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Documents and Eyewitness Accounts of the Mormon Purge
1991 - 2014
UPDATE: A woman just contacted me and told me that it is her understanding that at least 5000-6000 people were excommunicated in Utah County alone.
CORRECTED VERSION:
The 1980s was a very narrow window of time that I feel was the best time to be in the LDS church, or to grow up in the LDS church.
it was a time when a lot of the things Brigham Young added to the church after the death of Joseph Smith were finally being removed.
The church was distancing itself from the Adam-God theory.
Blacks were once again eligible to hold priesthood offices.
In 1990 the grisly blood oaths were removed from the temple ceremony.
In the late 1960s and early '70s two new publications independent of the LDS church were born, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought was founded in 1966 and Sunstone in 1974. These new forums for contemplation and scholarship coalesced with the appointment of Leonard J. Arrington as the first non-general authority since 1842 to be appointed as the official historian of the LDS church out of which the field of Mormon studies emerged.
This began the pre-internet search for truth independently of the LDS church leadership.
Leonard J. Arrington biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_J._Arrington
Arrington's obituary in the Salt Lake Tribune
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=3988110&itype=CMSID
One of the most pivotal moments of my life was the October 1984 General Conference just one month after starting my freshman year in high school. I was riveted when Ezra Taft Benson reminded us that the church was under condemnation and warned us that we had been treating the Book of Mormon lightly. https://archive.ph/o8hiH
One of the other highlights of my life was being able to attend a week-long EFY (Especially for Youth) at BYU in Provo in 1987, the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. I used to love the EFY soundtracks. One of the songs that year was called, Like a Lighthouse by Michael Webb. We were listening to it on tape all week but then near the end of the week we went to go see the artists perform some of their songs live. I remember near the end of the performance Michael Webb came on the stage and began singing, Like a Lighthouse. I remember the Spirit was so strong that everyone around me, myself included, was crying. My Bishop was sitting right next to me and he was crying. The next thing I knew everyone in that theater was balling their eyes out and all of sudden I knew that Jesus Christ was in that room. Not just the Holy Spirit but that he was, bodily, present in that room and I knew exactly where he was. I couldn't see him and yet I knew exactly where he was on the left side of the stage. I was so overwhelmed to experience him making his presence known in the most undeniable way. It was an experience that was way more than emotion. I could not deny that I knew that he was physically there during that song. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life but I didn't say anything to anyone about and the concert ended and we went home a day or two after.
The next week we had a special fast and testimony meeting during Sacrament meeting so we could share our testimonies about EFY. The Bishop got up and started sharing his testimony about his experiences at EFY. Then he said that when Michael Webb came on the stage and started singing that song that he knew that Jesus Christ had entered that room and was not just spiritually present but physically present with us and he began crying so hard when he said that and I was crying so hard because I hadn't told anyone about my experience but to have a second witness provided for me like that just blew my mind because it helped reassure me that I was not imagining that experience. That second witness was just as much of a gift as that visit from the Savior, himself. So I got up and also provided a second witness from the pulpit that I had the exact same experience and that what the Bishop was saying was true.
In the 1980s My father was part of the Mormon intellectual community and when I was in high school I used to borrow books from his library and periodicals such as Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. My father's book collection also included numerous unpublished manuscripts before some of them were later published as books or articles. These included such documents as Paul Toscano's, The Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood, Margaret and Paul Toscano's "The Missing Rib: The Forgotten Place of Queens and Priestesses in the Establishment of Zion." Andrew Ehat's The Words of Joseph Smith (which demonstrated the numerous changes that Joseph F. Smith had made when allegedly publishing those same words as "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith"), Andrew Ehat's Master's thesis, “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question.” BH Roberts magnum opus, The Way the Truth and the Life (which had never been published in book form until 1994), A book-length manuscript of D. Michael Quinn's pre-publication research into 19th century American folk magic, investigations by other authors into the origins of the temple ceremonies, as well as investigations into the relationship between 19th century Mormons and freemasonry, as well as manuscripts by Hyrum Andrus among others.
My dad also owned a complete set of the Journal of Discourses, he owned most of Hugh Nibley's books and He also began collecting Avraham Gildeadi's books beginning with the first one published in 1988 when I was a senior in high school, and for the record I should also note that in the 1990s my parents and I loved studying Book of Mormon evidence that suggested that the Book of Mormon lands were within what are now the present-day borders of the United States.
Before the purge I was used to seeing the LDS church in the national news from elementary school to my mid-twenties. I was also accustomed to having some degree of involvement in some of those headlines, a theme that would continue throughout my life.
Beginning in 1984 as the Mark Hoffman situation began to unfold making national headlines even before any bombs had gone off. I remember my parents reading and discussing each news story as they were published week after week and how worried my mother was about the implications of these supposed new historical discoveries. There was tremendous overlap with the cast of characters and subject matter in both the Hoffman situation and the later purge, for instance Paul Toscano was a friend of Steven Christensen who was killed. Mormon history was involved.
"The White Salamander Murders: Mark Hoffman’s Discoveries Had Shaken the Mormon Church - Then a Bomb Went Off. And Then Another," Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1987 https://archive.ph/0BBUD
If you haven't yet seen Murder Among the Mormons on Netflix I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I always tell people who are waking up to the re-writing of LDS history by Brigham Young and his cronies, that if Mark Hoffman could fool the best forensics experts of the twentieth century how much better could a 19th century forger?
In 1989 when I was 19 years old I found out that my mutual teacher, a neighbor and close friend of the family, was one of the victims of satanic ritual abuse interviewed by Bishop Pace, and although not interviewed, my mother was a survivor as well - most likely a generational one, as her mother, a Relief Society president, and temple worker, had Dissociative Identity Disorder and also abused my mother along with a group of unknown people. My mother's memories did not surface as a result of a therapist, some things she remembered since the time that they happened. Other memories that had been repressed such as the memory of a satanically distorted temple ceremony come back to her the first time she was endowed in the LDS temple. Later on in life, after I became a mother, this became the primary cause of a number of years of inactivity in the LDS Church for me because once I became a mother, I became fearful of bringing my young son to leave alone in a church classroom with people that I really didn't know.
A couple of years later In October 1991, the Pace memorandum was leaked to the press making national headlines. In his memo, Bishop Pace stated that he had met with sixty victims who had either recovered memories (or always had memories) of ritualistic abuse during their childhood, again my former mutual teacher having been one of them.
On July 4, 1992 the Mormon Alliance was formed. The purpose of the group was:
to identify and document ecclesiastical/spiritual abuse, to promote healing and closure for its survivors, to build more sensitive leadership, to empower LDS members to participate with more authenticity in Mormonism, and to foster a healthier religious community.
https://mormon-alliance.org/about.htm
in 1996 they published the Pace memo in their case files:
https://mormon-alliance.org/SiteMap.htm
In August of 1992, due to the leak of the Pace memo the LDS church was forced to admit the existence of a Joseph McCarthy-style intelligence arm of the LDS church, the Strengthening Church Members Committee.
"Secret Files," New York Times, August 22, 1992 https://archive.ph/eevlU
"First Presidency Statement Cites Scriptural Mandate for Church Committee," Church News Archives August 22, 1992
https://archive.ph/hpsVA
Within three months of the revelation of the SCMC, accusations of an LDS church "purge" began making the rounds of the wire services. The Associated Press wrote the following:
"Ultraconservatives Say Church is Purging Them," November 29, 1992, https://archive.ph/YFHtS
I don't think it's any coincidence that several months prior to accusations of a purge that amidst rumors of President Benson being drugged and muzzled by the other church leaders that Gordon B. Hinkley brought General Brent Scowcroft (the national security advisor to six U.S. presidents) to give a commencement speech where he mentioned the formation of a "New World Order" seven times. He also said, "You are graduating at a time when the world is going through the same sort of transition that you are in your personal lives. The world is moving from one historical era to another, and you are joining the world, as it were, at a period of dramatic change. Only 4 years ago when many or most of you began your studies here, the world was a very different place. In historical terms, change has taken place at an astonishing pace. It is this historical transition that I would like to discuss with you this afternoon."
In hindsight it is clear that it's no coincidence that a "historical transition" was taking place in the LDS church as well. As I was compiling this information it became very apparent to me how significant the The title of Scowcroft's commencement address is, World in Transition. I believe this is the key to understanding the timing of the purge. This was a transitionary time in American history and world history, which happened not coincidentally at the same time the Internet was just being rolled out. This was a huge coordinated effort on the part of those building a New World Order both inside and outside of the church.
"Some believed he was being held hostage, and possibly drugged by his counselors." https://archive.ph/AjvnQ
Scowcroft commencement speech, April 23, 1992 (audio)
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/brent-scowcroft/world-transition/
BYU removed the transcript but there is a very good transcript with highlighted key words and excellent commentary on the LDS Freedom Forum:
https://archive.ph/ROhg0
The Atlantic Council's obituary for Brent Scowcroft (a picture is worth a thousand words),
August 7, 2020
https://archive.ph/7LWpv
For those who missed the call to join the N W 0 the Deseret News resounded the call for anyone who missed it:
"Scowcroft Says Now is Time to Help Shape World," Deseret News, Apr 24, 1992
https://archive.ph/QYDTS
In the 1980s Carol Lynn Pearson had been on a number of national talk shows such as Phil Donahue discussing her book, "Goodbye. I Love You." She was well-known in the LDS church as a poet and a playwright and a songwriter. We were in the same ward in Walnut Creek, CA and Carol Lynn had been best friends with my mother's second cousin's wife when they were in high school. I was at the beginning of my study of women in the scriptures, the feminine divine in the scriptures as well as the lost and suppressed history and culture of women going back into pre-historic times. At the time Carol Lynn was touring with her play Mother Wove the Morning and hosting regular gatherings for Mormon women in her home.
I had one foot in the Mormon intellectual community and another foot in more conservative subcultures so I never supported 3rd wave feminism. I couldn't stand Gloria Steinem (who later turned out to be a CIA asset) and I was always opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment (aka the ERA) since I was and still am a Constitutional activist. At age 22 in 1992 I was the vice chairperson for the Libertarian party in Contra Costa County, CA.
In 1993 the Libertarian National Convention was held in Salt Lake City. In 1992 I'd been campaigning in San Francisco for the Libertarian Presidential ticket and in 1993 I was able to attend the Libertarian party national convention in Salt Lake City, synchronistically having moved to Provo from the Bay Area in 1993.
