Are there such things as enforceable religious contracts that may be made between human beings and entities called churches, in the same context as people engage in contracts with corporations, companies, governments, or with other people? A contract is simply defined as an offer made by a person, company, or business entity to another person, company, or business entity, which, if accepted, is based upon a certain consideration that might be money, a service, or a promise that certain events will occur for the benefit of both the offeror and offeree. In other words, I might offer John an apple for the sum of $1.00. If John likes the apple, and wants to obtain it, he will accept my offer and tender the required consideration of $1.00, which will allow him to obtain the apple. Hence, there are many types of contracts that are taken very seriously by, both, the offeror and offeree. One of the most complex types of contracts is a church’s offer of spiritual products, in the name of a deity, for a person’s promise to obey the commandments imposed by that church. For instance, if agents of a church make an offer to a person that, if he, or she, will strictly obey the commandments imposed by that church, the spirit of that person will, after death, go to a paradise and remain there for eternity, the proselyted person will, either, accept, or reject, the offer based upon the representation made by the agents. Such a representation would be much like Goethe’s “Faustus,” where a man sells his soul to the devil for power and influence while alive on the earth. Of course, while “Faustus” is purely fictional fantasy, there are churches that actually represent that they are the only medium or conduit through which mortal man may communicate with deity and through which, so to speak, mankind get to heaven. These churches have their own very ethnocentric scriptures, which, they claim, were obtained from deity via a centrally organizing character, usually called a prophet. These churches claim to possess powers that other churches don’t possess because of the lack of proper ecclesiastical authority. This tendency of a particular religious organization, or denomination, to proclaim unique power only reposed in that particular organization is what I shall refer to as religiocentricity.
When agents of these purely religiocentric churches, or cults, seek converts through active proselytizing and by making representations about what the churches have to offer, some people are immediately cajoled into believing and converting to that particular church’s standards and requirements, and others are never persuaded. One church in particular, the Mormon (LDS) Church, makes missionary representations about its theology, which are not, in the least bit, true in order to obtain converts. In other words, lies are told. Tens-of -thousands of full-time Mormon missionaries are constantly throughout the USA, and the world, offering individual men and women, and families, around the world a, supposedly, Christian theology that is actually a total misrepresentation of real Mormon theology. Millions of Christians have, during the dawn of the 20th Century, been induced by these false representations into joining the Mormon Church by baptism, thereby undertaking the tangible demands of Mormonism. Here is where the contract concept applies to the acceptance of a church’s theology by a person to whom the theology was fraudulently misrepresented by agents of the church; which is the proximate cause of the defrauded convert to seriously accept the demands, rules, and regulations based upon deliberate lies. In the case of a new Mormon convert, the most important mandated religiocentric rule to which a newly converted person must commit before baptism is the payment of a full-tithe of gross income to the Mormon Church. Believe me when I say that a person won’t be baptized into the Mormon Church without making this commitment. A formerly Christian convert to Mormonism is induced by the Mormon agent missionaries to believe that what the Book of Mormon, the “alleged” keystone of Mormon theology, says about God is true Mormon theology; that God is a Spirit with no beginning and no end, a Trinitarian Spirit that has never changed; and that Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit are one Trinitarian God.
Yes, this is what the 1830 Book of Mormon entailed as the theology that Joseph Smith, Jr. wrote into the fictional 19th Century apocrypha between 1820 and 1830. Then, later, between 1831 and 1835, Smith met a follow of Alexander Campbell’s Disciples of Christ, a preacher by the name of Sidney Rigdon, who added his specious knowledge of the Holy Bible to Smith’s heretical imagination to produce a reconstructed Mormon theology that was as heretical, un-Christian, and unbiblical as the Islamic Koran. When this new pagan theology was introduced by Joseph Smith Jr., the Book of Mormon was extensively edited, later, in 1838, in an attempt to make the original Christian Book of Mormon theology conform, to some extent, with the unChristian scriptures written, and spoken, later by Joseph Smith Jr. While the 1830 Book of Mormon could not have been defended, in any way, form, or fashion as a book of divine origin, the Mormon missionary agenda was created by Smith and his successors in order for lies were contrived about the origin and content of the Book of Mormon to make it seem more credible to struggling Christians who believed in Jesus, but were ignorant of biblical scripture and prophecy. These material misrepresentations began the Mormon ritual of “lying for the Mormon lord.” The primary focus of real Mormon theology was the 1845 King Follett Discourse proclaimed by Joseph Smith Jr. during an LDS General Conference, in Nauvoo, Illinois, the year of his subsequent lynching and death in Carthage, Illinois. These theological ramblings of Smith added the heretical dimension of polytheism to what he had created between 1835 and 1839 in his fictional book, the “Book of Abraham,” a book he claimed was the product of his translation of Egyptian funeral papyri that he had acquired in 1835 from a seller of Egyptian antiquities. Having charismatically persuaded his disciples, in Kirtland, Ohio, that the Egyptian papyri had been personally written 5,000 years before the birth of Christ by the Prophet and Patriarch Abraham, and that he, and he alone, was able to translate it, the concept of the plurality of gods was introduced in his fictional book. In his 1844 King Follett Discourse, Smith defined the ritualistic polytheistic manner in which Mormon gods were perpetuated, which was expanded by the second Mormon Prophet, Brigham Young, in the first written Mormon temple liturgy in 1877 that he delivered before his death, later in 1877.
