Stuff I Would Just As Soon Not Known

[Damien the Leper]

When topics such as this come up, I am reminded of when I told a former bishop several years ago that I was reading Dr. James W. Loewen's book Lies My Teacher Told Me which is about everything our 11th grade US history textbooks get wrong. My bishop dismissed knowing actual US history as "gossip". Thankfully, I took my US history teacher in college much more seriously than my bishop on this matter. As Dr. Loewen states in his book, "Those who choose to neglect history are destined to repeat the 11th grade." Such is true about church history.

 

What is important is how we respond to and use the knowledge. I choose to implement the knowledge in such a way so as not to repeat or recreate the mistakes made in secular or church history and to find ways of overcoming the dirt.

[bluebell]

I disagree. You are trying to have your "cake" and eat it too. You can't study and weed out the "bad" stuff. It's impossible. Doing it officially is called censorship, an evil thing if there ever was.

 

"God" is not concerned with what we learn on Earth, since it has virtually no impact on immortal minds once the venue of mortality is dispensed with. We learn from literally everything in mortality, "good and bad" intermixed. Trying to "protect" our children is impossible anyway, and we just come off as control freaks, which is what we become in fact when we try. The world is simply too big and complex (especially today!) for parents to be able to stand as some bulwark to protect their precious little darlings from the big bad evil world. We are all born into it, we all run into it, and we all get scarred up by it, and so we need to accept it as early as it happens, when it happens, how it happens, and talk about it endlessly, i.e. talk through it. Children will trust their parents the more if they know mom and dad have been through it already....

 

I could not disagree with you more.  Let's just leave it at that...

[Stone holm]

This message thread seems to be confusing and combining two separate items - 2nd annointing and Calling & Election.

 

1. The Second Annointing is an ordinance, similar to the washing and annointing, only instead of being ordained to become a King & Priest, the person is actually ordained as such.  There is then a second part to the ordinance that involves the husband and wife at home.

Basically, it means you have received all the ordinances and have been sealed up to eternal life and exaltation.  But this is not your calling and election made sure.

 

2. The Calling and Election is when the Savior appears to you personally, lays His hands upon your head, and confirms the sealing.  Or in other words, when the Savior accepts you and makes you His joint-heir.

 

Basically - your first annointing is the calling (to become), your second is your election (chosen & actually given), and the made sure is when the Savior confirms the blessing personally.  Hence, many are called - receive their endowments, but few are chosen - receive their calling & election.

 

There are numerous records of second annointings - specifically the record of Brigham Young & Heber C. Kimball receiving theirs.

Someone's calling and election being made sure is, as you might imagine, not something that is really recorded, but there places where people allude to receiving it.

 

Good point.

[Damien the Leper]

I could not disagree with you more.  Let's just leave it at that...

 

You are so good at and look very good at disagreeing...I do love ya Bluebell!

[ERayR]

When topics such as this come up, I am reminded of when I told a former bishop several years ago that I was reading Dr. James W. Loewen's book Lies My Teacher Told Me which is about everything our 11th grade US history textbooks get wrong. My bishop dismissed knowing actual US history as "gossip". Thankfully, I took my US history teacher in college much more seriously than my bishop on this matter. As Dr. Loewen states in his book, "Those who choose to neglect history are destined to repeat the 11th grade." Such is true about church history.

 

What is important is how we respond to and use the knowledge. I choose to implement the knowledge in such a way so as not to repeat or recreate the mistakes made in secular or church history and to find ways of overcoming the dirt.

 

I love history.  Not the memorization of dates but the stories of real lives.  One thing I have learned is that history changes according to the viewpoint of the teller.  Now throw in the personal biases of the student and it sometimes warps the narrative a great deal.

[Damien the Leper]

I love history.  Not the memorization of dates but the stories of real lives.  One thing I have learned is that history changes according to the viewpoint of the teller.  Now throw in the personal biases of the student and it sometimes warps the narrative a great deal.

 

Dr. Loewen actually said the same thing at a speaking appointment he participated about a decade ago. Except he included in his statement "...especially when using the Library of Congress Archives".

[bluebell]

You are so good at and look very good at disagreeing...I do love ya Bluebell!

 Back at ya! 

[ERayR]

Dr. Loewen actually said the same thing at a speaking appointment he participated about a decade ago. Except he included in his statement "...especially when using the Library of Congress Archives".

 

 

Here is where I am supposed to insert something about great minds. . .

 

I had not even heard of Dr. Loewen but perhaps I should have.

