I was doing more research on the Mormon Church a few weeks ago, and I came across an interview done with a couple whose whole family left the Church at the same time. They were outstanding citizens, owned their own business, and unfortunately for the LDS Church, they decided to think for themselves. Their names are Rauni and Dennis Higley, and I sincerely hope they don't mind sharing parts of the interview on my blog as it is already posted on the internet for everyone to see. I know that there are many true-blue Mormons that come across this blog, and while I mean no disrespect to you, I will be talking about my (and others') feelings about the temple ceremonies.
The wife, Rauni, was originally from a different country, and worked as a translator of the Finnish language for the Mormon Church for over fourteen years. When she began translating the Journal of Discourses, a group of speeches given by leaders of the church, she noticed a different kind of Mormonism than she was taught. Blood atonement and Adam being God the Father were new to her, she was taught about them, but told these stories were made up by anti-Mormons. While doing her translation work, she learned these topics were indeed taught by the early church and the issues were too large for her to ignore.
When she was beginning to consider leaving the church, her husband was an Elder's Quorum President. He was in the High Council and very devoted to the Mormon faith. She loved him very much, and she was afraid of being honest because it might mean their marriage would be over. She decided to keep it to herself. When she tried to question things, he would reply with, "The Church is true, no matter what." This went on for a number of years.
The f
ollowing is taken directly from the speech/interview I read...
"I had spent many months in the Salt Lake Temple working on translation of the ceremony. I took a lot longer in it than many other translators, because I really wanted to understand it and do my work well. I was seeing the entire thing as not having anything to do with the God of the Bible. I tried to reason and analyze what it was all about, but my doubts remained. - So that you understand, the ceremony I am familiar with, is the ceremony before 1990 when major changes were made to it. In analyzing the ceremony, I could not see it having anything to do with the work for the dead. Yet over 90% of the temple work is done "for and (on) behalf of" the dead. But it could only be applicable for the living, to keep them in fear and obedience. Those of you who have been through the temple, before 1990, will know what I mean. There was a "death penalty" for practically every step we took. We had to show, demonstrate, how our lives could be taken, by drawing our thumbs across our throats, across our bodies, etc. if we ever revealed outside of the temple tokens or signs given to us during the temple ceremony. How is that applicable to the dead? How about washings and annointing for health, "multiplying and replenishing the earth", wearing temple garments and so on? What could these things have to do with a dead? We had demonstrated "how the life can be taken", as a punishment. How do you take a life of a dead person? We also had to take oaths and make promises (for the dead) to obey all the laws of the church, to "walk up to all covenants" entered in the temple. We promised to give all that "God has blessed us and or will bless us with" to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What can the dead give? Nothing. They have nothing. We even made promises "for and behalf" the dead to wear garments day and night... The more I thought about these, the more I questioned all of it.
I went through the temple for the first time in the Swiss temple, as a missionary. I did the temple work for my mother and my grandmothers while there. During the first day, after receiving my own endowments, I went through for my mother and after that for one of my grandmother's. (They only had done the baptisms prior, so I had to take the names through the washing and anointing too, which often is done by others before the endowment ceremony. ) My questioning started then. I was washed and annointed "for health" for my mother and grandmother!! They were dead! Why is this done? This could not apply to a resurrected body they would receive later, because it would be healthy anyway, would it not? What about the garment? How could she "wear it throughout her life" - for she is not living any more? And then the oaths, how their lives can be taken, if they reveal the tokens or signs? Questions were flying in my mind - and then the fear set in. This was to frighten me, the living, was it not? Nothing to do with those who were dead!
