ByteLine

Does Anyone Think Journalists Are Angels?

2011-12-19T15:23:00.007-07:00

Yesterday, several news articles and reader comments reminded me why I have such low regard for the media—conservative as well as liberal. This low regard, however, is well deserved and based upon years of observing human nature—also held by me in the lowest esteem. Working in a primarily cash industry, I know that given the opportunity, practically everybody will steal.

Everywhere you look you see an attempt to thwart thieves and robbers: locks, passwords, concealed carry permits, pin numbers, software validation, and time clocks. These and countless other devices exist to keep people from stealing—or at least to make it more difficult. As a society, we simply accept these circumstances because thievery is ubiquitous.

We’d like to think that there is a class of people who can be trusted—especially those who oversee our security—such as policemen, judges and legislators. But the only reason we have to trust them is that they haven’t yet been caught (with the exception of Alcee Hastings, the Federal Judge convicted of bribery and perjury, impeached and removed from the bench who now is the honorable Congressman from Florida.) But, I’m certain that every police station in America has lockers where cops can secure their valuables from other cops—illustrating that their perspective is merely that of society in general: if you can steal it, go for it.

Years ago, I pulled into a self-service gas station on Thanksgiving morning. Back then, you paid after pumping the gas. After filling my car, I walked over to pay the cashier and found that the station was closed for the holiday.

I thought that if I drove away, I could surely be arrested for theft. I tried to insert a check for the gas between the panes of glass at the pay booth, but it wouldn’t fit. I walked out to the street to consider my options. Fortunately, a policeman was driving past. I flagged him down and explained that the owners had closed the station but had left the gas pumps on. He said, “You mean you can get free gas?”

I explained that if that was my intent, I would hardly have gone to the police first. Then it dawned on him that he could contact someone who could stop the distribution of “free gas.”

Accustomed as we are to the fact that theft is a way of life, we’re less likely to realize that lying is equally widespread. As a child, I believed that if something was printed in the newspaper it had to be true. I remember hearing others say, “They couldn’t write that unless it was true!” By the time I was in the 8^th grade, I knew that people could write pretty much anything they wanted to write. There were no journalism police. That’s good because truth can be difficult to identify and hard to defend against opposing views—particularly if liars have more money and influence than those who are telling the truth. It’s bad because society at large still thinks that if it’s in print, it’s probably true. Just look at how often footnotes in history essays cite newspapers.

Which brings me to yesterday’s “aha.” Media outlets keep reminding people of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. A couple of weeks ago, Romney had referenced the perspective he got while roughing it as an LDS missionary in France. Since then, reports have appeared claiming that is bogus. For example, The Telegraph wrote, “Much of Mitt Romney’s life as a Mormon missionary in France was not as poor or arduous as he has claimed, say those who knew him at the time.” The problem with that line? It claims that “much” of his life was not as poor as he claimed—not that what he said was false. Actually, during the 30 months that he was in France, he spent 8 months living in the Church’s mission home—a palatial setting with all kinds of amenities. What about the other 22 months? He lived in slums accurately reflected by his recollection. I’m pretty sure he faced those conditions because I was in Europe a few years after that and lived in the same conditions: apartments with no toilet or shower and lots of rats. I lived in nicer apartments as well; but The Telegraph’s assertion is false: 8 months out of 30 hardly qualifies as “much.” A similar twist of the truth appeared on one of my formerly favorite websites when Romney responded to a reporter’s question asking if Gingrich should give back the money he got from Freddie Mac. In response, Romney said he thought Gingrich should give the money back. Hotair modifies that to, “Mitt Romney’s demand that he return over a million dollars from Freddie Mac.”

It seems to me that it’s reasonable to paraphrase someone else’s comments; but a paraphrase should retain the original meaning of the quote. There is a big difference between agreeing affirmatively with a reporter’s suggestion and calling that agreement a demand. It’s a basic question of integrity. However, we shouldn’t be any more surprised to see the media lie than we are to see politicians steal.

Newt's Incredible Luck in Securing Employment as a Historian at Rock Star Wages

2011-12-14T07:08:00.003-07:00

Is anybody in America stupid enough to believe that Newt Gingrich earned $1.6 million in three years to give “advice as a historian?” That’s his explanation—without cracking a smile. Here’s how that surely came about:

Freddie Mac’s Board of Directors needed advice on how to remain solvent—given the fact that they were guaranteeing the principle and interest on billions of dollars in bad loans. With a very bad business model, and financial disaster on the horizon, they made the only really logical decision: they hired an historian. That makes all the sense in the world. No reason to horse around with an economist, or an MBA, or even a good defense attorney. They needed a guy whose expertise was on the Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945–1960. Of course that makes sense. The fact that he knew lots of elected conservatives who were adverse to this fiscal madness had nothing to do with it. They didn’t need a conservative lobbyist—they needed a historian—seriously.

That wasn’t their first choice, though. They were conflicted between the allure of a historian and the more sensible idea of getting a community organizer; but come on, he already had a job.

Harold Bloom on the Mormon Menace

2011-11-18T13:16:00.004-07:00

Earlier this week, an essay appeared in the New York Times by Harold Bloom titled, Will this Election Be the Mormon Breakthrough? I noticed it was cited on a blog and so I left a comment there. My reply to his most recent rejoinder was too long to fit in his comments section so I have posted it here.Readers might find it to be easier to follow if they read John's blog comments first.

John:

When I first read Bloom’s essay, I was disappointed at several factual errors; but had not considered whether or not it was an “anti-Mormon diatribe.” I am inured to anti-Mormon propaganda and find it generally entertaining—so I rarely think of any of it in the context of a diatribe; however, as a result of your reply to me, I went back to re-read it. I don’t think it is anti-Mormon as much as it is anti-American Religion with a healthy dose of condescending ignorance.

I do consider myself conversant with anti-Mormonism; and consequently, as I noted above, I’m more likely to be entertained than offended by it. That is not the case in this essay: it is incredibly offensive.

You provided a list of 5 points that you take from Bloom’s piece, which you suggest make up the thrust of his essay. Generally, a good essay states the premise at the beginning, submits evidence for that premise in the body of the essay and concludes by re-stating the premise as having been established. His essay consists of uninformed assertions followed by additional uninformed and bigoted assertions, ending in a final fear that Republican politics are little more than an a choice between a theocracy led by zealots and a theocracy led by ignoramuses.

Bloom’s hostility towards people of faith (limited here to American religions; but it likely extends to all branches of Christianity) is clear in his description of “omens that will darken” as they’re arrayed against Obama’s quest for a second term.

To explain this looming disaster, Bloom writes that Mitt Romney is “deep within the labyrinthine Mormon hierarchy.” That assertion is laughably false. Romney served—seventeen years ago—in the temporary, local leadership positions of Bishop and Stake President. But seriously, “labyrinthine?” Aside from local leaders of congregations, the LDS hierarchy consists of the president with two counselors, 12 apostles and an additional two quorums of 70 men each to assist them. Those “deep within” the quorums of 70 serve only temporarily. An additional 3 bishops oversee the administration of church finance and property concerns. Romney never has been in that hierarchy—deep or otherwise.

The next big blow to Bloom’s credibility comes when he claims that Mormon leaders are “plutocratic oligarchs” while referring to America’s “supposed democracy.” As is typical with many professors, he falsely denigrates both America and Mormon leaders. Leaving aside his swipe at America’s constitutional republic, he either knows nothing about actual Mormon leaders; or he has no concept of plutocratic oligarchies. While it’s true that Mormon leadership is confined to a small group of about 150 men, they could hardly be considered plutocrats—ruling by virtue of their wealth. The current president, Thomas Monson, worked as a book publisher before being admitted to the Quorum of 12 Apostles. Until very recently, he lived in a modest home in my middle class neighborhood in Salt Lake City. His predecessor and those before him could hardly have been considered plutocrats. For the most part they have been businessmen of modest means, teachers, attorneys and a physician.

This brings me to the first item you took away from Bloom’s essay:

1. Mormonism "was as much a departure from historical Christianity as Islam was and is." But then, SO ARE MOST OTHER AMERICANIZED CHURCHES.

Well, that’s pretty much the premise of Mormonism isn’t it? Mormonism is predicated on the position that historical Christianity is a vestige of a pristine Church that fell into apostasy. As far as Islam being a “departure from historical Christianity,” It’s apparent that Bloom has no firmer grasp on Islamic history than he has on Mormonism.

2. Mormonism is uniquely American precisely because we have made a cottage industry of reinventing the church.

Honestly, Bloom’s essay is pretty bad when it comes to logical thought; but that non sequitur had to come from somewhere else.

3. American religion, like American culture, is centered upon the denial of death [literalizing an ancient Christian metaphor.]

You left out the part in brackets; but its context is essential to see what Bloom is claiming.

According to Bloom, only American Christians actually have the temerity to believe in a literal resurrection—and as a result “deny death?” Likewise, historical Christians only looked on the idea of the resurrection of Jesus as a metaphor? That's nonsense. American Protestants aren't the only Christians who believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead. I’ve talked with a significant number of European Catholics who believe in a literal resurrection; and I would submit that it is the central theme of Christianity worldwide. Belief in a literal resurrection certainly is the central theme of Mormonism; but it could hardly be classified as “denial of death.”

4. Our religion is shaped by individualism, "freedom," and the American Jeezus.

Our religion is shaped by its tenets found in scripture. While the freedom to choose is basic and explained in 2 Nephi 2, that freedom is possessed by all the descendants of Adam and Eve—not just Americans. As far as the “American Jeezus” goes, I was unfamiliar with the concept and went to the Urban Dictionary for a definition. It seems to be a romanticized idea of what a politically correct Jesus would embrace. It claims that this “Jeezus” hates gays, doesn’t allow women to end pregnancies from rapists, believes in guns, hatred of others, and social Darwinism.” I’m pretty conversant with Mormon theology and that is a categorically false caricature of American Christianity in general and Mormonism specifically.

5. The LDS is evolving into just another Americanized Protestant sect.

Evidence supporting such an assertion would be interesting to assess. Since Bloom provides no evidence I would point out that a wide doctrinal gulf separates the LDS from Protestantism; and it isn’t disappearing in some mythical evolutionary process. Mormonism differs radically from Protestantism (and so-called Christian orthodoxy) today and historically. Their irreconcilable differences include diametrical opposition in their views of the nature of God, scripture, man, sin, soteriology, creation, revelation and the afterlife. There isn’t one particle of these tenets that has evolved since the time of Joseph Smith; and they separate us absolutely. Bloom’s assertion is little more than wishful thinking. He would do well to become informed about these subjects before making such wild and speculative claims in the future.

