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AmyJ wrote:
My husband raised his eyebrows when in a joint interview with the Branch President I gave him my list of “perfect callings for me” as points to consider for future callings….NOTE: All recommendations I put forth I make very clear are recommendations coming from me personally. I will defer to revelation if specific revelation is in play. If I am interested and involved, if the endeavor is worth my time and energy, then I am going to have an opinion and I am going to be involved – I am not going to sit back and wait passively.
I think you are on the right track — even though leaders say “it doesn’t work that way” when you select where you want to serve, they are missing an important point of passion and motivation that serves the interests of the church, and the volunteer, at the same time.
I think it’s great you made yourself the VT of the person who needed it, although I would have just started visiting the person unofficially. I would have simply reached out and said I wanted to help, and would love to come by. That I am not a VT officially, and this isn’t a duty-bound assignment. That would create the kind of meaningful community people crave, and that systemized service doesn’t necessarily promote. But you are being self-directed and finding joy in service that matters to you — something I think all unorthodox people should consider doing to feel independent yet service minded at the same time. Kudos!
SilentDawning wrote:
I think it’s great you made yourself the VT of the person who needed it, although I would have just started visiting the person unofficially. I would have simply reached out and said I wanted to help, and would love to come by. That I am not a VT officially, and this isn’t a duty-bound assignment. That would create the kind of meaningful community people crave, and that systemized service doesn’t necessarily promote. But you are being self-directed and finding joy in service that matters to you — something I think all unorthodox people should consider doing to feel independent yet service minded at the same time. Kudos!
Technically my VT’ee doesn’t know that I am her Visiting Teacher. I consider myself her Visiting Teacher, and contact her accordingly. To me, being a visiting teacher means being a good friend, loving the mom first, then the kids and sharing a spiritual thought/uplifting message as prompted by the spirit.
I mentioned it to the R.S. president that I considered myself her Visiting Teacher more or less as an afterthought because I wanted the R.S. President to know that I was watching out for this sister so she didn’t have to and Visiting Teaching is the lingo for that:)
AmyJ wrote:
SilentDawning wrote:
I think it’s great you made yourself the VT of the person who needed it, although I would have just started visiting the person unofficially. I would have simply reached out and said I wanted to help, and would love to come by. That I am not a VT officially, and this isn’t a duty-bound assignment. That would create the kind of meaningful community people crave, and that systemized service doesn’t necessarily promote. But you are being self-directed and finding joy in service that matters to you — something I think all unorthodox people should consider doing to feel independent yet service minded at the same time. Kudos!
Technically my VT’ee doesn’t know that I am her Visiting Teacher. I consider myself her Visiting Teacher, and contact her accordingly. To me, being a visiting teacher means being a good friend, loving the mom first, then the kids and sharing a spiritual thought/uplifting message as prompted by the spirit.
I mentioned it to the R.S. president that I considered myself her Visiting Teacher more or less as an afterthought because I wanted the R.S. President to know that I was watching out for this sister so she didn’t have to and Visiting Teaching is the lingo for that:)
All wonderful stuff!!
:clap: :clap: :clap: Let’s take the following example of “revelation”: You lose your car keys, and appeal through prayer to the divine creator to find them. Then, suddenly it dawns on you where you last left them. There are two possibilities. First is, God heard and answered your prayer by adjusting the synapsis in your brain to forumulate the exact location of the car keys. The second, is that you went into a light hypnotic state which allowed you to access your unconcious mind, which created a synaptic connection to a recessed memory, which carried on to the consious mind. This second explaination is what happens all the time, when someone has an “inspiration” or “epiphany” without appealing to divine inspiration.
The question is, how do you differentiate the two? On the one hand, a true believer could say that God, in knowing and creating everything, is ultimate responsible regardless of natural laws or the petitions of mankind. But that’s a cheap answer, and would imply that God can lie.
If you are not the person recieving the revelation, you could ask the person who has made the claim several questions, including the scope of their revelatory gift and their degree of accuracy. Then, you can wait to see if their revelations are within the scope and accuracy. If not, you can safely determine that the revelator is either false or confused.
Problem solved!Except, God revealed that he hates “sign seekers”, and when a revelation fails it always gets reframed to automatically be true, or redefined as personal opinion. You can also take a similar account of the personal revelation in your own life. How often, when you have felt you were inspired by God, have you been correct? If you say “100%”, then you are either truly a prophet, bad at self-analysis, or one of the lucky .00001% of all humans. Let me tell you, there have been many times I’ve prayed to find my car keys, felt inspired to where they are, and spent the next 45 minutes frantically searching for their true location.
But given that your personal revelation is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, there is really no way to differentiate beforehand whether or not your revelations are true. The best approach you can take is admitting that you can be wrong, and correcting yourself when that happens. As for Brigham Young, of course he believed in his revelations 100%. But truthfully, I think it was impossible for him to determine which revelations came from a God (if any), and which were the result of subconsious synaptic connections being brought to the surface.
It’s very easy to correct past religious leaders when they present a “revelation” which turned out to be false. But it’s very difficult for religious leaders to rescind their own false “revelations”
dande48 wrote:
If you are not the person recieving the revelation, you could ask the person who has made the claim several questions, including the scope of their revelatory gift and their degree of accuracy. Then, you can wait to see if their revelations are within the scope and accuracy. If not, you can safely determine that the revelator is either false or confused. Problem solved!
