Light is Good.

[Teancum]

On 5/25/2017 at 2:54 PM, Avatar4321 said:

except the root of the church is Jesus Christ, not Joseph Smith

No not really.  Can you reject Joseph Smith and be a member in good standing?

[Jeanne]

8 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I am using techniques I learned from the Bible.

1 Corinthians 12:3 Wherefore I give you to understand ............that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

Hebrews 10:15 Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,

Luke 11:13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

 

My confirmation of Joseph as a prophet was the same as my confirmation that Jesus is the Christ and that of His Atonement. 

I was not raised in the church in my early years. We mostly did not have an automobile. We lived out in the country (we called it the sticks) and I do not recall seeing the inside of a church until we moved to the "town" of Pink Hill many years ago. I was in the first grade in school. We went to Presbyterian, Methodist, and Free Will Baptist churches in that town, i.e. the ones we could get to by walking. I was in my eighth year when we had a car that would get us to the LDS Albertson Branch. a distance of only about eight miles, but it seemed much further to me then.

My mother told me that it was the "true church" and I believed her, but I did not know anything about it. However, at one Sacrament Service an elderly man was speaking and I saw a halo about that man's head (I did not know what a halo was at that point in my life) and I knew that what he was saying was true. That experience has stayed with me all of my life. I learned bit by bit what the man had been speaking.

When I first read Joseph's own story in the Pearl of Great Price and the First Vision Account I was struck by the same conviction, a communication from the Holy Ghost that it was true and that Joseph was indeed a prophet.

However those experiences became dim in my mind as some of my desires conflicted with the standards of the Church and I actually left for quite a period of time. Later, in a period of great spiritual and emotional crisis where suicide seemed to be a more desirable option than continuing on with my miserable life, I actually began praying again for the first time in years. It took some time and a lot of effort, but one day I had a vision, a communication I cannot describe. It brought back vividly my earlier experiences and showed me what I had to do both temporally and spiritually, in precise detail, to survive and "make it." I followed those steps and, although I have not "made it" yet, as in the Celestial Kingdom, I did make it past a terrible crisis in my life, including the unexpecteId death of my wife.

I do not know what experiences you have been through in your life. I can only attest to what I have known and experienced in my life. I know that I have received revelation from the Holy Ghost concerning the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Joseph Smith, as well as other matters. 

Glenn

I appreciate and respect the sharing of your experiences here in this post.  I wish you the best.  It helps to understand where people are coming from.

[Jeanne]

10 minutes ago, Teancum said:

No not really.  Can you reject Joseph Smith and be a member in good standing?

Good question.  This is why it is difficult to hold on to God/Jesus when leaving the church.  For some reasons..Joseph Smith is the reason..imo..for staying in ..or leaving. 

[Glenn101]

5 hours ago, Teancum said:

So do you give the same credence to the so called personal revelations of the women who think Warren Jeffs is God's prophet?

It seems we have competing "Spirits of Truth." But, I hope that you can see a lot of differences between the way the FLDS is run and the Church during the time Joseph was alive.

 

Edited May 28, 2017 by Glenn101
A further thought

[pogi]

6 hours ago, Teancum said:

Your comparison is absolutely ludicrous.  I am surprised that you keep hammering on it.

I don't really care for your smug tone or your opinion.  What is the point of your post, besides insult?  If you want to have a discussion, fine, tell me what you find "absolutely ludicrous" about the comparison.  I am fine talking about reasons behind your opinion, but I am not fine with substance-less opinions laced with insults. 

I was responding to this - "Extreme authority is justification for extreme scrutiny and transparency." 

If that statement is absolutely true, then why does it apply to the LDS church and not the US government?  We have a short tempered president who has the authority to go to war with access to nuclear war-heads.  President Bush took us to war with zero transparency or approval from anyone, and now trump has that same ability.  We have zero insight into government funds from the Federal Reserve - it has never been audited!  We don't have access to what is discussed behind closed doors in the government, but Meadowchick is calling for absolute transparency in General Authority meetings when she is not even a member of the Church?  People have been detained in Guantanamo without any trial or even a charge, and yet Meadowchick is more concerned about transparency in disciplinary councils in the LDS church?  Why?  Because, according to her, "extreme authority is justification for extreme scrutiny and transparency".  Is it really that ludicrous a comparison?