Our mission president had chartered a plane to take all 120 missionaries and a few Finnish Mormons to the Swiss temple. I was there among Mormons - I was still a fearly new member. I had only been a member then by just shortly over one year. I found myself very frightened, but I could not speak about my fears to anyone. I desided to just go on and think about it later. I determined that I must have not understood correctly. Several years later, when in Utah, I was asked to translate the ceremony, and the opportunity was given to me to have the text in front of me - and to think about it deeply, all I had experienced and thought while in the Swiss temple, came back to me - and even stronger. There was no way I could misunderstand it now! I was in spiritual crisis. I was a Mormon among Mormons. I did not even know anyone who was not an active Mormon. I questioned my ability to think straight. How come no one else seemed to have these problems and questions? It must be me that is at fault! Is there something wrong with me, I questioned. I, again, desided to think about these things later... and just go on with life.
And quite a few years later we found out that the names of the dead are actually rotated from temple to temple and redone. Why? Were they running out of names? We have a friend who used to be a temple worker in the Manti temple. He later told us that when they finish doing names on computer sheets in Manti, they send the same names to another temple and then another temple and so forth. If living will only have their work done once, why would the work for the dead have to be repeated? I had mentioned that to Dennis. - Later, when he was in the Provo temple with a couple of his friends, he was faced with this same question. They were waiting their turn to go to the session. Just to make some small talk, he asked his friend what name he had. He showed it to Dennis. It was the same name as he had. He then asked the other friend. He had the same name too. Why?
We had, over about 20 years, done a lot of templework. We have an envelope full of names from the time that they used to give us those nameslips after we were through the endowment. The men's names were on a green slips and the women names on a yellow slips. They stopped giving these slips to "patrons" after the session was over. Temple workers tore the nameslips in half and put them in (his/her) their pockets at the veil. Later I started to see why: They did not want us to see that we were repeating the work for same names.
Larry Braithwaite used to play the role of Satan in the Manti Temple and he verified this information. He left the church about five years ago and came to talk with us. He was very familiar with the apron Satan wears. He had to put it on every day! If you have gone through the live-session, which is only available in the Manti and Salt Lake Temple, you can see the apron better than in the video. This apron has symbols or emblems on it. I had seen it close up, but had never handled it. I knew that it had, among other things, a compass and square, same as on our garments. I recall seeing a pentagram, an obelisk, all-seing eye, and more on it. They are known occultic symbols that had come from Masonry. Those of you, who have been through the temple, may remember, that Adam asks Lucifer, "What is this apron you have on?", and Lucifer replies, "It is an emblem of my power and my priesthoods." If that doesn't send chills through your spine I don't know what would, because there you are sitting there with the garment on that has those symbols on it, and Satan claims that they are his emblems. He says that they represent his priesthoods! His claims are not refuted. BUT we were told that they were "emblems of the Holy Priesthood"!! Which is it?
Satan seemed to have all the "best parts" in the whole temple ceremony (laughter from listeners). He gives commands. He tells Adam and Eve to make aprons and cover their nakedness. And Eve then acknowledges that is was good, "better", that they disobeyd God and did what Lucifer told them to do, "to partake of the fruit from the tree of good and evil" so that will have children and go through sorrow.
Analyzing and thinking about all that really "did me in", both emotionally and spiritually. Eventually I stopped wearing the garments. That is when our life became very stressed at home. This is when I told Dennis that I was on my way out of the church, but I didn't want anything to happen to our marriage.
We had both been very involved over the years. I had been in a stake Relief Society board for many years and had tried every which way to justify my activity in the church even after I had started to question it. I had come to know in my heart that Mormonism itself was not true, but because I felt that there were so many "good things in it", perhaps we could still be part of it. I started in my teachings to rely more in the New Testament teachings and ignore other "Mormon" things, but there were those who did not like that I was putting the Mormon doctrines aside. Eventually I gave up my positions in the church. I had already quit working for the church as a translator. I was leaving "in stages". I still worked in the Relief Society board for about 18 months after that, and finally I was released from that too.
Dennis was very upset (with) me. Valentine's day was coming up and he gave me a plane ticket to Finland, for a month there. He said, "Go home for a month and remember how happy you were, when you joined the church and how happy you were when you served your mission there. I want you to come back as a good Mormon wife and mother and forget about all these things."
