Background Rant: The Half Gospel

I was looking at the Saturday session of LDS general conference yesterday, and what I saw sort of disappointed me. And for background: general conference is the semiannual meeting where Mormon leadership broadcast to the world sermons and important pieces of church news; this conference is very long – it has 5 sessions throughout Saturday and Sunday, each session lasting 2 hours. The Mormon leadership is increasingly drifting towards typical doctrines held by the rest of Christianity: They mainly only teach half of the gospel – all the nice parts – but ignore the sharper doctrines, which in my mind are just as essential if not more so:

• They talk about the grace of Christ, but not repentance (this is more true of conventional Christians, but is increasingly also the case for Mormons).
• They note that we can have self esteem knowing that we are sons of God, but they don’t note that we actually only are sons of God if we follow the gospel. If we follow after sin, we become sons of the devil, captive unto him.
• Sometimes they uphold standards of not having sex before marriage etc., but they never talk about logically why it is important to put the spirit over the flesh, or even seriously explain the concept of the flesh being evil and our war against the flesh.
• They talk about how God can bring us comfort and peace, but rarely discuss Satan’s war for our minds, or how one of the primary reasons to diligently study and pray is to roll back the influence of Satan over ourselves.
• They praise tolerance, but they don’t talk about how it is our duty to warn others against sin, and how the ideas from our political enemies often originate from the influence of demonic entities.
• They talk about God’s kingdom, but not the destruction that will befall the world first.
• They speak of God’s love, but seldom of His justice.
• They emphasize Christ’s acceptance, but overlook His command to “Go and sin no more.”
• They comfort the sinner, but rarely warn him.

A Few Scripture References:

We only become sons and daughters of God if we are righteous and born again: John 1:12, Revelation 21:7, Romans 8:14–17, Galatians 4:5–7, Matthew 5:44–45, 2 Corinthians 6:17–18, 1 John 3:1–10, Mosiah 5:7–9, Moses 6:56-67

Sinners become children of the devil: 1 John 3:10, John 8:44, Ephesians 2:2–3, Alma 5:41–42

Sinners become subject unto the devil: 1 Nephi 14:3–7, Mosiah 16:3, Alma 12:11, Alma 34:35, 2 Nephi 2:27-29, 2 Timothy 2:26

There are only two masters and two sides, and all things which don’t come from God are from the devil: Alma 5:39–41, Matthew 13:38, Romans 6:16, 1 Nephi 14:10, Matthew 6:24, Moroni 7:12–14, Luke 11:23, 1 Corinthians 10:20–21, D&C 50:23–25

My understanding of salvation:

My discussion here isn’t to say that we must be entirely perfect otherwise we are lost. Rather, let me draw a comparison to flying kites. You don’t have to be a “perfect” kite flyer to get your kite off the ground, but if you don’t know how to fly a kite, then it will immediately crash. Thus, our first goal is to live according to the doctrine of Christ sufficiently for our spiritual “kites” stay in the air and not crash – this doesn’t require perfection, but it does require careful diligence.

As a kite gets higher, the wind gets stronger, thus increasing what you can do with said kite. Likewise, once our spiritual kites are in the air, we shouldn’t be thinking that we are finished. Rather, we should then start trying to get our kite even higher to therefore earn ourselves an eternal weight of glory in the life to come. Again, this doesn’t require us to be “robots”, but it does require a degree of discipline and perseverance in striving towards the mark – which is becoming like Christ and therefore perfect.

And to belabor the point: by virtue of our inherent nature as flesh, we are always drawn towards evil – just as gravity always pulls kites down. Thus, we are always in in a battle against our flesh to be righteous – just as it requires constant activity to keep a kite in the air.

The Dreams

China

In the first dream I had this night I was a youtuber history researcher in southeast China, and I called other youtubers to see the beautiful karst scenery. I then saw this creepy society in China with futuristic buildings that I knew was very collectivist – the members of the society had somehow merged their brains with this nature God organism thing – thus losing free agency. The dream morphed into myself being in a haunted house with people dying within (I wish I remembered more from this part).

Assuming this dream is from God, I think this dream is modeling the type of society the antichrist will create: the people will give over their agency to the beast system – which may portray itself as a technological force helping planet earth and nature (like massive organism nature God in the Avatar movies about blue aliens living on Pandora).

Civilian Prayers

I dreamt that I was at church with my twin brother, and we were asked about prayers. I think my brother responded by talking about how he had dreams about the end of the world, but he was worried that they were from Satan and thus (I concluded) he hadn’t reckoned with them as much as I personally have mine. My brother then turned to a scripture in 3^rd Nephi which was a poem about how prayers from civilians have a special weight and power.

