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When God gives a commandment to his Church, it is designed for the benefit of all, both the strong and the weak. It places everyone on equal footing. The spiritual strong may not need the commandment as they may already live the principle set out in the commandment, but the spiritually weaker require it, yet both are commanded to abide in it in order for the faithful to be blessed by it.

The act of giving a commandment sets out the blessings a person will gain by obedience. The blessings are the same for those who have no trouble following it and for those who struggle with it as they obey it. This is part of the equal footing given to all. This may sound as unequal, in that the weaker who work harder at it should get more or better blessings, but remember the parable in the Bible of the vine yard workers. Those who started the work late will get the same pay as the ones that started work earlier. This applies to those who inherit the Kingdom of God. The ones that started late in life as faithful, will inherit the same as those who began earlier in life. The wisdom in this is the blessings that God gives are far more and above any effort or work we do, awarding us far more than we can imagine.

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Have you heard this cry? – “I have seen the truth!”, as many walk away and become advocates against this Church.

This is frequently heard and is in abundance in the claims made by ex-mormons on the Internet. Are these claims that they now see the truth, true? Can these ex-mormons be speaking the truth? I am sure for many current members this has been a kink in their spiritual armour, wondering if these claims are really true.

For those members who wonder this, please consider this.

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I have read quite a few statements by ex-members who claim they have seen the light that this Church is false and they spent years believing in the wrong church. Reading their personal accounts I have found an alarming trait with all of them. None have claimed that God told them to leave, not one. 

The beliefs that each of them held, to account for leaving the Church, have centered on some claim that the Church lied, or mistreated them, or that they claimed the Church is false after reading some book or article about some historic account that tainted the Church, etc etc. With that, they professed the Church was false. 

Not one of their claims have originated from the Spirit of God, not one of their beliefs is spiritually based, not one is spiritually justified. Wouldn’t a spiritual basis be the foremost important reason for staying or leaving, knowing that it is only the spiritual that God works in and determines if a church is his?

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I am sure that many know about Margaret Toscano. A lady that was born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Due to her position on free speech and her enthusiasm toward women’s issues as a scholar and within the Church, Margaret Toscano faced excommunication in the year of 2000.

I wanted to read more about her thoughts and beliefs to determine for myself where she stands, in a spiritual sense, so I searched the Internet for reputable articles of what Margaret says and believes. I found a good one at the PBS website where a transcript of a PBS interview exists. After reading that transcript I could write pages about what she has said, but I needed to focus on one important topic for this blog entry.

When reading the words spoken by others about this Church and about their experience with this Church, I search for the spiritual validity of what they say and how much in line they are with gospel teachings and principles. I did the same with what Margaret said in that PBS interview.

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 There are some on the Internet that have called Mormons a cult, claiming that the definition of the word “cult” proves it. I read one claim from one person who said that he “pursued the most scholarly, objective approach” and proceeded to show a definition of the word cult according to the Webster Dictionary of 1913. The definition he showed was as follows:

Cult (k?lt) n .[F. culte, L. cultus care, culture, fr. colere to cultivate. Cf. Cultus.]

1. Attentive care; homage; worship.
Every one is convinced of the reality of a better self, and of. thecult or homage which is due to it. Shaftesbury.

2. A system of religious belief and worship.
That which was the religion of Moses is the ceremonial or cult of the religion of Christ. Coleridge.

(link:  http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=Webster’s&word=cult&use1913=on&use1828=on target= )

 This particular person specifically used one definition of the word cult to justify his aberrant claims. Was he correct? No he was not and I will show why. 

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 There is an endless array of claims against Joseph Smith and this Church, so much so, it would be hard to count them, but from time to time, I feel there is a need to address some of these claims, for faith reasons. What would be my reason to address only a few? The reason is to express spiritual common sense and first hand knowledge and experience toward those Anti-Mormon claims, showing the foolishness of them. 

Over the many years, from the moment of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, his creditability was attacked. It began the moment Joseph Smith related the First Vision to a Methodist preacher who flatly denied him and essentially called Joseph a promoter of the devil. The vigor and fervor of that opposition spread and grew.

This says that the First Vision preceded any claims about Joseph Smith and because of the First Vision, evil intentions rose in others which Satan grabbed hold of and worked it to death (pun intended). From that point on, problems existed about so called “testimonies” made by people against Joseph Smith. 

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Spiritual integrity is a very important principle that Jesus Christ taught. The freedom given by truth is proof that lies are a sin and create bondage. Truth is what allows us to be truly free, allowing us to progress in life and be at peace with ourselves and with others. Peace and love cannot exist in lies and lies cannot make or sustain peace.

This is exactly what Satan wants to do with each of us, promote and propagate lies so we can be blindly or knowingly locked into the bondage of sin. This is one reason that the Father wanted us to become as gods, to know the difference between good and evil. Progression, personal and spiritual development, can only occur with truth, it can never occur with lies.

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With the increase of evil in the world, it is very true that false spirits are roaming the earth to every place possible. If some have noticed, there seems to be an increase of negative or evil spiritual events and since these last days are going to get darker, it is reasonable to expect some increase of visitations by ill, false and evil spirits as well.

Being a Latter-day Saint is not a guarantee that we will not suffer evil spirits in our lives, but as a Latter-day Saint, we have something that other Christians do not have, that is the priesthood. With this power and authority, it becomes important to ensure your place of residence is safe from evil influences.

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I am sure you have heard this cry before from many Christians, that to enter the Kingdom of God, his salvation is for free, meaning there is no work that can be done to obtain it because it is a free gift from God. 

How can I determine if that claim is true? After all, there are so many Christian denominations, over 38,000 of them across the world and all of them have different claims about salvation. So how can I test this claim? Well, other Christians say that by comparing it to the Bible, a person can “try the spirit” of something and determine if it is biblical. In all fairness then, I will do the same to determine if salvation is truly a free gift. 

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Not long ago, I was in conversation with a fellow who quit the Seventh Day Adventist church because he was against it’s membership in the World Counsel of churches (WCC). He claimed that he believes in Jesus Christ, yet he quit his chosen church which preached salvation by the Bible. This saying that he quit what he believed was his chosen church and his means of salvation because of his personal disagreement with his church. 

Our conversation began about the false traditions of other Christians where he spoke of his short findings about the WCC, but when he asked me if I belonged to a church and I told him, his tune quickly changed, hypocrisy and ignorance began to rear it’s ugly head. 

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