In the past couple of months I have been given reason to ponder the question of excommunication, I mean, "removal of membership" as it pertains to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For a bit of history, I recommend reading my post "A Court of Love... it may not be what you think..." From September 29, 2024, as a prerequisite to this blog post. In it, I briefly highlight the process of the church disciplinary councils for people that it deems as somehow not living up to the standards of the Church in such a manner as to make them worthy of no longer being welcome to participate in full membership in the Church or its activities. Since that time, I have wondered, just who exactly would Jesus Christ excommunicate IF He were really at the head of the Church as the leaders claim. We should, of course, begin with an overview of Jesus, Yeshua's roots as a member of Judaism. Yes, Yeshua was an Israelite, a Jew (if you will). As such, he would have been ...

I’ll be honest – for most of my life, I skimmed through the early chapters of the Book of Genesis – the stories about talking snakes and the “sons of gods” who saw beautiful women and took them as wives. These stories are so strange and describe a world so unlike our own that they appear more like Greek myths than classic biblical stories meant to guide and instruct us. But the truth is, these strange stories have far more to teach us than I ever realized. Beneath the strangeness lie profound truths as relevant today as they were at the very creation of the world. וְהַנָּחָשׁ הָיָה עָרוּם מִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים וַ יֹּאמֶר אֶל־הָאִשָּׁה אַף כִּי־אָמַר אֱלֹהִים לֹא תֹאכְלוּ מִכֹּל עֵץ הַגָּן׃ Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that Hashem had made. He said to the woman, “Did Hashem really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” - Genesis 3:1 We are told almost nothing about the serpent whose evil shrewdness changed the enti...