I then noticed how our Church then gave assignments to its members on how we should teach – including our home teaching assignments. For context, home teaching refers to how each member is assigned to minister to each other member in Mormonism – this program being designed to prevent any members from falling through the cracks and being forgotten; as it is presently, the Church does a lot to keep home teachers accountable for teaching their stewardship, but what lessons are to be taught are up to the discretion of the home teacher.  In the dream, I saw that the lessons to be taught were extremely micromanaged by the Church, leaving no room on the part of home teachers to decide what to teach or discuss.

Discussion

I think the part about lessons being micromanaged is bad because it will allow the Church bureaucracy to have greater power and leverage to corrupt the teachings of the gospel from how they were originally taught in the scriptures.

Regarding civilian prayers – I assume that means everyone’s prayers matter, not just the prayers from important people; and no, I don’t think that is a real scripture.

Driving to a public event

I dreamt that I was driving with others to a public event in Austin. I saw a flash scene of the venue, and it was very nice and looked much like the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin Texas (though not as large) – being a modern building with large windows by a park in a nice area of town. I also knew Candace Owens would be speaking at this event and saw her profile standing behind the large windows of the venue.

We were in I think a sedan which was full of people, with myself sitting in the middle, and I started talking to the person sitting to my left – who was a very handsome, successful, well-dressed young adult, who worked in high finance. He told me how he had been led by Christ in his education and then told me a story of a sort of investment bootcamp he had attended early in his career that included many high up financiers and business leaders: In this bootcamp, a woman there talked emotionally about how her friends had committed suicide because they had rejected Christ. He then considered arguing with the woman (because he wanted to defend religion), but the holy spirit prompted him to hold his silence and keep his head down. The holy spirit then told him that the woman was out to destroy the believers, and if he made himself known to her, she would try to destroy him; conversely, if he held his silence, then the woman’s friends would have destroyed themselves in vain.

I noted then how terrible it would be to die in your sins, and he had an odd response: He noted how even though he hadn’t been able to teach the gospel to my younger brother (who in real life has rejected Christianity), God had still given him many other opportunities at preaching the gospel.

The person I was sitting next to then switched topics to finance. He discussed how finance was no longer like the wild west, and now we had to be very careful in our investments. Particularly, he noted that the number one metric he looked for when making investments was whether companies had low liabilities, because he was conscious of the risk of the value of the asset going all the way down to zero. Throughout this, he used the acronyms “SCO” as if they meant liability, which confused me.

Interpretation

This dream reminds me of Amos 5:13:
13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

The dream therefore forecasts a time when believers will have to be very careful about what they say to maintain their own safety. I think the dream brought up my little brother because he is an example of the type of person with whom you should hold your silence about religion. We need not see ourselves as bad disciples for failing to preach to those who deeply hate Christianity, because God will lead us to teach to those who are willing to listen.

Regarding the part about investments – I assume this is about how the value of companies will literally go to entirely zero as the future destructions commence, thus ruining the finances of what otherwise would have been unaffected countries.

Shorter Scenes

• I saw a flash scene of how people could differentiate different types of humans (who I think were descendants of the Nephilim) by measuring their blood pulse rate. And just to note, from this I somehow knew that there were more types of humans than merely normal humans and those with Nephilim blood.  I felt like one of these types of entities was called “Hibaki” or “Hibachi” – but I don’t know what that means.
• I saw a table of scriptures with several columns, one column said “Book of Mormon”, and one said “bmnri” (though I likely misremember this) – I wish I remember more from this.
• I saw flash scene of a member of the 144000 opening these pearly gates to a hidden paradisial city. The doorway was rather narrow – perhaps 5 feet wide or less – and it was sort of hidden in a corner area of a street of a large city. The person opening the doors appeared to be an about 9 feet tall angel, and I knew that the people at first were jealous of the 144,000, but then became grateful when the 144,000 opened the doors unto them.

A Robber Fleeing

I dreamt I saw a robber running down a street, with perhaps 30 feet behind him an angry mob chasing him. As this happened, a safe (meaning literally those metal boxes that you might lock cash in) came up in huge bounces (each bounce perhaps 20 feet tall), and the safe completely smashed through the area between the robber and the mob – thus blocking the mob from continuing their advance on the robber (there might have been water underneath the street, so it was a bridge which the safe smashed, though now I forget). I then saw the robber on a tiny paradisical island, and I knew that he was in a sanctuary provided by God. Upon waking, I had the thought that I have had dreams before of such safes saving us (though now I can’t remember them).

Interpretation

The robber represents God’s servants who shall be going across the world during the end times, and the mob represents how the people of the world will reject God’s servants and drive them out. The island therefore represents the sanctuary (the New Jerusalem?) which God will provide to his elect.

