new life

It's been a long time since my last post. I keep busy these days with my Gluten Free blog, school, work and my new life.

People say something monumental will happen in 2012. The world might end, etc 
For me, I believe that Ive already experiences something monumental in 2012. 

Since everyone likes to know how a story began, I am going to tell you.

It seriously began for me in Spring 2009. This is when I went to the LDS temple and got endowed. This ceremony is one of the most special and sacred experiences that Mormons experience in their faith. I was committed, spiritually prepared and ready to make this step in my faith. I was in my 30's and single. I didn't have any other reason to go through the temple for this ceremony. For example, I wasn't getting married or going on a mission.
I did this of my own agency and choice. I took the classes (two times) that LDS members are supposed to take before going through his temple ceremony.

However, what occurred to me during the temple ceremony was something I wasn't prepared for.

During a certain part of the ceremony, I suddenly got a very uncomfortable/ "not right"/ strange feeling. I pushed it back in my mind and justified it as "Well, this is my first time and there's a lot to learn and understand in the temple."

However, what occurred over the next couple of years surprised me. When I went back to the temple to perform this ceremony for deceased relatives, I had the EXACT same uncomfortable, "not right", feeling at the EXACT same point in the ceremony. 

Again, I pushed these feelings aside. I didn't record these feelings in my journal, nor did I tell anyone about these feelings.

Now fast forward to February 2012. A member of my family confided in me that they didn't want to go to church anymore. This shocked and confused me, more than it upset me. It caught me completely off guard. I respected this person due to their level-headed, rational, research based intelligence and personality. I asked for reasons why and was given a short list of their reasons for leaving church. I DID NOT look up their reasons, but continued to pray for understanding as to how to deal with my feelings of this news.

A month went by. I continued to talk to this family member and when I wanted to, I asked for more of their reasons, but I never looked into their reasons as to why they wanted to leave the LDS church.
Then in April, right before Easter, I was having lunch with this family member and another friend.
I listened as they talked about uncomfortable and upsetting things that happened to them in the LDS temple. I only listened, and when they were done, I decided to share with them about the feelings I had during the temple endowment session. 

After I told them about my uncomfortable and "not right" feelings during the endowment session in the temple., I told them that I believed that my religion should not make me feel uncomfortable. While they agreed with me, they didn't push me or influence me. Our afternoon together ended and I went home.

That night I decided to start praying to ask God why I had these feelings, Where did they come from?  I wanted an answer from God because I knew that only God would be unbiased towards me. I knew from past experiences that God had answered my prayers during crucial times in my life. 
I was very scared to ask because it meant that I was willing to open myself up to whatever answer I received from God. I chose to be vulnerable.
 
I had been praying in earnest for 4 days when suddenly on the 4th day, I woke up during the night with a high temperature. My temp. was 101 and I never got fevers like this. This resulted in me staying home from work the next day. When I got out of bed in the morning and was walking to my kitchen, this sentence randomly came into my head, "Remember someone told you that Joseph Smith was a Freemason."

Ohhkayy....

This, to me, was the answer I was praying for. I immediately went to my computer and started looking into Freemasons. I didn't know much about them, their organization, when they started, where they started, how they started, why they started or what their rituals were.

Now, let me stop here and explain something......

I am a Grad student in my 2nd year. I am getting my Masters in Education. I have two Bachelor's Degrees. Suffice it to say, I do have some experience in doing academic research. In Grad programs, you are expected to do your own research , but also read research and find primary source material whenever possible to back up your work.

I am also a direct descent of Brigham Young through his 2nd wife, Maryann Angel.
I always prided myself on my ancestry and I always believed the LDS church was true. These two facts about me influenced how I decided to proceed  in finding out why I had uncomfortable feelings during the temple endowment ceremony. I took my faith in God and Jesus seriously, but I also realized that my faith (which is based on feelings) would not help me to come to an unbiased conclusion. So, I used the skills I had been taught in my education on how to try and gather research using primary source material and reading both sides of any arguments I would come across.

During my research, Never once, did I go to any of the websites that are run by ex Mormons. I didn't go to my Bishop or Stake President either. I didn't want to be influenced by people who knew me or from strangers who had already decided to leave the religion. I also wanted to stay focused on the feelings that initiated this search especially since those feelings had remained unchanged for 3 years. Again, I knew that a person's feelings about something doesn't prove facts that exist outside of themselves. All I knew was that the feelings I had during the temple endowment session was something that was very unexpected for me and they didn't coincide with other feelings that I had (that the church was true). 


