Of Reading and Home Teaching

Kudos to the Church for its recent statement on alcohol consumption in Utah.

And the one on marriage as well.

My last post inspired a slight thread that I want to continue, sort of, here. My very attractive wife and I were talking about the Priesthood ban. I was very impressed with some of her ideas and thought I’d share some of them here (I’ll have her edit the post so as to not misrepresent her).

Was the Priesthood ban God’s will? Was there a good reason that it was allowed to occur and was perpetuated for over a hundred years?

Her opinion is that yes, there was a very good reason for the ban, but it had nothing to do with any kind of unworthiness, premortal or genealogical, on the part of anyone with African heritage. On a side note, from what I’ve seen of members of the church in Africa, they put someone like me from Utah to shame when it comes to faithfulness and enthusiasm.

The reason she sees for the ban is that had it not occurred, and had African Americans (or African Europeans, etc.) been given all of the same blessings, privileges, callings, and responsibilities as other members of the church during the period of the Civil War and through the Civil Rights movement, there is a strong possibility that opposition to the church, not only from without but certainly from within, would have been too much for the survival of the church. America had to be ready, and church members had to be ready, to receive the blessings that attended the extension of these blessings to all people.

God sometimes allows our intolerance and/or our prejudice to assist in furthering His purposes. For example, the marking of the Lamanites with dark skin seems to have had everything to do with the prejudice of the Nephites that the Lord knew they would have. He did not want them to mingle their seed with the seed of the Lamanites if that would result in a loss of the blessings of the gospel. So He, knowing that darker skin would be abhorrent to the Nephites, caused the darker skin of the Lamanites. The curse of the Lamanites had everything to do with spiritual separation from God, and not the color of their skin. This is made clear when the Lamanite converts who were taught by the sons of Mosiah, and who Mormon called the most righteous group of people in the history of his people, did not experience a lightening of their skin color upon conversion, but they did break the centuries-old curse of living without the spirit of God. Apparently, the Nephites at the time were mature enough to see past skin color and respect and love the Lamanites for who they really were: their brothers and sisters. (Btw, the Nephites’ disgust at the color of the Lamanites’ skin is described using irony that only Jacob, of all the BoM authors, could muster in Jacob 3.)

If there was a worthiness issue that was a part of the ban, it was on the part of the non-black members of the church who, for so long, held the belief that they were in some way superior to others of God’s children because of their skin color. The Lord knows what He’s doing; I have absolute confidence in that. He knew when the world would be ready to receive the marvelous blessings of extending the covenants of the temple to all who would receive them, and He knew that no one would be denied the blessings in eternity.

Though the Lord allowed members of the church to have their prejudices, He was not the author of those prejudices, and certainly we can be confident that He does not condone such intolerance. There was a price that the church paid for the ban: imagine what blessings were forfeited by not perpetuating the standard that began with Joseph Smith. What black leaders might there have been in the church, and what kind of influence might they have had for good? We cannot know, but we can be very glad that we live in the post-1978 era.

I really don’t mind valid examination into the policies and personalities of Presidential candidates, but two more email I received today convinced me that, well, I’d better not say what it convinced me of. But let me address the claims of one of them.

The email was titled something like, “A man from the east.” I’m providing for you one of the first marvelously, um, articulate(?) first paragraphs (complete with the underlining and highlighting used in the email text):

I have felt for sometime now that Obama is the
o ne person that ‘Frightens Me’. I believe the Bible has
warned us that ‘A man will come from the East that will be
charismatic in nature and have proposed solutions for all our
problems and his rhetoric will attract many supporters!’

A quick search through the text of the Bible (AV/KJV) shows that the words “east” and “man” are paired only a few times, and the nearest text to this apparent biblical citation comes from Isaiah 41:2:

Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? he gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow.

The other prophecy concerning a man coming from the east is in Matthew 24:27 and has to do with the Second Coming of Christ.

I can’t bring myself to give any more attention to this email; I started to respond to more of it, but it isn’t worth it. Suffice it to say, if Barack Obama’s policies make you nervous or the stand he takes on issues worry you, go ahead and talk about that.

But stop calling him the Anti-Christ! Stop invoking “the Bible” as a means of political trash talk.

As far as New Testament experts go, I’m not one. But that being said, I have spent a little time looking into the issue of an antichrist in the book of Revelation, and when this paragraph came into my email box as a part of a rant against Barak Obama, I couldn’t not at least respond a little.

Here is the paragraph:

“According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal….the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??”

Maybe I developed this particular response from some of my college professors, but if anyone ever refers to the book as Revelations (plural) I immediately suspect erroneous interpretations. I was certainly justified in doing so in this case.

Revelation has no specific reference to an antichrist. That is the first major problem with this statement. The term antichrist is used only in the Johannine Epistles in the New Testament, not in Revelation. When the term is used (in 1 and 2 John), John is referring to a contemporary figure/group/presence, not a figure who would come in the distant future.

Revelation does refer to figures who would come in the last days and wreak havoc on the saints of God; it could be one of these figures that the author of the paragraph is referring to, but I think a brief examination of the characteristics of these figures from the actual text of Revelation will demonstrate that the paragraph is, to be kind, ridiculous.

I know some have equated the dragon of Revelation 12 with antichrist. However, v 9 makes it clear that the dragon is Satan (I grant that calling Satan antichrist makes sense), not a person.

Revelation 13 speaks of two beasts, one that comes from the sea and another that comes from the earth. The beast that comes from the sea appears to be an entity (whether person, organization, ideal, etc.) that’s whole purpose is to blaspheme God and cause those who will not worship God to worship it. The beast that comes from the earth is another entity bent on turning individuals from the worship of God to worship of the first beast.

Just a comment about Senator Obama. I don’t care whether you agree with his politics or not, personally I like some of his positions and disagree with him on others, but I don’t see how he personifies any of the above characteristics of either beast.

Now to address some of the claims of the quoted paragraph from the email.

“A man in his 40’s of Muslim decent” Are you kidding me? I cannot think of any Biblical prophecy that contains such specific information about an individual. The remark about his age would be a little plausible, if such a thing existed in the prophecies (it doesn’t). But the part about Muslim decent is an outrageous anachronism and deserves no consideration except to mention that Islam did not exist until centuries after the writing of the book of Revelation.

“who will deceive the nations with persuasive language”  One of the beasts in Revelation is said to deceive the inhabitants of the earth with mighty miracles like calling fire down from heaven (see Rev 13:13 –14). It is because of these miracles that he is able to persuade the people to worship the first beast.

“and have a MASSIVE Christlike appeal” Nope. No mention of that. In fact, it’s pretty clear that the beasts in Revelation are unequivocally opposed to Christ.

“people will flock to him, and he will promise false hope and world peace” The beasts in Revelation tend to like war, not peace, kind of like their leader the dragon.

“when he is in power, [he] will destroy everything” Actually, the beasts are said to control economic markets and cause a lot of problems, but total destruction? Not so much.

“Is it Obama?” Let me just say this. No.