My parents were the same way. My dad was part of the Mormon intellectual community but he and my mom had also been members of the John Birch Society back in the day, and my mother still occasionally attended JBS meetings until the early 2000s.
Upon arriving in Utah I began a radio broadcasting internship at a Salt Lake City radio station called KTALK aka KTKK.
That same year Col. James "Bo" Gritz was speaking at events in Salt Lake City such as the "Preparedness Expo" and teaching workshops called SPIKE Training which teaches self-sufficiency, self defense and survival skills. Gritz is probably best known for his role as a negotiator in the FBI siege on the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge in 1992. Gritz was the real life model for the film Rambo and claims to have been the most highly decorated special forces officer in America and he was sharing his special forces skills with the masses. He was also a convert to the LDS church and he was running for President (although I still continued to support the Libertarian party and I didn't like some of the people that Gritz affiliated with). But that year in '93 I did do the SPIKE training with him in Salt Lake City.
SPIKE training
https://www.spike-team.com
Trailer for feature film documentary about Gritz
https://youtu.be/TIh1i-2WZb8
More biographical info re: Gritz' church membership, patriarchal blessing, and more (2021)
https://archive.ph/NDDee
"Speaking Their Peace: Survivalists Sound Off LDS Zealots Muzzling Outspoken to Protect Tax Status, Gritz Says," The Salt Lake Tribune, January 22, 1993
https://archive.ph/Y468W
"`Doomsday' Mormons Say Church Rejects Them," The Chicago Tribune, January 3, 1993
https://archive.ph/0Ft7y
Spring 1993 Lavina Fielding Anderson published a chronology of the history of the purge from the 1970s up to that point in 1993.
I think this is the most important article of all of the articles included in this study.
This is a play by play account of everyone involved in this, citing dates and names of both the accusers as well as the accused, and not just the historians and the feminists but Avraham Gileadi, Bo Gritz and everyone else involved in the purge who was a household name at the time.
This also documents the LDS church hypocritically breaking its own rules.
I also thought that this quote is extremely important. Lavina says:
We must protest, expose, and work against an internal espionage system that creates and maintains secret files on members of the church. If there were some attempt to maintain a full and complete record—including the record of church service, the lives influenced for good, and the individual's spiritual strength—I might feel differently. I might also feel differently if individuals had access to their files. But they are secretly maintained and seem to be exclusively accusatory in their content. I find such an activity unworthy in every way of the Church of Jesus Christ.
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V26N01_23.pdf
Summer 1993 Dialogue publishes, Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts by D. Michael Quinn
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/issues/V26N02.pdf
This is a play by play account of the conflicts that Benson encountered over the years while he was in church leadership.
I thought it was charitable of Quinn to include this statement:
Despite their dissent, the politically moderate general authorities allowed Ezra Taft Benson to become an enduring hero of ultra-conservatives. It now seems uncharitable for the LDS hierarchy to punish Mormon "true believers" for emulating this apostle's thirty years of rejecting political moderation.
On the other hand Quinn tried to tie Ezra Taft Benson to a "spy ring" at BYU in the late '60s but years later Gary James Bergera published his investigation into the matter in the Utah Historical Quarterly and could find no proof that Benson was part of the spy ring.
https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume79_2011_number2/s/10373893
September 1993 "the September Six" was born.
"Six Facing Censure Accuse Mormon Church of Purge," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 18, 1993
https://archive.ph/0GAeL
Something else that took place in the early 90s in the Utah Mormon culture (and those of us outside of Utah in the Mormon diaspora) was that people were beginning to use the Internet to find and chat with like-minded people. It was also getting close to the end of the astronomical "age" of Pisces, referring to the precession of the equinoxes which Jesus referred to in the New Testament and as we got closer to the year 2000 people were feeling more inspired to prepare for his return and a desire to gather with like-minded Saints. A lot of people said they were feeling a spirit of gathering and felt inspired to move to Utah (I was one of them and moved there from 1993 - 1994). Other people were seeing the disconnect between the Book of Mormon and the Institutional LDS church and trying to go "back to the original" and sort things out. As people were sorting things out they were noticing the changes that had been made in the LDS church - changes to ordinances, such as the sacrament, as prophesied in Isaiah. They noticed that the Lectures on Faith had been removed from the Doctrine and Covenants. We were obtaining copies of documents such as the original Book of Commandments (which later became the Doctrine and Covenants) to see what changes had been made. We were seeking to identify what the Lectures on Faith call "the pure and unadulterated religion of heaven" and separate it from the false traditions in the LDS church. Many of us were studying the prophecies of Bishop John Koyle in Spanish Fork, Utah. which he prophesied around the turn of the 20th century. Many of us were also studying old documents such as David Whitmer's, An Address to all Believers in Christ.
Some really important books that really changed a lot of people's lives were very inexpensive and self-published.
One was called, Back to The Original - The Restoration of The Dispensation of The Fullness of Times, Part One (Edited by Givoah Ali), published in 1991. I was 21 years old and this was the first book I read that suggested that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist and actually fought polygamy. This was also an early attempt at separating the "Doctrine of Christ" and Jesus Christ's definition of his church as found in the scriptures from the man-made traditions of the LDS church. I still have a hard copy but it can be found online as well. It's definitely outdated but it is a wonderful relic of the quest for truth happening during that time period.
http://backtotheoriginal.faithweb.com/ten.htm
Another one, published in 1993 was called, Experiencing the Mighty Change. I still have my original copy of that one as well but it's also since been posted online. This one was about the necessity of obtaining the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost and how to obtain it.
http://mightychangeofheart.com/etmc/intro/
Beginning in December of 1993 to the Spring of 1994 the Lord gave a humble servant named Donovan Bramwell 15 separate messages or "Words from the Lord" to publish online directed to both the LDS hierarchy and the general public pronouncing woes upon the LDS church if they don't repent and prophesied that He would lead a remnant out of the LDS church who are "willing to be taught from on high." In contrast to the Denver Snuffers and the Phil Davises and the Mauricio Berger's of today no one ever saw a picture of Donovan or knew anything about him because he never made it about himself. He was simply hearing and obeying the voice of the Lord. Three years later Donovan was excommunicated.
https://archive.ph/5f5fS
Approximately four months before Ezra Taft Benson died, Avraham Gileadi's The Literary Message of Isaiah was first published on January 01, 1994.
My dad and I had already heard of Gileadi and his work prior to publication so my dad bought a copy as soon as it was hot off the press. As soon as my dad was finished reading it I borrowed it and never gave it back. After years of study it's still sitting in tatters on the bookshelf having just about been loved to death. The Lord has since shown me a couple of errors in Gileadi's work but regardless his work as a whole has been a great source of spiritual nourishment and inspiration to me as I was maturing in the Gospel.
The Davidic Servant Error
https://ldsanarchy.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/the-davidic-servant-error/
May 30, 1994 just a few days or weeks after my move from Provo to Salt Lake, Ezra Taft Benson dies in Salt Lake city. I remember video taping the funeral services and having that tape in my library for decades to come.
I am still a Constitutionalist but I no longer participate in party politics. I am still totally opposed to the UN, communism, socialism and just about every other "ism." However, over the past 10 years the Lord has shown me that most of these freedom oriented groups back in the day were often not what they appeared to be on the surface. One thing he showed me was the anti-Communist crusade back in the '50s and '60s was actually being used to get freedom-loving Americans to compromise Constitutional principles in order to justify the need for a police state. Another example that makes me suspicious about the JBS is that just like the now known CIA front, National Review, the JBS was also established in the same year, 1958, at the height of the CIA’s psychological warfare research and development phase and during the CIA’s creation of its Operation Mockingbird program, which would pave the way for the CIA to use the media for covert domestic and international psychological warfare. John Birch himself worked for U.S. intelligence through the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and like National Review, it appears the JBS’ function may have been to homogenize the conservative movement and, eventually, the conspiracy community, into one manageable controlled opponent.
Regardless, Ezra Taft Benson did act as a prophet on many occasions. A prophet is not a title or an office. A prophet is as a prophet does. it s an action. a prophet warns a people or a nation of their apostasy and impending judgment. It's also not necessarily a 24 / 7 gig. They're a prophet when they are prophesying and the rest of the time they're an ordinary person.
If Paul (who saw the Resurrected Jesus Christ in person) says that he "saw through a dark glass" and that, "All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely" (1 Corinthians 13:12) how much more does this apply to Ezra Taft Benson?
But in his October 1984 General Conference talk he spoke truth to power, and I believed risked his life to do so. The Lord was definitely authorizing this "witness and a warning." That day He reminded the LDS church that according to the scriptures they were still under condemnation. That was in the same talk where he stated the need to return to "the Key Stone of our church," the Book of Mormon. I still remember feeling the Spirit so strongly. I've always felt blessed that I'd been privileged be a witness to that kind of history. He's a heroic figure not because he was perfect or knew everything, but in spite of not being perfect or knowing everything the Lord gave his final warning over the pulpit through that man.
Other prophetic acts he performed under divine inspiration included warning and testifying of the fundamental need to double-down on protecting the Constitution and our God given rights, and to identify and adhere to the "Proper Role of Government."
Under divine inspiration he gave us one of the best quotes of all time, "There is no conspiracy theory in the Book of Mormon — it is a conspiracy fact.” ("Civic Standards for the Faithful Saints," Ensign, p 59. July 1972)
In the April 1989 General Conference, four and a half years after his October 1984 talk, A New Witness for Christ (where he warned that we were under condemnation and treating the Book of Mormon lightly), Thomas S. Monson read a message from President Benson addressed to the children of the Church. In this message, President Benson said:
I wish I had time to locate additional sources but I can tell you from experience and hearing from many people older than me that from the time of Brigham Young to the time of Ezra Taft Benson the Book of Mormon was not emphasized in the LDS church at all. It was not systematically taught and studied like it is now. It wasn't taken nearly as seriously until president Benson warned us that we were "treating it lightly."
The Lord was able to use President Benson as an instrument to change the lives of countless people for the better. This move of God was definitely a huge blessing to me.
On the other hand, prior to becoming President, Benson gave a talk at a 1980 BYU devotional called “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet” codifying the already-existing prophet worship in the LDS church to the level of Papal Infallibility and would make heretics out of anyone who followed his later counsel to take the Book of Mormon seriously. It's almost as if the Lord had divinely orchestrated this choice to see who gravitated toward which talk because these two talks are not compatible. One talk kept people in the church and one talk may very well have led some people out of it.
