What About MORALITY?

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I'm satisfied. Welcome, Fireflies, to this episode of Outer Brightness. This week, we'll be talking about the 13th LDS Article of Faith and the question: What about morality? The 13th LDS Article of Faith states: We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men. Indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul.

We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. Here, Joseph Smith paraphrased 1 Corinthians 13:7 and Philippians 4:8. There are several topics that we can unpack out of this article of faith: from honesty to sexual ethics, endurance to morality. We're not going to dig into the topic of conscience, though that is a discussion that could also flow out of this article of faith.

For that topic, I recommend season three, episode eight, of our friend Jeremy Howard's Do Theology podcast. He and his co-host Ken discussed the seared, cleansed, and wounded conscience. It's an in-depth look at the conscience, the concept of conscience from a biblical perspective, and I highly recommend that episode. As for us, though, we're going to dig into this, the last in our series of the LDS Articles of Faith, and talk about how it relates to our journeys from Mormon to Jesus. We might even talk about the recent Netflix documentary, Murder Among the Mormons, related to the Mark Hoffman scandal.

So let's get into it. Tonight, it's just Matthew and I. Uh There may be some episodes going forward where it's one or two of us or three of us rather than all four of us. And that's just to give each of us a chance to have a break occasionally from our recording schedule. And so for tonight, it's just Matthew and I.

So Matthew, in the intro, we talked a little bit about the 13th Article of Faith. Was that important to you as a Latter-day Saint? How did you view it? If it was important, why was it important? If it wasn't, how did you view it?

Yeah. So. This article of faith wasn't something that was on my mind constantly, but I think for myself and most Latter-day Saints, we saw that as kind of the end goal of what we should be as Latter-day Saint. We should be able to point to all of these adjectives and say, I'm either seeking after this or that's what I am. It reminds me, isn't there something like that in the Boy Scouts where you say like a mantra or something that says something to that effect?

You know, trustworthy. True, kind, loyal, obedient, thrifty, brave, something like that. A Boy Scout is honest, trustworthy. I can't remember what it was. I never got my Eagle Scout, but you're right, it's something.

The Boy Scout model is something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's kind of what always reminds me of is those kind of go hand in hand. That we're just supposed to be basically good people. And so that was kind of the driving force for. how we should live and And be around other people as Latter-day Saints.

So, what about you? Yeah, yeah, same. I was, um, I didn't think about it constantly, like you said. It wasn't one of the kind of hardcore doctrinal articles of faith that really set Latter-day Saint teachings and beliefs apart from Christianity. But, like you said, it was really like the the ethics i would say article of faith right trying to trying to be honest true chaste and and uh and all of that so let's unpack then the the five adjectives that that joseph smith used in the first clause uh those were going back to it um those were uh honest true chaste benevolent virtuous so matthew as a as a latter-day saint how did you understand what it meant to be an honest person a true person a chaste person a benevolent person a virtuous person why don't you tackle those each in turn sure uh broadly i would say that those kind of just build out what it means to love your neighbor so if you love your neighbor you're going to do all of those So for an honest person, it's somebody who not only tells the truth when they're asked, but it's their whole lifestyle.

So they aren't going to try to cheat their employers. They're not going to try to cheat their neighbors. Everything they do in their life is going to be in accordance with what God has revealed. And as far as a true person, that's kind of more, I guess I would have probably interpreted that more specifically to be someone who tells the truth or who seeks after truth. You know, true principles, true doctrines, correct ideas.

A chaste person is someone who keeps his thoughts and actions clean. That's probably what I would have said. A benevolent person is someone who's kind and selfless, thinking about others. And virtue, I just kind of saw virtue as just everything else related to being good or to being correct. price-like or being Yeah, following Christ's example, I guess.

Yeah, good. Would you agree that while many Christians would disagree with Latter-day Saints on doctrinal points, that a lot of Christians would probably view Latter-day Saints as decent people? Yeah, for sure. Every time I've heard apologists talk about Latter-day Saints, they'll talk about their theology, how they disagree with it, but then they'll say they make the nicest neighbors. They're just great people, very moral and upright.

So, yeah, I think they have a lot to say about the moral character of Latter-day Saint members. In general. Yeah, definitely. That was my finding as well. I recall a time when I went on a business trip.

I live just south of Cincinnati, Ohio, and went on a road trip for business up to Cleveland, Ohio. And on the way back, I rode back with a couple of my colleagues: a gentleman who was in our labor and trust sales department, and a lady who was in our case management provider quality kind of area. And I work for an insurance company. And on the drive back, the lady was. A pretty devout Christian, and she was putting to me when she found out that I was a Latter-day Saint, she was putting to me a lot of pretty difficult questions.

And I was at that time, this would have been around like the 2007, 2008 timeframe. I was at that time pretty close to getting ready to leave the Latter-day Saint. Faith. I didn't believe the core truth claims of the Latter-day Saint Restoration movement anymore. But I was still kind of trying to hold on.

So her pretty pointed doctrinal questioning to me was it was kind of putting me on the spot because I really didn't hold to the doctrines anymore.

So I wasn't really up for an argument or even a strident discussion of doctrine per se, because I wasn't trying to defend it. And the guy who was driving, who was from our labor and trust sales department, you know, he just kind of made the comment to the woman, you know, hey, you know, Latter-day Saints, all I can say about them is that they're the best people. I've worked with several Latter-day Saints over the years and they've been the best colleagues and most trustworthy colleagues. And so, so yeah, I would say people who aren't Latter-day Saints do have that perception that Latter-day Saints are good, honest people. And I think that's, as a former Latter-day Saints, Saint, I think that's true in many, many cases.

So, yeah, definitely. All right. Let me ask you this: then, as a former Latter-day Saint who is now a Christian, having learned what you have about LDS church history, what do you think about this article of faith now? Yeah, I think it's, I mean, I think in terms of the morality, in terms of how we should approach things, I think a lot of that transfers over from when I was Latter-day Saint to a Christian and is following the truth, seeking after what's right and virtuous and good, and clinging to that and staying away from what is not true. Or virtuous or good.

So a lot of it still applies. I would probably, I don't know, I guess a Since we view differently what the commandments are in certain cases, that might be applied differently. But I think, in terms of the principles of how How we should live our lives, I think that's. the I mean the statement like you mentioned in the introduction. It's basically a summary of 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and Philippians 4.

So those are in the Bible, so we would agree with those. But just how that would actually flesh itself out in our daily lives would be different. Good. Do you think you learned anything? I'm sorry about that.

I had to plug in my laptop. I was getting the battery low notification. Do you think as a former Latter-day Saint, is there anything that you learned about LDS church history that made you kind of question whether past leaders or current leaders of the LDS church really live out this article of faith? Yeah, as I started to dive into church history around 20. 2015, that's when I really kind of started that dive.

You see, and I already knew that the church leaders weren't perfect, and I'd heard of things in the past that have kind of left a kind of distasteful view on the church. And there was always that lingering thought of polygamy in my mind. But when you really start to dive down deep and see what Happened in a lot of church history, and particularly the very early church history with Joseph Smith and the early Latter-day Saint movement. You see, kind of like a very, at least I saw a very different picture. We were, we always in the LDS Church, we always focused on Saying telling the truth, and that's one of the temple recommend questions.

If you want to Attend the LDS Temple, which for those who don't know, Is not the same thing as an LDS church house. The LDS temple is where you go after you're. certain age and you pass several Interview questions with your ecclesiastical leaders, and you're proven worthy to go there. You receive extra ordinances, and you also perform ordinances for the dead, like baptism. Confirmation.

So, one of the questions they ask is: Are you honest in your dealings with men or with others?

Something along those lines?

So, just being an honest person is one of the questions. And so, you assume, well, all of my leaders are temple-worthy, they're high priests, they perform ordinances in the temple, they officiate weddings, and etc.

