“The waters of the Dead Sea will be healed.”

(Yes, readers, I admit that contribution came from me.) It was interesting enough to capture my attention for quite a while, so if you want a report of the rest of her lesson, you will have to get it from someone else.

The reference to the waters of the Dead Sea being healed was from Ezekiel 47. I spent some time reading about the running water coming from the temple, going down into the desert, and then running into the sea, and healing its waters. This causes a great multitude of fish to come, and the fishers spread forth their nets to catch them.

Then, as I am wont to do, I looked at the symbolic nature of the scripture passage. Rather than reading this passage literally as it is described in our SS lesson, as the waters of the literal Dead Sea somehow being chemically changed, I looked at some of the symbolic meanings of the scriptural terms. Often in the scriptures the restored gospel is described as living water. Fishers of men are missionaries. At once, a greater meaning of Ezekiel 47 became clear. As I read it again with these things in mind, I saw a prophecy of the gospel (living water) flowing forth from the Temple of God. I saw it going into a desert wasteland of the earth without the restored truths of Jesus Christ. I saw a previously spiritually barren world now healed and full of people ready to hear the good news of the gospel of peace. There were missionaries and members of the Church ready and waiting to gather these converts with their nets of fellowship.

Of course, I’m sure I’m not the first to interpret this chapter symbolically. But I think that Latter-day Saints tend to gravitate more naturally toward a literal reading of the scriptures. Here’s how Joseph Smith described it:

Judah must return, Jerusalem must be rebuilt, and the temple, and water come out from under the temple and the waters of the Dead Sea be healed. It will take some time to rebuild the walls of the city and the temple etc.; and all this must be done before the Son of Man will make His appearance.

In the LDS Guide to the Scriptures, topic “Dead Sea,” this explanation is given:

The salt sea at the southern end of the Jordan Valley. It was also known as the Salt Sea. Its surface is approximately 1300 feet (915 meters) below the Mediterranean Sea. The cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Zoar or Bela were near its shores (Gen. 14: 2-3). In fulfillment of prophecy and as one of the signs of the second coming of the Savior, the waters of the Dead Sea will be healed, and life will flourish there (Ezek. 47: 8-9).

Often, interpreting the scriptures symbolically fits well with our doctrine and frees us from the cognitive dissonance we experience when prophesied events don’t happen exactly as they are described. Why do we have such trouble giving holy writ a figurative meaning rather than a literal one? What makes us prefer wild speculative theories about the desalination of a gradually shrinking body of water with modern technology in support of literalist exegesis?  What literal interpretations do you tend to cling to?

An apologist is “a person who makes a defense in speech or writing of a belief, idea, etc.”  Usually, the term is used in a religious or philosophical context.  Wikipedia adds:  Apologists are authors, writers, editors of scientific logs or academic journals, and leaders known for taking on the points in arguments, conflicts or positions that are either placed under popular scrutinies or viewed under persecutory examinations. The term comes from the Greek word apologia (απολογία), meaning a speaking in defense.  Apologists have been around for a long time.  The Apostle Paul was essentially a Christian apologist. Mormon apologists can be found at places like FARMS and FAIRWiki.

Why Are Apologists Reviled?

Let me illustrate with a simple joke:

• Q:  How many apologists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
• A:  Since there is light, we know that the number of apologists involved was sufficient to complete the operation of lightbulb-screwing-in to connect the lightbulb to a power source which could then create the light.  Or if there were no apologists involved in the lightbulb-screwing-in, somehow or other it got screwed in.  Look, a butterfly!
• IOW:  We don’t know how, but we know there is light.

From Wikipedia:  Apologists have been characterized as being deceptive, or “whitewashing” their cause, primarily through omission of negative facts (selective perception) and exaggeration of positive ones, techniques of classical rhetoric. When used in this context, the term often has a pejorative meaning.

Here are some common criticisms of apologists:

1. They are not objective; they approach a problem backwards, beginning with the conclusion (like reverse engineering).  IOW, their methods are not exploratory (e.g. scientific method), but are in fact merely confirming a belief already held (hmmm, sound a lot like the detractors’ arguments).  In their defense:  The detractors are generally equally biased.
2. They are defensive.  This is true in the same sense that a defense attorney is defensive.  When an idea is attacked or criticized, an apologist comes forward to answer that criticism.  So, apologists are defensive in the way an NBA team is defensive of their basket when the opposing team has the ball.  In their defense:  An offensive attack calls for a defensive response.
3. They require “mental gymnastics.” The most prevalent criticism of apologists is that their arguments are more complex and sometimes less convincing than the criticism they are refuting.  The simple fact is that this is a necessary byproduct of a defensive posture.  You are not arguing “for” something, asserting its validity; you are responding to a criticism, which means, you review its merits on the basis of all facets of the criticism.  In their defense:  Apologists don’t have the home court advantage.
4. They degenerate into bickering. When someone leaves a flaming bag of poop on your doorstep, and you respond by leaving a bigger flaming bag of poop on their doorstep, be prepared to wash your hands afterward.  And if someone leaves a flaming bag of poop on your doorstep, ignoring it might narrow the number of visitors to only the really diligent.  In their defense:  The detractors started it!
5. They are irrelevant; faith cannot be proven or disproven as it is not based on logic, but rather subjective personal spiritual experience.  So, deigning to refute the critics of faith using the tools of logic is not likely to be very convincing to those who rely on faith.  Nor is a faith-based argument likely to convince a staunch logician.  In their defense:  You can’t beat a football team with baseball skills.  Also, even if the arguments are ultimately irrelevant, someone has to respond.  Perhaps apologists and critics are like Rock-em Sock-em robots; they just engage each other in the circle of debate, but it’s really just a game.
   

