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It Takes One to Know One And there is yet another dimension to the inability of men to make (or even face) a discerning choice in the matter of whom to follow, which spirit to recognize and how to understand and discern the genuine from the counterfeit. Indeed, to recognize there is a serious and fundamental choice to be made at all. It is social conditioning. God and the Adversary both understand the working of the human mind and will. The Devil knows man as the combination of traits that we recognize as the mortal or fallen nature of the natural man, possessing sovereignty, but faced with the pains and threats and limitations of life. In other words both God and the Adversary are past masters of human psychology that we have just begun to scientifically explore and define in the waning years of the 19th century. The Adversary intends that we should remain in a fallen state, subject to being controlled by our fears and desires, devoted to ourselves and deciding from a reference point of the self, alone. The Devil likes group-think and shrinking from the opportunity to decide for one’s self. That shirking throws away the gift from the Garden of Eden, the opportunity to discern and decide. It is the essence of the sin of fearfulness that Christ condemns in the Book of Revelation. (Rev. 21:8) Being afraid in itself is not an irredeemable sin, but being afraid to do right in the face of great, murderous wickedness is. This sin leads to following clever, charismatic, and threatening demagogues who know how to move crowds and get them to embrace tyranny, and even participate in anti-gospel acts. How is our national thought enforced? -through social discrimination in the name of political correctness. How does the sin of fearfulness apply to us? By being afraid to trust in God enough to ask Him in faith whom we should sustain and how we should honor and live the fullness of the gospel ordinances and the greater light and knowledge available to us through the ministry of Joseph, we cut ourselves off from the mission we chose and were set apart for in the pre-existence to do for God and his children. By being fearful to go to God with our concerns and have Him direct us, even teach us how to pray and what to pray for (because He’ll do that), we are not aware of the eternal significance of sustaining a man of men, and men of men, and a tradition (counterfeit to living the gospel) that is a dead end. The other personality the Devil loves is that of the utterly selfish, who emulating him, serve themselves at the expense of others using his rules and tools to influence, control, dominate and annihilate the personhood of those who are their victims. By the same token, those who live by the Devil’s code and perfect themselves in exploitation, annihilate their own personhood. All these can be recognized by a characteristic odor, the stink of deception. Deception, like maggots, feeds on decayed things; in terms of spirituality, decay of virtue is sin. Deception feeds and grows upon sin. One of the names the Jews call the Adversary is Beel·zebub, the lord of the flies. A psychologist has recently said that ninety-five percent of the things we do that we think are the result of our autonomous decision-making are really influenced and governed by emotional drives we have taken in during the first seven years of our lives. We are creatures of emotionally driven instinct. God intends that we should use our freedom to choose, our agency, to transcend our condition and follow Him to be like unto Him through our progression as sons of God, following the Son of God, and be in His presence once more as overcomers. God’s recipe for this amounts to the totality of scripture and the record of inspired men. These men lived valiantly and righteously to be found by God to be fit vessels of truth and worthy to proclaim the oracles of God to edify and inspire their fellows. Are we as a people, building upon the ministry of Joseph, Brigham, and Rulon, or have we fallen off, not even willing to look at, say nothing about acknowledging their words and warnings? We are placed here to be vessels of blessing. In this way we broaden and deepen the foundation upon which Christ’s spirit can grow in us and radiate upon all with whom we have dealings. This building up of perfection has an external quality (“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Jn. 13:35 )(“Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Mt.5:16) , but more important, it must have an internal component, likened to that portion of an iceberg that remains submerged out of sight and holds up the snowy peaks to view. We also gain an understanding of all these things by being hearers and readers of the word and then judging by its standard and acting upon its principles. In this way, we build for ourselves what we Mormons call a testimony, that which increases our devotion and strength to endure adversity. Like the nutritional pyramid our temporal saviors would have us observe, every aspect of the gospel we incorporate into our lives makes for a balanced spiritual diet that makes us able to perform our tasks and overcome our tests with optimal capability. When you start thinking and acting like a Christian – considering the value of others as with self – you want to do more. This is especially true when this good will to bless, openly and silently, is combined with storing up an understanding of scripture to form your personal religion. Scripture referencing reinforces actions and thoughts by showing what thoughts and what way is right. We should look upon the incidents in our lives as opportunities to perfect our understanding and bring our will subject to a God’s way of doing things. We are taught Heavenly Father is a perfected man. Perfection is not so much conferred by an ordinance; an ordinance is simply a key or permission to exercise a portion of God’s authority in behalf of others, for their sakes. It is one dimension of perfection and, unhappily, for many, higher ordinances, which do transform one’s character, also provide the opportunity for greater sin and greater confirmation of one’s striving for holiness or fall into God-denying and God-hating damnation. Here’s priesthood doctrine on the subject; see if you recognize it. “And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” (D&C 130:21) We can no longer call Worth, or Joe, or George a Brother. Who’s next to reveal themselves? If we have mastered ourselves and have yielded and combined our will to that of God, then we are strengthened and transformed. If we stay as we are, just wearing the outer trappings of the status an ordinance or an office confers, we have made ourselves