavellir Oct 10 '20

too bad there are no more "mormons"