BISHOP JOHN KOYLE - HIS RE-INSTATEMENT AFTER THE INITIAL EXCOMMUNICATION

I got seriously trolled this afternoon.  There be serious haters out there who do not like the fact that Koyle was right.  And they will be (are currently being) proven wrong here shortly.....

Here was the trolling comment which I published:

Mormon Church doctrine holds that members can receive guidance from spiritual powers, but revelations concerning the flock as a whole always are channeled through the ruling First Presidency. So while Koyle was free to pursue his dream, the LDS leadership had warned him for decades against using church doctrine to persuade other Latter-day Saints to join him.

Mormon President Joseph F. Smith and his two counselors signed a statement published by the church-owned Deseret News that year, saying "when visions, dreams, tongues, prophecy, impressions or an extraordinary gift of inspiration conveys something out of harmony with the accepted revelations of the church . . . it is not of God, no matter how plausible it may appear. . . . It is our duty to warn against mining schemes which have no warrant for success."

Isn't is amazing how well this scripture fits Koyle, who was excommunicated for going AGAINST the first presidency.

D&C 124
84 And with my servant Almon Babbitt, there are many things with which I am not pleased; behold, he aspireth to establish his counsel instead of the counsel which I have ordained, even that of the Presidency of my Church; and he setteth up a golden calf for the worship of my people

Here is my response to that (and I rarely publish or take on trolling comments - but I find this a good opportunity to shed light on Koyle and what he was about).  People that I happen to like, liked John Koyle - and swore by him, instead of at him.  They had their reasons - and there was a reason that the leadership felt threatened at the time.  He WAS RIGHT way more often than not.  He really kind of stepped in it when he called out a GA in the day who said that they would build a temple in Mexico - and Pancho Villa and pals and the Mexican Revolution put a handy stop to that possibility.  Koyle said that this would not happen due to war - which happened, and they punted and put the temple down in Mesa as a result.  We had two sister temples from that (one in Mesa and one in Cardston) proposed action to have those who were still living plural lives on either side of the borders of the US to have easier access to temples in the day.  Mesa was a compromise when things got sticky on the southern border.  This prophetic call (one of many that Koyle made that were right, but not popular with those with lesser gifts), caused his final excommunication.  He was like a Denver Snuffer of the day with a following and everything (except time proved that Koyle was right - and not deluded).

Fact is, other than Heber C. Kimball or Edward J. Wood, we have not seen someone with this kind of gift in the 1900's.  Not one.  If there is one, please comment and set me straight on this.  No, seriously.  Please read Ogden Kraut's writeup on Koyle and then get back with me.  Koyle CLEARLY had a gift.  You cannot deny facts and data.

Fact is, Koyle was gunned down by James Talmage who wrote the apostate crap called "The Theory of Evolution", which caused me to lose total respect for the man.  He was just a step back from Darwin in his views and was an intellectual, pandering to the changing tide of "science" back in the day when that subject was as much the rage as whether or not gayness is inherent or a depraved behavior (and whether two same-sex people should therefore, be marriagable under the argument that "God don't make no junk".).  In my opinion, Talmage caved to the PC crowd of the day - and did so when asked by the FP of the day to see if Koyle's claims to minerals in those mountains to be of merit.  Clearly there are minerals there - there was an entire causeway thrown up from the rubble that the early inhabitants took out of the tunnels in that area.  In fact, I would say that there is as much merit to the argument to the minerals being located there (and aboriginals mining them in somewhat sophisticated fashions), as there is to merit of the Rhodes Mine (which produced fabulous wealth by aboriginal miners even before the Saints arrived in the valley- and which mostly was responsible for funding the SLC Temple).  Either someone was not coming clean on where they got the cash over a 40 year period to build that magnificent edifice, or the Rhodes story is correct.  I am sticking with BY and Rhodes.  The Spanish were there in the 1700's looking for it and they have found just a few cannons in them thar hills that prove that even the Spanish knew there was fabulous wealth in the aboriginal mines there.  It is debatable as to whether the Spanish ever extracted much - whereas there is plenty of proof as to where BY got the funds to build canals and railroads to bring that granite down out of Cottonwood Canyon for the building of the Temple - when people were generally just scratching out a meager living in the day.  Apparently, the gold for BY's  gold coinage came from this mine, as well.