Bloom's essay seems to serve as a warning to America against a possible Romney presidency. It's hard to see any connection with reality.

HDR Photography

2010-10-04T07:25:00.006-06:00

When I write on this blog, the subject matter--more often than not--deals with religion, and rarely with politics. Once in a while, I come across something else that occupies my mind for a while and I think, "I ought to put that on my blog." This is one of those items.

Last winter, I came across a couple of pictures of the Salt Lake Temple--posted on a blog by a visitor to Salt Lake City. He referred to the pictures as "HDR" photographs--which I had never heard of. I learned over a couple of weeks that this is a way to take pictures that more closely mimics the human eyes' ability to perceive texture. Standard photography is limited when both bright and dark images are captured in the same frame. For example, when taking a picture from inside a room looking out the window, if the exposure is correct for inside the room, everything outside will be washed out. Conversely, if the exposure is appropriate for sunlight, everything inside the room will be too dark. HDR photography allows the photographer to use computer technology to take several photographs at different exposures and fuse them together later. This makes it possible to capture the image of a dark gray temple with a bright blue sky in the background where the colors and features appear as they would when seen by the human eye.

The more expensive camera you have, the easier it is to produce HDR images, and since I have a low-end Nikon, I've had to work a little harder than if I had a higher end camera. I'm still learning how to work around problems like movement of people or clouds between exposures, but the clarity of the photographs is so high that I'm very disappointed that I didn't know of this technique a year ago when I went to Israel and Jordan.

With an entry level Canon or Nikon camera and about $100 for software, anyone can produce remarkable images. With HDR, I've found a renewed interest in taking photographs. Pictures have to be taken in "RAW" format--which I now do exclusively, and a great on-line tutorial is available to learn the basics. Even single exposure images have an added dimension of texture unavailable in standard JPG format. Here are a couple of the pictures I have taken since last February.

Philosophy and Theology

2010-08-02T23:51:00.004-06:00

I wrote that I would write more later about the different perceptions of God between LDS and perceived Christian orthodoxy. It's now much later; but I have spent some time following up on ideas related to this subject. Here is what happened in the interim.

It's clear, as noted by the scholar Edwin Hatch, that there is a vast difference between the doctrines of the New Testament and those promulgated at Nicaea. Following our discussion on the creeds, and while I was preparing to teach my New Testament class, I was struck with this passage from Revelation 9:20

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk.

The striking part is the very clear contrast between false gods and the God of Israel. The devils and idols cannot see, hear or walk. Perhaps that stood out for me because I had been listening to some remarkable lectures on Christian theology by Professor Phillip Cary. He had provided a rule for interpreting scripture in the course of one of his lectures, noting that scripture is interpreted literally unless it would be ludicrous to do so. He gave as an example a passage from Genesis that couldn't be taken seriously--where God is referred to as walking in the garden in the cool of the day. (Gen. 3:8) Professor Cary explained, "If you take that literally, you're not taking the text seriously. God doesn't literally walk in the cool of the evening."

I thought that was a rather cavalier attitude and hoped he would be willing to respond to an email from me. He graciously and quickly replied and gave me permission to quote his answer:

You raise an important issue. I don't think Rev. 9:20 decides the issue, since I would take its point to be that idols are not even alive, much less divine. And in any case, from an orthodox (non-anthropomorphic) perspective, God's seeing and hearing are as metaphorical as his walking, since he has literally neither eyes nor ears, any more than he has legs.

Yet the general issue you raise remains. It's not hard to arrive at a very anthropomorphic conception of God if you don't accept the alliance between Christian doctrine and classical philosophy. You don't have to be a Mormon to take this path. All you have to do is take literally the attribution of emotion to God in the Old Testament. For if God literally has emotions, then he must exist in time (so that his emotional states can change) and if he exists in time then he must also exist in space (as if clear from modern physics and Einsteinian relativity theory) and if he exists in space he must have some kind of body. (Phillip Cary 2/23/2010)

I am still astounded at the implications of his answer--which is representative of mainstream orthodox Christian theology. The requirements of classical philosophy remove God from both time and space. This constructed Being of philosophical conclusions can experience no emotion--neither compassion nor tenderness. He is so transcendent that he does not love, neither does he mourn. This is the meaning of a God without body, parts, or passions.

As I mulled over the ramifications of the orthodox perspective, I remembered that Judaism shares to a great extent the same philosophy regarding God existing (if that is possible) outside of time and space who neither walks, nor sees, nor eats, nor smells (see also Deut. 4:28). I wrote to James Kugel, a professor of Hebrew who had been quoted in a news report as having concluded that the God of the Old Testament was corporeal. I wrote to Dr. Kugel and asked him when he believed the change of perception took place so that the Jewish idea of God mirrored that of Christian philosophy. He suggested that I read his book, "The God of Old," since it is a fairly complicated answer.

I read the book which led me to several others on Jewish theology by Gershom Scholem. Essentially, the rabbis of the middle ages became concerned that their concept of God wasn't as transcendent as the God of philosophical Christianity; so there was a concerted effort to modernize the God of Judaism. Kugel quotes Scholem as lamenting this development because it changed what it was that made God a "living God."

The philosophers and theologians [of medieval times] were concerned first and foremost with the purity of the concept of God and determined to divest it of all mythical and anthropomorphic elements. But this determination to ... reinterpret the recklessly anthropomorphic statements of the biblical text and the popular forms of religious expression in terms of a purified theology tended to empty out the concept of God ... The price of God’s purity is the loss of his living reality. What makes Him a living God ... is precisely what makes it possible for man to see Him face to face. (G. Scholem, “Kabbalah and Myth”) [Kugel, James "The God of Old" p. 201]

Kugel points out that earlier Israelites conceived of a God as "a physical being not much bigger in size than an ordinary human." This reminded me of a news report of Mormon missionaries in 1836 in the Ohio Observer: "They believe that the true God is a material being, composed of body parts; and that when the Creator formed Adam in his own image, he made him about the size and shape of God himself."

The orthodox perspective that denies the "body, parts and passions" of God stands in stark contrast to the personage described by Joseph Smith. The passages we view as literal, they see as "figurative expressions accommodated to our way of conceiving things." I see some real problems with such explanations as did early LDS apologist B.H. Roberts--because the passages aren't figurative of anything other than anthropomorphic characteristics. One passage in particular--Deuteronomy 23:12-14-- illustrates this point.

Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad: And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee:

Why were they to bury this waste? The answer comes in the next verse: "For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp..."

And this is only one instance of scores of other passages referring to God as a corporeal being. But more important to me is the certainty that God loves--"For God so loved the world." He is not merely the attribute of love; he does love with tender compassion. That is the nature of a perfect Father.

As B. H. Roberts pointed out years ago, Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the Father. He is the express image of His Father. He existed in both time and space, he displayed tenderness, loving kindness and anger. He wept. His nature did not change at his resurrection as is demonstrated in the Book of Mormon.

And when he had said these words, he wept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them. And when he had done this he wept again;

He continues to exist in both time and space as a resurrected being. He possesses all the attributes He manifested in His mortal ministry.

The Nicene Creed

2010-02-16T20:53:00.002-07:00

I had the opportunity for the past two weeks of appearing on Pastor Jason Wallace's television program "The Ancient Paths." Pastor Wallace is really an enjoyable host and interviewer. We're able to discuss our differences and disagreements agreeably and without discourtesy. He's probably as perplexed that I'm a Mormon as I am that he's a Calvinist. He invited me two weeks ago to come on his program and discuss the Nicene Creed.

Since it had been quite a few years since I had read that specific creed I re-read it. Mormons have an almost automatic aversion to most of the creeds (even though we have our own 13 Articles of Faith that probably qualify as creedal statements) and I was surprised at how little disagreement I personally have with the creed of Nicaea. As we discussed the words and thoughts expressed in it, I noted that they aren't problematic for Mormons. What is problematic is that they prescribe belief as a condition of fellowship. Mormons perceive behavior rather than belief as the litmus test of fellowship. I'll write more about that later; I just remembered I'm late for choir practice.

Think Twice About Getting the Google Nexus One Phone

2010-02-11T10:45:00.016-07:00

If you bought a Google Nexus One, pray that you never have to have it repaired.

I bought the new Google phone manufactured by HTC. After using it for a couple of days, I thought, "This is cool, I'll get one for my wife." That was a $529.00 mistake.

The phone's "haptic response" didn't work. What's "haptic response?" It's a remarkable innovation that silently tells you the phone is accepting your keystrokes. It's a very brief vibration of the phone with each keystroke. After a few minutes of investigation, I learned my wife's didn't work. I called HTC's repair site for what was the first of a series of useless and exasperating discussions.It went like this:

"Can you tell me your name?
"What is your email address?
"What is your telephone number?
"What is your home address?

After giving the appropriate replies, I explained the phone's problem. The service representative said that I needed to send the phone to the repair center so it could be evaluated. I said, "OK, what do we do?" She said: "What's your name?"

I said, "Didn't I just give you all that information?" She said, "Yes, but that was on a different screen, I need it again." She then explained that she needed my email address, home address, phone number and credit card number. There is a $38.00 fee for examining the phone if it turns out that it had been damaged by me so she needed my credit card number.. I said, "OK, here's the number." She said, "Not yet. I have to get permission from my supervisor for you to send it back." Although I didn't say it, I thought, "You need PERMISSION to provide warranty service--on a brand new phone that arrived with a defect? She asked for permission to put me on hold. Every 45 seconds or so, she came back on the line to tell me she was still working on getting permission. After about 10 minutes she came back and said, "OK, could you give me your name and address?"

"Seriously? What have you been doing with it each time I gave it to you?" She apologized but said I still needed to give it to her. She said she was having trouble getting the computer to take the information. Would I mind if she called me back in about 20 minutes?

No call came; but the next day I got an email with a FedEx label and instructions on how to return the phone. (How in the world did they find my email address?) I packed up the phone according to the instructions and dropped it off at FedEx on Saturday evening..

Two weeks later, with no communication from HTC, I checked the tracking number through FedEx and learned the phone had been delivered two days after I had dropped it off. Reluctant to call HTC, I looked for some way to check the status on their web site but found a phone call was the only option. I called.

"So that we can work effectively with you,
"Can you tell me your name?
"What is your email address?
"What is your telephone number?"

