Go up to the MountaIn of the Lord

Isaiah 2:2-3

2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 

It has long been a belief among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that this Isaiah reference speaks of Temples of the Lord, first the temple in Salt Lake City in Utah and subsequently dozens that have been erected around the world.

These truly are abodes of Christ where his disciples can come to learn from him and make covenants to "walk in his paths" toward sharing exaltation with the Father and the Son. I go to the temple of the Lord very often and always feel closer to my Savior at each visit.

The journey to enter these Houses of the Lord begins with learning more of him through missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who will add more wisdom and understanding to the faith and knowledge you may already have in Jesus Christ.

Continue your journey to the Messiah and Savior of all. 

Avoiding the Lord's fiery indignation

It seems some people have offended God and, although the Lord is reported to feel great love for those who follow him and obey his commandments, the scriptural record uses words such as "wrath" and "indignation" to describe Christ's attitude about those who work against him.

Doctrine and Covenants 87:6

And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations;

These are not pleasant ends for "the inhabitants of the earth".

However, Jesus in his mercy extends repentance under certain conditions on those otherwise under condemnation.

Doctrine and Covenants 98:47

But if the children shall repent, or the children’s children, and turn to the Lord their God, with all their hearts and with all their might, mind, and strength, and restore four-fold for all their trespasses wherewith they have trespassed, or wherewith their fathers have trespassed, or their fathers’ fathers, then thine indignation shall be turned away;

The Lord provides a path to redemption, though it may require much of us in both devotion and reparations.

Feminism is silly compared with real feminine power

Years ago, I conceived a society that works with females at its head. It recognizes what women value on a deep level, instead of the sophomoric effort of just pasting a girl's face on a man and saying that will work. This is what feminism is, a foolish replacement of men with women with a total performative ignorance of what either sex truly wants and needs. We are awash with crazed men and women who think the "better way" is simply to switch places, sometimes by physical "trans-gendered" operations that embed the "switcheroo" feminist lunacy more deeply.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082RAFM6#

In my book "Escape", women behave as women by nature will do, as do the less mentioned men. The ruling of this society is performed by women, but in ways that are far more sensible for women to do. Many will find the fictional aspects of the story not far enough to make the story into a fantasy novel, and I certainly didn't write it that way. No aspect of this culture is beyond the normal purview of your next-door neighbor or the attention-grabbing starlet that you see on television. It isn't some farcical sub-group in some dark jungle or in some 'better" past. It could work here and work today. It is just as likely to be evil as any male-dominated world, as is very apparent from the Escape book. There are good people and bad people, emperors and pawns.  Females don't make leadership particularly better, as silly feminists demand. There will be feuds and intrigue a-plenty under either sex.

My thought is that my female-run world is much more plausible and would enjoy a longevity far beyond the chaos of what is being experimented with in our world. Read it and see what you think.

A Summative Statement on Performatiive Piety

After Isaiah catalogues the performative actions of piety and the Lord's rejection of them, he instructs the children of Israel in the thing the Lord desires. 

Isaiah 1:16-20

16 ¶ Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

It is customary to see "judgement (or the application of Judgment) as a bad thing, always employed to punish the wicked. In verse 17 above, Advice is given to "seek judgement" and to "judge the fatherless", without the implication that someone is in trouble for wrongdoing. In this case, it is a good thinking to seek the judgement from a righteous judge, such as the Lord. This judge will see the rightful need and dispense what is needed to make things right. The righteous seek the judging Lord for just recompense of the circumstances of life, rather than avoiding judgement as with the wicked.

A proper judge sees through pretense and show to look into the heart of those seeking judgement. Those seeking to deceive hate such a judge and those who are good an in need seek out such a judge who understands circumstances and can make things right. It depends on the sort of person seeking judgement to either embrace or eschew the Lord, our righteous judge.

Isaiah 1 - Meaningless Perfomances?

I can't approach Isaiah in the same ways that I worked through the Book of Mormon.  There are not a few scripture snippets that can be expanded upon, but it seems like, at least in this particular chapter (Isaiah chapter 1), it is almost circular reinforcements of a theme.

