The Light of The World Church

I was always a believer in Joseph Smith’s quote:  “Mormonism is truth…The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or … being … prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men.”

Actually accepting this always put me on the Liberal end of Mormonism, as I was willing to talk to anyone and go to any church. I felt I could learn just as much about God in a Buddhist temple as in an LDS sacrament meeting.

I visited just about every kind of religion you can imagine, but one of the most interesting experiences came when visiting La Iglesia Luz del Mundo [The Church of the Light of the World].

Small Placard in Salt Lake City

Their building was half a block from my SLC apartment. Late one night I was walking and I saw people coming in and out of the church, at 10 p.m. It was not Christmas or any other common Christian holiday.

From my apartment window I could see the church and checked periodically. By the time I went to bed they were still there, it was after midnight. This was curious to me to say the least.

The next day I walked by the church to see when services were. They have services  every day, 3 times a day. I decided to go to one that night at 8 p.m.

I want to press into the mind of the reader that this was a most curious experience which included many strange things visually and audibly and in just about every way, I will do my best to describe all of these details. Also an important note the church was entirely in Spanish (I am fluent). I was the only white guy present. This is significant in terms of culture and customs.

First, appearances: this building is a historic building in Salt Lake City, it even has the plaque marking it as a historic site. However, the lettering, billboards and decorations are painfully anachronistic and cheap looking (see picture of the name of the church for example).The letters are cheap black and white letters that are normally used on the windows of office buildings. And the letters are not even put on straight. Most American’s would find it unbearably tacky.

The juxtaposition of historic architecture and some tacky not perfectly straight lettering

The inside had the same anachronistic mixing of beautiful, turn of the century Gothic (and Romanesque) architecture, with tacky plastic lettering and fake flowers. They have a very ostentatious display, almost like the Vatican with a large gold chair and red carpet, but everything was so obviously plastic and fake it just came across as tacky (see pictures).

The ornate front of the church. The throne and fake flowers are just tacky. Notice the screen projector on top of the pipes. The organ is not used. Names and lettering on each side (also unevenly spaced).

Notice the date on the pillar: 6 April 1926

This symbol is throughout the church, not really sure what it means.

From the pictures you will likely also notice some other curious things (at least I did). If you look closely under the two names written down the pillars you will see two dates. Under Samuel, February 14, 2014, under Aaron, April 6, 1926. April 6? I wondered what the significance was. As it turns out, after talking to some members after the meeting I found out that April 6 1926 is the year the church was, listen closely, “restored.”

I asked, “Aaron formed your church on April 6?”

“No, we believe that Christ formed the church, Aaron was just called as an Apostle to restore the church.”

Sound familiar? Well if you ever taught the missionary lessons it should. It was uncanny how similar the language they used was to that which I used on my mission.

Apparently, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, Aaron Joaquin “restored” the Church on April 6, 1926 down in Mexico during a time of religion upheaval. He was persecuted for his beliefs, but he still kept preaching and stuck to his belief. He started a small congregation that grew and was ostracized by their neighbors. They were persecuted and even driven out until they formed their own city in rural Mexico. They built their city centered around the temple, a large ornate building they eventually built (not making this stuff up). Their temples are now throughout Mexico, Central America, South America, and a few in the United States.

As I learned more of the history, multiple times I felt like pinching myself and saying out loud, “Is this for real?” It was definitely a twilight zone experience. I felt like I was meeting Mormonism’s younger, Mexican brother. 

A picture of the main temple of La Luz Del Mundo church in Mexico.

I did feel like the cult of the leader was perhaps even stronger than in Mormonism. The other date on the wall, 14 of February, is the birthday of Aaron’s successor, Samuel. “Why 2014?” I asked. “Because that was the most recent celebration of it (strange, I know, maybe the guy is sensitive about his age).” So it turns out that the current Apostle’s birthday is basically the biggest festival they have (a little narcissistic perhaps?). These posters pictured below were outside recently (as it turns out Samuel began his ministry in 1964). Also, and most interestingly, what was the reason for them being there all night long?

