On occasion, as I research gospel topics, I come across websites set up by ex-Mormons as platforms to denigrate doctrines and practices held sacred by Latter-day Saints and to attack Church leaders they themselves once sustained as the Lord’s prophets.
At first we may wonder why these people feel so driven to go public with their incivility and anger. Why don’t they don’t just put it all behind them, go forward with their lives, and leave the Church alone?
I believe the answer is found in a conversation that took place between the Prophet Joseph Smith and Daniel Tyler and Isaac Behunin, as recorded in Daniel Tyler’s journal. The Prophet had just returned to Commerce, Illinois (before its name was changed to Nauvoo), after being persecuted and imprisoned in Missouri. Speaking about the suffering he’d endured, Joseph said that the cruelest treatment of all came at the hands of former members of the Church, now apostates, and not from non-members.
Daniel Tyler wrote:
“When the prophet had ended telling how he had been treated, Brother Behunin remarked, ‘If I should ever leave this Church I would not do as those men have done; I would go to some remote place where Mormonism had never been heard of, settle down, and no one would ever learn that I knew anything about it.’
“The great Seer immediately replied: ‘Brother Behunin, you don’t know what you would do . . . Before you joined this Church you stood on neutral ground. When the gospel was preached, good and evil were set before you. You could choose either or neither. There were two opposite masters inviting you to serve them. When you joined this Church you enlisted to serve God. When you did that you left neutral ground, and you can never get back on to it. Should you forsake the Master you enlisted to serve, it will be by the instigation of the evil one, and you will follow his dictation and be his servant . . . When men [do this] they leave neutral ground forever’”
(Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, 315-16).
These teachings are confirmed in Alma 24 where we read about a battle between Nephites and Lamanites. Among the Nephites was a group of former Lamanites who now called themselves the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. Having been converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, they'd joined with the Nephites and had not only laid down all weapons of war and buried them in the earth, they made a vow to never use them again.
So as the battle commenced and the Lamanites came upon the Nephites, these people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi lay down before the invading Lamanites, refusing to fight and, instead, putting their trust in God. The Lamanites, seeing such an easy prey, began to slaughter them.
The record goes on to describe a change of heart among the Lamanites, for “when the Lamanites saw this they did forbear from slaying them . . . for they repented of the things which they had done . . . and it came to pass that they threw down their weapons of war . . . [and] there were more than a thousand brought to the knowledge of the truth.”
Unfortunately, the slaughter didn't completely come to an end. Why? Who continued doing the killing? Just as apostates had inlicted the worst suffering upon Joseph Smith, it was a group of apostate Nephites — Amalekites and Amulonites who had formerly embraced the gospel but then rebelled and joined the Lamanites. These apostates were now slaughtering the believers.
The final verse of chapter 24 confirms the truth of what Joseph Smith said to Isaac Behunin: “And thus we can plainly discern that after a people have been once enlightened by the Spirit of God and have had great knowledge of things pertaining to righteousness, and then have fallen away into sin and transgression, they become more hardened, and thus their state becomes worse than though they had never known these things.”
That verse, and Joseph's words to Isaac Behunin, explain why the apostates in our day cannot leave the Church alone: "Should you forsake the Master you enlisted to serve, it will be by the instigation of the evil one, and you will follow his dictation and be his servant . . . When men [do this] they leave neutral ground forever.”
