The Cult of the Firstborn

The Cult of the Firstborn:

While interacting online at LDS Freedom Forum, I slowly encountered a united group who are calling themselves the Church of the Firstborn. It was a strange, interesting, and surreal experience. I came to realize that they support, sustain, and back each other up. I wasn't aware of their existence until I started to disagree vigorously with some of their claims and doctrines; and then suddenly they came out of the woodwork as a united front against me. I also came to realize that they are looking for others to join their elite group; but, if you write anything potent that contradicts their religion or their beliefs, they will unite together and come down on you like a ton of bricks. Unitedly and collectively, they invited me to shut up and go away. That's how they handle dissent in their group and on the LDS Freedom Forum. I was in a sense excommunicated from their group, a concept that was familiar to me.

With the exception of two different individuals, the rest of them seemed to ignore my posts and pretended that I wasn't even there. It was only after I started to contend with their spokesman that I became aware of their existence, while they employed various different means to end my messages while continuing to support his. It was like trying to fight with my hands tied behind my back. The deck was stacked against me. It was a strange, confusing, and weird feeling, especially at first when I wasn't fully aware of what was happening. Thankfully, a couple of different people had mercy on me and told me what was happening, and then suddenly it all made sense. These people are an organized cult or a religion, and they are defending their religion and backing each other up. Since they have yet to give themselves a name (other than the Church of the Firstborn) and are still hiding their existence, I chose to call them the Cult of the Firstborn to distinguish them from the real Church of the Firstborn.

When I finally figured out who they are and what they are all about, I suddenly lost all desire to be a part of them and had no desire to associate with them any more. So, whether I was excommunicated from their group or left of my own free will and choice, it doesn't really matter, because the net result is the same. Now, about the only obligation that I feel towards them is a desire to expose their existence, their secrets, and their secrecy to the world, because they thrive on not having anyone know that they exist. I want to warn others about them as I was warned. Obviously, I wasn't the first person to encounter difficulties with this cult or group.

Their combined Cult of the Firstborn message that I and others were starting to perceive and understand is that once I am a member of the Church of the Firstborn, then I will no longer need my LDS Ordinances, my LDS Temple Covenants, the LDS Church, or the LDS General Authorities. When I become a member of their club or group, a member of the Church of the Firstborn, Jesus Christ will give me special dispensation; and thereafter, I can say and do whatever I please, because I am going to be saved and exalted in the Celestial Kingdom no matter what I say or do. It's a comforting religion, but only if you are a member of it.

Since the other members of the Church of the Firstborn that I have met in person outside of the LDS Freedom Forum seem to be a completely different group of people than the club or group that I met online, I have taken to calling the online group The Cult of the Firstborn, in order to tell the difference between the two and to keep everything straight in my head. The Cult of the Firstborn proved to be a strange and interesting group of Gods and Goddesses. They are not large enough yet to build Zion on their own, but I get the feeling that they believe that one day they will be. One day there is going to be 144,000 of them. Some of the Cult of the Firstborn believe that they are Heavenly Angels or Divine Messengers or missionaries for the Church of the Firstborn.

The Cult of the Firstborn are a secretive group, and they will often deny their existence and are reluctant to discuss their purpose or their mission. They want you to judge their message and not the messenger. They were often telling us to just let the messenger disappear from our minds, and listen only to the message. This was confusing at first, until I realized that some of them had been excommunicated from the LDS Church and that some of them were afraid of disciplinary action from the LDS Church. Then it made sense why they wanted us to focus only on the message and completely ignore the messenger.

The Cult of the Firstborn haven't completely consolidated their message or platform; but, there were a few things that started to become clear to me and to some of the others I associated with in Private Messaging. Some of the moderators at LDS Freedom Forum are members of this Cult of the Firstborn, so we were not fully permitted to publicly disagree with them or point out where they are wrong, so we had to take our comments private if we wanted to talk about them and compare notes. Our public messages would sometimes disappear if we were challenging or disagreeing with the Cult of the Firstborn.

The Cult of the Firstborn believe that they have had their Calling and Election made Sure, which means that they believe that they are part of the Church of the Firstborn, part of the 144,000, True Messengers from the Father, and have a special apostolic relationship with Christ. Many of them claim to have received the Second Comforter or to have entertained the Angels of God. They are an exclusive or an elite group, but they seem to be recruiting followers there on LDS Freedom Forum. They are looking for like-minded people to join them, and there's a grooming process that's going on. When it comes to the Cult of the Firstborn, they used to be LDS or came from the LDS Church; however, now they are no longer members of the LDS Church but are instead members of the Church of the Firstborn.