This was why is became important for me to start researching the origins of the church doctrine and also look at historical church documents and primary sources. For people who are born into the church, they don't usually do extensive research into these topics. The reason is, they've been told that the church is true from as early as 18 months, when they begin nursery at church.  I was 35 when I began my search, which means that for 33.5 years I had been told on an almost daily basis that the religion I was born into was the only true religion. If I had been introduced to the church as a young adult, then I would have researched the church out and been able to come to my own conclusion without any bias from my own feelings, or from family, friends, or church teachers.

So, after researching Freemasons, I went on FAIRLDS.org.   I wanted to read what LDS scholars had to say about the connection between Freemasons and the LDS temple. I read what they said about Joseph Smith becoming a Freemasons. They said he became a "Master Mason" in 1842.

 http://www.fairlds.org/authors/misc/ask-the-apologist-similarities-between-masonic-and-mormon-temple-ritual


I didn't know what a "Master Mason" was, so I looked it up and I found a script of the Master Mason Ritual from 1866. I read the script and was shocked to find so many similarities between it and the LDS temple ceremony.

The Master Mason ritual is fashioned after an event that Masons believed happened to Hyrum Abiff. According to the Bible, a stone mason named Hyrum Abiff was in charge of the stone masonry for  King Solomon's temple. Masons believe that this stone mason was privy to ceremonies that priests of King Solomon performed in the Holy of Holies- inside King Solomon's temple.
The Master Mason ritual is done to initiate a Freemason into the higher order of Freemasonry as a "Master Mason".
Words, hand shakes, objects and clothing of this Freemason ritual are very similar to the LDS endowment ceremony. Specifically, all of the hand shakes done in the LDS endowment ceremony are also found in the Master mason ritual.
Per LDS scholars, Mormons believe that over time, the rituals and ceremonies done in King Solomon's temple (that Hyrum Abiff was made privy to) were  PERVERTED over time. The belief is that when Joseph Smith received the Priesthood and later the endowment, the true knowledge that Hyrum Abiff was privy to,  was supposed to be the "correct" ceremony.

However, in my mind, I found a problem with this belief.
Joseph Smith was given the priesthood in 1829 in Pennsylvania.  Joseph Smith became a Master Mason in 1842.  So, that means that Joseph Smith participated in the Master Mason ceremony 13 years after he had received the priesthood. Then, shortly after his initiation into Master Mason, the endowment ceremony was taught to LDS male members. 
  If the Master Mason ritual, passed down over time through Freemasons, from Hyrum Abiff was PERVERTED over time, then why would Joseph Smith become a Master Master IF he already had the "true power" (the priesthood). Why would Joseph Smith need to learn anything from a "Perverted" Freemason ritual if Joseph Smith was receiving revelations from God?
 Wasn't Joseph Smith's association with that organization tainted since the organization of Freemasons used "Perverted" rituals?

LDS scholars say that the ritual ceremony found in the LDS temple is NOT the endowment, but a means for members to receive the endowment.   I agree.
However, the ritual is the vehicle for obtaining the endowment. If the LDS temple ritual is fashioned after a perverted vehicle ,with hand signs that are exactly the same, very similar wording and clothing, THEN it must be concluded that ritual is tainted, or has the appearance of perversion.

Here's an analogy for you:  If my religion teaches me not to drink alcohol and that the "appearance" of alcohol is bad, then it would not be appropriate for me to use Rum extract in a cake recipe. The Rum extract is not alcohol, it only makes the cake taste like Rum. If I don't want others to think I am putting Rum in my cake and therefore give the appearance that I am breaking a rule in my religion, then I shouldn't even put Rum extract in the cake. LDS leaders have counseled their members again and again to "avoid the appearance of evil".

Therefore, if a religion says that an outside organization's ritual has been perverted over time, then why would their prophet join this organization? Doing so gives off the "appearance of evil" much like the Rum flavoring in the cake gives off the appearance of using alcohol.

If God wanted to endow members of His church with sacred blessings, powers and knowledge to use in the hereafter, then isn't God also capable of reveling a METHOD for doing so in which the Method doesn't mirror a ritual that the religion deems as being "perverted"?

Here is a good site for a side by side comparison of the 1820's Freemason ritual with Pre-1940's LDS temple endowment.
http://packham.n4m.org/mason-endow.htm
 
It was this discovery that was the answer to me as to why I felt uncomfortable and had that "not right" feeling during the endowment ceremony.


And this is what started my research....