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Harold B. Lee while serving as president was asked at one time if he had seen Christ and said no. The only prophet after Joseph Smith that I know that is reported to have said he saw the Savior was Lorenzo Snow and the only record of that story comes through his granddaughter. Others, of course, could have seen Him but not publicly announced it. I have often wondered, however, what would happen to a prophet in our age that announced he had talked with God. I think it would cause great hostility and he might even wind up a martyr as Joseph Smith and other BofM and OT prophets. Maybe that is the reason for the silence. FYI. O.C. Tanner was early CES employee. Friends with many intellectuals like Lowell Bennion. He wrote many excellent church books and manuals. Unfortunately he lost his testimony somewhere along the way and like his friend Sterling McMurrin no longer believed in the church. His daughter became the Episcopal Bishop of Utah. It was a shame to loose a great intellect like Tanner from the institute and seminary program. My grandfather was Howard Hunter’s bishop. He called Hunter to go on a mission and he turned grandfather down. He wanted to take his band to Japan instead, which he did. Grandfather baptized Hunter’s father and grandfather admired Hunter greatly. Thank you. I am sorry about the death of your child. The issue of why some are spared and some not really bothers me. I know it is not due to worthiness, at least in my case. I did feel hurt about the response, and maybe a little guilty as Pres Packer has said some pretty rough things about sharing spiritual experiences with others. I did it not to say I am special as I am not. I work very hard just to be a minimally decent person. Having said all of that there is one more thing that was interesting since the conversation also dealt with feelings. This was not a feeling as I usually have when worrying about something but “pure knowledge.” I feel hesitant to talk like that as I may sound like a nut or self promoter. I cannot describe it other than that. I have heard the term but never knew what it meant and probably will never have it happen again. I was so confounded by it I had to get my wits about myself to take action and shout a warning. Do I have anymore insight than that? No, I am just here to learn as much as I can from you guys. I knew Dr. Poll as I was fairly well acquainted with his sister and her family. I found him to be a very fine man who had many supporters at the BYU. I believe that Harold B. Lee’s remarks were directed at him. It is interesting to note that at that time Harold B. Lee also directed (at BYU devotionals) unfavorable comments to other high profile members such as Ezra Taft Benson and Ernest Wilkinson. I was at one such devotional when Lee said that instead of speaking his mind Elder Benson should mind his tongue. Elder Benson in turn directed a few critical comments back. The brethern are strong individuals with strong personal opinions. The fact that they may interpret doctrines differently and occasionally publically disagree has become less of a problem to me as I have grown older and realized that when the Lord calls a leader he gets the whole person. Except that when statistically improbable events (many times multiple events tightly connected) occur in response for protection, where else might this inspiration come from? I believe the explanation that such things are the result of ESP are as intellectually indefendable as my assertion that they consist of inspiration from the Lord. It obviously was not possible for Joseph Smith to convince others who were not present with him at his first vision, that the vision occurred or came from God. I disagree that that this reality should have prevented him from sharing the experience with others. Specifically the question in this post was “What does the Holy Ghost feel like?” Your objections could be raised to any response to this question. Of course unbelievers will always tend to unbelieve, and believers will tend to do the opposite. I can respond to a questions as was posed by the creator of this section of the blog without being concerned whether others accept or reject what I have to say. I am simply participating in a discussion. It’s not a moral issue. As a teenager when praying to know if the church was true, I was enveloped with a physical force that is difficult to put into words. I felt like electricity was entering my eyes (which were lifted upward). I flowed through my body and out my feet. Electricty is not a true analogy as it was not painful, although it was so powerful I wondered if I might lose my life. It was so beautiful it didn’t matter. Another analogy would be standing in a fast moving stream and having the water flow through rather than around your body. I have had this experience only once since and that was the night before I was called to be a Bishop. On another occasion I had what I can only describe as “pure knowledge” that a daughter of mine was going to be hit by a vehicle and killed. I stood amazed, thinking how can I have “pure knowledge.” I have never had anything like it. My children were walking along a road where we were camping and nothing appeared to be wrong. A minute or so later a Winnebago saundered past. The kids were a block away and I couldn’t see anything wrong as it approached them. I felt I needed to do something and so shouted “look out!.” A minute or so later my two children came walking back towards me. My daughter was covered with leaves and dirt. My son said “Dad when you called ___ was about to go under the wheels of the Winnebago. We hadn’t seen it, and it didn’t see us. I looked up and grabbed her throwing her into the ditch.” I have had several times where I have felt strongly prompted to take an action that saved a person in danger–statisticaly those situations were too improbable to be anything but the prompting of the spirit. I had an occasion once where I was asking the Lord to affirm a decision I had made and a dark depressing feeling immediately came over me. I followed the prompting, changed my decision and was later grateful for it. I have found that after