The Cult of the Firstborn are either secretive about what they believe or use an anonymous name so that they can freely tell the world what they believe, because if they were to reveal to their LDS Bishop or LDS Stake President what they truly believe, then they would be excommunicated from the LDS Church, if they haven't already been excommunicated from the LDS Church. Their Doctrines and Teachings are not in harmony with Official LDS Church Doctrine, and they will freely admit in private (and sometimes in public) that they have no interest in converting anyone to the LDS Church.

In general, the Cult of the Firstborn preaches that the LDS General Authorities and LDS Apostles are fallen prophets, have been rejected by Christ, and have lost their way. They will say that there hasn't been a True Prophet of God in the LDS Church since Joseph Smith. When you ask them what their goal or purpose is, they say that it is to bring you to Christ or to convert you to Christ. They make it clear that it is a sin and it is wrong to rely upon the arm of flesh, meaning the LDS General Authorities. The Cult of the Firstborn wants you to go straight to Christ and receive a special dispensation from Him. If you can do that, then you are a candidate to join their group. They want you to ignore or go past the LDS Prophets and go straight on to Christ.

Most of the Cult of the Firstborn seem to see little value in or need for the LDS Ordinances, LDS Standards, Church Attendance, the LDS Doctrine, the LDS Temple Covenants, the LDS Church, the LDS Apostles, the LDS mission, the LDS teachings, the LDS people, or LDS church membership. Their message to us is that we will need none of these things after we have established a direct personal apostolic relationship with Jesus Christ and have become members of the Church of the Firstborn. I believe that the majority of the Cult of the Firstborn that I have encountered have been excommunicated from the LDS Church, or they are no longer really members of the LDS Church in their hearts and minds. Their message is that you will not need the LDS Church or the LDS Apostles after you have had your Calling and Election made Sure, have established a direct Second Comforter relationship with Christ, and have entered into the Church of the Firstborn.

When it comes to the Cult of the Firstborn, their message is logical and it is enticing to anyone who has become dissatisfied with the LDS Church for whatever reason. You can still have salvation and exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom, as long as you receive special dispensation from Jesus Christ. They have found another way to enter into the Kingdom of God, a backdoor of sorts. If you are a member of the Church of the Firstborn, then you don't need the LDS Church, the LDS Ordinances, or the LDS Temple in order to be saved and exalted in the Celestial Kingdom. It sounds wonderful, actually. You can just go straight to Christ for your salvation and exaltation, and completely skip the LDS Church. Now you know why I call the Cult of the Firstborn an interesting and fascinating group.

Throughout my life, I have gone to hell many different times. I am learning to recognize what it looks like, what it feels like, and what it is. The more I interacted with the Cult of the Firstborn on LDS Freedom Forum, the more I realized that I was back in hell again. All of the signs were there. It became a very unpleasant experience, especially compared to the interaction that I have with the ordinary Latter-day Saints at Church on Sunday and throughout the week.

Even the non-LDS people that I interact with at school and work, the ones that everyone says are going to the Terrestrial Kingdom, are infinitely kinder and a whole lot more fun to be around than the Cult of the Firstborn. I eventually realized that I would much rather go to the Terrestrial Kingdom or go to hell than to go to the place where the Cult of the Firstborn are going and have to associate with the Cult of the Firstborn for the rest of eternity. It was a very unpleasant bunch of people, for me at least. But, they seemed to be happy with their club or group. They had found each other and were soul mates, and together, they had created what I call The Cult of the Firstborn. It was a club of the super elite or the super elect, and they are looking for Latter-day Saints who are willing to join their cause. Eventually, I elected not to go where they are going.

In the next life, if there is a next life (and I have no direct personal proof that there is a next life), I want to go to the place where my LDS Grandmother, Hugh Nibley, and an LDS bishop friend of mine went when they died. Those are the people that I want to see and meet again in the next life; and, those are the people that I want to associate with in the next life for the rest of eternity, if they will have me. I have said many times that it would be a shame and a loss to the whole universe if these people ceased to exist when they died. These are the first people I know that I have found myself praying to God and hoping that they continued to exist after they died. They are the people that I want to go to and associate with in the next life, even if they all ended up going to hell. They are my kind of people, and I learned to love them while they were alive. I want to be with them after I am dead.

Before my LDS bishop friend died, he came up to me after Gospel Doctrine class and said to me, “You are a Treasure.” I have been called lots of things in my life, most of them bad, but I have never ever been called a Treasure. That was a first and only. So, if there is an afterlife, I want to go where this friend went, because there I know that I will be treasured. I miss this person, and I want to see him again.

