LDS Apostles Part 1

30 November

Apostles of the LDS (Mormon) Church

On Palm Sunday of 1993 I accepted the Lord Jesus into my heart as God and Savior.  From that day on my life was never the same – praise God!  Not long after I was saved from an eternal life separated from God, it became increasingly clear that what I was going to do with my life was about to change as well.

Up to that point I hadn’t ever thought of doing anything but raising my small daughters, but then my phone began ringing with people asking for help.

I’d go to church and people wanted to hear what God had done in my life and then people I had never met began calling and wanted to hear of the news.  They’d want advice on how to witness to Mormon friends or they’d just want to hear of how God had reached down and plucked me out of a fiery hell.

So one day I took a drive up to Issaquah, Washington which was about 20 miles from my front door.  I wanted to visit a book store which held all the secrets of my thirty years in Mormonism.

I ended up at the ministry office of Ed Decker, founder of Saints Alive Ministry and author of the GodMakers.  The man I had once spat upon in Oklahoma City in 1984 was the man sitting behind the desk when I walked in that afternoon and he asked me a question I still haven’t forgotten.

He was actually the second person who asked me that question on the same day no less, and to make things even more “strange”, neither of the men knew each other.

When I asked Ed for some information on how to share my story he asked me if I’d go to Utah and share my news with the people in my hometown of Ogden.  I told him no, I couldn’t do that.

He stared at me with the warm eyes of a loving father and said; “You can’t go or you won’t go?”

My initial response was a nervous laughter which was met with a dead silence from the other side of that large brown desk.  In a matter-of-fact tone of voice he told me there’d be a few people who’d want to meet with me and he already had their contact information written down.  And since there was no time like the present, they thought I should be in Ogden in two weeks.

So on a weekend less than a year after I got saved I was sitting at the Solid Rock Café in downtown Ogden, Utah and sharing my testimony in a Christian coffee shop that sat across the street from where I used to perform baptisms for the dead.

In the first few years of leaving Mormonism I focused upon learning about the true God of the Bible and making charts comparing Him with the god of Mormonism.  I had stacks upon stacks of legal-sized yellow notebooks piling up all over the house filled with my discoveries.

Those years were daunting for me spiritually and emotionally speaking.  With each new discovery about Mormonism I told myself it couldn’t get any worse.  I kept finding sermons and teachings of my former leaders who taught things about God that were so outlandish and unbiblical that I found myself curled up in a fetal position with a tear-stained face more times than I wanted to remember.

The pain inside my heart of finding these things had no words.  Everything I was in life was wrapped up in Mormonism; it was my culture, my heritage and the very essence of who I thought I was.  I was Mormon first, American second.  I was Mormon before I was a mom and Mormon before I was a wife.

And then as time waned on with more heretical teachings I finally told myself nothing could shock or surprise me anymore.  I went with that theory for about ten years because it was the only way I could prevent myself from being shocked over and over again.

And all that brings me to today.  Doing what I thought was going to be a quick little post for the blog has turned my thoughts back to those early exodus days.  Seventeen years of researching Mormonism has taught me that I’ll never know every single thing there is to know about it.  And so it goes for this discovery.

My goal for this little article was to list all the apostles of the LDS Church. The very first thing I learned is that more than half of Joseph Smith’s first apostles were excommunicated.  While that probably shouldn’t surprise me, I’ll be the first to admit that it did.  More than surprise though is the sadness that seems to attach itself to things like this.

When I think of the totality of it, it’s hard to fathom how this organization ever made it out of the first decade or so.  Satan is powerful indeed when we choose to ignore God.  And the consequences of those events are what made it possible for my family to get tricked into the lies as well.

I guess the question I would ask the Mormon reading this today is how much is enough?

How many things need to be wrong in the character of these men who started Mormonism before you’ll admit there might be a problem?

How many theological inconsistencies that you have to make excuses for will be enough for you personally to say “I can’t accept it”?

Where is the line for you?

How much do you love Jesus?

Does your love for Jesus outweigh the love in your heart for your heritage?

One thing I knew for a fact when I was a Mormon is that I loved Jesus more than anything else.

My devotion to Jesus was greater than it was for Joseph Smith or the idea of a forever family.

That love for Jesus in my heart is what kept me focused when searching for the truth.  I wanted to know the truth about Mormonism and I wanted it to match up with the Bible, alas, the more I studied the less I was able to reconcile the two so my love for Jesus is what kept me on the proverbial road to truth.

I’m not looking for a shock value to tantalize or exaggerate the truth about the history of Mormonism.  My concern with this has made me wonder why this rather large number of people would be excommunicated.  What did they do or see in this religion that gave them pause to either question those in authority or truly apostatize from God’s “one true church”?

I’ve not listed the reasons why these men did what they did.  I’m praying you’ll search this out on your own to get the questions answered that you may have.  For one example just go to the first apostle, Thomas B. Marsh and ask yourself how all these people could be wrong with no culpability on the part of Joseph Smith or the Church.  Could the concerns they had be legitimate?

Why is holding someone accountable a form of apostasy?  Book after book, “scripture” after “scripture” is filled with words of warning to not question Smith, rather the followers of Mormonism are to revere and adore their beloved prophet.

As we publish our findings over the next few weeks we’re praying that you take a good look at the real history of the Church.  These findings aren’t just our private opinions, rather the actual historical writings of the Church itself.

How great of an organization could this be when seven original apostles were ex-communicated, one was “reassigned” and one was murdered for sleeping with someone else’s wife?

Are you willing to find and accept the truth?  We’re praying you do!

I retrieved all information from the following sources:

Wikipedia

LDS Church

 

LDS Apostles
Name Born/Died DatesServed Notes
Thomas B.Marsh 1799/1868 1835 -1839 Ex-communicated for apostasy, re-baptized 1857
David W.Patten 1799/1838 1835 -1838 Killed in battleOf Crooked River
BrighamYoung 1801/1877 1835 -1847 Became 2nd prophetof LDS Church
Heber C.Kimball 1801/1868 1835 -1868 Held office ofapostle until death
OrsonHyde 1805/1878 1835 –1878 Removed of apostleship from5/1839 – 6/1839 due to

apostasy; reinstated in

1839 in a lesser capacity

William E.M’Lellin 1806/1883 1835 –1838 Ex-communicated for apostasy in 1838
Parley P.Pratt 1807/1857 1835 –1857 Murdered by Hector McLean,legal husband of one of

Pratt’s plural wives

Luke S.Johnson 1807/1861 1835 –1837 Ex-communicated in 1837 forapostasy in 1838, later

re-baptized in 1846.

WilliamSmith 1810/1893 1835 –1845 Ex-communicated for apostasy In 10/1845.  Followed Strang then

RLDS Church until 1893.

OrsonPratt 1811/1881 1835 –1881 Younger brother of Parley Pratt.Ex-communicated for apostasy

8/1842; readmitted 1/1843;

author of The Seer

John F.Boynton 1811/1890 1835 –1837 Ex-communicated for apostasy in 1838
LymanJohnson 1811/1859 1835 –1838 Ex-communicated forapostasy in 1838

LDS Apostles Part 2

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