Falling out of bed or Falling out of the Church?

A theme has been attributed to the teachings of Apostle Marvin J Ashton, “people fall out of the church for the same reason they fall out of bed: they don’t get in far enough.”

This theme then causes a person to ask, “how far in is far enough?”

The answer may be found in what the Savior taught Joseph Smith as they met in the woods in 1820, “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

Many teachings and principles pertaining to heaven and godliness taught within the church and elsewhere may cause a person to draw close to our Savior. However, a person is not one with Him or His church unless he or she has experienced and exercised His power.

How then, does one experience His power? How does the Lord express His power and how might we observe it?

In one of my favorite passages of scripture, we see how his power may be conveyed and measured.

1 Kings chapter 18 describes a time in the days of Elijah where a battle of religions lingered. The population wondered if they should worship the God of Abraham or if they should worship Baal. To end the discussion once and for all, Elijah called upon 450 priests of Baal and offered a challenge:

“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, how long halt ye between two opinions?

If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.

Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men.

Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under:

And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God.

And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.

And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.”

So doing as instructed, the priests of Baal dressed their animal for sacrifice and began to pray. As they prayed, nothing happened, so they continued to pray. The day grew long and their prayers became more earnest yet nothing happened.

As Elijah watched he gave the following encouragement:

"Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked."

Though they cried louder, and mutilated their own bodies for the rest of the day, nothing happened. Baal did not answer.

As evening approached, Elijah called the crowd to his broken altar and had them watch him rebuild it. Once assembled, he dug a trough around the altar and laid his sacrifice thereon. After all preparations were made, he had buckets of water thrown on the altar to drench his presentation. (Using copious amounts of water proved two points: Elijah knew the power of the Lord’s fire and he knew that the same power would soon end the current famine and drought.)

After the water soaked the altar and the animal, Elijah prayed.

"Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.  Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again."

Then the fire of the Lord fell. It consumed everything, altar, animal, stones, dirt and even the water in the trough. Through his servant, the Lord showed his power.

1 Kings 19 describes that later, as Elijah pondered this the Lord showed how His power could be measured:

"And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?"

Even after the wind and earthquake, the Lord and his power were measured and perceived as a still small voice. This principle can only be understood by prayer, pondering and actual experience.

How then does one become eligible to access His power?

Power comes to a person as he or she exercise the laws that govern. All things in nature, or with people or even within governments and principalities obtain power via obedience to laws. The scriptures clearly teach that all heavenly encouragements come from obedience to the specific law that the blessing is related to:

"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."

Laws are universal and apply to everyone regardless of the amount of knowledge or ignorance toward the law. 

Whether I study the intricacies of gravity or if I am clueless, it is proven that what goes up, must come down. If I seek to defy gravity and decide to jump off a cliff, I will meet my unfortunate end at the falling rate of 9.8 meters per second. Conversely, if I learn enough about gravity and how to use it, I could fly to the moon.

The same applies to Laws decreed by God—whether in knowledge or ignorance, we reap the consequence.

Financial studies have shown that one of the quickest ways upward on a path of wealth is to give away at least one tenth of your earnings. We would call that principle, the opening of heaven’s windows after obedience to the Law of Tithing.

When the body is sick, before it can begin to heal, it vacates all unused food and water. Medical journals and holistic healing point to the health benefits of a regular fast.

Society deteriorates as it moves further from proper human relationships and observance of the Law of Chastity.

My own observation: when parents do not honor God on the Sabbath, their children likewise do not honor them. The rising generation has strayed from home and family foundations because the home has similarly wandered away from its heavenly origins.

With diligent adherence to these and the rest of God’s laws, we move from being nearer to Him to being one with Him. Therein is the source of heaven’s power: obedience and oneness.

Over the years I have watched with sorrow as close friends have fallen away from the Lord’s Church. I wish their return was as easy as when one falls out of bed. Though each has made a certain academic or spiritual claim as the rationale behind their apostasy, one thing has been true for each person I saw fall: they never fully observed one or more of the following:

The Law of Chastity

The Law of Tithing

The Law of the Fast

The Lord’s Law of Health

The Law of the Sabbath

Each person that has lost their faith and left the church, in my observation, never obeyed some or each law fully for an ongoing duration. It has not been lack of prayer, or lack of study or lack of doing a calling, but it has been the lack of observation and obedience.

