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

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 was not allowed to give this talk because someone convinced my stake president that my testimony was not appropriate. It was the same testimony which I included in a letter to the First Presidency asking for my blessings to be restored. The letter resulted in the restitution of my blessings without any recriminations. If only our local members were as tolerant as is our First Presidency.

Brothers and sisters, a couple of years ago I came back to the church after being excommunicated for apostasy over twenty five years ago.  I was started down the road to apostasy by leaders who abused their priesthood on me.  Becoming impatient with the Lord made apostasy appealing to me.  It took several years of intense study of the mysteries, the histories and commentaries to get me there.  That study taught me a great deal, some of it I feel comfortable in sharing with you.  I wish it had taught me to be patient with the Lord.  That took over twenty years of kicking against the pricks and some very vivid dreams.  Please be patient with me while I attempt to give you some of my history.  I pray for the Lord’s guidance so that the words I speak may be for the edification and benefit of all present.

As a young boy of twelve, I made my profession of faith in Jesus Christ in a Southern Baptist Mission in Pacheco, California and was baptized in a nearby Baptist Church.  The Baptists taught me to love the New Testament and helped keep me out of trouble through my teenage years.  In my later teenage years I began to have some questions about the doctrine taught by the Baptists.  When I was 19 years old LDS friends acquainted me with their beliefs and those beliefs answered my questions much better than my Baptist minister did.  Any doubts I may have had about the restoration of the Gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith were soon overcome by the beauty of those beliefs and a feeling of being at home among Latter-Day Saints.  I was soon baptized by a friend my age who held the office of Priest in the Aaronic Priesthood and I became a member of Martinez Ward Just about twenty miles east of Oakland, California.

Becoming a member of the church changed my life.  In high school there were kids from every peer group who befriended me, but I really didn’t fit in with any one group and my lack of self confidence occasionally caused me to stutter.  The LDS kids I became acquainted with were a diverse but close knit group and I felt like one of them.  I discovered a greater sense of purpose in life and as a socially backward young man I quickly came out of my shell.  Within a year of joining the church I spoke at stake conference in front of a large crowd at what was then called the Tri-Stake Center on what would become the Oakland Temple grounds.  Six months later I was serving a full time mission in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, but having lost some of that enthusiasm which enlivened me a few months earlier.  I sometimes wonder how much more successful that mission might have been if I had not allowed the actions of local leadership to weaken my testimony.  But, becoming a magnet for the abuse of priesthood power by my leaders was to provide for me a different destiny than I had envisioned.

When someone is chosen for important responsibility in the church it does not signify that he/she has a perfect understanding of the gospel nor does it mean that he/she becomes a puppet of the Lords will.  However, it does mean that we should sustain them unless we are aware of serious sin they have not repented of.  Though I knew this my expectations for my leaders were so high and my experience so limited that I hadn’t learned how to cope with less than infallible behavior by our leaders.  Within a year of joining the church someone I worked with said to me, “One of your apostles said that man would never reach the moon.  If that statement turns out to be false does that mean that the Mormon Church is false?”  That brought the question of fallibility so close that it took some time to come up with an answer.

The Lord takes us as He finds us and calls us into the Church, then into responsibilities.  We are a latter-day Israel stuck in the wilderness, having been deprived of our center-place in Independence, Missouri.  We are indeed a people, united in our identity as Latter-Day Saints, but that unity is often marred by diverse traditions that each of us, all the way back to the early leaders, brought with us into the Church.  So we need to give each other the benefit of the doubt whether recent converts or long term members of the Church.  When I read commentary by Joseph Fielding Smith I have to remember that he is one of the Smiths.  I believe he is a descendent of Hyrum Smith, who was one of the brothers of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  So when reading his opinions on church history I must remember that defending the church against the claims and accusations of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and others was a very personal matter for him.  So if we find that he sometimes did not think very clearly on some points of that contention we must give him a little slack. The Lord certainly did, for he became one of the presidents of the church.

