The divine right of kings

Not too long ago I served as an assistant ward financial clerk – about as close as I ever got to having any kind of real “responsibility” in the LDS Church. I learned that the typical LDS ward (if ours was “typical”) has a “budget” of approximately $8,000 per year. (That number would be slightly higher now, perhaps, due to inflation.) In other words, the typical gross tithing paid by one veteran school teacher in my stake could pay for all our ward’s annual needs (not including caring for the poor). The lights, heat, air conditioning, copy paper, maintenance – all of the programs deemed to be “Church” related – are paid for by one person’s tithing receipts. The rest? It goes to Salt Lake.

It's an enormous sum. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per year per ward (in the U.S. at least). This money is used to run the general operations of the Church, including the building of new chapels and temples. A typical chapel costs upwards of $3 million. A temple ten times that. Schools (like BYU) cost enormous amounts of money to run and maintain. While the Church strives to have each “department” pay its own way, the Church’s tithing funds are really just one big “slush fund” to allocate in any form or fashion the Presiding Bishopric and First Presidency deem appropriate. (They could even build a mall with it, if they wanted.) This pool currently represents billions of dollars of income to the Church each year. Tax free. Literally thousands, if not tens of thousands, of paid employees are sustained by these “sacred” funds. The Church is a huge enterprise. It would be a Fortune 500 company if it weren’t a church. In fact, it is a Fortune 500 company despite being a church. And because it is a legal entity which can be sued, the Church is very wary to maintain a posture and to put in place policies that mitigate and preclude any substantial risk to the institution or its income stream.

In other words, if there is any chance you or your activities might cost the Church money, you (or your activity) will be curtailed or eliminated.

The Church used to own hospitals. Hospitals cost enormous amounts of money. Hospitals (in the U.S.) are required by law to fend for the sick and afflicted and (for basic services) not turn anyone away. This was deemed an “unnecessary” expense and risk to the Church’s income stream. (At one time, the Church was broke, and may not have been able to afford maintaining even one hospital.) So the Church got out of the hospital “business”. A strange thing to do for an institution ostensibly devoted to caring for the sick and afflicted. But choices have to be made.

People who don’t (or can’t) go to the temple don’t have much incentive to pay tithing – other than the fact that paying tithing is the “right” thing to do. But what if your church ordains that, even if you do the “right” thing, you still can’t go to the temple? What if you’re invited to pay the “full price of admission”, but then you’re not allowed to see the movie anyway? What then?

It seems almost laughable that the LDS Church isn’t allowing hundreds, maybe even thousands, of TBMs (True Blue or True Believing Mormons) to hold temple recommends, even kicking some out of the Church entirely, because they actually believe D&C 124:28! The Church is expelling formerly full-tithe-paying members because they merely “support and sustain” the leaders of the Church but perhaps haven’t obtained a “testimony” (an actual revelation from God) that the one currently at the top (Thomas S. Monson) is a real prophet of God.

If Bro. Monson, God forbid, were to die today, members of the LDS Church would be automatically expected to attest, with the right hand raised to the square, that they “know” Boyd K. Packer is the “prophet of God on earth”. This, for sure, is not by dint of anything Bro. Packer has ever said or done – for every LDS prophet is thus assumed to fill the position of his predecessor – but, rather, LDS prophets are made into prophets by the traditions of men and by a mechanism Latter-day Saints have accepted and put in place as a “protocol” for priestly succession. This protocol is nowhere found in scripture. It’s “built in”, rather, to the Church’s official charter and by-laws, no doubt found in the “succession clause” of the legal paperwork filed with and acknowledged by the state, by which the current “living prophet” is the corporate sole trustee of all of the property and affairs of the Church. This property, being owned by him and him alone, is passed down to the next “living prophet” after the former passes on.

So when one “bears witness” that the “prophet” is, indeed, a prophet, one is perhaps only swearing allegiance to a system that, at best, can historically be found only in the generational succession and maintenance protocols of the Aaronic priesthood.

One recalls the conversation had between Elisha and Elijah immediately prior to Elijah’s departure into heaven:

“…Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.

 10 And [Elijah] said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.” (2 Kings 2:9-10)

Clearly, just being a devotee of a prophet, following him everywhere he goes, and belonging to his “inner circle” does not guarantee to any "would be" successor the prophetic mantle. The new prophet himself must possess the attributes of a prophet! In other words, calling him a prophet does not make him a prophet. The simple fact that he belongs to a quorum, body or institution does not deem him “approved” by God. God must anoint His prophet with His Holy Spirit or he is not a prophet.

The fact that some Mormons are actually cast out of their church for believing that all men are fallible and ultimately “unworthy” of blind trust and obedience and that only God is to be exalted as the ultimate and only “General Authority” ought to be shocking to the conscience of every Latter-day Saint. We still believe, don’t we, that “by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things”? Where is it written that God has ceded this ultimate power and authority to a mere mortal?

It is contrary to the mind and will, practices and purposes of God to believe that one naturally receives the Lord’s prophetic spirit and mantle by sheer dint of biology, by merely outliving one’s peers. To believe such is to express faith in the ultimate abomination: “trusting in the arm of flesh”. Elijah himself said it wasn’t so. And no example of such occurring can be found in scripture. It is a modern invention. An institution of men. One perhaps tolerated by God. But a man-made creation, nonetheless, reminiscent of the divine right of kings.

Leaders of men may be chosen by rites of succession and so forth. But God always chooses His servants with manifestations of power and authority from heaven. It has always been so.

Men follow men – and call them “prophets” -- at their peril.