Jesus in mortality railed most of all against hypocrites, or what me might term actors or pretenders (the Greek word from which hypocrite is derived means just that: an actor!). His words against them were particularly sharp when religion was the faked façade. He said to the religious leaders of his day:
"You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,
‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God" (Matt. 6:7 – 9, NLT).
Today he warns of similar sentiments among his people, hypocrites who claim to know him but in actuality do not:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, darkness covereth the earth, and gross darkness the minds of the people, and all flesh has become corrupt before my face. Behold, vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth.... And upon my house shall it begin...first among those among you, saith the Lord, who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord" (D&C 112:23 – 26).
Jesus gave direction on how to know when such a hypocrite comes before us: consider the manner of his praying. Are the words of his mouth drawn out in decorated rhetoric perhaps impossible for the heart of a mere mortal to match? Then it may be a sign:
"When you pray, don't be like those show-offs who love to stand up and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners. They do this just to look good. I can assure you that they already have their reward. When you pray, go into a room alone and close the door. Pray to your Father in private. He knows what is done in private and will reward you. When you pray, don't talk on and on as people do who don't know God. They think God likes to hear long prayers. Don't be like them. Your Father knows what you need even before you ask." (Matt. 6:5 – 8, CEV).
The hypocrisy of long-winded, flowery praying is that the heart of man has to play catch up with the grand sentiments sent up! The savior taught instead a pattern of prayer that was simple, like one man speaking to another, and this because God is a man. A story from the life of Daniel Tyler, an early Mormon, will illustrate the point through on occasion when he heard the prophet Joseph Smith give instruction on prayer:
"[In] 1836, [Joseph Smith] stated that he was out of firewood and that he had no time to get up any, for the officers of the law were continually on his track. So some of the brethren thought they would turn out and get him some wood. Father and some two other brethren took their teams to haul, and myself and three other boys went to chop the wood into sled lengths. It was the last of December and snow was on the ground.
"When noon came we were all called to dinner at Joseph's house. The table was loaded down with cornmeal mush and milk, and at the bidding of Joseph we all stepped forward to our places around the table, standing on our feet. Joseph asked Joshua Holman, who was one of the wood haulers, to ask a blessing upon the food. He went at his duty with all his soul.
"As he had been a Methodist exhorter before joining the Church, he commenced to call upon 'the great and mighty God who sat upon the top of a topless throne,' to 'look down and bless the food' and asked many other blessings to rest upon the Prophet, etc.
"As soon as he closed Brother Joseph said, 'Brother Joshua, don't let me ever hear you ask another such a blessing;' and then before we took our seats he stated his reasons for making this remark, and showed us how inconsistent such ideas were, and told us many things about God and who He was" (Daniel Tyler quoted in the "Recollections of the Prophet Joseph Smith," The Juvenile Instructor, 27 [1892]).
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