Hello everyone, I was raised as a Catholic Christian my whole life. In February this year, I got in contact with two wonderful Mormons. I really like the ideas of the church. So after the three-hour meeting with them and one church service, I took the Book of Mormon with me and started to read it. I did this because they told me to ask Jesus if it’s the right belief for me or not. So every night I read the book, I had the same dream. It was an old man with a white beard on a donkey telling me to believe in nymphs. When I woke up, I had to look up the word because I did not even know what it was, at least I could not recall that I ever heard that word. After having the same dream three times in a row, I stopped reading the Book of Mormon. And also, the dream stopped, but I was so scared before going to bed. Can anyone explain this? Was it Satan trying to get me away from believing in Jesus and the Book of Mormon?

Short I was born in the church, serve as missionary, had callings and such, I've left and broke law of chastity twice, also got some tattoos. I'd like to go back as life seems meaningless without church, it's going to be 4 years I left.

My Mormon aunt married my Mormon uncle but unfortunately she passed away from breast cancer long ago. My uncle is still alive. From my understanding, they should both go to his planet when they die. Is she on his planet right now even though he’s still alive or is there some sort of waiting area until he passes on too?

Hello everyone. I was curious about how different church traditions, practices, beliefs, and afterlives differ in different latter day saint denominations.

There were quite a few splinter groups, but the two biggest I know of are split over between following Joseph Smith III & Brigham Young. I know not much thereafter, but the history of Mormonism really interests me, so if anyone can recommend me any books/websites on the subject or have discussions with me, that'd be fun!

EDIT: Spelling

In the recent town meeting about the Fairview temple, a man spoke up concerning whether the church had a scriptural or doctrinal basis for the steeple height. His remarks have been shared by a lot of people, usually in the post-Mormon commentators circle. And they are all saying that this man is an active member standing up to the church, bravo for him.

But I'm not sure it's an active member. It may be difference in dialect, but I hear "... and my wife WERE members of the church..." Past tense. Some people are insisting it is "WE'RE members..." (contraction of we are) indicating current participation.

Does anyone know if this is truly a statement by an active member vs. a former member?

Link to the best clip I have, if anyone has a longer clip with more context, it would be appreciated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fdq-oqIxto

How could a member harmonize these (potentially) contradictory teachings about who is in the terrestrial kingdom?

D&C 76:71-75 teaches about four categories of people who will be sent to the Terrestrial kingdom after the judgment.

1. “These are they who died without the law.”
2. “The spirits of men kept in prison, whom the Son visited…. Who received not a testimony of Jesus in the flesh, but afterwards received it.”
3. “They who are honorable men of the earth, who were blinded by the craftiness of men.”
4. “They who are not valiant in the testimony of Jesus”. [unfaithful members}]

I get number 3 and 4, but I thought groups 1 and 2 actually got to go to the celestial kingdom, yet D&C 76 says they won’t.

Joseph Smith also said this:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/kingdoms-of-glory?lang=eng

“All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God;

“Also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom;

How could a member harmonize these contradictory teachings about who is in the terrestrial kingdom?

BYU applications and admissions statistics have been discussed in a number of posts and comments recently but I haven't seen the data presented in a format that is quick and easy to understand. So I grabbed the statistics from the U.S. Depart of Education's IPEDS website [source] and made a chart for the past 2 decades.

BYU Admissions 2002–2022

You can see from this data there was an increase in applications and a commensurate dip in acceptance rate during the 2012–2017 time frame which is very likely due to the change in missionary age in 2012 with the resulting peak in full-time missionaries in the ensuing years. And the acceptance rate for BYU was higher for the majority of the first decade of this century than it is now.

Hopefully this is helpful for any discussions about BYU admissions statistics.

EDIT: Here's a chart showing BYU applications and number of missionaries from 2002–2022. I used a log scale for the Y axis to facilitate the comparison.

Sacrament meeting: Talks about mothers(one of which I gave) and the youth combined with primary singing a song about mothers.

Second hour: The YM served ice cream(in waiter fashion) to the YW and Relief Society. They were quite strict about not allowing primary children in the room. I was asked to man the door and only let adults in and out. One time I had the door open for “too long” and the bishopric second counselor gestured me to close it. When the primary children were in their individual classes(with the couple teachers), they were instructed to not leave the room until their parents picked them up from the class.

Somewhere out there in the interwebs recently someone asked why is tea prohibited in the word of wisdom given that it is actually healthy for you.  Especially green tea.  And our wonderful Mormon members are answering them.  The word of wisdom is NOT about health.  It is about obedience.

I cannot say this loudly enough. It is wrong to ignore your own morality and defer to someone else's authority. You have to answer for your actions and it is immoral to hide behind the "they told me to" argument. IMO.

It is a slippery slope from a small thing to ultimately a big thing (mountain meadows anyone???). This is one of my top 5 concerns about the morality of the church and members. IMO.

It’s not about if they are healthy or not. It’s about obedience.

The law of sacrifice requires us to sacrifice what God asks us to sacrifice instead of what we want.

That's what's "wrong" with Alcohol, Coffee, and Tea IAW the WoW. He asks us not to. And while He hangs it around our health as His reason why, our reason why is to obey Him.

Just follow what the church says, and it will be simple and not confusing.

Caffeine - yeah, don't try to make it fit logically. It's allowed in general by the WoW (because it's not mentioned). Plenty of LDS drink a Coke to stay awake while driving on a trip or cramming for finals.

In short: God commands it. If you can aquire a testimony that this is His church woth His prophets, you can know the commandment given through them is correct.