saying my evening prayers, if I will take a few minutes to listen, that I will often have ideas come into my mind of something I should do to help someone. Despite several “miraculous–at least to me” experiences, I have come to believe that the most reliable messages come from feelings. I heard a quote this week made many years ago by a lady I knew and greatly admired, Stella Harris Oaks, the mother of Dallin Oaks. She was quoted as saying that the Lord often answers prayers through feelings. While I realize that we can deceive ourselves and in a sense “answer our own prayers,” I think with practice one can tell difference between true spirirual promptings and the workings of our own imaginations. I think the best approach for a spouse who has a doubting partner is simply to offer unconditional love. We are all work-in-process, few of us have perfect faith. For whatever reason, your former wife has not yet developed that perspective. Her emotional affair with an old boyfriend reinforces a belief that she is not receptive to the Spirit that would have dictated a different path. I don’t think it is wrong to doubt as long as we don’t give up. I am sorry for the terrible hurt that must have accompanied a divorce. An additional thought: There have been times in my life when what appeared to be the worst thing that could have happened to me turned out to the best. If you live according to the light you presently have, the Lord will give you more. If you keep yourself clean and moral and don’t use this as an excuse to do things that you know in your heart are wrong, you will eventually have all that you could ever want in an eternal spouse. Everything in this life is temporary. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Psalms 30:5 I’ve spent the better part of 45 years studying the history and doctrine of the church and have gone from being a believing member to a non-believer to a believer. Several thoughts that may or may not be helpful with regard to the points you make. Why don’t people want to hear about he historical and doctrinal defects in the Church? I suppose there are many reasons: (1) some people are intellectual lazy, somewhere between 50 and 70% of people never read a book after graduating from high school or college, (2) some people have had enough experiences to convince them the gospel is true even if it does have defects, (3) some people like me while adopting position (2) realize that history is a pretty speculative thing. In a court of law both the prosecution and the defense take the same pieces of evidence and use them to tell opposite stories. Such is the case with all history. LDS history presents some special problems in that while many people documented what they believed was going on Joseph Smith did not. He didn’t like to write and so it is hard to get inside his brain to see what he was thinking with issues like Polyandry. Also many of the “dark” events come from second and third hand parties speaking years after events happened. I have been suprised the past several years to try and trace back “hard facts” that are reported by pro and anti-Mormons only to find it difficult to get to an original contemporary source. I have also concluded that the Lord works with the tools at his disposal. Some of the early leaders may not have been the sharpest knives in the drawer and made mistakes, albeit in many cases while trying to do the best they could. They Lord worked with what he had, however, those who were willing to join the church and put up the persecution and economic and social dangers membership entailed. I have learned in the past few years that there are very few official doctrines. Joseph Smith’s religion was based on experiences, not upon a codified theology. After his death many tried to take the pieces and put them together into a logical organized whole. I am not sure their efforts were successful, although I probably couldn’t have done any better. With a lay clergy (even at the top) individuals were more inclined to speculate in the early days then they are now. As a result some speculation has been adopted by some members as doctrine while instead it may be simply opinion or urban legend. Sometimes it is better to say “I don’t know” in response as to why the Lord, or a church leader did something then to try an answer that makes tries to make sense of difficult to understand doctrines or controversial church actions. In some ways I like the fact that the church in some ways is a broad umbrella that can accomodate various points of view on what true doctrine (versus opinion) really is.
Much of what I have said above also applies to the question of why some people don’t want to hear that some doctrine originates in myth or speculation. First of all it is not always easy to know what is truth versus what is speculation. There are a few codified basic doctrines such as the fact that God lives, and there was a restoration. Beyond that, there is not a great deal that we know for certain. I think the Lord teaches lessons through paradox. He wants us to struggle with seeming inconsistencies to achieve a level of understanding, patience and character not available in other ways. Someone on one of the blogs said that maybe life is not so much about being right as being wrong in the correct way. If that means that the struggles we have in pursuing truth are really designed to teach us how to treat people of differing perspectives in a loving manner, then I agree with that statement.
It appears to me that even the greatest church intellects with the highest level of spirituality still see through a glass darkly. I am frustrated at times that the Lord doesn’t give us more knowledge. I have had enough experiences to convince me with out any doubt that there is a God. I believe based on faith that he loves us and wants us to grow. I focus on those things I know, and (with some frustration) wait for the day I will understand more. I think it is good to ask questions, to explore different viewpoints, but bad to lock into any one perspective too early (at least on the speculative parts of the gospel). I like something Henry Eyring Sr. once said to me: “I believe in however it turns out to be.”