Then to make matters more confusing, forty years later no one still knows who actually started the Strengthening Church Members Committee. If you go online to try research who started it it's always linked to Ezra Taft Benson by pointing out that it began under his administration but there is absolutely no evidence online that can tie Benson directly to the organization. Under pressure, the church was forced to admit its existence in 1992 but it only identified Russell M. Nelson and James E. Faust as being active on the committee at the time.
https://archive.ph/hpsVA
As far as the purge itself goes it has since been documented that the primary person responsible for the excommunications of the September 6 was Boyd K. Packer.
On June 6, 1994 The day after Howard W. Hunter became President of the Church he gave a talk titled, Come Back and Feast at the Table of the Lord, where he invited the purged and other disaffected church members back into the fold. Nine months later he was dead having served the shortest tenure of any president of the LDS church.
As the purge continued, BYU professor, Hyrum Andrus came under scrutiny for conducting scripture-based study and in private firesides and cottage meetings a wide variety of questions and subjects such as what is priesthood? the Holy Order, the second comforter, prophecy and the signs of the return of Jesus Christ, establishing a Zion society and more. Andrus was heavily pressured by the church leaders to stop his firesides and cottage meetings but a former assistant has dispelled the persistent rumors that Andrus was excommunicated.
One of Andrus' former research assistants, a woman named Gaia was on a number of the same invitation-only, private list-servs as myself and other well-known scholars and researchers back in the '90s.
She recounts:
Paul Toscano was also a student assistant to Hyrum Andrus at BYU.
I certainly don't think that anyone mentioned in this video is perfect or knew everything there is to know about everything and I very much agree with John Hajicek's recent critique of the so-called New Mormon History (which I will post a link to here for anyone who hasn't seen it yet)
John Hajicek, A 3rd View of Mormonism
https://youtu.be/ZSMQpE0hcVM
But I think most of the people involved in the events cited here were sincere in their quest for truth and that many of them even those I disagree with had a sincere love for God and the Restoration.
I also think it's possible that a lot of people were inspired to conduct some very important research in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and aside from most of the so-called New Mormon History there were many lines of worthwhile inquiry that bore good fruit, such as looking at what the scriptures say priesthood is versus man-made LDS priesthood traditions, searching for the origins of the temple ceremonies, searching for the original words of Joseph Smith versus the heavily revised, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, etc.
These are some examples of Theological explorations that bore good fruit:
Paul Toscano, Priesthood Concepts in the Book of Mormon
https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/074-08-17.pdf
Margaret Toscano, If Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood since 1843, Why Aren't They Using It?
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V27N02_231.pdf
Hyrum Andrus' research:
https://www.hyrumandrus.com/about/
In 1986 I began studying graduate level research every Sunday while I was in high school. This was the beginning of my participation in the Mormon intellectual community. A decade later, In the late 1990s I began to study religious studies, cultural anthropology, and archaeology in college and then at the graduate level.
I was invited to speak at the Sunstone Symposium four times between 2007 to 2012. In 2008 my path came full circle when Margaret Toscano chose to be the respondent to the paper I read that year, a paper that was later published as my master's thesis.
In 1995 the newspaper articles continued:
An article by Peggy Fletcher Stack in The Salt Lake Tribune, May 27, 1995, pg. D1 documented the spiritual and cultural milieu that was taking place at the time:
DOOMSAYERS ARE HAVING THEIR SAY DOOMSAYE
Dozens of current and former Mormons say they are having visions, writing scripture, speaking in tongues and talking with angels.
Now these believers are trying to wake up humankind to its imminent demise.
“The great cleansing of the Earth is about to begin,” declared a large advertisement in Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune. “It will start with those who have been given the most light and yet deny his power among them.”
The ad went on to urge people to “seek the spirit of God in their lives and to come out from under the bondage of relying on the arm of flesh,” in preparation of a thousand-year reign by Jesus Christ, known as the millennium.
The $4,300 ad, which covered nearly three-quarters of a page, carried 75 signatures. It was placed by Mike Rigby, a 39-year-old Orem man who runs Modern Automated Publishing (M.A.P.) which specializes in life-after-death books.
But Rigby denies that he is the leader of any organized group or movement.
Rather, he insists, he is just one voice testifying of God’s continuing spiritual gifts. Rigby said he, like many of those associated with the movement, has been excommunicated from the Mormon Church. But many more have not, he said.
Rigby said their revelations do not urge them to practice polygamy, stockpile weapons, escape to the mountains, attack the U.S. government, stop paying taxes or establish a church.
Rigby’s sojourn with the supernatural began when he published Life in the World Unseen, a book purportedly dictated by Robert Hugh Benson, an Anglican priest who died in 1914.
The book describes the afterlife, allegedly from Benson’s experience, Rigby said, and “it went along with LDS doctrine.”
Benson could not reach “the upper levels of heaven” without the appropriate signs and symbols, Rigby said. So Rigby and his wife Carol went to the Mormon temple in Provo to perform vicarious temple rituals for Benson, including posthumous baptism into the Mormon Church.
The next morning, Rigby said, Benson and two of his friends “showed up in our bedroom.
“It was fascinating,” he said.
For the first six months, Rigby said, he didn’t tell a soul of his otherworldly callers. Now he is ready to tell the world.
“We are raising the consciousness of people,” Rigby said this week. The destruction will begin in Utah with those Mormons “unwilling to accept additional light and truth.”
That includes current members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as all the breakaway groups such as the polygamists of Manti lead by Jim Harmston, Rigby said.
People who hear his story want to join with him or form an organization.
“They’re coming from a system where the prophet tells them what to do and think,” he said. “So now they want a new leader.”
But that is precisely the problem, said Rigby, who compares the movement to a colony of ants in which each ant performs a specific function and contributes to the whole without central leadership.
“The curse of a prophet is depending on him rather than on one’s own revelations,” he said.
Rigby said he has been having daily exchanges with God and Jesus Christ for at least the past two years and in much of his life does only what God tells him to do — like placing the ad. Someone else in the movement, he said, was likewise told to pay for it.
David Whitmer, a Sandy contractor and father of nine, claims to have had similar divine manifestations for the past 10 years. He also claims to have received sacred writings known to Mormons as “the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon.”
Mormons believe that founder Joseph Smith was commanded by God not to translate all the writing on the gold plates he received from a heavenly messenger.
Together, Rigby and Whitmer produced Sacred Scripture, which includes writings they purport are from the Old Testament prophet Abraham and the Mormon prophet Moroni.
They sell the book for cost, Rigby said.
Not everyone finds in the new scripture additional light and truth, however.
John Muir of Davis County said much of the book is “filled with expanded and fanciful accounts of old prophets like Abraham, Adam, and some new Nimrod.”
The book promises but fails to “reveal things of the future,” Muir said. In addition, Muir noted several passages describing the prophet Abraham dancing naked with several of his wives.
This work claims to celebrate “some kind of holy ravishment” where the enlightened few “expend fluids into the waiting mouths of those who want to be filled with the light and holiness of the power of God,” Muir said. “This sounds like an orgy to me.”
Jenet Hansen, who signed the ad, said the passages to which Muir was referring were “from Abraham’s personal diary and that was his experience, not ours.
“God only gives us what is for our highest good,” she said. “I don’t believe in a God who has any need for sexual perversions.”
All the ad’s signers want to do is share their spiritual experiences, Rigby said.
“God and Jesus are getting ready to divide the sheep from the goats,” Rigby said. The criterion is not church membership, but “what’s in your heart.”
At 24 years old I was one of the 75 signers of the 3/4 page ad that was put in the Salt Lake Tribune titled:
F-2 Tornado in downtown Salt Lake City
Pt. 1
https://web.archive.org/web/20000614174859/http://www.greaterthings.com/Newsletter/31_SLC_tornado.htm
Pt. 2
https://web.archive.org/web/20000611015306/http://www.greaterthings.com/Word-Number/Tornado/Newby.htm
Pt. 3
https://web.archive.org/web/20000603120819/http://www.greaterthings.com/Newsletter/31_Feedback.htm
September 11, 2001
Inside St. Paul's chapel, where George Washington prayed after taking the oath of office — that remained standing when the Twin Towers fell across the street
https://www.businessinsider.com/st-pauls-chapel-new-york-city-photos-history-911-2018-9
BYU professor Steve Jones was one of the first academics to contest the official 9 1 1 narrative and after publishing his scientific findings in an academic journal was forced into early retirement by BYU and church leaders.
"Controversy Dogs Y's Jones," Deseret News, Sept 11, 2006
https://archive.ph/5DH7K
"BYU Professor in Dispute over 9/11 will Retire," Deseret News, Oct. 22, 2006
https://archive.ph/5DH7K Sometime between 2001 - 2002,the purge continued outside of Utah, in this case in Pennsylvania. My first online friend, Todd Jumper, a young father in his early 20s, his children were just babies, had his entire social support network torn out from under him. If I remember correctly Todd seems to have been targeted for running what I would call fansites, or personal websites talking about his love for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon as well as his own spiritual experiences and explorations. These websites may have touched on the esoteric and the mysteries of God but these were pro-Mormon sites talking about his personal life. There was nothing critical of the LDS church on these sites. I highly recommend listening to Todd give the rest of his testimony. It's eerie hearing him say that he saw the file that church leaders had been keeping on him.
Todd's testimony (27 min.)
https://youtu.be/Ob6nTduD3PY
In 2005 the creator of the Greaterthings.com website began compiling his memoirs of the Purge. Greater Things also hosted the David's Outcasts discussion group which was a hub for Constitutionalists, people concerned about the N W 0, people seeking to hear from the Lord directly, and other independent thinkers in general.
http://web.archive.org/web/20151209204459/http://www.greaterthings.com/Books/MormonPurge/
In 2014 Rock Waterman updated us on the latest round of purging while undergoing the process of excommunication himself. I highly recommend this important article to everyone. Here are a couple of highlights:
This leads to an excellent discussion of spiritual abuse, and he also addresses the Strengthening Church Members Committee.