Despite the fact of that they meet three times a day; they do not usually stay all night. What was the occasion? “The apostle of God is sick.” Yes that is right Samuel Joaquin had the flu or something, and so these people were doing 24-hour all-day all-night prayer sessions for him. People would leave to go to work, and they would sort of “take shifts” during the night, but there were people praying (and a lot more as you will soon see) all night long. Wow I thought, that is dedication, or at the very least, insanity. I am not sure when exactly Mr. Joaquin got better (I did not bother to check up), but one thing I am pretty sure of is that a lot of other people got sick from lack of sleep.

A poster recently outside the church. It says: "Apostle of Jesus Christ, Samuel Joaquin Flores, The Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, celebrates 50 years of communion apostolic anniversary."

Okay to the meeting. It was instantly apparent that it was an extremely conservative church. The congregation was separated by gender, women on one side (the speaker’s left) and men on the other. The women were all very modestly dressed. This was not like Mormon women who sometimes “push the limit” and show their knee caps or even (gasp!) some thigh. These women were covered quite literally head to foot. They all covered their hair with a sort of scarf and wore ankle-length dresses. Obviously no sleeveless dresses were around. There were none of the spicy Latina girls you would meet at the Catholic Church wearing miniskirts and low-cut tops. Not at all. Anyways enough about the women!

They read a letter from the “Apostle” about how he was under the weather and needed their support. They even put the letter up onto the projector screen (you can see the projector screen in the picture, but the screen is up).  After this there were three or four people who spoke. What was curious was that at the end of every speaker’s talk they would get super emotional and start to cry. Not only would they cry, but people in the audience would also start crying and appearing as if they were in emotional trauma. Some would even approach the stand and prostrate on the ground as if in pain. But all the emotion was so obviously fake. As soon as the speaker was done he would go down and start talking to someone (I would watch them) and they were perfectly fine, no tears or emotion in their face at all.

All speakers spoke way too long, and all were over-the-top ridiculously emotional. This was like Fast and Testimony meeting times 500 on the fake-emotion scale. At least in Fast and Testimony meeting some speakers show genuine emotion, and lots don’t cry at all. But here it was every single speaker.

Then it was time for a song. I like singing. I picked up the hymn book, turned to the song, stood up with the rest of the congregation (which is what they do apparently), and began singing along with them. I did not know the tune, but luckily neither did anyone else. It is against their religion to use musical instruments (they have the organ because it is a historic building and they can’t take it out), so everyone just sings whatever, but most Latinos do not have formal musical training, so it was pretty bad to say the least. And it gets worse.

These people sing. I mean they sing. They made that annoying guy in sacrament meeting who sings two decibels above the rest of the congregation combined seem like a muted sheep. These guys belted it out like there was an air-raid and they needed to warn their neighbor three blocks away. It was incredible. I actually liked it (as it turns out I am that annoying guy in sacrament meeting, so for once I fit right in). However, about half way through the song I noticed something strange.  I heard what sounded like dying cats. I also noticed the song was getting quieter. I looked around trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. I noticed some members had stopped singing and were crying out as if overcome with emotion. They had even fallen to their knees on the floor. Others had gone into the aisle way and were basically lying on the ground crying and moaning almost as loud as they had sung.

As the song progressed, so did the number who switched from singing to crying. It was like there was a sniper picking people off from the balcony. Pretty soon everyone was down for the count. Everyone except me of course. There I was, already singled out because I was the only tall white guy, but now I was the only person standing and singing. I was not going to fall down and start crying in fake emotion, so I just stood there alone and sang. Not knowing the song didn’t help. It was awkward to say the least.

After the song was over, everyone returned to their seats, and it was like nothing had happened. The tears gone, no pain or emotion were left on the faces.

And you can’t end a meeting any better than that.

I stayed and talked to a few people. One missionary guy talked to me about their beliefs. But after talking for all of 30 seconds I realized that, though he tried to make it a discussion, there was no room for questioning. What he said was the truth, no matter what.

I left the building feeling like I had left this weird wormhole out of the modern world. Then I remembered all the similarities between Mormonism. This really was Mormonism’s younger Mexican brother. Samuel Joaquin is basically their Brigham Young (likely with quite a few similarities).  I used to wonder what it would be like to live during the early days of the church. Perhaps now I knew.

I had shiver run down my spine. I was glad it was over and I will never again have to sing a made up tune A Capella in the middle of bunch of crying Hispanics. Praise Samuel Joaquin!