Question
Dear Gramps,
It seems that a lot of evil has also been done in the Mormon Church in the name of the Lord, so the movie “Angels of Wrath” does have some truth in it.
I only want to point out that there is a lot of stuff, both pro and con, regarding the Mormon Church which we don’t like, or even despise. But reading the Old Testament, just as a lot of evil is written about the people of Israel, so will be written of our Church and of this people, and the Lord has and shall handle it. The Lord’s gospel is true, but His people aren’t sometimes. I only want to know if the concept of blood atonement is true.
amj
Answer
Dear amj,
It never ceases to amaze me how members of the Church, who should know better, seem to continually turn to fables, in fulfilment of Paul’s prophecy recorded in 2 Timothy 4:3-4,
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables,
and seem to put more credence in what the protestors have to say than in the words of the prophets. I don’t understand why there is such a desire to examine and investigate every protestation of evil against the Church. We will always tend to find what we look for whether it is there or not.
Such ruminations should be beneath the dignity of those who profess to have testimonies of the gospel. Rather than looking for every bad thing that is professed by the detractors to exist in the Church, why not bend one’s energies to look for every good thing that the Lord’s kingdom on the earth has to offer?
Nevertheless, here is the specific answer to your question on blood atonement–if you can accept the words of the prophets over those of evil men who are trying to tear down the kingdom of God.
Just a word or two now, on the subject of blood atonement. What is that doctrine? Unadulterated, if you please, laying aside the pernicious insinuations and lying charges that have so often been made, it is simply this: Through the atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel. Salvation is twofold: General–that which comes to all men irrespective of a belief (in this life) in Christ–and, Individual–that which man merits through his own acts through life and by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel (Joseph Fielding Smith Jr., Doctrines of Salvation, Vol.1, p.133 – p.134).
From the days of Joseph Smith to the present, wicked and evil-disposed persons have fabricated false and slanderous stories to the effect that the Church, in the early days of this dispensation, engaged in a practice of blood atonement whereunder the blood of apostates and others was shed by the Church as an atonement for their sins. These claims are false and were known by their originators to be false. There is not one historical instance of so-called blood atonement in this dispensation, nor has there been one event or occurrence whatever, of any nature, from which the slightest inference arises that any such practice either existed or was taught (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.92).
Gramps