Well, I did go and and spent it mostly in seclusion. I did see two or three of my old non-Mormon friends, but just briefly. I had my English Bible with me. I took my Finnish New Testament and started comparing then. You all know that as Mormons we accepted the Bible only "as far as translated correctly". Translation having been my work for a long time, I knew there was not really a great mystery to it - even though mistakes can creep into it - I still knew that any translation can be checked. So I did.
I started to compare the English New Testament, which was translated directly from the Greek, to the Finnish New Testament. I knew that the Finnish Bible did not have anything to do with the English translation. If they compared well, in other words, said the same thing, it would help me to see if there is God who would protect His Word from doctrinal errors. I compared them verse by verse during that month. I came to see that this "reservation-statement" about the Bible translation by the Mormon church was not true, because these translations agreed.
Mormon doctrine teaches that God was once a mortal man and we are all His spirit children, brothers and sisters of Lucifer and Jesus and that we have a Mother in Heaven also. This does not go along with the doctrine found in the Bible. The God of the Bible has never been less than God. (Isa. 43:10) He is not married, - we are only Adam's posterity. I started studying the Bible very carefully after that using many commentaries and scholarly works. I came to see that the Bible IS correct and that there really is God, and that to know Him, we don't have go through or belong to any certain church.
Joseph Smith's doctrine of God had evolved. He had taught at first that God is Spirit and only the Son has a body of flesh and bones. It can be seen from the Book of Commandments, from 1835. I had not known this until I studied the early history of the Mormon church. There was no teachings at first about us being spirit children of God or having a Mother God. That came along many years later. Lectures of Faith was part of the Doctrine and Covenants or Book of Commandments as it was then called. Lecture five says that God is Spirit and only the Son has a body of flesh and bones. Why was this removed in 1921? Because they added then the Section 130 that says that God has a body of flesh and bones (v. 22). They had to remove the Lectures all together because they taught that God is Spirit. The Book of Mormon teaches that also. It does not teach that God had a beginning, as he would have if he was once a mortal man with parents etc. Joseph Smith's doctrine had simply evolved as his own ego grew. As he became bigger in his own eyes and people believed everything he said, he started thinking of himself as godlike. In the History of the Church, Joseph Smith says, "God is my right hand man." He actually created a God for himself, after his, Joseph's image. He made himself a god. Most Mormons have not read their own history and do not know that doctrines of the church have changed.
I came back from Finland, but not as Dennis had hoped. There was no change in my feeling towards the church. I was even more aware of how false Joseph Smith's teachings were. Our relationship deteriorated further. We only spoke when necessary, and for the childrens' sake only. This time was tremendously stressful. It was tough living.
One Sunday, Dennis went, as usual, to church with our the girls. I thought that I cannot go on like this any more. Later, that day, I again, challenged him - and we talked. I told Dennis that perhaps he was too scared to find out that the church is not true. Perhaps he did not want to know that. I said, "You just want to hide behind your testimony, because you realize that knowledge brings responsibility. If you know it is not true, you will have to act on that knowledge, because otherwise you will be a hypocrite. I think that you really don't trust that Mormonism is true, because if you did, you would try everything to convert me back and show me that it is true." He thought about it for a little bit and said, "You are probably right. I believe it is the truth, because I have always accepted it as truth taught by my parents and the church. I have never tried critical thinking or testing where the church is concerned." We then agreed to sit down and study doctrines, one by one, and verify all from the church own writings and compare those teaching with the Biblical teachings.
By this time I had already visited Tanner's bookstore. I first discovered a Tanner's book called "Mormonism - Shadow or Reality", in our friend's bathroom. At the time our friend Max didn't know that in my heart I had already left Mormonism. I came out of that bathroom with this book in my hand asking if could borrow it. Max had a scared look on his face and he explained that he got the book by responding to a Salt Lake Tribune add at a conference time which stated, "If you want to strengthen your testimony, read this book?" Max added that his testimony had not been very strong, so he ordered the book, but that the book was not what he expected it to be. (laughter from listeners)
I took that book home and read it. This book took a "load off of my shoulders", because I had seen practically all that material that Tanners were talking about. When I saw that somebody else had actually gone through and drawn the same conclusions, I was relieved that "I'm not crazy! Others have come to the same understanding." This gave me courage to talk more with Dennis about this.