The current statement of real Mormon theology has been presented to the presiding Mormon Melchizedek Priesthood in written form, outside the venue of the Mormon temple (there are 149 operating Mormon temples throughout the world) approximately every 25 years since 1900. The most recent statement of real Mormon theology was presented in written form to the Mormon Melchizedek Priesthood, as a refinement of the comprehensive verbal statements of the first Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr., in 1844, and the Mormon Prophet Lorenzo Snow, in 1896, about Mormon polytheism, in 1984 in the Melchizedek Priesthood Study Guide, “Search These Commandments,” in the form of “Lesson 21 -“Man May Become Like God.” In this written lesson, the expanded couplet coined by Lorenzo Snow, “As man is God once was, and as God is, man may become,” was succinctly explained in the context of the 1844 “King Follett Discourse” of Joseph Smith, Jr. The reason that the real theology of Mormonism is published so rarely and only talked about and extolled in the Mormon temples is because of plausible deniability in the face of the lies that are told by Mormon missionaries to people who are investigating Mormonism, called “investigators.”
As a brief summation of real and correct of Mormon theology, the Mormon (LDS) Church believes and maintains that the Mormon father-god, the father of Jesus Christ, was once a human man who was biologically born, and lived, on some planet in the cosmos; who followed the laws and commandments of Mormonism and, later, died, was resurrected and awarded the highest degree of celestial opportunity, called exaltation, wherein he was transformed into a god, with a capital G, and given limited power to organize, not create (Mormon gods are bound according to the earthly laws of physics), an earth of his own, and to procreate billions of spirit children, with his Mormon goddess wife, in order to populate his earth on the spirits obtaining mortal bodies. This process of Mormon godhood, in “Lesson 21” is further expanded by an explanation that all worthy Mormon elders (holders of the Melchizedek Priesthood) have the destiny of becoming as great as their Mormon father-god, with a capital G, by becoming, themselves, Mormon father-gods, with a capital G, to be able to do all that their father-god, with a capital G, was able to do. Brigham Young, in 1868 during a Mormon General Conference, in Salt Lake City, proclaimed that “there are as many Gods as there are stars, and as many saviors as there are Gods.” This additional principle of real Mormon theology is the main point of theological emphasis that the Mormon missionaries, in the 21st Century, want to hide from the prospective Mormons, with whom they connect in their door-to-door proselyting. What this means is that every Mormon elder, on the earth, who becomes a Mormon god, with a capital G, procreates his own version of Jesus Christ, as saviors for their world. This, of course, blasphemously makes the real Christian Jesus, the one and only God of the universe, just another “savior,” who was biologically procreated to ritually die just in order to provide provide resurrection, not universal salvation, to all of the inhabitants of an earth in the past, present, and future.
The foregoing explication of genuine Mormon theology is what is presented with emphasis, as a commandment, in “Lesson 21.” So, it is quite obvious why the Mormon Church wants to hide, and lie about, the real theology of Mormonism from the hundreds-of-thousands of struggling Christians, to whom the tens-of thousands of full-time Mormon agent missionaries, and the hundreds-of-thousands of part-time ward (local Mormon congregations) missionaries who assist the full-time agent missionaries, present the five currently scripted presentations (called discussions) every calendar year, which don’t contain, to any degree, real Mormon theology.
Hence, the application of contract law to the Mormon missionary dissemination of false theological information to struggling Christians, who know nothing about Mormonism, and a subsequent offer of membership in the Mormon Church based upon this information, goes hand-in-hand with the offer, acceptance, and consideration requirements of all legally enforceable contracts. What is the tangible consideration that is required to consummate the contract? The Mormon missionaries are agents of the Mormon Church hierarchy who offer membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by baptism to all struggling Christians who sincerely “promise” to do certain specific acts of obedience to Mormon commandments. One of these acts of obedience is the paying of a full-tithe (1/10th of a person’s gross income) to the Mormon Church. Now, if an enforceable contract is, supposedly” formed through the offer of membership by baptism for a promise of obedience between the Mormon convert and the Mormon Church, the other laws of contracts must also apply. If the material representations made by the Mormon Church are false, and the struggling Christians base their acceptance of Mormonism on false material misrepresentations, then the contract is, by contract doctrine, void on its face, and all consideration paid to the Mormon Church by those struggling Christians must be returned by the Mormon Church, just like the legal obligations any other corporation.