This also reminds me of Isaiah's prophecy about latter-day Ephraim that, "all who watch for iniquity shall be cut off, those who at a word adjudge a man to be guilty." That is they watch for iniquity in others, not in themselves and on mere hearsay they condemn others (Isaiah 29:20-21).
https://archive.ph/BjGef
In 2018 a blogger was reading Leonard J Arrington's biography and noted that, "One of the interesting observations Arrington made was about the existence of “[an] underground church.” that ran parallel to the official LDS church. I just came across this during the course of this research and loved it! I had never considered the fact that I had been a part of an underground church all those years.
https://archive.ph/swDpL
After re-visiting this study for the past two weeks I've concluded that the purge was never about targeting any particular type of group or individual. People all over the social and political spectrum were targeted but what each individual had in common was that they were independent thinkers and noncomformists.
The question asked by someone else which launched this study was how it is that there used to be so many patriots in the church but now only mostly globalists?
When I left the church I took my son with me. If my adult son were to have had children already that would be three generations of our famliy that has been missing from the church for the past 25 years.
What happens to the demographics of an organization when you systematically remove three generations of critical thinkers from that organization?
Purging the people purged the people's collective memory within the LDS church, 1984 style.
In conclusion, this is an excerpt from a blog post I wrote six years ago:
It is a well established fact that in the early to mid-1990's, many people were having dreams and revelations instructing them to gather with the Saints in Utah and the Mormon Corridor in the Intermountain West. Many people began moving to the region in droves and many more were in the process of planning to move. I was one of them. My great-grandmother, Maggie Evans Richardson, is buried in the Spanish Fork, Utah cemetery in the plot directly adjacent to Bishop Koyle who prophesied of the Relief Mine and the "White City" - a place of refuge prophesied to be built up around the "Dream Mine" as it is also known. She reiterated Koyle's prophecy to my grandfather and to my mother, who reiterated it to me, saying that that area would be a place of refuge during the winding up scene and that our family should move back to Utah from California before it was too late.
This move of God was most disturbing to the powers-that-be in Salt Lake City. They began to aggressively preach against gathering to Utah and scattered the flock by telling everyone over the pulpit to stay where they are and to stop moving to Utah. Many people who were considered by Church leaders to be too pre-occupied with the events leading up to the Second Coming of Christ were excommunicated which came to be known as "the purge." This was also around the time of the excommunication of "the September Six."
Many people still continued to move to Utah, especially Manti and Sanpete County (where the Lord was directing many people to go). The problem was that without the assistance of the leadership of the LDS Church, many people moving to the area began to fall prey to a new group of wolves-in-sheep's-clothing known as the TLC Church. Because the TLC Church was preaching about the obvious corruption of the mainstream LDS Church it became a gathering place for many well-meaning people who had nowhere else to go. It didn't end well for those involved, the rest is history.
I believe the Lord holds the L.D.S. Church leaders responsible for this scattering of the flock as evidenced in the following scriptures:
A revelation describing the Lord’s work in the last days in gathering out a people to be His people. Written December 11, 22, and 25, 1993.
Manifestations of the Spiritual Gifts
A prophesy promising a manifestation of the spiritual gifts. Written March 23, 1994.
I prophesy in the name of the Lord that the time is now at hand when the saying recorded in the Book of Joel will be fulfilled. The Lord will pour out his spirit upon his people in great abundance. Old men will dream dreams, and young men will see visions. Their sons and their daughters will prophesy, and ordinary men and women of the working class will speak in the name of the Lord.
I stopped attending the LDS church in 1997 a year after going through the endowment ceremony in the LDS temple. Five years later I briefly attended the LDS church for about a year from 2002 - 2003. I did not step foot in an LDS church again until my father died five years later in 2008. In 2009 - 2010 I attended my mother's ward while I was living with her that year just as a way to spend time with her. A couple of years later In 2012 - 2013 I attended an LDS ward for a few months but the last time I walked out of the door I knew that that was the last time I would ever step foot in an LDS church ever again. That was almost ten years ago.
in 2010 after undergoing a terrible tragedy I began to hear the voice of the Lord when he told me he would grant me access to his Holy of Holies.
Three years later, in January of 2013, the Lord began pouring out his spirit on me I'd already been baptized by Fire and Holy Ghost but this was a whole new level of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This led me to the discovery that the Lord was pouring out his spirit on all flesh as prophesied in Joel 2:28 - 29. The Lord then showed me that there were thousands of people from diverse walks of life all around the world hearing and obeying his voice. The Lord showed me that those of us who claimed to hear his voice were all being given the same revelation about his soon return. The Lord showed me that there were thousands of people around the world who are ready to stand face to face with him in the clouds when he comes to gather us at any moment. The Lord showed me that his church was alive and well that we were organized by no man or earthly institution, only by Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord showed me that the prophetic timeline was much farther along than most people with LDS backgrounds realized and that most people with an LDS background, (even those that have left the church or are seriously questing the church) are blind to how soon he is returning and unprepared because they refuse to let go of the false traditions of men and false interpretations of scripture passed down by their forefathers. They're stuck in the past and have no idea what the Lord is saying and doing right now.
During this time Father in Heaven sent the Holy Spirit of Promise (Ephesians 1:13)prophesying my marriage (which took place almost four years later), sealing that marriage, and giving other covenant promises, making my calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10), giving me an invitation to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9) and pouring out dreams and visions most of which have either already come to pass or have already begun their process of fulfillment (Joel 2:28 - 29). I also began experiencing many miracles, signs and wonders, often there were witnesses (Mark 16:17-19). I was also called to sacrifice my career and all of my possessions and called to live by faith and not the arm of flesh. I was set apart by the Lord himself (Acts 13:12, Hebrews 10:10) and called to go on a mission to prepare the way for the Lord's return (and given an endowment of power to accomplish that mission) which has taken me to three states in a 25 year-old beat up truck (that broke down a few times) and is still ongoing ten years later. In addition to preaching his soon return, the Lord also gave me an intercessory prayer ministry and a spiritual warfare ministry.
You can read more about the Lord's work over the past decade through myself and thousands of others here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/discussdoctrineofchrist/posts/1293745597853050
and here:
Pt. 1 January / March 2013 Visions
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2013/10/january-march-2013-visions.html
Pt. 2 The The Day of the Lord is upon us! + a Revelation on the Gathering (2017)
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-day-of-lord-is-upon-us-revelation.html
Pt. 3 2022 UPDATE on 2017 post about DREAMS & VISIONS
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2022/12/2022-update-on-2017-post-about-dreams.html
After working on this project for the past two and a half weeks something that I have known for a long time only just now crystallized in my mind. Despite claims of continuing the work and Joseph Smith and perpetuating the Book of Mormon, The Utah-based LDS church was never a lawful successor to the organization that Joseph Smith began, not according to the laws set forth in revelations given to Joseph Smith by the Lord and not according to the Bible or the Book of Mormon. It is a documented fact that Brigham Young's church was created through an unlawful seizure of power.
Brigham Seizes Power (short version)
https://rumble.com/v1z9ls0-december-6-2022.html
Apostolic Coup D'é·tat - The History of Brigham Young's Seizure of Church Power Part 1
https://youtu.be/9BMoPpEtJV4
Apostolic Coup D'é·tat - The History of Brigham Young's Seizure of Church Power Part 2
https://youtu.be/AMVoa_uG5Vs
Can an organization never authorized by God to exist in the first place be set in order?
The LDS church has spent the past century removing Brigham Young's most controversial teachings and practices, but how can you completely remove the founder of an organization from that organization? During the past couple of weeks I have noticed a common theme in all of this information and that is espionage. It is well documented that The LDS church has been spying on its own members for decades. This inspired me to see how far back this espionage goes and It appears that the church hasn't just been spying on it's members for decades, it appears that Brigham's church has been spying on its members from its inception. Brigham Young has been accused of tampering with U.S. Mail and using illegal wiretaps.
https://archive.ph/QiSjo
It also appears that Brigham Young created the Home Teaching program as a method of surveillance as well.
Brigham Young had a murderous heart and also taught blasphemous doctrines of demons in place of the doctrine of Jesus Christ:
In the Deseret News, April 16, 1856 Brigham Young is reported as saying:
In the Journal of Discourses, Young is reported to have said:
John 1:7 tells us: “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin,”
and the Book of Mormon states:
"Remember that there is no other way nor means whereby man can be saved, only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ."
Helaman 5:9
Please listen to the testimony of my 2nd great-uncle, William Adams Hickman, who was a hit man for Brigham Young, crimes which he repented of by trusting not in the shedding of his own blood but by relying on the Atoning blood of Jesus Christ alone.
https://youtu.be/DQcKEH5yXDY
Can we determine what kind of man Brigham Young was based on the scriptures?
John said, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world." (1 John 4:1 ).
Jesus said,
May 30, 1994 just a few days or weeks after my move from Provo to Salt Lake, Ezra Taft Benson dies in Salt Lake city. I remember video taping the funeral services and having that tape in my library for decades to come.
I am still a Constitutionalist but I no longer participate in party politics. I am still totally opposed to the UN, communism, socialism and just about every other "ism." However, over the past 10 years the Lord has shown me that most of these freedom oriented groups back in the day were often not what they appeared to be on the surface. One thing he showed me was the anti-Communist crusade back in the '50s and '60s was actually being used to get freedom-loving Americans to compromise Constitutional principles in order to justify the need for a police state. Another example that makes me suspicious about the JBS is that just like the now known CIA front, National Review, the JBS was also established in the same year, 1958, at the height of the CIA’s psychological warfare research and development phase and during the CIA’s creation of its Operation Mockingbird program, which would pave the way for the CIA to use the media for covert domestic and international psychological warfare. John Birch himself worked for U.S. intelligence through the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and like National Review, it appears the JBS’ function may have been to homogenize the conservative movement and, eventually, the conspiracy community, into one manageable controlled opponent.
Regardless, Ezra Taft Benson did act as a prophet on many occasions. A prophet is not a title or an office. A prophet is as a prophet does. it s an action. a prophet warns a people or a nation of their apostasy and impending judgment. It's also not necessarily a 24 / 7 gig. They're a prophet when they are prophesying and the rest of the time they're an ordinary person.
If Paul (who saw the Resurrected Jesus Christ in person) says that he "saw through a dark glass" and that, "All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely" (1 Corinthians 13:12) how much more does this apply to Ezra Taft Benson?
But in his October 1984 General Conference talk he spoke truth to power, and I believed risked his life to do so. The Lord was definitely authorizing this "witness and a warning." That day He reminded the LDS church that according to the scriptures they were still under condemnation. That was in the same talk where he stated the need to return to "the Key Stone of our church," the Book of Mormon. I still remember feeling the Spirit so strongly. I've always felt blessed that I'd been privileged be a witness to that kind of history. He's a heroic figure not because he was perfect or knew everything, but in spite of not being perfect or knowing everything the Lord gave his final warning over the pulpit through that man.
