Of Bones & Stones, Thrones & Groans

What Stone?

    Since the beginning of the CJCLDS the allegory of King Neb’s dream has been interpreted to mean the CJCLDS today was the Kingdom foretold.  There have been all manner of interpretations concerning this idea.  Joseph Smith’s grandfather (Asael) referred to it, and it appears to have been a prevalent theme among religious folk at that time.  Joseph spoke of himself being a stone rolling down a mountain and being smoothed by coming in contact with “religious bigotry, priest-craft, lawyer-craft, doctor-craft, lying editors, suborned judges and jurors, and the authority of perjured executives, backed by mobs, blasphemers, licentious and corrupt men and women”, and that God would “give me dominion over all and every one of them.”  Perhaps Joseph desired such a dominion, I certainly do not.

Joseph organized the Council of Fifty which started to morph into the political kingdom of God.  It is from this body of men that the Danite organization was composed and grew.

Mr Avard, a prominent leader in the Danite organization, declared to his Captains in the Danite movement that the establishment of this last kingdom was to be carried out by plundering and robbing the Gentiles, and that if necessary, to lie for the sake of each other’s welfare, and any who should oppose them should be dealt with as Moses did the Egyptian task master who buried the Jewish slave in the sand.  This was the manner in which God destined His kingdom to come forth.  He told them they had been organized into the Ancient Order to defend the Saints.

Doesn’t sound like an order I would like to participate in, particularly in view of the many secret murders they committed in Nauvoo and later in the “Great Basin Kingdom.”

Bruce McConkie stated that the CJCLDS was the kingdom of God, that in time it would become the ecclesiastical kingdom, as well as the civil.  But this kingdom would not be created by the arm of flesh and no man’s hands would create it. To top it off, he takes Christendom to task for believing that this Kingdom is “wholly spiritual.”  Yet elsewhere he stated that the Kingdom set up in the last days is a spiritual, ecclesiastical kingdom.  Did Bruce ever truly know which it was, or be consistent?

There are numerous other similar assertions readers can pursue for themselves.  But what exactly did Neb’s dream mean, especially in view of the unreliability of translation errors and changes in the Old Testament?  The establishment of God’s kingdom, which would destroy all other kingdoms according to Daniel I can accept (not morph out of kingdoms on the earth as McConkie once asserted in General Conference).  What is hard to correlate is that the CJCLDS IS that stone, cut from the mountain without hands.  To take this view, one must necessarily interpret the allegory.  To interpret an allegory or prophecy, one must have a key, or an insight which bears out the truth of the elements of which it is composed.  The only other recourse is to examine the historical evidence in the passage of time, in the same manner a prophet was tested in the Old Testament—did it come to pass?  If not, he is a false prophet.

In the first place, is the CJCLDS in this dispensation truly the same CJCLDS as in the Meridian of time?  There are many who will assert it is, and base it on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  The cited passage in Ephesians is vague, and only indicates that these appointees existed.  There is no New Testament declaration concerning the structure of the CJCLDS.  Nor is there anywhere given a detailed description of how members joined, worshipped, served, or were called.  They did not have a missionary or welfare program that we know of.  It has always been the duty of the Twelve to preach the Gospel in all the world, and others whom they might call, such as the Seventy.  In fact, religious scholars have known for many years that the book of Ephesians is a fraud.  It was not written by Paul, and it is unknown who penned it.  It is well known to Biblical scholars and history students alike, that the New Testament writings are dubious copies and abridgements of eye-witness accounts.  The earliest writings in existence that bear any reasonable mark of authenticity can at best only be traced to the second century C.E..  The originals were poor copies by unlearned people who had little or no writing skill.  Add to this difficulty the strong evidence that Paul was the instigator of Christianity, and not those in Jerusalem who followed Peter, and such an assertion by any modern Christian sect is based on quicksand-like syllogisms.

