Apostate Patterns Show Our Need for Prophetic Proclamations

by Matthew Sailors

Introduction

Church history provides many cautionary tales of people who apostatized for various reasons. Today in the Church, the adversary is stirring up apostate movements similar to their historical predecessors, threatening the spiritual lives of some Church members.  Yet God has not left us defenseless against the adversary’s counterfeits, such as the philosophies of men mingled with scripture.¹ By learning from Church history and nurturing our testimonies of the restored truths contained in official Church proclamations, we can avoid deception and lay a firm foundation for our faith on the “rock” of Jesus Christ (see Helaman 5:12).

I take my definition of “apostasy” from the Church’s General Handbook:

“As used here, apostasy refers to a member engaging in any of the following:

• Repeatedly acting in clear and deliberate public opposition to the Church, its doctrine, its policies, or its leaders
• Persisting in teaching as Church doctrine what is not Church doctrine after being corrected by the bishop or stake president
• Showing a pattern of intentionally working to weaken the faith and activity of Church members
• Continuing to follow the teachings of apostate sects after being corrected by the bishop or stake president
• Formally joining another church and promoting its teachings (Total inactivity in the Church or attending another church does not by itself constitute apostasy. However, if a member formally joins another church and advocates its teachings, withdrawing his or her membership may be necessary.)”²

Based on that definition, it appears that the greatest dangers of apostasy do not consist only in believing false doctrine, but relate to attitudes and behaviors that engender enmity,³ or opposition, towards God and other people. The Prophet Joseph Smith recognized the oppositional spirit manifested by apostates when he responded by letter to a rash of apostasy in Kirtland, Ohio, U.S.A.⁴ In that letter, he taught that faith in and love of God should govern relationships between members and leaders of the Church. Joseph’s description of apostasy in that same letter reveals a vicious spiritual cycle in which apostasy both proceeds from and leads to violations of the First and Second Great Commandments.⁵ My intent in this article is to expose what I call the apostate mindset and contrast it with the principle of faith in Jesus Christ,⁶ which includes faithfulness to the leadership of His restored Church.⁷

Learning from Apostasies in Church History

A book that I have studied recently is Divergent Paths of the Restoration by Steven L. Shields, who is a member of the Community of Christ. In his book, Shields documents over 500 “expressions” of the Restoration from 1830 onward. Some of these expressions involved large groups of people who formally organized into churches, while others consisted of just a few individuals or families who put their own schismatic spin on the Restored Gospel. Most of these movements have long since died out.

I learned a wealth of lessons from my study of Shields’s book and other materials used as I prepared this article. I encourage the reader to check out the footnotes if you want to do further research. As I read Divergent Paths, something I noticed was that most of the apostate individuals and groups that Shields describes displayed common behavioral patterns:

• Criticizing Church leaders as uninspired, possessing invalid authority, or “fallen”^{8, 9, 10}
• Exaggerating their self-importance through grandiose delusions, sensational claims of revelation, and aspiring to leadership positions^{11, 12, 13}
• Exploiting other people for gain by using intrigue, fraud, and in some cases violence ^{14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19}
• Revising Church history narratives to justify their dissent from the Church.¹⁹

Each of these patterns manifest the apostate mindset of opposition to God and our fellow beings. Many scriptural and prophetic counsels can be cited that reveal the dangers of each of these patterns.^{20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25} Current apostate trends in the Church generally follow one or more of these four patterns of criticizing Church members and leaders, exaggerating one’s self-importance, exploiting other people for gain, and Church history narratives.

It is also worth noting that some LDS-oriented online communities frequently attract apostates to their circles because they share many worldview assumptions with them. These worldviews may serve as “red flags” for possible apostate trends. They include the following:

• Fundamentalism,²⁶ which can contribute to a variety of doctrinal, historical, and intellectual errors, including denying Joseph Smith’s involvement with plural marriage, engaging with conspiratorial thinking and fringe ideologies, and exaggerating the capacity of science to answer non-scientific questions.
• Politicizing the Gospel,²⁷ which includes elevating ideologies and causes on both the political left and right over the Gospel.
• Mormon Gnosticism,²⁸ which refers to an obsession with so-called “deep doctrine” or “hidden messages” in scripture, often dismissing the mainstream Church as spiritually deficient in the process.
• Syncretism, which means mixing the teachings or worldviews of different religions (syncretism may have contributed to Nephite apostasies recorded in the Book of Mormon²⁹).