When fully observed, a Godly power flows into one’s life which leads a person to do the rest of their duty. But when even the slightest rebellion occurs, light and power flee which leaves that person floundering in a fog of doubt, temptation and weakness.

My challenge is this: observe these laws with diligence for at least 2 years and note the power of heaven that flows into your life. It will lead you beyond faith into the realm of knowledge. Once there, as obedience continues, you may find yourself participating in miracles even like those of Elijah and Moses.

To those who say the Church isn’t true, I say observe the Lord’s laws diligently for at least two years and then see how true and tangible the Lord and his powerful teachings become.

Let me share a few examples of the Lord’s expression of his power in my life. Before I continue, I understand that sharing things like this places me into more public scrutiny than I am comfortable with. However, though I am just a man, struggling to repent each day, and am just seeking to find my way back home like the rest of us, stories like this may be of some benefit to someone.

Though I have have seen dozens of such examples, the following few will be a sufficient sample.

One example: in Seattle, a teenage boy was in a horrible car accident. He was smashed between a semi and another car, and then sent flying down a hill because he was not wearing a seat belt. He was thought dead, because his head was crushed and more than 100 bones in his body were broken. I was called to administer a blessing. When I arrived, this boy was in an ICU and being kept alive via machines. The family was trying to decide whether or not the pull the plug and let this boy pass to the next life. When I saw how serious the situation was, I went to a different room and asked for spiritual guidance. In undeniable terms, I was told that this boy would be healed completely and that all would be well. So I went into the room, anointed and blessed him to be whole. As I did, I felt light and power flow out from me to him. As I closed in the name of Jesus Christ, the flow stopped. The family may have felt what I felt, but they were surprised to hear that he would be healed. I left the hospital and wondered how things would proceed. Within two days he was moved from the ICU to a normal room. Over a very short time, he was released and basically restored to full capacity.

Another: one night as a missionary, a missionary companion and I prayed together to end our day. As my companion prayed, we both felt a desire to increase our prayers for personal safety. So we offered some extra prayers. While doing so, this same feeling of light and power flowed through me. Though I wondered why we felt such a need, I went to bed. In the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of pounding on our door, but I decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. When we left our apartment the next morning, we were shocked to see that the entire complex had been on fire. There was smoke and water and fire damage throughout our whole building—every apartment on each side was damaged. Oddly, though, when we went back into our apartment, we couldn’t smell any smoke at all. When we went out to our car, we were also surprised by what we saw. Though it was parked in the middle of 4 other ash and firefighting foam covered cars, ours was pristine. There was no ash on it, nor water spots, nothing blemished the shine of our car at all.

Another: while in the MTC, I woke to the screaming of my companion. I was in a threesome. I had one deaf and one hearing companion. My hearing companion was screaming out loud pointing at the door. My deaf companion was asleep in his bed. When I looked over to the door, I saw a large black thing standing against it. It was around 7 feet tall and had no discernible features. It was just a black shadow like thing that stood at the door. Though Cruz kept screaming, I rose out of my bed, placed my right arm to the square and commanded in the name of Christ that the thing should leave. When I finished speaking, it turned around and walked out of our room passing through the closed wooden door.

Another: a friend of mine and I were called to the home of a person who was addicted to heroin. The mother of the person was at her wits end and asked if there was anything we could do for her son. When I looked at her son, I could tell that he had recently been high and had all telling signs of a heroin user. I then turned to the son and asked if he had a desire to be healed. He said yes. I felt that light and power begin to flow again and asked if he believed that through the atonement of Christ he would be made whole. He again said yes. So we laid our hands on him and blessed him to be clean and whole. From that moment on he went cold turkey and did not experience the normal and painful process of withdrawal. As far as I know, he is still clean to this day.