Dennis' first words were, "I agree to look at things, but I am not touching any anti-Mormon book." I replied that actually the information is coming from the Mormon books. It is far more effective when it comes from church own books. I, however, did use Tanner's book as a sort of an index into where to look...
We started that first night at seven in the evening. Dennis had all his church books on his side of the table and I had Tanner's book, "Shadow or Reality" on my side. I first asked about the Adam God doctrine. He said it was never really taught. He soon realized that it was taught. The same thing about Blood Atonement, etc. We stayed at it until two in the morning. Months later he admitted to me that he started to realize the church was false that very night. After that evening Dennis studied furiously for weeks and weeks.
Dennis eventually quit all his church callings, stopped attending, and the rest of the story is history. As a family we started studying the Bible, because we did not want to throw "the baby out with the bath water". This is how we became "generic", "no-label Christians". We believe that Jesus is real. He is God who became a man for our sakes. He paid for us what we could not pay. Our life is full of joy and happiness now. We have put eighteen years into the Bible study - and continuing.
We were living in Vernal, Utah when we left the Mormon church. We were quite successful financially. We were building spec homes and had a Real Estate Company and Dennis run a retail business, importing items from Europe and elsewhere.
When Dennis finally decided to leave, we asked that our names be removed from the records of the church.
The rumors around town started almost immediately , saying that we were excommunicated because Dennis had committed adultery, and that he was now a polygamist. Dennis' old home teaching companion even told people that Dennis had six or seven wives.
We had a few Mormon friends who talked to us, but most ignored us.
One of our Mormon friends told us that at the Stake Conference it was suggested that they all boycott our businesses and force us out of town, because we were now "a bad influence". Within a couple of years, we lost everything. We had thought that our leaving the church would "blow over", and that people would see that we had not changed, only that we did not believe the church to be true, but a small town has small ways.
To try to keep our business going without clients became hard. We borrowed money against our home and other personal propterty, and eventually we lost it all. We had to move out of town. We had to start over. Dennis decided to make his hobby his business. He started now as a skilled wood worker he was. I went back into real estate.
We lived in Park City for almost four years and then we moved to Salt Lake City. We rented at first and our friend helped us to buy a home that Dennis renovated. We are very comfortable and blessed now."
After the speech concluded, there was a brief question/answer period. I found this question and answer quite troubling...
Q: How is the LDS Church in Finland doing currently?
A: As far as I know, membership there is not getting bigger! -- I went back to Finland in 1984 on my "repentance trip". That was before we went totally broke. I was going there to tell all the people where I served as a missionary how sorry I am that I misled them.
I arrived, and got the Helsinki phone book out and contacted the Lutheran church, introduced myself as being from Salt Lake City, a former Mormon and that I was there to tell people that I am sorry that I taught false doctrine while I was there as a missionary.
The pastor asked me how I "knew to call him", because he said that he was the one in charge of the cult problems in Finland. He had actually helped a Finnish couple, who had left the Mormon church to write a book called, "How We Divorced Ourselves From Mormonism." He had helped them put that book together. They were not in Helsinki, but through this pastor, they asked me to come to their city.
The pastor took me through the Lutheran offices and the next day I flew to Eastern Finland. I was in Finland for five weeks and I was kept busy every day talking about Mormonism. I had taken with me a short video ,"The Temple of the God Makers", to have something to show even though I am not too crazy about all things in it. I was kept very busy every day at different places, speaking to youth groups, etc.
Even the Finnish secret police came to ask me questions about Mormon church... I was also interviewed by the Christian magazine in Finland. I met with their Editor in Chief for two days and he wrote a six page article for the magazine. That article was also later translated into German.