I provided the information and explained why I was calling. She explained that she would have to transfer me to the service center. I got my name, email and phone number ready. That's what the next person asked for. I was told that the phone had never arrived. I gave her the tracking number and explained that it had been delivered January 25th.

She said, "Hmmmm. Can I put you on hold while I look into this?"

A few minutes later she returned and explained to me that it had indeed been delivered on January 25th but they didn't know where it was. She said that this is a problem (!) and she would submit an escalation ticket to have it looked in to. "The escalation team doesn't come in until 10:00 so you should hear back from us in about 2 days."

Two days later I got an email explaining how to ship my phone to HTC. "That's odd" I thought, but now I expected things to deteriorate. Why tell me how to send them a phone they already have? I replied to the email and explained that after several conversations, I now have the same information I started with, to wit: I got a bad phone from them, I mailed it to them, they lost it. I invited them to get me some new information that I didn't already know.

This morning I called again for an update. After the initial exchange of the same information of name and email and phone number, they also asked for the HTC ticket number (which you would think would include all the information they keep taking down), He looked up my record and said, "Apparently you refused delivery of this phone?" Incredulous, I asked when they sent it to me so that I could have refused it.

(Hold please)......."Here is what happened. We wrote down the wrong serial number on the phone. When your phone arrived it didn't match our number of your phone so we didn't repair it. However, I am sending in an escalation notice so that they'll look into it."

"A new escalation notice? What good will that do? Didn't somebody send an escalation ticket on Monday that proved to be a waste of time?"

"Well, they did find the phone."

"But that didn't accomplish anything towards the goal of getting me back my phone did it?"

"What? Didn't they send you a loaner?"

"No." (When you order the phone they engrave two lines of text of your choice. I had them put my wife's name and the second line said, "If found, call XXX-XXX-XXXX with my phone number for the contact. The service department had that phone with my telephone number on it and they didn't take the time to tell me what was happening when the serial number didn't match. Incidentally, they don't swap out phones if they're engraved.)

"hold please..... We're issuing you a refund for the phone some time next week."

"Ah," I thought, "some real, albeit very late, customer service." Then it hit me: these people have been so clueless, they're not doing what a normal company would do in such a situation. They're not making anything right; they just want to start over. "So, what about my phone?"

"It won't be repaired. We wrote on the ticket that you had refused shipment so that you would get a refund and now you just need to buy another phone."

I can understand a less than satisfactory experience with customer service; but I don't see how that can happen every time I call. I think Google made a mistake with this partner. It kind of reminds me of new Coke.

UPDATE: Feb 15 2010 - I got a call from HTC telling me that the problem was related to the fact that they had recorded the wrong serial number; but they were going to issue an "escalation ticket" so that Houston can proceed with its repair. Once again, they told me what I already knew; and their news didn't indicate that anything would be resolved. She did start to ask me to confirm my telephone number and then realized she had called me and just asked for my address and email. I noted that this was at least the ninth time I had proffered this data and she was pleased because she said they're all supposed to asked for that information each time they contact a customer. Apparently, HTC could not proceed to repair my phone until they called me and went through all the processes we've been through 4 times now. I noted that this was not only astonishingly useless but equally aggravating. She apologized and reiterated that it was necessary to contact me to issue an escalation ticket because the previous two escalation tickets needed to be closed before any further work could proceed. Apparently, further work must be metaphorical or necessary for additional irritation to the customer since no work whatsoever had been done on their part after 3 weeks-- except of course--writing down my name and address and issuing those essential escalation tickets.

UPDATE: Feb 16 2010 - I got an email from HTC. It had to be good news. How surprising to learn it was another FedEx label to send in my telephone for repair. It included this solemn warning: "You must access the URL on or before the Label Expiration Date of 2010-02-23" and, "If you require more information about this shipment, please call 888-617-1113."

I called. I explained that this had ceased to be entertaining and asked why they're sending me another label for a phone that never goes anywhere. He asked if I had an HTC work order number. I read it to him from the original email confirmation. He could see a record of all my conversations and didn't need any other information. He said, "Don't worry about that. Those labels are emailed automatically whenever a work order is generated."

"Just to aggravate customers?"

UPDATE: Feb 17 2010 - At work this morning a gmail notifier indicated a message from HTC Customer Service. They were responding to a survey they sent me on Sunday because I had interacted with Customer Service. Of about 22 items, I had rated all but one as "unacceptable" --mainly because there wasn't a lower category. The one I ranked as acceptable was "Was your service representative polite?" They have all been very polite and very useless. Well, apparently something I wrote gave them reason for concern so Nate called and left a message on my voice mail that he wanted to make sure "HTC was meeting my needs satisfactorily." He left a number and asked me to call him back. I was so excited to find out what they weren't going to do today, that I immediately called at 9:36 am.

He asked me how everything had turned out. I laughed and gave him a condensed version. He apologized. I said I was tired of hearing people apologize who had no more power to make things right than I had. What I really wanted from HTC was some semblance of customer service. He quickly scanned the history of escalation notices and said, "I know who I need to talk to about this. I will make a couple of calls and call you back in 10 minutes. What's the best number to reach you?" I gave him my office number and waited by the phone for the next 10 minutes times 12. Then, I forwarded my office number to my cell phone. Five hours later I called his number several times, but all I got was a message that he was unavailable. I should have known it was only a ruse. Last time they said they'd call back in 20 minutes and never did. I wonder if they will ever call me if I don't try to contact them?

I think HTC would be more profitable if they got rid of all their customer service personnel. They're very good at apologizing and being polite, but what they need is people who can resolve customer service problems. As long as they can't do that, why employ them?

UPDATE: February 22, 2010. Today marks the four week anniversary that HTC has had my phone. I called their service center on Saturday to find out why they hadn't returned any of my calls. The guy told me that he didn't have any information but that he was going to send an email to his supervisor and she'd call me on Monday. I explained that I was tired of hearing nothing except what I already knew and asked him to make sure that when she called me she should have some information related to when I would get my phone or a refund. He said the email was going out right then.

No call from his supervisor today so I called HTC and asked if they had any information. Here is what he told me. Here is a transcript of the recording:

"All right, I received a message here from our repair center and it said that the serial number for the received device does not match the in-bound device. They have discarded the ticket and have asked to re-create a new ticket with the proper serial number, so I guess I need to do that. That message was sent to our system on, uh actually, that message was here today, Let me see if I can find if that ticket was created. I'm going to search by the serial number to see if that ticket has been created. Sorry, there's a lot of different tickets, there's a lot of information that's been shuffled around to that uh......I'm going to get a supervisor over here just to confirm this--but it looks like I got a response today from the repair center in Houston, and it's asking us to create a new ticket with the proper serial number. Well, this ticket is closed, so that's OK--all of your tickets are closed, so we do need to create a new ticket and everything should be fine."

Looks to me like we're in a repeating loop--or this is the best story they have and they're sticking with it. Two weeks ago, they told me the wrong serial number was recorded and they had to create a new ticket. Last week, Angie called me and told me the wrong serial number was recorded and they had to create a new ticket. I just got off the phone with Matt who told me the wrong serial number was recorded and they had to create a new ticket.

UPDATE! March 2, 2010: My phone arrived via FedEx on Wednesday. It was such a relief to see the package and visualize an end to this astonishing adventure--which, I learned, had not concluded. They did not fix my phone; they just sent it back.

Everyone at home laughed.

I got another survey inviting me to rate customer service.

I have learned why HTC kept stopping work and had the wrong serial number. On my first call they asked for the serial number of the defective phone. I read it to them and they recorded it. They sent me a shipping label with instructions to pack the phone carefully to avoid damage. I put the phone in one of the two boxes they came in and sent it out. The box had a serial number on it--the serial number for the working phone. When it arrived in Houston, someone used a scanner to read the serial number on the box. That number wasn't the same as the number they were expecting so they set it aside, unable to work on it. They didn't check the phone--that was the number they needed.

Two weeks later, I called to find out what was taking so long. They concluded they could repair it by creating a new ticket with the serial number from the box. So, armed with a new work order and new serial number, the technician opened up the phone. The serial number didn't match the work order so he couldn't fix it.

When I called the following week they issued another work order with the first serial number. That apparently made it possible for them to mail the phone back to me so we could start over.

UPDATE March 4, 2010: I got my phone back today. It still doesn't work. I don't understand why they would send it back non-functioning without any comment. Tomorrow I'll find out how good my VISA Platinum purchase protection is.

UPDATE March 5, 2010: I didn't turn the phone off yesterday when I--in total frustration--set it down to write my update. This morning, I picked it up to mull over my next step. I went to turn it on and it vibrated. Aliens must have visited my home during the night because now it works. It didn't last night; but now it does everything it's supposed to do.

Windows 7 -- Pleasant Surprise after Nightmare of Vista

2009-11-11T12:14:00.003-07:00

Having used the beta edition of Windows 7 last spring, I was excited to dump Vista from my home computers. Two weeks ago, I purchased 3 upgrade licenses, together with copies of PC Mover because I wouldn't need to reinstall all my software. It was definitely a good purchase in several respects but came with a couple of glitches.

I bought the Windows 7 upgrades over the web from Office Max and PC Mover from the manufacturer's Laplink website. I downloaded the PC Mover files and when I went to Offic Max's site to track the shipment there was a note on my invoice that the offer had been discontinued and I needed to repurchase the items elsewhere. I found the same product on Amazon (as well as PC Mover for half of what I paid Laplink.) My Windows 7 files arrived two days later and I thought I'd try one computer at a time. It was the easiest and most problem free upgrade I've ever accomplished.

After my wife made me promise that this was risk free and there was no possible way anything could go wrong, she agreed to let me upgrade her Dell laptop. Everything seemed to go as before until PC Mover began reinstalling the software. It choked because the 80 gig drive wasn't big enough to store the previous Windows files in addition to the new Win 7 files. I thought, "No problem, I'll move the windows.old file on to an external hard drive and have it start over. Big mistake. I should have copied the file rather than moved it because halfway through I got an error message that some of the files couldn't retain their file names on the new drive. Not knowing what to do, I told it to cancel. I then found that several hundred files had been moved but all the directories were still intact on the old drive. I had to manually inspect each directory to make sure everything got moved. Since there were nearly a hundred directories it took a while. After that, I was able to restart the restore process and it completed without a hitch. I learned after it was complete that this model of laptop is missing drivers (the touchpad for one) and Dell doesn't recommend upgrading this model.