Maybe apologists are like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men (paraphrased):

Every morning I eat breakfast 400 yards from evangelical ministers, the disaffected, and anti-Mormons trained to destroy testimonies.  We live in a world that has religious beliefs, and those religious beliefs have to be guarded by men (and women) with facts and theories. Who’s gonna do it? You? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the disaffected, and you curse the apologists. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know — that apologetics, while requiring mental gymnastics, probably saves testimonies; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves eternal lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on FAIRWiki — you need me on FAIRWiki.  We use words like “historical evidence,” “account,” and “source.” We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a person who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very religious freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather that you just said “thank you” and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you get on the internet and stand the post. Either way, I don’t give a $@?!# what you think you’re entitled to!

So, what do you think?  Are apologists performing a necessary service by defending the faith?  Or do you think they miss the point?  If so, what alternative do you suggest?  And where are these “places we don’t talk about at parties”?  Discuss.

Which of these is God to you?

I’ve a friend who died and came back from the light. He believes in a God who marks the sparrows fall. To him, the only miracle God works is that God knows, loves and cares, God suffers with us. But in his view, God does nothing else in the world. When I read his editorial in the paper on that, I realized that he believes that God is the God of Sparrows.

One step past that is the God of many, a God who gives vague guidance to man, who we can see through a glass, darkly. The God of obscurement, who I have named the God of Mists. Something beyond the agnostic’s question, but a great mystery.

In counterpoint, there are those who feel that God is a light in darkness. To them, God’s only miracle is knowledge and inspiration to those who will look, listen and feel. I refer to this vision of God as the God of Light.

There are others who believe that God works tangible miracles, but only at a distance, for others, long ago and far away. God saved Israel from the Pharaoh, but of course did not save the Jews from Hitler (though, if you think about it, Israel spent four hundred years in bondage, the Jews did not suffer the Nazis quite that long). That is the Distant God.

The Distant God contrasts with the God who only works miracles that are indistinguishable from random chance or unknown physical laws. They believe that the miracle of loaves and fishes was really that Jesus prompted people to share what they had, and that turned out to be more than enough. When God heals, it is only people who would or could have healed naturally. In this view God is the God of Miraculous Coincidences and luck.

Then there are those who believe in weak miracles. The God of almost miracles (I put that in lower case intentionally). My favorite example is of a man dying of cholera who as asked if he had faith to be saved. He responded that if only they had come an hour before, a miracle would have saved him.

Then there is the God of Miracles, the God of my experience. One who loves like the God of Sparrows. One who sometimes leaves me confused like the God of Mists, and other times has been brilliantly clear, like the God of Light. But one, who has from time to time, worked real, tangible miracles.

What God has not been for me is the trained and tamed lion (intentional C. S. Lewis reference) who performs miracles on demand, by rote.

Which is some ways raises more questions than answers. It also leads to my next post “God is a What?! Part Two.”

According to Bushman, early Mormon converts were imminent millennialists. Even Joseph himself was sure of its coming. The establishment of the Church of Christ and the gathering to Kirtland was seen as an event that would insulate them from the calamities that would come in a very short. In fact, many other charismatic millennial sects were doomed in this time period. Mormons were a bit different. The imminent feeling abated with the construction of the temple and Joseph’s and the Church’s feeling that a sort of second coming occurred with that seminal event and the visions that took place thereafter. This didn’t satisfy some converts such as Ezra Booth as many apostatized after the promised Second Coming didn’t take place after the construction of the temple and the failure of Jackson County.

Now the focus became work, missionary efforts, Priesthood organization, and sanctification of the Saints etc. that was essential to take place to prepare for the political inevitability of the Church of Christ. The Church entered into an era of a more protracted imminence. Some of the doctrine issued through D&C balance protracted imminence and historical futurist necessity. Some of these doctrines are:

• The necessity of mass Jewish return to the Holy Land prior to the Second Coming
• A New Jerusalem must be built—attempted but never accomplished
• Great calamities – earth tremble, moon blood, stars fall, etc. macro level
• Poor and meek shall have the gospel preached to them, gospel in every nation (completed or not, experts argue)
• Jacob shall flourish in the wilderness, Lamanites blossom as the rose
• Economic consecration enacted – yes, that means the Church will not be practicing the holy and sacred American capitalist system.
• The concept of 1,000 year seals, the 7,000^th seal to start at the end of the 6,000 year, roughly around 2000 AD.
• Joseph has a strange revelation where 1890 is the magic year, his 85^th birthday, which he interprets as it won’t come before that time. Others following him weren’t so ambiguous.