Having said that I must admit that  I eventually came to understand that I could not rely on Joseph Fielding Smith’s scholarship or opinions on some points of history and doctrine.  Several years after I returned from my mission and married my sweetheart, the lovely Sylvia, Joseph Fielding Smith was sustained as the President of the Church.  I stood up in one of the Chico California Wards at the Fast and Testimony Meeting following his sustaining as the head of the church and testified to my certainty that Joseph Fielding Smith was the one the Lord wanted to lead the church at that time.  I cannot fully describe the difference I felt as I walked back to my seat.  I can say this much, the spirit returned to me in sufficient abundance to repair my damaged testimony.

Regarding the question of fallibility - let’s take a look at what Brigham Young said about the subject.  In Journal of Discourses Vol. 7, page 243 he said, “When I have lived to be as old as was Moses when the Lord appeared to him, that perhaps I then may hold communion with the Lord, as did Moses.  I am not now in that position ... that I can commune in person with the Father and the Son at my will and pleasure.  If I am faithful until I am eighty years of age, perhaps the Lord will appear to me and personally dictate me in the management of his church and people. ... Brother Joseph ... revealed the will of the Lord to the people, and yet but few were really acquainted with brother Joseph.  He had all the weaknesses of a man when the vision was not upon him, when he was left to himself.  He was constituted like other men, and would have required years and years longer in the flesh to become a Moses in all things.”

JD Vol. 8, p. 189, speaking of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young said “The people required him to be as holy as the Almighty himself, and to never make a mistake.  Wherein the First Presidency and the Twelve do wrong, it is not in the ability of the people to detect them in those wrongs. ... if they commit an error, it is passed over, and the people cannot tell wherein or when, or how to correct it.”

I would like to draw your attention to D&C Section 1:24-27.  Section one is not the earliest revelation, but was placed at the beginning in order to be seen as the preface of the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church.  “These commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.  And inasmuch as they erred it might be made known; and inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed; and inasmuch as they sinned they might be chastened, that they might repent”. 

 We know a great deal about the failings of the Children of Israel through the hundreds of years the Lord stuck by them.  We know quite a bit about our failings in the early days of the Restoration, the many promises, based on righteousness, which we weren’t able to obtain.  But, even those failings which have been frankly written about are often glossed over with spin about what a great time of growth and learning those persecutions and afflictions were.  We should remember to blame some of that spin on the fact that our enemies were shouting out our failings so loudly.  I look forward to the day when our scholars and leaders will feel obligated to acknowledge sin and error in our history as readily as they do with regards to the failings of the ancient Israelites.

This talk is also about me, so let’s get back to my life.  We stayed in Chico for only one year, then we moved to Orland Branch where I served simultaneously as Branch Clerk, Executive Secretary, and Scout leader for the older scouts.  After moving to Woodbridge, near Lodi, a couple of years later I was ordained a member of the San Joaquin Stake Quorum of Seventy.  A couple of years after moving to Elk Grove I was set apart as one of the Sacramento South Stake Seventy’s Quorum Presidents.  Before the stake quorums of Seventy were disbanded I asked to be released from the quorum presidency because of the amount of time I spent out of town for my job and I became the teacher of the Investigator Class.  That’s when my troubles began again.

While in San Joaquin Stake I had become aware of the inroads the polygamists were making in the church in California.  My group leader was home teaching a family whose son-in-law had become a polygamist.  My leader told me that polygamists in California secretly married extra wives and let government welfare take care of them.  This way they could maintain their church membership while secretly living the polygamist lifestyle.

I knew my Seventy’s Group Leader in Elk Grove, along with some others, was very fascinated by polygamy.  That I also heard an old quotation which was quite popular in some circles, made me a little uncomfortable.  It went something like this, “if you are righteous enough the Lord will one day ask you to do something which was previously thought to be evil”.  I decided to speak out against what was going on.  This was before the priesthood was made available to men of all races. 