I am most pleased with my HP laptop's upgrade. It's a 64 bit machine and there's a touch feature for controlling the volume just above the keyboard. When I got the computer, I learned never touch that feature! Any attempt to do so caused a giant volume graphic to cover the screen while the operating system locked up. Since I got a great deal on the computer I just lived with the few times someone reached out and adjusted the volume. However, the Win7 driver for the volume control works perfectly.

A couple things have quit working that I have relied on in the past. They are:

1. Wave Pad. This is a remarkable audio editing program that has allowed me to take analogue audio files from tape, remove hiss and clicks and basically digitally remaster them. The 50 bucks I spent for this program has been well worth the investment and I'll purchase it again.

2. Paperport. I started using Paperport when it came free with my first scanner. I bought upgrades over the years, and when our office started to go paperless, I convinced my secretary that this was a great program. We got the latest (at that time) version Paperport 11 Professional and found that it was most adept at freezing whatever computer tried to use it. Since I had been storing documents on Paperport for many years, I was reluctant to give it up, but it proved to be the most irritating program I've ever used. We have upgraded to version 12 in my office and it seems to have resolved the problems we had with it. I don't know why I agreed to go with it because each iteration of this program since Paperport 7 was worse than its predecessor. It stopped working on my HP laptop with the Win7 upgrade but continues to function (marginally) on my desktop.

3. Scansoft PDF Printer. This program is the main reason I continued to use Paperport. They're both made by Nuance and this is as good as Paperport is bad. It produces PDF files that are substantially smaller than any other program. This week I took an 80 page document from a PDF file that was 35 megs and it turned it into a PDF of 530 K. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Win 7.

4. I upgraded to this version of Windows for two primary reasons: 1) Vista was taking as much as 10 minutes to boot up, and 2) When I played with the beta version of Win 7 last spring it took less than 45 seconds to install a network printer. Installing my home printers was incredibly easy, but I haven't been able to install the scanning function of my HP Photosmart printer.

Knowing what I do now about the advantages and disadvantages of Win 7, if I had it to do over again, I would without hesitation.

Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia

2009-06-28T13:51:00.006-06:00

According to a news report out of Rome this past week, the ancient Ark of the Covenant has resided in Ethiopia for the last 3,000 years and has been under the care of the Orthodox Ethiopian Church for much of that time. Here's an English translation of the story:

The Orthodox Patriarch of Ethiopia confirmed that which had been anticipated for two days after a report of the [Italian] news organization Adnkronos, "I repeat the Ark of the covenant is in Ethiopia and none of us knows for how much longer. Only God knows that. I am not here to give proof that the ark is in Ethiopia but I am here to say that I have seen it."

Rome, June 19, 2009 (Adnkronos) "Ethiopia is the throne of the Ark of the Covenant. [It] has been in Ethiopia for 3000 years and it is still there and by the will of God will continue to be there. It arrived in Ethiopia by way of a miracle."

The Patriarch of the Orthodox Ethiopian church, Abuna Pauolos, confirmed what had been anticipated earlier through the news agency Adkronos. At a press conference at the Aldovandi hotel in Rome, the Patriarch said, “I have seen it with feelings of humility—not pride as when one goes to church.” Also participating in the press conference was Prince Makonnen Haile Selassie, nephew of the Emperor. "This is the first time,” Patriarch Paulos continued, “that I say this in a press conference. I repeat, the Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia and none of us knows for how much longer. Only God knows."

"Everything that is found in the Ark," explained the Patriarch responding to the curiosity of the journalists, "is perfectly described in the Bible. Its state of preservation is good because it is not made from human hands but it is something that God has blessed.

“There are many documents and proofs available concerning the presence of the Ark in Ethiopia. There is no reason for someone to pretend to claim to have something that he does not have," the Patriarch affirmed. "I am not here to give proof that the Ark is in Ethiopia, but I am here to tell what I have seen, which I know, and can testify about. I have not said that the Ark will be displayed to the world. It is a mystery and object of worship."

Patriarch Pauolos also spoke of construction of a museum at Axum, a buildng where treasures built over centuries and centuries could be displayed. The museum, financed through a foundation established by the Prince, should be built within two years—where the Ark of the Covenant could also be placed.” However, for this to take place the patriarch explained, "there still needs to be a decision on a petition made to the Holy Sinod—the ruling council of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church." Patriarch Pauolos, president of the G8 for Religions—attended meetings of the council 16th through 18th of June near Rome and l’Aquila. Subsequently, the patriarch was invited by the community of Sant’Egidio to participate in a day of study on the religious history of Ethiopia and all day yesterday he met at the Vatican with Pope Benedict XVI.

“Benedict XVI and the Patriarch discussed many things, and his Holiness extended an invitation to the Patriarch to return in October” explained Prince Markonne Haile Selassie.

Althought it would be really cool if it were true, a few items of this story don't ring true to me:

1) Patriarch Pauolos claims to have seen the actual Ark; but his face hasn't melted.

2) He claims the Ark has been in Ethiopia for 3,000 years. That's 400 years longer than possible. The Ark was in the Jerusalem temple at the time of Josiah's reforms and until about 585 B.C. when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem. 2 Maccabees claims that the prophet Jeremiah spirited the Ark out of Jerusalem at that time and hid it in a cave on Mt. Sinai. (see 2 Maccabees 2:1-8.) Some legends claim the Ark was taken to the Jewish temple at Elephantine shortly before the Babylonian assault. At any rate, 3,000 is too many years.

3) The Patriarch claims that the Ark wasn't constructed by human hands; yet God gave instructions to Moses to have it constructed by human hands.

Pull My Finger

2009-03-08T19:26:00.007-06:00

I want to begin by apologizing to visitors who find that I've been MIA for six months. I've had a couple of adventures but not that much time to comment on them. A couple of months ago I fell on the ice which made it very hard to type for a while. Here's how I explained it to my kids:

I dropped off the van this morning to get snow tires in the midst of a big snow storm. I planned on taking the bus home, but saw it too late to get to the bus stop. Since it was only about 10 blocks, I figured I would start walking.

As I passed a grocery store, I went inside to see if they had an orange peeler. They didn't--but they had 2 liter Sprite on sale for 69 cents each. I bought four and two doughnuts and started walking again. About a hundred yards from home, my feet went out from under me and I went down. I heard a "crunch" when I landed, looked at my right hand and screamed. It was ugly. I had either broken my middle finger or dislocated it or both. I kicked my groceries off the sidewalk into the snow and took off for the nearest hospital. A kind lady stopped and gave me a ride. Unfortunately, this health care facility doesn't accept my insurance. I didn't care as long as they were willing to pull my finger back in to place.

The doctor wasn't in yet due to the snow. They couldn't give me anything for the pain because I hadn't eaten anything yet that morning (the doughnuts were lost in the snow). So, I got out my cell phone and took a picture of my hand. The doctor arrived in about 10 minutes. I held up my hand and she said, "That's a good one." She gave me two shots in my finger and sent me for x-rays. She explained that it was obviously dislocated but that it might be broken as well. If it's broken and they pull really hard on it, it can have additional distressing consequences.

They took x-rays and determined it wasn't broken and then started pulling on it. The nurse was pulling my finger while the doctor had hold of my arm--leaning against me for leverage. There was a loud "pop" and I said, "That's it? Is it fixed?" The doctor said, "No, that pop was my thumb, we have to do it some more."

After some more pulling, there was a much louder pop and it was back in. They wrapped two fingers together and charged me $700 and I went home. It's surprising how hard they had to pull to get it back in.

It looks like I won't be able to drive for a while since I won't have the use of my middle finger.

Turns out the Sprite cost me $175 per bottle--such a deal.

It's been interesting to see how many things are impacted by an injured finger. I can't tie my shoelaces, type "8", "i", "k", or ",". A few days after the accident, I took off the splint while watching "White Christmas" on TV with my wife. I said that even though they were gifted entertainers, it would be impossible to put together their dance number "just like that" as I held up my hand and tried to snap my fingers...

It's In The News, It Must Be True

2008-09-09T20:44:00.004-06:00

I have recently been enjoying a website engaged in the fruitful field of analyzing bias in the media. An article from yesterday showed how good news from the Bush administration morphed in headlines from one outlet to another so that the original message was good and lost. It reminded me that I pretty much distrust everything I read and hear—noting that there’s some factual basis that caused a particular story to end up in the news, but that it probably isn’t what really happened. These are a few of the reasons why I think the news is not accurate.

Almost 30 years ago, I had spent several hours of my work day repairing control equipment in a parking garage. Unable to get an exit gate to function in the basement of the ZCMI garage, I broke the board off and told the cashier that I’d try to get back later. If people didn’t stop to pay, there wasn’t much she could do about it until I could fix the gate—but at least people could get out.

I realized that I could fix these problems more readily if I had a work bench where I could plug in the electronic modules away from traffic lanes. In the back office, I quickly assembled such a work bench that only needed to have a power supply. There was an electric panel a few feet away and I thought that I could probably insert a couple of wires somewhere and get everything to work. The only real problem was that I didn’t know anything about electricity. But, I figured, “I’ll be careful” and opened up the panel.

I got an extension cord, stripped off the insulation and hooked up two wires. The test bench had a 110 outlet on it and I figured that if I had done it correctly, the soldering iron in my tool box would probably work if I plugged it into the newly powered outlet.

I plugged it in. The lights in the room started to rapidly go dim. Scared, I quickly unplugged the iron and the lights went back up. I thought, “Was that my fault? Naaah.” I plugged it back in. Suddenly there was a loud “pop” and everything went dark. My secretary yelled, “What are you doing back there?”

“Nothing!” I yelled. I stepped out to where I could see outside. Next door was the main office for Utah Power and Light Company—five floors of offices with lots of windows—all completely dark. I ran out to the street. Semaphores in each direction for as far as you could see were all dark. So were all the buildings—except for emergency lighting in the underground ZCMI parking garage.

I dropped the soldering iron.

I wondered, “Who designed an electrical system that could be disabled by an idiot with a soldering iron?"

Over the next few minutes, we learned from radio news reports that a fire under some power lines had created a cascading effect of shutting down electrical power throughout Utah and into parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Nevada.

We spent most of the rest of the day getting people out of elevators. Power was restored by evening so that we could watch the national news on television. I heard Dan Rather report the massive power outage and note that there were no serious problems except for a few hundred vehicles that were trapped in the basement of the ZCMI parking garage—in the dark and unable to leave because the gate wouldn’t open.

The gate I had removed several hours earlier in the only garage in the city equipped with emergency lights.

