Over the past three years, my wife and I have enjoyed visits to out of the way places. We’ve enjoyed the experiences to the bush of Alaska and presently here in Colorado . It was in these places that we came upon two LDS who had left the church for no particular reason that they could remember. It was not as if it strained our friendship in discussing it with them. It was as if the Church had become a memory forgotten.

A recent conversation with my wife (we talk now and again) worked around to a discussion of people leaving the church. Now I don't want to step on any toes here. I know the reasons people leave the church are varied. Further, I know nearly everyone struggles with something sometime in their life. Yet since joining neither my wife nor I have had those serious a struggle.

I recall reading a statistic about how many active members had spent at least a year inactive and it was quite high. (Sorry I don't recall the figures) I have known a Bishop or two who have become inactive in the church, bringing to mind that poor DNA scientist who was excommunicated. But I'd urge caution that we not engage in value judgments regarding why people leave the church. Our duty is to love those who leave and pray that they find their way back. Having said that though, my wife and I discussed the interesting question of whether one has to engage in a kind of denial to leave.

Now clearly people can go inactive while retaining a testimony. Lots of people leave not because they disbelief in God or the Church but because they are angry. Perhaps at God. Perhaps at the Church. Perhaps at the members. But that's not where I wish to travel with this.

Let's presume that most actually had a testimony given by revelation. (And clearly not all Mormons do - indeed I sometimes feel pessimistic and wonder how many within the church really do). But if there have been real spiritual experiences in their lives, don't you have to seriously deny them so as to leave? I know, memories being what they are, even profound experiences can fade. And it’s clear that in the Book of Mormon we have experiences most profoundly with Laman and Lemuel who had SEEN manifestations of Angels. But if they become stale, we can come to doubt them. So, there is the importance of not just having a testimony, but continually remembering, sharing and renewing it. But to what extent do we have to deny the experience of our spiritual experiences to even re-interpret them as "not real"?

Constantine I , Constantine the Great (272-337) “The First Christian Emperor” by virtue of a deathbed baptism. His Edict of Milan (313) provided supposed religious tolerance to everything Christian. However, the edict came through his desire to mold Christianity to be consistent with his plans for a growing Empire. "As long as the state had been indifferent or hostile, it had classed all Christians, heretical, schismatic, orthodox, together, as equally criminal before the law. Now (313) that it had chosen to become an interested factor, it at once found itself obliged to ”discriminate". It could not conceivably support two sects or two bishops at the same time in the same place." With the conversion of the princes, the tendency to meddle in the internal affairs of the church became more pronounced. Who was more interested than the emperor in knowing which party represented the "true" Christian tradition? The temptation was great to refer the dispute to the emperor. And Constantine wanted to mold a state religion.

The most fundamental beliefs of Christianity were in dispute and it was left for Constantine and his newly converted princes to solve those disputes. Already Constantine had tried unsuccessfully to appease the Donatist quarrel in the west when his attention was attracted to the division of the church in the east by the Arian controversy. It was concerned with the nature of God, with the nature of the Son, and more especially with the relation of the Son to the Father, and, later, with the nature and the relation of the Holy Ghost to the Father and to the Son. In the darkness of Apostasy and after three generations of absolute persecution, Christianity was defining itself anew. However to the emporer, religious divisions meant political divisions, political divisions would not be endured by any Emperor.

Constantine was the lone author of the Council of Nicea. Eusebius gives him full credit and did not even mention the Bishop who presided at the conference. Constantine, himself, takes full credit. Both before and after he spoke of it as the synod he had summoned. Dr, Funk (Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen , t. 1. III, ch. XII) has accumulated many texts and many arguments to show that Constantine acted in his own personal name and on his own initiative.

This unbaptised “Christian” formed it “under the inspiration of God” and out of his own political self interest.

The Bishops arrived at Nicea some time in May but did not begin until June because the most important person had not arrived yet: The Emperor, Gaius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus

We have been taught that it was expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice; not a sacrifice of man or animal; but it must be an infinite and eternal sacrifice from an infinite and eternal God of His Son. Why an infinite atonement for a finite creation? Absurd.

The human mind was created in God's image not only to conceive but also to believe; yet it is supposed here that a "Christian" must have certain boundary lines (a certain agnosis) within which it may both conceive and believe, and beyond them it cannot go. It can know only the limited, and the conditionally limited, the agnostic Christian says. That being true might we not enquire, how is the human mind—it being finite—is to have a conception or a belief about things infinite, as in a God? With only a finite creation what has God to do with Himself forever, playing mind games?

This agnosticism Christian pronounces The Book of Mormon to be the productions of finite men instead of an infinite God. What he/she prescribes as Christian has nothing to do with divine revelation....except an attack on its foundation stone.

Thus, if there is an infinite realm of spirits that as finite beings, we can know nothing whatever of their existence. Such a "believer" travels half way to not concieving of an eternal God at all in believing only His finite creation.

The LDS hold out the hope that the time will come when we shall know God and all things infinite; we mean in the sense of comprehending Him and His Creation. For the scriptures tell us that His Son was with Him from "the Beginning" and curiously His Son IS necessarily His Son. A moment of "Dah".

The agnostic Christian holds to the necessity of a law of logic that man cannot have a rational faith in the existence, power, and infiniteness of any being or force unless it is a being or force that he can fully comprehend?

No. God certainly can, by revelation, make known his existence, and can reveal to us the fact that He himself and his creation, are infinite.

"Worlds without number have I created. * * * * Behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power, and there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they to man. * * * * The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; * * * * and as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof, even so shall another come, and there is no end to my works, neither to my words."

This passage implies constant movement in this infinite universe. The movement in the universe, the organization and then the disintegration of worlds and world systems is in the direction of the development of, and for the increase of the power and glory of truly immortal Intelligences.