Shortly after the publication of these writings in the early 1990's, Gileadi was excommunicated from the LDS Church. The exact reason for his removal was never made public as far as I’m aware, but it was almost certainly influenced by his openly writing about the prophesied decline of the Church, and how it will need to be corrected (which will be our next and final topic from Isaiah's prophecies).

Gileadi was allowed to re-join the Church a few years later; according to him, the whole episode was just a misunderstanding.

“Though they believe in Christ, they care more for people’s praise than for God’s… They love others to call them by ecclesiastical titles, to greet them publicly, and to hold them in admiration. In token of reserved seats in the kingdom of heaven, they take the foremost places at meetinghouses… Their fear of political repercussions outweighs their love of spiritual obligation… To assure themselves that their religion is well founded, the elitist-Pharisaic faction makes frequent mention of a key prophet or forbear on whom they base their authority. So far have they departed from the prophet’s message, however, that if some came among them who taught as he did, they would seek to kill them.”

Describing what he means by “elitism-Pharisaism,” Gileadi writes:

“We cannot ignore scriptural parallels, though they might be painful… our leadership reflects what we ourselves are, both at our best and at our worst… A paradoxical aspect of the elitist-Pharisaic phenomenon is that its pastors and teachers do in fact possess authority… however, they have taken away the key of knowledge and shut up the kingdom, neither entering it themselves nor letting others enter. As a result, they cannot answer difficult religious questions nor recognize the signs of the times. They are blind leaders of the blind and yet they assume they see things aright. They confuse their priorities and what is real.”

Gileadi takes this thought further in tLD, where he says that we should expect to see two major forms of religious corruption:
the “pollution of the temple” and the rise of what he calls “elitism-Pharisaism” among church leaders.

Naturally, in his study of Isaiah and other scriptures, Gileadi has made note of historical parallels and direct warnings about religious corruption in our time – including many of the things I’ve pointed out here before as well as deeper insights of his own. In BoI, discussing Isaiah 28 in particular, Gileadi says “Isaiah singles out for condemnation not only Ephraim’s political but also religious leaders… Like the political leaders, the religious leaders suffer from being intoxicated with the wine of self-deception.”

Before we wrap this all up, there are several other less important but mildly interesting parallels between Gileadi's writings and my own observations. Some example quotes from tLD:

“The wicked pursue the righteous, and not vice versa.”

“Because so much of television defines no clear-cut standard of right and wrong, it portrays immorality as normal.”

“We cannot simply assume that the Lord will do his part when we are unsure of what he expects us to do.”

“I know that the scriptures hold up under scrutiny, and I therefore make no apology for the message they contain.”

“Another is the war pattern. Have you wondered why the Book of Mormon writers spend so much time describing the Nephite-Lamanite wars? They detail five major wars in the second half of Alma, all of which follow the same pattern… Book of Mormon wars that don’t fit this pattern, even major wars, receive but the briefest mention.”

“Book of Mormon writers… use history itself to predict the future. They do that by choosing episodes out of their past that typify the future, describing those in detail rather than others… Repeated descriptions of such events create patterns of things – things that ‘have been and shall be.’

For example, more than seven exoduses appear in the Book of Mormon, beginning with Lehi’s exodus from the land of Jerusalem, Nephi’s exodus to the land of Nephi… Their descriptions establish an exodus pattern that is prophetic for the future.”

In his writing, Gileadi echoes a crucial point that I have made many times (e.g. here, here, here, here, and here): when the prophet Mormon took a thousand years of his people’s history and dramatically condensed it, the choices he made about what to include or emphasize can tell us a lot about what he knew we would face today.

As Gileadi says in tLD, “Book of Mormon writers… selected those things out of their own history that most nearly prefigured a fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecies. The Book of Mormon by no means covers all Nephite history… it emphasizes phenomena and events that serve as lessons for posterity.”

“And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim’s head… and said… his seed shall become a multitude of nations.” – Genesis 48