Hairless monkeys in magical underwear — “Follow the prophet”

I, Zorbak, am an NBA basketball player. Not because I actually play basketball in the NBA, but because that’s what I say I am and that’s good enough for you. That’s basically the approach that Mormonism takes on it’s so called prophets. True believing Mormon’s or TBM’s as they are called in the ex-Mormon community, will tell you that they have a current, living, honest to goodness prophet of God. Yes, the kind of prophet that talks to God, has brunch with Jesus, parts seas, brings stone tablets off mountains, builds giant ships, etc. That kind of prophet. Right now, as I write this, it’s a guy named Thomas Monson. He’s not looking so good, I don’t know how much longer he’s going to last. There are rumors that he has dementia but they can still put him in front of a microphone and have him spout off the typical, redundant Mormon rhetoric (he’s been doing it for over 40 years) while some guy crouches behind him to make sure that London Bridges don’t go fallin down. By the way, TBM’s get quite flustered if you leave his middle initial out. They might even correct you, “It’s Thomas ‘S’ Monson!’.

Old Tommy has two guys under him, his ‘counselors’ as well as a modern day ‘quorum of the twelve apostles.’ Mormons claim that these old guys are just like the apostles of old, John the beloved, Peter, doubting Thomas; just like them. Minus the services and humility, I might add. They get ushered around in limousines and from time to time are received by large gaggles of Mormons who stare on in hushed reverence, anxious to burst into laughter over the smallest and lamest of jokes. Laughing at lame jokes is a good way to prove your devotion to them. Mormons talk about how inspired and profound these old guys are when they usually just get up and say things like “read the scriptures. A lot.” Every year Mormons raise their hands which signifies to their big baby sitter in the sky that they ‘sustain’ these guys as prophet’s, seers and revelators. All 15 of them. If you’re at home watching it unfold on TV you still have to raise your hand because you know, God’s watching and recording everything and if you’re a kid, your Mormon parents will swiftly punish you for your lack of religious conformity. #notacult

None of them, scores and scores of Mormon “prophets” have not produced a single accurate prophecy in the last 175 or so years. They’ve never accurately predicted a war, a plague or a calamity of any kind. What’s really fun though is that there are dozens of failed and bogus prophecies. Like the time a Mormon “prophet” from the early 20th century predicted that men would never leave the planet, it was not God’s will. Of course they don’t tell you that at a Mormon church. They conveniently leave the bogus parts out. The founder of the religion, Joseph Smith, even prophesied that there were tall people living on the moon and that Mormons would one day teach the gospel to them. But it seems as though Joseph Smith was well know, back then, for making some really big statements, claims and predictions that nobody at the time had any way of refuting or verifying. People just had to take his word for it, or not. And despite heavy evidence proving the man was a blatant fraud, Mormon’s still take his word for it. Not the moon part, they don’t know about that, it’s also conveniently left out at church.

All joking and sarcasm aside, there are a lot of problems with this current situation with these so called prophet’s, seers and revelators. Mormons rely on these old guys to guide them through the complicated matters of modern life but the only thing they can come up with is to just be more religious. And keep paying money. There are so many people in the modern world who are inspired leaders, people that teach and promote love and universal acceptance as social issues become more and more complicated. It’s difficult to watch modern Mormons stick with values and lifestyles that seemed to work okay for previous generation but only cause distress and dysfunction for the younger generations.

One example of this is that Mormons put extremely high value on getting married young despite high levels of divorce and dysfunction for those that get married young. Mormons date for extremely short periods of time before they get engaged to be married, sometimes as short as 6 weeks before there is a proposal and rings. Yes, 6 weeks. The pressure to get married young in Mormonism is intense, the people that fail to do so by the age of 25 are literally labeled “a menace to society” and are essentially shunned and treated as second class until they do get married. Getting married young after only dating and being engaged for a total of 3 to 4 months? Divorce rates are high, there are many broken families since they also tend to have a lot of kids at very young ages, but that’s a whole other story.

So where are these inspired leaders? What do they have to say about things like this? Where is their help and guidance in the face of large and troubling social issues? Unfortunately, TBM’s basically take the stance of ‘if the prophet doesn’t say it’s a problem, than it’s not a problem.’ #notacult But clearly these men are just old men. Incidentally, almost all of them just so happen to be rich white guys from Utah. Some of them are former lawyers, some of them are former surgeons. You know; bureaucrats. Bureaucrats that clearly have NO idea what is actually going on out here. Bureaucrats that are surrounded by yes men that believe they are sinning if they point out mistakes, contradictions are discrepancies. Just hope and pray that these old men don’t start telling Mormons to start blowing up train stations, I promise that many of them will do it.

So if you encounter Mormons, in missionary form or non missionary form and they try to tell you that they have a modern day Moses leading the church, please ask them about all the prophesies that have come true from Mormon prophets. Ask them where the Mormon prophet was before hurricane Katrina or some of these massive earth quakes that have hit China, Japan or Haiti. They won’t have a good answer, they will do one of two things. They will either accuse you of having egregious sin in your life which is why you’re questioning God’s prophet’s but this is less likely. More likely, they will bare their testimony and tell you about the warm fuzzy feelings they got when they prayed about the prophets. Either way they will side step the question entirely. If you try to hold them to it, they will bail, they will get out of there. But I would like to finish this story by baring my testimony that I know that the Mormon prophets are just rich old narcissists that love being revered by the masses. In the name of cheese and rice, ramen.