Shalom Lynn, you wrote: <snip>

As said, there are many tender, touchy, moments during the last
days & weeks of the Prophet's life that, I believe, defy an
apostate's heart. . . . .

I struggle with calling it--demonic delusion.

Lynn
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Dean here:

When I say "demonic delusion" I do not do so to take away from
Joseph Smith's personal qualities nor gifts. Nor am I calling
him an "apostate." To come under delusion does not make one an
apostate. It may make one a casualty in the spiritual war, but
not irredeemably so. It is more like a little child trying to
cross a busy street and getting hit. I see Joseph as the
unlearned man of Isaiah's prophecy, innocent in many ways and
whose disobedience in certain matters had far worse consequences
for him than would have been the case for others.

Here's how I have to look at it, however: Either the Book of
Mormon is authentic, in which case, to the extent Joseph Smith
went away from its teachings he was off course. Or, it is not
authentic (that is a real history of a real people) but contains
many true teachings and represents a phase in Joseph Smith's
development as a "modern prophet."

That latter statement is how modern LDS intellectuals would tend
to see it. It is also the way that Reform Judaism looks at the
Torah, not as a direct revelation from God, but a creation of
inspired men reaching out to God. So, with the Higher Criticism
of modern intellectuals, Joseph Smith could be seen as someone
reaching out for God, and the answers he received came through his
own mind and imagination, but present a transcendent level of
meaning and understanding. The historical claims are not impor-
tant in this kind of activity.

When I first converted to Judaism, it was Reform Judaism that
attracted me. I had come to see all religion in this liberal
way. I still have leanings that way. But as I tried to take
on my new heritage as a Jew, I began to study Biblical Hebrew
and then Talmud and Kabbalah, etc, and began to wonder if there
wasn't a lot more to the story than I had ever imagined? Then
the Bible Code phenomena came out. I found my own name in the
Book of Ruth and in Numbers, with information about my life that
was shocking to me. I guess it scared me into becoming Orthodox.
So I underwent a second conversion under an Orthodox Yemenite
Jewish Rabbi.

Then, curious about my Mormon past, I looked for things in the
Code about the LDS and Jesus and other things. I found in Psalm
22 "Yeshua Maschiach" (Jesus is Messiah) at a skip of 45 at a
0.00358% probability. That is the Psalm about the suffering
servant whose hands and feet are pierced and begins with the
words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Pretty soon
I found myself attending the Eastern Orthodox Church and was
baptized in the Russian Church by a Greek priest. But I felt
much more at home among the Jews, so I kept this to myself and
continued to study Hebrew and go to synagogue.

Then, I found something in the Torah Code that was really strange.
I had an impression that where I was living in Texas was near an
ancient Nephite site. So I wondered if, by means of the Code, I
could somehow find a "relic of the Nephites?" The Hebrew for this
would be "Sarid ha-Nephim." It does not show up in the Code, but
the Gematria for this is 699. There is only one expression in the
Torah that equals 699, which is "va-Khapartah," "and thou shalt
dig."

"Wow!" I thought. "What a coincident!" But where should I dig?
As I began playing with different matrices and trying to call up
information on my computer screen out of the Torah, a kind of
"map" began to form. In fact it was completely to scale of a
location I was very familiar with. Each letter of the Torah
represented an exact measurement from where I was. In the plain
text was the word "Makom" (place) and perpendicular to this was
the word "Tsur" (stone). Also, under Makom "Cement" was spelled
out. (I'm sure I am doing a poor job explaining this.) The
property on which this "dig" was located was owned by a Jewish
Holocaust survivor. I got his permission to dig. Encrypted next
to "Makom" was "26 inches." (It was 20+ inches--I'm not sure of
the exact number & am too tired to look it up right now.)

I got a friend to help me and about 5 inches down we hit something
solid: a cement stone with a metal pipe going down the middle.
We had to clear the 20+ inches before we could budge the thing and
pull it out via a hoist with a chain and truck. It was about 3
feet tall and belled out at the bottom. The curious thing about
it was the metal pipe in the middle. It was a very odd place for
this stone to be and the owner of the property had no idea how it
got there, but since he had owned the land for more than 20 years,
the object had to have been burried there before he bought the
property. The metal pipe showed alomst no signs of rust at all.
That was what was weird.

But there were some other strange features. When I had gone to
mark the place to dig, as I hammered a stake in the ground, I
received a powerful shock. I was actually dazed. Then, as I
struggled to get my footing, I was overcome with a ravenous
hunger and I had just eaten lunch within the hour. After we
dug up the object, it was so odd looking, none of us could make
out what it was, a Jewish friend of mine wanted to try to crack
it open with a sledge hammer. That evening I took a couple of
whacks with a sledge hammer and got a powerful negative feeling.
Something told me not to hit it again and to push it back into
the hole. I was really "freaked out." So, that evening, in a
heavy rain storm, I managed to pry the thing to the edge of the
hole, and back in it went with the chain and all. The area of
the Torah where this map appeared was around Deuteronomy 23 where
"thou shalt dig" shows up in the plain text. In the same text it
also says "thou shalt cover it again," or words to that effect.
It is referring to excrement. Near the place where "stone" was
encrypted, I also found "Molech" and "idol."

Strange, eh? But what were the odds that anything at all would
be found at the exact place and depth we had to dig to free it?
Was it a relic of the Nephites?

That led me into further investigation into Kabbalah. As I
studied more I was amazed at how complex and detailed is the
description of the Spirit Realm and ascending planes of existence.
There are some required things to go into this area and there are
some extreme dangers as well. The rabbis forbid what is called
Practical Kabbalah. It can lead to very dangerous spiritual
things, such as demonic delusion and "psychic drowning." That is
because the ways of calling on the angelic realm is blocked due to
a lack of the means of purification, namely, the ashes of the red
cow. What one gets instead is imitative, the pious Shedim (demons)
from the immediate spirit world called Asiyah.

It seems I am going far afield, here, but I can tie this all
together. More in my next post. Dean.



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