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A Morman President? Seriously?

MORMON BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

• ISRAELITE BLOOD: If a Gentile becomes Mormon, the Holy Ghost actually purges his Gentile blood and replaces it with Israelite blood.
• TITHING: You must donate at least ten percent of your income to the church as tithing. Other donations will be expected as the need arises. You will never see an accounting of how this money is spent, or how much the church receives. The church keeps its finances secret, even from its members.
• ABSTINANCE: You must give up the use of alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea.
• GOD: You will be taught that Elohim (God) was once a man like us with a tangible body of flesh and bone. Elohim (God) has at least one wife, our "Mother in Heaven," but she is so holy that we are not to discuss her nor pray to her. There are many gods, ruling over their own worlds. We can become like God and rule over our own universe.
• STAR: God lives on a planet near the star Kolob.
• SUN: The sun receives its light from the star Kolob.
• WIVES: In the highest degree of the celestial kingdom, men have more than one wife.
• EDEN: The Garden of Eden was in Missouri. All humanity before the Great Flood lived in the western hemisphere. The Ark transported Noah and the other survivors to the eastern hemisphere.
• BLACKS: Dark skin is a curse from God, the result of our sin, or the sin of our ancestors. If sufficiently righteous, a dark-skinned person will become light-skinned.
• JESUS: Jesus Christ was conceived by Elohim by having sex with Mary, who was temporarily his wife. The "Lord" ("Jehovah") in the Old Testament is the being named Jesus in the New Testament, but different from "Elohim" (God). Jesus was married. Christ will not return to earth in any year that has seen a rainbow.
• SATAN: Jesus and Satan ("Lucifer") are brothers, and they are our brothers - we are all spirit children of Heavenly Father. Mormons should avoid traveling on water, since Satan rules the waters. You can identify a false angel by the color of his hair, or by offering to shake his hand.
• PRE-EXISTENCE: Before coming to this earth we lived as spirits in a "pre-existence", during which we were tested; our position in this life (whether born to Mormons or savages, or in America or Africa) is our reward or punishment for our obedience in that life.
• HOMOSEXUALS: If you are homosexual, you will be pressured to abandon this "evil" aspect of your nature. If you do not, you will not be fully accepted by other church members. If you do not remain celibate, you may be excommunicated.
• WOMEN: The role of Mormon women is to be a wife and mother and to obey and honor her priest husband or father.
• PRIESTHOOD: If you are a male over 12 years of age and "worthy" (obedient, attend meetings, do not masturbate), you will be ordained into the priesthood and gradually advance through the priesthood ranks. You will be expected to be unquestioningly obedient to church authorities in whatever they might tell you to do.
• MARRIAGE: If you are unmarried, you will be encouraged to marry a good Mormon as soon as possible. When you do marry, in a wedding ceremony in the temple, your non-Mormon family members and friends will not be allowed to attend the temple ceremony.
• WORK: Your church work assignments become progressively more deamnding upon your time without pay. You will be told that God has called you to your assignments that consume much of your spare time.
• Faithful, hard working, obedient members "receive an endowment" in a Mormon temple. The lengthy ceremonial rituals are secret and involve secret signs and passwords and oaths. The penalty for violation is no longer stated but until 1990, the penalty was death by various bloody methods, such as having your throat slit from ear to ear. After receiving the endowment you will be required to wear a "special undergarment" at all times.

HISTORY OF MORMONISM

Mormonism began in 1820 when a teen-aged boy in western New York named Joseph Smith was spurred by a Christian revival where he lived to pray to God for guidance as to which church was true. In answer to his prayers he was visited by God the Father and God the Son, two separate beings, who told him to join no church because all the churches at that time were false, and that he, Joseph, would bring forth the true church. This event is called "The First Vision."

In 1823 Joseph had another heavenly visitation, in which an angel named Moroni told him of a sacred history written by ancient Hebrews in America, engraved in an Egyptian dialect on tablets of gold and buried in a nearby hill. Joseph was told it was the history of the ancient peoples of America, and that Joseph would be the instrument for bringing this record to the knowledge of the world. Joseph obtained these gold plates from the angel in 1827, and translated them into English by the spirit of God and the use of a sacred instrument accompanying the plates called the "Urim and Thummim." The translation was published in 1830 as The Book of Mormon, now revered by Mormons as scripture, along with the Bible.

The Book of Mormon is a religious and secular history of the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere from about 2200 BC to about 421 AD. It tells the reader that three groups of immigrants settled the uninhabited Americas. They were led by God from their original homes in the Near East to America. The first group came from the Tower of Babel, about 2200 BC, and two other groups came from Jerusalem just before the Babylonian Captivity, about 600 BC. They had prophets of God who had been

Joseph Smith was directed by revelation from God to reestablish ("restore") the true church, which he did in 1830. He was visited several times by heavenly messengers, who ordained him to the true priesthood. He continued to have revelations from God to guide the church and to give more knowledge of the Gospel. Many of these revelations are published in the Doctrine and Covenants, accepted by Mormons as scripture, along with the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith and his followers were continually persecuted for their religious beliefs, and driven from New York State to Ohio, then to Missouri, then to Illinois, where Joseph Smith was murdered in 1844 by a mob, a martyr to his beliefs. The church was then led by Brigham Young, Joseph's successor, to Utah, where the Mormons settled successfully.

The LDS church is led today by the successors of Joseph Smith. The present president of the church is a "prophet, seer and revelator" just as Joseph Smith was, and guides the members of the church through revelations and guidance from God.