KNOW THIS - THAT EVERY SOUL IS FREE

In response to my most recent post, “Musings on the Church in a Darkening World”, one reader responded as follows:

“Why can't people understand that THEY are responsible for their own lives and decisions?  It reminds me of the hymn ‘Know this that every soul is free’.  We have a prophet to guide us... but we have the [responsibility to understand for ourselves and] the choice to follow his counsel - or not. Like getting a Covid shot [via a 12 August 2021 letter, the First Presidency of the LDS Church formally advised all members to get a Covid shot, repeating the official government narrative that the shots were ‘safe and effective’].  I chose not to get one.  It's my body and my choice.”

The key is being able and willing to discern where the buck - especially the spiritual buck - actually stops...  We know - some of us know - and our most revered leaders in the LDS Church have always taught - that the buck stops right here with each one of us, not over yonder with some supposedly omniscient, infallible leader or leaders with a direct conduit to heaven - people we can safely trust with our minds, bodies and spirits - people who can do our thinking for us, make decisions for us. That psychology, as Brigham Young asserted, is evidence of a profound spiritual weakness - or at best a dangerous spiritual immaturity - in the people who are willing to be so led - a weakness that will land them far short of the glorious end they think they are headed for.  

The truth is, given the universal frailties of our mortal condition, the best we can hope for in ourselves and in our church leaders is that all of us will be constantly focused on seeking the guidance of the Holy Ghost in all things, and then sharing with others what we believe we have learned, always leaving them to decide for themselves. That is how the Church was designed to work. That is the doctrine - an expression of the eternal principle of free agency. Everything that matters flows from that principle. Any other basis for belief or action is inferior, delusional, and will not produce the desired optimal result... 

It has always been a great comfort to me, and a witness of the truth of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, that the senior leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has, from the beginning, starting with Joseph Smith, never sought to preach up or encourage in the people an obsequious, mindless dependence on leadership but has instead refused to bear that burden and has specifically encouraged spiritual independence in the people.

Out in the world, the satanic temptation to seek power over others is deeply rooted in unregenerate human nature - the Natural Man (see Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:19) - as is the desire of the weak-minded to be led by someone they think has all the answers. It takes, I think, a real and powerful spiritual bulwark and dynamic to resist the penetration of that kind of evil into the minds and hearts of those who lead and those who are led. Where that strong wall is raised, where that resistance to spiritual tyranny is observed to be in place - a spiritual realm where some men do not seek power over others but all serve one another in their several capacities - there is the influence of heaven. 

As the truth about the Covid vaccines continues to be revealed and descends upon us like an avalanche (excess deaths exploding worldwide, estimated something like 20 million vaccine deaths worldwide, plus innumerable injuries), I think you will never regret having had, in the face of the First Presidency's earlier admonitions, sufficient capacity for independent thought to enable you to reject the evil vaccine propaganda that swept up most of the world, including many well-intended but uninformed and gullible people, into the giant maw of a demonic, money-hungry pharmaceutical industry and their coconspirators in the globalist cabal - people who really don't care whether their fellow human beings live or die... 

Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, order vs. chaos, law vs. lawlessness, patriotism vs. treason, liberty vs. tyranny, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, God vs. the Godless…

One way or another, you’ll choose…

If you can be fooled, you will be…

These are the times that try men’s souls…

Torquemada