Several years earlier I was in Italy where terrorists occasionally attacked innocent civilians. During a communist rally in Forlì, a bomb hidden in a garbage can exploded, killing six people. Several of my friends were living in the city and had seen the rally—a gathering of hundreds of thousands of people. They took pictures of the town square with a giant banner showing pictures of Lenin at one end and a hammer and sickle at the other end. A week later, TIME Magazine reported on the attack that they said occurred during a “Catholic Worker’s Rally.” Their picture was cropped so that the communist insignias weren’t visible.

These were instances where the truth didn’t seem interesting enough and so someone decided to revise things to make better copy.

In the late 1970’s a fundamentalist polygamist named John Singer decided to take his children out of school and teach them at home. At the time, Utah law didn’t allow for home schooling. Through negotiations with the court system, the State determined that he could teach his children at home provided they received periodic tests and psychological evaluations. After a while, Singer declined to allow his children to be tested but the government backed down. At the end of 1978, Singer took a “plural wife” who brought her children from her legal marriage to the Singer compound. The father of the children had legal custody and demanded that the authorities intervene and rescue his children from Singer’s control. When confronted by sheriff’s deputies, Singer pulled a pistol on them and was shot and killed. News reports consistently claimed that Singer was killed because he refused to send his children to public schools. He was killed because he had illegally confined someone else’s children and threatened to shoot the police if they challenged him. The New York Times wrote in 1988 that, “Mr. Singer, … was killed at the cabin Jan. 18, 1979, by police officers seeking to arrest him for refusing to send his children to public school.

The US Constitution guarantees the right of a free press but not necessarily a responsible or honest press. It used to mean something to me when someone cited the date and page of a newspaper article. I remember my childhood friends saying, “They couldn’t print it unless it’s true.” I wonder if they're as innocent today.

Does Anyone Care if Jong is Il or Dead?

2008-09-09T18:27:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, a professor from a Japanese university claimed that Korean leader Kim Jong Il likely died several years ago but has been propped up (so to speak) by look alikes. Today, several news agencies claim that Jong Il probably had a stroke last month and is now incapacitated. Does it sound like the politburo in Korea has seen the movie Dave?

Mormon and Protestant Scripture - Follow up

2008-08-10T14:17:00.009-06:00

In an earlier post, I discussed the canonization of the LDS Doctrine and Covenants in 1835. I mentioned that the comments made by those present at the August 1835 meeting where the book was approved, indicated a distinction between the Lectures on Faith and the Revelations. Those comments appear both in the LDS (and RLDS) History of the Church as well as on page 255 of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.

The preface to the book and the arrangement of the subject matter also demonstrates the same distinction. I photographed pages from the RLDS reprint of the 1835 edition that I include here.

Additionally, I photographed the corresponding pages from the 1846 Nauvoo edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. Unfortunately, this book is so fragile that splaying it out on my scanner would have damaged the binding. So, I propped it open on a table and took pictures with a digital camera. Consequently, the pages have a slight angle to them.

Clearly, the main reason the Lectures on Faith don't qualify as part of the canon is because Church leaders have maintained that they aren't and never have been canonized. When the Church canonized the Pearl of Great Price in 1880, George Q. Cannon made some preliminary remarks immediately after the Church had sustained John Taylor as the Church president. He said, "I hold in my hand, the Book of Doctrine and Covenants and also the book, The Pearl of Great Price, which books contain revelations of God." The Pearl of Great Price that he held included the Hymn (as a poem) "O Say What is Truth." After Cannon's remarks, Joseph F. Smith put forth the motion that the Church accept as its canon, "the revelations" included in both books held by George Q. Cannon. Consequently, the Church voted on that measure and accepted the revelations--obviously excluding the Lectures on Faith, the hymn, and apparently the article written by Oliver Cowdery on government--since they were never classified as revelations. The Articles of Faith were separately presented to the Church's vote in 1890 and again in 1907, so even though they may not be technically "revelations," they're included as part of the canon.

There is, though, still a wrinkle in this process that gives non-LDS folks heartburn. Throughout the history of the publication of our scriptures, editorial revisions have taken place. Oliver Cowdery corrected William W. Phelps' edition of the revelations, Joseph Smith made corrections to each edition of the Book of Mormon, and later Church editions have also made authorized changes.

The Book of Abraham, printed first in the 1842 newspaper Times and Seasons provided the initial text for Franklin D. Richard's missionary pamphlet titled "The Pearl of Great Price." However, when the Church obtained original manuscripts to the work, it was clear that the 1842 publication wasn't faithful to those manuscripts. Consequently, when the Church produced a new edition in 1981, it was updated to reflect the originals. The same is true for passages in the Book of Mormon. So, even though the earlier versions were canonized, the later, corrected versions are today's official canon.

That's one reason I refer to my pre-1981 Book of Mormon (triple combination) as the "Expired Version." Alma 32:30 is twice as long as in previous versions, nobler and foes were changed to robber and joy to coincide with the original manuscript. There are several other interesting revisions. They're more correct than the earlier canonized editions and clarify some puzzling passages. We subscribe to Joseph Smith's and Moroni's idea of rational scripture: If there are mistakes, they're the mistakes of men--if we notice mistakes, we fix them.

Why Fundamentalists Don't Get It

2008-08-09T07:17:00.002-06:00

For the past couple of months, I’ve been corresponding with a young man named Steve—raised in the FLDS Church. It’s reminiscent of a similar exchange I had about 20 years ago with representatives of the AUB Church—a break off group from the FLDS. Both correspondences began as I attempted to respond to attacks against the LDS Church. Steve wrote on an internet forum that Spencer W. Kimball was a false prophet because he warned the Church against the so called Adam God theory. Similarly, the AUB had purchased a full page advertisement in the Salt Lake Tribune complaining that the LDS Church had forsaken its fundamental principles.

As both exchanges proceeded, I quoted scripture and statements of Church leaders that they claimed to revere and they responded mostly with folklore and third hand recollections that often made no sense at all. But there was an even more puzzling facet of our communication. It seemed as though they were incapable of comprehending elementary concepts of doctrine—no matter how carefully I explained them. If there was any possibility at all of misunderstanding what I wrote, they misunderstood. A significant portion of what I wrote to them had to be clarified, explained, re-explained and qualified so much that it seemed we were speaking different languages.

I remember thinking again and again, “How is it that this guy can’t understand what I write?” And now, more than 20 years later, I find precisely the same mental paradigm—one that embraces shoddy or pretended sources, and instinctively and repeatedly misunderstands basic elements of communication. (A fellow named John Lester left comments here this week that follow this same vein.) It was so frustrating because it was clear that I wasn’t dealing with someone who was mentally handicapped—but he was so obtuse when it came to evaluating simple statements of doctrine that I wondered if he really had both oars in the water.

I eventually concluded that my correspondent from the 1980’s fit Paul’s description of the “natural man” who was incapable of receiving the things of the Spirit of God. “…the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” This reminded me of what I wrote to an LDS woman who complained that the Church baptizes converts before they have a complete grasp of Church doctrine. I wrote back:

“There is a very good reason to be baptized as early as possible. When Joseph and Oliver were baptized, Joseph wrote that upon coming out the water he immediately understood the scriptures in a manner that previously was impossible. True doctrine comes more readily to people who have the gift of the Holy Ghost than otherwise.

“A couple of weeks ago, we were teaching the gospel to a young woman who had been raised in a fundamentalist, polygamist family. She has thousands of questions. Her brother, who was baptized about 3 months ago, told her that there was no way all of her questions could be answered until she was baptized. He said he had tried it, and after worrying over many questions, he got one answer that he knew came from God: that Gordon B. Hinckley is a living prophet. At that point he decided to be baptized and since that time, it is as though he was given prescription glasses when before he couldn’t see anything clearly.

“If the gospel were merely a scientific endeavor, people would be well advised to wait until they became experts before joining, but the gospel cannot be understood by the natural man, it must be discerned spiritually and that’s why we have to be baptized and confirmed while yet doctrinal babies.

I Went to Zion and Kolob

2008-08-03T15:28:00.007-06:00

I like to believe that I'm always open to learn something new. This week I learned that I'm too old to hike the Subway in Zion National Park.

The Subway is a slot canyon hike located in the Kolob Terrace portion of the park. It covers nearly 15 miles where you start in a bleak desert, descend into a deep canyon, swim for your life, rappel down sheer cliffs, wade in shallow water past dinosaur tracks and then hike almost straight up out of the canyon back into the bleak desert.

At the end of the hike, it was 107 degrees and I remembered that when I did this in 1992 I said to myself, "I'm never doing this again." Unfortunately, I forgot to tell my wife about that and she arranged for a reprise this past week. It was beautiful, glorious, and too much for my old bones.

Although the hike takes a serious physical toll, the part that makes me not want to return is that I just don't like the terror of standing at the top of a rock cliff with slippery, sandy shoes-- thinking that one wrong move will end my life as I know it. And, after hiking for about 4 hours, you realize that you can't turn around and go back. Once you unhook the rope, you're committed to continue on--the only way out is straight ahead.

Here's a photo of the last of our group descending into the actual Subway. When I say "our group" I really mean "my wife" casually putting on the harness to descend with a laugh. When I came down five minutes earlier, I wasn't casual or laughing. I wasn't sobbing either, but almost.

This is one of those trips where the fright soon fades from memory--unless you do it again.

Fundamentals of Fundamentalists and Mormonism Part 2

2008-07-28T19:58:00.007-06:00

While driving back to Salt Lake City from Phoenix, Arizona in 1989, I crossed the border into Utah as evening was approaching. Still five hours from home, and very tired, I thought I should find a place to stay for the night. It occurred to me that I might drop by Colorado City, Arizona-- the headquarters of the FLDS Church and say hello to two of my great-aunts who lived there. I knew that they would offer me a bed for the night and perhaps even an invitation to their church services the next morning.

Fortunately, that's exactly how it turned out. My aunt Marjorie seemed pleased to see me and told me they had a spare bedroom and insisted that I stay the night. The next morning, they asked if I wanted to attend church with them before returning home. I eagerly consented.

The services were interesting to me and confirmed what I had read about and heard from others. Men were called to speak to the congregation without prior notice and obviously without any preparation. One fellow talked about the dangers of modern dress--including makeup and men rolling up their sleeves. He suggested that there was no need to question the teachings of the prophet (i.e. "Rulon Jeffs") because God would not allow him to lead them astray. At that juncture, I really wanted to raise my hand and ask the speaker when such a policy came about; for if it was valid for Rulon Jeffs, why wouldn't it have been valid for Wilford Woodruff? However, I was their guest and that would have been bad form.