The Protective Power of Official Church Proclamations and Declarations

We modern Latter-day Saints have a huge advantage in the struggle against personal apostasy because we have the benefit of several landmark Church statements that distill, synthesize, and summarize core doctrinal truths that can help us avoid being deceived by modern apostate trends. To constitute official Church proclamations and declarations on doctrine for my purposes here, sources must meet the following criteria:

1. They must be official Church statements, endorsed by the united First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
2. They must be doctrinally rich (some official Church proclamations from the past are more historical in nature rather than doctrinal)
3. They must be consistently used to teach Church doctrine since they were first published.

By that measure, we can include several official Church statements such as

• The Articles of Faith (published 1842, canonized 1880)
• The Family Proclamation (published 1994)
• The Living Christ (published 2000)
• The Bicentennial Restoration Proclamation (published 2020)

The power of the truths contained in these sacred prophetic statements to protect us from deception becomes clear when we consider how Church leaders have regarded them and taught from them through time. According to them, these proclamations and declarations are

• “authoritative interpretations of scriptures” because they are official teachings of the President of the Church³⁰
• “statement[s] of eternal truth… tests for this generation”³¹
• “our benchmark for judging the philosophies of the world”³²
• best understood with “an eye of faith” and “the intent to obey”³³
• intended to help guide us to salvation and exaltation through Jesus Christ.

It is also important to note what official proclamations and declarations are not.

• They are not creeds in the sense that Christian orthodoxy regards traditional creeds. John Welch and David Whittaker once wrote of the Articles of Faith, “Unlike creeds which are delimiting and dogmatic, the Articles of Faith are living and open. They invite further thought…. They enhance our understanding of certain principles and give us simultaneously a commitment toward living the same.”³⁴ This commentary is equally true of other official statements of Church doctrine such as the family proclamation.
• They are not “changeable statement[s] of policy”³⁵
• They are not intended to attack or dismiss people who have sincere doubts or whose family situations are not ideal.

It is important for each of us to consider how we can use these proclamations and declarations to respond to apostate trends and move the Lord’s work forward now and in the future. The prophet Alma declared,

“For what shepherd is there among you having many sheep doth not watch over them, that the wolves enter not and devour his flock? And behold, if a wolf enter his flock doth he not drive him out? Yea, and at the last, if he can, he will destroy him. And now I say unto you… [the good shepherd] commandeth you that ye suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed.”³⁶

We likewise have a duty to resist spiritual “wolves” such as doctrinal pollutions and dilutions through living, teaching, and testifying of the Gospel of Christ in its simplicity and purity.³⁷ Official Church proclamations and declarations should be an integral part of that endeavor. Not only should we understand them and bear our testimonies of them, but we should also share them, teach with them, find people with them for the missionaries to teach, and minister with them. We should reflect on how we can more fully utilize these sacred teachings:

• The doctrines in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” seemed taken for granted when it was published in 1995. Nowadays, this official statement stands validated as prophetic and protective against the flood of secularist philosophies and shifting cultural and legal views of morality. How can we use the Family Proclamation in defense of truth and virtue?
• “The Living Christ” was published in 2000, when a large majority of Americans still affiliated with Christianity. Presently, an increasing number of churches are retreating from belief in Jesus’ divinity, and the numbers of those religiously unaffiliated has almost doubled.³⁸ How can we use “The Living Christ” to build people’s faith in the risen Savior?
• The “Bicentennial Restoration Proclamation,” published in 2020, affirms truths that most members of the Church currently cherish. Will we be able to say that in a generation or two from now? How can we proactively use The Restoration Proclamation to share and defend the message of the Restoration of Christ’s Gospel and Church?

I believe that receiving answers to these questions by inspiration from the Spirit and putting those answers into action will affect our capacity to avoid deception, resist personal apostasy, and build our spiritual foundation on the rock of Jesus Christ.

References

¹ Members of the Church, especially those endowed, will recognize that one of Satan’s most effective tactics is preaching false religion by mixing scriptural truths with human error.

² General Handbook, Section 32.6.3.2, “Apostasy,” cited 8 October 2024.

