OH, NOW I GET IT

Wow, it took me a while (only 20 years) to put it all together.  Man, do I feel so SLOOOOWWWW......

This is where alot of hostility or resistance towards preparedness-minded people historically comes from in the leadership of the Church.  I am very late to the party, I guess.  I suppose alot has changed in the last 20 years - what was an attempt to close down groups who were extra-doctrinal, turned into a witch hunt, of sorts for other conservatives and liberty-minded people that I still feel the effects of 20 years later and which created such a bad taste in peoples' mouths, that you cannot beg them to fill their pantry now, let alone assemble every needful thing.  Man, what mixed signals.  I was a newlywed back in the day, and I was pretty clueless politically and socially in so many ways - and did not read this article.  I just wanted to graduate from college and did not have a care in the world except for my new bride and making it to the next tuition payment....and finding a real job where they would pay more than the minimum wage once I got out.

What confusing times it would have been for ultra-conservatives like myself; to have just gone thru the Ezra Taft Benson years preaching against pride and secret combos (and he nailed it - on the bulls eye), having to endure a couple of years with Bill Clinton and the first Gulf War wondering if the whole thing was coming apart at the seams.  Then to have all that excitement and build-up tamped down all of a sudden by currents within the Church.  I guess things might well have seemed as if the wheels were coming off the next few years with David Koresh and Waco, followed by the retaliatory bombing in OKC and the first attempt to take down the WTC, the dotcom bubble bursts and the spooky millennium date arriving after all that.....then Sept 11th.  That was enough to freak anyone out.  I would have headed for the hills long before that myself.  Come to think of it, I was over in MT freaking out when Sept 11th went down.  I was building my escape pod from the nasty stuff I saw happening around me.  I had officially become a conservative freak by that point.  Kids will do it to you - that added measure of responsibility makes you want to squirrel away a few extra nuts, just in case.  I have seen starving kids in Brazil, and it rattles you and keeps you up at night.  You are never the same after.

I think the secret combos are in full swing right now (yup, the full meal deal: burger, fries and soft-drink of your choice - but don't tell anyone what you ordered, because its a secret...) - and it is world-wide and it is entrenched and will require a massive, world-wide divine solution of destruction and hell on earth to kill the parasite - just as it did in 33 AD in America.  We now have people who have backyard gardens or chickens, or hives or more than a cupboard full of food, labeled as extremists and the guy who checks your power meter with the ability to report you to the "authorities".  Freakin nazis!  I seem to remember two generations back - during WWII - this was the NORM and encouraged by the state.  They called them Victory Gardens - and the thinking was self-sufficiency.  Now they call it a crime worthy of something just short of an indefinite stay at the Gitmo Marriot?  Don't worry about a thing - the state will take care of you.  Yeah, the same state that can't control spending, burgeoning prison populations, and regulate out of control derivatives markets that are several hundred times our GDP - let alone the world GDP;  that will explode with such ferocity, there will be nothing left to even pick up after its over.  The shrapnel will be sub-atomic....  It will make the housing bubble burst look like child's play.

I say this openly because I really don't give a rip about any of that puckey.....  I decry evil.  I decry control and compulsion.  I decry corruption.  I decry the system as it currently is.  What a mess we are in!!  When its all over, no one will ever want to go back to it because it will have made such a toxic stew of things, we will never desire to get close to it.  Babylon and all its constructs will fall in one day.  I don't think people realize just how that will be.

I say bring it on - and make me the next headline if any of the above is attempted for me and mine.  I will not cower.  Not that I like trouble, or anything, I just don't like nazis and control freaks.  The sooner we bust this down and get it rolling toward a better solution, the better.  Because we have sat around and kept our mouths shut, and have tamped down alot of people who may one day be the back-bone of the surge to save the Constitution and what is left of America, we have created a much bigger parasite that will require a stronger solution.  WE as a people missed the boat, and we will suffer the consequences.  So, when gut-wrenching things occur, designed to take care of (kill the parasite) what could have collectively been eradicated by a people who were awake decades ago, remember that the chance was given and thwarted. My own mother did not even like President Benson.  I kind of wish the division that is coming in the Church would have just happened then.  I am a believer in getting the hard stuff out of the way earlier than later.  Its always easier to deal with it before it festers and really gets bad.....

The hard road now lies ahead.  And don't complain about it.

This is what got me pumped up:

File: LDS.press

The Salt Lake Tribune, 29 Nov 1992 Sunday Edition, Page A1

IT'S JUDGMENT DAY FOR FAR RIGHT: LDS CHURCH PURGES SURVIVALISTS

by Chris Jorgensen and Peggy Fletcher Stack

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is purging hundreds of
Mormon dissidents who church officials say are preoccupied unduly with
Armageddon.

This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the
1850's, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor
hygiene and low church attendance to disobeying the Ten Commandments.

In recent months, Mormons from Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Idaho have been
expelled and many others have been threatened. Numbers are impossible to
determine because excommunication records are guarded closely.

