"you will search the scriptures and you will not fear to learn the truth"

As a young man in my last year of high school, I was excited to get my patriarchal blessing. I was very anticipatory on November 22nd 1972 as Dad and I drove up to the condominiums at the mouth of emigration canyon in Salt Lake City Utah to meet the Stake Patriarch.

One of the prophetic statements in my patriarchal blessing is:

"You have grown up in the knowledge of the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. These truths will be increased in your being as you proceed for you will search the scriptures and you will not fear to learn the truth, but you will always strive for it and it will be revealed to you from time to time as you stay close to the Lord..."

Frankly, as a young teenager I was hugely unimpressed with the statement "..you will not fear to learn the truth.."

I went home after getting the blessing and I felt a little bit disappointed. I felt like my Patriarch had been blessed with the gift of pointing out the obvious.

Everyone loves the truth... I thought to myself. Who would fear the truth?

His statement did not seem very prophetic, profound or newsworthy to me, after all, the truth is happy, warm, fuzzy and obvious. right?

Truth is something everyone runs towards not away from. Right?

Yes I realized that for most of the people in the world there were aspects of truth that might be a little challenging at first because they had to first find it ( although I was one of the lucky few who had had inherited it) and after finding it, it might necessitate a little change in their lives, but I deemed myself to be one of the special select few who had been born under the covenant.

I did not need to go out into the world looking for truth I figured I was born into it. It was my heritage.

It was not necessary for me to make great changes in my life I thought to myself, and there is certainly nothing to fear about learning additional truth!

All I had to do was go to church, pay my tithing, do my home teaching, frequent the temple, obey the word of wisdom, not kill anyone and a few other minor things and I would spend a blissful eternity in the Celestial Kingdom...

I won't bore you with any more details than I already have in previous posts of how and when my paradigm changed but sufficeth to say it has changed!

After much prayer, thousands of key word searches, investigative research into LDS church history, soul searching, many sleepless nights, many angry responses from from shell shocked victims of my articles and rantings, much heart burn and many tears, my perception of truth has changed.

It is not always obvious, it is not always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes it is brutally painful.

My journey in life and my quest to find the holy grail and that ever fleeting state of enlightenment has been an interesting one that has provided me with lots of interesting experiences and I have met lots of very interesting, passionate and colorful people along the way. Many were religious fanatics like me.

The National Enquire used to run TV ads with the following slogan

"Inquiring minds want to know"

That pretty much describes me and the kindred spirits I love to associate and converse with.

I have an inquiring mind.

I have come to want the truth at all costs.

I can honestly say that I am more interested in knowing the truth than in being right.

Hence, I had to give up my self appointed role as defender of the faith and become a seeker of the truth. (a true defender of the faith is one who defends truth rather than a religious institution)

One of the other contributors to the ldsanarchy blogsite, speaking about my articles, once asked me the following question:

"...how would you gauge the reaction to this disruptive content?"

I had to chuckle to myself at the wording of his question.

In business we refer to inventions that displace existing technologies as "disruptive technologies". Now someone was referring to my articles as "disruptive content".

I recently came across an interesting definition of the word proclamation;

A proclamation (Lat. proclamare, to make public by announcement) is an official declaration.... In English law, a proclamation is a formal announcement ("Royal Proclamation"), made under the great seal, of some matter which the King in Council or Queen in Council desires to make known to his or her subjects: e.g., the declaration of war, the statement of neutrality, the summoning or dissolution of Parliament, or the bringing into operation of the provisions of some statute the enforcement of which the legislature has left to the discretion of the king in council.

I believe that a great proclamation is coming to the ruling powers of the world and to all the inhabitants thereof. This proclamation is going to have some disruptive content in it.

I have come to the conclusion that the final part of my tribute to Sidney Rigdon will never be finished by me in the sense that I will never be satisfied with it and there will always be something more that I want to put in it. Let me apologize in advance for how long and repetitious it is going to be... Nevertheless I believe truth seekers looking for hidden treasures are willing to meticulously dig their way through piles of information even if their effort only turns up one small nugget of truth.

I want to thank everyone who has exchanged information with me in the comments section and in personal emails back and forth. I have learned much from many of you. My son recently caused me to revisit a belief that I had made a hasty interpretation on. NEPT just challenged me and caused me to rethink things out on a previous post. The anarchist, bless his little heart, did it in one of the articles I presented a few months back on his blog. There isn't too much that gets past him!

We are all on a leaning curve... There is a synergy that takes place when we can freely share, discuss and critique each others discoveries, observations, interpretations and revelations.

I want to suggest that when I post the last part of my tribute to Sidney Rigdon, each of you need to discern by the Spirit if it is wise for you to read it at this time. Do some soul searching to determine if it is the proper time in your life to view something as disruptive as this, something that is going to take you into deep waters. It may not be the right time.. if it isn't right time, don't do it. If you do read it.. as always remember the fallibility of man and consult the spirit regarding every precept.

If you are one of the ones that has been deeply engaged in the information on this blog leading up to and including the first three parts of the tribute to Rigdon, and you have chosen to swim in deep waters, then please realize that I want and encourage you to challenge me on anything you disagree with as you read the article. Please remember, it is a work in progress. I will be making periodic updates in it. I may post the final part of the tribute on another site so please be watching closely if you are interested in reading it.

To be perfectly honest, I don't expect very many people to accept the underlying presupposition of the last part of the tribute prior to the return of the servants, my main desire for posting it is to simply get it documented in the public domain before certain events happen, to provide a compelling witness of the bizarre things the witnesses may be saying...

"Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?"

In closing, I feel like the content of three watches has pretty much run its course and filled its purpose... yes, I could keep providing lots of additional evidences about the 3rd watch but it occurs to me that anyone that doesn't believe the first 50 evidences I have provided, won't believe the second 50 evidences that provide. It ether resonates or it does not.

For that reason, I am not sure how much longer I will be posting on this particular blog.. so let me take the time to thank everyone that has posted comments as well as the hundreds of silent visitors that have visited this blog.. it is hard to believe that I have had as many as 180 visits to this blog per day with thousands of people who have visited over the last several months.

Just in case I do move on to other things and discontinue this blog, may the Lord God of Israel bless each of you in your quest for truth and in your understanding of the Marvelous Work and a Wonder that is about to begin.

May you always be watching.

May you treasure up the word of God and take the Holy Spirit as your Guide as you embrace the truth and find your way into the gate.

I hope to see you higher up, if not before.

I am, as always,

Watching