Regarding the safe, at first level, the safe represents the miraculous actions of God in protecting his people. Going deeper though – I speculate the safe represents the area containing the treasures of whom the robber was accused of stealing. Thus, I suspect the safe at some level represented the inviolable sacredness of God, and the mob saw the individual as a robber because they thought he had blasphemed God. But in reality, these people were worshipping a false God, and the real God actually decided to protect the “robber” against the mob.

Scriptures

As I was laying in my bed, I was inspired to receive the following scripture references – meaning I heard in my inner mental dialogue these references, before knowing what they might contain:

John 4:9
9 Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

1 John 4:9 – when I first noted John 4:9, I couldn’t tell if it was actually 1 John 4:9 or not:
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

1 Peter 5:4 & 8
4 And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.
…8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

Samuel 6:9
9 And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to Beth-shemesh, then he hath done us this great evil: but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that smote us; it was a chance that happened to us.

Ether 3:8
8 And he saith unto the Lord: I saw the finger of the Lord, and I feared lest he should smite me; for I knew not that the Lord had flesh and blood.

1 Nephi 4:9
9 And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

Discussion

I believe these scriptures outline our spiritual journey:

Samuel 6:9 interestingly is written from the perspective of the Philistines – they had taken the arc of the covenant, following which they experienced plagues. Worrying the plagues were a result of the Hebrew God, they released the arc, filled with their own treasure as an offering, on an unmanned ark hitched to calves. That particular verse refers to their prayer – asking God to reveal if he had caused the plagues by controlling the direction of the cart.

Thus, the steps taken by the philistines represent the first steps in the gospel: the philistines were basically completely divorced from Gospel living – however, they still had fear of God, and thus were willing to offer treasure up to him and pray.

In John 4:9, the Samaritan likely had a much better understanding of the gospel than the Philistines, but she still felt unworthy – nevertheless Jesus called upon her anyway.

This relationship with God progresses in Ether 3:8, were the brother of Jared is able to directly witness God because of his faith.

And finally, we see in 1 Nephi 4:9 and 1 Peter 5:4 how God awards great treasure unto his faithful – with Nephi receiving a golden sword, and the saints receiving crowns. The symbolism of the sword of course is twofold though, also representing how God enables his faithful to perform their missions – seeing that Nephi went on to use that very sword in performing God’s work.

Thus, whatever our starting point is, may we all be able to progress until we can have a personal relationship with God and be inheritors to his kingdom.

The Antichrist

At this point, I was praying if I should return to sleep to potentially receive revelation, and I felt like the answer was that I shouldn’t. Therefore, I fully woke up and started reading a summary of the Mormon general conference (since I am on the other side of the world from America right now, the conference happened for me during the middle of the night). After reading the summary, strangely I felt inspired to again return to sleep – and I had the following dreams:

• I saw a scene of a black man providing a list of scriptures – but there was something that seemed sort of wrong with the scriptures, and so I was at first confused as to what to make of this.
• I then saw the black man allowing entrance to people onto a cruise ship.
• I then saw him putting people’s names onto a list of people to be saved in the Kingdom of Satan.
• I then saw a wooden chair sitting in an otherwise empty black room, and upon my grasping one of the beams holding up the armrest, the beam fell out. I then investigated the chair and found it was actually made of many different small interlocking blocks of wood. I saw, almost hidden from view, a few key internal pieces of wood were missing – hence why the chair was coming apart in my hands.

So, these scenes were clearly about the antichrist: he will alter and misuse the scriptures for his cause and will have his own “kingdom” into which he allows people entrance. The cruise ship symbolizes how his kingdom offers gratification rather than holiness, and the chair represents how his kingdom – though outwardly looking mostly fine – actually is not a sure foundation upon which you can rest, because it is missing key aspects of the gospel. This all got me thinking: perhaps it is possible that the doctrines of the antichrist actually won’t entirely contradict the gospel – indeed, they may almost entirely overlap with the gospel – missing only a few small, but essential, ingredients. Which is all to say that perhaps the “half gospel” being taught in many denominations is very similar to the Antichrist’s religion.

To note the obvious – I think these scenes were all inspired by my disappointment in the doctrines I saw proceeding from the leaders of my Church. Which aligns with what I have written here repeatedly: the leadership of the Mormon church sadly has been deceived and captured by dark forces.

And finally, I have seen many different representations of the antichrist and the mark of the beast in my dreams – these representations I believe are intended to have symbolic meanings, rather than literal meanings. Which is all to say that I doubt that the antichrist will literally be black – in my mind he most likely will be white/European (that’s just my opinion).