Don LeFevre, LDS spokesman, would not confirm that mass excommunications
are unfolding. However, he did say LDS Church leaders increasingly have
been concerned about ultraconservative "super patriots" and survivalists,
many of whom have quit their jobs and moved their families to mountain
retreats.

Those interviewed by _The Salt Lake Tribune_ say they have faced church
discipline for a range of transgressions - from having too much emergency
food storage to adhering to the doomsday predictions of popular Mormon
presidential candidate Bo Gritz, who received more than 28,000 Utah votes
in the November election.

Targeted are those obsessed with the early speeches of LDS Church President
Ezra Taft Benson and who believe the ailing, 93-year-old leader has been
silenced because his opinions no longer are politically popular.

"We support President Benson 100%," says Elaine Harmston, who was excommun-
icated from her Manti ward last month with her husband, Jim. "He has warned
us thoroughly. But there are some brethren who speak 180 degrees against him."

LDS Church leaders worry that some members are taking too literally state-
ments made decades ago by Elder Benson before he became president.

In a recent speech, Elder Malcolm Jeppson, a member of the Second Quorum of
the Seventy who oversees the Utah-South region of the church, urged Mormons
not to "take out of context words and statements made by church presidents
that were given at a different time and circumstance than the present."

He urges Mormons "walking on the fringes of our faith to seek the safety of
the center."

At the church's October general conference, LDS apostle Boyd K. Packer
cautioned members about falling for the survivalist line. "Do not be
deceived," he warned, by those "who have not been regularly ordained by the
heads of the church, who tell of impending political and economic chaos,
the end of the world - something of the 'sky is falling.' ...they are
misleading members to gather to colonies or cults."

LDS Church leaders from central and southern Utah complained of such
"troublesome ideologies" during a Nov 13-14 meeting at the Edgemont Stake
Center in Provo. Elder Jeppson outlined a profile of dissidents. Stake
Presidents have used that profile to compile a list of warning signs.

There is a lot of concern about some things that are going on," says
Harold Nicholl, one of six Sanpete County stake presidents using the list
as a guide for excommunications.

Among activities sounding the alarm at stake houses across the West:

o The practice of home schooling.
o Having leanings or membership in the John Birch Society.
o Holding study groups.
o An inordinate preoccupation with food storage.
o Reading doomsday books and other material unapproved by the church.
o People who sell their services of gospel understanding for money.
o Quoting the exact day of the coming of Jesus Christ.
o Performing temple ordinances outside the temple.

To some, the list contradicts church standards. For decades, Mormons have
been urged to store food for an emergency. The church always has insisted
that members follow the president, whom the faithful believe is a prophet.

By the new standards, "President Benson wouldn't even be allowed to stay
in the church," says a prominent Utah Mormon, referring to the leader's
association with the ultraconservative John Birch Society.

The profile apparently was used to finger Elaine and Jim Harmston. "Our
stake president said, 'You cannot discuss the gospel in your own home with
anyone except your own family or you will be excommunicated,' " says Elaine
Harmston. "That was something we couldn't go along with."

But it was more than scripture study that upset the Harmstons' Mormon
leaders. The couple continue to teach and practice a special form of
prayer prohibited outside Mormon temples.

Several weeks ago, the Harmstons' bisphop read an open letter to the
congregation warning them to stay away from the Harmstons' study group or
risk discipline.

The next week, more people attended the study group than ever,
Mr. Harmston claims. "There are thousands of people hungry for the truth and
they're tired of the pablum they're getting from the church," he says.

As the study group swelled, Manti church leaders began surveillance on the
Harmstons' home, taking down visitors' license-plate numbers. The visitors
were later called in for interviews by LDS leaders, says Mrs Harmston.

Larry Garmoth believes that's how he got caught. "It's a small town," he
explains. "Everyone knows what everyone else's car looks like."

Mr Garmoth says he was interviewed by his stake president and told not to
associate with the Harmstons. Within weeks he was demoted from his security-
guard job at the Manti Temple to groundskeeper.

LDS church officials feared Mr. Garmoth was letting apostates into the
temple after hours to perform clandestine religious rituals - a charge
Mr. Garmoth denies. "My guts are just torn out because of the stupidity
of this thing," he says.

Another church mamber in nearby Fairview says he was threatened with
excommunication for having too much food in storage. "I was told that
one year's worth of food storage is enough and anything more is excess,"
says the lifelong Latter-Day Saint, who asked not to be identified.

He says he amassed a huge cache of food to help other church members
during a crisis. "I haven't done anything I haven't been told to do by
the prophet."

The extreme actions taken by LDS Church leaders indicate their sense of
urgency in squelching the survivalist movement among their ranks. No fewer
than three LDS general authorities spoke directly to fringe Mormons at
the October conference.

Apostle M. Russell Ballard told members "not to overreact" to signs that
the end of the world is near. He cautioned against being "caught up in
extreme preparations."

While the church is focusing on the ultraconservatives for now, Elder
Jeppson also has counseled stake presidents to watch out for feminists
who advocate women holding the priesthood and pray to a Mother in Heaven.
He also warns of intellectuals who challenge the origins of the _Book of
Mormon_ and church authority.