Apostasy of Israel

In my last post, I discussed the steps of an individual going apostate. Another type of apostasy is of an entire nation going apostate. It happens as individuals lose sight of God and we can learn by looking at these societal patterns how what may seem like a personal choice can have consequences for a larger community. As I am drawing from the scriptures, the examples given are for the apostasies of Israel and Judah.

The history of Israel is littered with dozens of examples of the nation going into apostasy and then being restored again, but I would like to focus on one apostasy in particular that had very long lasting effects. I would like to break apart some of the teaching of Isaiah and Jeremiah. These were two prophets who preached concerning the time period known as the Babylonian Captivity, when Babylon conquered Judah, slaughtering a good number of the people and taking the rest captive back to Babylon. Before this happened, Judah was openly practicing pagan rituals that were forbidden by the laws of God and committing all manner of sins without remorse or shame. Isaiah foresaw and prophesied of all this happening about 100 years before it occurred, while Jeremiah actually live through it. Isaiah and Jeremiah, along with other prophets, were called of God to preach repentance, and to warn the people that if they did not repent, then they would be conquered by other nations.

So what had happened to Judah to make it so wicked?

*They had grown prideful with their own accomplishments (Isaiah 2:8)

8Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made:

*They had changed the holy ordinances and practices of their religion (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.

*They were worshiping other gods and taking up the practices of their neighbors (Jeremiah 11:13)

13For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal.

*They were openly breaking the commandments (Isaiah 3:9, Jeremiah 23:10)

9The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

10For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right.

*They rejected the prophets God sent them (Jeremiah 35:15)

15I have sent also unto you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, Return ye now every man from his evil way, and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to your fathers: but ye have not inclined your ear, nor hearkened unto me.

All of these can be done by an individual in a private life, but in the strongest sense these are societal choices that change the entire make up of a nation.

A lot of people believe that freedom of religion means that everyone should be free to practice, secretly in their own homes away from their neighbors, whatever they want. What they do not see is that religions freedom means being able to have an open dialogue of what one believes and feels that society should adopt. As a study of this topic shows, when it comes to moral practices, it is not just a personal practice that will determine a nations future, but of what that nation's inclinations are towards religion and God that will lay the foundation for its future prosperity.

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.

Apathy

Topics without scriptures: Anxiety.

In the scriptures, the theme of "apathy" is most often addressed in two ways. The first of which is our general concern for God and for His commandments. The second is our apathy for the poor. Or in other words, for being lax in our love for God and our love for our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40).

Focusing on the first one, what it means to have apathy towards God and His commandments is summed pretty well in 2 Nephi 28:21:

21And others will he ^apacify, and lull them away into carnal ^bsecurity, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the ^cdevil ^dcheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

In other words, one of Satan's most effective methods is to convince people that everything is fine and that they do not need to be paying attention or working hard. God's reaction to these type of people can be found in Revelations 3:16:

16So then because thou art ^alukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will^bspue thee out of my mouth.

Note that God is not saying that we are not of worth or that He does not love us, He is saying that in all honesty when we become slacker we really are not useful. To bring it home, have you ever been assigned to a project group or committee where there is that one person who really just does not care? How frustrating is it when you know how useful that person could be, but instead they really are just holding everyone else back?

God's call to us is simple, to wake up (Romans 13:11) and get moving (Alma 34:33) with special emphasis on taking care of the poor (Alma 34:28). God does not want a little bit of who we are, He wants our "heart, might, mind and strength" (D&C 4:2) because anything less won't be enough to face the trials that come to us.

Remember, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy.

Antichrist

This entry is actually anti-climatic. With an entry like "antichrist" you would expect some high spirited show-down, but in reality it is pretty simple. An antichrist is just anyone who is against the gospel of Christ.

The scriptural definition of "antichrist" can be found in 1 John 2:22:

22Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

Another definition can be found in the LDS Bible Dictionary:

A word used by John to describe one who would assume the guise of Christ, but in reality would be opposed to Christ. In a broader sense it is anyone or anything that counterfeits the true gospel or plan of salvation and that openly or secretly is set up in opposition to Christ. The great antichrist is Lucifer, but he has many assistants both as spirit beings and as mortals.

So an antichrist could be anyone against being a good person in general or saying that Christ wasn't who he says he was. With that last one there could be lots of people who would fit under the category of antichrist, but I think where it becomes a problem is when you start trying to convince others of your ideas or telling Christians themselves that they are deceived. You can argue points this way and that, but in the end you can't argue faith.

An example of an antichrist who came to a tragic end can be found in Jacob 7. In short, there is a man named Sherem who openly opposed the gospel declaring that there was no Christ. He was so confident in himself that he sought out the current prophet Jacob to try and prove him wrong.

I've been in situations like this. I'm not saying that I'm a prophet, but I've kind of found these situations more than a little pointless. As I said before, you can't argue faith. If someone has it, you can't really smash it. If someone doesn't have it, you can't argue it into them. I have rarely met someone who for reasons of faith are bitterly against our church, but instead have problems with some historical or scientific reasoning that doesn't make sense to them. I've kind of realized that whether a religious conversation is going to go well with mutual respect or if it is going to turn into me sitting there while they spew angrily at me can be based off of their response to two questions. Both of which it would be a good idea of we all answered ourselves either with a "yes" or a "no":

1. If you had all of your scientific and historical questions answered and resolved, would it be enough for you to enter the water's of baptism and unite with us in our faith?

2. If God gave you a personal revelation confirming to your heart in a way that you could not deny, that this was the true church and that you were to join it, would it be enough for you to enter the water's of baptism and unite with us in our faith?