Edited May 28, 2017 by pogi

[Glenn101]

11 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Glenn, thanks so much for sharing your personal story and testimony with me. I am very glad that that it has helped you in your life. I wish you only the best.

For the purposes of this topic I will describe a few types of Spirit experiences:

1) You intellectually see a clear path and the Spirit confirms it with good feelings

2) You have good feelings about a choice and attribute them to the Spirit

3) You have good feelings about a thing (like a belief or a church) and attribute it to the Spirit

4) You have good feelings about a person and attribute them to the Spirit l

I have done all four of these things and more, as I guess you surely also have. There are also other ways to describe the Spirit. Yet, my evaluation about the Spirit has changed and I no longer believe experiences like 2, 3, or 4 are  necessarily valid examples of the Spirit of God. They imo can be overgeneralised to legitimize too much.

For example, many Spirit experiences can be very simple witnesses of the worth of a person, be it yourself or others and are common as we make choices validating that worth. 

Moroni's Promise, rather than a real truth-seeking method, now seems to me like an emotional method to leverage loyalty to the Book of Mormon.  There are so many things in the book which can generate strong feelings to facilitate this method.

Alternatively, I think the Spirit will testify of things more simply and specifically, one thing at a time.  To me, a church with a claim of authority and direct line to God is an inadequate replacement of the authentic spiritual life. While an authentic spiritusl life might happen concurrently as one participates in a "one true church," I think that at some point or points the two will likely diverge.  

Sometimes the separation becomes untenable.

I guess it really comes down to blind faith. To me, one cannot prioritise another person's spiritual experience over one's own.

If one, then, is going to be an active participant of equal worth in a spiritual gathering of believers, they will see the doings common to their group, that those experiences can be made opportunities to feel the Spirit with an informed mind, more expansively and more authentically. These doings, whatever they are, will be continually an inseparable part of the shared experieces. Hiding such things is only a hindrance to growth and unity.

 

 

I do believe that you are being just a bit biased here. I guess that you have to. I know that I have to. Your first statement goes:

"1) You intellectually see a clear path and the Spirit confirms it with good feelings"

And then, with all the other statements you end it with "attribute them to the spirit." Isn't that stacking the deck with you own favored interpretation? Should not your first statement also end with "attribute to the spirit" rather than "confirmed by the spirit?"

It is my belief that spiritual truths require spiritual confirmation. They may be open to reason once revealed, but reason alone cannot discern them. Could we have discerned the need for an Atonement intellectually if it had not been revealed to us? But once it was revealed, it makes sense. There are elements of the Atonement and resurrection which I still do not understand, but accept because it was revealed and the Spirit has confirmed. The part that I do not understand is why Jesus had to die and be resurrected in order that all mankind and womankind could be resurrected. And I certainly cannot comprehend the enormity of the pain and suffering that Christ had to endure to effect that Atonement.

There also is a problem with the intellectual approach in that not all are endowed with the same intellectual acumen. I know that when I first became convinced of the verity of the restoration message by the Holy Ghost I had not the intellectual development to understand the truth of which I had become convinced. That understanding has been and still is an ongoing process. I am nowhere near close to "being there" yet.

You said "I guess it really comes down to blind faith. To me, one cannot prioritise another person's spiritual experience over one's own." And I agree with this.  As I have said, I was not there when you had your spiritual experiences. I was privy to the spiritual experiences of any of the ladies who became plural wives to Joseph Smith. Therefore it is impossible for me to articulate the differences and similarities of those experiences with mine. It is really impossible for me to articulate what really happened to and with me to engender the depth of conviction I feel.

The interesting thing, or at least one interesting thing about the polygamy scene is that when my current wife was originally investigating the church she was turned off and ended her investigation when some of her friends told her about polygamy and the church. It was years later that she began reading books about the restoration and Joseph Smith's part in it that she became converted to the Gospel, despite the negative information she had been given. It came as a bit of a shock to some young missionaries when they knocked on her door and upon opening it and recognizing them, she said "I am ready to be baptized!" 

Now I have to get to my glass and try clean off some of that soot so that I do not have to look through it so darkly.

Glenn