Friday, January 1, 2016

I dare any Mormon to read this!

A few years ago Robert Smith blew me away with his declaration that active membership in the LDS (or Mormon) Church actually deters one from coming unto Christ. "The net effect," he said, "is negative."

I didn't believe him. I simply had experienced for myself too much "good" in the Mormon Church!


Even after I was excommunicated for apostasy (as Denver SnufferRock Waterman and now countless others have been), I still didn't believe him.

Now I do. 


I recently began reading Rob's latest book: Teaching for Doctrine the Commandments of Men: Tradition in Modern Mormonism. (Also available here for free.) 

Of this book Rock Waterman wrote in his review: "This is a book I wish I had written, and I might have if I was about ten times smarter...." (That's exactly what I was thinking as I read this book: "If only Rock Waterman were ten times smarter!") 

This tome is a real page-turner for those of us who believe in the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith and who want to know and meet our Savior before we die. In it, Rob explains how replacing Christ's doctrine with the traditions of men is positively damning to the LDS Church and its members. To paraphrase a Mormon "prophet," David O. McKay: "No success can compensate for failure in the doctrine."

Many Mormons (and non-Mormons) may be wondering: "Why am I not experiencing angels, dreams, visions, revelations, the power of God and gifts of the Spirit, including the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost in my life?" Robert Smith explains why.

In my view, Teaching for Doctrine the Commandments of Men is A Marvelous Work And A Wonder for our time. Sixty six years ago, LeGrand Richards explicated the whys and wherefores of Mormonism, inducing countless souls to join the LDS Church. (I was one of them.) Now, with this book, Robert Smith matter-of-factly and thoroughly demonstrates how Christ's pure and simple doctrine has been rejected and ejected from the spinning wreckage that has become the modern Mormon enterprise.

This book is as important to my salvation as any book I have read outside of the scriptures. It not only untangles the twisted knots of false doctrine, "fuzzy" logic, wicked practices and foolish rationalizations strangling active faith in Jesus Christ in what has become
 the apostatic LDS Church, but it establishes Christ's true doctrine. (For that alone, it deserves our reading.) It clears the landscape of falsehood and disbelief (belief in falsehood) in hopes that we might have sufficient space and interest to build upon the Rock something sure, steadfast, immovable and everlasting.

My only concern now regarding this book is how to get it into as many Mormon hands as possible.

3 comments:

  1. I woke up from a dream this morning that I had been anointed by Christ to proclaim his truth and dispel FALSE/DAMNING Doctrine. The doctrine of "Follow the Prophet" and the "Church and the Brethren can't lead you astray. Those that believe these 2 major things were built upon a sandy foundation and believe damning this. There was much more truth to share but for now this was all Yeshua wanted me to point out. I was cast out from my friends and immediate family for doing so. I told them God trumps! I was following him and his instructions. Him and him alone. They saw me as an apostate. What's new, most my dreams turn out that way. Where, I have the 2nd Comforter, anointed by him and sent on my mission. Say and do the things he has sent me to do and am rejected by them (those I am sent to) my family and friends and the devout LDS crowd.
    I'm on a mission for Christ in this dream, Very powerful dream. I have these learning dreams on a regular basis.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I dynamite review of a dynamite book, Will.
    I agree with your assessment. There's no way to understate the influence this book will have on our fellow Saints.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I’m reading this book and agree it’s excellent.

    To me, the most useful idea presented so far in my reading is how the LDS church has become creedal (as in they adhere to religious creeds, not that crappy 90’s band). They take any idea and stuff it into that god-awful correlated curriculum.

    In my past, this was my pattern of reaching conclusions for all ideas, too. I used to hear something contradictory then become angry, confrontational and dismissive at the person who contradicted me, then compare the idea to my beloved creed and declare to myself: “See? It isn’t there, it can’t be useful. To hell with that uncorrelated idea! To hell with all of those uncorrelated ideas and their uncorrelated architects!” (By “hell” I meant a lovely paradise so great that people would kill themselves to attend if they could see it, because there is no real “hell” any more in that creed I loved so much).

    For some reason, it was difficult for me to see how absurd that pattern of creedal thinking is. (My wife would say it’s difficult for me to see how I still follow the same thought pattern when dealing with her contradictory statements about things I do, but that’s a different topic altogether).

    I appreciate your “dare” for any mormon to read this, because now all active LDS members have been scared by their prophets/seers/revelators from reading anything like this. It turns out yours is quite a dare, because it’s a scary proposition for most to consider.

    ReplyDelete