Answer

In learning about other religions, I've discovered that one of the key doctrines we teach that many other churches do not is the principle of revelation. We believe that there are two channels of communication that we can receive from heaven, one directly from God through the Holy Ghost, and one through the priesthood using prophets and other leaders. Elder Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave a great talk or sermon on this last fall called Two Line of Communication.

What it boils down to is that God answers prayers. If you really want to know how you should be living your life, he has provided a way for you to learn - whether it is directly from the Holy Ghost or more plainly explained by one of his servants (Amos 3:7), there is always instruction available. Especially now with the internet and technology, our access to the scriptures and to the living prophets is un-paramount. A teacher once made the comment that he was reading about an angel appearing to a prophet in the Book of Mormon named Alma the Younger, and was contemplating on what a miraculous one-on-one experience that must have been. Then he turned on his computer and started watching a video of one of the latter-day prophets speaking. It was then that it hit him that there really was no difference. Both provided support and spiritual instruction in a way that was beyond basic human experiences.

The scriptures in the Topical Guide for this topic tended to deal with either showing an example of God answering, or instruction on how we should answer. The scripture that meant the most to me while studying was 1 Peter 3:15 that says:

15But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

So in response to that call, below is what I have written as my answer for the "reason of the hope" that is in me for why I know that God answers prayers. It is from my Mormon.org profile answering the question "In what ways have your prayers been answered?":

When I was a little girl, I took an alphabet book with me to preschool for show and tell. At some point during the day, it got lost and I was really upset. But I went behind the bookcases and knelt down and prayed and within 10 minutes it was found. When I was in high school I had some negative people in my life that would spend a lot of time breaking me down emotionally. I would pray beside my bed every night, and every night I would get a feeling of peace as if someone who really did love me was putting their arms around me and hurting just as much as I was that I was going through a hard time. When I was trying to figure out what school to go to for college I did a lot of praying, but wasn't getting any clear answers. Then I went to visit a school I applied to in Ohio and went to an institute class there. While sitting there I got a feeling and asked in my heart "I'm going here aren't I?" and received a clear voice in my head "Yes, you are." When I was in college I was put into a situation that was not a positive one. I prayed about it and was told to stay. By the end, I was heartbroken and felt as if my entire soul was drained. After some soul searching for several months, I realized that I was made stronger by being there and that God was watching me to make sure that I was not hurt beyond my breaking point. It was not a very positive answer to live through but sometimes answers are like that. We're God's hands on Earth and sometimes that means really being put to work. When my husband and I started dating everything clicked together so perfectly. I prayed a lot about whether I should marry him. He was not LDS and I knew I should be worried about it, but it was like there was a barrier inside me keeping me from worrying. So I moved ahead with our relationship. Later on, after he came out of the water when he was baptized, I had a feeling like I was looking into a mirror when I was with him - knowing that I was suppose to marry him.

Anointing, Anoint

Topics without scriptures: Anna; Annas; Annunciation; Anointed One.

If you read the Bible, you will see the practice of anointing with oil from the days of Moses down to the Apostles. It was meant as a ceremony that sealed someone to a certain mission or duty - in the case of the sons of Aaron it was to be priests. It is also used in calling kings in Israel.

Though I do not know everything, in my experience we use anointing today according to the direction found in James 5:14:

14Is any ^asick among you? let him call for the ^belders of the church; and let them ^cpray over him, ^danointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

In that anointing we use special consecrated oil, which is ordinary olive oil you buy from the store that then goes through a ceremony to become consecrated or set apart for the healing of the sick.

I went into this a little more in depth in a earlier entry for Administration to the Sick, so I am just going to say how amazing it is that this church is so biblical. Every now and then, if you are paying attention, you can pick up on these things that were true and used thousands of years ago, and though the implementation may have changed, we are still using them. The gospel has always been true.

Anguish

When I was little I would break things on accident and more often than not I was afraid of the punishment. Then, while on my time out, I would have a degree of anguish in my heart for the suffering I was being forced to endure. Most people when they read about the agony of Hell assume it is from being punished, but I would suggest another type of agony.

This agony I first experienced when I was older. I was in six grade and was hungry during class, so I pulled out some pretzels to snack on. My teacher caught me and confronted me in the middle of her lesson in front of the whole class. I was on the whole a good kid and I thought very highly of my teacher. The resulting feeling was a terrible agony of letting down my teacher and wishing that I could run from the room. At that moment I couldn't bare to be in her presence even though she had moved on with the lesson. In spite of how highly I felt towards my teacher and how much I wanted to be with her, I could not with the knowledge of letting her down.

I believe this is really what Hell will be like. I do not believe that God will torture us for eternity, but I do believe that when we come to a recognition of our sinful state and how we have "let him down" that we will be tortured inside ourselves.

But I also believe there is hope. My favorite story of hope is the one of Alma the Younger. He was described as the "vilest of sinners" who went about "spiritually murdering" the followers of God with his false preaching. Then an angel of the Lord appeared and chastised him, leaving him unconscious for three days. During those three days, he learned what anguish meant:

8And it came to pass that I was ^athree days and three nights in the most bitter^bpain and ^canguish of soul; and never, until I did cry out unto the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy, did I receive a ^dremission of my sins. But behold, I did cry unto him and I did find peace to my soul.

9And now, my son, I have told you this that ye may learn wisdom, that ye may learn of me that there is ^ano other way or means whereby man can be saved, only in and through Christ. Behold, he is the life and the ^blight of the world. Behold, he is the word of truth and ^crighteousness.

You can try and ignore or numb guilt, but the only way to permanently remove it is through Christ. From everything that I have experienced, I can promise that it will not be easy, but it will be possible. Most importantly it will be worth it.