even more vulnerable to the deceptive and destructive agenda of the Adversary’s psychology than we were before. Look upon an ordinance as an opportunity, and a caution for exposure to greater consequences for succumbing to unconquered weaknesses, more than an acknowledgement. Priesthood should be focused on the Master, Jesus, more than “What a good boy am I.” When we look at ourselves, it should be to examine and inventory ourselves where we are, not puni-shing, but acknowledging error, mistakes and shortcomings and making adjustments for the sake of the love of Christ, rather than to avoid punishments. The ones who are in the greatest danger of the consequences of becoming alienated and deserting God, while enjoying the temporal benefits (sitting in the favored seats and receiving fulsome greetings in the streets) are those who are not concerned about God as a presence within them. Eternal progression means just that. The process of testing and overcoming continues. If we are discerning, we see the awful consequences of what happens when a man has not prepared himself to exercise an office with firmness, with resolution, with humility, with a listening heart, and with discerning love for others. If we are discerning, we can see the sickness of sin weighing upon our social climate that has spread like a contagion to become endemic, like malaria in the tropics, affecting those who have made their righteousness (choosing rightly) depend upon the righteousness and good will of another. With us, this error has been generational and has become institutional. We cannot discern the presence of God among us, and we do not have it, as long as we do not exercise our right and duty to recognize and identify the source of spiritual sickness that has dammed up our progression as saints. It’s not just with a man or men; it’s with misunderstanding and misinterpreting doctrine. It’s with putting form above substance, show above spirit, self above others, fear above love, man above God. We don’t earn a status with God just because we have doggedly and diligently participated in some of the opportunities presented by a religious community; we earn our salvation, we perfect our salvation by doing our spiritual homework, shepherding our wayward will, guarding how we express ourselves, opening ourselves to the still small voice in daily affairs. Practicing mindfulness (focused, persistent awareness) to combine what we know of God with how we think and what we do is the process by which we understand who God and what he wants, and do our part to belong with him in eternities to come. If we make all we do all about us: our kingdom, our progress, our ambitions our achievements, and call that being godly, the tests shall come that prove the lie. If you want to have a McDonald’s franchise you have to act a certain way. If you want to have a Jesus franchise, you have to be a certain way and your actions will flow from that. Actually, aligning your actions to Jesus’ way should be undertaken in the spirit of becoming and being like him. For the Christian or Mor·mon being and acting reinforce each other. We are to pass on from trying to please God by correcting ourselves, to being preoccupied with doing good in every situation we encounter, with occasional checkups to examine conscience. Those who are trying will always be trying; get busy and do. Here is a series of quotes that caught my attention from D&C 123:12-15. 12. “For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it-” In our case, we are keeping ourselves from the truth because we think we have already found it and don’t need to look for it any more. Truth is not with us as a book on a shelf, it is written in our hearts and it is the way by which we live, or it is nowhere with us. 13. “Therefore, that we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven – 14. These should then be attended to with great earnestness.” (D&C 123 13,14) This is what Brother Murphy has done and is it no wonder, given the darkened state we are in, that he should stand virtually alone, and under condemnation, no less. But – it takes one to know one. I’ll explain. You can’t begin to know or want to know where the truth lies in Brother Stephen’s Blog, unless you, yourself, have built your personal religion and confidence in God, and power to discern and love of righteousness and truth, as Brother Murphy has. What does it mean to be a brother, anyway? Unless you are in agreement with the value and need to have justice and (right doing) based on moral principles (not just supposed authority), your truth is the truth of men of questionable virtue and doubtful integrity. At one point, Joseph declares that men who speak against men in authority in the church he founded are on their way to apostasy. Yet history shows that nearly all the men whom he appointed to high office, who even experienced the miracles of Kirtland, shortly afterward revealed themselves as apostates, and some even sought his life. Therefore, when we speak to judge, we cannot speak of (from) ourselves, alone. The truth with which to discern in a situation is not necessarily contained in one scripture or pronouncement. Even if we have the faith and virtue and depth of scholarly and spiritual discernment, we still need to go to God for His will. But we have to go in the question of worthiness, because the signs of spiritual sickness are among us right now, and if we do not at least apprise ourselves of the truth and once we have His witness, pray aright for deliverance, we have lost our place and lost our way for ourselves and for our children. This is our test to determine whether or not we are worthy of the kingdom. Let the Lord tell you, himself. 15. “Let no man count them as small things; for there is much which lieth in futurity pertaining to the saints, which depends upon these things.” (D&C 123:15) What “lieth in futurity” is the bringing about of the kingdom of God in the midst of Lucifer’s victory lap, with all the blessings of eternal life promised through all the ages to be fulfilled upon the faithful who have overcome. We don’t even know how this is going to happen, because we have not been preparing ourselves for it. We think it will come to us because we are uniquely deserving, if we think about it at all. Here is a word to Bro. Steve from his beloved Isaiah: Is. 66: 5 “Hear the word of the Lord, ye that tremble at his word; Your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name’s sake, [and] said, let the Lord be glorified; but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed.” Who would tremble at the word of the Lord, except someone who has actually heard it? It Takes One (who is on the same path) to Know One.
— A posthaven user