This only works for seemingly miraculous prophecy or prediction. Perhaps a more useful form of revelation is that of the personal nature that cannot be disproven. I felt a confirmation that my intended wife would be a good choice for me. I have felt that God loved (and redeemed) me in spite of myself. Perhaps something to give you the confidence to choose among competing imperfect options. What do you feel “called” to do? What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? These, to me, are the best types of revelation.
Quote:Have any of you seen the now deleted section 101 from the D&C? So was God lying during that revelation?
I talked about that with Mark Staker. There is some evidence that original D&C 101, the “Declaration on Marriage” may have been written by Oliver Cowdery, not Joseph Smith. (Brigham Young may have confirmed this.) Mark Staker says that he could see it being re-canonized eventually, as monogamy is the church’s standard. See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2CP5VsJyps&index=3&list=PLLhI8GMw9sJ7yZHy-B4bbIKIidW5hUQzr I’m with Curt. No. Not by a long shot was it revelation, and in fact, the Bickertonites who broke off during the succession crisis (originally under Sidney Rigdon) never had a race ban. Chew on that. I just wanted to add that when I hear members say that we had the race ban because “the members” just weren’t ready yet for such a progressive policy, they are overlooking the fact that we literally created a church which hardly any black people joined because the policies were so clearly racist. So the “members” not being ready means “white people” weren’t ready–and assumes that God cares more about whites than blacks. It’s a vote of no confidence in the gospel, in revelation, and in the love heavenly parents have for their children.
hawkgrrrl wrote:
I’m with Curt. No. Not by a long shot was it revelation, and in fact, the Bickertonites who broke off during the succession crisis (originally under Sidney Rigdon) never had a race ban. Chew on that.I just wanted to add that when I hear members say that we had the race ban because “the members” just weren’t ready yet for such a progressive policy, they are overlooking the fact that we literally created a church which hardly any black people joined because the policies were so clearly racist. So the “members” not being ready means “white people” weren’t ready–and assumes that God cares more about whites than blacks. It’s a vote of no confidence in the gospel, in revelation, and in the love heavenly parents have for their children.
Yep. Women can’t have the priesthood because the men are not ready for it? OK, maybe 15 men are not ready for it.I will add that the RLDS never had a race ban either, and currently have a black apostle. Here’s a photo of 8 of the 12, with several female apostles too. 
[img]https://i2.wp.com/www.cofchrist.org/Common/Cms/images/hero/Apostles-2013WC-John-Weese-IN.jpg?zoom=2 [/img] https://mormonheretic.org/2016/02/15/comparing-1978-to-1985/ This is an interesting discussion. I think the consensus is that the ban was definitely not revelation. So here is a bigger question: what is revelation? Is it God revealing to man His will? Or is it man having an “epiphany” that he thinks is God’s will? Does the first type of revelation happen with any sort of frequency in the church to either the brethren or to its members? And finally, does it matter? What if there is no “revelation” (in the traditional sense as coming directly from God), just mankind having moments of inspiration, epiphany, or transcendence? Would you be able to tell the difference?.
I like to believe that God reveals his will to men. But I am not even sure if that is because I need to believe, or because that is how it actually works. I personally need to believe that God answers prayers and provides answers to humanity – but there is a healthy dose in the BoM and Bible of “God’s will” being specific concepts and ideas that I believe were either God working line upon line or man’s understanding of the situation being sold as “God’s will”. Isaiah makes a whole lot more sense to me when I realize he was going through the anger and bargaining steps of the bereavement process while his people were being led into captivity. At this point, it makes sense to me that Nephi and Jacob quoted him so much because they were going through a similar process regarding leaving Jerusalem and Jewish culture as they knew it. It also doesn’t help that part of their worldview was the destruction of their posterity – even after all they could do. At this point, I don’t know what else to make of the rest of the prophesies in Isaiah (Old Testament) or the additional information provided by Nephi regarding the 2nd coming, coming forth of the Book of Mormon, or other minute stuff specific to LDS culture.
I think sometimes when an idea enters your mind that is completely outside of your thinking and processing, that is revelation. I think that a lot of “revelation” is actually the brain finishing up processing stuff and coming to specific conclusions. I wonder how much lore from the Bible/early BoM is exaggeration to tell a story, or the result of other circumstances. Lehi might be a visionary person – or he might have been under the influence of something, or had a brain that was designed to see things in terms of visions…
DoubtingTom wrote:
This is an interesting discussion. I think the consensus is that the ban was definitely not revelation. So here is a bigger question: what is revelation? Is it God revealing to man His will? Or is it man having an “epiphany” that he thinks is God’s will? Does the first type of revelation happen with any sort of frequency in the church to either the brethren or to its members? And finally, does it matter?What if there is no “revelation” (in the traditional sense as coming directly from God), just mankind having moments of inspiration, epiphany, or transcendence? Would you be able to tell the difference?.
I’m not a literal believer in the anthropomorphic Abrahamic God; you could probably pull most of my answers from that alone. At the same time, I do see the value in other’s beliefs in God. I think most people would not go to the trouble to live wholesome, virtuous lives without a belief in religious authority. The Book of Mormon itself blatantly states that without God there is no good or evil. I’ve personally seen many people, who when leaving the Church, swing to the opposite end of the spectrum, and end up living some pretty amoral lives. Others would surley give up hope and slink into dispair. And without religious authority, without that connection to “revelation”, where will people turn to for purpose and spiritual fulfillment?
To answer your last question, I think it would be very easy to tell if there was revelation, and very difficult to tell if there wasn’t.
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