Monday, October 27, 2008

Day 43: Election Prayer Focus Utah


Utah - Beehive State


Motto: Industry


Capital/Largest City: Salt Lake City


Leaders

Governor John Huntsman, Jr. (R)

Senator Robert F. Bennett (R)

Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R)

1. Rob Bishop (R)
2. Jim Matheson (D)
3. Chris Cannon (R)


Prayer Points

*Declare revival comes to the state of Utah.

*Declare signs and wonders follow the preaching of the Word in Utah.

*Declare the people of Utah are open to the truth of the Gospel.

*Declare divine strategies come to Christian leaders to effectively evangelize the people of Utah.

*Declare the leaders of Utah walk in wisdom and the fear of the Lord.

*Declare prosperity comes to the state of Utah.

*Declare protection over the state of Utah.

*Declare protection over the National Guard, military personnel, and military bases in Utah.

*Declare Christians in Utah get out and vote for the party platfom that lines up with the Word of God.

*Declare an accurate accounting of the vote in Utah.

*Declare an expansion of Christian media in Utah.


The region was first explored for Spain by Franciscan friars Escalante and Dominguez in 1776. In 1824 the famous American frontiersman Jim Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake.
Fleeing religious persecution in the East and Midwest, the Mormons arrived in 1847 and began to build Salt Lake City. The U.S. acquired the Utah region in the treaty ending the Mexican War in 1848, and the first transcontinental railroad was completed with the driving of a golden spike at Promontory Summit in 1869.
Mormon difficulties with the federal government about polygamy did not end until the Mormon Church renounced the practice in 1890, six years before Utah became a state.
Rich in natural resources, Utah has long been a leading producer of copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc, and molybdenum. Oil has also become a major product. Utah shares rich oil shale deposits with Colorado and Wyoming. Utah also has large deposits of low sulphur coal.
The state's top agricultural commodities include cattle and calves, dairy products, hay, greenhouse and nursery products, and hogs.
Utah's traditional industries of agriculture and mining are complemented by increased tourism and growing aerospace, biomedical, and computer-related businesses. (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108279.html)


Utah is known for being one of the most religiously homogeneous states in the Union, with approximately 58 percent of its adult inhabitants claiming membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church or the LDS Church), which greatly influences Utah culture and daily life. It is also known for geological diversity ranging from snowcapped mountains to well-watered river valleys to rugged, stony deserts and open plains.
The state is a center of transportation, information technology and research, government services and mining as well as a major tourist destination for outdoor recreation. St. Georg, Utah was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000–2005 with Utah being the sixth fastest growing state overall in 2006.


Morman Settlement

Following the assassination of Joseph Smith, Jr., in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844, the more than 11,000 Latter-Day Saints remaining in Nauvoo, IL struggled in conflict with neighbors until Brigham Young, the President of the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, emerged as the leader of the largest portion.
Brigham Young and the first band of Mormon pioneers came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Over the next 22 years, more than 70,000 pioneers crossed the plains and settled in Utah. For the first few years, Brigham Young and the thousands of early settlers of Salt Lake City struggled to survive. The barren desert land was deemed by the Mormons as desirable as a place they could practice their religion without interference.
It is not widely known that Utah was the source of many pioneer settlements located elsewhere in the West. From the beginning, Salt Lake City was seen as only the hub of a "far-flung commonwealth" of Mormon settlements. Fed by a constant supply of church converts coming from the East and around the world, Church leaders often assigned groups of church members to establish settlements throughout the West. Beginning with settlements along Utah's Wasatch front (Salt Lake City, then Bountiful and Weber Valley, then Provo and Utah Valley), irrigation enabled the establishment of fairly large pioneer populations in an area that Jim Bridger had advised Young would be inhospitable for the cultivation of crops because of frost. Throughout the remainder of the 1800s, Mormon pioneers called by Brigham Young would leave Salt Lake City and establish hundreds of other settlements in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, California, Canada, and Mexico. At the time, Young had an expansionist's view of the territory he and the Mormon pioneers were settling, calling it Deseret - which church founder Smith had taught meant "honeybee" - hence the beehive which can still be found on the Utah flag, and the state's motto, "Industry."