In contrast, I don't really care if I ever see, meet, or encounter any of the Cult of the Firstborn ever again. I don't want to spend the rest of eternity with them. Plus, they unitedly told me to shut up and go away, so it is quite clear that they don't want to spend the rest of eternity with me either. They got together and voted me off the island, so they won't allow me to go where they are going in the next life anyway. It was an interesting and memorable experience. I'm not a member of the Cult of the Firstborn, and apparently, I never will be. I was no longer free to openly and honestly say what I believe to be true while participating on LDS Freedom Forum. I was back in hell again.

They say that when it comes to your enemies, the only way that they win is if you give up and go away. Yet, when it came to the Cult of the Firstborn, I eventually realized that I would win and win big if I simply gave up and went away. That bridge got burnt. It was a good thing for me to light that particular fuse and watch it burn, as it was for them. We were all in agreement concerning that one particular thing, that it would be best for all involved if I were to just go away.

The beautiful thing about the Gospel of Christ is that we can repent, do a complete 180 and go the other direction. The Cult of the Firstborn invited me to go some other direction with my life, and I came to believe that it was right for me to do so. I had delivered my message, so now it was time to move on to a different group and a different mission. I chose to go back to the Latter-day Saints and the LDS Church. There I periodically find comfort and peace. There I find my kind of people. The Latter-day Saints haven't voted me off the island yet. These Latter-day Saints who live around me might not all be members of the Church of the Firstborn, but at least they are not the Cult of the Firstborn.

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Cult of the Firstborn Revisited:

Ever since Hirum Page started receiving revelations from Satan through the peep stone (D&C 28:11), there have been Cults of the Firstborn, or Secret Gnostic Groups, or Selective Clubs in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Each one of these groups makes the claim that they have Special Knowledge from God or Secret Knowledge from God that the Apostles of God do not have.

During the Primitive Church of Jesus Christ, the Apostles of God were driven out of Congregations of the Church by Gnostics claiming to have Secret Knowledge from God that the Apostles of God did not have. Gnosticism in a sense killed the Primitive Church of Jesus Christ; and, it could kill the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints if we are not aware of that particular Satanic Trap.

I coined the phrase, “The Cult of the Firstborn”, so that I and my LDS friends would have a term that we could use in person and during Private Messaging to describe the phenomenon.

There is nothing new about the Cult of the Firstborn. While talking with one of my LDS friends last weekend, he told me that a decade or two ago, one of his friends had been captured by one these Gnostic Groups, led away from the LDS Church, and destroyed. The results can be devastating. Lives and families can be destroyed if we choose to fall for one of these Gnostic Groups.

I realize now that anyone who considers themselves to be a member of the Cult of the Firstborn might be offended by the term. Being called a Gnostic Group sounds a lot cooler, I must admit. After all, the Gnostics know things that the rest of the Latter-day Saints and the LDS Apostles don't know and can't know. So, it sounds a lot cooler to be a Gnostic than to just be a member of the Cult of the Firstborn.

One of my spiritual gifts is the ability to notice patterns or trends. These things just kind of jump out at me. I can see throughout the whole of LDS Church history all of these different Gnostic Groups or Cults of the Firstborn that rise up, flourish, and then slowly die out. There are hundreds and even thousands of them.

God the Father lost one-third of the hosts of Heaven to a Gnostic Group. One-third of the hosts of Heaven refused to sustain the Brethren (Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost). They thought that they knew better or were smarter than God the Father. They thought that they knew something that God did not know. They thought that they could do it their own way.

Joseph Smith tells us that the Ten Virgins represent the Latter-day Saints. According to the parable of the Ten Virgins, half of the baptized Latter-day Saints during the whole history of the Latter-day Saints are going to apostatize from the LDS Church or walk away from the LDS Church.

I personally have predicted that one-third of the Latter-day Saints will be lost to a refusal to sustain or accept the LDS General Authorities or the Local Leaders in their wards and stakes. If I am correct, a huge number of Latter-day Saints throughout the history of the Latter-day Saints will be drawn away to various Gnostic Groups or Cults of the Firstborn, because these Groups will claim superior knowledge and superior revelations than the knowledge and revelations that the Apostles of God are receiving.

I can see the pattern, and I can see the trend. My purpose in writing about it is to warn the active Latter-day Saints about it. Those who have already fallen for one of the many hundreds of different Gnostic groups will not receive any benefit from my warning, and might even take exception to it. That's the nature of issuing a warning. The LDS Apostles get the same result whenever they issue a warning. The Gnostics are here to stay, and so is the Cult of the Firstborn.