[Damien the Leper]

Here is where I am supposed to insert something about great minds. . .

 

I had not even heard of Dr. Loewen but perhaps I should have.

 

I think, along Dr. Loewen's thought processes, the same could be said about the BYU archives and the FP Vault.

[WmLaw]

This message thread seems to be confusing and combining two separate items - 2nd annointing and Calling & Election.

1. The Second Annointing is an ordinance, similar to the washing and annointing, only instead of being ordained to become a King & Priest, the person is actually ordained as such. There is then a second part to the ordinance that involves the husband and wife at home.

Basically, it means you have received all the ordinances and have been sealed up to eternal life and exaltation. But this is not your calling and election made sure.

2. The Calling and Election is when the Savior appears to you personally, lays His hands upon your head, and confirms the sealing. Or in other words, when the Savior accepts you and makes you His joint-heir.

Basically - your first annointing is the calling (to become), your second is your election (chosen & actually given), and the made sure is when the Savior confirms the blessing personally. Hence, many are called - receive their endowments, but few are chosen - receive their calling & election.

There are numerous records of second annointings - specifically the record of Brigham Young & Heber C. Kimball receiving theirs.

Someone's calling and election being made sure is, as you might imagine, not something that is really recorded, but there places where people allude to receiving it.

That sounds nice and tidy. What are your sources for that?

[JLHPROF]

That sounds nice and tidy. What are your sources for that?

Mysteries of Godliness - Bergera pg 66-68, 87-91 describe the purposes and forms of the ceremonies from historical records.

TPJS pg 150-51, 298 describes Calling & Election as receiving the Second Comforter or the presence of the Savior.

 

And of course, there are other references scattered througout a great many books.

[cinepro]

Well from the blogspot I read, and no I don't remember which -- I was rifling through them as fast as possible.  The records regarding the second annointings were sealed from historians around 1949, which apparently coincided with a substantial drop in the number of them being performed.  I don't know if any of that is true.  The mental image that I had always carried with me was that having ones calling and election made sure was something strictly between you and the Lord, and when the Lord told you directly Himself -- you weren't to talk about it.  Here, however, you have a mortal physically performing an ordinance.  The idea of someone doing such a thing, I suspect became distinctly unfashionable out in the world and so the Church started holding the cards closer to the vest so to speak at that point.  I don't think the membership would get all bent out of shape if it were openly taught, better to hear it from your gospel doctrine teacher than to hear it from someone that just got himself subjected to a disciplinary council blabbing on and on about the fact he had received the ordinance.

 

 

Have you read this article yet?  It's pretty comprehensive regarding the Second Anointing:

 

The Fulness of the Priesthood": The Second Anointing in Latter-day Saint Theology and Practice

 

Your link is not downloading.  But if this has temple content it is inappropriate for this board.

[Questing Beast]

All censorship isn't evil. If your child was just learning how to do simple math. Would it be evil censorship to not skip to calculus in that early learning?

 

Incorrect. God is very concerned with what we learn here on earth. No man can be saved in ignorance. It has all impact on our immortal minds. While those whom haven't had the opprtunity to have the Restored Gospel taught to them in this life. It will be given to them in the next. What ever their level of acceptance does have major implications for where we will be in the next. Also we are to be of service to our fellow man. It is very hard to be of service if we haven't been taught how to do it.

 

We have to protect our young. To not do so is not only a very bad thing to do. It is criminal not to. What good parents do is give more and more responsibility to their children as their children grow and mature in the use of that responsibility. IE; Most kids by the age of about 10 years old have physically developed enough to drive a car on the highway. Very few, if any, have the mental maturity to do so. In the Gospel sense. If we can't control ourselves. What makes us think that God will give us control over anything else?

 

Yes things happen. We live in a fallen world, so bad things are going to happen, as well as good things. All these things will give us experience. As good parents we teach our children how to do good things; and avoid, or minimize, the effects of the bad things. As a parent I knew that I didn't always have the right answer. However as my children grew and progressed we'd talk about it.

I don't see "control freak" in anything you said. What I was addressing is the angst that too many parents feel to shield their children from the world, and for far too long.

 

There is nothing of what I actually said in your objection, and math analogy. Of course children learn as they mature, and we don't dump grad school on them in first grade, the very idea. You also don't excuse not trying to foster a heavenly environment in your own home with fallacious reasoning, like "The world will teach them this crap, so it might as well start here, better to learn it from their father than from strangers". Just because the world has crap in it doesn't mean we allow it in our homes. Example is how parents really teach. Words bounce off. And dogma largely bounces off too, as only the children naturally drawn to it continue in it. Your religious dogma will work with some but not all children....