Although the people were doing the performances required of the Lord in Isaiah's time, the remembrances and symbolism were not effecting the personal devotion and changes the Lord desired in them.  They are becoming hypocrites with a public face of piety and harboring evil in their hearts.

Isaiah 1:4

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

Isaiah 1:10-15

10 ¶ Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.

11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.

12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?

13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Although we can make a good performance o righteousness in the eyes of others, the Lord sees into our hearts and knows if we are truly devoted to him and his purposes.  

Prosperity Blessings of Putting Marriage then Family ahead of Economic and Professional Concerns

It is a matter of prioritizing obedience to the oldest commandments and associated blessings over short term fears of not having a full cornicopia of society's "essential" marriage ingredients, such as a great job, high pay, or deep maturity. In some ways, many cultures actively discourage marriage with pushing these expected "requirements" that can rarely be met.

I found this view of attitudes going into marriage to be interesting and helpful to re-enshrining "holy" marriage: 

Beyond Hollywood Type Love: Choosing Commitment Over Chemistry

In addition to viewing marriage as a devoted commitment, rather than a impossibly life-long romantic infatuation as so many demand, we often forget God's take on marriage and making it a priority in our lives.

Genesis 2:18 

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Genesis 2:24 

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 

Adam was a very unaccomplished man at this point and yet he is married and commanded to populate the world (eventually and generationally)!  I wonder how Eve viewed the prospects of her husband in the Garden? 

 Matthew 19:3-6

The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? 

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 

And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Doctrine and Covenants 130:20-21

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—

And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

In my life, I discovered that obedience to God's command to marry and cleave is tied strongly to my blessings of financial prosperity. I am quiet hard to push on many things and I never pursued career or money particularly, but they came anyway, as if God was obligated to bless me this way.

In a practical application of the principles discussed here and in The Shape of Prosperity, any of us can push forward though the reservations, cultural hurdles and social fears that tell young people to put off or avoid productive marriage then family-building. It is my assurance to all that God blesses those that pursue and obey this "first commandment" of marrying and "cleaving". Those who do this will be prospered just as I have been in often miraculous ways.

Get married, the younger and less experienced, the better, Put your trust in the fact that God will prosper your obedience in cleaving and building a family.  Then, the miracles will come.

 

Honoring the First Choices at the Last

It's important to remember that accepting the trials of mortality has, until very recently, been just a fact of life (no obvious pun).  My parents did it, my grandparents and my further ancestors all married and had children (obviously), never giving it much more thought than these institutions are what everyone was expected to do and it was the basic sign of being a respectable adult.

We live in a "modern" time that the age-old expectations or marriage and family have been pushed aside by a growing group of DINKs, singles, NEETs, and so on. Sloughing established standards seem to have become something of a flaunted recreational sport, usually by showing young single women traveling the world's tourist spots or pulling dogs into their liberated and well-heeled "van lives".

Some six-thousand years ago, Adam and Eve set the standard, eschewed the easy man-child Eden, and took the choice to stay together as a married couple and face mortality together and naturally having children. God had a (now mostly forgotten) commandment about marriage to help them along:

Genesis 2:24

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Being "one flesh" would, by nature, produce children and lead to parenting inherited from previous generations. 

Young couples today must face a similar "first parent" choice under peer pressure conditions that test their faith in God and their courage to stand against growing social standards to forgo marriage and childbearing. God's first law of "cleaving" gets thrown under the cultural bus as a matter of course.

None of this is improved by leftist feminism - generating fleets of ugly and undesirable women who joyously reject mother Eve's higher choice. Satanic feminism destroyed the perpetuation of humanity in only about fifty years. 

Isaiah 3:24-26

 24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.

25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.

26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

 The solution is to ignore modern influences and embrace the morals of productive marriage and family-building.  It is a hard thing to put aside the constant clamor that marrying is patriarchal slavery and childbearing and child-rearing in our world is tantamount to a prison sentence and throwing children into pauperism. A generous God will bless our obedience to his "cleaving" commandment and the worst predictions of the future hell for families will be largely overcome with compensatory blessings.