I also am sticking with Koyle on this one.  I can tell someone who has the gift - and I can usually tell a charlatan.  No amount of obfuscation or historical revisionism by trolls can attempt to cover the facts as they are.....  Nor can a recommendation for excommunication by someone who wrote a Progressive treatise on us being one step above monkeys, be taken seriously by me.  As far as I am concerned, it was the watering down of the doctrine by the likes of Talmage and others who threw polygamy under the bus in 1890, that has led us to the anemic fools that we are (generally speaking) in the Church today.  A membership which is devoid of many of the gifts that we are told should be present in Christ's true church - precisely because those who professed them and openly exercised them, were swatted down by those who simply did not have them and largely were jealous (please hit me on this point, trolls - because I will get started on the scrips I have been reading in Mark and John where Christ hit the faithless and worthless priests of the day who were so devoid of any gifts (including discernment), that they could not recognize the very Son of God......).  And then I will tell you, that if Christ were to return today - right now - that a full third to half of the membership would raise the cry to "crucify him!" once again.  I am not kidding here.  Precisely, because they are social mormons and have very little light and very little exercise of those gifts.

So let me reiterate my point - and then I will end this troll shred.  I do not have a testimony that James Talmage was a PS&R in his day.  I am sure he was a fine scientist and wrote a fine treatise on Jesus, but I would rather hang my hat on BR McConkie's final testimony than I would on an eloquent regurgitation of facts on someone's life.  I do not necessarily know that the FP of that day was inspired.  I do know that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses - and I still have much reading to do, but the last great prophet I have seen in this Church (someone who has the cahunas to lay it all on the line in public statements) was back in BY's day.  Heber C. Kimball was your man.  Of course, we have great Prophets since then, such as Ezra T. Benson and others, but they rarely came out and put it all out there in such a bold fashion.....  Of course, I cannot speak highly enough of Joseph Smith - who had the gift in spades and would say what appeared to be the most ridiculous things - only to find out he was spot on (including the Zarahemla thing I have been raving about as of late).

On that note, I think we started going down the MesoAmerica model bunny hole around the time of Talmage (who was saying all kinds of crap contrary to base doctrinal teachings).  So yeah, I am still trying to find someone to pin that little trip down the primrose path on......

To finish this tirade, let me remind the trolls out there that Koyle was post-humously vindicated and re-instated with full blessings into the Church by honorable men that came later.  And on that "men" point.....  we are watched over by mere mortals, who simply make mistakes.  The fact is, it has been painful watching the Catholic Church after centuries of stepping in it over and over again (including a few female papas and much worse), finally declare the doctrine of infallibility, to be fallible.....  Seriously - reading their history and seeing them do back-flips has been way worse than seeing our own minor offenses in this area - where we have finally seen gutsy leadership finally come forward and admit that we stepped in it in a couple of instances.  The MMM and bizarre attempts to cover up the fact that Joseph had 19 wives are just a few of the instances that come to mind.  Seriously - maybe I am just too much into facts and data - but you just state them and let the chips fall where they may.  Most anything else is just ridiculous.

Some troll tried to upbraid me the other day over calling out my sister over her acts with the German immigrant boy, which led to a cascading series of failures in our family unit.  To me, it was just a simple event which precipitated some serious bad juju.  My other siblings attempted to cover it up (quite cowardly, I might add - with one being in law enforcement and worrying that a related action on her part would jeopardize her career), and I was thrown under the bus by the lot of them.  I was not a happy camper over that little detail.  I think that something that will not thrive in the light of day, is NEVER good.  For this, and many other reasons, I talk pretty openly of our family struggles (and that of my wife) so that others can gain strength and learning from our foibles.  The Book of Mormon is just a compilation of the foibles of one group of people.  From those foibles, we draw inferences and lessons for our own lives.  If people were too proud to talk openly of things, we would have nothing uncomfortable to talk about to grow from.  It would simply be, "All is well in Zion, All is well in Zion, All is well in Zion - crash, burn; utter annihilation" and no one left to even write it down.  If someone uses the "All is well in Zion" phrase while we are clearly in desperate straits as a people, they are no friend of mine.  I like the more frank analysis that we have from the likes of Neal A. Maxwell that we are quickly approaching the state of those in Sodom and Gomorrah (that was in the 1990's - imagine now....).

Friends do not let friend drive drunk down the roads of history, while at least cautioning them that they might could pull over to sleep it off.  A friend (who is any kind of friend), will always do the right thing by their friend - and warn them of danger, even though it may jeopardize their friendship.  I do not trust people who are anything other than that frank, quite frankly.

Speaking of warnings - I have to tell my wife that we need to check our insurance policies for hail damage.  I had a dream last night on this very subject.

Rant off - over and out.