There are many organizations that a person can apply for membership into and enjoy spending time with similar folks with the same interests. Antique cars or model airplanes or dogs or beading or foreign films or sports or theater or the arts or whatever. It's fun and exciting to share those things with like-minded souls. Professional wrestling fans and ballet aficionados most likely don't sit and have a good chat over their interests. In our Church membership we are expected to get along with e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e!! Yep! ALL!!
When a person comes into the Church, into the citizenship of the Saints, no more a wanderer searching hi and low while chasing every wind of doctrine, but now a fellow citizen expected/expecting and desirous to stake out a Zion homestead and sink roots...the reality happenings?....the odds are at some point the lay of the land will appear, to our fellow homesteaders, to be mis-marked and some neighboring plow-boy or maybe a woman making lye, soap that is, will wipe the dirt and water off their hands and let us know our shortfalls through their clouded dime store glasses. Ouch!! That smarts like the dickens!!!
Members being offended, angered, faultfinding, disillusioned, backbiting and all those other nasty little parasitic human traits, surfaced early in the Church History. Right out of the chute things got stirred up.
Members found fault with the Prophet Joseph because he was to human. Just a regular man. How could the Lord use a regular ordinary fellow? (What other kind are there within the Church membership????)
Remember the witnesses? The 3 and The 8. The 3 all left in a huff (over ill feelings toward Joseph) and then 3 of the 8 followed suit. 2 of the 6 grudge holders eventually came back into the fellowship of the Church. To their credit all 6, even with demeaning the Prophet and having no confidence in him, never denied what they saw regarding the gold plates but so much collateral damage was done to the Church and the Saints by those choices, that testimony was sometimes overlooked.
Another amazing story of the danger of determination- to prove others wrong and thereby cutting off your nose to spite your face- is the unbelievable saga of Thomas B. Marsh. President of Quorum of the 12. His wife makes an agreement with a sister Harris that they will share milk and give strippings with the milk and not hold any back so they can make a larger cheese when it's their turn to receive. Sister Harris sticks to the deal but Sister Marsh systematically held that extra thick cream back, got caught, denied it and it was major fire works.
President Marsh worked his way through all the Church channels to clear his wife of the thievery. He went to his Home Teachers and they found his wife guilty so he then went, in order, to a Bishops trial and then a High council trial and finally to a 1st Presidency trial and each governing body supported the previous one in finding her guilty.
That so infuriated him after exhausting all avenues, and all finding his wife guilty of not keeping her end of the bargain....
"He went before a magistrate and swore that 'the Mormons' were hostile towards the state of Missouri. That affidavit brought from the government of Missouri an exterminating order, which drove some 15,000 Saints from their homes and habitations, and some thousands perished through suffering the exposure consequent on this state of affairs."
President George Albert Smith said years later at a meeting in the Bowery .... “This little affair kicked up a considerable breeze, and Thomas B. Marsh then declared that he would sustain the character of his wife even if he had to go to hell for it." ... (I remember reading that Brigham Young once said that was where he would go!)
One of the best, if not the best talks, is http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1984/04/small-acts-lead-to-great-consequences?lang=eng&query=milk+strippings
I take that back on it being one of the best. It is the best!! 1984 by President Hinckley. It has what Brother Marsh said in pleading to come back into Church, after 19 years, and the entire milk story. It is so great because President Hinckley tells the story right from the Church History, the repercussions and then he points out to each of us the danger of finding fault etc. Puh-leeze read his short talk. You will love it and be strengthened. I just know it!
"It is so easy to stumble. It is sometimes so hard to keep our voices low when small things provoke us." by President Hinckley
I've bent your tender little ear more than enough for today!
TOMORROW....
The Gospel Net Catches All Sorts of Fish!!!
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