Is the Mormon Church crumbling?!!

I've already had a Family member and a best friend warn me that it was prophesied in the last days that even the very elect would be deceived. They ask me, "How do I know that I'm not just being deceived? First I try not to laugh, then I ask them, "who prophesied that?" Of course, they have no idea. It's a Mormon Doctrine, folklore, just like Salt Lake will be the wickedest city in the world, blah, blah, blah. Then I say that the Bible warns of False Prophets in the last days that will lead people astray and "how do they know that Joseph Smith and Hinckley aren't false Prophets?" Of course, that burning in their bosom is what tells them it's true!! Forget common sense, study or knowledge, it's all about warm fuzzy feelings.

I just mess with them because of course, they are "TBM's"(Truly Blinded Mormons) and wouldn't know the truth if it smacked them in the head. Hinckley could marry two women today in the middle of State street and they'd believe it was commanded of God. I tell them that I will pray and fast for them, that they will be able to find out the Church is false..lol!! Then, like my best friend, they usually bear their testimony to me. It's hard to keep a straight face when they keep saying I know this and I know that, when I used to say the same thing. I just find humor in how sure I was and how sure they are now when they won't even look at any evidence at all. They really think that they can bring me back to the "truth" and that I'm being deceived by Satan. Of course, they don't want to hear a thing about what I've discovered about the Church, because they know it's true, God told them so. Anyway, we can only hope that with the Internet and word of mouth, etc, it will just keep spreading, the growth slowing,etc.

Whoever said that the growth was slowing more outside of the US is correct I believe. After all, that's where all of the explosive growth came from in the 80's and 90's, South & Central America especially. However, now that well is beginning to dry up. Maybe they need to hit the sun and the moon to start baptizing those people. In my former mission....one area that I was in that was supposed to grow so much, still has a branch in each city and is still a District. In another area where I was, the Branch is gone!! I was in a big city that was made a stake right before I left and it still is a Stake with 6 wards and the activity is awful. This was a city that had over 6,500 members of record and on a good week right now, they get around 300 combined in all the wards or about 50 a ward which is what it was when I left.

It has been over a decade since I left, so with all the baptisms in the last 10+ years, they have the same number of people coming to Church each week. Not a good sign if the Morg thinks they are growing. I'm sure this is the case in many places, especially in South & Central America, as we learned from the Census Stats. The Church has been banging the drum of baptisms for decades, bragging about their growth, filling the earth like that rock and if that starts to really dry up, well, everyone will begin to take note, especially the current members. It's already happening in South and Central America.

It's a long process, but little by little, the Church will continue to shrink. It certainly peaked in the late 80's to mid 90's and I honestly feel that they will never see those days again. The Church will most likely exist forever but what size will it be? Of course, we already know that the 12,250,000 that they claim as members is over inflated dramatically and that at the most, 3,000,000- 4,000,000, are active. That doesn't bode well for their future if they plan to grow to 50,000,000 or 100,000,000, etc. It will never happen as long as things continue as they currently are. Now if they dig up the hill Cumorah and find billions of bones and millions of breastplates, swords, helmets, etc, that would be another matter, but as we all know here, that isn't gonna happen either.