Wednesday, February 14, 2018

REVOLTING AT THE THINGS OF GOD

This is a true principle.  It also applies to Plural Marriage:

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This is what happens to those who kick against the pricks:

https://woodyoubelieveit.blogspot.ca/2014/05/kicking-against-pricks.html

The Prophet Joseph spoke of how apostates often bring severe persecutions upon their former friends and associates. "When once that light which was in them is taken from them they become as much darkened as they were previously enlightened, and then, no marvel, if all their power should be enlisted against the truth, and they, Judas like, seek the destruction of those who were their greatest benefactors." (HC 2:23.)

Strange, how often defectors leave the Church, but they cannot leave it alone!

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Neal A. Maxwell, Notwithstanding My Weakness [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1981], 84.)

Newcomers may even see a few leave the Church who cannot then leave the Church alone. Let these few departees take their brief bows in the secular spotlight; someday they will bow deeply before the throne of the Almighty, confessing that Jesus is the Christ and that this is His work. Meanwhile, let us not be surprised if, as the little stone seen by Daniel rolls relentlessly forth, some seek in vain to chip away at it.

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Neal A. Maxwell, Plain and Precious Things [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1983], 72.)

Willful dissent ages ago produced yet other symptoms that are worthy of our pondering today as life confronts us with determined dissenters who leave the Church—but who then cannot leave the Church alone:

Now these dissenters, having the same instruction and the same information of the Nephites, yea, having been instructed in the same knowledge of the Lord, nevertheless, it is strange to relate, not long after their dissensions they became more hardened and impenitent, and more wild, wicked and ferocious than the Lamanites—drinking in with the traditions of the Lamanites; giving way to indolence, and all manner of lasciviousness; yea, entirely forgetting the Lord their God. (Alma 47:36.)

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(Neal A. Maxwell, Men and Women of Christ [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991], 4.)

Some members maintain only cultural ties to the Church. Often these people have had valiant parents but they themselves live off the fruits of discipleship banked by those parents and grandparents. They make no fresh, spiritual investments; they have neither new earnings nor an inheritance to pass along to their own posterity.

Then there are the dissenters who leave the Church, either formally or informally, but who cannot leave it alone. Usually anxious to please worldly galleries, they are critical or at least condescending towards the Brethren. They not only seek to steady the ark but also on occasion give it a hard shove! Often having been taught the same true doctrines as the faithful, they have nevertheless moved in the direction of dissent (see Alma 47:36). They have minds hardened by pride (see Daniel 5:20).

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(Cory H. Maxwell, ed., The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1997], 68.)

Church members will live in this wheat-and-tares situation until the Millennium. Some real tares even masquerade as wheat, including the few eager individuals who lecture the rest of us about Church doctrines in which they no longer believe. They criticize the use of Church resources to which they no longer contribute. They condescendingly seek to counsel the Brethren whom they no longer sustain. Confrontive, except of themselves of course, they leave the Church but they cannot leave the Church alone. (Ensign, May 1996, p. 68.)

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