APOSTASY - MAKING HEADWAY

So, I had a great convo with a friend over the last weekend.

He is "disaffected" with the Church.  Many of the initial stances he had, he has softened on (at least in conversation to me).  I think he has given up trying to make Joseph Smith out for some kind of philandering piece of work, using the whole Polygamy thing as a crutch.  In a previous conversation, I pointed out that Joseph was not shooting blanks - and that there would be posterity running around everywhere if he was hitting the hay with these gals (literally, there are salacious stories running around amongst the anti community that he was in the hay in the barn with a bunch of different women at a time when the pill did not exist and reliable condoms were not really happening.  Folks, there was a reason a woman had 8-12 kids in the average child-bearing years back in the day.

If a woman did have a chance to copulate with someone as magnetic, dashing and a physical specimen like Joseph, all sexual responses would have been in place for maximum fertilization (I will not go into graphic detail, but as an observant engineer, am quite aware of them).  Sufficeth to say, when a woman is "into her man", and she is fertile, the greater the specimen, the more likely it is that she will conceive.  Women used to note in their journals that, aside from the spiritual awe of meeting him, they were in that mode otherwise (flushed, etc).  As part of that "flushed" experience, the rest of it comes about.  I have probably said enough on the matter....

Anyway, I think my Cardston Jack/Apostate/Inactive/Struggling (however he wants to classify himself) is still stuck on Fanny Mae Alger who was married to a man (for time) while being sealed to Joseph Smith.  I knew of this before or during my mission and my wife became aware of that during an apostate BYU Women's Studies course (prof now ex'd for spreading the garbage that was all proven false through genetics - and NONE of the posterity she was expouding as Joseph's turned out to be his)....

I am SO fine with that fact - and I believe it to be a fact from Joseph's journals.  The Church likely has not officially denied it - or stated that there is nothing to it.  The problem with "weak" (spiritually) individuals, is that they have no basis to understand how things are on God's economy, let alone amongst those who are on a Telestial sphere, operating under higher laws.  Kind of like scratching your head while watching someone walking on water.  They, simply not being able to relate to what they are seeing, would ask where the rocks just under the surface of the water are.....

Having "given up a son" to SIDS to do a greater work on the other side, I understand almost fully the concept of consecration.  We simply do what is the higher good - regardless of the outfall.  When you live a Celestial life (thing of the covenants in the Temples), we agree to do what God requires and put our wills on the sacrificial altar, if so required.  In order to move to the Terrestrial sphere, we agree to keep our wills in regards to Chastity in the bounds the Lord has set.  In so doing, we qualify to have an eternal increase of posterity (we will be allowed to breed and seed worlds without end). 

In supporting the spirit of Consecration in order to come into Father's presence, we are rewarded for our successful behavior with ALL that Father has.  So simple.

Marriage is fluid - and I think my friend got that concept.  If he continues in a fallen or stumbling state - and his wife runs with light and knowledge and eternal progression, she will be taken and given to another who will allow her to progress.  His faithful posterity will be given to others (through adoption) and his welded link will lose it's temper and fail and will be taken out of the eternal chain put in place from Adam to the last faithful inhabitants of this earth.  He simply is spiritually de-selecting by throwing Joseph Smith (and the Book of Mormon) under the bus.  If he continues on the path, he likely will eventually throw Jesus under the bus - and then there is no salvation or continuation for him.

I am not passing judgment on him - just stating the facts and data of how the process works.  We are ALL under these agreements and conditions in order to move along through the eternities.  We either move forward - or we are damned in our forward movement.  As I pointed out, if I did not care for him, I would not waste my breath on him.  My motives are also two-fold; love for my fellow-man and also that his family will thank me later on for persisting with him (striving with him).  Our Stake President also has a lot of skin in the game with him and really is feeling after him and has since he helped activate him years ago.  Also, in the end, as things come to a head, he will become my enemy and I do not need to deflect .303 bullets with everything else that will be going on.  If he is saved, partially through my instrumentality, then I have a best friend, and those bullets can fly in different directions....  If it comes to physical confrontation at some point in the future, the Lord will remove him from this sphere of existence.  I have had several go that route.  God took them out.  I expect no different in the future - but told him as he was dancing around half-hearted veiled threats (no I will not shut up in the face of those), that it would be an honor to go in any manner like that.  I would say that I actually desire that over dying peacefully in my sleep.  I have had whisperings that this will actually be the case - but only time will tell.

In our discussion last weekend - I pointedly asked him (while we were discussing various points on why he takes exception to on the BoM), how many times he had read the book.  Once or twice was the answer.  Folks, in 30 years, that does not cut it.  We need to have the words of that book written in our hearts - or we WILL fall.  Guaranteed!  My sincere hope is that I have raised some questions that have pricked his heart (hopefully without hardening it too much) and that he will consider it. 

I would rather take the chance of creating an enemy, than have a "bastard son" as it says in the NT because I said and did nothing.  I have taken the same tack with co-workers, children, siblings, etc.  Use the warning voice - or lose it.  Much as it was with Cain after the fall and before that fateful day with Abel; "if thou doest well"....