Share The Light

Only to say that I am thankful for this win. I thank God, and I thank Joe and Bruce and their team. I thank all the people that have called in their support. I thank Blair,  John, Chuck, and the host of others who were with us in the beginning and pulling for us all the way through.

I thank my family for enduring this trying summer. This was our first win and we needed it. Today we are once again proud to be Canadians. Oh yea, thanks to you media guys that actually wrote a fair story. I hope you don’t get fired!

Our foundation contained some fundamental principles. They were so important to so many early Mormons and became the values that they lived by.  By and by as the principles changed the values changed. It seems to me that one should complement the other.

Plural Marriage was a fundamental principle. It is hardly a value of most Mormons.  United Order was also fundamental but not valued today. The ten commandments are fundamental but their value is lost on a society that cares nothing about the truth and so on.  The Word of Wisdom is fundamental but has no value to a person who drinks alcohol and hot drinks.

Christ said if you love me you will keep my commandments.  That is very fundamental but what value does it have in a persons life that will not keep the commandments of God?

Gather round the standard bearer is a line from the old song. I think it means for people to fashion their lives after the life of someone who maintains their faith.  There have been so many people over the years that have thought that their way was the only way, and they have had many clamor in their wake.

The Standards of our faith are the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon teachings and of course the teachings of Christ in the Bible. Whosoever have those standards entrenched in their life and living is a Standard Bearer and a disciple of Christ. It would be wise to gather with them.

A Standard Bearer is not necessarily the “Key Holder” as you called it.  Being a person that can unlock the heavens as was the Prophet Joseph comes because he lived the standards set out by Jesus Christ. History is full of guys who claimed the keys but did not have the standards. Don’t gather round them.

Thank you for asking that question.  We do allow our children to go to high school.  Two of my children graduated from Grade 12 last year with the Provincial Dogwood Diploma. Others from the community did so as well.  This year there will be another ten graduates from the community and next year more than that. 

Our children do graduate from grade twelve! And then, my goodness, some more are planning on going to college.  We need to get some of our children interested in journalism. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I certainly do think that there have been many inspired writers over the years. There have been many inspired speakers, singers, and so on. Mormondom has been flooded with preachers and writers and prophets and holy people until you can hardly navigate your way through a modern bookstore. The Fundamentalist movement is hardly behind either. New trainings, writings, prayers, sermons and all, have come tumbling forth to take the place of holy writ. But is it all that Holy?

All Mormons should care about what the Prophet Joseph taught. He said, check out what you hear by what God already said. God will not contradict himself nor will He reveal something new that will contradict the teachings of one of the old prophets. Say that again! If God was the sponsor of all the nonsense that Mormons, apostate Mormons, fundamentalist Mormons, Jack Mormons, and the break away faiths that have splintered from the Mormons, have come up with and taught for the last hundred and how many years, then who on earth could have any faith that they knew anything at all about God? I know that we believe that God will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of Heaven, but not one of those things yet to be revealed will contradict the revelations of Gods ancient and modern but true prophets.

Simple. It is not true. I heard a statistic that one in every three relationships in modern society is abusive. How can it be? I have also heard that the divorce rate in monogomist marriage is as high as fifty percent. Could it be that marriage itself could be considered abusive?  Marriage is intended to restrict the committed couples affections to each other, and that could open the argument for emotional abuse.  Yikes!

No, all polygamist relationships are not abusive. There could be as many as thirty three  percent that were abusive, which would be horrible, but that would only put them in line with the rest of the committed relationships in society.  Is one in three polygamist relationships abusive? I don’t think so, but if it was so, then I am just as sad for the abused polygamists as I am for the abused monogamists.

That is a good question for Moses. You know him don’t you? The polygamist who is credited with the first five books of the Bible. No really, I have been a Minister for thirty years now and am just as qualified as any other Minister of thirty years to answer questions directed to myself.

I am not a lawyer, just a minister. I read the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms exactly the same way that I read the Ten Commandments. I interpret the basic rights of freedom of religion to mean just what they say, and I would expect that I should enjoy that fundamental right to live my religion. I read that all Canadians have mobility rights and so I expect that I should as well. I read that I have the right to enjoy all those privileges guaranteed by our charter, and when I am denied those rights I naturally feel that someone is involved in discrimination and religious persecution.

I also believe  the Ten Commandments.  They are as simple to understand as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When folks kill, or commit adultery, or take things not their own, or don’t tell the truth, then I naturally think that they are not keeping the laws of God.

Just suppose for a moment that if the Federal Government made a law against any other religion, just as the one made against our faith in 1892, would discrimination and persecution of that religion then become right in Canada?