We know that Joseph changed the CJCLDS’s structure over the years until his death.  The CJCLDS’s structure today is not how Joseph had it organized when he was killed.  The current structure is the brainchild of Brigham Young, who dismissed the authority of the stake of Zion, even though the Twelve only had jurisdiction over the branches of the CJCLDS outside of the center stake of Zion.  In fact, Joseph had established an “anointed quorum”, with members comprised of men and their wives who held the fulness of the Priesthood which Joseph had dispensed to only them.  It remains exceptionally doubtful that the CJCLDS Brigham created after Joseph’s death had any Priesthood authority since many of the members of this quorum, especially the women, had no voice or control in the CJCLDS’s restructuring.  Since it has been firmly asserted for more than one hundred years back, that the CJCLDS can be restructured (including appointing the Prophet) only by the voice of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, the same principle applied to the quorum of anointed, who held a Fulness of the Priesthood (and not part, as did many Apostles) must also apply.  If this be so, the CJCLDS since the death of Joseph has had no bonafide Priesthood authority even if Joseph Smith ever had such.

Apostles in the early CJCLDS were supposed to be special eye witnesses to the Savior’s ministry and resurrection.  There is no mention of an office in the priesthood He conferred as “Apostle” in the New Testament.  Biblical scholars know there were female members who were apostles of the Lord, and they were revered and listened to with equal weight among other apostles.  We know of no Deacons nor Elders, and there certainly never were any “Assistants to the Twelve”, nor Regional Representatives.  It is clearly evident to the serious student that the Christian church in the Meridian of time in its structure, as well as its form of worship, bears little resemblance to the CJCLDS of this era.  Most importantly, there is no record of members in the early Church losing their membership for speaking their minds, searching out the true history of their predecessors, and possibly embarrassing Church officers in the process.  This practice did not manifest itself until the dark age of the Catholic Church.

The question then remains, how has the CJCLDS grown since the Restoration declared by Joseph Smith?  Up until his murder, the growth rate was phenomenal.  From its formal organization of six, to the final days of Nauvoo, the rate was unheard of in most Churches—hundreds of percent, although other Churches had “conversions” numbering greater.  The westward migration took its toll—many were left behind because they had not the means to make the trek.  Others remained being weary of the constant loss of home and property, having no desire to tame a desert wilderness in abject poverty in the remote regions of the growing Nation.  For a few years the growth of the CJCLDS was stagnate as the membership was widely dispersed, not only to acquire territory, but to avoid the civil litigation by the Federal government over multiple wives.

Plotting the membership (data from CJCLDS publications) and world population growth we find an interesting graph:

Note the membership growth has taken an exponential curve, while the world population growth has remained fairly constant.  However, this growth rate is not directly due to the acquisition of new members, and in fact new membership growth has fallen off before the increase and fall-off of total missionaries in the field.  When we compare the CJCLDS membership against the world population we derive this graph:

Here we see that compared to total world population, the CJCLDS remains an extremely small portion, and the rate of growth is constant and fairly linear.  From this graph we can establish that if the trend continued, it would take 78,000 years to arrive at 100% world membership, holding world growth at zero.  So far it doesn’t sound like the stone cut without hands destined to fill the earth at the Savior’s reign.

The mission of the CJCLDS as proclaimed today is to dispense the saving ordinances.  To do that in full (baptism through sealing to parents) in current temples requires about 3½ to 4 hours of a patron’s time.  To determine how much time it will take to perform this work for the dead, we can estimate a rough figure from estimates of total world population since recorded history, about 100 billion people.  It turns out that this would require >73 million man-years, for one person spending fifteen hour days in one temple (no weekends or holidays off).  Since the rumors of running the temples all night have remained that, we can estimate if all current temples (124) were running 15 hour days, 6 day weeks for 52 weeks/year, with an average of 60 patrons per session, it still would take more than 11,488 years.  It is easy to see getting all the ordinance work for the dead completed before the end of the Millenium is problematic.  During the 1980s, the CJCLDS was averaging roughly 4½ million vicarious endowments per year.  At this defunct rate it would take >22,222 years to complete just the endowment (no baptism, initiatory, or sealing) for all dead persons estimated to have lived.  All this is assuming we can obtain on demand the necessary relational information for every person who has ever lived on the earth.  We still know nothing of the early aborigines on the American continent, especially those who’s remnants are found in the dust dating to 7,000 BCE.  The same is true of every continent of the planet.  If the total population figures are low, we REALLY have a conundrum.  Let us see how the CJCLDS has been doing in the category of higher ordinances.

