Wow, talk about a timely post, Matt. My condolences to LDS members everywhere.

Classic. This convinces me he really is on to them.

I wish more priesthood leaders understood that.

Rather, email J Stapley. He had a post about it a while ago.

So how do you frame the question in your mind? And what the heck is the “second anointing” anyway?

I thought about asking a question at the end, but there was not enough time “You’ve seen us from the outside looking in, from the perspective of Church headquarters. How are we doing? How are we measured there? What can we do better?”

As for my personally considering the question about the second anointing to be an intellectual question, I think it is because of the way it is framed in my mind. Plus, I am personally uncomfortable with bringing something up in a public setting that 75% of the people at may have not even heard of.

I suspect that people probably don’t like to ask “spiritual” questions because they have been beaten down over the years every time they have tried with rebukes like “stop wasting your time on that” and “why not ask if the pearly gates swing or slide” or “I suppose next you’ll want to know how many angels dance on the head of a needle”. Get burned enough times and most people get the message.

Of course Elder Anderson probably doesn’t know the answers to most theological questions people might pose to him to begin with so the correct answer might be “I don’t know” or “God hasn’t clarified that for us yet”, but that is another subject altogether.

A couple of years later he spoke to a stake conference at the BYU. Expecting the worst, I was surprised when he basically gushed about how righteous we were for being at church that day.

So, yeah, lock the priesthood up in a room with a GA and you’d think the forces of evil had practically won; open the meeting to women and birds start singing the songs of Zion from sun-drenched tree-tops.