I was also aware of the fact that some of our members were trying to turn the church into a haven for racists.  You remember the Golden Questions, “What do you know about the Mormon Church?  Would you like to know more?”.  Racists thought they had a better approach.  It was “You ought to come to our church, we know how to keep the blacks in their place.”  The prophets who condensed one thousand years of Nephite history into the Book of Mormon saw our day and placed in it those things which would be for our benefit.  In Alma 33:16, “For behold, he said: Thou art angry, O Lord, with this people because they will not understand thy mercies which thou has bestowed upon them because of thy Son.”

I was well read on the latest teachings from the general authorities on the subject of African Blacks and the  priesthood so accordingly I told the Investigator Class that black skin, if  the mark of Cain was indeed black skin, it  was not a curse, it was a protection.  I also told them that Blacks were not poison to the Temple, they could be baptized for the dead in any of them.  My non-member parents were visiting us that very next weekend.  When they came up they decided to go to church with us so they could attend the class I was teaching.  Imagine our surprise when we walked into the classroom and found someone else already at the blackboard ready to teach the class.  They didn’t even have the decency to let me know that I didn’t need to prepare a lesson.

Later, when I asked my group leader about it he blamed it on someone else saying that the bishop had a non-member friend in the class who hated blacks.  I was so ashamed of the Bishop and other racists that I never again encouraged my parents to learn about the church.  Not wanting to get caught in the middle of an argument about who did it to me I dropped it for the time being because I hate to see priesthood leaders lying their way out of an uncomfortable situation as I witnessed in another stake.  After some worse things happened I went to the Stake President, but nothing came of it.  Later on when I confronted the Stake President he said that he had discounted much of what I said because he knew I was sensitive to my leaders.  The stake president had decided to cover up the mess with a “cloak of charity”.  Brigham Young warned us about the corruption which would grow among the saints from that practice (JD Vol. 3 page 47).

One Sunday in our Seventy’s Group Meeting our group leader told me, in front of the group, that he was going to straighten me out or run me out of the church.  Jesus warned us about those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.”  Something said more recently may be instructive; on page 121 of the Book of Mormon Student Manual which our Institute of Religion uses as a study guide Elder Dan L. Larsen explains the part in Jacob 4:14-18 which speaks of the Israelites “looking beyond the mark”.  He is quoted as follows, “They were apparently afflicted with a pseudo-sophistication and a snobbishness that gave them a false sense of superiority over those who came among them with the Lord’s words of plainness. ... they became infatuated by these ‘things they could not understand,’”.  It appears to me that this was happening to some extent among us several decades ago.

Within two or three years the priesthood was made available to men of all races, but in the meantime I had become deeply involved in studying the scriptures and history of the church into the midnight hours looking for answers.  In addition to taking notes while studying the histories, commentaries, and scriptures I went through the Journal of Discourses taking notes on everything which Brigham Young taught.  The discrepancies I found led me to believe that some of our leaders were so caught up in a fascination with polygamy and/or hatred of blacks that they had lost the spirit, and I was beginning to wonder if the Lord had rejected the church.  The High Council Representative to the Seventy’s Quorum referred me to a highly respected brother in the Institute Program to help me find the answers I needed.  He couldn’t refute my complaints, only bear his testimony.

By this time I was in such a state of mind that I wanted to find proof that the Lord had rejected the church.  I refused to give up my testimony of the restoration of the Gospel, so I joined the Reorganized Church.  After a few years it became obvious to me that they were more interested in what the Ecumenical Movement and the news media thought of them than they were in promoting the Restored Gospel so I quit going to their meetings.

I remained out of the church for about 25 years, though I sat through Sacrament Meetings with Sylvia and took her to church socials most of that time.  I also sang in the choir just to be with her.  Not long after leaving the Reorganized Church I set my scriptures aside and concentrated on earning a living and keeping up with the political scene.  I was also very distracted by my failing health and spent a great deal of time looking for ways to overcome my disability.

