Delusions, Part 1

I lay awake the entire night, staring at the corner by the closet where I imagined he would appear.  Waiting.  Wondering what it would feel like to be taken away in a twinkling of an eye along with all of the other righteous elect.

Since I knew the world was coming to an end, I hadn't studied for any of my midterms.  Why should I?  Instead I spent time pondering life, reading the scriptures, praying, and feeling that unidentifiable feeling that only comes when you know that your father is a chosen prophet of God, the one who would usher in the new millennium.  

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The revelations began when I was probably 13 or 14, when my dad was the stake mission president of our stake in Pleasant Grove, Utah.  They started out as ones that the Leaders of the Church had stated were acceptable:  they had to do directly with my father's immediate family and their welfare.  

The first one that I can remember was that the Lord revealed to my father that he would be called to be a Mission President in England, and that we would all move there while he was serving in that capacity.

That never happened.  And Dad was bitter about it, blaming those in authority directly above him had blocked the Lord's will.  Then he began receiving revelations that there are two types of people in the world, the Elect, and Wicked.  The Elect were few, the Wicked were many, and Dad spent many hours in the following weeks classifying people we knew in a green spiral notebook.  The tricky thing was, many of the Church's leaders, both local and at Church Headquarters, were actually on the Wicked list.  They infiltrated their way into Church leadership positions through deception and greed, wanting nothing but power over others in order to secretly abuse and persecute the weak and humble.

And who was at the very top of the Wicked list?  Current Mormon prophet and revered servant of God, Ezra Taft Benson.