³ See President Ezra Taft Benson, “Beware of Pride,” April 1989 General Conference

⁴ Letter to Oliver Granger, between circa 22 and circa 28 July 1840, p. 159, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 15, 2024, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-oliver-granger-between-circa-22-and-circa-28-july-1840/1#historical-intro

⁵ See Matthew 22:35-40.

⁶ See the 4^th Article of Faith.

⁷ Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt has taught, “…distrust [of human nature] is the very opposite of the faith the Lord requires of His covenant people in Himself, His prophets and apostles, and those they direct. He established His apostles as an extension of Himself…. [C]riticism of the Lord’s prophets is actively working in the minds of some to decouple prophets from the prophetic line that runs from Joseph Smith to President Nelson.” See Corbitt, “Activism VS. Discipleship: A Message for Chaplains of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” 4 October 2022.

⁸ See entry for Wycam/Wycom Clark in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 40

⁹ See entry for James Collins Brewster in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 94-95

¹⁰ See entry for Samuel Eastman in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 211-212

¹¹ See entry for Warner/William McCary in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 75

¹² See entry for Gladden Bishop in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 78

¹³ See entry for Elijah Schwackhammer in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 98

¹⁴ See entry for John H. Koyle in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, p. 204

¹⁵ See the article about Nathaniel Baldwin, written by Will Bagley at The Salt Lake Tribune, 8 July 2001; cited from web.archive.org.

¹⁶ See entry for Ervil LeBaron in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 267-268

¹⁷ See entry for Arvin Shreeve in Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, pp. 444-445

¹⁸ Dan Ellsworth, “The Seductive Power of Apocalyptic Ideas in Mainstream Religions,” Public Square Magazine, 8 May 2024. https://publicsquaremag.org/faith/gospel-fare/chad-daybell-faith-apostasy/

¹⁹ Gregory L. Smith, “Passing Up the Heavenly Gift,” parts one and two. Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. 2013. https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/passing-up-the-heavenly-gift-part-one-of-two/ and

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/passing-up-the-heavenly-gift-part-two-of-two/

²⁰ History of the Church, 3:385; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on July 2, 1839, in Montrose, Iowa; reported by Wilford Woodruff and Willard Richards.

²¹ See Alma 30:53.

²² See 2 Nephi 26:29.

²³ See 2 Nephi 26:21-22.

²⁴ See Ether 8:19.

²⁵ Travis Ewell, “When I Felt Deceived about the Church,” July 2020 Ensign https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2020/07/when-i-felt-deceived-about-the-church?lang=eng

²⁶ Wikipedia, “Fundamentalism,” cited 23 September 2024 from en.wikipedia.org.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

²⁷ Dan Ellsworth and Jeff Bennion, “Has Politics Become Your New Religion?” Public Square Magazine. 19 July 2022

²⁸ Carol Rice and C. D. Cunningham, “How Susceptible Are You to the Allure of Divergent Doctrine?” Public Square Magazine. 15 November 2023

²⁹ Mark Alan Wright and Brant A. Gardner, “The Cultural Context of Nephite Apostasy,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, 1(2012):25-55. 10 August 2012

³⁰ Boyd K. Packer, “The Twelve Apostles,” October 1996 General Conference

³¹ Dallin H. Oaks, “The Plan and the Proclamation,” October 2017 General Conference

³² Bonnie L. Oscarson, “Defenders of the Family Proclamation,” April 2015 General Conference

³³ Neil L. Andersen, “The Eye of Faith,” April 2019 General Conference

³⁴ John W. Welch and David J. Whittaker, “We Believe,” Sept. 1979 Ensign

³⁵ See Dallin H. Oaks, “Kingdoms of Glory,” Oct. 2023 Gen. Conf.

³⁶ Alma 5:59-60

³⁷ See Henry B. Eyring, “Simple Is the Doctrine of Jesus Christ,” October 2024 General Conference.

³⁸ See Pew Research Center, “Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe,” 24 January 2024.

Matthew Sailors is an adult convert to the Restored Gospel and has been a member of the Church for 9 years. He recently graduated from Brigham Young University – Idaho with a bachelor’s degree in marriage and family studies. He is married, currently has one precious baby daughter, and is enjoying life as a stay-at-home dad (for now) in Texas.

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