Can God Withdraw from the LDS Church?

Modern Mormons claim that God could never turn away from the LDS church. For example, Elder Holland recently wrote:

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most secure, the most reliable, and the most rewarding truth on earth and in heaven, in time and in eternity. Nothing—not anything, not anyone, not any influence—will keep this Church from fulfilling its mission and realizing its destiny declared from before the foundation of the world. Ours is that fail-safe, inexorable, indestructible dispensation of the fulness of the gospel. There is no need to be afraid or tentative about the future.Unlike every other era before us, this dispensation will not experience an institutional apostasy; it will not see a loss of priesthood keys; it will not suffer a cessation of revelation from the voice of Almighty God. Individuals will apostatize or turn a deaf ear to heaven, but never again will the dispensation collectively do so. What a secure thought! What a day in which to live! (Elder Jeffery R. Holland, Facebook, May 27th, 2015.)

The scriptures and words of early LDS leaders disagree.

There are innumerable examples in the Old Testament of God rejecting his covenant people through their iniquity (see, for example, Jeremiah 12:7-17, Jeremiah 18:5-10, Isaiah 1:21-23, Hosea 1:8-9, Hosea 4, Ezekiel 18, Ezekiel 22:17-18, and Zephaniah 3:11). Modern Mormons do not dispute that when ancient people deviated from God after he established a covenant with them, they were cut off. They dispute that God would ever have a reason to cut the LDS off. They believe that the Lord has promised that the LDS church will continue in his graces until Christ comes again, a position that ignores that, by 1841, the Lord had already told the church that it was in sin, under condemnation, and rejected.

Early leaders understood that the Lord could cut off the church. They hastened to finish the Nauvoo temple after the death of Joseph for fear that they would be cut off for disobeying God’s command. Orson Hyde stated:

If we moved forward and finished this house we should be received and accepted as a church with our dead, but if not we should be rejected with our dead. These things have inspired and stimulated us to action in the finishing of it which through the blessing of God we have been enabled to accomplish and prepared it for dedication. In doing this we have only been saved as it were by the skin of our teeth. (Wilford Woodruff Journal, May 8, 1846.)

Heber C. Kimball taught that God could take the priesthood from the Saints through disobedience:

We receive the priesthood and power and authority. If we make a bad use of the priesthood, so you not see that the day will come when God will reckon with us, and he will take it from us and give it to those who will make better use of it? (JD 6: 125.)

George A. Smith said the Lord could abandon the Saints in favor of another people,

God has set his hand at the present time to establish his kingdom. But unless the Saints will so live and so exert themselves that they can preserve the purity of the holy Priesthood among them, the work will be left to other people. (JD 6: 161.)

There are many additional witnesses that the church can be cut off. The Lord said in D&C 63:63: “let the church repent of their sins, and I, the Lord, will own them; otherwise they shall be cut off.” If it was the inalterable destiny of the LDS church to usher in the second coming of Christ, why would Christ himself tell them it was possible for them to be cut off? If it was not possible for the church to sin sufficiently to be cut off, why would God say that it was possible? If it were not possible for the Lord to choose another people, why did Joseph threaten the Saints who were sluggish in responding to the commandment to build the Nauvoo temple:

I will now ask this assembly and all the Saints if you will now build this house and receive the ordinances and blessings which God has in store for you; or will you not build unto the Lord this house, and let Him pass by and bestow these blessings upon another people? I pause for a reply. (June 11, 1843, DHC 5:423-427.)

If, once given, God cannot remove the keys because of disobedience or ordinances changed contrary to his word, why did Joseph Smith say:

The power, glory, and blessings of the priesthood could not continue with those who received ordination only as their righteousness continued, 11 for Cain also being authorized to offer sacrifice but not offering it in righteousness, therefore he was cursed. It signifies then, that the ordinances must be kept in the very way God has appointed, otherwise their priesthood will prove a cursing instead of a blessing. (Joseph Smith, 5 Oct 1840, Robert B. Thompson record.)

In order to believe that God cannot cut off the LDS, one would have to disbelieve each of these statements from Joseph Smith and God himself. They are too plain to be misunderstood, and therefore must be somehow directly ignored.

Perhaps one reason why there is such resistance to the idea to God cannot cut off the LDS is a misunderstanding of Daniel’s prophecy of the stone cut without hands rolling forth until the second coming. From thence shall the gospel roll forth unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, until it has filled the whole earth. (D&C 65:2.)

The gospel was revealed through Joseph Smith. The kingdom was revealed by Joseph Smith. The gospel is not the church, and the kingdom is not the church. Neither the gospel nor the kingdom are the exclusive property of the LDS church. To the degree that the church turns away from the gospel as revealed through Joseph Smith, they turn away from the kingdom. Or, as the Lord said,

`I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and

every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. (John 15:1-2.)

If the church ceases to bear fruit, he will cut it off and burn it (see Jacob 5), and turn to another people.

The prophecies state that God will do a great and marvelous work involving the Lamanites, and that the LDS church will not preside over this work, but will be cut off as a result of their turning away from the commandments and ordinances revealed through Joseph, modern Mormons who repent of the traditions of the fathers and accept the Lord’s teachings from Joseph will remain members of the kingdom. In fact, the priesthood and everything else restored by Joseph can and will remain on the earth independent of the success or failure of the LDS church. The destiny of the LDS church was never to establish Zion, but to act as a seed pod of sorts to preserve the Book of Mormon, the teachings of Joseph, and the priesthood¹ for a time to deliver it to another people who would honor and appreciate them. As the Lord prophesied:

But if they [the Gentiles] will not turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, I will suffer them, yea, I will suffer my people, O house of Israel, that they shall go through among them, and shall tread them down, and they shall be as salt that hath lost its savor, which is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of my people, O house of Israel. (3 Nephi 16:15.)

Those Gentiles who are trodden down “shall be as salt that hath lost its savor.” In the Doctrine and Covenants we are given a clear definition of what this means.

When men are called unto mine everlasting gospel, and covenant with an everlasting covenant, they are accounted as the salt of the earth and the savor of men; They are called to be the savor of men; therefore, if that salt of the earth lose its savor, behold, it is thenceforth good for nothing only to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men. (D&C 101:39-40.)

These Gentiles are the LDS: the only ones in the last days who have been called unto the everlasting gospel and have made an everlasting covenant with God. According to these scriptures, these covenant people will reject the fulness of the gospel that will be taken away and given to the house of Israel. When read in context, it is difficult to interpret these scriptures any other way.