Several years ago I started having some unusually vivid dreams which led me to reconsider my decision to leave the Church.  Just about the time I began to be interested in rejoining the church an evil force entered my dreams turning them into nightmares aimed at making me feel unworthy of rejoining the church.  As soon as I decided to apply for rebaptism the nightmares ended.  I was so ashamed of the racism and longing for polygamy in the church that it took 25 years and some vivid dreams for me to realize that the Lord had put up with the Children of Israel for centuries, so why should He cast off the Mormons after only a few decades?  For thinking that the Lord had so little patience it is no wonder He allowed me to kick against the pricks for twenty five years before calling me back.

Some day other things which distressed me will be made clear to the brethren, things plainly taught in the scriptures but made hard to understand with blatherings which tend towards pseudo-sophistication and snobbishness, things which are covered up, and things which are confusing because they were only meant to test us.  “Now, we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face.”  When the whole truth comes out I expect some surprises, but I will be happily enlightened, though I fear that some of us will not be edified by it.

Having to face the fact of my foolishness was not easy.  Most of you have been very supportive and I thank you for that.  However, we are still losing members to the polygamists, but at least the racists have repented or gone underground.  But, in a more positive vein, I believe that there is a more tolerant attitude in the church today.

I am a people person and I tend to make excuses for those who offend.  My biggest problem was that I had decided that I had a bone to pick with the Lord, not with those who offended me.  I blamed the Lord for the evil I saw in the church.  I blamed him for “choosing our delusions, for catching us in snares of our own making, for giving us things which are hard to understand, for giving us statutes that were not good and judgements by which we should not live and  corrupting us in our own gifts.  I didn’t realize that this is part of the plan of happiness.  Some are so hungry for greater glory than they are worthy of that they need the opportunity to discover their shortcomings so that in their embarrassment they will be happy to receive whatever glory the Lord allows them to have in heaven.  The apostle Paul understood this for he told the Corinthians, (1 Cor.11:19), “For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.”

I would like to read something which can be found in the History of the Church, vol. 3, page 296-297, an excerpt from a letter written while Joseph was in Liberty Jail and completed on March 25, 1839.  After stating the general principal which I will quote, Joseph described how the activities of renegade members of the church and outside  persecutors related to it.  Joseph Smith wrote “But I beg leave to say unto you, brethren, that ignorance, superstition and bigotry placing itself where it ought not, is oftentimes in the way of the prosperity of this Church; like the torrent of rain from the mountains, that floods the most pure and crystal stream with mire, and dirt, and filthiness, and obscures everything that was clear before, and all rushes along in one general deluge; but time weathers tide: and notwithstanding we are rolled in the mire of the flood for the time being, the next surge peradventure, as time rolls on, may bring to us the fountain as clear as crystal, and as pure as snow; while the filthiness, floodwood and rubbish is left and purged out by the way.”

I learned the hard way nearly thirty years ago that to lesser degree, that general principle is still active in the church.  Ignorance, superstition, and bigotry can become so popular among the saints that it overpowers the teachings of our leaders, and leaders can make superstition so popular that it overpowers the teachings of the scriptures.  When I served my mission from 1961-1963 we did not proselyte African Blacks, at least not in the Southern States Mission.  This was, at least in part, due to a passage in the Book of Abraham stating that the descendants of Cain were not entitled to hold the priesthood.  A passage in the Book of Moses also figures in this question.  There is a serious controversy over the question of how the Book of Abraham was obtained.  After a great deal of study on the matter, I’m not ashamed to tell you that I’m not certain what the answer is.  I will tell you this much; it’s a mystery to me why we should be concerned about what may or may not have happened several thousand years ago with regards to the availability of the priesthood.  It is ridiculous to imagine that the infinite atonement Jesus established by that great and last sacrifice could leave any righteous man ineligible to hold the priesthood.

Before my blessings were restored I was required to write a letter to the First Presidency.  I would like to quote one sentence from that letter.  “ Now that I have returned I have a testimony which does  not depend on the faithfulness of past or present prophets or upon the reliability of the Pearl of Great Price.”  Brothers and sisters, we would all do well to be as tolerant of diverse opinion as are the general authorities.  I know that they are grateful for the Lord’s patience with them and all of us.

