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

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims to be the church Jesus organized and by Jesus restored to the earth in 1830 through our prophet Joseph Smith. My testimony of that restoration is not threatened by the mistakes, heresy, and misdeeds of some of the leaders of the church. These things do not threaten my testimony because I still have confidence in D&C 112:12&13. “And pray for thy brethren of the Twelve. Admonish them sharply for my names sake, and let them be admonished for all their sins, and be ye faithful before me unto my name. And after their temptations, and much tribulations, behold, I, the Lord, will feel after them, and if they harden not their hearts, and stiffen not their necks against me, they shall be converted, and I will heal them.”

    I cannot allow anything to threaten my testimony of the restoration of the gospel because it has done so much for me. It brought me an understanding of the gospel which was lost to the Christian world for many centuries. My Lord’s resurrection became real to me. Formerly the resurrection was a mystery for Father, Son and Holy Ghost were thought to be mysteriously joined together into an incomprehensible triune God. The resurrected Jesus did not hang his body on a cloud and go off to join a bodiless trinity for he has a glorified body the same as God the Father. And, heaven is real with more to do than sit around and sing praises to God. We will have responsibilities. Read about it starting at Luke 19:12-19 where the Lord is telling us how he will deal with his servants when He comes into his kingdom. Those who have been given responsibility and increased the value of that which they were responsible for will be made ruler over many cities depending upon how well they handled their responsibility. Some may say “that cannot be true for in the parable of the laborers all the laborers received the same wages”. But, the wages promised by the Lord are the blessings of life eternal and in that sense we all receive the same wages unless we fail to make it to heaven. The parable in Luke 19 is about the responsibilities we will receive if we do make it to heaven. The prophet Joseph Smith restored a gospel I can love and understand.
    Now I find myself resenting some of our leaders, yet it is not for me to judge them. But I must acknowledge that if our leaders had been healed they would not still be covering up Brigham Young’s heresies. One of our apostles tried to apologize for Brigham’s heresy by insisting that though he spoke in error sometimes, he got it right at other times. That was very misleading, because telling the territorial legislature that the blacks would one day receive the priesthood and more does not contradict the times he spoke at general conference insisting that they would have to wait until after mortality and then be the last ones to obtain the priesthood. You see, the speech before the territorial legislature did not specify when the blacks would receive the priesthood.
    Though the Book of Mormon and church covenants prohibited racism, the pro-slavery peoples who joined the church would not allow blacks to hold the priesthood even though Joseph ordained at least one black. Because the church members refused to believe the Book of Mormon regarding the error of their racism the Lord gave them  a book they could believe called the Pearl of Great Price which justified racism. That was what they wanted, so that is what He delivered to them. Our D&C cautions us to be careful about what we ask for.
    In a 1980 general conference President Mark E. Petersen spoke on Adam or Michael and completely debunked the “Adam/God” theory, but without calling it the “Adam/God” theory or mentioning that Brigham Young had concocted it. Brigham’s theory is revealed in JD Vol 1, p.50-51, where he said, referring to Adam “He is our Father and our God and the only God with whom we have to do...” Later, referring to Adam in JD Vol 4, Page 217, “... it is no matter to me whether we are to consider Him our God or whether His Father or His Grandfather...” Later, in JD Vol 7, Page 290 he said, “Adam and Eve are the parents of all pertaining to the flesh and I would not say that they are not also the parents of our spirits.” With his love of racism and polygamy Brigham Young made the church look like a cult.
    They expected to establish a Zion of Peace in Independence, Missouri, but because of their disobedience they were scourged from city to city. In Jeremiah 17:6. Jeremiah saw them driven to a salt place. Here they would not be allowed to establish a Zion of Peace because they were not worthy, so Joseph Smith pointed them towards polygamy which the Book of Mormon declares a whoredom and an abomination. Even after the priesthood was made available to men of all races they still refuse to admit that Brigham Young insisted that African blacks would never receive the priesthood during their mortal lives. Brigham’s false teachings have been covered up. Out of our failure to establish a Zion of peace, we took away a commission to perform vicarious ordinances for the dead.
    However, There are some things I do not understand. We still follow his practice of allowing unbaptized children to partake of the emblems of the sacrament in spite of the Book of Mormon teaching against it. Recently our general authorities did away with the practice of having the High Priests in each ward meet as a group. Now they have the Elder’s Quorums in charge of the High Priests within their ward, which to my understanding of the scriptures cannot be justified. Members are not discouraged from believing that polygamy is an essential practice in heaven.
    It seems to me that those who think that D&C 132, the section on polygamy, supercedes the Book of Mormon condemnation of polygamy must be living in a make believe world. They must believe that polygamy is one of the greater things left out of the Book of Mormon. But, in Third Nephi, chapter 26:8-11 the Lord makes it clear that we will not receive the greater things until we show Him that we believe those things we were given first to test us. Is it the false pride of our leaders which keeps them from bringing the church into compliance with the Book of Mormon? Or, is it because too many of us prefer to believe section 132 and long for the opportunity to have wives and concubines in heaven? Perhaps the Lord keeping us under the curse found in Jacob 4:14 because, as the Lord told us through Jacob 4:14, “...Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble.”
    The church today is not the church it started out to be. In the Kirtland Temple the Saints received an endowment of power and the Holy Ghost something like the early Christian’s Day of Pentecost. They went forth thinking they would establish a Zion of peace in Missouri. The Nauvoo Temple was a place where they received a covenant much like Abraham’s promise of future blessings. They also received a commission to perform vicarious ordinances for the dead. The difference between the hoped for Zion of peace and what we received in Nauvoo  is much like the difference between Melchizedek’s legacy and Abraham’s. Melchizedek sanctified his people and took them in search of a Zion of peace while Abraham was left behind with promises of future glory. Brigham Young’s legacy is a cult of polygamy and racism with a redefinition of heaven as a place where the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom is inhabited by polygamists. This new definition of heaven has a lot of male members of the church anticipating going off into some far corner of the universe with a huge harem. I believe that the Lord allowed this to happen because He wants the wheat and tares to grow together even in the church during these last days..