I just made an account, as a local Mormon rexburg citizen, to make a plea to my fellow members to quit being so defensive about our faith. Just because someone isn’t mainstream doesn’t mean they can’t fully participate in our weekly services with us. And to be honest emotional healing and alternative health Etc is fairly common in LDS culture. (Hello oil MLMs) We have a wide variety of opinions and beliefs even among active weekly members. I don’t think people in this forum are having a hard time grasping that. I’m frustrated at people in these fringe groups claiming full mormonism but of course this has to do with our faith an beliefs — for crying out loud it’s about a man who had dreams/visions as a teenager that set him up as a prophet leading a small group of religious followers, the literal way our faith was founded—of course members will be more susceptible to these types of claims. And the recent ramping up of changes from SLC and some of the things said has effected the timeline these fringe groups see their actions with. Don’t take this as an opportunity to do missionary work and quote articles of faith. Just help give people context to what LV & CD might have been thinking and focus on our task. Yes some of our beliefs sound out there and it’s hard to admit how easily they can be twisted. But this defensiveness and bickering needs to stop MOO
Yes, thank you. It may not be 100% germane to the issue to discuss such things, and I don't really care whether or not CD was excommunicated in the grand scheme of things (or much at all, really).
However, I think it is somewhat important to know what we are talking about, when people of different religions talk about core beliefs. It does, IMO, matter if we are talking about the "same version" of hell/heaven; or if a "same version" of hell/heaven actually occurs between religions, not the least of which is that it might in fact cut down on the non-comprehending people saying "that's the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard. Clearly this is something only an apostate could come up with"; only to find that they need just a little clarification to understand it.
For the record, I think everyone reading this thread ought to read at least this one post, which IMO explains a lot of CD's self-aggrandizing tendencies.
I must respectfully disagree. I suspect fellow congregants at the Lutheran church would agree, that there is quite literally nothing within Lutheran doctrine that would be of any benefit in explaining what Dennis Rader (BTK) did. Just because a person was once connected to or associated with "ABC", doesn't mean that ABC can explain anything they've done since.
With all due respect, there is a difference from "once showed up in a church", and "was heavily immersed in every aspect of the church for 4 decades". Was Dennis Rader a devout Baptist? In church every time the doors open? Was he a deacon/elder/usher/other, expected to be in regular weekly contact with his church? When such a type of person "goes bad", you can be absolutely certain that there's a lot of press and fascination about their level of religious affiliation and commitment; and it doesn't always come from a point of view of thinking that everyone Baptist is a weirdo/deluded/other dismissive term about religion.
In my experience with religion, I was taught that it was wrong to speculate and delve too much into the book of Revelations because the Bible also says, about Christ's second coming, "No man knows the hour nor the day"; so all this stuff about knowing who "the remnant" (144,000) is, or even their number, is not doctrinally sound -
to my ears. Are CD and LV's beliefs in this aspect doctrinally sound to mainstream LDS teaching? If such-and-such is perfectly normal to a standard practicing temple member, I don't want to be calling it "weird" or suggesting that it "throws up red flags". I certainly don't want someone thinking/going away with the impression that I'm biased against the LDS religion; but in order to pick out red flags that might help trace the presence of poor JJ and Tylee, it seems to me that we should in fact know the difference between a red flag and sound LDS doctrine.