Space is limited to the Doctrine and Covenants, yet ideas such as the Church filling North and South America prior to the Second Coming and it filling up the Rocky Mountains were other ideas espoused by Joseph Smith. It is clear that for most, imminent premillennialist fervor took a back seat for decades while a more utopian growth and survive phase was implemented. The saints looked to God to protect the work from a wicked Missouri/Illinois, and then American government than they looked to God for his imminent arrival.

In the 1870’s and 1880’s you see a shift. First, the key date of 1890 was fast approaching. Second, with the passage of the anti-polygamy laws and no where else to run, Mormons saw themselves as making their last stand—with the necessity of God intervening. Orson Pratt, Charles C. Rich, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and others of the Priesthood began making dire predictions, having dreams, giving “morning of the first resurrection” blessings, and forecasting doom and gloom. That all ended with the Manifesto. The Church was now back in balance with a protracted imminence, albeit with a Faustian bargain of sorts—missionary work being more important than standing by the nature of the fundamental doctrine of plural marriage. That didn’t settle so well with many of the fundamentalists that were IN the church at the time. Soon, they went OUT of the Church over these very issues.

So mainstream LDS culture transitioned to a missionary church—with little controversy—into a banal Utah/western monoculture—into an adjusting international Church. Premillenialism has sat where it is sitting now, with protracted imminence. The Church has been hedge-betting for more than 100 years—straddling a Mormon version of amillennialism with premillenialism from a cultural standpoint. In essence, they believe premillennialism but they practice amillennialism.

Historical premillennialism has checked off most of what needs to be done, both from a Christian and Mormon perspective. The only thing left are the calamities and war (at the macro level), establishment of the New Jerusalem, and the Temple in Jerusalem. Some of the other ideas as outlined in my first post on neo-FLDS are based on dreams, visions, and questionable sources that are valid only in individualized spirituality by the reader. Someone with neo-FLDS tendencies would search for historical premillennialist holes to fill the narrative so that context to current events can give a generalized feeling of acceleration towards the Second Coming. While these things may not be official history or doctrine, they may still be useful. Fitting them together such that contradictions don’t ensue is one key to interpreting the truth of any vision or dream claim. And, like Star Wars novels are to George Lucas’s movies, you can’t overrule the Bible, Book of Mormon, or D&C with a found vision or dream from an ancestor’s journal. There must be harmony. This is a key for the true believer who is searching for last days prophecies.

Epilogue

Most of my family are mainstream Mormon. Like them, many mainstream Mormons are premillenialists in a general sense. They think it will happen but they don’t worry about it. They envision a sort of meshing of premillennialism with a general creeping utopian amillennialism from the point of view of Church progression. In other words, one day Mormons will watch all of the calamites happen on CNN, just as if it was the Gulf War—then fly off to Cold Stone for a family night treat. They think there will be some general mayhem, but that will be in Europe and Africa, and possibly New York City, but they see the calamities as being general and spread out and not disrupting of civilization. They are more concerned with their Calvinistic destiny of working hard, being prosperous, raising families, and seeing them on the other side. The latter-day premillennialist element of the Church is paid lip service, but in practice, it is largely symbolic. There really is no working toward Zion from an economic/political sense, even from a personal standpoint, which is what we’ve been commanded to do in the temple. Finally, although there is doctrinal mainstream belief for food storage, debt abatement, and general preparedness, the priority for these concepts culturally falls into the dark netherworld zone of practices such as searching Scottish microfiche for Middle Age ancestry—in essence it is done by hobbyists. One author noted in the Southern Utah area suggested on radio that perhaps less than 10% of active Mormons have their food storage as outlined by prophetic counsel. If that’s true, it would show how protractedly imminent mainstream Mormons think the Second Coming is.

Neo-Fundamentalists do not see a peaceful transition for the Church to the millennium. They see major disruption of our culture and economy that allows for a reinvention of the Church in the ways outlined politically in the Doctrine and Covenants. They see the realization of a Constitutional Theocracy known as Zion. For the traditional Mormon, calamities are viewed through a micro level. Tsunamis in Asia would therefore account for the “seas heaving themselves beyond their bounds.” A fundamentalist perspective would see a far greater catastrophe, one that would ruin the world economy and kill millions, not just thousands. Calamities are on a macro level are very personally felt. This is why they go to such lengths to be prepared for this inevitability.

My personal feeling is if in 10-15-25 years we see no trend towards events that signal the second coming, there will be a crossroads for the Church. The “Latter-day” thing may have to be dropped, and we may enter into a new form of neo-Catholicism in our concept of a millennial reign. Of course, my personal feeling is that the narcissistic nihilistic tendency of the wider culture, the Balkinzation of America, and the demographic Dark Age coming in 50 some odd years will help strengthen the premillennialist tendencies of the LDS culture. We actually may see the change visualized by NFLDS believers even without the utopian flavor.