VernPorter.com

Warning: Declaration of smilies_plugin::GetDefaultSettings() should be compatible with Plugin::GetDefaultSettings(&$params) in /home1/vporter/public_html/b2e/plugins/_smilies.plugin.php on line 73

Warning: Declaration of smilies_plugin::GetDefaultUserSettings() should be compatible with Plugin::GetDefaultUserSettings(&$params) in /home1/vporter/public_html/b2e/plugins/_smilies.plugin.php on line 149

Warning: Declaration of facebook_plugin::SkinTag($params) should be compatible with Plugin::SkinTag(&$params) in /home1/vporter/public_html/b2e/plugins/_facebook.plugin.php on line 56

Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; OnlineSessions has a deprecated constructor in /home1/vporter/public_html/b2e/plugins/_whosonline.plugin.php on line 121

Warning: Declaration of whosonline_plugin::SkinTag($params) should be compatible with Plugin::SkinTag(&$params) in /home1/vporter/public_html/b2e/plugins/_whosonline.plugin.php on line 84

I am grateful for my family. A man whom I highly respect and admire once told me that my family would open the way for me to have many friends. He failed to warn me that they could also be a burden, for there are men in the church who long for polygamy. They look forward to going off to some far corner of the universe with wives and children to start a kingdom of their own. They are not satisfied with the idea of living on a celestialized Earth where they will have to share the inheritance reserved for Abraham and his seed with other celestial beings. They look beyond the mark for something more. Some of these brethren are jealous of my family and don’t believe that I deserve them. Some of them are willing to try to drive me out of the church in the hopes that my family might be assigned to them in their own personal Celestial Kingdom. Such men are placing their salvation in jeopardy, for if the many efforts they make to advance the Kingdom of God are because of their desires to be rewarded with many wives rather than for their love of righteousness, they shall suffer loss.

There are men in this stake who have made personal attacks on my reputation and have influenced others to take part in their attacks on me. The boldest have done this openly. One such brother has denounced me in High Priest’s group meeting several times. He didn’t offend me when in his home one day he took me into his office where he showed me on his computer how he deals with controversy in a better way than do I, or so he thinks. I have worked as a stringer for a local newspaper where they paid me for each article I wrote so I am not lacking self confidence in my writing skills, so that did not bother me.

After giving up my job as a stringer in order to have more time to finish the book I was writing, I took to writing “letters to the editor” occasionally. Some of the saints looked forward to reading my letters so I announced it to the priesthood every time one of my letters appeared in the paper. After one such announcement my adversary told the High Priest’s group that my letters were too confrontational. He also told the group that “It has been my experience that when someone leaves the church it is because he has been offended and cannot forgive”. Another time he stated, “It has been my experience that when someone leaves the church it is because he is guilty of serious sin. I don’t mean Vern, of course”. Everyone knew that I had recently come back to the church after a twenty five year apostasy. Several years later when I confronted him he denied having made the above statements. It comforted me to hear President Uchtdorf contradict my adversary’s assertions about apostates several years ago in conference.

The first time I was scheduled to talk in Sacrament Meeting someone talked the Stake President and the Bishop into requiring me to submit a copy of my talk for approval before  I would be allowed to speak. The Stake President had become so prejudiced against me by someone’s efforts that he made it obvious that he didn’t expect I would want to rewrite it and I wasn’t in the mood to change his mind, so I decided to pass on the opportunity. I thought that the Stake President was a friend of mine. I photographed his son’s wedding reception and didn’t charge him. He was the one who forwarded my letter to the first presidency, requesting that my blessings be restored and he was very supportive at that time. There were several other attacks on me and when confronted, two of the guilty parties actually apologized.

In the early 1970s I became aware of the evil influence of polygamists and racists still active in the church. Before I left the church I studied every sermon of Brigham Young’s which is recorded in the Journal of Discourses and the explanations for them in several commentaries written by general authorities. It was very disappointing to discover that Brigham Young taught false doctrine and Joseph Fielding Smith said “No he didn’t”. Another general authority said that Brigham Young sometimes miss spoke when describing doctrine, but he also got it right at other times. When it comes to the false doctrine Brigham Young is famous for, I did not find that to be true. Brigham Young stubbornly promoted the Adam/God theory in the face of opposition. Before he finally gave up on that subject he defiantly said something like, “I don’t care whether our God was Adam, his father, or his grandfather”.

When the revelation directing the priesthood to be made available to men of all races was announced, the letter accompanying the announcement said the revelation was in accord with the promises of past presidents and prophets proceeding them. In order to make it appear that Brigham Young did not teach that blacks would not obtain the priesthood during mortality a later letter appeared on the church webb site quoting a speech before the territorial legislature. This speech did not specify when the blacks would obtain the priesthood, only that they would eventually. For twenty years I taught the false doctrine of those of our prophets who looked beyond the mark and obtained doctrine which we could not understand. How can I bring my adversary’s actions to the attention of my local leaders when he had the bad examples of some of our general authorities to follow.

