Which of the Mopologists (if any) Has Received the 2nd Anointing?
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 9:41 pm
On a different thread, someone--Everybody Wang Chung, perhaps--was alluding to the idea that Consiglieri may have been given his 2nd Anointing which, as well all know, ensures that one's "calling and election" is made certain. You are pretty much guaranteed a "golden ticket" into the upper echelons of the society depicted in Added Upon. But this raises a number of very interesting questions vis-a-vis Mopologetics.
First and foremost, what are the odds that any of them have received this sacred ordinance? You can make an educated guess based on things we know about this secret rite. E.g., supposedly the "calling and election" is granted to high-ranking priesthood holders, such as temple presidents and mission presidents, and presumably all the General Authorities have gone through the ceremony. Would the same apply to "Agents" of the Strengthening Church Members Committee, such as DCP and Midgley?
If I may be allowed to speculate, I would say that, out of all the Mopologists, Midgley and Greg Smith seem most likely to have gotten the 2nd anointing. I say this because they both act with impunity: Midgley constantly refers to his mortal life as a "probation," as if he's expecting a guaranteed reward on the other side of the veil. Sure: I think that most Latter-day Saints expect to make it into the Celestial Kingdom, but most Latter-day Saints don't display the same level of arrogance and impudence as Midgley. And Smith is arguably the most vicious of the apologists, and similarly acts with impunity--as if, for him, the idea of destroying someone's life would be met with little more than a smirk and a shrug. And if I'm not mistaken, his father-in-law is a General Authority. So perhaps the anointing was given to Smith as a result of him being in the family? Getting sealed to his wife meant, de facto, the he got to have the 2nd anointing?
DCP, on the other hand, is a big question mark for me. He used to be every bit as vicious as Smith--collecting dossiers of quotations that he'd harvested off of RfM, for instance--and openly laughing about ruining Infymus's job opportunities. But he cooled his jets significantly in the wake of his expulsion from the Maxwell Institute, which makes me think that he was concerned about his eternal salvation--as if any further slip-ups might put his status in jeopardy. And recall that in Added Upon, the Celestial Kingdom is a stratified society: even though everyone has achieved Eternal Glory, it's still a world of haves and have-nots. Perhaps Dr. Peterson fears that he's going to be relegated to a lower caste, where he'll have to grovel at the feet of Midgley and Greg Smith? After all, Midgley comes from a higher-status family than DCP, and Smith is related to a GA; I would imagine there is at least a bit of fear that these sorts of social-class differences will carry over to the next life.
I'm curious what others think, but at the moment, I want to get a kind of "scorecard" going. This is who I think has maybe gotten the ordinance, versus who hasn't (and I'm not limiting the list strictly to Mopologists; any "players" in the world of Mopologetics can be included):
--Consiglieri: Maybe
--Greg Smith: Likely
--Louis Midgley: Likely
--DCP: Unlikely
--John Gee: Unlikely
--Steve Smoot: Definitely not
--Scott Gordon: Maybe
--Allen Wyatt: Unlikely
--Jeff Lindsay: Maybe
--Neal Rappleye: Unlikely
--Blake Ostler: Unlikely
--Matt Roper: Unlikely
--Royal Skousen: Maybe
--Brian Hauglid: Probably not, but it would be awesome if he had
--David Bokovoy: Unlikely
--John Welch: Likely
--John Sorenson: Unlikely
--Brant Gardner: Unlikely
--Hanna Seariac: Highly unlikely
--Brent Metcalfe: Possibly
--Grant Palmer: Possibly
--Hugh Nibley: Unlikely
--Bill Hamblin: Unlikely
--George Mitton: Unlikely
First and foremost, what are the odds that any of them have received this sacred ordinance? You can make an educated guess based on things we know about this secret rite. E.g., supposedly the "calling and election" is granted to high-ranking priesthood holders, such as temple presidents and mission presidents, and presumably all the General Authorities have gone through the ceremony. Would the same apply to "Agents" of the Strengthening Church Members Committee, such as DCP and Midgley?
If I may be allowed to speculate, I would say that, out of all the Mopologists, Midgley and Greg Smith seem most likely to have gotten the 2nd anointing. I say this because they both act with impunity: Midgley constantly refers to his mortal life as a "probation," as if he's expecting a guaranteed reward on the other side of the veil. Sure: I think that most Latter-day Saints expect to make it into the Celestial Kingdom, but most Latter-day Saints don't display the same level of arrogance and impudence as Midgley. And Smith is arguably the most vicious of the apologists, and similarly acts with impunity--as if, for him, the idea of destroying someone's life would be met with little more than a smirk and a shrug. And if I'm not mistaken, his father-in-law is a General Authority. So perhaps the anointing was given to Smith as a result of him being in the family? Getting sealed to his wife meant, de facto, the he got to have the 2nd anointing?
DCP, on the other hand, is a big question mark for me. He used to be every bit as vicious as Smith--collecting dossiers of quotations that he'd harvested off of RfM, for instance--and openly laughing about ruining Infymus's job opportunities. But he cooled his jets significantly in the wake of his expulsion from the Maxwell Institute, which makes me think that he was concerned about his eternal salvation--as if any further slip-ups might put his status in jeopardy. And recall that in Added Upon, the Celestial Kingdom is a stratified society: even though everyone has achieved Eternal Glory, it's still a world of haves and have-nots. Perhaps Dr. Peterson fears that he's going to be relegated to a lower caste, where he'll have to grovel at the feet of Midgley and Greg Smith? After all, Midgley comes from a higher-status family than DCP, and Smith is related to a GA; I would imagine there is at least a bit of fear that these sorts of social-class differences will carry over to the next life.
I'm curious what others think, but at the moment, I want to get a kind of "scorecard" going. This is who I think has maybe gotten the ordinance, versus who hasn't (and I'm not limiting the list strictly to Mopologists; any "players" in the world of Mopologetics can be included):
--Consiglieri: Maybe
--Greg Smith: Likely
--Louis Midgley: Likely
--DCP: Unlikely
--John Gee: Unlikely
--Steve Smoot: Definitely not
--Scott Gordon: Maybe
--Allen Wyatt: Unlikely
--Jeff Lindsay: Maybe
--Neal Rappleye: Unlikely
--Blake Ostler: Unlikely
--Matt Roper: Unlikely
--Royal Skousen: Maybe
--Brian Hauglid: Probably not, but it would be awesome if he had
--David Bokovoy: Unlikely
--John Welch: Likely
--John Sorenson: Unlikely
--Brant Gardner: Unlikely
--Hanna Seariac: Highly unlikely
--Brent Metcalfe: Possibly
--Grant Palmer: Possibly
--Hugh Nibley: Unlikely
--Bill Hamblin: Unlikely
--George Mitton: Unlikely