Jason Bourne wrote:madeleine wrote:Most Mormons I know have a hobby of looking for "signs of the times". My mother, who is very, very uber-TBM, said to me not more than a month ago, that Christ might come before I am as old as she is.
But I understand what Pres. Packer is getting at. Years ago, I had a friend who didn't buy anything, rented his house for something like 20 years, didn't even a have a bank account, didn't worry about saving for the future, because he was absolutely convinced that the world was going to end very soon. He has since died, but, if LDS kids are so inclined to believe what they have been taught, and are looking at the "signs of the times", I can see how some would be inclined to sit and wait it out, so to speak, and not make any plans for a future that doesn't include anything that resembles life as we know it.
Such a head trip.
No invalid points. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I heard all my growing up years how we had been held back for the end times and that Jesus was coming soon. Signs of the times was favorite topic. I was convinced Jesus would come in my lifetime even probably up to my late 30s. And while the Church never really did say it would be in my life per say such things have been strongly implied. We still here such sayings.
I guess a last dispensation can be a long time but how long? How many saved to the end generations are there? Me, my kids, my grand kids, great grand kids, great great maybe according to Packer's comments. Obviously people have been thinking Jesus was coming soon for a long time. Even Jesus and Paul thought the end was in their generation.
It seems all a bunch of hype.
I am curious, what do Catholics teach about this now?
“But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch
Watch, therefore; you do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”
Mark 13:32-37
Which we understand as teaching us to always act as a disciple of Jesus Christ, so as not to be caught unprepared at the time of His return.
I was raised LDS, in the 60's and 70's, my siblings have patriarchal blessings that tell them they will return with the saints to Missouri to build Zion there. In seminary, the teacher had this audio performance, an enactment of how the media might report on the second coming. I was headed into atheism at that time of my life, and was questioning pretty seriously what I was being taught, especially in seminary, which is where the more esoteric things I was taught came from. After high school, it was gospel doctrine which had the esoteric teachings, but by then, I was gone in spirit, still attending to keep the parents happy. Funny thing thinking on this, I was dropping my daughter off at jr. high one morning a few years ago, and there goes my seminary teacher, the one with the recording I just related, walking from the school to the seminary, right in front of me. It is odd, almost surreal, to have that "LDS life" walk in front of you, when you haven't believed for so long. He still looked the same, and I wondered if he was still teaching the really weird stuff.
Anyway, the LDS view still doesn't make much sense to me. *shrug*
Peace.
Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction -Pope Benedict XVI