If we look at the live endowment rate, and separate the missionary endowments from the rest, we get this graph:

We find here that missionary endowments and other endowments are at about the same rate, with a general increase during the period of the Seventies and Eighties.  But if we look at related figures, the number of members per Melchizedek Priesthood holder, and the Endowed versus members we get a different picture:

The ratio of Melchizedek Priesthood holders to the Church remained fairly constant during those two decades, but the number of endowed members versus the Church has been gradually dropping.  More curiously, the number of converts to the total membership is falling at the same rate as the number of converts per missionary.  Earlier we saw that the number of full time missionaries has been dropping rapidly in this millenium.  In some ways missionary effectivity has dropped to levels of thirty-five years ago.  And it is also evident the increase in emphasis on missionary work over the last twenty-five years has not yielded an increase in conversions, either in total, or per missionary.  Rather it appears that the missionary-mill is producing the opposite effect, retarding the conversion rate in spite of the opening of new missions around the world.  Again, this does not sound like the stone that fills the earth, and certainly not in the near future.

    It is interesting to note that Brigham Young was anxious to finish building the Salt Lake temple so that the CJCLDS could return to their disinherited lands in the Midwest.  He felt the millenium prophesied of old was about to commence, especially with the advent of the Civil War.  He was convinced the war would continue until the entire nation had wasted away.  Wilford Woodruff was convinced that the millenium of Christ was to come forth in 1889.  Numerous pulpit declarations were made in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries concerning individuals present remaining alive to witness the Savior’s return.  In the late 1980s there were prognosticators of every sort along the Wasatch Front trying to predict the advent of Adam-Ondi-Ahman and the Second Coming.  Yet after 176 years since the formal organization of the CJCLDS, we are still awaiting the appearance of the Lord, the personal establishment of His government and kingdom, and find that the performance of the CJCLDS as a definition of the stone Daniel spoke of is dismal at best.

    As a Christian church, it remains a minority.  Today there are 25% more members world-wide in the Jehovah’s Witnesses than the CJCLDS.  In the early 1980s, there were nearly four times as many Catholics in India as total LDS members.  Christianity comprises one third of the world population, and dominates any other single category of religion.  Here, the percentages for the CJCLDS are way below the Oriental and African groups by category. Even the Jews outnumber the Mormons:

In a recent Dialogue article, Jiro Numano characterized the history of the CJCLDS in Japan.  The Japanese have always resisted outside cultural influences, and largely have shown only passing interest in the CJCLDS as a curiosity.  Jiro states that the Japanese rate of growth in this millenium has dropped to 1%.  The loss of interest was spurred by the advent of the Internet, and its availability of early period CJCLDS history now being suppressed by LDS Authorities.  As the CJCLDS data shows, the fall-off of conversion began about four years prior to the departure of many prominent members in Japan as reported by Jiro.  An extremely perceptive statement in his conclusion is worth noting.  He said: “A system of thought from the outside that will not engage a society’s most rigorous minds will always remain peripheral.  In Japan, those at the first stage of naivete stayed in the CJCLDS, while many of the rest, including members with complex views, left or drifted into inactivity.  Those who leave tend to be inquisitive and intelligent; thus, the CJCLDS in Japan is losing significant human resources.”  This is a classic Japanese polite way of saying the CJCLDS is being reduced to persons who have no inclination to go beyond baptism and are generally dull or superficial intellectually.  His observation is poignant, as the state of the CJCLDS in Japan is somewhat a barometer of how the CJCLDS is outside the United States.  In 2000, U.S. News reported the CJCLDS as one of the richest and fastest growing religious movements in the world.  Reported experts estimated world-wide membership at 280 million by 2080.  But other sources reveal just the opposite has been happening.  In view of the declining growth rates since the U.S. News editorial, that 280 million must be scaled way down.  President Hinckley was quoted to say: "We have a demanding religion, and that's one of the things that attracts people to this Church."  But as Jiro has pointed out, when that obedience demands a conformity and silence of the inquisitive, the member departs.