Another: hurricane Isabel hit the Washington DC area in 2003 (if I remember right). while living there and an hour before the storm hit, I saw the distress of my wife and children. I wanted to be some source of comfort to them, so I went up to my bedroom and prayed for help. The guidance I received was to go outside and rebuke the storm. “seriously?” That’s what I thought, but I did it anyway. I went to the back yard, held my arm to the square and with a loud voice said something like, “in the name of Christ, I rebuke you and say to you to do no harm to this property or the people herein.” An hour later the storm hit. Though we were inside, we heard the howling wind and pelting rain. It lasted for hours, but we were warm and safe in our home. We never lost power. The next morning, we went outside and saw the damage. There were tree limbs down everywhere and power lines had been severed. In fact, almost everyone from Raleigh NC to Philadelphia PA had no power. Some had it restored in a few days, but others didn’t have any power for up to two weeks. Though all of my neighbors had no power, somehow we did and our living space was absolutely unaffected by the hurricane.

Another: when I was serving as a Branch President in Washington DC, I had a feeling that there were some brethren in the branch that needed to resolve some law of chastity issues.  There wasn't a good system of finding out who to speak with and I didn't want to schedule interviews with each male adult in the unit. So I prayed and prayed and prayed. On a certain Sunday, while the sacrament was being passed, I prayed again. This time, I felt light and power fill me inwardly. As I looked up from my prayer, I scanned the congregation. While doing so, I saw 4 men that were shaded in a blue hue. I don’t know a better way to explain it. They each appeared as though they had been covered in a dark blue shadow. I looked to my lap and wrote the four names on my notepad. When I looked up at the congregation again, the hue was gone and everything looked normal. I scheduled meetings with these four brothers. Each meeting began with my greeting and something like “hello, the Lord asked me to meet with you. Is there anything you would like to talk about?” In each case, each brother confessed to struggling with a variety of law of chastity issues. Over time, the issues were dealt with and repented of.

Another: for some reason—maybe due to the experience of living through Hurricane Isabel, my daughter has been extremely frightened by howling winds. One day, when she did not return home as expected from 1^st grade, I went over to her school to look for her. As soon as I stepped outside and felt the gusty wind on my face and heard the howling blow past me, I knew she would be frozen with panic somewhere between her classroom and her home. After searching, I found her curled up into a tight ball with her face buried deep in the grass of the school playground. She sobbed and said she couldn't make it home against such an awful wind. So I picked her up and carried her home. We still live in the same home and from time to time experience severe wind. Each time, though she’s learning to cope, she still becomes a little anxious. Another night, the wind blew with such ferocity that much of the siding on my house blew off and scattered itself around the neighborhood. (I guess we all could benefit from knowing how to put siding on a house—I learned how, after gathering and reassembling each blown piece.)  I woke up one recent night to another bout of loud and powerful wind gusts. While knowing how the wind has damaged both my house and daughter’s psyche, I knelt in prayer and asked the Lord if we could be blessed with a quiet and restful night. As I prayed, light and power flowed through me and I felt that if I stood, held my arm to the square and rebuked the wind that it would grow still. So I stood and did just that and as soon as I uttered the word “amen” the wind stopped and didn't blow for the rest of the night—I mean it went from window shaking gusts to absolutely nothing.

Here is one more for now: once when on a military assignment in Virginia, I had a day off and went to the gym for a workout. It was a Bally Total Fitness gym in the Hampton Roads area. While working out, I had a cold/sickly feeling stirring inside. It grew in intensity until I could no longer proceed with my exercise. I have learned that that feeling happens to me when there is an evil vibe around me. So I went into the locker room and began to pray. I asked the Lord why I felt so bad. In an obvious manner, he revealed to me that this gym was a place where evil men gathered to conduct business in drug trade and human trafficking. I responded that the thought was awful and wished there was something I could do. I then felt that I should gather my things, go to the front door and upon leaving, wipe my feet off at the threshold and rebuke the place in the name of Christ. So I did. After doing it, nothing happened. I went to my car and waited for a few minutes, but again, nothing happened, so I left. Out of curiosity, I returned to the place two or three days later. When I pulled into the parking lot, I was floored. Instead of a building, there was just a hole in the ground. The building had been razed.