Other prophetic acts he performed under divine inspiration included warning and testifying of the fundamental need to double-down on protecting the Constitution and our God given rights, and to identify and adhere to the "Proper Role of Government."
Under divine inspiration he gave us one of the best quotes of all time, "There is no conspiracy theory in the Book of Mormon — it is a conspiracy fact.” ("Civic Standards for the Faithful Saints," Ensign, p 59. July 1972)
In the April 1989 General Conference, four and a half years after his October 1984 talk, A New Witness for Christ (where he warned that we were under condemnation and treating the Book of Mormon lightly), Thomas S. Monson read a message from President Benson addressed to the children of the Church. In this message, President Benson said:
I know you are reading the Book of Mormon, for I have received hundreds of personal letters from you telling me that you are reading this sacred book. It makes me weep for joy when I hear this.
I wish I had time to locate additional sources but I can tell you from experience and hearing from many people older than me that from the time of Brigham Young to the time of Ezra Taft Benson the Book of Mormon was not emphasized in the LDS church at all. It was not systematically taught and studied like it is now. It wasn't taken nearly as seriously until president Benson warned us that we were "treating it lightly."
The Lord was able to use President Benson as an instrument to change the lives of countless people for the better. This move of God was definitely a huge blessing to me.
On the other hand, prior to becoming President, Benson gave a talk at a 1980 BYU devotional called “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet” codifying the already-existing prophet worship in the LDS church to the level of Papal Infallibility and would make heretics out of anyone who followed his later counsel to take the Book of Mormon seriously. It's almost as if the Lord had divinely orchestrated this choice to see who gravitated toward which talk because these two talks are not compatible. One talk kept people in the church and one talk may very well have led some people out of it.
Then to make matters more confusing, forty years later no one still knows who actually started the Strengthening Church Members Committee. If you go online to try research who started it it's always linked to Ezra Taft Benson by pointing out that it began under his administration but there is absolutely no evidence online that can tie Benson directly to the organization. Under pressure, the church was forced to admit its existence in 1992 but it only identified Russell M. Nelson and James E. Faust as being active on the committee at the time.
https://archive.ph/hpsVA
As far as the purge itself goes it has since been documented that the primary person responsible for the excommunications of the September 6 was Boyd K. Packer.
On June 6, 1994 The day after Howard W. Hunter became President of the Church he gave a talk titled, Come Back and Feast at the Table of the Lord, where he invited the purged and other disaffected church members back into the fold. Nine months later he was dead having served the shortest tenure of any president of the LDS church.
As the purge continued, BYU professor, Hyrum Andrus came under scrutiny for conducting scripture-based study and in private firesides and cottage meetings a wide variety of questions and subjects such as what is priesthood? the Holy Order, the second comforter, prophecy and the signs of the return of Jesus Christ, establishing a Zion society and more. Andrus was heavily pressured by the church leaders to stop his firesides and cottage meetings but a former assistant has dispelled the persistent rumors that Andrus was excommunicated.
One of Andrus' former research assistants, a woman named Gaia was on a number of the same invitation-only, private list-servs as myself and other well-known scholars and researchers back in the '90s.
She recounts:
I was a research assistant to Andrus for several years during the publication of (what was to be) a four-volume "tour-de-force" work on the thoughts and teachings of Joseph Smith: "Foundations of the Millennial Kingdom of Christ."
...I think it's important to note that while it's certainly true that his tendency to discuss controversial topics didn't exactly make him a favorite of the Brethren (especially of BR McConkie), Andrus was never excommunicated nor disfellowshipped.
Paul Toscano was also a student assistant to Hyrum Andrus at BYU.
I certainly don't think that anyone mentioned in this video is perfect or knew everything there is to know about everything and I very much agree with John Hajicek's recent critique of the so-called New Mormon History (which I will post a link to here for anyone who hasn't seen it yet)
John Hajicek, A 3rd View of Mormonism
https://youtu.be/ZSMQpE0hcVM
But I think most of the people involved in the events cited here were sincere in their quest for truth and that many of them even those I disagree with had a sincere love for God and the Restoration.
I also think it's possible that a lot of people were inspired to conduct some very important research in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and aside from most of the so-called New Mormon History there were many lines of worthwhile inquiry that bore good fruit, such as looking at what the scriptures say priesthood is versus man-made LDS priesthood traditions, searching for the origins of the temple ceremonies, searching for the original words of Joseph Smith versus the heavily revised, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, etc.
These are some examples of Theological explorations that bore good fruit:
Paul Toscano, Priesthood Concepts in the Book of Mormon
https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/074-08-17.pdf
Margaret Toscano, If Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood since 1843, Why Aren't They Using It?
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V27N02_231.pdf
Hyrum Andrus' research:
https://www.hyrumandrus.com/about/
In 1986 I began studying graduate level research every Sunday while I was in high school. This was the beginning of my participation in the Mormon intellectual community. A decade later, In the late 1990s I began to study religious studies, cultural anthropology, and archaeology in college and then at the graduate level.
I was invited to speak at the Sunstone Symposium four times between 2007 to 2012. In 2008 my path came full circle when Margaret Toscano chose to be the respondent to the paper I read that year, a paper that was later published as my master's thesis.
In 1995 the newspaper articles continued:
An article by Peggy Fletcher Stack in The Salt Lake Tribune, May 27, 1995, pg. D1 documented the spiritual and cultural milieu that was taking place at the time:
DOOMSAYERS ARE HAVING THEIR SAY DOOMSAYE
Dozens of current and former Mormons say they are having visions, writing scripture, speaking in tongues and talking with angels.
Now these believers are trying to wake up humankind to its imminent demise.
“The great cleansing of the Earth is about to begin,” declared a large advertisement in Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune. “It will start with those who have been given the most light and yet deny his power among them.”
The ad went on to urge people to “seek the spirit of God in their lives and to come out from under the bondage of relying on the arm of flesh,” in preparation of a thousand-year reign by Jesus Christ, known as the millennium.
The $4,300 ad, which covered nearly three-quarters of a page, carried 75 signatures. It was placed by Mike Rigby, a 39-year-old Orem man who runs Modern Automated Publishing (M.A.P.) which specializes in life-after-death books.
But Rigby denies that he is the leader of any organized group or movement.
Rather, he insists, he is just one voice testifying of God’s continuing spiritual gifts. Rigby said he, like many of those associated with the movement, has been excommunicated from the Mormon Church. But many more have not, he said.
Rigby said their revelations do not urge them to practice polygamy, stockpile weapons, escape to the mountains, attack the U.S. government, stop paying taxes or establish a church.
Rigby’s sojourn with the supernatural began when he published Life in the World Unseen, a book purportedly dictated by Robert Hugh Benson, an Anglican priest who died in 1914.
The book describes the afterlife, allegedly from Benson’s experience, Rigby said, and “it went along with LDS doctrine.”
Benson could not reach “the upper levels of heaven” without the appropriate signs and symbols, Rigby said. So Rigby and his wife Carol went to the Mormon temple in Provo to perform vicarious temple rituals for Benson, including posthumous baptism into the Mormon Church.
The next morning, Rigby said, Benson and two of his friends “showed up in our bedroom.
“It was fascinating,” he said.
For the first six months, Rigby said, he didn’t tell a soul of his otherworldly callers. Now he is ready to tell the world.
“We are raising the consciousness of people,” Rigby said this week. The destruction will begin in Utah with those Mormons “unwilling to accept additional light and truth.”
That includes current members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as all the breakaway groups such as the polygamists of Manti lead by Jim Harmston, Rigby said.
People who hear his story want to join with him or form an organization.
“They’re coming from a system where the prophet tells them what to do and think,” he said. “So now they want a new leader.”
But that is precisely the problem, said Rigby, who compares the movement to a colony of ants in which each ant performs a specific function and contributes to the whole without central leadership.
“The curse of a prophet is depending on him rather than on one’s own revelations,” he said.
Rigby said he has been having daily exchanges with God and Jesus Christ for at least the past two years and in much of his life does only what God tells him to do — like placing the ad. Someone else in the movement, he said, was likewise told to pay for it.
David Whitmer, a Sandy contractor and father of nine, claims to have had similar divine manifestations for the past 10 years. He also claims to have received sacred writings known to Mormons as “the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon.”
Mormons believe that founder Joseph Smith was commanded by God not to translate all the writing on the gold plates he received from a heavenly messenger.
Together, Rigby and Whitmer produced Sacred Scripture, which includes writings they purport are from the Old Testament prophet Abraham and the Mormon prophet Moroni.
They sell the book for cost, Rigby said.
Not everyone finds in the new scripture additional light and truth, however.
John Muir of Davis County said much of the book is “filled with expanded and fanciful accounts of old prophets like Abraham, Adam, and some new Nimrod.”
The book promises but fails to “reveal things of the future,” Muir said. In addition, Muir noted several passages describing the prophet Abraham dancing naked with several of his wives.
This work claims to celebrate “some kind of holy ravishment” where the enlightened few “expend fluids into the waiting mouths of those who want to be filled with the light and holiness of the power of God,” Muir said. “This sounds like an orgy to me.”
Jenet Hansen, who signed the ad, said the passages to which Muir was referring were “from Abraham’s personal diary and that was his experience, not ours.
“God only gives us what is for our highest good,” she said. “I don’t believe in a God who has any need for sexual perversions.”
All the ad’s signers want to do is share their spiritual experiences, Rigby said.
“God and Jesus are getting ready to divide the sheep from the goats,” Rigby said. The criterion is not church membership, but “what’s in your heart.”
At 24 years old I was one of the 75 signers of the 3/4 page ad that was put in the Salt Lake Tribune titled:
A WITNESS, A WARNING, AND A BLESSING
Salt Lake Tribune, May 21, 1995
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people: That we the undersigned, through the grace of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ do declare that the work of the Father has now commenced upon the earth. And this work is a work of love and of gathering into one body all nationalities of the world, regardless of race, color, or religious affiliation. We declare with words of soberness that angels have ministered unto many of us and have brought into the light of this day many sacred scriptural writings which have been withheld from man that they might come forth to a pure and believing generation, even portions of the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, which portion is a testimony of the Father and the Son and their love for all the generations of mankind.
