JVW

No, while that experience was a powerful moment with the divine it was like a .0001 out of 100 in comparison to my NDE experience. It was in the same realm though with the subtle not-quite-human feelings present. I've never heard of that before, I'll check it out thanks. My NDE is what caused me to no longer be atheist, so mine was from an atheist background. It isn't something I share very often.

directly related but I really hope that the church produces their own translation of the bible. I think the church's scholars and the purported spiritual gifts and authority that the church has would produce an incredible translation. It would also be great because it could be copyright free and available for free for anyone around the world via any medium. Current Bible copyright laws really suck.

Elder Scott is my favorite apostle of all time so whatever he says I believe it. I don't remember enough about the blog posts I've read to really comment further here, but thank you for sharing this information, I wasn't really aware of this. Regardless of whether it's actually happening or not, there is definitely enough material available (even if it's falsely or coerced) for someone to convince themselves of LDS SRA being a reality and it looks like Tim Ballard took the bait. I chatted with a social worker once who worked with children in the darkest police cases for his entire career and he told me (paraphrasing because of my crappy memory), "Don't trust any cop who's been a cop for more than 10 years. No normal, sane person could keep their good moral values in that industry for longer than that amount of time." I thought it was a really interesting remark, and his comment felt loaded with a lot of experience with the dark side of the police force. I can imagine his comment is doubly more applicable for those who work to rescue children who are trafficked. The kind of material they have to deal with day to day as they work to catch the bad guys would break any man, I think. And I view Tim Ballard as an example of this.

I +1 this Manol. I love NDEs, I don't care what religious background they're from, and I have experienced one myself. I must say that the experience, while it may have left me with words, the words do not adequately do the experience justice, and the perspective change... I wish there was some way for me to retain that, but the good news is that when we die we will all have it, that "experiental understanding of everything" kind of thing. Our bodies truly are designed to be incredibly limited, and I think the text you present here does a good job of trying to describe just how different our beings will feel after we pass on. In a cruel sort of irony, when I was atheist I wanted to be dead because I looked forward to ceasing to exist. After my NDE I wanted to be dead so I could experience what I felt again. So my goal in life is now to try to make my life so good that I don't want to be dead. (Yeah there may or may not be some CPTSD going on, but it is what it is.)

That's a lovely thought, Calm.

I saw a Dan McLellan video recently in which he makes a wild statement. Apparently, back when the Israelites adopted El as their God, El was the God over a pantheon of 70 gods and He assigned Jehovah, as one of the 70 gods, to be the God of Israel. El also had a wife Asherah according to McLellan. What an interesting idea.

Indeed, you raise a good point. If we are meant to handle this much as mortals, what kind of trials may await us in perfect, impossible to kill bodies with unlimited stamina? I sure hope it isn't Chinese water torture for a trillion years, that would suck.

Here's where I currently stand regarding Tim Ballard. I believe that Tim Ballard did mess around with girls on his child rescuing missions. I believe that Tim Ballard is using illegal drugs as Nehor mentioned. Tim strikes me as arrogant and uncouth and I wouldn't want him as my neighbor. I believe that he has done a lot of good in rescuing children from trafficking, but that he's been in the industry too long. But I'm not inclined to entirely disbelieve all of his conspiracy claims. I've tried looking for the articles I've seen over the years (only 1-3 total) of firsthand accounts of people who have experienced or participated in ritual satanic abuse in Utah. But I can't find the sites now. Each site was just a blog post somewhere deep in the internet of a single individual speaking about their personal experience as part of an LDS family that practiced satanic rituals. Some of these accounts were very difficult to read. Based on what I've personally seen and read, I don't think the idea is crazy that there are some members of the church, or even some members in church leadership, who are part of the secret combinations present before Jesus comes. I don't personally believe any of the 12 are involved, but I could see it at the 70 level or below. If the LDS priesthood is God's real, true power on Earth, and if Satan is real and imitates God and fights against Him, then it stands to reason that there would be a Satanic priesthood present on the Earth with blood sacrifice and all of that stuff, and who would be the most prized person to gather into that dark priesthood? An atheist or a Judas? I'd like to note here that what I said in the preceding paragraph is pure conjecture and as much as I've tried, I will not be able to fulfill a CFR request for it and can remove this paragraph (even if I could find the sites, it's just one person's personal testimony without additional witnesses). It can be really hard to find certain material online and it was so many years ago I don't remember how I found it. I don't run in those online circles anymore. His idea about the leadership, in general, having issues is (according to my view) from Avraham Gileadi's translation and commentary of Isaiah. Avraham's translation is free online, as well as his commentary. And the chapter I'm thinking of specifically is here: https://isaiahexplained.com/commentary/28 His translation is really, really good IMO, but his commentary I take with a grain of salt. There is a chapter in Isaiah that very explicitly condemns the tribe of Ephraim for getting rich, fat, and lazy. And Avraham, according to his deep knowledge of Isaiah and stuff, believes that that chapter is apocalyptic in nature, that it's referring to the latter-days and not some time past. And honestly, I could see it his way if I chose to. I've met many rich, fat, and lazy Ephraimites. And the church restored by Ephraim and headquartered in Ephraim's land of inheritance is incredibly wealthy. A few snippets from the chapter commentary if you don't want to read through it all. Interestingly enough, Avraham was excommunicated wrongly and ended up getting rebaptized. His response to his excommunication was very gentle and humble though, the kind of response you expect from someone who is a true disciple of Christ (not like cough *Tim Ballard* cough). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avraham_Gileadi The Tim has reacted to his excommunication is wrong. God will only accept those with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and the way he speaks and talks about things doesn't really reflect either of those qualities to me. That's just my two cents there.