Just how much continuing consideration is received by the Mormon Church from the duped struggling Christian, and non-Christian, converts within the time that they remain members of the Mormon Church, before realizing that they have been deceived? Well, the breach of the contract is immediate and begins with any and all promises and actions made by convert to the Mormon Church, especially the payment of the first tithing payment to the agent ward bishop, to whom all Mormons are required to submit their tithing, in the form of checks and cash. Let’s then say that the husband and wife of a convert family makes $200,000 per year gross. That is a total gross tithing sum of $20,000 for one year of membership. In the year 2014, over 150,000 struggling Christians, and people from other religions, were induced to join the Mormon Church. If the average gross income of these 100,000 individuals was $100,000, the Mormon Church received approximately $10,000 x 100,000 = $1,000,000,000 of tithing payments during one calendar year. Now, the average approximate time that a new Mormon remains a member of the Mormon Church before he, or she, realizes the lies that have been told about Mormon theology is 4 years. Within that time, a new Mormon convert is prepped and indoctrinated to accept the Mormon temple rite, which is an epitome of the polytheistic theology. Within those four years, the amount of tithing money received by the Mormon Church from those 100,000 Mormon converts is $4 billion. Now, on considering that the Mormon Church is the wealthiest Church, per capita, on the face of the earth, and that the average income of the, approximately, 10,000,000 active Mormons is approximately $100,000 per year, 10,000,000 tithe-paying Mormons multiplied by $10,000 tithing per year, which yields $100 billion per year. With that gross yearly income, the Mormon Church hierarchy makes sizable business investments throughout the world, which yield considerable dividends every year for the LDS Church. Hence, isn’t it, therefore, quite obvious why the Mormon Church, in the year 2016, is worth nearly $700 billion dollars?
But, as the parodic bard would cleverly say, herein lies the awful rub, for even though the contract between the Mormon Church and every Mormon convert is voided, or breached, at the outset of the acceptance of the offer of membership, because of the false theological information upon which the acceptance is based, the Mormon Church has never returned any part of the consideration that they have received from the deliberately duped converts; that is, the tithing money paid in good faith to the Mormon Church, amounting to billions of dollars. Why hasn’t it been returned? The main, and only, reason is that the LDS Mormon Church would never voluntarily return a penny of tithing money to the deceived Christians who paid it. The only way that it would be returned is if the Mormon Church were forced by a court of law, and equity, to repay the billions of dollars to those duped converts, to whom it is rightfully owed. This also applies to all other religious organizations that manipulate the minds of their converts to cause them to pay money to those churches based upon false information and criminally fraudulent misrepresentations of church doctrine, rules, and theology.
So does the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of religion in the USA, protect the actions of such churches that deliberately deceive people into joining them, in order to induce those unwitting people to pay the churches tithing money based upon fraudulent and deliberate misrepresentations? Currently, of the, approximately, 11 million active tithe-paying Mormons in the world in 2016, there are approximately 5 million of them who have been “Mormons” for five years-or-less, who have been deceived into believing the false theology of Mormonism, and who ignorantly continue to labor under the false information. The other 6-to-7 million members are the true-blue Mormons, Latter-day Saints who have been procreated into the Church through a long lineage of Mormon ancestors. Most of these people, born into the Mormon Church, know the truth about real Mormon polytheistic theology. These are the fraudulent, if not criminally illicit, men and women who are, either, employed by the Mormon Church or are ward and stake defenders of the faith, known as professional or part-time Mormon apologists. Yes, the Mormon Church hierarchy employs their very sophistic members as professional apologists to “lie for the Mormon lord.” Every time websites are posted by Christian and, generally, anti-Mormon information groups exposing real Mormon theology, these paid professional Mormon apologists produce opposing websites in an attempt to neutralize, or totally diminish, the effect of truthful facts upon the mostly ignorant religious public.
Hence, if fraudulent multi-state insurance companies, which send their door-to-door salesmen agents out to sell insurance polices that the companies never intend to honor, can be federally indicted for fraud and racketeering, under the federal RICO Statute, religious organizations that do the same basic thing in every State, deriving illegal money from converts through their agents’ false theological representations, are equally culpable of criminal fraud. I see no difference. Total disclosure of the facts, and the truth, about what the people accepting the churches’ offers will receive in return for their faithful payment of a full-tithe of their income, is necessary for there not to be fraud. Criminal and tort action should, therefore, be taken by the U.S. Department of Justice against each, and every, church in the USA that are enriched through deliberate intentional misrepresentation of their theologies by their proselyting agent missionaries, in order for the unfortunate and deceived converts to receive reparation payments to restore the money that has been lost through church racketeering, and for the criminally offending church organizations to be punished for their criminal conduct.