When I went to hear Brother Darius Gray speak on Blacks and the Bible, there were some scriptures quoted which require everyone to be treated equally.  My favorite comes from D&C 38:25-27, “And again I say unto you, let every man esteem his brother as himself.  For what man among you having twelve sons, and is no respecter of them, and they serve him obediently, and he saith unto the one: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there-and looketh upon his sons and saith I am just?  Behold, this I have given unto you as a parable, and it is even as I am.  I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.”  I have to confess that until I heard Brother Darius speak I had never considered just how forcefully these verses speak out against the withholding of the priesthood from anyone because of his race.

Brother Darius also documented speculation in the early days of the church about the withholding of the priesthood being about the behavior of blacks in the world of spirits during the war in heaven and the rejecting of that speculation by church leaders in those early days of the restoration.  The speculation had a life of its own and kept showing up.  In 1954 President David O. McKay tried to put a stop to it.

By David O. McKay - 1954
“There is not now, and there never has been a doctrine in this church that the Negroes are under a divine curse, there is no doctrine in the church of any kind pertaining to the negro.  We believe we have a scriptural precedent for withholding the priesthood from the negro.  It is a practice, not a doctrine and the practice someday will be changed, and that is all there is to it.”  Taken from David O. McKay & the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Greg Prince & William Robert Wright. 

In spite of the clear statement in D&C 38 and by David O. McKay in 1954 those old speculations about African blacks were still floating around in the 60s.  There were influential voices among the membership of the Church who spoke out against racist attitudes.  In area where I joined the Church about 20 miles east of Oakland I remember Armand Mauss as providing enlightened arguments against those racist speculations.  He was the son of our Stake Patriarch and an instructor then a professor at Diablo Valley College.

I became acquainted with Brother Mauss when I was attending DVC and working in the duplicating center there.  He was working on his Doctorate which involved a study of racism in the LDS Church and I took part in that study.  His study revealed that racism in our church was about the same as racism in the general population when the socio/economic status of individuals was considered.  Not long after receiving his doctorate, Brother Mauss took a position at Utah State University in Logan, Utah I believe.  I remember seeing a letter from him posted on the bulletin board after he had settled into his position at Utah State.  The one thing I remember about it was his observation that whereas he was considered quite conservative in California, he was looked upon as a flaming liberal in Utah.

While I am grateful to the many who have made it obvious that I have their moral support, something happened last year which I was tempted to take personally.  In High Priest’s Group Meeting one Sunday I presented an idea which was received very poorly.  It didn’t bother me at the time because I look at things a little differently than most and I often say things which get a laugh or make little sense to others.  Several weeks after that in High Priest’s group meeting someone quoted a general authority who had said the same thing I had said, but this time the remark was received with enthusiasm.  For a time I took it personally, but I think something else was also going on.  Brothers and sisters, it is apparent to me that some of us are much too quick to say “amen” to every bit of gospel commentary our leaders and scholars give us instead of studying the scriptures for ourselves.

From the Journal of Discourses Vol. 3, p 45, Brigham Young said, “Suppose that the people were heedless, that they manifested no concern with regard to the things of the kingdom of God, but threw the whole burden upon the leaders of the people, saying ‘If he brethren who take charge of matters are satisfied, we are,’ this is not pleasing in the sight of the Lord.”  There is also something else going on which reinforces my feelings.  How often when we read an account of something negative said about the ancient Israelites in Jerusalem or in the New World do we only look for comparable behavior by non-Mormons.  One might get the impression that there is a bit of pseudo-sophistication and snobbishness among us.

I would not have returned to the church if I was not convinced that the promise to the quorum of twelve in D&C 112:13 still holds true.  “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.”  It seems evident to me that said promise still holds true for each of us today.

Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that I have a great deal of admiration for and confidence in our prophet, our stake presidency, and our bishopric.  My association with our ward auxiliary and priesthood leaders has also given me an appreciation for their dedication.  I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.