Message to Area Authorities re BKP's "talk" ....

[_Sethbag]

Actually, I think to a lot of chapel Mormons, BKP is right up their alley. I know 10 or 15 years ago or so when I was still years away from my apostasy, I thought BKP was the Cat's Meow. I would bet money that BKP is a favorite of my dad and brother, and others in the family. Not to mention, he's the President of the Q12, which in Mormondom makes him not only a rockstar, but a "lead singer" in the band, to boot.

Hence people falling all over themselves to get ahold of his "prophetic" testimony and parse every word of it to glean what scraps of secret and prophetic knowledge they can piece together from it.

Just ask yourselves this. I know there would have been people wetting themselves over this testimony no matter who of the 12 gave it, but would the response have been really so large if it had come from, say, Dieter Uchtdorf? I have a hard time imagining that.

[_harmony]

Grizzly bears, ironically, are warm and fuzzy.

To other grizzly bears, maybe, but to me, they're all roars and teeth.

[_Sethbag]

One more thing. If this was indeed recorded by someone on their cell phone or whatever, I wonder what chance there is that it'll leak out and get uploaded to Youtube? Wouldn't it be kind of funny, in light of the official letter stating that the version in the email is "inaccurate", if the audio went public and was in fact a faithful reproduction of what Packer said?

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Below is an email posted on the Foyer from the poster's bishop about all this:

Brothers and Sisters of the (deleted) Ward,

I have received from multiple sources (from within and outside our Ward) an email with the text of a talk attributed to President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of Apostles, that states he gave a talk in a Sacrament Meeting in Salt Lake City last Sunday. I know that many of you have received the same email. I looked into this (as did others apparently) and felt it was important to contact you about this.

When a General Authority speaks in General Conference his message is for the entire world. As is stated in the church handbook, any other time he speaks in a Regional Conference, Missionary Zone Conference, Stake Conference, Sacrament Meeting or any other meeting, his message is for those in attendance only. Also in the handbook we are taught that members should never teach or pass on statements attributed to Church leaders without verifying that they are from approved Church sources.

I recommend that ward members should call or email me or one of my counselors before teaching or passing on such statements. Please follow this even when the information appears to come from trusted sources such as family, other church members, or the media. The handbook also teaches that any notes we take personally during a meeting where General Authorities, General Church Officers or Area Seventies speak should never be distributed without the consent of the speaker.

Elder Packer's secretary at church headquarters confirmed for me by telephone on Friday that President Packer did speak in the Forest Bend Ward, Salt Lake City last Sunday and that the talk had apparently been transcribed by someone in attendance and then distributed by email.

She went on to say that the transcription "is not the word of President Packer" and "contains many inaccuracies". She told me that President Packer has not authorized the distribution of his remarks either accurate or otherwise.

She also said that anyone who has passed this email along should send out a note to all who received it stating that the message is not authorized for distribution and ask those who have received it to please stop sending it out. You do not need to send this message of mine to others but please make sure anyone you forwarded this to and whoever sent it to you knows to stop sending it.

In response to these notes being distributed President Packer, through his secretary, recommended that I encourage you to refer to his General Conference talk from two weeks ago (which was intended for the entire world) rather than the text of this email.

A link to his talk is below.

http://www.LDS.org/conference/talk/disp ... 27,00.html

I do not mean for anyone who originally forwarded this on to others to be offended by my bringing this to your attention. I felt that this was a teaching moment to help us all.

I am daily reminded of the goodness and righteousness of the members of the (deleted) Ward as I witness your constant and valiant Christ-like service to each other and those who live in our community.

Thank you for your obedience in this matter,

Bishop (deleted)

[_mentalgymnast]

So either he's a mouthpiece for God or he isn't.

That's where you're running into a problem there Skippy. Either/or. Black/white. False/true. Your assumption may be erroneous. Gosh, if BRM can goof up and get something published in MD, doesn't that tell you that God himself is not micromanaging things? Or at least if he is, he's looking at the macro rather than the micro?

Do you really expect that every word coming out of the mouth of a man of God would literally be God spoken? Wouldn't you think God has better things to do than be involved 24/7 in the neural activity/syntactical relays and production of thought in any one individual?

Come on. Get real.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

Nice of him to hog the testimony time for his own pontifications...

It would be interesting to take a poll of those that were in attendance at the meeting Elder Packer was at and see if a majority of those in attendance would agree with you.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

It's a matter of control. SLCentral didn't have control over the content, the delivery, or the transcription, and they sure didn't have control over the dispersal. That which they cannot control they will not support.

This talk (not testimony) is as useful as any talk given from any pulpit in the church on any given Sunday... which is to say: not at all useful. That's gotta sting BKP.

BKP is a part of SLCentral.

Why in the world would the words of an individual who is speaking on his/her own be pre-correlated with the 1st Presidency and Q12? The fact that BKP is a member of the Q12 and can still have the freedom to speak on his own when not acting in his official capacity at "SLCentral", is a wonderful thing. Isn't it? Of course there are those that will hang on every word he says as though it was "God breathed". Anyone here fall into that category?

Isn't it great that when he is on his own and in a home setting he can actually speak on his own without people prejudging him? (sarcasm mode on)

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

In a church where the brethren can't reveal anything beyond a political agenda, who can blame the Saints for latching on to any little bit of possibility that their leaders know something the general population doesn't?

How 'corporate' the LDS Church has become. There once was a time when we believed "that a prophet is a prophet only when he was acting as such." (Words of Joseph Smith, as recorded in History of the Church, 5:265). Nowadays, it seems more like "a prophet is a prophet only when he is acting through the correlation committee." And lest there be any misunderstanding about whether BKP was talking as a "man" or as an "apostle sustained as a prophet, seer and revelator" (and just a heartbeat away from Church president), note that he began his "talk" by stating he felt "moved upon by the Spirit to share a message," and concluded his "talk" by pronouncing "an apostolic blessing."

Do you have an accurate transcription of the talk that we can look at? As far as I know, there's not one out there anywhere.

Kind of difficult to make any accurate judgment when an accurate transcription is not available. You're not making any kind of judgment are you?

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

Hence people falling all over themselves to get hold of his "prophetic" testimony and parse every word of it to glean what scraps of secret and prophetic knowledge they can piece together from it.

Parse-analyze critically.
Glean-to pick up after a reaper

I suppose we need to have a little more background on the individual that transcribed the talk and look at their parsing and gleaning skills. Do you have that information?

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

One more thing. If this was indeed recorded by someone on their cell phone or whatever, I wonder what chance there is that it'll leak out and get uploaded to Youtube? Wouldn't it be kind of funny, in light of the official letter stating that the version in the email is "inaccurate", if the audio went public and was in fact a faithful reproduction of what Packer said?

When I received this talk from my sister I was under the impression from what I read that the talk had been written down by a woman who was in the meeting without any electronic devices being used. Makes a difference if this is so.

Regards,
MG