When the meeting concluded, I thanked by aunt for her hospitality and said I'd better be on my way. I asked about my other aunt and she said that a few years earlier there had been a split among the leaders and they were now in separate movements--the Timpson group was meeting in their own Church nearby. As I drove out of town, I thought I might drop in there as well.

There were a couple of surprises inside. The women in this group were considerably more attractive than those attending the previous meeting. I only was able to listen for about 10 minutes before the meeting ended. Some of my female cousins recognized me and rushed over to see what in the world I was doing down there. They took me to the front and introduced me to their prophet, Alma (Del) Timpson. "Nice name." I thought.

I asked him if he would mind if I came back at a later time and interviewed him. He agreed and invited me to return. (I did return the following October, but by that time he wasn't lucid enough to answer any difficult questions. He told me that whatever his associate said, I could rely on as though it came from him.)

After the introductions, my cousins invited me to come to their home for dinner. Even though I felt that I needed to be going, I again consented. It was early afternoon and I had the feeling that several of the giggling girls were wondering who this Gentile was and why were they being so nice to him?

We had a pretty typical Sunday dinner where there were about 20 people gathered around a lengthy table. Strangely, there weren't any adult men present--only women, teenagers of both sexes and lots of little kids. As the girls and women started clearing off the table, my cousin came into the room with a very large coffee pot, asking, "Who wants coffee?"

Everybody in the room that looked over the age of 10 shouted, "I do!" I have to admit, that was a big surprise, and I know that my face gave away my astonishment. My cousin paused and said, "Oh, you're in the Church and don't drink coffee--but we quite enjoy it. Are you sure you don't want some?"

I said, "No, thanks, but don't mind me..." I made a mental note to ask about that when I came back to talk to Del Timpson. I had noticed a coffee pot in the kitchen of the home I stayed at, but thought there had to be an explanation. There was an explanation: They don't live the Word of Wisdom.

As I returned home, I thought to myself, "Their meetings certainly don't reflect Mormon worship I know, where men, women and children offer discourses on gospel themes. The discourses I'd heard that day hadn't referenced any scriptures at all, or even any gospel topics. Their private observance didn't even countenance the 89th section of the Doctrine and Covenants where Mormons eschew coffee and alcohol. When I asked Rulon Jeffs why they didn't keep the Word of Wisdom, he said there were "more important" elements that concerned them. Del Timpson's surrogate said, "There's nothing better than a cold beer on a hot day."

Since that time, I've given a lot of thought about how far afield the FLDS have gone when compared to LDS faith and practice. As I noted in a previous post, John Walsh's claim that we share 95% the same theology is grossly inaccurate. He noted that 75% of our practice was the same, but in reality such a distinction isn't valid either. Our theology isn't separable from our practice.

I noted that their concept of authority is incompatible with LDS History. The same is true regarding other essential doctrines. The first Article of Faith written by Joseph Smith says, "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost." How does the FLDS theology measure up? Well, they believe that Adam (of Garden of Eden fame) is God the Father and that Joseph Smith is the Holy Ghost. I know what most people will say about that. They'll say that this merely reflects early Mormon thought (since Brigham Young believed that Adam was God). In reality such a position relies more on supposition than substance (too detailed for this entry--fodder for a later day), and fails to recognize the heresy of Joseph Smith being the Holy Spirit. This theological wrinkle was addressed by Brigham Young while the Mormons were still in Nauvoo. Someone had started preaching that Joseph Smith was the Holy Spirit so the 12 Apostles publicly condemned that concept in the official Church newspaper Times and Seasons:

Let no false doctrine proceed out of your mouth, such, for instance, as the doctrine that the devil and his angels will be redeemed: and that the tabernacle of our martyred prophet and seer, or of any other person, was, or is the especial tabernacle of the Holy Ghost, in a different sense from that considered in relation to his residence in other tabernacles. These are doctrines not revealed, and are neither believed nor sanctioned by the Twelve, and should be rejected by every saint. ( August 15, 1845-emphasis added.)

95% The same theology indeed.

A hallmark of LDS faith and practice is its emphasis and engagement in missionary work. Dissenters from Mormonism --and the FLDS movement is typical--rarely engage in proselytizing except among members of the LDS Church itself. Orson Hyde made that observation back in 1846:

...but when the spirit of apostasy takes possession of a man's heart, ...he cherishes no desire to convert and save the world, but is content to confine his operations to the church, which he slanders, defames, and, like a ravening wolf, tries to tear in pieces and destroy; and having no merit of his own to bring him into notice, he seeks to obtain notoriety by contention and debate, which the Lord declares are not of him, but of the devil. (Millennial Star , Nov. 20, 1846, p. 136)

Another early dissenter, Lyman Wight, took a group of about 120 followers to Texas in 1845. From that time until his death in 1858, his group basically disintegrated, while during the same time frame the other 11 apostles oversaw the conversion of more than 50,000 additional Mormons.

Similarly, the FLDS organization conducts no missionary activity in the sense in which it has always existed in Mormonism. Young men in the FLDS group do serve as "missionaries" for two years, but their activity consists of working for free for another member of the FLDS Church rather than preaching the tenets of their religion. Hardly comparable to the sacrifice of LDS families and missionaries.

When followers of Joseph Smith numbered in the hundreds, he organized them into a unit he called a "stake." Everywhere Mormons settled, "stakes of Zion" were established under the direction of the First Presidency. That organization continues today with over 6,000 stakes in the world. The FLDS organization has no First Presidency, no 12 Apostles, and no stakes. It has a "priesthood council" of seven men--an aberration that never existed in Mormonism. The fundamental Church organizational structure of Mormonism simply doesn't exist in fundamentalism.

Given these clear distinctions between LDS and FLDS faith and practice, I have to wonder what Carmon Hardy was smoking (if he's quoted accurately) when he said, "These fundamentalists [have] good reason to look upon themselves as the most faithful," and people might just think that the FLDS are the closest thing to Mormon Orthodoxy that you can find."

Mormon and Protestant Scripture

2008-07-27T17:07:00.006-06:00

Earlier this week, I was a guest on Jason Wallace’s television program, “The Ancient Paths.” We discussed the LDS and Protestant perspectives of scripture—Jason is Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City.

He noted the fact that there were several changes between the Church’s 1831 publication of Joseph Smith’s revelations in the Book of Commandments and the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. I explained that the revelations were first published serially in the Evening and Morning Star in Missouri and then during the printing of the Book of Commandments, a mob destroyed the printing office and the Mormons were expelled from Jackson County, Missouri—putting an end to both publications.

Leaders of the LDS Church determined there were so many errors in the Missouri editions, that they would reprint the entire series from Kirtland, Ohio.

“There are many typographical errors in both volumes, and especially in the last, which we shall endeavor carefully to correct, as well as principle, if we discover any. -- It is also proper for us to say, that in the first 14 numbers, in the Revelations, are many errors, typographical, and others, occasioned by transcribing manuscript; but as we shall have access to originals, we shall endeavor to make proper corrections.” (Evening and Morning Star (Sept. 1834) Oliver Cowdery "Prospectus," p.192)

As a result, two publications of similar name exist in LDS history: “Evening and Morning Star” published in Missouri from 1832-1833, and a corrected version of the same newspaper re-published in Ohio 1833-1834. When publication ceased in 1834, the Church established a committee to compile LDS scripture in book form. That committee opted to include a series of lectures known as the “Lectures on Faith” and presented its work to a Church conference in August of 1835. The committee included a preface dated February of 1835, but the book wasn’t approved for publication until the August conference. At that conference, several speakers differentiated between the lectures and the revelations, canonizing only the revelations.

That was essentially my answer to Jason on how the Church could later remove Oliver Cowdery’s article on marriage and the Lectures on Faith—indicating that they weren’t canonized in the first place.

As we continued to discuss our perspectives on scripture, I brought up what I believe is an important conundrum for people who believe in scriptural inerrancy.

It goes back to the fact that New Testament authors, and God, (and if you believe that God is the author of the New Testament) used the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) even when it was mistranslated from the original Hebrew.

In translating Psalm 2:9, the translators of the Septuagint evidently mistook רעע ra’a’ (break) for רדה radah (rule). So, instead of saying, “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron” it reads “Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron.”

That, in itself isn’t problematic because I don’t know many people who believe that inerrancy extends to every possible translation (although Mormons are usually the only ones getting grief for accepting the Bible as “far as it’s translated correctly"), but it does seem to me to be problematic from a non-LDS perspective when an angel from heaven quotes the mistranslation.

In Revelation 2:27, the angel quotes this passage using the Septuagint version—indicating a couple of possible conclusions: 1) an angel from heaven didn’t know it was a bad translation, 2) John, writing by inspiration, wasn’t inspired enough to use the right translation, 3) Inerrancy is a myth, and or 4) God allows His angels and prophets to use extant versions of scripture even when they’re flawed.

Number four above really is a comfortable option for Mormons, given the fact that the Book of Mormon shows a significant influence from the KJV—much like the New Testament shows a significant influence from the Septuagint.

Fundamentals of Fundamentalists and Mormonism

2008-07-26T05:25:00.007-06:00

So now the Mormons are trying to take away the rights of the living--saying that fundamentalists aren't Mormons. So called experts have weighed in on the matter with one--Dr. John Walsh--even issuing a press release to set the record straight on just how close to Mormonism fundamentalists really are.

As I have read his comments, I've wondered what it is that makes him an expert on Mormonism and Fundamentalists? His data seems to me to be very suspect. Add to that B. Carmon Hardy's comments that "These fundamentalists [have] good reason to look upon themselves as the most faithful," and people might just think that the FLDS are the closest thing to Mormon Orthodoxy that you can find. My own experience says otherwise.

In 1838, Joseph Smith published a list of items meant to correct misinformation about him and the theology he embraced. In answer to the question, "What are the fundamental principles of your religion?" he wrote, "The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it." (Elders' Journal, July 1838, p. 44.)

If you were to ask a so-called Mormon fundamentalist what the fundamentals of his religion are, you'd get a very different answer. As I've pondered John Walsh's claim that 95% of our theology and that 75% of our practice is the same as the FLDS, I thought it would be appropriate to evaluate that opinion.

The premise of Mormonism rests upon the concept that the Church established by Jesus Christ fell into apostasy and was restored to the earth by the ministering of angels, who conferred upon Joseph Smith apostolic authority. As a modern apostle, he had the authority to establish anew the Church of Jesus Christ and direct its affairs on the earth. The premise continues that upon the death of Joseph Smith, this apostolic authority continued in the Church in the person of Brigham Young and through the process of time his successors in the priesthood until today where it resides with Thomas S. Monson. This line of succession includes 15 presidents of the Church. Of those 15 men, the FLDS recognize only 3, for a total of 20% in common with the LDS. But that barely scratches the surface.