I saw a really good video about this by a channel called "The Great Harvest" or something like that on YouTube. The guy is basically a "Christian politics" commentator and very good at what he does. From what I understand the root document that GAFCON points to is the 2008 Jerusalem document which was basically like the Anglican version of the Family Proclamation. Their official statement is very sharp. They will not have any of their [whatever their word for is] congregations giving any money to the Archbishop Anglican sect. And they will not accept any money from that sect. They even are willing to allow churches in other areas that aren't GAFCON to get redistricted into their own. I'm curious what this means for how they view the English Monarchy, and how their new governing body will function. Presumably it will function like the old one, but will they get recognition from the King, and isn't the King a key figure in Anglicanism because the King is the head of the Church instead of the pope?

As the conversation has progressed on this thread I've been reflecting on how the problem of evil is inherently tied to trust in God, because there is no satisfactory explanation for this problem. As an addict I've been attending various 12 step meetings regularly for a number of years and the 3rd step of AA is "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him". The first three steps, summarized succinctly are: I can't, He can, I let Him. And the key principle in step 3 is to consciously choose to trust God. It is a huge step and a very difficult one to take, but one that every recovering addict needs to take in order to be completely free of addiction through the program. The challenging aspect of trusting God as an addict (speaking for myself) is that the root cause of my addiction is childhood trauma and I've had to wrestle with why God didn't protect me or prevent me from becoming a victim. In a way, I feel like God is the cause of my addiction because of what He let happen to me and for some other reasons that I won't go into here. Yet I'm supposed to trust God, who let me be hurt so deeply while in a vulnerable state, and let Him make decisions in my life that will supposedly free me of the bondage I'm in. It's not just a conceptual issue but a deeply emotional and painful thing to consider. It's taken me years to take step 3, and I know some people who have been in the program for over a decade who have still not taken step 3. And even after having taken the step, there are days when I step back and doubt the trust that I've placed in God. It's something that I have to work on every day. Life is hard.

How do I know we are all going to die and that God's responsible for death? Because I know that God exists and I know that death is inevitable and God is powerful enough to prevent it. I'm not quite sure what you're asking here.

Well, in case I wasn't clear enough, I do not know the mind of God. But I do know three things more surely than I know that I exist and that you're not an AI poster: there is a God, God is love beyond the ability of human comprehension, and there is an afterlife. So while I may not know why the most loving being in existence designed life to be torturous, cruel, and full of disease and death I believe that the way things are are the most loving way that things could be. Can I fault anyone for hating God or viewing Him as evil? No. And if you view Him that way I don't blame you. I'm sure you've been hurt in very serious ways, as we all have, and that any of us can be justified in turning our backs on God.

I have wondered for many years why there hasn't been a "Mormon serial killer" yet. I know of a news story from the 80s of a couple in Kaysville Utah who believed that they were given a trial of Abraham and stabbed their baby to death on their kitchen counter while truly believing that God would stop them at the last moment. I could see someone believing that God gave them a "righteous" calling of committing souls to Celestial glory by murdering a bunch of kids under 8 years old.