I have been a convert for 6 years however I went inactive for about 4 years. In that time I met the love of my life and at the time we were overseas (military) and because of Covid we could not get married. When we came back we entered a common law marriage in Texas. Texas has no “amount of time” you must be living together for it to be considered common law, the requirements in Texas are “agreed to be married”; “after the agreement they lived together in this state as husband and wife” And “represented to others that they were married” So we did not live together until we were common law married. After the passing of my dad last year I have decided to be active in the church again, however today I found out that the church does not recognize common law marriages. He is not a member but is very supportive. I immediately jumped into action today and got the process started to get legally married and we will be ASAP. (Probably the next 2-3 weeks) My question is will I get in trouble? I honestly had no idea the church didn’t recognize common law marriages. Is this something I need to repent for and talk to my bishop about? I would also like to add even tho I was inactive i did still believe.

My earlier post was slightly in jest:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/1coaprr/proclamation_on_the_temple_coming/

But, hearing the prepared statement that very obviously came from SLC that the church representative read in the Las Vegas council meeting regarding the Lone Mountain temple feels like a draft of a more formal statement. It touched on many of the items I and commenters discussed in my post.

This is so mind blowing that the church is trying to create a new doctrine out of the steel, stone, stucco, sheetrock, etc of a building. How much better would it be for the church to actually be good neighbors and build temples according to local zoning ordinances, or put it in places where it would be ok.

What is more bizarre is that it feels that there has been a change on this. When our local church building was built, the floor plan had an overflow as part of the original blueprints. But, it would have required a variance of about 6 feet on the set back ordinance (which we were assured would be easy to get). Instead of taking it to our local city council, they changed the blueprints and eliminated the overflow so no variance would be needed. Now, this was on the heels of the brouhaha of the Boston temple so perhaps the church was gun shy.

The best explanation I've heard is this is a calculated effort by the the church to rally local members, uniting them in defense of persecution of their faith.

I’m attending high school in Utah and haven’t been able to add seminary into my packed schedule. I’ve seen mixed things on how much graduating seminary impacts your acceptance to BYU, so I’m just not sure. My mom works full time at BYU, but I don’t know whether that would really make much of a difference.

Just came across this video. It seems that they're trying to deny that Joseph Smith used the rock in the hat. I've noticed that there's a huge movement among the orthodox to try to deny things that the church has already publicly admitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j81dKemn9ig

I have been a member since I was born and have served a mission. As I seek deeper understanding, I come to this question with the topic as in the title. Here is the question:

If everyone in the Millenium is just/virtuous and not none would die of old age (constant number of people exist), does not that mean the first resurrection is the default option for all of them and at the same time? I am unsure with the separated time for this, like the morning and so forth since I thought everyone deserving that would be there already?

Extra question: why will people still reject the Christ even though they will have the knowledge that He is the king and the only way? It sounds like people will not change to me.

I just want to note that we are 16 and 17 so please be nice. So I have a crush on this guy, and I met him where I work. We immediately hit it off and had a lot of things in common and I’ll note that I did think he was cute before we talked for the first time too. We were immediately very sassy with each other and he made me smile a lot. The other work friends around our age definitely felt any chemistry I guess and one even went to him and said “ooohhh I can feel the love in the room” when I was cleaning somewhere. He’s very sweet and funny and in the most respectful way possible, doesn’t seem Mormon at all. As one does when they have a crush, I looked up if he had a facebook or instagram or something and he didn’t, but I found his dads facebook and kinda sorta stalked it a little, and I saw his family is Mormon. I have quite the developing crush on him and we make eye contact and always try to talk to each other at work and I kinda suspect that he likes me a little too but obviously I don’t wanna assume things. I grew up Christian, and my parents even helped start a new church, but later learned that they were atheist and left. I was probably like 8. The feelings about religion my parents have are kind of toxic about it so idk how I feel about it, but even though I’ve picked up on some of those feelings, I never judge people for their religion. I don’t identify with anything because I don’t know what I believe and it’s a very confusing subject for me. But idk obviously as I said he doesn’t seem very religious himself, but the fact that his family and probably him are Mormon makes me unsure what to do. I’ve heard some things about Mormons not being allowed to date people that are not members and I live in a heavily populated Mormon area. What advice would you have? He’s really cute and I don’t like throwing away connections like that. Has anyone else dated/serious relationship/married a Mormon while not being religious yourself or as a Mormon been allowed to date someone that is not a member? Thank you 💕💕 P.S. I do not know a lot about the Mormon church and their rules, although I have studied some in the past. I say everything in the utmost respect!

Can someone help me understand what DC132 verses 61 to 64 are saying?

• verse 61 - Who qualifies for the "law of the priesthood"
• verse 62 - Is 10 the limit on the number of virgins, or is that a figure of speech ?
• verse 62 - Didn't Joseph violate this virgin requirement by marrying mother-daughter pairs ?
• verse 63 - Didn't Joseph and Brigham violate the replenishment of the Earth by not having many children? Brigham averaged one child per woman, which was less than the average of 5 at the time.
• verse 64 - What does it mean to be administering virgins ?
• verse 64 - Do all the wives have to administer virgins ?
• verse 64 - What does "for I will destroy her" mean ?

Doctrine and Conventants 132 for reference:

61 And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.

62 And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.

63 But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified.

64 And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law.

I know this may see kind of odd, but I have an English paper on subcultures and am doing it on Mormons. One of the requirements for this is to do an "interview" with someone who is currently or used to be apart of it. I was wondering if any of you would be interested in doing this. It wouldn't last long it would just be a normal text convo. If you'd be willing to please let me know quickly, it's time sensitive as I may or may not have procrastinated till the last minute. Thanks you.

How really bad is it? Would I get excommunicated for doing it?

My sister in particular but other people in my life as well have argued that polygamy was only practiced by a "select few" in the church. Do we have evidence suggesting this is true or is it a TBM default answer with no basis behind it?