So, they must be honest too, right? And I'm not saying that I know that is the case for current LDS leaders, but when you look back in history, you see Joseph Smith and a lot of his dealings, in particular with polygamy, that was very disturbing to me. In particular, where you found out that he was That he was marrying in secret. And when you compare that to Doctrine and Covenants chapter 132, it basically says that the first wife has to give permission to that person before they can marry them.

So you're not supposed to marry in secret, but Joseph Smith was marrying in secret. His first Supposedly, his first wife, Fanny Alger, was. It's doubtful whether they actually did get married. It's possible that they were caught in an affair, as was Oliver Cowdery that said it was a nasty, filthy affair. And, um, And when you read that and you understand it and you think, oh, well, they just had a break, you know, as a True believing Mormon, I thought Oliver Cowdery's statement was just, ah, he's just, you know, he's.

It's sour grapes. He's just upset. You know, he had a falling out with Joseph Smith and he was throwing that in his face. But then the more I thought about it and read church history, I thought, you know, those two were like inseparable. You know, they were like, they were like Bonnie and Clyde, or, you know, like it would have had to be something really serious to break them up.

And, you know, I think. Catching the person you consider to be a prophet of God in an illicit affair with somebody else, that would qualify.

So, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know, maybe he was right. Maybe it was not really a marriage, but an affair in that. Later, all the historians have kind of retrofitted that to say, well, that was his first polygamous wife. But I don't think we even really have a record of their ever being married by anybody or stating that they were married. And when later, I think later, when people interviewed Fannie Alger and they asked her about that relationship, she didn't want to talk about it.

So she didn't want to divulge any details.

So we really don't know much about it. But LDS historians will say, Yeah, she was his first wife, but we don't, we can't prove that.

So, when that's just one example, one of many that really made me start to have doubts about, in particular, Joseph Smith and other early LDS church leaders, the way that they led their lives versus the way that we're taught to lead our lives as Latter-day Saints. Yeah, I agree with you on that, on the point about Fannie Alger. And, you know, one of the kind of final nails in the coffin for my kind of ability to view Joseph Smith as an honest person. was when I Read the statement that he made in general conference in Nauvoo. And it was kind of around the time when he was practicing polygamy behind the scenes.

It wasn't known openly within the Latter-day Saint movement that he was doing so. There were several other leadership or leaders within his close circle that were also involved in that at the time. And it was beginning to leak out. There were some other leaders of the church, William Law. What was the guy?

Marks.

Something Marks was the stake president of the Nauvoo Stake at the time. Might have been William Marks, too. But William Law was involved in the Publication of the Nabu Expositor. Marx was also involved in exposing and kind of leaking out the fact that Joseph Smith was living this polygamous lifestyle. And Joseph Smith stood up in general conference, which for Latter-day Saints is supposed to be the leaders of the church, the prophet of the church, speaking as he's moved upon by the Holy Spirit.

And so he stands up in general conferences. This is beginning to come out and it's starting to cause a controversy in the community. I don't believe the Nabu Expositor had yet been published, but it was. Word was beginning to leak out verbally. And I think you could feel the heat.

And he stood up in general conference and said, What a thing it is to be accused of having seven wives when I can only find one. And I remember when I read that he had said that, and then I knew from having studied that he was at the time practicing polygamy. Um, and here he was in general conference making a really bold-faced lie to the church. Um, it It destroyed my ability to view him as an honest person. That's really a challenge when it comes to this article of faith because he wrote it.

Right, right, right before this time, and he wrote it as part of the Wentworth letter to a Chicago newspaper man to describe what the beliefs of the Latter-day Saint movement were. And yeah, it really is a challenge to think about him as an honest person. And I know it's challenging for Latter-day Saints. It was challenging for me to look at that and say, okay, he was willing to lie about polygamy. Uh to his wife.

The church, um, is it a stretch to believe that he would have been willing to lie about the book of Mormon and how it came forth, or the book of Abraham and what it actually was? Um, I know Latter-day Saints, when I've talked to them about this, have challenged me, you know, not to take that leap. You know, that a person can lie in one aspect of their lives and not in another. Um, but I think for Latter-day Saints, that makes it challenging because you would have to almost view him as a fallen prophet by the time he starts living polygamy. Um, but then, as you noted, you know, Fanny Alger was.

1836. Or before, right? I think it might even be earlier. I think it was, I thought it was like 1834, 35-ish.

Okay. It was pretty early. Yeah. So, I mean, that's. It's yeah, it's really early.

And you know, you have things like the book of Abraham come after that. You have things, parts of the doctrine and covenants come after that as supposed revelations.

So, if you're going to view him as a fallen prophet as a result of polygamy, then you have to throw away a lot of what he did in his later career. Career. Yeah. And like you were saying, Matthew, too, about temple recommend questions. You know, are you honest in your dealings with your fellow man?

Right. Um, there's been a lot of revelations come out, and by revelations, I don't mean from God, but uh. of information that has coming out come out that recently that wasn't known previously. Know the very large monetary holdings that the Latter-day Saint Church has. Stipends that are given to church leaders when for many, many decades it was claimed that one of the reasons the Latter-day Saint faith was better than Christianity was because they have a lay leadership.

And that, you know, that had been extended for many decades to the upper leadership of the church, but it's come out recently that I think above stick president level they receive a stipend. You know, things like that, where one thing is told to the membership and another is actually practiced behind the scenes, really makes it a challenge for this, you know, as a for me, as a former Latter-day Saint for this article of faith. What do you think about what I've said, Matthew? Yeah, I had a lot of thoughts, but I forgot them. But yeah, no, you had a lot of.

Great things that you brought up. And yeah, that was another sticking issue with me when I was transitioning. It bothered me to learn that it seems like most Latter day Saints think that the prophets and apostles aren't even paid at all. Like they're just doing it for free. And that's kind of surprising to me.

That's still a pervasive idea. And I think it stems from the fact that I was trying Find it in the Book of Mormon. I think it's Mosiah chapter 2, maybe. I think this is with King Benjamin. Yeah, King Benjamin, verse 14 of chapter 2, Mosiah 2, or Mosiah 2:14.

And even I myself have labored with mine own hands that I might serve you, and that you should not be laden with taxes. That there should nothing come upon you which is grievous to be born, and of all these things which I have spoken, you yourselves are witnesses this day. But then there's also another passage. Oh, Alma 30. Let's read that really quickly.

Thou knowest we do not glut ourselves upon the labors of this people. This is Alma speaking. For behold, I have labored even from the commencement of the reign of the judges until now with mine own hands for my support, notwithstanding my many travels round about the land to declare the word of God unto my people. And verse 34, and now if we do not receive anything for our labors in the church, what doth it profit us to labor in the church save it were to declare the truth that we may have rejoicings in the joy of our brethren. And so I think a lot of Latter-day Saints think this is how the prophets and apostles are, that they're just laboring because they love the truth.

They love, you know, serving in the church. And that's how all our callings, you know, every Latter-day Saint has a calling and they're not paid for it either.

So it's kind of shocking to me to see just how much they are recompensed for their callings, you know. Um Free BYU education for their kids and grandkids and all that. And it's not that they're being paid that bothered me. It's the fact that Latter-day Saints believe that they're not being paid. And the Book of Mormon says you're not supposed to be paid.

For your ministry, and yet they are being paid. That's what bothered me. That's what, because Christian pastors are paid, and Latter-day Saints bring that up with us, and they say, Well, you're being paid. Your pastors are paid, so what's the big deal? And I say, Well, because the Bible doesn't say they're not supposed to be paid, but the Book of Mormon does say that they're not supposed to be paid, and yet they are being paid.

So, there's a contradiction there.

So, yeah, for sure. Those are things that really bother me. Yeah, me too. And that's a good place for me to jump in and kind of end this segment.

So, to hear further discussion of this topic, Fireflies, subscribe to the Outer Brightness podcast. Thank you for listening. You can also join the Outer Brightness group on Facebook to connect with other listeners and learn about what we'll be discussing in upcoming episodes. You're listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post-Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer brightness, outer brightness, outer brightness, outer brightness.

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It comes to us from without. Thus, Outer Brightness. Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to His Son. We have conversations about all aspects of that transition, the fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between. We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around.

All right, so kind of continuing on. Let me just jump in with a thought here. You know, another thing that kind of bothered me when I was serving as a missionary, Gordon B. Hinckley was the president and prophet of the church, the LDS church at the time. And he went on, I can't remember if it was the Larry King interview or if it was the Mike Wallace interview.

I want to say it's the Mike Wallace interview where he was pressed about what Latter-day Saints believe. With regards to the Godhead, did God, was God once he was asked about the Lorenzo Snow couplet? Because it's such a distinctive doctrine that Latter-day Saints have that is kind of a dividing line between Latter-day Saint beliefs about who God is and Christian beliefs about who God is. And So he was asked about that. You know, do you believe that God was once a mortal man, a sinner?

You know, and he kind of played it off. I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we talk about it. You know, you know the quote I'm talking about from him. And as missionaries, we were allowed to watch a.

A VHS tape. Michael is not here, but he'll make fun of me for my age. But we were allowed to watch a VHS tape of that interview. And I remember sitting around on the P-Day, we went over to the branch house in the city where I was serving in Hungary, put the VHS tape into the VCR, hit play, and watched the interview. And I remember just having a kind of a sinking feeling in my gut because I knew for a fact that not only do Latter-day Saints believe that teaching, as God is now, or as man is now, God once was.

And as God is now, man may become, the couplet. Not only is that taught very often in official LDS manuals.

So it's not, I don't know that we teach it, I don't know that we believe it. It's taught and they do believe it. And it's an important LDS doctrine. And so I had a kind of a sinking feeling: like, why is he backing away from something that's so distinctive? to our faith.

And then I remember after I came home from my mission and was married, it was a few years later. I was thinking about that experience. And I was kind of going back through some Ensign articles, some general conference talks, and reading through. Old general conference talks for that were several years old. And I saw the talk that he gave, that President Hinckley gave shortly, you know, at the next general conference after he had given that interview to Mike Wallace.

And in general conference, he kind of, with a wink and a nod, said, you know, I don't need, none of you need to worry that I don't understand what our doctrine is, you know? And it was just kind of like, it hit me again, kind of.

So, he didn't tell the truth to the public about what we believe, and then just kind of gave a wink and a nod to the membership, like, yeah, we know what we believe, but that they don't need to know all the details, you know? And it kind of bothered me. Yeah, I was actually thinking about that too when you said that. when you were talking about his interview. I do remember that afterward or he's kinda like Yeah, you know, like the vibe I got was like, well, you know, milk before meat kind of a thing.

but it did also, but it seemed to me a little bit of damage. Control too? Because a lot of members probably asked him about it. Why didn't you just say, Yes, that's what we believe? I don't know.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of viewed it as damage control as well.

So next question. In an address at Brigham Young University in 1981, at a time when the LDS church was facing the fallout from kind of its first attempt at transparency about its history.

So there was these years that were kind of viewed as the quote unquote Camelot years in LDS church history where Leonard Arrington, a professionally trained historian, was called to be the church historian where up until that time it had always been a general authority of the church who was who was the serving in the calling as church historian.

So this was the first time that a university trained historian who was not a general authority was called to be the The church historian, and that you know, they had. Planned this multi-volume church history, all written by professional scholars. And The the kibosh was put on that after the first A couple of volumes were published, and there was kind of some fallout from that because they were attempting to be pretty honest about. LDS church history for the first time. And during that time, again, in 1981 at Brigham Young University, Boyd K.

Packer, who was a member of the LDS Corum of the 12 Apostles, was speaking to LDS church educators.

So these would be the seminary teachers. Teachers for high school students and institute teachers for college students. And he said, There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith-promoting or not.

Some things that are true are not very useful. What do you think about the concept of quote-unquote lying for the Lord, Matthew?

So, do you mean, like, how do I view it now, or maybe as a Latter-day Saint or both? Both. Yeah. Okay. Well, I didn't really, as Latter-day Saint, I didn't really know.

About this concept of lying for the Lord. I had kind of heard of that mostly from Non-Mormons or you know, critics of the church. I said, Well, no, like, look at our articles of faith, look at our baptismal questions, look at our temple recommend interview questions. They all ask us, Are you chaste? Are you honest with your dealings with men?

So, no, we're not told we can lie for the Lord. But then, as you kind of dig into LDS history, as I was a transitioning Latter-day Saint, now as a former Latter-day Saint, you You do see a lot of that in history where As we discussed, polygamy was a very big issue. You also even have things like the Council of 50, where there was a secret council that was basically where Joseph Smith was kind of crowned king and he was going to be the ecclesiast or the governmental leader of the world when Jesus returned, but that didn't ever happen.

So it was kind of kept a secret. And we also see with Just uh the the changes to The church ordinances, like the temple endowment, you know, how that came to be in the beginning. It was within weeks of Joseph Smith becoming a master mason and having all those ceremonies, basically taking the same signs and tokens from the mason. uh rituals and using that in the temple Ordinances.

So you see a lot of instances in the past where it seems like these are cases of lying for the Lord. And Some people have pointed to the book of Abraham, where it takes the instance where he lied about his wife being his sister in the book of Genesis. Kind of recontextualizes it slightly in the book of Abraham to make it seem like kind of God wanted him to do that. Is that correct? I'm kind of struggling to remember all the details, but it seemed like when he wrote the book of Abraham, that seemed like this is what God wanted him to do and it was allowable to accomplish God's purposes.

And so some people have kind of seen that as the beginnings or maybe. The outflowing of Joseph Smith's thoughts on that issue of lying for the Lord, that if it's for the purpose of the greater good, then the ends kind of justify the means a little bit. And so that's potentially the case. I don't know for sure, but it kind of fits in with his pattern of keeping all these marriages secret or keeping all these ceremonies secret for having these secret councils for having introducing new concepts and ideas to a select group of people, kind of like a secret group, and then over time, adding more people to that group. And then I think that's probably I can't remember who it was.

Might have been Michael D. Michael Quinn who said that Brigham Young kind of he kind of what's the word I'm looking for? Not communized it, but he made it he made those same ordinances available to everybody, basically. You know, like the endowment was still kind of a secret ordinance, not for every member. But he made it so the priesthood was available to everybody.

Everybody could receive the endowment and temple marriage. But in the beginning, it was a very small percentage of people that were practicing polygamy that were even allowed in the temple. And temple marriage itself was tied to polygamy, like celestial marriage and polygamous marriage were kind of hand in hand. I don't I don't know if there really was a lot of celestial marriage, you know, monogamous celestial marriages being performed back then. I don't know exactly, but it seemed like celestial marriage and polygamy were very much intertwined.

So yeah, long answer, but Basically, you In retrospect, and looking at the history, it does seem like there is a pattern of this concept of lying for the Lord, as long as it suits the purposes of the church. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, you think about the the episode of of like uh Joseph Fielding Smith, when he was serving as church historian, removing pages from from a record book that contained A version of Joseph Smith's first vision that didn't comport with some of the later versions of that vision.

So it had him seeing only one personage rather than two, whereas later versions of the first vision claim that he saw the father and the son as a 14-year-old boy. And there are some other key differences between that version and the one that Joseph Fielding Smith removed and put in his desk drawer. And so you think about instances like that that only came out because. Uh, folks like Sandra and Gerald Tanner did the research and found that and heard that there was this missing version and wrote to church headquarters to find out. And then, you know, I guess a clerk in the historian's office went looking for it and was able to confirm that there were missing pages.

And then, you know, it only comes out later that he had kind of hidden it away out of sight for historians not to see. And so you think about instances like that. And for someone like me, you know, when I came home from my mission, I think I mentioned when we had our conversation on the three LDS conversions that I didn't start out a doctrinal Mormon, but I aspired to be one after my mission, especially. I came home and I bought, started, I didn't get all of them, but I started to buy up the collected teachings and sermons of each of the presidents and prophets of the LDS church because I wanted to read them. I viewed Those men as prophets.

And so I wanted to understand the things that they had taught and the things that they had said to the church in their sermons. And, you know, I had bought up the collected writings and sermons of Joseph Fielding Smith are called Doctrines of Salvation, is the book. And I had bought that. It's a very thick book, like 600, almost 700 pages. It was originally three volumes, and I got the one-volume edition.

And I read through that like crazy because I thought, you know, he did a really good job of explaining LDS doctrine. And kind of, he was kind of the precursor to Bruce R. McConkey, who was his son-in-law in terms of. Attempting to systematize Latter-day Saint belief and approach all of Latter-day Saint scripture in a systematic, systematically theological way.

So I really devoured his book. And then when I found out, which was very shortly after I had read through his book, when I found out that he had, you know, I read through Leonard Arrington's memoirs about being a church historian, and I found out that whole episode of the missing version of the first vision, man, it just deflated me in terms of my respect for and reverence for Joseph Fielding Smith. Because on the one hand, he was someone trying to doctrinally make everything work. And I appreciated that about him. But on the other hand, he was somebody who was willing to hide something that was not useful.

As Boyd K. Packer would say, for keeping people in the faith. And so those kind of episodes and learning about them bothered me. I didn't like the concept of lying for the Lord. And once I kind of became aware of it and that, That, like you were saying, there may have been this concept begin with Joseph Smith and his revision of the Abraham story, where Joseph Smith presents Abraham as being commanded to lie to Pharaoh about his wife, rather than Abraham kind of doing that on his own.

Yeah, once I learned about that, then it made me really uncomfortable as someone who was trying to be, you know, when I was a young man and my wife and I were going to Lama's classes, my wife was pregnant with my son, and He, you know, I told my wife one time on the drive back from Lamaz class that I wanted to be an apologist for the LDS church, you know, and that was what I aspired to. And so, you know, learning about this concept of lying for the Lord, it made me really uncomfortable when I would be challenged with things from LDS doctrine or history that were difficult to deal with. And I was pressed to try to come up with an answer. There are some things for which it becomes very difficult to. To answer in a way that would bolster faith in somebody without kind of straying into that area of lying.

And that became really challenging for me.

So, yeah, that. Anyway, that's what I'd have to say on that. Any thoughts on that before we kind of go on, Matthew? Yeah, I had a lot of thoughts go through my head, but yeah, when you were talking about the Joseph F Fielding Smith, right? Not Joseph F.

Smith. Uh that makes it confusing. But when he when he hid that uh those those pages from Joseph Smith's journal, I was also watching the other day the interview on Mormon stories with Sandra Tanner, where they were talking about the Hoffman documents. And I don't know if it was the McClellan collection or if it was another document, but it had something to do that might be. Or it might have been the blessing that The fake blessing that Joseph Smith gave to Joseph Smith III, that I think the church bought it up.

And then Gordon B. Hinckley, instead of taking it to the historians, he kind of hid it all, he also put it in a vault somewhere. Yeah. And why would that be?

So, for listeners who might not know, Mark Hoffman was a forger. He was a Mormon and he served a mission in Great Britain. And when he later came home from his mission, And got married, he started forging not only documents related to the LDS church, but documents related to US history, literary history. He was a very skilled forger and fooled a lot of people for a number of years. But he forged.

A purported letter or blessing of Joseph Smith to his son Joseph Smith III, which purportedly named Joseph Smith III as his successor as prophecy and revelator of the LDS church.

So, for those listeners who might not know Matthew, why is Why would that be problematic for The Utah Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yeah, so. This leads into the historic event or period of the church where there was a crisis of succession.

So, to boil that down into layman's terms, basically, when Joseph Smith was assassinated, when he was murdered in Liberty Jail, there was not a clear line of succession. There was not a clear path as to who was supposed to lead the church after he died. And there were potential options.

Some people say that it's not clear, or that it was clear, and that the eldest church is supposed to be the one true church, but really there was not a clear set of rules or succession that Joseph Smith laid down. There was actually a precedent for Possibly having his son take over.

So we see all throughout the Book of Mormon that a lot of times the prophethood went from father to son. Alma to Alma the Younger is an example. And so the leader of the church was supposed to go from father to son.

So that's why a lot of Latter-day Saints decided to stay in, was it Nauvoo at the time? I believe or independence. I can't remember. Yeah, it was Nauvoo. And some were still in Missouri.

Right. So they some decided that they thought that Joseph Smith III should be prophet, but I think he was 11 or 12 when his father, Joseph Smith Jr., was killed.

So he couldn't take over the mantle.

So they kind of were, they called them protectorates or guardians or something like that. There were several apostles that stayed and kind of were guardians of the church until Joseph Smith III was old enough to take that. Position again. There are also some that thought that the president of the 12 apostles or the most senior apostles should be the next one to become prophet. And that's eventually the position that the Mainline LDS church in Utah took.

But there were also others like James Strang. He he had a he claimed to have an experience similar to Joseph Smith, where the day that Joseph died, he claimed he had a visitation from an angelic visitor That came to him and revealed to him that he was supposed to be the new prophet. And he also claimed to receive new scripture, the book of the law of the Lord. But she dug up. In plates that were supposedly written by Moses.

So there was not a clear line of path forward for the church. And so if this document were correct, going back to the Mark Hoffman document, if it were correct in that it was a document claiming to be a blessing from Joseph Smith Jr., so Joseph Smith, the leader, the first prophet of Mormonism, if he really did give a blessing to his son, Joseph Smith III, that he was supposed to be the next prophet, then that would be pretty conclusive evidence that he was supposed to be the prophet. And when he grew up, Joseph Smith III, he was ordained to be the prophet of the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was. still in Illinois. And now today they're called Community of Christ.

So that would basically be the nail in the coffin to say, well, okay, the LDS church in Utah is a schismatic church, it's not the one-true church.

So, yeah, they have a lot of vested interest in making sure that wasn't released or words escaping me at the moment, but yeah, to spill out into the media, basically. Yeah, you did a great job explaining why that would be problematic for. for them.

So, yeah, that document was either bought by Hinkley or bought by someone else. Because what the LDS Church would do is get a wealthy LDS church member to buy Hoffman's documents and Donate, then donate them to the church, and they would be squirreled away to the first presidency vault, never to be seen again.

So I just like to add too that that's another kind of not necessarily lying for the Lord. You see, the elders church, the leadership, they have a lot of businessmen and lawyers, and they've got a large legal team. By the church.

So they kind of tried to do that, to buy these documents. Or to have a member buy these documents and then donate it to the church, it's technically what happened, but then that's so that the church leadership could have deniability to say, no, we never purchased anything from Hoffman directly. They had this intermediary, this intermediate party to do so to say, you know, our hands are clean, we didn't buy anything from him. But when you dig into it, it's like, well, okay, but I mean, somebody bought it. And you received it.

Yeah. And the succession crisis is interesting because, and that forgery by Hoffman is interesting because. As you said, when Joseph Smith was assassinated, several people kind of stepped forward in a succession conference, so to speak, in Nauvoo, claiming to have the authority to be the successor to Joseph Smith. One of them was Brigham Young, as the senior apostle, right? One of them was Sidney Rigdon, who was at the time Joseph Smith's first counselor in the first presidency of the LDS church.

They were estranged from one another. Sidney Brigham, I believe, was living in Pennsylvania at the time where he then lived for the rest of his life, but he returned to Nauvoo upon Joseph Smith's death. And he was actually the one who made the claim that he would be, you know, that although he didn't have the authority as first counselor to lead the church, that he would oversee the church until Joseph Smith III was old enough. And so there's kind of that true historical nugget that somebody had made that claim that Joseph Smith had named his son, that the reorganized church held on to, and that Hoffman was able to manipulate with his forgery.

So, yeah, kind of fascinating, really challenging historical. Situation with the Hoffman forgeries. It's been just kind of an aside on that. It's been interesting to see the reaction from other LDS bloggers and Podcasters talking about the series on Netflix. You know, what sometimes I think gets lost.

Um, and I don't think it gets lost in the Netflix series, but sometimes I think what gets lost when we discuss Hoffman is that people died. Um Steve Christensen was one of the LDS church members who bought documents on behalf of the church. Kathy Sheets was connected to Steve Christensen through her husband. And those two people died as a result of the bombs that Mark Hoffman created. And I lived in Salt Lake City.

At the time that that was going on in 1985, I was seven years old. And I remember my mom used to do a lot of research because she studied library sciences at Brigham Young University and went into doing family history and genealogy research for people, both Latter-day Saints who were interested in taking the names of their deceased relatives into the LDS temples to do temple ordinances on their behalf, and as well as research for people who were not Latter-day Saints, who were just interested in their family history. And so she spent a lot of time downtown Salt Lake City at the genealogical library that the church has there with vast stores of microfilm records of census records and everything that a genealogical researcher would need to search out somebody's family history. And I remember I would go sometimes during the summers when I was out of school with her and I would hang out there or I would go to Temple Square. I would go to one of the museums down there.

But a lot of times we would walk back to where our stake center was a couple of blocks away from the genealogical library. And my mom would park there at our stake center and we would walk back there and On the corner of the hill that leads up past where the Deseret Gym used to be and where the conference center is now. That's where Mark Hoffman's car was parked when his. When the bomb that he was handling in his car went off and nearly killed him. And so I remember walking past that corner and crossing the street over to our Stake Center parking lot a lot with my mom.

And she would almost always comment, pointing up the hill, that's where that Mark Hoffman. Nearly blew himself up, you know? And so it's a historical episode in LDS history that I also kind of lived through kind of firsthand. And I remember around that time, I was. I had started playing basketball at the YMCA in Salt Lake City.

And I was playing basketball there with a couple of friends of mine who lived nearby. I remember one Saturday, excuse me, my dad dropped us off at practice, and their dad was supposed to pick us up. At practice after practice. And my friends thought it would be a good idea for us to go check out. Crossroads Mall, which is, it used, it was where City Creek.

Center is now.

So we walked the, I think it's like eight or nine blocks from the YMCA to Crossroads Mall without telling either of our parents. What we were doing.

So, when their dad went to pick us up and we weren't there at the YMCA, everybody was all up in arms. And I remember my mom being really, really upset about that. And it was around the time that the bombings were happening. And I think she was probably really concerned that, you know, who knows what's going on in this city with these bombings. You know, here you're walking around.

As a seven-year-old, you know, with an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old, unaccompanied, you know.

So she was concerned, but uh Yeah, all of that surrounding that, and like you were saying, the distance that the church leaders put between themselves and the documents to give themselves some deniability. No, we're not buying these to hide them. This church member bought it and gave it to us. We just happened to put it in the ball so nobody could see it. Yeah, it really challenges credulity when it comes to the 13th Article of Faith and talking about honesty and being true and that kind of thing as well.

And we don't want to say that, you know. We're not cris criticizing the church for the sins of Mark Hoffman, you know. No.

So I hope no one was listening and thinking that, you know, w we're trying to put the blame of what he did on the church or anything like that. We're kind of trying to more talk about the circumstances surrounding that. And I originally kind of brought out this idea of talking about the Hoffman situation in the series because it just came out on Netflix recently within the past couple of months. Because you look at his life and a lot of it mirrors Joseph Smith's life. You know, he started making forgeries when he was around 13, 14, which was.

When Joseph Smith started, you know, when he claimed that he was seeing visions and things like that. But you also see Joseph Smith doing, participating in glass looking, you know, treasure seeking at that age. And he would make the part of that was making stories saying that he would look into a stone and when he would see treasure. And so then he would get paid to go find the treasure and dig it up. And when you got there, they wouldn't find the treasure, and there would be some kind of excuse saying, well, the treasure sunk deep into the earth, or the guardian spirit was protecting this.

This is not just something I'm making up. This is documented by D. Michael Quinn, who's pro-LD, you know, he's no longer a Latter-day Saint, but he considers himself an apologist for the church. And in his book, Joseph Smith, or Early Mormonism and the Magical Worldview, he talks about this where. You know, this was the common view at the time that people thought there were guardian spirits guarding treasure.

That articles could sink into the earth. There's one, you know, he would also build up confidence in people by saying that there is a, you know, a box and above it was a feather, and above it was dirt. You know, claim to see this through the stone. And so then they would go, they would dig, and they'd find the feather on the box.

Well, he put the feather there to gain their confidence. And so we see a lot of these kind of. Activities In Joseph Smith's glass-looking, his treasure-seeking days that mimic kind of what Mark Hoffman was doing. He was slowly getting better and better at making forgeries, gaining confidence in others, gaining notoriety. And he would start out little and then he was trying to get bigger and bigger and bigger with the forgeries he was making.

And you could kind of see that he thought this was for, he had grandiose ideas about why he was doing these things. He eventually was not, he was not trying to further the cause of the church. He had his own ideas in mind. But you kind of see similar parallel views of him and Joseph Smith. Or Joseph Smith started out with little doctrines, a little bit by little bit, and started, he wanted to build temples and then polygamy.

And it just got greater and greater. And even his first vision grew over time, you know, like we said, in his first account in his journal, very simple. He claimed Jesus appeared to him. He had already decided all the churches were wrong. He didn't go to ask what church was true, he already decided that for himself, and then he was just asking for forgiveness of sins.

And he's claimed Jesus appeared to him and forgave him of his sins. Then later, the account showed not only Jesus, but the father with him. And then later on, even in other accounts, there was a choir of angels that were accompanying them. And then later on, Satan appeared and tried to bind him. And, you know, it just got greater and greater every single time.

And Latter-day Saints will try to say that these agree with each other. But I mean, if I saw God the Father standing next to Jesus, that's not a detail that I would come up with, you know, almost 20 years later after the fact. You know, it doesn't show up until like at least 1832, 34-ish, that detail. And so. 1834, because the 32 was the account where it was just Jesus.

So we see a lot of these parallels. And you can kind of say, well, maybe Mark Hoffman, because he knew church history, maybe he had this idea of lying for the Lord from instances in church history. He would take something that was true and then slightly twist it. And like you said, he would make a forgery based off of actual church history. and make it convincing enough that it was actually fooling historians into thinking that it was legitimate.

So, sorry to bring that side up, but that's kind of why I wanted to talk about Mark Hoffman is because you can see parallels in this concept of lying for the Lord. Possibly there in Mark Hoffman's mind as he was making these forgeries. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, the parallel that really is striking to me when thinking about Joseph Smith is, you know, this idea of treasure kind of slipping away beneath the earth and him using that as an excuse for why they never actually found treasure in the digs that he was involved in.

Even though he claimed to be able to see where the treasure was located through his stone, through his cedar stone, they never actually found treasure. And that was his excuse. It slipped away through the earth. The guardian spirit took it away, right? And then you think about how.

How that parallels the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, they were taken away. By a guardian spirit. Moron, I was. The protector of the plates. You know, you read about Joseph Smith trying to take the plates too early in one of his yearly visits to the Hill Kimorah, and he is shocked by the guardian spirit.

He's not able to do it.

So there's a lot of parallels in what he was doing with his treasure digging prior to. His career as a Quote unquote prophet, and then after as well. And that, a lot of that detail ties into the Hoffman scandal because, you know, as we kind of talked about, the LES church was kind of taking these documents that Hoffman was providing, which kind of gave Truth. To what before had been kind of rumor that, you know, up until really like the 1970s, I think, the church, the LDS church denied that he was, that Smith was involved in treasure digging at all.

So, some of the documents that Hoffman brought forward, you know, helped to, I don't wanna say that any of it was positive, but it kind of forced the LDS church leaders' hands to come clean on some things. And a lot of, you know, during that time, a lot of that was being discussed in, you know, groups like, you know, The Sunstone. Sunstone is a publication by, it's a Latter-day Saint, it's not a church publication, it's an independent publication, but it's by and for Latter-day Saints. And a lot of the kind of controversial and difficult information that was coming out about church history was being published and talked about in Sunstone and also Dialogue at that time. A dialogue is another journal for Journal of Mormon thought.

And, you know, I'm old enough to remember, you know, hearing my parents talk to people. One guy in our ward in particular was kind of in on the ground floor of Sunstone as it got up and running. And I'm old enough to remember my parents having conversations about him and his loss of faith as a result of being involved in Sunstone. I'm old enough to remember when the LDS church leadership sent a letter to all the stakes and wards in the church to be read out in sacrament meeting, warning about participating in groups like Sunstone and Dialogue.

So there definitely was an effort to keep as much as possible that information under wraps. And then, you know, with the advent of the internet, which happened when I was in high school, and then even more so when I came home from my mission, I was able to access a lot of information that wasn't available previously so readily. And, you know, a lot of this information, you know, now there's the church, the LDS Church Gospel Topics essays. I heard on a podcast with, I think it was Bill Real and RFM just recently that they published one on the Hoffman forgeries.

So, you know, they're trying to tackle some of these tougher issues. And for younger Latter-day Saints, you know, it's out there right now. It's kind of ubiquitous as it wasn't before. And so, you know, when, you know, for people like me and like Matthew that learned this stuff after having served missions, after, you know, Having dedicated two years of our lives to go and preach Mormon teachings in Europe for the two of us, you know, it's a challenge to deal with that.

So I would just, you know, I know some latter, some younger Latter-day Saints that we discuss with online, they, you know, they, they kind of, it kind of rolls off of their backs like water off a duck's back, right? But it, it, It's not so easy for those of us who learned this stuff after the fact.

So I get that there's like inoculation, quote unquote, going on right now with what the Latter-day Saint leaders are doing. Man, I would just challenge them to be honest, though. Seriously, there's so much that they could do to be honest. And I just think it would be better for Latter-day Saints in the long run for them to be honest. I know they're probably worried about bleeding membership, but that's happening anyway, you know?

And so that kind of brings us to, you know, we've talked a lot about this article of faith in regards to LDS Church history and leadership and how they've handled. Authority, historical issues. Let's kind of talk about the result of that.

So, one of the things that I've said quite often, both here on on outer brightness and um And online in my discussions with people. And I think it comes across as a kind of strong statement, a challenging statement. I've said that, you know, when I lost my faith in the LDS church, when everything crumbled and it was gone and I was left with nothing, that I asked the question of myself and in my studies: is Christianity just an older lie? And I think that comes across as blunt, but that's where I was. I needed to know if I was going to maintain faith in Christianity, is it just an older myth?

Is it just an older lie? And so, you know, often when Latter-day Saints reject the beliefs and religion of their youth, they become atheists or agnostic. Without their prior beliefs, they have to rebuild their worldview and moral framework. And so, kind of the question I have for you, Matthew, is: I know you went through this as I did. Did the moral argument for God's existence play a role?

In your thought process as you evaluated Christianity? You know, yeah, there.

So when I was kind of deconstructing and trying to figure out what I believed or whether I even believed a God, there's probably like a week or two period where I was like considering atheism. I didn't really go through the classical arguments. I didn't go through the classical arguments like the Uh what's the word? Starts with the T. Uh Not telestial.

Teleological. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, right, right. Teleological. Why did telestial keep popping in my head? Man. You you can take the boy out of Mormonism.

You can't take the Mormonism out of the boy. It never it never goes away permanently. Yeah, teleological argument, right? That's like the argument for our purpose, right? Or or isn't that kind of what it is?

Like the the end purpose of something? I took philosophy in college, but it's been too many years now. But yeah, there's that. There's the cosmological argument. There's the moral argument.

There's a lot of different arguments, philosophical arguments for God's existence. But no, like that didn't really play a major role to me. It was strange because now that I'm thinking back on it, what really I was when I was really struggling and thinking maybe there wasn't a God. I just thought back to all the times, like on my mission, like there was a time where, just as one example, I was. Me and my companion were just walking down the street doing street contacting, and we were basically there was a guy trying to mug us.

And so that was pretty weird. And we weren't quite sure what to do. But just at that exact moment, there was this guy that we'd meet around town and he knew us and we tried talking to him, but he was never interested. But he would always just be walking around town with his dog and he was a cool guy. And so at that moment when we were going to be mugged by this dude, he's like trying to take our stuff, this guy comes up with his dog and chases the guy off.

And I was like, that's crazy. You know, like he wasn't always outside walking his dog. It was just once in a while. But the fact that the guy was there at that exact moment where we were getting mugged by this dude that we were trying to share the gospel with, kind of funny. That was like one instance that really stuck out in my mind.

It's like, how can I? How can I believe that there's no purpose or there's no reason or That there's no designer watching over us or planning things out. There were just too many instances like that on my mission. And other times where I felt like it was just crazy to think that everything's just an accident. You know, and plus, like, there was just so many passages in, well, both the Book of Mormon and the Bible.

I didn't know what I felt about the Book of Mormon at that point, but there were just so many points that just were so they just spoke to like the core of my being that I was just unable to just say, well, okay, I don't believe the Bible anymore, you know. It's like it was just indescribably Connected to my identity, that I just said, well, I mean, if I'm going to leave Mormonism, you know, at least I have the Bible that I can fall back on.

So that was kind of that was kind of wa w how I Started to reshape my views on God. It wasn't really the moral argument, but it sounds like from the way he asked this question that it was for you. Is that the case? Yeah, yeah, it was. I listened, excuse me, as I came out of the LDS faith, I listened to a lot of William Lane Craig, a pretty famous Christian apologist.

And, you know, the way he kind of lays out the argument for God from morality, I thought was pretty convincing to me. And basically, you know, for our listeners, I'm not a philosopher either. I'm going to do my best to kind of put this in layman's terms, the way I understand it. The argument for God, God's existence from morality basically says, you know, there's normative morality, right? And because there's normative reality or normative morality, therefore God exists.

Because you can't ground ethics and morality in anything other than the existence of a perfect being, a perfectly moral being. And so that's how that kind of classical argument for God's existence works and is laid out. I've seen it kind of pilloried by critics. I've seen, you know, one of my friends that I grew up with who is an atheist. Former Mormon atheist.

And honestly, he was probably an atheist when we were friends as teenagers. But he definitely is now. And I saw him once post on Facebook something like, you know, if a Christian needs a God to tell them that murder is wrong, Then I can't trust that person. And I see what he's saying, but that's a misunderstanding, I think, of the argument for God's existence from morality, right? It's not that we need a God to tell us that murder is wrong.

Of course, we do. And we wouldn't be out murdering everyone if there was no God. That's not what we're saying, right? We're not saying the existence of God keeps us from murdering necessarily, but what we're saying is what the argument is that if you're going to say that X is wrong morally, what is your grounds for saying that? As an atheist, what would you give as grounds for?

Claiming that something is wrong. There are various ways that atheists try to argue to morality without the existence of God, right?

Well, we've evolved these societal norms.

So it's the societal norms.

Well, not every society has held the same norms throughout history, right? There have been some societies and cultures who have been very cruel and have murdered many people, many of their own people, many other people.

So to try to argue that morality can be grounded in societal norms becomes somewhat problematic. Which society, which culture, that kind of thing.

So I think it's something that Latter-day Saints have to wrestle with. I bring it up in relation to this. Uh, article of faith because, um, you know, as I think about uh listening to uh questioning Latter-day Saints, former Latter-day Saints. Uh, talk on podcasts. A lot of times they'll reference this article of faith as something they kind of hold on to as a touchstone within their beliefs, even if they don't.

Don't believe in God, or they're not sure if they do. This idea that we should love one another and love our neighbor, as you were, as you kind of summed up this. This article of faith, Matthew, is something that they They hold to. And, you know, I would, I would argue that that's the law written on their hearts, as the Bible says, you know. And there's this innate recognition of right and wrong that people have.

It's not, it comes from God writing it on our hearts, and it comes from the existence of a perfectly moral being.

So, yeah, that argument was convincing. Uh, it was compelling to me as a former Latter-day Saint working through these things. What do you think, Matthew? Do you think it's possible to ground ethics and morality in anything other than God's existence? I mean, you can base your ethics on whatever you want.

You know, you can write your own book of ethics and be like, well, here's my morality. But I think if we're going to be consistent with reality, of course. We're both Christian theists, so we believe that the only God is the Christian God. And so, if you want your ethics to be based on reality, then they should be based on what God has revealed in scripture. But someone can say they can base their morality on whatever they want, but Ultimately, it's going to be flawed or it's going to be incorrect to some degree.

So, what do you think? Yeah, I don't think it's possible to ground morality in anything other than God's existence because you're left with, you know, just as Latter-day Saints are left with an unending succession of gods, right? Back into, if you try to ground your ethics in something other than the existence of a perfect being, then you're left with an unending succession of questions and no grounds. Right. What I mean to say by that is at some point, You can have a system of ethics, but it's going to be inconsistent, it's going to fall apart at some point.

Yeah, so uh, I think we've covered just about everything, unless there's anything else related to this article of faith that you want to touch on, Matthew. There was a thought that I had. Uh, there was so you saw, did you see the uh The documentary, the Mark Hoffman documentary? Yes.

So there was one um there was one part where they had uh I forget who it was, it was I think it was a general authority where they kind of responded and asked why these forgeries were allowed to be sol given to the church and why, you know, nobody stopped him or nobody knew what was going on in the background. And he kind of said, Well, that wouldn't That would im impend on his uh Moral agency, essentially, you know, like God doesn't always come down and stop us from sinning. He gives us a choice, allows us to do as we like. I was wondering: do you think that that's an honest answer? Or do you think that's kind of trying to?

Pass the buck a little bit on why the LDS leadership, who claimed to be prophet seers and revelators, didn't see this coming. Yeah, if I'm remembering correctly, On the part of the documentary you're referring to, I think it was Richard Turley, who is an LDS church historian. And, you know, I respect Richard Turley in some ways because, you know, there's an episode in LDS church history, and I don't want to go deep into it here, but it's the Mountain Meadows Massacre. And Richard Turley was involved several years back, now, maybe a decade ago almost, in writing, definitely more than a decade ago. That's recent to me.

But he wrote a book about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and it was kind of the first book connected this closely with the LDS church about that episode that went pretty in-depth about what took place there and kind of pulled no punches in holding those who were responsible accountable for that awful episode. And so I respect him for that. But he was also involved in the Swedish Rescue, if you've heard of that, where he went over to Sweden. Hans Mattson was a LDS regional general authority for the LDS church at the time in Sweden. And they were having a lot of people leave the church.

I forget the timeframe. I want to say maybe 2009, 2010, somewhere in there, maybe, maybe a little after that. But they were having a lot of people leave the church in Sweden. And he and another, I can't remember who went with them, Richard Turley and somebody else went over there and they gave a fireside and tried to answer some tough questions from the the LDS church church members there in Sweden. And that's maybe not his most shining moment.

When it comes to honesty. But in regards to your question, in the part of the documentary where he's speaking there, he's asked. um like you said why why weren't the lds church leaders able to Foresee if they, if they're prophets, seers, and revelators, why weren't they able to foresee that Mark Hoffman was deceiving them and also that he was who he was, a murderer, you know, in his heart? And he answers, and if I remember correctly, he says, well, the apologetic would be. And then he gives kind of the answer that you were talking about: that, you know, that if God were to, you know, let them know that, that, you know, it would be, he would, God would be impeding on the agency of the prophets and this and the apostles, and God wouldn't do that, which, you know, on the one hand, that's a that's a view that Latter-day Saints take, right?

God will never abrogate our agency. But does that hold? I mean, you know, if you think about, Uh you know, Joseph Smith's claim that an angel with a drawn sword Forced him to accept and start practicing polygamy, isn't that abrogating his agency?

So that's a good point. You know, there is in LDS church history, at least, some indication that God would abrogate agency in some instances.

So I don't know that it's a very good apologetic that Richard Turley gave there. And it wasn't clear to me watching the documentary whether he actually buys that apologetic himself or he was just presenting, well, this is what the apologetic could be. Yeah. Yeah. I found that curious when he gave that defense because it reminded me of the Book of Mormon in Helaman.

And I don't remember which Nephi it was because there's like 50 Nephi's, but one of the prophet Nephi's, he gave a testimony. You know, he was testifying to the people. He said, you're all sinners. You know, you're looking down on the poor people. You're not doing justice and righteousness.

And they're like, ah, you know, who cares? Who cares about this guy? We don't know what he's talking about. But then they go through that whole story, which I think is in like a Doctrine and Covenants seminary video or something, where they depict this whole thing where he says, Well, I'm going to prove to you that I'm a prophet. And he goes and says that the chief judge was murdered and his brother was the murderer, I believe.

And he says, If you go to him, you'll find blood on his. On his cloak, and you'll ask him, What is this blood from? And he'll look in shock at you. And they said, Have you murdered your brother? And he won't know what to say, and then you'll know that.

Everything I've said is true, that I'm a prophet of God.

So it seems like, you know, like, it seems like very, like, as Latter-day Saints believe, they believe that God talks to them, that He reveals to them, that they see things. As proof of their prophethood. But then you have this apologetic given that says, well, they don't really know. God doesn't reveal everything. God's not going to stop every wrong thing that happens.

It just sounds like the as we talked about earlier about how Prophets in the Book of Mormon said specifically, don't be paid. By the people you preach amongst, you know, work, be paid by the work of your own hands. You see this growing divide between. The LDS. Prophets and the prophets of the Book of Mormon.

They're just, you know, completely different. And so that's the thought that came to my mind when he said that on. The documentary, like you said, at face value, it's like, okay, yeah, I guess it makes sense. You know, Latter Day Saints say God doesn't stop your agency, but at the same time, it's like, wait a minute. But there are plenty of times in the Book of Mormon where God revealed things to the prophets as proof that they're prophets.

And this happened for years and years, and it wasn't until. Literally, you know, it blew up in Mark Hoffman's face with the bombs that started sitting off, and that started getting everybody. Looking into him as a potential, as the one who was potentially sitting these bombs off. It wasn't until then that anybody even really suspected him, you know? Except for.

Gerald and Sandra. They're like, hey, you know, maybe we should check this out. You know, maybe we shouldn't just accept these at face value. It's funny that critics of the LDS church were the first ones to. really start to doubt.

His credibility. And then they were vindicated when it was discovered that he really was making these forgeries.

So it's It's when I learned all about that, it really, my previous views of the Tanners was drastically changed. I'm learning about this decades later, but I'm like, you know, they really had the integrity to say, look, let's take the time. Let's not just automatically assume these are legitimate. Let's check these out. Let's make sure that we're not trying to push these.

Just because it suits our narrative doesn't mean we should push them. We got to really make sure that this is historical and legitimate.

So, yeah, I don't know. I just had a lot of thoughts about that. And I was just curious about what you thought about that. Quote because it seemed to kind of tie into this episode. Yeah, yeah, good.

And I, based on what you just said, I'm curious about something. When you were growing up in Utah, were you aware of the Tanners? I'd heard about them and I had run across their website, utlm.org, when I was preparing for my mission. And I kind of looked there and I read some of their articles, but I was like, yeah, I don't really find those convincing. Plus I think I that's when Fair was still around.

Like Fair, I think they had their website up at that point, so. I found sufficient uh answers to some of the questions the Tanners brought up.

So I didn't really, you know. But then years later, then all that stuff came back to my mind and I was more willing to check back into it. But yeah. Didn't know much about the Tanners, no. Right.

It's kind of funny. I didn't, like I mentioned, my walking with my mom and her kind of pointing up the hill and saying that's where, you know, that Mark Hoffman almost blew himself up. I remember her telling me that, but I didn't know anything about Mark Hoffman. Right. And I didn't until I was an adult, home from my mission and married, and started encountering it more and more in my discussions online.

And so then finally went and got the Book salamander and read through it to educate myself what was this all about. Same is kind of true with the Tanners. For me, I remember driving that their Utah Lighthouse Ministry building is up by the Utah Capitol, Utah State Capitol. And I remember driving past there with my mom and what's that all about? Utah Lighthouse Ministry.

Oh, those darn Tanners. She'd make some comment about, but it was like this ubiquitous name, those darn Tanners. But I had no idea who they were until, like you, I started encountering their. UTLM.org website and fair answers to them and that kind of thing. And so, yeah, I find it interesting too that it was Gerald and Sandra and Gerald in particular that kind of looked closely at, I think it was the salamander letter he looked really closely at and was like, wait a minute, this doesn't really, and started, and I think in their newsletter, he actually published.

His concerns about whether or not that was actually. True LDS history that was being presented there in the salamander letter. And uh, and yeah, it's interesting that it was coming from critics, not the LDS church itself. Um, so yeah, that's that's an important part of the whole story that was completely removed from the documentary. And I can kind of understand why they wanted it to be more dramatic rather than informative.

I mean, it was informative, but it was mostly dramatic, and they were also. Limited in what they could share because it was kind of in a partnership with the church, I've heard. You know, they kind of agreed to make it as. Unbiased as possible, and probably putting too much of the story on the Tanner side might make it look Unbiased or biased. But so, yeah, I would recommend anyone that wants to know more.

To watch the interview with on the Mormon Stories podcast with Sandra Tanner. She has the article that you were talking about that Gerald, where he dressed as a salamander letter. She's like, Yeah, I got a copy right here. She shows it.

So, yeah, it's neat to hear her side of the story and how she saw all these events and how they all fit in. Yeah. Yeah, I've never, you know, Gerald's passed on now. I've never, I never got to meet either of them in person yet. I hope to meet Sandra sometime, someday in person and thank her because they went through a lot in the 1970s and 1980s.

Publishing what they did. You know, they were kind of making mimeographs of their articles and getting them out in a newsletter, you know, kind of underground there in Utah. And it really, they really helped bring some of this to light where a lot of it was hidden and obscured for Latter-day Saints. And I know they've gotten, you know, really bad reputation among Latter-day Saints, but I think they've really tried to be honest and upright people. And they're both former Latter-day Saints as well.

Um, but you know, I just want to comment quickly before we close on why I kind of tackled morality as the core of this article of faith. I don't want to tear down Latter-day Saints. It's why I kind of brought out earlier that Latter-day Saints, a lot of them, many of them that I know that I grew up with, who cared for me when I was a young child. are good upright. Uh honest people.

And I mentioned earlier that, you know, when I started to learn some of these challenging and thorny issues with LDS church history that LDS church leaders have tried to keep hidden, it challenged me as someone who wanted to be an apologist for the LDS church because when you're asked about something like this, then you have a choice. You can be honest about what you know, or you cannot speak about what you know. And there's a dishonesty in remaining reticent about things that you know. And where the rubber really hits the road, or did hit the road for me, was in two places. One, where I was a teacher in the LDS church, both to other adults and to children, teenagers mostly, young men in the priesthood organizations, when difficult questions would be asked about an inconsistency that was seen.

And I knew something about it from my deeper studies into sources that weren't approved by the LDS church. Should I say something about it? Should I try to give it a gloss? Should I try to put it in a context that would help this young man to maintain faith? Or should I say nothing?

About what I know. Very challenging questions for someone given the mantle, so to speak, to. Teach young men. The other place where it comes into play is within your own family. My wife, as I've mentioned on my story episodes, Was a convert to the LDS church.

And as a priesthood holder in the LDS Church, I felt very, a very heavy weight. To not harm her faith, particularly as I was learning these things that were challenging to my own faith. And, you know, I've talked about when my kind of first faith crisis with the LDS church really hit me, that I confessed in tears to Angela that I wasn't sure I believed in God anymore. From that point on, I had to wrestle with the same types of questions I was just talking about with regards to the young men I was teaching. How honest do I be with my wife when she comes to me with a tough question?

When she finds the book In Sacred Loneliness that I'd kind of hidden away under the sink in the bathroom where I was reading it, and not wanting her to see what that book had to say about polygamy. You face questions of honesty. As someone who's transitioning or someone who's struggling with the LDS faith.

So, my encouragement and my recommendation to anyone who is struggling would be to be honest with your spouse, with your children as it's appropriate. Just take that approach of honesty as you walk this journey. It makes it, from my experience, it makes it so much easier. As I shared openly with Angela, we were able to walk the journey together. I know that's not possible for everyone.

I know sometimes this transition ends marriages. Um, but I think you'll have a much higher percentage of opportunity to maintain your marriage if you if you take that approach of honesty with your spouse and and that they can see that you're, you're not being, um, you're not sharing with them difficult things to harm them, um, but you're sharing your journey with them in in an authentic and an authentic way that that has integrity.

So that would be my recommendation. Amen. Yeah, that's great. Great advice. All right, fireflies.

That's a wrap for this topic. Feel free to share your thoughts in the Outer Brightness group on Facebook. Is there an aspect of this topic that we missed, something you'd like to see us discuss in the future? Let us know.

Next week, we are going to be recording some interviews with Micah Wilder and hopefully Matt Wilder. He's confirming that the date will work for him, but we're planning to have both of them on to talk about some projects that they've been working on. Micah has a book coming out. that we'll talk about. Called Passport to Heaven, and Matt Wilder has been working on a project called Adams Road Piano.

So excited to talk to both of them about those projects. Until then, shine bright, fireflies. We thank you for tuning into this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please visit the Outer Brightness Podcast page on Facebook.

Feel free to send us a message there with comments or questions by clicking send a message at the top of the page, and we would appreciate it if you give the page a like. We also have an Outer Brightness group on Facebook where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes, and suggestions for future episodes, etc. You can also send us an email at outerbrightness at gmail.com. We hope to hear from you soon. You can subscribe to the Outer Brightness podcast on Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Pocket Cast, Podbeam, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Also, you can check out our new YouTube channel, and if you like it, be sure to lay hands on that subscribe button and confirm it. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating and review wherever you listen and help spread the word. You can also connect with Michael the X Mormon apologist at fromwatertowine.org. where he blogs and sometimes Paul and Matthew do as well. Music for the Outer Brightness podcast is graciously provided by the talented Brianna Flournoy and by Adams Rode.

Learn more about Adams Road by visiting their ministry page at Adamsroad Ministry dot com. Stay bright, Fireflies. Whoa. To whom shall we go? Oh you Have the words of eternal life.

And we have believed and have come to know That you are. The Holy One of God, the word made fresh, the risen Son. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Through all of this world is indeed. But the word of our God through ages remain Lord, you promised that we, as your church, would remain upon this rock and the gates of hell.

Will not prevail against us. Cause you have power to keep your word unspoiled in purity. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the word of our God through ages remain as the rain falls down from heaven and waters the earth, bringing it light.

So the word that goes out from your mouth will not return heaven. But does what you desire Lord, we hear your word and believe in you. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of our Lord endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the word of our God through ages remain of God remains. This is the Truth Network.