Eric Hoffer, a visionary of mass movements in our own time points out that people who gravitate to such “demanding” societies and “Causes” are people who feel displaced in society, and have an inherent need to establish meaning and direction to their lives.  It doesn’t have anything to do with doctrines or Truth, it has to do with feelings of inadequacy and lack of definition to their lives.  Those who are possessed of healthy self-confidence seldom attach themselves to groups or causes to identify themselves.  It is this kind of individual that is gravitating to the CJCLDS, and those of intelligence who discover dissimulation and obfuscation of pertinent facts concerning their beliefs look elsewhere for fulfillment, often leaving with disgust and mistrust.

If activity figures of the CJCLDS (currently being suppressed) can be taken as barometric, the actual membership of the CJCLDS is only half what is proclaimed.  This rumored statement tends to follow the same pattern I found as a full-time missionary in Norway.  Nearly half of the people brought into the CJCLDS there went right back out again within a few years, often within months.  Of the remaining, the attendance at sacrament meeting hovered around 30%, and went down from there for other meetings.  Home teaching was virtually non-existent, and in fact this is so for the CJCLDS everywhere outside the United States.  Jeff Burton stated he came across figures he believes are fairly accurate: 30% either leave or are excommunicated, 35% become inactive, and the balance split with 16-17% remaining active with Temple recommends.  It is widely believed, particularly among the excommunicated, that the single largest group of the CJCLDS are the excommunicated, consisting of millions.  This is a startling community of non-communal people!

The number of Melchizedek Priesthood holders outside the continental US versus the membership within is considerably lower.  What Jiro reports in his essay concerning the resistance to Western culture in Japan seems to be true in most countries of the world; people generally are not willing to accept the influence of western culture, particularly in the guise of religion.  The failure of the Indian placement program had at its roots some of the same issues.  With the preaching of the new doctrines to the Native Americans came the demand to adopt western social values and ideals, especially regarding the family and what is considered chaste behavior.  President Kimball, who had close ties to the Native American tribes, wrote about some of that westernization.  Hugh Nibley also wrote about the resistance of Native Americans to adopt white-man’s ways in the guise of religion.  Their general attitude in time became they would wait until the white man figured out how to be a genuinely charitable people before joining.

As an indirect reflection of this condition, we find that the figure of >75% of all temple work being done in the United States in 1985 has likely remained the same rate twenty years later, in spite of the brief, rapid growth of temples.  Not only has temple building tapered off in recent years, but the widening gap of membership versus endowed members likely has continued since 1985, thereby yielding only marginal improvement, traceable to countries such as Brazil and South Africa.  The vast majority of deceased names are produced as yet by CJCLDS extraction.  While the building of a temple was widely rejoiced in the Scandinavian countries, it took another 19 years for one to appear in Denmark, and just last year one in Finland.  And the wonderful introduction of President Hunter’s “all worthy members holding recommends” was truncated on his death as the administration went back to opposing the endowment of young members, especially the females.  It seems the young can only receive the blessings if they are part of an organization which closely controls their daily life by strict rules, i.e., serve a mission.

