Are these the last days?
Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 4:27 am
It is almost a year to the day that I began my quest to find out if the church was really true. Some personal problems in my life led me to question my beliefs. I have always been a life-long member of “the church,” a TBM chapel Mormon; in fact my ancestors are all Mormon pioneers that came across the plains and settled the Salt Lake Valley. I was/am a “good” Mormon, kept all the rules, and even served a mission in Peru when I was young. Two of the most important unofficial rules of Mormonism that I’d always kept were (1) don’t read uncensored Mormon history and (2) don’t read literature critical of the church. A year ago I broke these two rules and began a flurry of secret reading that lasted for many months. I knew when I started this that once I walked down that road I could never go back and unlearn what I was about to learn. But I decided to go forward anyway.
I read some excellent books: The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power; by D. Michael Quinn; No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie; Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon by (several authors, I can’t remember their names) which promotes the theory of Solomon Spalding authorship of the Book of Mormon; An Insider’s View of Mormon History by Grant Palmer; Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Will Bagley; Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West by David Bigler, Emma Smith: Mormon Enigma, and I’ve got a few others hidden somewhere that I haven’t had the chance to look at. I’ve learned a lot from this board. I’ve even read some of the Tanners’ newsletters and visited their bookstore. I had to do all this reading in secret, of course, because almost every significant person in my life is a Mormon.
The result of all this reading is, of course, that I no longer believe in the Mormon church, no longer believe that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young were prophets, no longer believe in the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and I learned that the Pearl of Great Price is an absolute fraud. So now I feel like a complete and total idiot that I actually believed in these things for my entire life. I never learned about any controversial aspects of Mormon history, such as that Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter and con man, nor about the DNA research done on Native Americans, nor the lack of supporting archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, nor that Joseph Smith’s translation of the Egyptian Papyri (supposedly the Book of Abraham) was actually a funerary scroll from the Egyptian book of breathings. I was never told about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, or how he entered into polyandrous relationships, and married 14 and 15 year old girls (and slept with them). And, of course, inside the church you are considered an evil person if you investigate or talk about these things. In fact, you can get excommunicated for simply telling other people about these things. I’d never heard about blood atonement, or the fact that early leaders had many people killed. I’d never heard that the problems the Mormons encountered in Missouri and Illinois were in large part because of stupid things the Mormons either said or did.
In fact, I’m not even sure if I believe in God anymore. And that is sad, because a belief in God would really be helpful to me at this point in my life. I just don’t know what I believe in anymore. I'm a very confused person.
But it is hard to rid one's self of a lifetime’s worth of programming and beliefs. Mormonism is a whole world view. I have always viewed the events and changes in the world with the idea that these are the last days, and viewed the earthquakes, wars, global warming, tsunamis, tornadoes, rising crime rates, perceived increase in immorality, rising divorce rates – as evidence that these are indeed the last days and signs of Christ’s second coming.
Surely during my lifetime, from the radical sixties to the violent wars of the present – the world seems to be following the course outlined in the Bible as “the last days.”
What do you all think? Are these the last days? Is it just coincidence? How does one understand these things outside of the prism of Christianity, or Mormonism? Are they signs of the times?
I read some excellent books: The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power; by D. Michael Quinn; No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie; Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon by (several authors, I can’t remember their names) which promotes the theory of Solomon Spalding authorship of the Book of Mormon; An Insider’s View of Mormon History by Grant Palmer; Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Will Bagley; Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West by David Bigler, Emma Smith: Mormon Enigma, and I’ve got a few others hidden somewhere that I haven’t had the chance to look at. I’ve learned a lot from this board. I’ve even read some of the Tanners’ newsletters and visited their bookstore. I had to do all this reading in secret, of course, because almost every significant person in my life is a Mormon.
The result of all this reading is, of course, that I no longer believe in the Mormon church, no longer believe that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young were prophets, no longer believe in the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and I learned that the Pearl of Great Price is an absolute fraud. So now I feel like a complete and total idiot that I actually believed in these things for my entire life. I never learned about any controversial aspects of Mormon history, such as that Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter and con man, nor about the DNA research done on Native Americans, nor the lack of supporting archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, nor that Joseph Smith’s translation of the Egyptian Papyri (supposedly the Book of Abraham) was actually a funerary scroll from the Egyptian book of breathings. I was never told about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, or how he entered into polyandrous relationships, and married 14 and 15 year old girls (and slept with them). And, of course, inside the church you are considered an evil person if you investigate or talk about these things. In fact, you can get excommunicated for simply telling other people about these things. I’d never heard about blood atonement, or the fact that early leaders had many people killed. I’d never heard that the problems the Mormons encountered in Missouri and Illinois were in large part because of stupid things the Mormons either said or did.
In fact, I’m not even sure if I believe in God anymore. And that is sad, because a belief in God would really be helpful to me at this point in my life. I just don’t know what I believe in anymore. I'm a very confused person.
But it is hard to rid one's self of a lifetime’s worth of programming and beliefs. Mormonism is a whole world view. I have always viewed the events and changes in the world with the idea that these are the last days, and viewed the earthquakes, wars, global warming, tsunamis, tornadoes, rising crime rates, perceived increase in immorality, rising divorce rates – as evidence that these are indeed the last days and signs of Christ’s second coming.
Surely during my lifetime, from the radical sixties to the violent wars of the present – the world seems to be following the course outlined in the Bible as “the last days.”
What do you all think? Are these the last days? Is it just coincidence? How does one understand these things outside of the prism of Christianity, or Mormonism? Are they signs of the times?