The chasm that separates the F from the LDS on the foundational issue of authority, cannot be understood without considering a few elements of Mormon history. Joseph Smith claimed that he had been ordained an apostle by the ancient apostles: Peter, James and John, and that they told him to ordain others. Joseph Smith reported that when he asked God how to proceed in ordaining others to the priesthood, he said:

We were, however, commanded to defer this our ordination until such times as it should be practicable to have our brethren, who had been and who should be baptized, assembled together, when we must have their sanction to our thus proceeding to ordain each other, and have them decide by vote whether they were willing to accept us as spiritual teachers or not; (History of the Church vol 1 p. 62)

Thereby entered into the faith and practice of Mormonism the concept of "common consent" precluding the surreptitious ordination of any individual. After the Church was formally organized, Joseph Smith presented a constitution to the Church outlining many of its practices, policies and doctrines. This constitution reiterated that no one was to be ordained to any office in the Church without the vote of the Church. (D&C 20:63,65).

As converts joined the new Church, certain individuals claimed prerogatives in the Church that belonged only to its leaders. In order to correct such arrogations of authority, Joseph Smith again reiterated by revelation the provision that no one had authority to teach or lead the Church unless they had been "regularly ordained" by the heads of the Church and that it was known to the Church that such an ordination had taken place (D&C 42:11)

Within a few days of that revelation, Joseph Smith outlined to the Church what he termed as a "commandment for a law" to the Church. It was that only one man was appointed in the Church to receive revelations and commandments for the Church--that he had the only authority to provide such direction and that the Church was forbidden from receiving the revelations or commandments of any others as long as he lived. Then, explaining that this was a safety feature to protect the Church from impostors, he said, "he that is ordained of me shall come in at the gate and be ordained as I have told you before, to teach those revelations which you have received and shall receive through him whom I have appointed."

How closely does the FLDS group adhere to this commandment? Not only have they rejected every individual that the Church has approved by vote, but not one of their leaders has ever been "regularly ordained" or voted upon by the body of the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith claimed that he did not have the authority to ordain others without their sustaining vote. Joseph Smith's 5th Article of Faith stipulates that "We believe that a man must be called of God by prophecy and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority to preach the gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof." This fundamental element of our faith and practice merits a 0% by the FLDS movement.

What about Church organization? Well, for years the FLDS and others who refer to themselves as "fundamentalists" have taught that the Church was incidental to the priesthood and was unnecessary. Consequently, they have never had a First Presidency, a Quorum of Twelve Apostles or a Quorum of Seventy as outlined in Joseph Smith's revelation on Church government. They have a man whom they claim is "the prophet" known universally as "uncle" but even their so-called "priesthood council" is devoid of any Mormon fundamental elements specified in section 107 of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Wherefore, it must needs be that one be appointed of the High Priesthood to preside over the priesthood, and he shall be called President of the High Priesthood of the Church; (D&C 107:65).

The practice of the FLDS to refer to their prophet as "uncle"--reminds me of an uncanonized revelation of Joseph Smith from 1834 that reproved the members of the Church for failing to recognize leaders by their official titles. In the realm of authority, ordination, common consent, and Church structure the FLDS movement has no correlation to LDS practice or theology.

While much more might be written--and I plan to continue later on--Brigham Young warned Mormons about people who had apostatized from the Church in his day. He said, "They say they believe that Joseph Smith was a Prophet raised up to establish the work of the last days, and bring forth the Book of Mormon; and thus they deceive. But if you will examine them you will not find anything but contradiction to every principle of truth."

About 20 years ago, we had a family gathering with aunts and uncles. My immediate family consisting of my mother and father and brothers and sisters were the only LDS people there among many fundamentalists. We started singing together an old family favorite titled "The Mormon Sunday School." I think it's a variation of a similarly named Baptist song. It consists mostly of distorted Bible stories sung in a humorous vein and has probably scores of verses. My uncle Owen sang this verse:

Esau was a farmer of wild and woolley make,
Half the farm belonged to him and half to brother Jake.
Esau saw the title to his land was none too clear,
so he sold it to his brother for a sandwich and a beer.

Everyone laughed at the end of each verse. After a few other favorite verses, my brother Arnie offered one he'd written--noting that it came from the Book of Mormon rather than the Bible:

To the Gadianton robbers we owe all the thanks,
for robbing all of the Nephite banks.
They robbed every bank in the whole darn nation,
'cause they all knew the secret combination.

Everyone in my family had heard the verse before and so we waited for everyone to get the joke. Only two people did. They say they believe in the Book of Mormon.

More later---

Where'd He Get Those Names?

2008-07-17T21:27:00.003-06:00

Growing up with the name Alma had its challenges. Unless you're LDS, you probably recognize that Alma is primarily a woman's name. Colin Powell's wife is named Alma as are lots of Hispanic females. But, since one of the the Book of Mormon's most prominent prophets is named Alma, so am I.

If you have more than a passing familiarity with anti-Mormon propaganda, you've undoubtedly seen criticism of Joseph Smith for giving a man such an obviously female name in his book of scripture. Even as late as 1987, Walter Martin wrote, "In Hebrew Alma means a betrothed virgin maiden-hardly a fitting name for a man."

In 1961, in the Judean desert, letters and deeds were found in a cave dated to 134 A.D. One of the parties to the deed was a man named Alma--identified as the son of Yehudah. A photograph of the deed appears in Yigael Yadin, Bar Kokhba (New York: Random House, 1971), page 176. From an exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls at San Diego's Museum of Natural History, this note appears with a description of the deed: "Latter-day Saints find this scroll of particular interest, because it specifies "Alma son of Judah" as one of the people involved in the agreement on the fourth line and at the bottom of the document. This text contains the oldest known occurrence of the name "Alma" outside of the Book of Mormon." Lucky guess?

It reminds me of a comment I read on the B-Hebrew listserve back in 2000. People were discussing "theophoric" names in the scriptures--that is, names containing an element of one of the names of God, such as "el" and "yah." One non-LDS scholar from the University of Michigan wrote this about the name Sarah from the book of Genesis:

"As for Sarah, I would guess that the theophoric is missing, as every name in the ANE had a theophoric. It is probably Sariah, YHWH, or Yah, rules."

It is interesting to find the name "Sariah" in the first paragraph of the Book of Mormon. Kind of makes you go, "hmmmmm."

A Wasp and Crash Put a Damper on Blogging

2008-07-17T20:57:00.004-06:00

A few years ago, I tore my ACL playing racquetball. Part of the physical therapy included riding a stationary bicycle. It was so pleasant that I began to ride to and from work via bicycle so that now that's my preferred form of transportation. Last Thursday after work, I was riding home when a very large (about two inches long) black wasp hit the right lens of my glasses with a very loud fwwwip! I thought, "Man, that could have put out my eye!" While I was thinking that, I realized the crash hadn't dispatched the wasp and he was stinging me at the bottom of my eyelid. By the time I was able to rip my glasses off and flick him off, he had stung me four times. It was not a pleasant experience. I really wanted to just pull over my bike, call my wife or my mommy and have her come get me and take me home. I decided I was going to live so I kept riding. When I got home, it looked like someone had punched me in the face.

The next morning we headed south for a family reunion in St. George. Fortunately it didn't get as hot as the 108 degrees forecast by the weatherman. We decided to return by an alternate route that kept us west of the interstate. It was a nice drive even though we spent about 40 minutes lost--with the GPS trying to force us to the freeway. I thought the Coke machine in the middle of nowhere (well, actually on Main Street of Deseret, Utah) seemed like a moderate irony. Some LDS people eschew Coca Cola -- my mother kind of felt that murder was only barely worse than drinking Coke.

We did see some ancient graffiti--the sign said it was petroglyphs. Those ancient Americans sure had a recipe for paint didn't they? I have to paint at least every 10 years and whoever painted these rocks used something that has lasted over a thousand years. Now that's a permanent marker.

Monday brought me back to work on the bicycle. There's a kind of scary part of the ride home--particularly during rush hour--when I have to share the road with lots of fast cars. It looked especially crowded so I went to a curb cut to get on the sidewalk away from the traffic and I must have hit some gravel and crashed. There I was lying in the road wondering if I'd broken anything or if the cars behind me would break anything else. Somebody behind me honked. I guess they didn't want me bleeding in the road where I might slow down their commute.

So, I've been sore for a few days and haven't felt like writing.

Catching Up

2008-07-17T20:34:00.004-06:00

I had wanted to continue on with another comment on Joseph Smith, but before I get to that, I want to cover a couple of interesting things that have occurred over the past couple of months.

When I came home from work early this spring, my brother's three-year-old grandson approached me and said he'd seen an owl. I thought that he'd probably seen one on television since this was mid-day and owls are nocturnal. I played along and said, "Where did you see the owl?"

"In a tree."

"Cool."

"Do you want to see it?"

"Heck yes."

He took me into the back yard where about a dozen neighbors were gathered around an old apple tree where a beautiful owl was sitting halfway out of a hole in the tree.

Earlier in the day, one of our friends--who still has a license to spray fruit trees--was applying an oil spray to our apple trees. Suddenly, it looked as though the tree were shaking. As he looked closer, he saw a western screech owl standing at the entrance to a hole in the tree--apparently protecting the nest from the oil spray. He stood there in the entrance until everyone left and it got dark. Later on, we looked into the hole and saw four baby owls with yellow eyes. Over the next several weeks, you could see the mother and father leave the nest about a half hour after sundown. I couldn't get a good picture of the father after the first day, but I did get a nice one of the mother who was only willing to peek out with one eye. I guess the dad's photo wasn't good because he never opened his eyes wide enough for a typical owl portrait.

If I could have figured out how to get the camera to focus on the babies inside the next that would have been the best photo: eight round yellow eyes staring up at the camera. Within about 3 weeks they had all left the nest, but we hear them calling back and forth most nights.

What Hath Joseph Wrought?

2008-07-09T22:30:00.005-06:00

I came across a website that offers free Hebrew lessons. There's an article explaining the importance of studying the original languages so as to better understand the meaning of the scriptures. The author made an interesting comment regarding the original meaning of the term break the commandments. He wrote:

“The breaking of the commands is usually understood as "disobeying" but the Hebrew word "Parar" literally means to trample underfoot.”

