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Our general authorities and local leaders deserve our prayers and good will. They also deserve to know when their actions are threatening the testimonies of the members. The problems some local leaders and general authorities have caused me has left me feeling that I have the right, even the obligation to sound off about it. I left the LDS Church for twenty five years because of the opposition I encountered when I stood up to racists and discovered over a century of denials about Brigham Young's false doctrine. Out of my concern for others who have been chased out of the church and have not yet found their way back, I have written Will the Real Mormons Stand Up and Sound the Alarm? When I returned to the church I found that the First Presidency was very tolerant of my new and much less naive testimony. Some local influencial high priests, to their shame, were not tolerant. They need to feel ashamed of the things they put me through. Confronting them did little good in most cases so I wrote the book.

At times I felt uneasy about the practice of refusing to allow black men of African descent to be given the priesthood. Then, when I discovered an effort to make the church a haven for racists I was mistreated by local leaders because I reminded the investigator class I was teaching, that black skin was not the curse of Cain and that worthy blacks can enter the temple to be baptized for the dead. Wanting to understand the source of the hateful behavior I encountered I studied deeply into church history for several years, including the 26 volume Journal of Discourses. What I discovered was a long history of denial concerning the false doctrine taught by Brigham Young and the reasons for the forced removal of the church to the Utah Territory. When I wanted to determine how much influence one of our scriptures called The Pearl of Great Price had in promoting the practice of withholding the priesthood from blacks of African descent and in supporting some of the prevalent racist attitudes I researched the controversy surrounding it.

In 1978 when the priesthood was made available to men of all races by an announced revelation, some members were suggesting that the time had come and the blacks were now ready while others suggested the change came because of pressure from civil rights groups. During the 1950s and 1960s when David O. McKay was attempting to obtain revelation to put an end to the practice of withholding the priesthood from blacks one of his counselors told him that the saints were not ready for that. An essay on race and the priesthood at the church web site does not support the idea that we were right to withhold the priesthood from blacks up to 1978. The essay justifies the right of blacks to hold the priesthod with passages in the Book of Mormon which declare that the gospel is for every nation. Since The Pearl of Great Price should not have been considered justification for withholding the priesthood from blacks I felt safe in stating my doubts about that scripture to the First Presidency after I returned to the church.

After being re-baptized and active in the church for one year I became eligible to have my blessings restored. I was required to write a letter to the First Presidency of the church. I felt the need to be completely frank with the prophet. Since The Pearl of Great Price was the source of racism in the church and it had no credibility with non-Mormon scholars I admitted that my testimony does not require me to believe that all of our leaders have been true to their callings, nor does it require me to consider The Pearl of Great Price to be completely credible. That statement did not prevent me from having my blessings restored, not did it cause me any problems with our general authorities. However, when I reported the tolerant attitude of the First Presidency toward me and my testimony I quickly discovered that a handful of local members were not so tolerant and they had placed a target on my back.

That some members of the church are not as tolerant of me as is the First Presidency awakened in me a desire to look for the cause and try to expose and oppose it. Those who opposed me went so far as to get my bishop and stake president to demand to see the text of a sermon I was scheduled to give before I would be allowed to give it. They wouldn't tell me who complained about my testimony or why they complained. The only cause for their concern which they would give was the "passion" in my testimony. Listing passion as the reason for the scrutiny of my sermon was obviously bogus. This left me concerned and confused. Had someone been reading my blog and did they see something that upset them? If so did they refuse to explain because they wanted me to feel free to keep writing articles for my blog which could get me excommunicated again? I smell the stench of self-appointed Danites conspiring against me.

As Latter-Day Saints we have much to be proud of. The gospel which was restored to Joseph Smith agrees with so many passages in the New Testament which the Catholics and Protestants know nothing of, especially regarding the nature of God; Jesus, a resurrected being in the image of God the Father, and the Holy Ghost, a personage of spirit. A God whose purpose is to provide a means of salvation for all those who desire it, is defined to our understanding instead of with hard to understand phrases. Our God does not consign to Hell all those who die without having a proper chance to accept him as some churches do. The Lord's church makes available vicarious baptism for those who accept the gospel in the spirit world so that they may fulfill the requirements of salvation. We also have a church which looks after both the spiritural and physical needs of its members as did the church in olden times. Our charitable efforts to help others including non-Mormons are well known. But, sometimes I think we are too proud of the hardships our ancestors faced in being chased out of New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Nauvoo. These hardships are referred to as persecutions, being tried and tested, the refiner's fire, chastisement, experience, etc.. We must acknowledge that how well we accept the punishment is also a test, but if we fail to recognize the reason for the punishment false pride steps in and we will likely continue to make mistakes, perhaps bigger ones.

