Religion Position Paper

There are several reasons why I have the religious affiliation that I do. My membership, unlike that of so many, has very little to do with the choices my friends and family have made. My decision was based on reason and personal experiences. While some may say that these things are both easily influenced by parents and peers, in my case I have parents of different faith and therefore have less direct influence from them. When I was very young I was made aware of the need to research religion. The problem with this is that as a child my comprehension and knowledge were both very limited. Still I knew that I needed to figure out what was right for me. The easiest place to start for me was the Bible, since such a large number of religions use at least some part of the Bible. There were several scriptures that stood out to me while reading. One of which was Ephesians chapter two verse twenty,” And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” Since I believed the Bible to be the word of God I therefore knew that the religion I was looking for needed to have a prophet and apostles. So I searched and I searched, and I found only one. The amazing thing was that many religions have similar hierarchies in place but very few of the claim to have a prophet. While many people choose to dismiss the prophets as the old way of doing things, I learned through my reading that God is “… the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” After gathering this there were only two choices left for me, either this religion that I had found which did have Prophets and apostles was the one true church of God, or there was no true church of God on the earth at this time. This great question lead me back to the same fount of wisdom form which I had gained the other religious knowledge that I had gained. In reading about wisdom I found a very profound scripture in James that helped me answer this question. It

Cited: 1. The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Holy Bible, Ephesians 22:20, Salt Lake City, Utah 1989 2. The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Holy Bible, Hebrews 13:8,Salt Lake City, Utah 1989 3. The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Holy Bible, James 1:5-6,Salt Lake City, Utah 1989 4. The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Holy Bible, Galatians 5:22-23, Salt Lake City, Utah 1989 5. The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Holy Bible, 1 Peter 3:18-19, Salt Lake City, Utah 1989