[volgadon]

Having ones calling and election made sure is openly taught, that it involves mortals conducting an ordinance, is not.

 

I lived in a country with only a handful of members, yet that there is a second anointing was hardly news to me, and the same holds true for my wife and her family- converts from a different country entirely.

[Damien the Leper]

Hi Volg! I miss ya bud.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

I had always felt that in the Church knowledge was a blessing and that we should encourage members as knowledgeable as possible by reading not only the Scriptures, but the sayings of the Prophets, and the History of the Church.  I also always felt that the more knowledge people had including the blemishes and awkward prior activities, the better.  As a result I was normally critical of the attempts to sanitize our history and deny the influence of politics, culture and the world on the Church.   But of late, I have begun to feel that perhaps there are some things that I now know that I would possibly have been better off not knowing.

 

This feeling has arisen as a result of the doctrine of the Second Annointing.  I have tended to do my study based on the Journal of Discourses and teachings of the Prophets, and have shied away from the internet because there is so much false information on it and vicious articles written by former members and professional ministers.  So when the subject came up and I got berated for not having done internet research, I did some internet research and it looks fairly obvious if you were surfing the net you would have known about the rite of the Second Annointing even if the Church hadn’t really openly taught it.

 

Unfortunately, in the process of doing that internet research I got exposed to stuff I would just as soon not have thought about, namely: all the posts arguing over whether Mitt Romney had received the Second Annointing  and whether Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun have had their Temple work done.  So the problem as I see it, is that it is very distasteful to have to do internet research in order to find out things about the Church, and in the process get exposed to stuff you would rather not know.  So should a member stay ignorant because they avoid general internet research on Church matters, and simply go with the sanitized stuff put out by the Church?

I have to ask, what Internet site, and why are you mentioning Mitt Romney, no insult intended but you have been very public about your feelings concerning the right. As for Hitler and Eva, I know most know who Hitler is, I know few who know who Eva Braun is, and unless it was after watching the History Chanel the night before, many Temple workers would not know. Names can be submitted by anyone (although unless family or been dead a very long time...you are not supposed too). The person who did it, may have taken another look and thought, well this can't be that Hitler. Why do so many always assume the worst? I would say 90% or more of the Internet is trash...IMHO. Though I do like it here, but fear I am not well liked, especially by GG, when I rag on BYU. :)

[Stone holm]

I have to ask, what Internet site, and why are you mentioning Mitt Romney, no insult intended but you have been very public about your feelings concerning the right. As for Hitler and Eva, I know most know who Hitler is, I know few who know who Eva Braun is, and unless it was after watching the History Chanel the night before, many Temple workers would not know. Names can be submitted by anyone (although unless family or been dead a very long time...you are not supposed too). The person who did it, may have taken another look and thought, well this can't be that Hitler. Why do so many always assume the worst? I would say 90% or more of the Internet is trash...IMHO. Though I do like it here, but fear I am not well liked, especially by GG, when I rag on BYU. :)

Personally, have no real problem with that sealing and it might well have happened as you said. It's just I would have preferred not to have had to think of it. If you google second Annointing, all those articles pop up including the debate over whether ETB performed the rite on Mitt. I have no intention of posting those links as I found them disgusting. The concern is that more and more people will find themselves scrolling through that stuff if actual doctrine is not being openly taught in the Church. Think of it as where you would prefer to receive knowledge, from the Church or from anti website or from some article posted by an excommunicated member. Children will gain information, is it preferable for them to be taught by their parents or by some fellow teenager.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Personally, have no real problem with that sealing and it might well have happened as you said. It's just I would have preferred not to have had to think of it. If you google second Annointing, all those articles pop up including the debate over whether ETB performed the rite on Mitt. I have no intention of posting those links as I found them disgusting. The concern is that more and more people will find themselves scrolling through that stuff if actual doctrine is not being openly taught in the Church. Think of it as where you would prefer to receive knowledge, from the Church or from anti website or from some article posted by an excommunicated member. Children will gain information, is it preferable for them to be taught by their parents or by some fellow teenager.

You admit to being disgused by what you read, admit it was on an anti-Mormon site and you give it a forum here then admit it may not be true, but the Church should come clean that is in question? Based on this admission maybe you should close the thread. I am confused at the accusation, and fear the underlying motive if there is one.