Religion
A majority of the state's residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormons or the LDS Church. As of 2007, the percentage of Utahns that are counted as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is 60.7 percent of the state's population. The Salt Lake Tribune has projected that Latter-day Saints may no longer be a majority in the state, not just the case in Salt Lake City, as early as 2030, though the LDS Church refuted the Tribune's findings by publicly reporting its end-of-year 2007 statistics in January 2008 that 1.8 million (or 72 percent of total Utahns) are recorded on its rolls.
The LDS Church's doctrine's has historically had a strong regional influence and as historically law makers have been church members, the effect has contributed to the state's restrictiveness towards alcohol and gambling. Another doctrine effect can be seen in its high birth rate (25 percent higher than the national average; the highest for a state in the U.S.). The Mormons in Utah tend to have conservative views when it comes to most political issues and the majority of voter-age Utahns are unaffiliated voters (60%) who vote overwhelmingly Republican.
The self identified religious affiliations of adults (note that numbers below do not include children, a possible cause of the disparity with the percentage identified above, though it does include non-lds mormons) living in Utah are:
Latter day saints/Mormon 58%
Unaffiliated 16%
Catholic 10%
Evangelicals 7%
Mainline Protestants 6%
Black Protestant Churches 1%
Don't know or Refused to specify 1%
Totals are rounded. Jehovah's Witness, Orthodox, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other world religions each make up less than .5%. Other faiths total 1%.


Early suffrage
Utah granted full voting rights to women in 1870, 26 years before becoming a state. Among all U.S. states, only Wyoming granted suffrage to women earlier. However, in 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Act was passed by Congress in an effort to curtail excessive Mormon influence in the territorial government. One of the provisions of the Act was the repeal of suffrage; full suffrage was not returned until Utah was admitted to the Union in 1896. To this day, Utah is one of the 15 states that has not ratified the U.S. Equal Rights Amendment.


Politics

Utah votes predominately Republican. Self-identified Latter-day Saints are more likely to vote for Republican ticket than non-Mormons, and Utah is one of the most Republican states in the nation. Utah is much more conservative than the United States as a whole, particularly on social issues. Compared to other Republican-dominated states in the Mountain West such as Wyoming, Utah politics have a more moralistic and less libertarian character.


Miscellaneous

Due to its high total birth rate (highest of any state in the U.S.), Utah has the youngest population of any state.


Utah ranks 47th in teenage pregnancy, last in percentage of births out of wedlock, last in number of abortions per capita, and last in percentage of teen pregnancies terminated in abortion. Statistics relating to pregnancies and abortions may be artificially low from teenagers going out of state for abortions because of parental notification requirements.


Utah has the lowest child povertyrate in the country, despite its young demographics.


According to Internal Revenue Service tax returns, Utahns rank first among all U.S. states in the proportion of income given to charity by the wealthy.


According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, Utah has the highest rate of volunteerism.


Jell-O is the official snack food of Utah, giving rise to the term the Jell-O Belt

.
According to the National Restaurant Association, Utah has the lowest rate of restaurants per capita, with 4,691 restaurants at a rate of 1.90 restaurants per person.


According to Walmart, Utah has the fewest number of Walmart stores per capita at .081 per 100,000 people.


High School Musical 3 was filmed in Salt Lake City at East High School.
Home of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.



1 comment:

Mormons Are Christian said...

Mormons Are New Testament Christians, not Creedal Christians

The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) is often accused by Evangelical pastors of not believing in Christ and, therefore, not being a Christian religion. This article helps to clarify such misconceptions by examining early Christianity's theology relating to baptism, the Godhead, the deity of Jesus Christ and His Atonement.

Baptism:

Early Christian churches, practiced baptism of youth (not infants) by immersion by the father of the family. The local congregation had a lay ministry. An early Christian Church has been re-constructed at the Israel Museum, and the above can be verified. The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) continues baptism and a lay ministry as taught by Jesus’ Apostles. Early Christians were persecuted for keeping their practices sacred, and prohibiting non-Christians from witnessing them.

The Trinity:

A literal reading of the New Testament points to God and Jesus Christ , His Son , being separate , divine beings , united in purpose. . To whom was Jesus praying in Gethsemane, and Who was speaking to Him and his apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration? The Nicene Creed”s definition of the Trinity was influenced by scribes translating the Greek manuscripts into Latin. The scribes embellished on a passage explaining the Trinity , which is the Catholic and Protestant belief that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The oldest versions of the epistle of 1 John, read: "There are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water and the blood and these three are one." Scribes later added "the Father, the Word and the Spirit," and it remained in the epistle when it was translated into English for the King James Version, according to Dr. Bart Ehrman, Chairman of the Religion Department at UNC- Chapel Hill. He no longer believes in the Nicene Trinity. . Scholars agree that Early Christians believed in an embodied God; it was neo-Platonist influences that later turned Him into a disembodied Spirit. Harper’s Bible Dictionary entry on the Trinity says “the formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found in the New Testament.” The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) views the Trinity as three separate divine beings , in accord with the earliest Greek New Testament manuscripts.