Dennis came to be with me for the last two week of my trip. At the end of my time there I told Dennis that I felt I had totally failed because I had come to talk to Mormons, to go to every single branch that I served as a missionary, like Paul in the Bible, but I had seen a single Mormon. I was really feeling sad. I came home and a friend of mine asked how was it. I told her that I did not see one single Mormon. Then she said, "They would not have talked to you even if you had tried. The week before you went to Finland the church had sent another Finnish lady from USA to Finland to go and warn everybody in every ward and branch where I had been to on my mission and tell the members not to talk to me." I do not have first hand knowledge of this, I can only repeat what my friend has told me. But --- you know what? Just about every Mormon in Finland, I was also told later, bought that magazine when it came out in print. (laughter from listeners) So I did not have to tell them in person, after all.
The only way that the church could have found out about my intentions to travel to Finland was to overhear the conversation I had, in Finnish, with this friend. Someone had to have tapped our phone, recorded it and translated it. How else could it have become known?
We have had our phones tapped many times. We had verification of it from the phone company. Example: On one rainy Friday our phones went dead. I called for a repairman and he came out. There is a major phone box just down the street here and the repairman went to check the phone connections in it. He returned and asked me if my husband worked in a high security job? I said, "Wh
y? A high security job?" He replied, "Yes, like for the CIA or FBI? - Do you have any enemies?"
I didn't know just how to respond. I didn't know if he was a Mormon... So I made a joke of it by replying, "Well, who doesn't have some enemies."
He came through the house and checked all phone connections and then went back to the box down the street. Dennis then came home and I told him to "run and talk to the telephone repairman. He wants to know if you work for the CIA." Dennis went and met with him.
Dennis: He showed me where our phone line was connected and said, "Here is the tap that goes up here and over to this one here. Do you have a remote location that this phone rings into? Do you have another location where your phone is besides your house?" I said, "No, this is the only place." He said, "Well, it is tapped in right here. This is the evidence right here. I am going to call U.S. West security and notify them and then go and find out where the location for this this tap is. I'll be back in about an hour." So he left and came back. He said, "This goes up to the Sandy water treatment plant. I went in there and found where the line had been connected and asked the people there why was this phone line out where it was? They said that for the past four months there has been a trailer-office. We didn't know who it belonged to, they said, it had been parked there and that phone line was in it. People would come and go. They just moved it away last Friday. What they had done was pull the phone line out of the trailer and dropped it in an old six inch well casing. And as it rained, the water level came up, shorted our phone lines out and killed our phones here. Otherwise we would never have known. Repairman said, "I could see the trailer tracks where the trailer had sat and had been pulled out through mud."
I asked him how we could find out who it was? He replied that the U.S. West Security will not even tell him. "They will just report in their files that your line has been tapped."
Dennis: Three separate times we've had verification from US West that our phones have been tampered with.
Rauni: This water treatment plant is secured property and fenced off. The people there said they did not know who the trailer belonged to. Of course they had to know who the trailer belonged to. They just can't have a trailer just come and sit there.
Dennis: One time I had made a phone call and needed to make another one, so I just held the receiver and pushed the button to get the dialtone again. I lifted the phone up to my ear, and couldn't get a dial tone. All I could hear is like somebody eating an apple (you know munch-munch) and I said into the phone "Are you guys still listening?" Click, it went dead. (laughter from listeners)
Rauni: We have had people saying that after leaving from our place they have been followed. I am not really concerned about ouselves, because I have nothing to hide. But it makes me upset when they do that to our quests. Our phones were almost immediately tapped in Vernal after we had left the church - with similar phone trouble. I called one time to the phone company and they simply told me, "your line has been tampered with". I was shocked, and asked what can I do. They said, "Well, it's a police matter and you can report it." Who to? Just about every policeman in Vernal was a Mormon. (listeners laughter).
If you would like to read the entire speech/interview just click on the pictures... they will take you directly to the page. Have a good Sunday!
Sydney
Hello there, it's been a while since I have updated, and I apologize for that. I wish I could tell you it was because I won the lottery and I was on a cruise to Alaska, but I can't.
