Apostasy of Individuals

Topics without scriptures: apocalypse; apocrypha; Apollos; apostasy.

When I began this topic, I figured it would be about a ton of individual stories of people who went Apostate. There are enough stories in the scriptures. But instead, almost all of these scriptures are about how apostasy happens to someone and the consequences.

For a definition of apostasy, it begins with two alterations, one in a persons heart as described in Deuteronomy 29:18:

18Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;

And in how a person interacts with the church as described in Isaiah 24:5:

5The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.

After this, unless repentance kicks in, a dark bitterness sets in. I am not saying that everyone does this, but in my personal experience at least about 80% of the people who I have known who have left the church have become bitterly opposed to it. In a lot of cases, it has been shocking to me to see the alteration of my friends to the point where they are living lifestyles that are so completely opposite to who they once were, and hurtful in how much they hated and wanted to hurt the church and those who still belonged to it. In a lot of way, Alma 47:36 about another group of apostates is in more than one way prophetic:

36Now these dissenters, having the same instruction and the same information of the Nephites, yea, having been instructed in the same knowledge of the Lord, nevertheless, it is strange to relate, not long after their dissensions they became more hardened and impenitent, and more wild, wicked and ferocious than the Lamanites—drinking in with the traditions of the Lamanites; giving way to indolence, and all manner of lasciviousness; yea, entirely forgetting the Lord their God.

This is a very delicate and personal topic for me because I've had to live through it with friends many times, and every time I dig up the past memories it hurts. Not from any self-righteous "oh, they left the faith" type of feelings, but because in almost all the case I've lost friends.

The scriptures give a warning of what the resulting eternal consequence are for those who become apostate. In short, they are dammed, as in their eternal progression is stopped. However, Alma 24:30 describes what the immediate consequence it:

30And thus we can plainly discern, that after a people have been once enlightened by the Spirit of God, and have had great knowledge of things pertaining to righteousness, and then have fallen away into sin and transgression, they become more hardened, and thus their state becomes worse than though they had never known these things.

God is just, and I know that we will be judged off of what we know. I've heard it said that the devil and evil men can not bring down Christ's church on earth, that the only thing that can stop it's progression is the apostaty of it's members.

To end with, this is a serious issue that affects a lot of people. The idea of apostasy of the resulting consequences can be summed up in Doctrine and Covenants 82:3:

3For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation.