Splinter Groups Kingston Part 2

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. What are some of the doctrines of the Latter-day Church of Christ? Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. Yesterday we began looking at a group that is really a part of the state of Utah, you might say. It's the Latter-day Church of Christ, otherwise known as the Davis County Cooperative Society.

A nickname given to it is also The Order. This is a group that is led by a man by the name of Paul Kingston, and as we've been doing in this series, we are looking at some of the smaller, what we call splinter groups of the Restoration Movement. They look at Joseph Smith as being the principal author of what they believe, and many of them, as we have said, think that they alone represent Christ's true church. Well, the Latter-day Church of Christ certainly does believe that. Today we're going to be looking at some of the teachings of this church. What are some of the doctrines that either put it alongside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or doctrines that oppose what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe to this day? So first of all, we should mention, Eric, that the Latter-day Church of Christ holds to the same four set of scriptures that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold to, and they, of course, are based in Salt Lake City.

That would be the Book of Mormon, the Bible, the King James Version, as well as the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. We ought to mention with the Bible, they accept Article 8, so if you're going to use the Bible with somebody from this group, you're going to have to understand that they might reject what you have to say based on what a lot of Latter-day Saints will do by pointing to Article 8. So you would have to use a lot of the same responses with a person of this group, as you would the LDS Church, and show that a lot of these verses that they think have been mistranslated or erroneously transmitted are not really what they've been led to believe. They're also going to reject anything after 1890. 1890 is when the Manifesto came and polygamy was banned, and they think that was a bad thing, as we talked about yesterday. They do not accept the fourth president of the church, Wilford Woodruff, as being authoritative to have been able to do that. So this church does not hold to the two official declarations.

Official Declaration 1, which banned polygamy, and Official Declaration 2, which allowed blacks to hold the priesthood that was done in 1978. This church also accepts that God is a man with flesh and bones. D&C 130, verse 22, they would accept that.

They accept free agency, that everybody has the choice to be able to make their own decisions. They do believe in pre-existence. They believe in the three kingdoms of glory, the celestial, terrestrial, and telestial kingdoms. And they believe that celestial godhood with family relationships is available in the celestial kingdom.

Now this group does have a website, Bill. Not every polygamous group does. They talk about celestial godhood on the website, and this is what it says. God is a man who spiritually evolved to the point that he became omnipotent and omniscient. He created children in spirit form and desires that they also evolve into perfect beings. Bill, what do you think about this when it says that God spiritually evolved where he became omnipotent and omniscient? This teaching is very similar to what Latter-day Saints are told to also believe when it comes to a human being eventually getting the ability to be omnipotent and omniscient.

Now here's why I think this wording is quite silly. Basically what you're saying is that a finite being is all of a sudden going to inherit something that you might say is infinite. For instance, all knowing. You'd have to know every single thing that's ever happened, is happening, and will happen. An infinite number of potentials and understandings.

No finite being can inherit such a thing. An example that's been used is, it's like saying I can drive from San Diego to Salt Lake City in so many hours. But if you were to say it's going to take an infinite number of hours to drive from San Diego to Salt Lake City, obviously you're never going to get there. But yet this is the kind of promise that is not only given to these people in this organization, but also that's the same exact promise that was given by Spencer W. Kimball to Latter-day Saints in his book The Miracle of Forgiveness. Because he says very clearly that a Latter-day Saint who becomes a God will also be omnipotent and omniscient. He uses the same two words. This is a group, Bill, that is not just a theological cult, but it is a sociological cult. And there are two laws that I want to talk about now, because I think when we understand what these laws are, we'll see the control that the leaders have.

The first one is called the law of one above another. And Eldon Kingston wrote this, to be one with each other means that each one of us is one with the one above. And so the chain begins with Heavenly Father, Jesus, Brother Paul, numbered men. Bill, what is a numbered man? Again, we have a term that needs to be defined.

And in this group, the term numbered men refers to men in the group who are married and ordained. In other words, they do have some sort of authority within the organization. But let me go back, Eric, to what you said about that phrase, law of one above another. Because a lot of people, when they read that expression, might be thinking that maybe they're going along with what Paul wrote in Philippians 2, 3, where he said to count others more significant than yourself.

It sounds like that could be the way they're defining this phrase, but that's not the way they're defining it. And I think you bring that out when you talk about how this chain of authority begins with, as they say, Heavenly Father, Jesus, Brother Paul. And that would be, of course, Paul Kingston, who's the current leader of the church, as well as numbered men, et cetera. This is telling the members of this organization that you look to those in authority above you as having, I guess you could say, a more supreme authority than even your own thoughts.

And you do what you are told within this hierarchical structure. In other words, it's similar to the LDS Church in many ways, because let's say a bishop has a certain particular view. He is not supposed to contradict a stake president. A stake president most certainly shouldn't contradict, let's say, a 70 in the church. A 70 has no authority to speak over an apostle, and an apostle certainly has no authority to contradict the president of the church.

So it works kind of in the same way as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One Sunday School manual says this, When we think of the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the first thing that we should think about is obedience. We should always do what our parents and teachers want us to do. Brother Eldon taught us that the law of obedience to the one over us is one of the first principles of the order.

We should be obedient to our brothers and sisters. And this is the authoritarian structure that this group has, and let's be clear. In order for a group like this to function, you have to have this type of authoritarian structure. You don't want just anybody within the group questioning the leadership, proving perhaps even that the leadership might be wrong on a given subject, because once it can be shown that they are able to make mistakes, that puts the first domino in a tipping point.

And once that domino starts going, you can imagine the problems it's going to cause for those that are in authority. That could be why we don't usually hear the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints admitting to their mistakes. It's not that I haven't heard some anecdotal stories being told by some of the leaders of silly things they did as a kid, but not when it comes to laying down the hammer of doctrine. They don't admit to mistakes in that. Remember on the 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, they didn't apologize for that. They said, we regret. And I think it was Henry B. Eyring who had to make it very clear, we don't apologize.

But he did say, because I heard him say it, we regret what took place at the Mountain Meadows 150 years prior. So we have the law of one above another. The second principle is known as the law of satisfaction, which is called the golden rule. And according to the church's website, it says, as a parent, a manager or a leader, individuals must exercise their position through patience, long suffering and service to others, never by force. Each individual should create a place where others can thrive, treating them as they would like to be treated. Finally, with regard to our peers, do unto them as you would have them do unto you.

Support them in their endeavors and emphasize with their challenges. So there are several different ideas as part of these two principles. The first would be called pleasing obedience. And what that means is you're thinking first about the church's needs. And then first time obedience is doing what a person is told the first time and feeling good about doing it. I think you're already seeing how putting those two together, pleasing obedience and first time obedience, getting the person to obey who's above him, the parent, and then the parent to the church leaders and so on and so forth.

And so you have this sociological cult mentality that many polygamous groups have. Well, let's look at pleasing obedience, where you mentioned how it's thinking first about the church's needs. I would probably argue that that's not very different than what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches its people. The one thing that you do not do as a member of the LDS Church is to bring any type of embarrassment to the church itself. And that would include, of course, bringing any embarrassment to the church leaders. You just don't do that. And I find that many times when people are getting in trouble with the LDS Church, it's probably because they have caused some sort of embarrassment to the church.

That's just something you do not do as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A secular Dr. Amy Osman Cook wrote a book called Why They Believe, a case study in contemporary polygamy. It was written in 2011, and she did some studies with the Kingston group, and this is what she wrote. The Kingston organization stresses the importance of complete loyalty to the organization in thoughts, words, and actions. This loyalty is felt internally as organizational identification, and expressed externally through organizational behavior that is consistent with organization goals and directives.

And then she also said this. The organization encourages loyalty in thoughts by advocating that members restrict their thoughts and school their feelings. Members are taught to discipline their words by refraining from criticizing organizational leaders, withholding information from outsiders, and sometimes lying to protect the organization.

And members are taught to adhere to all organizational objectives with, quote-unquote, pleasing obedience. Sometimes lying to protect the organization, what we would call a Mormon version of the Muslim teaching of Al-Takiyah, that it's perfectly okay to lie in order to protect Islam. Wouldn't you agree, Eric, that to a certain degree we have seen some of those examples even within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Historians might say things that aren't clearly telling us what the circumstance is. In other words, we may easily draw a different conclusion based on how an individual words something, kind of like what we see in a lot of headlines. A headline may mislead you unless you knew what the story was really all about. The headline, it's somewhat truthful, but not absolutely truthful. Tomorrow we're going to continue looking at this organization known as the Latter-day Church of Christ, otherwise known as the Davis County Cooperative Society. That's our viewpoint on Mormonism.