Theosis

Divinization, narrowing the space between God and humans, was also part of Early Christian belief. St. Athanasius of Alexandria (Eastern Orthodox) wrote, regarding theosis, "The Son of God became man, that we might become God." . The Gospel of Thomas (which pre-dates the 4 Gospels, but was considered non-canonical by the Nicene Council) quotes the Savior: "He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him," (Gospel of Thomas 50, 28-30, Nag Hammadi Library in English, J.M.Robinson, 1st ed 1977; 3rd ed. 1988) The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) agrees with Athanasius and Thomas regarding theosis.

In the words of an LDS Apostle, Bruce R. McConkie: "There is and can only be one who is supreme, who is the head and to who all others are subject". Becoming like God is not saying we will ever be equal to Him, frankly we won't and can't. He, and only He, will forever be worshipped by us.

The Deity of Jesus Christ

Mormons hold firmly to the deity of Christ. For members of the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS), Jesus is not only the Son of God but also God the Son. Evangelical pollster George Barna found in 2001 that while only 33 percent of American Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists (28 percent of Episcopalians) agreed that Jesus was “without sin”, 70 percent of Mormons believe Jesus was sinless.

The Cross and Christ’s Atonement:

The Cross became popular as a Christian symbol in the Fifth Century A.D. . Members of the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) believe the proper Christian symbol is Christ’s resurrection , not his crucifixion on the Cross. Many Mormon chapels feature paintings of the resurrected Christ or His Second Coming. Furthermore, members of the church believe the major part of Christ’s atonement occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane as Christ took upon him the sins of all mankind.

Definition of “Christian”: .

But Mormons don’t term Catholics and Protestants “non-Christian”. They believe Christ’s atonement applies to all mankind. The dictionary definition of a Christian is “of, pertaining to, believing in, or belonging to a religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ”: All of the above denominations are followers of Christ, and consider him divine, and the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament. They all worship the one and only true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and address Him in prayer as prescribed in The Lord’s Prayer. It’s important to understand the difference between Reformation and Restoration when we consider who might be authentic Christians. . Early Christians had certain rituals which defined a Christian , which members of the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) continue today. . If members of the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) embrace early Christian theology, they are likely more “Christian” than their detractors.

• The Need for a Restoration of the Christian Church:

The founder of the Baptist Church in America, Roger Williams, just prior to leaving the church he established, said this: "There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking.” (Picturesque America, p. 502.) Martin Luther had similar thoughts: "Nor can a Christian believer be forced beyond sacred Scriptures,...unless some new and proved revelation should be added; for we are forbidden by divine law to believe except what is proved either through the divine Scriptures or through Manifest revelation." He also wrote: "I have sought nothing beyond reforming the Church in conformity with the Holy Scriptures. The spiritual powers have been not only corrupted by sin, but absolutely destroyed; so that there is now nothing in them but a depraved reason and a will that is the enemy and opponent of God. I simply say that Christianity has ceased to exist among those who should have preserved it." The Lutheran, Baptist and Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) churches recognize an apostasy from early Christianity. The Lutheran and Baptist churches have attempted reform, but Mormonism (and Roger Williams, and perhaps Martin Luther) require inspired restoration, so as to re-establish an unbroken line of authority and apostolic succession.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .* * *

• Christ-Like Lives:

The 2005 National Study of Youth and Religion published by UNC-Chapel Hill found that Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) youth (ages 13 to 17) were more likely to exhibit these Christian characteristics than Evangelicals (the next most observant group):

1. Attend Religious Services weekly
2. Importance of Religious Faith in shaping daily life – extremely important
3. Believes in life after death
4. Does NOT believe in psychics or fortune-tellers
5. Has taught religious education classes
6. Has fasted or denied something as spiritual discipline
7. Sabbath Observance
8. Shared religious faith with someone not of their faith
9. Family talks about God, scriptures, prayer daily
10. Supportiveness of church for parent in trying to raise teen (very supportive)
11. Church congregation has done an excellent job in helping teens better understand their own sexuality and sexual morality

LDS Evangelical
1. 71% 55%
2. 52 . . 28
3. 76 . .62
4. 100 . 95
5. 42 . . 28
6. 68 . . 22
7. 67 . . 40
8. 72 . . 56
9. 50 . . 19
10 65 . . 26
11 84 . . 35

So what do you think the motivation is for the Evangelical preachers to denigrate the Mormon Church? You would think Evangelical preachers would be emulating Mormon practices (a creed to believe, a place to belong, a calling to live out, and a hope to hold onto) which were noted by Methodist Rev. Kenda Creasy Dean of the Princeton Theological Seminary, as causing Mormon teenagers to “top the charts” in Christian characteristics. It seems obvious pastors shouldn't be denigrating a church based on First Century Christianity, with high efficacy. The only plausible reason to denigrate Mormons is for Evangelical pastors to protect their flock (and their livelihood).

Further Reading: http://jesuschrist.lds.org/SonOfGod/eng/