In Section 63 of the Doctrine and Covenants the Saints were warned against stirring up the inhabitants of Zion (Missouri) to anger. They were told that they must purchase their hineritance,                               

         "30) And if by purchase, behold you are blessed;

         31) And if by blood, as you are forbidden to shed blood, lo, your enemies are upon you, and ye shall            be scourged from city to city ... ."

Section 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants tells us why our ancestors ended up in the Utah Territory. When we read in verses 54-59 of that section we find it is because they treated lightly the things they received and that vanity and unbelief brought the whole church under condemnation. They were told that they would remain under this condemnation until they remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments which the Lord had given them. They were threatened with a scourge and a judgment and a promise from God that He would not allow the children of the kingdom to pollute his holy land. In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith as the leader of the Nauvoo militia, drilled the troops on Sundays. Did he do that to test the saints to see if they would trust in the arm of flesh and come under the curse delivered through Jeremiah about 24 hundred years earlier (Jeremiah 17;5-6)? The passage tells of those so cursed having to dwell in a salt place.

Early on the saints were tested to see if they believed the book of Mormon, which test was prophesied in 3rd Nephi 26:8-11. They were not to receive the rest of the Book of Mormon until they believed that which they first received. Our Doctrine and Covenants, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon all make it clear that the gospel is for everyone and that believers are equal in the sight of God. It didn't take the saints long to demonstrate that they believed the Pearl of Great Price with its racist doctrine to be more relevant than the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the New Testament.

Jacob 4:14 makes it clear what happens when the Lord's people look beyond the mark and seek things which are hard to understand; they come to despise the words of plainness, so the Lord delivers things which are hard to understand and He does it that they might stumble. Decades of denial have made false pride common among the saints, so common that our scholars and leaders still have not admitted that Brigham Young promoted racist doctrine. Instead of admitting that what Jacob 4:14 says about the Jews also applies to us, they still give us lesson manuals which promote the idea that God will not allow our prophet to lead us astray. Until we admit that we need to repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon, the Lord will not heal the Quorum of Twelve (D&C 112:12-13) or the church as a whole and we will continue to lust after things which are hard to understand. Even in our recent conferences the meaning of the atonement is being broadened so far that I find it incomprehensible.

The original New Testament understanding of the atonement was that the whole human family from the creation to the final judgment will be resurrected because the Savior overcame death and was resurrected after paying for Adam's transgression, but only those who are baptized and reborn of the Spirit in the image of the Savior will receive the full benefit of the atonement and become joint heirs with Jesus Christ. I told a stake president that I thought it was silly to imagine that it took the Savior four tries to atone for our sins, three tries in the Garden and one on the Cross. He immediately accused me of rejecting the basis of the church. Some of our general authorities are contradicting New Testament passages which comment on Old Testament passages about the Savior in order to justify their efforts to broaden the definition of atonement. Some of our general authorities are asking us to believe that Jesus, while He was in the Garden, was atoning for all of our mental and physical stresses in addition to all the sins committed by the unrepentant. Does that mean we don't need Good Samaritans, home teachers, visiting teachers, guardian angels, or the Holy Ghost to comfort us? While our general authorities are still refusing to come clean and put a stop to decades of denial about our history I find it silly for them to expect us to believe that they are smarter and more spiritually attuned than were Peter, James, John, and Paul.

David O. McKay's efforts to undo the damage racists were doing to the church gives me some hope. Mark E. Petersen in 1980 denounced Brigham Young's Adam/God theory, but without calling it the Adam/God theory. At the end of that sermon he stated, "Advocaters of false doctrine have come among us.", but he did not say who they were. I believe it is the prevalence of false pride and ignorance of the scriptures and our history among the saints which keeps us in denial of the truth about our past. Only the truth can free us from the dangers we face from those who hate God and desire to see us fail.