Edit to respell "there" in proper context instead of "their", I hate autocorrect.

Edited September 24, 2013 by Bill “Papa” Lee

[Stone holm]

You admit to being disgused by what you read, admit it was on an anti-Mormon site and you give it a forum here then admit it may not be true, but the Church should come clean that is in question? Based on this admission maybe you should close the thread. I am confused at the accusation, and fear the underlying motive if their is one.

I don't recall making an accusation?

[ERayR]

Personally, have no real problem with that sealing and it might well have happened as you said. It's just I would have preferred not to have had to think of it. If you google second Annointing, all those articles pop up including the debate over whether ETB performed the rite on Mitt. I have no intention of posting those links as I found them disgusting. The concern is that more and more people will find themselves scrolling through that stuff if actual doctrine is not being openly taught in the Church. Think of it as where you would prefer to receive knowledge, from the Church or from anti website or from some article posted by an excommunicated member. Children will gain information, is it preferable for them to be taught by their parents or by some fellow teenager.

 

And you take the word of some critic on the internet who has no way of knowing any of it and cricize the Church yourself,  (shakes head and shudders in wonder)

[Stone holm]

You admit to being disgused by what you read, admit it was on an anti-Mormon site and you give it a forum here then admit it may not be true, but the Church should come clean that is in question? Based on this admission maybe you should close the thread. I am confused at the accusation, and fear the underlying motive if their is one.

Went back and looked at my original post, there was no accusation contained in it merely a description of stuff that you run into if forced to start googling, which by the way someone else said on this thread would lead you to the knowledge as evidence that it was readily available. I refused to link such sites. So I do not understand your comment.

[ERayR]

Went back and looked at my original post, there was no accusation contained in it merely a description of stuff that you run into if forced to start googling, which by the way someone else said on this thread would lead you to the knowledge as evidence that it was readily available. I refused to link such sites. So I do not understand your comment.

 

Look at some of your recent subsequent posts.  Then put it on the list for your Gospel Doctrine class discussions.  Right behind your approved history, polygamy and polyandry, church membership numbers and church finances. 

[Stone holm]

Look at some of your recent subsequent posts.  Then put it on the list for your Gospel Doctrine class discussions.  Right behind your approved history, polygamy and polyandry, church membership numbers and church finances.

Huh? My approved history? Subsequent posts?

[Sevenbak]

I had always felt that in the Church knowledge was a blessing and that we should encourage members as knowledgeable as possible by reading not only the Scriptures, but the sayings of the Prophets, and the History of the Church.  I also always felt that the more knowledge people had including the blemishes and awkward prior activities, the better.  As a result I was normally critical of the attempts to sanitize our history and deny the influence of politics, culture and the world on the Church.   But of late, I have begun to feel that perhaps there are some things that I now know that I would possibly have been better off not knowing.

 

This feeling has arisen as a result of the doctrine of the Second Annointing.  I have tended to do my study based on the Journal of Discourses and teachings of the Prophets, and have shied away from the internet because there is so much false information on it and vicious articles written by former members and professional ministers.  So when the subject came up and I got berated for not having done internet research, I did some internet research and it looks fairly obvious if you were surfing the net you would have known about the rite of the Second Annointing even if the Church hadn’t really openly taught it.

 

Unfortunately, in the process of doing that internet research I got exposed to stuff I would just as soon not have thought about, namely: all the posts arguing over whether Mitt Romney had received the Second Annointing  and whether Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun have had their Temple work done.  So the problem as I see it, is that it is very distasteful to have to do internet research in order to find out things about the Church, and in the process get exposed to stuff you would rather not know.  So should a member stay ignorant because they avoid general internet research on Church matters, and simply go with the sanitized stuff put out by the Church?

Knowledge is not a good thing if one is not ready for it.  All of us are in that boat in one degree or another.

 

This quote by the prophet, speaking to the faithful, comes to mind...  "if I were to tell you all I know of the kingdom of God, I do know that you would rise up and kill me."  Joseph Smith

[Stone holm]

Knowledge is not a good thing if one is not ready for it.  All of us are in that boat in one degree or another.

 

This quote by the prophet, speaking to the faithful, comes to mind...  "if I were to tell you all I know of the kingdom of God, I do know that you would rise up and kill me."  Joseph Smith

I agree. I am sure that the Prophet Joseph knew quite a bit that he did not reveal and did not establish rites for. However, I assume this is not one of them else we would not have this thread.