And He has shown unto us that the great cleansing of the earth is about to begin, and that it will start with those who have been given the most light and yet deny His power among them. We have seen that it will start with his own house being set in order and then shall commence forth until it shall fill the whole earth. We plead unto all men and women everywhere to seek the Spirit of God in their lives and to come out from under the bondage of relying on the arm of flesh. Listen and do His promptings and seek His face continually without putting your trust in man. We who have bound ourselves together with God do not put one man above another, and there is no appointed leader among us. We hold all things in common and are given by God to know the needs of each individual as they arise.
All of the gifts of the Spirit (healings, visions, prophesying, speaking in tongues, and interpretations of tongues) are manifest among us, for God cannot withhold them when we unitedly seek His will and do it in all things.
And now we declare unto the world that this work and way of life shall be that order which shall proceed for a thousand years when Christ shall reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. And glory and honor and power be to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.
Looking back, I think that this was a real move of God, or at least a real grassroots movement but one thing I learned from back in those days was that every time the Lord begins to pour out his Spirit or make a move that the Adversary will send counterfeits and deception like a flood to muddy the waters so that finding truth in that situation will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. In the end, Mike Rigby and David Whitmer were deceived about those new "scriptures" they were discovering but at least they weren't trying to organize a group or make things about them. They and many other people were both searching for further light and truth and trying to excavate what Joseph Smith restored and separate it from all the things that Brigham Young added to it and in that process people were beginning to identify what Jesus Christ referred to in the scriptures as his doctrine and Jesus Christ's definition of his church versus the LDS definition of their church.
The primary message that I remember being preached in the early to mid-nineties by so many of these independent-minded Mormons, and what so many of us discovered in our studies, was the the primary goal of the restored gospel was was to obtain a personal manifestation of Jesus Christ and after that do whatever he tells you to do, and that the only way to hear and obey the voice of the Lord was to first obtain the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
We noticed that these things had always been in the scriptures and had even been taught by the LDS church until about the mid-nineties , it's just that they would teach one thing but then do another. These truth's had always been present in the LDS church up to that time but so many things had been added to it that we had to excavate it from all of the traditions of men and the doctrines of devils that had been added to it to muddy the water. This led many of us were to hope and pray for years that the Lord would "set his church in order." But that was before I realized that Christ's definition of his church and the LDS definition of Christ's church are two different things and if we are talking about Christ's actual church according to his definition, then that church has never been out of order.
This leads me to speak for a moment about my concern for the younger generation that came up after me in the LDS church because I've been concerned that after the purge that the younger generation would become prey to the Denver Snuffers, Phil Davises and Mauricio Bergers of the world. I think its entirely possible that some or all of these individuals and organizations were created by the LDS church knowing that as the church continued to integrate itself into the N W 0 that more and more people would continue to become disaffected and begin to jump from the frying pan into the fire and it feels entirely possible to me that they may have created an assortment of frying pans to catch as many of those people as possible and keep them in the fold (of course without people realizing they may well still be in that fold).
SEE:
Institutional Capture: How Religions Are Subverted & Coopted, Feb. 24, 2023
Jay Dyer and Rachel Wilson discuss church subversion by state / intelligence agencies and the agenda many of "activists" use who are often overtly funded and aided by these agencies, foundations, think tanks, NGOs and academic centers for subversion. They also talk about the current purge going on in Orthodoxy.
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2023/02/double-feature-institutional-capture.html
Regardless of whether the LDS church (or the government, or the Jesuits - I've had to wonder if Denver Snuffer is a Jesuit) is behind any of these people or whether these self-appointed leaders are just deceived of their own accord, several years ago I once told the Fellowship of Christ Facebook group (Denver Snuffer's group) that what was going on back then reminded me a little bit of what some of the people in Snuffer's group were engaged in but with some major differences.
That book in the early '90s called Experiencing the Mighty Change which helped many people obtain the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost in the early to mid-90s - nobody knows who really wrote that book, and more importantly no one cared. It was all about seeking the Lord's face. That book may have been written under pen names. I couldn't tell you who those people were and I don't think anyone else could. No one ever saw a picture of what they looked like. It was never about cults of personality or trying to organize any groups. And it probably didn't cost a penny more than the cost to print it. For most of the people I crossed paths with in those circles it was only ever about hearing and obeying the voice of the Lord and following the Lord alone.
I was taught about the first and second comforter in the LDS church and the scriptures and my patriarchal blessing. I was taught that I needed to seek the Lord's face and obtain his will and instructions for my life in the Lectures on Faith. I didn't need to buy Denver Snuffer's books to learn about that. Everything that Denver Snuffer taught up until 2016 I had already been taught in the L.D.S. church when I growing up, and these things were simply re-emphasized to me by many independent-minded church members in the early to mid-nineties without having to join a group or enter into multiple covenants
But I've suspected since 2017 that Denver Snuffer and some of the people in his organization may well have based their operation on studying and copying what the actual remnant back in the early to mid '90s was saying and doing - crafting a similar but artificial movement and that the people most prey to it, or vulnerable to it, are the younger people who grew up after Hinckley and his co-conspirators purged the collective memory of the LDS church by purging the Lord's remnant out of it decades before and then watering down their teachings like Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 1:22 so that those who were starving for truth would be more prey to the Snuffers, the Davises, and the Bergers of the world. But again even if the LDS church isn't behind those imposters the Adversary is. The cosmic powers behind this present darkness mentioned in Ephesians 6:12 saw all this coming and so with or without the help of conspiring men on the earth they definitely have been able to lure some of those disaffected into man-made splinter groups.
Back to the narrative:
In 1996, as I was preparing for my endowment ceremony in the Oakland, CA temple, I fasted and prayed and earnestly sought the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost with every fiber and cell of my being. One night as I was kneeling down in prayer and asking for forgiveness of my sins, I suddenly felt like a lightning bolt come down through the top of my head and shoot through my entire body. After that experience I was a completely different person. I was always a compassionate and sympathetic person but after this experience I had a bleeding heart for everything and as the scriptures promise I did lose my disposition to do evil.
In 1999, Doctrine and Covenants 112:24-26 began to be fulfilled first on the Lord's house in Salt Lake City and then one year and one month later on what was once the Lord's house in America.
Salt Lake Tribune, May 21, 1995
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people: That we the undersigned, through the grace of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ do declare that the work of the Father has now commenced upon the earth. And this work is a work of love and of gathering into one body all nationalities of the world, regardless of race, color, or religious affiliation. We declare with words of soberness that angels have ministered unto many of us and have brought into the light of this day many sacred scriptural writings which have been withheld from man that they might come forth to a pure and believing generation, even portions of the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, which portion is a testimony of the Father and the Son and their love for all the generations of mankind.
And He has shown unto us that the great cleansing of the earth is about to begin, and that it will start with those who have been given the most light and yet deny His power among them. We have seen that it will start with his own house being set in order and then shall commence forth until it shall fill the whole earth. We plead unto all men and women everywhere to seek the Spirit of God in their lives and to come out from under the bondage of relying on the arm of flesh. Listen and do His promptings and seek His face continually without putting your trust in man. We who have bound ourselves together with God do not put one man above another, and there is no appointed leader among us. We hold all things in common and are given by God to know the needs of each individual as they arise.
All of the gifts of the Spirit (healings, visions, prophesying, speaking in tongues, and interpretations of tongues) are manifest among us, for God cannot withhold them when we unitedly seek His will and do it in all things.
And now we declare unto the world that this work and way of life shall be that order which shall proceed for a thousand years when Christ shall reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. And glory and honor and power be to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.
Looking back, I think that this was a real move of God, or at least a real grassroots movement but one thing I learned from back in those days was that every time the Lord begins to pour out his Spirit or make a move that the Adversary will send counterfeits and deception like a flood to muddy the waters so that finding truth in that situation will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. In the end, Mike Rigby and David Whitmer were deceived about those new "scriptures" they were discovering but at least they weren't trying to organize a group or make things about them. They and many other people were both searching for further light and truth and trying to excavate what Joseph Smith restored and separate it from all the things that Brigham Young added to it and in that process people were beginning to identify what Jesus Christ referred to in the scriptures as his doctrine and Jesus Christ's definition of his church versus the LDS definition of their church.
The primary message that I remember being preached in the early to mid-nineties by so many of these independent-minded Mormons, and what so many of us discovered in our studies, was the the primary goal of the restored gospel was was to obtain a personal manifestation of Jesus Christ and after that do whatever he tells you to do, and that the only way to hear and obey the voice of the Lord was to first obtain the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
We noticed that these things had always been in the scriptures and had even been taught by the LDS church until about the mid-nineties , it's just that they would teach one thing but then do another. These truth's had always been present in the LDS church up to that time but so many things had been added to it that we had to excavate it from all of the traditions of men and the doctrines of devils that had been added to it to muddy the water. This led many of us were to hope and pray for years that the Lord would "set his church in order." But that was before I realized that Christ's definition of his church and the LDS definition of Christ's church are two different things and if we are talking about Christ's actual church according to his definition, then that church has never been out of order.
This leads me to speak for a moment about my concern for the younger generation that came up after me in the LDS church because I've been concerned that after the purge that the younger generation would become prey to the Denver Snuffers, Phil Davises and Mauricio Bergers of the world. I think its entirely possible that some or all of these individuals and organizations were created by the LDS church knowing that as the church continued to integrate itself into the N W 0 that more and more people would continue to become disaffected and begin to jump from the frying pan into the fire and it feels entirely possible to me that they may have created an assortment of frying pans to catch as many of those people as possible and keep them in the fold (of course without people realizing they may well still be in that fold).
SEE:
Institutional Capture: How Religions Are Subverted & Coopted, Feb. 24, 2023
Jay Dyer and Rachel Wilson discuss church subversion by state / intelligence agencies and the agenda many of "activists" use who are often overtly funded and aided by these agencies, foundations, think tanks, NGOs and academic centers for subversion. They also talk about the current purge going on in Orthodoxy.
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2023/02/double-feature-institutional-capture.html
Regardless of whether the LDS church (or the government, or the Jesuits - I've had to wonder if Denver Snuffer is a Jesuit) is behind any of these people or whether these self-appointed leaders are just deceived of their own accord, several years ago I once told the Fellowship of Christ Facebook group (Denver Snuffer's group) that what was going on back then reminded me a little bit of what some of the people in Snuffer's group were engaged in but with some major differences.