By the time I came back to the church my testimony had changed. I understood that racism in the church was a natural consequence of the popularity of slavery and racist doctrine which was widespread. It was also obvious that the Pearl of Great Price increased the popularity of those doctrine in the church. Many Latter-Day Saints did not understand what was meant by passages in the Book of Mormon and the New Testament which stated that the Gospel was for all nations. Many failed to realize that when Isaiah spoke of a time when the Lord’s temple would be a house of prayer for all people (Isaiah 56:3-7), he meant now in the latter days when the Gospel had been restored.

Before David O. McKay’s biography was published in 2005 most of us didn’t realize that there was disagreement among our leaders about Brigham Young’s doctrine that African blacks would not obtain the priesthood during their mortal lives. President McKay said it was not doctrine, but merely a practice and that the practice would change. During the fifties and sixties when he was the president of the church he tried many times to obtain revelation instructing him to make the change. One of President McKay’s counselors told him that the reason the revelation was not forthcoming was that the saints were not ready for it. If it was not obvious before the revelation in 1978, it should have been obvious after; that the Pearl of Great Price was not a credible source of information about the question of whether or not blacks should be allowed to hold the priesthood. Accordingly when I wrote a letter to the First Presidency asking them to restore my blessings I told them that “My testimony no longer requires 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 completely credible.”

My announcement of the change in my testimony did not result in any criticism from the First Presidency or from the Seventy they sent to restore my blessings. When I reported this to the adult Institute class I was attending there followed an email exchange from someone in the class who thought I needed chastising. He made it clear that he did not approve of my testimony. My adversary who had spoken out against me several times in High Priest’s group meeting told me in private that he considered my testimony inappropriate. Was it one or both of them who had convinced my bishop and President Williams that they needed to see a copy of my talk before allowing me to speak at Sacrament Meeting? Of the half dozen or so local brethren who were attempting to make me feel unwelcome in the church, how many of them were conspiring together?

Some of the brethren, both local and general authorities, are oh so orthodox and holding on so tight to their rose colored glasses and their beliefs that “all is well in Zion”. They think they can ignore the condemnation of polygamy in the Book of Mormon because Abraham and others were living during times when it was allowed. Don’t they know that according to Ezekiel 20:24-25 Moses gave the Israelites “statutes that were not good and judgments whereby they should not live”. Jesus listed some of them in Matthew 5:31-48. Are they so antisemitic that they think every criticism of the Jews in the Book of Mormon only applies to the Israelites. They take comfort from D&C 132, the revelation on polygamy. I have obtained a copy of the Nauvoo Expositor which convinced me that Joseph Smith did bring forth something like section 132, but I have no way of knowing what changes may have been made by Brigham Young. Section 132 appears to be the source of Brigham Young’s “Blood Atonement” with Brigham Young adding a bit. When I try to understand Section 132 I think of Jacob 4:14. Whether or not the revelation on polygamy was altered by Brigham Young it was the cause of Joseph’s martyrdom.

One of my sons asked me if Joseph Smith had extra wives. I told him, “I don’t believe he did, but if he did, then he paid the price”. God does not give our leaders permission to behave less honorably than the rest of the church. In D&C 88:64-65 we are told that “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you; and if ye ask anything that is not expedient for you, it shall turn unto your condemnation.” Joseph Smith was not exempt from this. Neither was he exempt from the warning in Jacob 4:14 to avoid looking beyond the mark and despising the words of plainness lest God deliver things which cannot be understood and they stumble, and stumble we did for we did not get to establish the New Jerusalem. According to Ether 13:8 in the Book of Mormon, that honor was to be left to the remnant of Joseph.

 We were given the opportunity to live the higher law and establish the New Jerusalem, but we failed. Melchizedek sanctified his people and took them in search of the Zion of Enouch while Abraham was left behind to live a lesser law with a promise of future glory. So it was with us. But, the proud and the self righteous have given in to false pride and to persecute those of us who refuse to believe that all is well in Zion. They say we must believe it all so that they can say that they believe the Book of Mormon, but they also believe the revelation on polygamy. But, they believe D&C 132 contains a more sacred part of the gospel which the Lord withheld from the Nephites (3rd Nephi 26:9). Because we are said to be included in the Abrahamic covenant, some of them teach that the Patriarchal Order is greater that the Melchizedek Priesthood in spite of what the scriptures say and that which Joseph Smith taught on pp.554-555 of volume 5 in the Joseph Smith History of the Church. Because of all the failures of the Latter-Day Saints I believe that Joseph’s last assignment was to get them involved in Polygamy so that they would continue to be scourged from city to city if they dare try to come back to Independence, Missouri from the western frontier.

How much false doctrine is the church going to teach because the Latter-Day Saints are not ready for the truth? It wasn’t until 1978 that the Lord thought we were ready to accept Blacks of African descent holding the priesthood. Racism and polygamy engender false pride and the result is that we operate on principles which give us a heart full of pride when what we need for guidance is our bosoms burning within us. Racism is no longer acceptable in the church, but the desire for many wives remains strong in some circles and remains a threat to our spirituality and correct understanding of the gospel. The result is jealousy instead of gratitude and charity.