In 1994, President Hinckley observed in a CES fireside at BYU (satellite broadcast), that the biggest problem facing the CJCLDS authorities was growth (Also Stack World View 1994).  Curiously, this statement was made when the ratio of converts to members had slumped from a peak four years earlier, and marks the present decline in the growth of the CJCLDS.  The loss of a few members who were “so-called intellectuals” as Boyd Packer condescendingly labels them is of no consequence to them.  It is inconceivable that the President would make such a public statement when the D&C is clear about the worth of souls, and even he has on numerous occasions pontificated this paradigm relative to missionary work.  He avoided in that statement the damaging effect excommunication has had among relatives and friends.  It has an even greater ripple effect than conversion.  To read of the effects of forced departure over nit-picking historical facts, or public embarrassment of the CJCLDS traced to local leadership problems, is most heart-rending.  Families are torn apart and once believing members suddenly become cynical about religion in the main. (Greater than 78% of the children of the “September Six” are no longer in the CJCLDS.  Families of other excommunicated/departed have comparable rates of loss.)  This phenomenon is world-wide; the same effects are had whether in Japan, Germany (consolidation of wards and missions from membership loss), or the United States.

    When one looks closely at claims made in the press and public statements, it is clear that the CJCLDS is not growing at a rate that will fill the earth at any point in relevant time.  What we find instead is a clear effort to propagandize in like manner as was done during the 1990s to upgrade the image of the CJCLDS.  It has become a church for everybody by proclamation, but in practice a church that is losing its best and most intelligent people; a church for those who want to be lead and governed; a church not just of western thinking, but one exhibiting the most damaging qualities of cult control.  It is becoming a church that can no longer motivate its people, but only make greater demands of them.  And this, interestingly enough, Eric Hoffer states is the final stage of all institutions intent on changing people’s lives, whether in government, business, sports, or religion.  Where the “leaders” (a highly miss-used term) can no longer inspire, they threaten, demand, or intimidate, shame, and punish.  It is the state of stagnation.

One really has to study well, analyze and ponder long about the meaning of Neb’s dream and Daniel’s interpretation.  It seems that if his prophecy is true, then it will take place outside the machinations of man’s effort to bring it about.  Perhaps this is part of what the Lord referred to when he declared: “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

SethSmee

Addendum 2-2-2015

Recently I came across a membership compilation on the Web for US churches.(http://www.statisticbrain.com/religion-in-the-united-states/) There I found the number of 5.691 million members for 2005. I then searched for the LDS church's total membership for 2005 which led to the Church's own conference report of 12.56 million. Aside from its continued dismal performance (their claimed annual domestic increase is still under 2½% and falling while world membership remains barely above 1% annually for the last decade) the most laughable portion was the assertion the church has grown every decade. The Church may show positive percentiles, but the graph shows something very important:

The trend has largely been negative since 1880. The slope of the graph is downgoing, except for the rapid rise during the war years--1938-1964. Since 1990 the slope has tilted downward at nearly -45º, while between 1880-1938 it was a mild -20º, roughly. Extrapolating this slope (fraudulently including departed members--see Effective Message Building by David Tweede at http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/conference2014.html) we can infer if the trend continues the Church will become stagnant around 2040. In actuality by some estimates by those with inside information the departure rate has reduced the actual membership to nearly a third of their published data. My guess is their growth rate will crossover--become negative, by decade's end (2020). What is also instructive is the growth rate outside of the continental US. If the data could be extracted I'd guesstimate it went negative some time ago. The slope during the decade 1964-1974 shows a steeper decline, and if the activity rate I observed in Norway during my mission (1970-71) has any correlation to membership (we were losing them faster than we could bring them in. Norwegians often didn't bother to "write" themselves out.), membership growth rate outside the US has been negative for several decades. The disillusionment period of the BabyBoomers over the VietNam war and Washington's corruption had a subconscious effect on all of us. Generation X and the Millenials are walking away, and it is no coincidence that the most recent decline also appears with the onset of the Internet. In the "Last Days" the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Fraud.

SethSmee

REFERENCES
Daniel 2:14-45

Luke 13:26-30
Matthew 7:15-23


Deuteronomy 18:19-22