That book in the early '90s called Experiencing the Mighty Change which helped many people obtain the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost in the early to mid-90s - nobody knows who really wrote that book, and more importantly no one cared. It was all about seeking the Lord's face. That book may have been written under pen names. I couldn't tell you who those people were and I don't think anyone else could. No one ever saw a picture of what they looked like. It was never about cults of personality or trying to organize any groups. And it probably didn't cost a penny more than the cost to print it. For most of the people I crossed paths with in those circles it was only ever about hearing and obeying the voice of the Lord and following the Lord alone.
I was taught about the first and second comforter in the LDS church and the scriptures and my patriarchal blessing. I was taught that I needed to seek the Lord's face and obtain his will and instructions for my life in the Lectures on Faith. I didn't need to buy Denver Snuffer's books to learn about that. Everything that Denver Snuffer taught up until 2016 I had already been taught in the L.D.S. church when I growing up, and these things were simply re-emphasized to me by many independent-minded church members in the early to mid-nineties without having to join a group or enter into multiple covenants
But I've suspected since 2017 that Denver Snuffer and some of the people in his organization may well have based their operation on studying and copying what the actual remnant back in the early to mid '90s was saying and doing - crafting a similar but artificial movement and that the people most prey to it, or vulnerable to it, are the younger people who grew up after Hinckley and his co-conspirators purged the collective memory of the LDS church by purging the Lord's remnant out of it decades before and then watering down their teachings like Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 1:22 so that those who were starving for truth would be more prey to the Snuffers, the Davises, and the Bergers of the world. But again even if the LDS church isn't behind those imposters the Adversary is. The cosmic powers behind this present darkness mentioned in Ephesians 6:12 saw all this coming and so with or without the help of conspiring men on the earth they definitely have been able to lure some of those disaffected into man-made splinter groups.
Back to the narrative:
In 1996, as I was preparing for my endowment ceremony in the Oakland, CA temple, I fasted and prayed and earnestly sought the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost with every fiber and cell of my being. One night as I was kneeling down in prayer and asking for forgiveness of my sins, I suddenly felt like a lightning bolt come down through the top of my head and shoot through my entire body. After that experience I was a completely different person. I was always a compassionate and sympathetic person but after this experience I had a bleeding heart for everything and as the scriptures promise I did lose my disposition to do evil.
In 1999, Doctrine and Covenants 112:24-26 began to be fulfilled first on the Lord's house in Salt Lake City and then one year and one month later on what was once the Lord's house in America.
Behold, vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth, a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation, of weeping, of mourning, and of lamentation; and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth, saith the Lord.
And upon my house shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord; First among those among you, saith the Lord, who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord.
F-2 Tornado in downtown Salt Lake City
Pt. 1
https://web.archive.org/web/20000614174859/http://www.greaterthings.com/Newsletter/31_SLC_tornado.htm
Pt. 2
https://web.archive.org/web/20000611015306/http://www.greaterthings.com/Word-Number/Tornado/Newby.htm
Pt. 3
https://web.archive.org/web/20000603120819/http://www.greaterthings.com/Newsletter/31_Feedback.htm
September 11, 2001
Inside St. Paul's chapel, where George Washington prayed after taking the oath of office — that remained standing when the Twin Towers fell across the street
https://www.businessinsider.com/st-pauls-chapel-new-york-city-photos-history-911-2018-9
BYU professor Steve Jones was one of the first academics to contest the official 9 1 1 narrative and after publishing his scientific findings in an academic journal was forced into early retirement by BYU and church leaders.
"Controversy Dogs Y's Jones," Deseret News, Sept 11, 2006
https://archive.ph/5DH7K
"BYU Professor in Dispute over 9/11 will Retire," Deseret News, Oct. 22, 2006
https://archive.ph/5DH7K Sometime between 2001 - 2002,the purge continued outside of Utah, in this case in Pennsylvania. My first online friend, Todd Jumper, a young father in his early 20s, his children were just babies, had his entire social support network torn out from under him. If I remember correctly Todd seems to have been targeted for running what I would call fansites, or personal websites talking about his love for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon as well as his own spiritual experiences and explorations. These websites may have touched on the esoteric and the mysteries of God but these were pro-Mormon sites talking about his personal life. There was nothing critical of the LDS church on these sites. I highly recommend listening to Todd give the rest of his testimony. It's eerie hearing him say that he saw the file that church leaders had been keeping on him.
Todd's testimony (27 min.)
https://youtu.be/Ob6nTduD3PY
In 2005 the creator of the Greaterthings.com website began compiling his memoirs of the Purge. Greater Things also hosted the David's Outcasts discussion group which was a hub for Constitutionalists, people concerned about the N W 0, people seeking to hear from the Lord directly, and other independent thinkers in general.
http://web.archive.org/web/20151209204459/http://www.greaterthings.com/Books/MormonPurge/
In 2014 Rock Waterman updated us on the latest round of purging while undergoing the process of excommunication himself. I highly recommend this important article to everyone. Here are a couple of highlights:
The repeated denials from Church PR that no one in the hierarchy has had anything to do with the current string of actions is palpably, laughably false, and pretty much everyone knows it.
There is no conceivable justification for kicking a believer out of the church of Christ unless he has committed an egregious sin, or the person advocating his removal has motives that are less than pure.
The second way abuse occurs is in not following the rules laid out by God by which a person is properly removed. This abuse occurs almost every time in the modern Church, because the scriptural procedure is almost never followed. It has been usurped by conflicting rules published in the Church Handbook of Instruction. Elevating the CHI over scripture is a violation of the law, part of which reads, "Any member of the church of Christ transgressing, or being overtaken in a fault, shall be dealt with as the scriptures direct." (D&C 20:80) See? Nothing in there about going by the corporate handbook.
This leads to an excellent discussion of spiritual abuse, and he also addresses the Strengthening Church Members Committee.
This also reminds me of Isaiah's prophecy about latter-day Ephraim that, "all who watch for iniquity shall be cut off, those who at a word adjudge a man to be guilty." That is they watch for iniquity in others, not in themselves and on mere hearsay they condemn others (Isaiah 29:20-21).
https://archive.ph/BjGef
In 2018 a blogger was reading Leonard J Arrington's biography and noted that, "One of the interesting observations Arrington made was about the existence of “[an] underground church.” that ran parallel to the official LDS church. I just came across this during the course of this research and loved it! I had never considered the fact that I had been a part of an underground church all those years.
https://archive.ph/swDpL
After re-visiting this study for the past two weeks I've concluded that the purge was never about targeting any particular type of group or individual. People all over the social and political spectrum were targeted but what each individual had in common was that they were independent thinkers and noncomformists.
The question asked by someone else which launched this study was how it is that there used to be so many patriots in the church but now only mostly globalists?
When I left the church I took my son with me. If my adult son were to have had children already that would be three generations of our famliy that has been missing from the church for the past 25 years.
What happens to the demographics of an organization when you systematically remove three generations of critical thinkers from that organization?
Purging the people purged the people's collective memory within the LDS church, 1984 style.
"Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth." George Orwell, 1984.
In conclusion, this is an excerpt from a blog post I wrote six years ago:
It is a well established fact that in the early to mid-1990's, many people were having dreams and revelations instructing them to gather with the Saints in Utah and the Mormon Corridor in the Intermountain West. Many people began moving to the region in droves and many more were in the process of planning to move. I was one of them. My great-grandmother, Maggie Evans Richardson, is buried in the Spanish Fork, Utah cemetery in the plot directly adjacent to Bishop Koyle who prophesied of the Relief Mine and the "White City" - a place of refuge prophesied to be built up around the "Dream Mine" as it is also known. She reiterated Koyle's prophecy to my grandfather and to my mother, who reiterated it to me, saying that that area would be a place of refuge during the winding up scene and that our family should move back to Utah from California before it was too late.
This move of God was most disturbing to the powers-that-be in Salt Lake City. They began to aggressively preach against gathering to Utah and scattered the flock by telling everyone over the pulpit to stay where they are and to stop moving to Utah. Many people who were considered by Church leaders to be too pre-occupied with the events leading up to the Second Coming of Christ were excommunicated which came to be known as "the purge." This was also around the time of the excommunication of "the September Six."
Many people still continued to move to Utah, especially Manti and Sanpete County (where the Lord was directing many people to go). The problem was that without the assistance of the leadership of the LDS Church, many people moving to the area began to fall prey to a new group of wolves-in-sheep's-clothing known as the TLC Church. Because the TLC Church was preaching about the obvious corruption of the mainstream LDS Church it became a gathering place for many well-meaning people who had nowhere else to go. It didn't end well for those involved, the rest is history.
I believe the Lord holds the L.D.S. Church leaders responsible for this scattering of the flock as evidenced in the following scriptures:
Woe to the leaders, the drunkards of Ephraim.The Lord has fulfilled his prophecy through Donovan Bramwell that he would remove a remnant from the LDS church that would be, "willing to be taught from on high."
Isaiah 28:1
Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer. For the LORD has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleepHe has closed the eyes of your prophets and visionaries.
Isaiah 29: 9-10
For behold, I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will neither care for the lost, nor seek the young, nor heal the broken, nor sustain the healthy, but he will devour the flesh of the choice sheep leaving nothing but a few bones.
Zechariah 11:16
And now I say unto you, all you that are desirous to follow the VOICE of the good shepherd, come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things...For what shepherd is there among you having many sheep doth not watch over them, that the wolves enter not and devour his flock? And behold, if a wolf enter his flock doth he not drive him out? Yea, and at the last, if he can, he will destroy him. And now I say unto you that the good shepherd doth call after you; and if you will hearken unto his voice he will bring you into his fold, and ye are his sheep; and he commandeth you that ye suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed.
Alma 5:57-60
The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.
Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.
A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming. He will abandon the sheep because they don’t belong to him and he isn’t their shepherd. And so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock. The hired hand runs away because he’s working only for the money and doesn’t really care about the sheep.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
Jesus Christ, John 10: 2-5, 7, 12-13, 10
But you have received the Holy Spirit, and it lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what it teaches is true—it is not a lie. So just as it has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ. 1 John 2:27The Gathering of the Lord’s People
A revelation describing the Lord’s work in the last days in gathering out a people to be His people. Written December 11, 22, and 25, 1993.
Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts:
My people nod their heads in assent to many fine sounding words, and they perform many works that have the appearance of obedience, but their obedience is taught by the precepts of men. Therefore I will proceed to do a work among them, even a marvelous work and a wonder, and the wisdom of their wise ones will perish, and the understanding of their prudent ones will come to naught.
I will pour out a deep sleep upon them, that when my work proceeds among them they will not be aware of it. I will make their eyes heavy, that they see it not, and their ears hard of hearing, that they perceive it not.
I will gather out from among them a people who refuse to be taught by the precepts of men. They will come unto me, and I will protect them as a mother shelters her little children beneath her skirts. They will disappear from the midst of the people, so that no one sees them.
Those who remain will wonder, Where are they? Where did they go? I will hide them unto myself, saith the Lord, and they shall be my people. For I will have a people willing to be taught from on high, and they shall know their God, even the Holy One of Israel. They shall stand in his presence and see his face and be instructed by the words of his mouth. The voice of the Lord has spoken it. Amen.
Manifestations of the Spiritual Gifts
A prophesy promising a manifestation of the spiritual gifts. Written March 23, 1994.
I prophesy in the name of the Lord that the time is now at hand when the saying recorded in the Book of Joel will be fulfilled. The Lord will pour out his spirit upon his people in great abundance. Old men will dream dreams, and young men will see visions. Their sons and their daughters will prophesy, and ordinary men and women of the working class will speak in the name of the Lord.
I stopped attending the LDS church in 1997 a year after going through the endowment ceremony in the LDS temple. Five years later I briefly attended the LDS church for about a year from 2002 - 2003. I did not step foot in an LDS church again until my father died five years later in 2008. In 2009 - 2010 I attended my mother's ward while I was living with her that year just as a way to spend time with her. A couple of years later In 2012 - 2013 I attended an LDS ward for a few months but the last time I walked out of the door I knew that that was the last time I would ever step foot in an LDS church ever again. That was almost ten years ago.
in 2010 after undergoing a terrible tragedy I began to hear the voice of the Lord when he told me he would grant me access to his Holy of Holies.
Three years later, in January of 2013, the Lord began pouring out his spirit on me I'd already been baptized by Fire and Holy Ghost but this was a whole new level of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This led me to the discovery that the Lord was pouring out his spirit on all flesh as prophesied in Joel 2:28 - 29. The Lord then showed me that there were thousands of people from diverse walks of life all around the world hearing and obeying his voice. The Lord showed me that those of us who claimed to hear his voice were all being given the same revelation about his soon return. The Lord showed me that there were thousands of people around the world who are ready to stand face to face with him in the clouds when he comes to gather us at any moment. The Lord showed me that his church was alive and well that we were organized by no man or earthly institution, only by Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord showed me that the prophetic timeline was much farther along than most people with LDS backgrounds realized and that most people with an LDS background, (even those that have left the church or are seriously questing the church) are blind to how soon he is returning and unprepared because they refuse to let go of the false traditions of men and false interpretations of scripture passed down by their forefathers. They're stuck in the past and have no idea what the Lord is saying and doing right now.
During this time Father in Heaven sent the Holy Spirit of Promise (Ephesians 1:13)prophesying my marriage (which took place almost four years later), sealing that marriage, and giving other covenant promises, making my calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10), giving me an invitation to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9) and pouring out dreams and visions most of which have either already come to pass or have already begun their process of fulfillment (Joel 2:28 - 29). I also began experiencing many miracles, signs and wonders, often there were witnesses (Mark 16:17-19). I was also called to sacrifice my career and all of my possessions and called to live by faith and not the arm of flesh. I was set apart by the Lord himself (Acts 13:12, Hebrews 10:10) and called to go on a mission to prepare the way for the Lord's return (and given an endowment of power to accomplish that mission) which has taken me to three states in a 25 year-old beat up truck (that broke down a few times) and is still ongoing ten years later. In addition to preaching his soon return, the Lord also gave me an intercessory prayer ministry and a spiritual warfare ministry.
You can read more about the Lord's work over the past decade through myself and thousands of others here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/discussdoctrineofchrist/posts/1293745597853050
and here:
Pt. 1 January / March 2013 Visions
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2013/10/january-march-2013-visions.html
Pt. 2 The The Day of the Lord is upon us! + a Revelation on the Gathering (2017)
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-day-of-lord-is-upon-us-revelation.html
Pt. 3 2022 UPDATE on 2017 post about DREAMS & VISIONS
https://bethanymagdalene.blogspot.com/2022/12/2022-update-on-2017-post-about-dreams.html
After working on this project for the past two and a half weeks something that I have known for a long time only just now crystallized in my mind. Despite claims of continuing the work and Joseph Smith and perpetuating the Book of Mormon, The Utah-based LDS church was never a lawful successor to the organization that Joseph Smith began, not according to the laws set forth in revelations given to Joseph Smith by the Lord and not according to the Bible or the Book of Mormon. It is a documented fact that Brigham Young's church was created through an unlawful seizure of power.
Brigham Seizes Power (short version)
https://rumble.com/v1z9ls0-december-6-2022.html
Apostolic Coup D'é·tat - The History of Brigham Young's Seizure of Church Power Part 1
https://youtu.be/9BMoPpEtJV4
Apostolic Coup D'é·tat - The History of Brigham Young's Seizure of Church Power Part 2
https://youtu.be/AMVoa_uG5Vs
Can an organization never authorized by God to exist in the first place be set in order?
The LDS church has spent the past century removing Brigham Young's most controversial teachings and practices, but how can you completely remove the founder of an organization from that organization? During the past couple of weeks I have noticed a common theme in all of this information and that is espionage. It is well documented that The LDS church has been spying on its own members for decades. This inspired me to see how far back this espionage goes and It appears that the church hasn't just been spying on it's members for decades, it appears that Brigham's church has been spying on its members from its inception. Brigham Young has been accused of tampering with U.S. Mail and using illegal wiretaps.
https://archive.ph/QiSjo
It also appears that Brigham Young created the Home Teaching program as a method of surveillance as well.
Brigham Young had a murderous heart and also taught blasphemous doctrines of demons in place of the doctrine of Jesus Christ:
In the Deseret News, April 16, 1856 Brigham Young is reported as saying:
“Will you love your brothers and sisters likewise, when they have committed a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood? Will you love that man or woman well enough to shed their blood? That is what Jesus Christ meant.”
“Any of you who understand the principles of eternity – if you have sinned a sin requiring the shedding of blood, except the sin unto death – would not be satisfied or rest until your blood should be spilled, that you might gain the salvation you desire. This is the way to love mankind.”
In the Journal of Discourses, Young is reported to have said:
“Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin through both of them. You would be justified, and they would atone for their sins, and be received into the Kingdom of God. I would at once do so, in such a case; and under the circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands.... There is not a man or woman, who violates the covenants made with their God, that will not be required to pay the debt. The blood of Christ will never wipe that out, your own blood must atone for it,” Journal of Discourses, v. 1, pp. 108-109.
“It is true that the blood of the Son of God was shed for sins through the fall and those committed by men, yet men can commit sins which it [the blood of Christ] can never remit,” Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 4, p. 54.
John 1:7 tells us: “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin,”
and the Book of Mormon states:
"Remember that there is no other way nor means whereby man can be saved, only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ."
Helaman 5:9
Please listen to the testimony of my 2nd great-uncle, William Adams Hickman, who was a hit man for Brigham Young, crimes which he repented of by trusting not in the shedding of his own blood but by relying on the Atoning blood of Jesus Christ alone.
https://youtu.be/DQcKEH5yXDY
Can we determine what kind of man Brigham Young was based on the scriptures?
John said, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world." (1 John 4:1 ).
Jesus said,
“A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad. You brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For whatever is in your heart determines what you say. A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. And I tell you this, you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word you speak. The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.” Matthew 12: 33-37
According to the scriptures preaching doctrines of demons instead of the doctrine of Christ makes one an antichrist.
Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, (Ephesians 2:2).
The "spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" is the spirit of the antichrist which John said is already in the world at this time (1 John 4:3).
Almost 2000 years ago John said that, "even now many antichrists have come" (1 John 2:18).
All of Brigham Young's words and actions fit very perfectly in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (also known as the DSM-V) section on cluster B personality disorders which includes narcissism and sociopathy.
According to this researcher, Brigham Young was married to fourteen women who never divorced their husbands. https://youtu.be/yiQfVnbxPss
Can an organization born from a spirit of murder and adultery, narcissism and sociopathy be redeemed?
Jesus Christ said, "no man can serve two masters" (Matthew 6:24).
All man-made churches are part of the Great and Abominable Church of the Devil. The Lord commands us In Revelation 18:4 to come out of the Great and Abominable Church of the Devil lest we share in her punishments. We must come out of the Synagogue of Satan in order to be "spared the hour of trial" (Rev. 3:20; Matthew 24:30-31, 40-41; Luke 17:34; Isaiah 25:19-21;1 Thessalonians 4:16 - 1 Thess. 5:3; D&C 45:45; Luke 21:36).
Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, (Ephesians 2:2).
The "spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" is the spirit of the antichrist which John said is already in the world at this time (1 John 4:3).
Almost 2000 years ago John said that, "even now many antichrists have come" (1 John 2:18).
All of Brigham Young's words and actions fit very perfectly in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (also known as the DSM-V) section on cluster B personality disorders which includes narcissism and sociopathy.
According to this researcher, Brigham Young was married to fourteen women who never divorced their husbands. https://youtu.be/yiQfVnbxPss
Can an organization born from a spirit of murder and adultery, narcissism and sociopathy be redeemed?
Jesus Christ said, "no man can serve two masters" (Matthew 6:24).
All man-made churches are part of the Great and Abominable Church of the Devil. The Lord commands us In Revelation 18:4 to come out of the Great and Abominable Church of the Devil lest we share in her punishments. We must come out of the Synagogue of Satan in order to be "spared the hour of trial" (Rev. 3:20; Matthew 24:30-31, 40-41; Luke 17:34; Isaiah 25:19-21;1 Thessalonians 4:16 - 1 Thess. 5:3; D&C 45:45; Luke 21:36).
SEE ALSO:
Institutional Capture: How Religions Are Subverted & Coopted
Rachel Wilson, who has done a good bit of investigation into subversive foundations and funding sources joins Jay Dyer to complement the last live stream they did on church subversion by state / intelligence agencies. They look at the agenda many of these "activists" use who are often overtly funded and aided by these foundations, think tanks, NGOs and academic centers for subversion.
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