You are correct. God can take any of us back to Him today, or in a year from now, or in 50 years from now. God has our days numbered and chooses the exact moment when to cause death to overtake us. We have zero control over that and can only exercise moral agency in mortality during the time in which God allows us to live. We really don't have much agency, but we have enough. The less we know the less we will be condemned according to the laws of justice, and the only real choice that we need to make is whether or not to follow the light of Christ in our day to day living.

I'd never heard of the Sunset revelation before. I found the text here and read through it and I am wondering why it's not canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants? I have reservations about how much of it is actually God's word but we've canonized worse and it reads like the D&C does. I wonder how many other revelations there are that could have been canonized but weren't? That was a wild read. https://mormonperfection.com/TLC/RefLibraryFolder/Revelations/RevSunsetRevelation.html From the prelude (at the bottom of the page) Three things that were mentioned specifically in the text were I know this is a total tangent but whatever, this is a zombie thread anyways. I know that most people don't think about what "ripened in iniquity" means but I believe that it means that priesthood leaders are being intentionally assassinated. Joseph was assassinated, but that's been about it, so I don't view this nation as ripened yet. I do think the day is soon coming when we will see church leaders get assassinated, at that point I will regard any prophecies about what happens to a "ripened" nation more seriously. So I disagree with the text here. "House of God" is another term for temple. For some reason I thought the judgments would start in the church, not in the temple. I think that's interesting to think about. There are a lot less people who go to the temple than to the church. I wonder if this could allude to some Judases in the church? People who have God's power and intentionally pervert it to use as servants of the devil. I don't doubt that that has happened and is currently happening somewhere, why wouldn't the devil want to use God's priesthood for his own nefarious ends? The last two quoted verses referencing the washing of feet. I'm pretty sure that's an "elite" ordinance in the temple that most aren't privy to and is part of the second anointing ceremony. Cool to see reference to that here, but strange that it is filtered down to even the Priests and Elders, not just the top brass leadership.

I agree with you and I think we all have an impetus to act to reduce the suffering in the world. However, we are not God, our vision is not His vision. You or I may think that the best thing in life is getting a good job, a good house, raising a few kids, fighting for social justice, advancing scientific knowledge, etc. But to God those may be (IDK) things that make it more difficult to do His job. I learned back in 2011 that I'm a very poor judge of determining what is good and bad in my life. But I do believe that it is good to act with integrity and if something is wrong to do whatever it takes to make it right. I'm not purporting to know what the mind of God is, but my current best guess is that His primary concern is all of us coming to Christ for salvation and redemption. In the scriptures I read about how God is in all things and that all things testify of Christ. It's as if God designed the entire universe from the quantum to the astrological realm to communicate one thing: the reality and divinity of Jesus Christ. I think that the problem of evil is one of the greatest wrestles each of us has with God. In my life, during my wrestle with Him, before I ever chose to give up and submit, I turned my back on God and grew angry with Him. After many, many years and some colorful prayers and acknowledgements I gave up and He changed my heart. I believe He can do the same for anyone and that that is the greatest miracle of all. Ultimately, whether I think that God is good or evil doesn't matter, He's still going to allow or cause the suffering and death of every person who's ever lived on this planet and there's nothing I can do to stop Him from doing that.

You raise an interesting point. I don't know if the following idea is related to your post but you got me thinking about it. I think moral agency is defined within a scope or boundary that God sets. Every breath we take is a gift from God and He can stop giving us that gift at any second of any day. With some He stops breathing in them when they are a baby, and with others they are over 100 years old. The fact that our breathing is only possible via God's power (which is something that I believe) means that the agency I exercise is only able to be exercised as long as God feels like letting me exercise it. When I also consider all of the things that have happened to me in my life that were out of my control and shaped who I was (Chris Williams comes to mind as an example. He lost his pregnant wife and a few children when he was hit by a drunk driver) I can see that the choices I'm presented with are influenced, in large part, by a reality that is outside of my control. While I do have moral agency, it is very clear to me that it is a gift. And each person's gift of moral agency may be larger or smaller in size, scope, or length of time given in which to exercise it in mortality. These are all choices that God makes. I think that in the Church, and in the world generally, that the amount of choices God makes in each person's life day-to-day is drastically understated and overlooked. That is one of the reasons why the Old Testament is my favorite religious text. I love how clearly it portrays God's ability to make decisions, regardless of how the reader interprets them. I think the following is related to your post, I have no idea why the above went through my mind while reading your post but whatever. I think one of the most remarkable things about God is that He hasn't been caught yet while being ever present in every person's life. The way we have been designed makes it so that there is no way anything God does will provide irrefutable evidence of His existence. We always have a choice whether or not to believe. Those who believe because they witness a miracle are given an opportunity, but I'm pretty sure that in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon there is talk about how faith precedes miracles and not the other way around.

