Dear Russell M. Nelson, president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
Consider this my open letter to you and your First Presidency. You did not respond directly to me when I resigned from your church, and no one asked me why I resigned. I have been told multiple times that I resigned because of a desire to sin or to hurt others. I have been labeled an apostate and heretic for resigning. However, this letter’s purpose is to provide the precise reason for my resignation from your church. I hope you will receive this letter in the same spirit in which I have written it. I love my God and my people, and so many of these people and our ideas of God are similar. How can they not be? I was an active, participating, and contributing LDS member for almost 40 years.
When I attended the temple for the first time in 1986, I did so with limited information as a young 19 yr old, attempting to serve a mission in Japan. I knew I would make covenants with God, and the experience would be sacred and holy. I knew that I would receive new underwear that I would wear night and day to remind me of those covenants. I knew that I would promise God my loyalty and service.
Instead of feeling a sacred and holy experience in your temples, I was traumatized by an extremely violent threat acted out in the most serious and holy and somber environment of the temple. I was told that someone from the church would take my life, that I would LOSE my life in a violent ritualistic murder that would require the slicing of my throat, chest, and stomach. Execution by knife, sword… something.
The temple rites include the miming and reenacting of this murder in gruesome and frightening detail… I mimed my own execution as instructed in those private, sacred and secret rooms. I performed this execution dozens and dozens of times over the years. The experience left a lasting and damaging impression.
That moment scared me. It made a lasting and permanent impression, an impression that made me have insomnia for 40 years, a threat that made me hyper vigilant and somber and serious as a Mormon member, a threat that has since caused horrible anxiety and trauma for myself and family.
I avoided the temple for years, but I attended to comply with local ward and stake and even prophetic counsel. I did my duty, each time making covenants on behalf of the dead, and always ending with a threat of complete secrecy with a punishment of murder for myself. I BELIEVED IT. I BELIEVED.
Now that I have self-selected out of the church for this exact reason — being a victim of emotional, mental, spiritual, and social abuse — I am a survivor not a victim. I left my abuser, the LDS church and its leadership, which includes you and the current presidency, counselors, and supporting “apostles” that support you and the LDS church.
I grew up in violence. I joined the LDS church as a young person so that I could escape violence, so that I could live and function among peaceful people. In the temple, I learned that peace and prosperity come with a price. The price was ABSOLUTE obedience to all rules, written, spoken or otherwise… anything asked by God is a commandment. And I believed… I believed.
Mr. Nelson, you are not my personal enemy. I believe that. However, you and your male leadership have abused my trust, my belief, and my faith. The LDS church itself, with its violent threats against me have established a pattern in my own brain that makes me afraid for my own life because I have apostasized. I have left the church, and by definition I am an apostate, a heretic. As an apostate, I am subject to the exact penalties that you and other leaders prescribe for me: ritualized execution by slicing mt throat, chest, and stomach.
Could you please let me know whether I should continue to worry about your church’s covenant with me? Upon reflection, I recall that most of all of these sacred and secret promises were made to your church and leadership, not God. I have spoken to God, at least to what I think is God in my own life. God and I are good… However, I don’t know whether I am still in harm’s way with you personally. I am not your enemy, nor anyone else in your church.
This letter formally requests your personal response by letter or direct meeting. Do you or an elected, ordained representative
intend to execute me for my crime of leaving the church? I’d like to know so that I can stop worrying.
Regards,
John O’Conner, Lost Mormon
John,
I hope you have remained true to what the scriptures have taught. We are to lay hold upon all good things. (Moroni 7:19) The church is packaged with falsehoods, but it does carry a knowledge of the fulness of the gospel. It brought you more of the word of God than any other church out there.
We are also told to lay hold to every good gift and touch not the evil gift. (Moroni 10:30)
The evil gift is clearly the temple endowment. It perfectly mirrors the secret combination had between Cain and Satan (Moses 5:29) and Moroni warned us that this secret combination would infiltrate the restored church. (Ether 8:24)
Forgive me for being brash, but how did Nelson the man betray/abuse you? You are a survivor; he is still a victim. He clearly believes he is a prophet dispensing the fulness of the gospel. He didn’t invent the temple rites; he walked into the temple oblivious just like you and got roped into the exact same thing. The difference between the two of you is that one of you didn’t buy into it.
Those that buy into it represent the blindness put upon Israel (Rom 11:25) — they have been deluded.
Yet, according to the scriptures, God himself sends a strong delusion on his people when they do not follow the commandments. (Isa 66:4/2 Thes 2:11)
In nothing does man offend God save those who confess not his hand in all things. (D&C 59:21)
The painful thing about awakening to our awful situation is the realization that God was the one who allowed this to occur.
Book of Commandments (original D&C) 4:6 — And now if this generation do harden their hearts against my word, behold I will deliver them up unto Satan.
I empathize and feel sorrow for the pains you’ve experienced. However, I sincerely hope you’re able to move on. All things work together for good to them that love God. (Rom 8:28)
-G.azelem
The LDS church contradicts the BoM on so many points it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Back in the days of Joseph Smith and before the succession crisis, it had way more truth then the LDS church does today. The LDS church is so busy trying to show why JS did not know what he was talking about.
You have been oppressed by King Brigham.
Mosiah (LDS 23:12-14) (RLDS 11:12-15)
12 And now I say unto you, ye have been oppressed by king Noah, and have been in bondage to him and his priests, and have been brought into iniquity by them; therefore ye were bound with the bands of iniquity. 13 And now as ye have been delivered by the power of God out of these bonds; yea, even out of the hands of king Noah and his people, and also from the bonds of iniquity, even so I desire that ye should stand fast in this liberty wherewith ye have been made free, and that ye trust no man to be a king over you. 14 And also trust no one to be your teacher nor your minister, except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments.
https://seekingyhwh.com/2017/07/04/king-brigham/
Hey man.. your talking about a guy who ‘used magic stones’.. Umim and ‘Thurmmim’..?..to ‘translate’ a language that never existed..? Ancient Egyptian..had 30 plus wives, likely a pedophile, shot dead in a jail cell.. and yet followers, allow the KING JAMES bible.. heavily redacted by Joe Smith wannabes.. to stand as a ‘truth’… smells like CULT.. or religious PONZI scheme to me.. tax- deductibles for the tithe, TO .. further tax deductions by the church.. and yet further deductions to off- spring church businesses.. the MEN.. and their families are gravy- training.. those who question that ‘orthodoxy’.. LOOK OUT.. yeh sure.. ‘WE ACCEPT LGBQT’..,we accept you as ‘damaged goods’.. BUT SORRY, just cant be intimate.. therefore.. NO CELESTIAL marriage for you.. would not come close to a Temple Recommend..while being Judged by males.. perhaps some closeted gay men..just saying.. NEVER CHALLENGE THE RULING ORDER’.. orthodoxy, the power and control structure.. etc etc
Listen the church is a good place. The church is true. The people? NOT SO MUCH!!! You need to get to a better ward/place. Whoever told you this is not right. Please don’t do this. The church can be a good place.
This should never have happened. The people who did that to you are wrong. The Church is still progressing, and it is not perfect, but in all of the times I’ve been to the temple that has never happened to me. I think that whoever did that to you is a horrible person, and should never have been able to enter the Holy House of God.