Crap, I'm the wrong guy to CFR about this. I don't have an X account and I blocked access via 3 internet filters on my home network. I did see a meme in a Ward Radio stream that basically said that a Christian nation cannot include Mormons. And I've heard a lot of chatter through the grapevine about Marc(k?) Driscoll. In my personal experience I served in the DFW area in Texas and chatted with a lot of non-denominational, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc. and everyone who didn't take personal time to read the Bible every day hated the missionaries. They were otherwise lovely people who, in many cases, had a much stronger sense of community than my church does. I currently have two close friends: one is a Pentecostal and the other is a non-denominational. They both think my church is a demonic cult and that I'm going to hell when I die for worshipping another Jesus, we have very candid conversations. All that being said, in my experience the Evangelical community absolutely does not like the "Mormon" community. I believe there is a Pew research study that backs this up too. Pastor Jeff of Hello Saints has even acknowledged as much while he actively tries to build bridges of tolerance and understanding between the two communities. I thought Fundamentalists were like Amish and stuff, I'm pretty sure Fundamentalist groups don't have any issues with "Mormons". We may be getting our wires crossed here if you have different definitions of these two groups.

Lol. If people start focusing on child abuse for awhile then I'll take issue with this derail, but I enjoyed reading your post so don't worry about it for now.

The title page is underrated TBH. People take the JST as more doctrinally sound than the Title Page when the opposite is true.

IDK who he is but if he's half a good a drummer as Mike Portnoy then I like the guy.

On a sidenote, I'm not sure if this view applies to all of Satanism, or just to a certain sect (there is a European Satanic leader I follow on YouTube IIRC his name is Nicholas Shreck but I'd have to look it up), but I've heard the view espoused that Satan is actually a good guy doing exactly what God is commanding him to do. That Satan is actually one of God's generals and his mission is to tempt and try God's children to see if they will choose Jesus. So Satan is not actually destined for hell but to dwell in glory with God for a job well done.

You should put more typographical errors in your posts. You're allowed to be human. I hope God will bless you in this terrible situation. I'm so sorry that happened to you.

I just wanted to pop in and say that Pyreaux is one of my favorite posters on this forum. I have learned some wild things from him and I assume that he's a remarkable person based on how much information he seems to have available to recall on any given topic. I also trust what he writes so I hope he never lies to me. I also hate AI and if anyone ever tries to force me to use it I will exercise my first amendment right to "freedom of religion/conscience" to escape having to use it. My disdain of AI will probably, eventually cause me to become uncompetitive in my field because AI is all the rage right now in the tech world, but if I have to become a farmer one day then so be it. I think AI is human's creating a god after their own image and in addition to that, I hate not being able to not do something and AI has been forced everywhere. As a result, even though I don't want to use it, I use it every day. Point in fact, it has an imprint on Pyreaux's posts and I can't opt out of that.

I think you are presenting an interesting idea. I agree with the depth of Christ's love for us, but I don't necessarily view God as being confident in us and I don't believe His confidence in us is necessary. He can be confident in Christ and in Himself (as to me, God has done way more with way less, so why does He need to have confidence in me?), and we need to be as well, but even on my worst days I probably view myself as a better person that I actually am in God's eyes. Because I'm not good compared to God, nobody is (see Mark 10:18). I think His love in light of how awful and depraved I am compared to Him is what really works miracles. Because His love is completely unmerited, unjustified, and unwarranted. I get it for stress. I can't watch and enjoy a show like Downton Abbey because the tension and stress is so high and it just freaks me out I can't handle it. I was really struck by these verses in Enos a couple of days ago and my mind has latched onto them as an irritant working on forming a pearl. God forgave Enos, but Enos had to do something after receiving forgiveness. He had to believe God. I have told people on many occasions that I've never felt healed, forgiven, redeemed, etc. Now I am wondering if I have experienced the miracles of Christ but I wasn't a person capable of receiving them at the time. If God clearly told me today, "JVW, your sins are forgiven." would I believe Him? Would I accept it? Do I actually believe that God will not lie? Do I actually have the faith in Jesus to be made whole? Because after Enos knew that God could not lie he then says: I don't know that this has anything to do with the topic but it's been on my mind and you reminded me of it in your response so I'll just leave it here if only to get it "on paper".