It occurred to me that the Book of Mormon uses the term "trample under foot" quite often. I've often felt that the passages that use this metaphor seemed out of place in the Book of Mormon; so, just for the heck of it, I thought I'd see if they occurred in connection with breaking God's commandments. I found these rather astonishing passages:

Alma 60:33 Ye know that ye do transgress the laws of God, and ye do know that ye do trample them under your feet.

Helaman 6:31 … insomuch that they had become exceedingly wicked; yea, the more part of them had turned out of the way of righteousness, and did trample under their feet the commandments of God.

Helaman 4:22 And that they had altered and trampled under their feet the laws of Mosiah, or that which the Lord commanded him to give unto the people;

Mosiah 29:22 For behold, he has his friends in iniquity, … and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God;

When I showed these passages to my wife along with Mr. Bennet’s comment, she smiled and said, "Well, obviously, Joseph Smith had access to the internet." Well, obviously not because Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet. But her sardonic comment is valid.

I’ve had pretty good access most of my life to excellent resource materials on the Bible—surely my Greek and Hebrew lexicons and concordances dwarf anything Joseph Smith might have been able to put his hands on. Yet, I find that when I look very carefully and closely at the language of the Book of Mormon, there is much more to it than initially meets the eye.

A few years ago, one of my sons challenged me to read the Book of Mormon in Italian while he read it in Russian. He suggested a race since he had recently returned from missionary service in Russia and I had been home from Italy nearly 30 years. I took him up on the challenge and ended up reading with my Dizionario Garzanti within arm’s reach. I came across a passage that puzzled me. Alma 26:1 quotes Ammon as having spoken to his fratelli and confratelli. I understood the first word meant brothers but wasn’t exactly sure of the meaning of confratelli.

I looked at my English copy of the passage and it says, “My brothers and my brethren.” I thought, “That’s odd. Isn’t brethren simply the archaic form for the plural of brother that would ordinarily appear in scripture? Why would both terms appear in one sentence?”

I got out my Random House Dictionary and learned that brethren is archaic when referring to the plural of brother but appropriate when referring to fellow members of a profession, society or sect. Hence, when Ammon spoke to his fellow missionaries in the Book of Mormon--among whom were his actual brothers--he said, “my brothers and my brethren.”

I am absolutely certain that Joseph Smith didn’t know that distinction.

Even more remarkable to me is the fact that Joseph Smith didn’t allude to these elements any time during his life. He didn’t challenge people to delve into its language or internal consistency. He merely offered the book to the world without comment--except to say that it was true and the word of God.

Tomorrow I’ll bring up another bullseye that Joseph Smith could never have guessed.

I do not think it means what you think it means

2008-07-08T10:48:00.004-06:00

Pew Research just published a new survey on the landscape of religion in America. According to the survey, only 5% of agnostics claim not to know whether or not God exists. Isn't that the point of claiming to be agnostic? The word--from the Greek gnosis prefixed with the negation a literally means, not knowing. Everybody who claims to be agnostic should claim that he doesn't know whether or not God exists--not merely five out of a hundred--otherwise he doesn't qualify as an agnostic. However, 17% of agnostics claim they're "absolutely certain" there is a God .

Even more unbelievable were the responses of atheists--21% claimed to believe in God and 8% were "absolutely certain." Ten per cent of atheists pray once a week.

A Muslim used to work for me and I arranged for him to have his holy days off from work. One day he came into my office and announced he had given up alcohol. Since he had appeared to be a devout Muslim, I was surprised that, given Islam's prohibition of alcohol that he had it to give up. I said, "Ash, I thought you were a Muslim?"

He held up his index finger and said "Jack Muslim!"

Perhaps there should be a category for waffling atheists: Jack atheists.

Or, perhaps someone should explain to them just what it means to be classified as agnostic or atheist?

Taking Away the Rights of the Dead

2008-07-08T08:40:00.007-06:00

I have to make a couple of comments about the decision of the Catholic Church not to give access of their parish records to the LDS Church--due to the LDS practice of vicarious baptism for the dead. The Vatican expressed "grave reservations." I personally don't see the cause for such reservations--unless the Catholics believe that what we're doing might be valid.

My favorite comment comes from an ex-Mormon blogger in Logan, Utah who decried the whole idea of vicarious baptism, noting "it takes away the person's rights." Takes away their rights? The only way that could be possible is if two conditions were also met: 1) If Mormon priesthood authority is valid, and 2) if those vicariously baptized had no choice in the matter. Since LDS theology is pretty specific that agency exists even among the dead, and that baptism is still contingent upon acceptance of the message, item two can't be a consideration. Do critics of Mormonism really think item one is a possibility? It seems that would be the only reason for objecting to it.

Maybe the Catholic Church's 2001 announcement that LDS baptisms for the living aren't valid should be their answer to LDS temple work as well? Following the logic of those who oppose this LDS practice, shouldn't Christians who oppose Catholicism also be miffed because their baptisms are accepted by the Vatican? Doesn't that make those people Catholic just as our temple baptisms make people Mormon? As far as I can see, the only reason for objecting to this practice is because people think it might actually work.

Succession in the First Presidency of the Mormon Church

2008-01-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

With the death of Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, questions arise as to how his successor will be selected. The answer is basic to the entire premise of the LDS Church. Joseph Smith taught that the authority to act in the name of God resides in the calling of an apostle--that when no more apostles ministered upon the earth, neither did God's priesthood authority. He claimed that ancient apostles--Peter, James and John--ordained him and Oliver Cowdery as apostles in 1829. He presided over the Church because he was an apostle. Over the next 15 years, he established a hierarchy that included three presiding quorums: The First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the Presidency of the Seventy. He taught that the First Presidency was only viable while he survived. Upon his death, (as upon the death of successive Church presidents) the First Presidency dissolved and the Quorum of the Twelve became the "First Presidency."

The summum bonum of the whole matter, however, is: Who has the right to delegate priesthood authority? The president of the Quorum of the Twelve is the man who now holds the right to delegate the administration of priesthood ordinances by virtue of the fact that he is the senior apostle. Thomas S. Monson stands at the head of the current First Presidency (the Twelve) until he organizes a new First Presidency of three.

At the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young became the de facto president of the Church even though the First Presidency wasn't officially reorganized until 1847. Four months after Joseph Smith's death, Young announced to the Church in its official newspaper, "If you don't know whose right it is to give revelations, I will tell you. It is I." In the next general conference he was sustained unanimously as "The President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to this Church and nation, and all nations, and also as the President of the whole Church of Latter Day Saints." During this period when the 12 were the presiding quorum, William Smith wrote to Brigham Young asking for permission to perform temple ordinances. Smith referred to his brother's teachings regarding the "sealing power" and Brigham Young wrote back reminding William that Joseph emphasized the exclusive nature of this presiding authority could only rest on one man:

Joseph said that the sealing power is always vested in one man, and that there never was, nor never would be, but one man on the earth at a time to hold the keys of the sealing power in the Church. That all sealings must be performed by the man holding the keys, or by his dictation, and that man is the President of the Church.

Brigham Young taught that his position as senior apostle trumped any other claim. So much so, that he refused even to be set apart as president of the Church when he reorganized the First Presidency three years later. His successors to the presidency of the Church, Taylor and Woodruff likewise declined to be ordained or set apart, concluding with Young that their ordination to the apostleship conveyed to them all the authority that could be conferred upon a man.

Lorenzo Snow decided that he wanted to be set apart as president when he reorganized the First Presidency. Although there are conflicting claims about subsequent presidencies (see Steven Heath in Dialogue, Vol. 20 No. 2 p.49 and D. Michael Quinn in Origins of Power p. 252) It appears that David O. McKay and all subsequent presidents have been both set apart and ordained. Interestingly, while it's been the custom over recent years for the next senior apostle to ordain the President, Joseph F. Smith asked his cousin, the then Presiding Patriarch, to set him apart. Technically, this could be performed by anyone since it conveys no authority or keys.

Presumably, if President Hinckley's funeral occurs before the Thursday meeting of the General Authorities, the Church will announce the reorganization of the First Presidency and that Thomas S. Monson was ordained by Boyd K. Packer.

President Hinckley Joins His Wife Beyond the Veil

2008-01-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

Preliminary word is that President Gordon B. Hinckley passed away today at the age of 97. This leaves Thomas S. Monson as the presiding Apostle and sixteenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am sorry to lose the leadership of President Hinckley; he reminded me of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Protocols of the Elders of (Latter-day) Zion

2007-12-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Stuart Rothenberg discusses today why Mitt Romney can't solve his Mormon problem. Through some really fuzzy logic, he explains that the inability of many evangelicals to support Mitt Romney isn't really bigotry; it's that Evangelicals pretty much believe that Mormons are lying when they claim to be Christians. It isn't so much that their theology is heretical--it's that Mormons as a group are deceptive about it. He says it's just like Jews who would refuse to vote for a Messianic Jew--and everyone knows that they can't be trusted.

Is that supposed to make me feel any better? Oh, I see. Mormons are inherently dishonest and that's why you couldn't vote for one--maybe for smaller civic offices but certainly not for President.

Isn't that the definition of bigotry? You can't trust (insert a race or religion) __________ because they all are (insert a negative stereotype)___________. It is bigotry even after Rothenberg tried to explain and justify it.

He is right, though, that much of the opposition against Romney's candidacy is rooted in this rather unchristian tactic of accusing others of evil because they disagree. They're not content to show the reasons for their disagreement without also claiming their opponent is also dishonest.

Question Mormonism and You're a Bigot?

2007-12-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

Paul Edwards asks and answers that question on his blog on Townhall, and he, as well as much of the mainstream media don't show so much that they are bigots as they are clueless.

Huckabee could have taken the high ground and deferred answering religious questions--particularly when everyone knows why they're being asked. When a reporter asks a stupid or improper question, a statesman points that out as Fred Thompson did in the latest "debate" in Iowa when all the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in global warming. If Huckabee were either smart or honorable, when asked about his opponent's religion, he would have answered as Mitt Romney has--point out that the discussion of religious doctrine is improper in a political campaign and then move on. It is frankly surprising that such questions keep getting asked by the media--and only slightly less surprising that Huckabee waded into those waters. Imagine a similar scenario with Joe Lieberman.

What if the media asked him, "Senator, do you believe that Jesus was a fraud? Surely as a practicing Jew you have an opinion on that?" There would be no end to the outcry against such an inappropriate question. When the media--who claim to be our advocates in keeping people informed--ask questions about theology rather than government policy they demonstrate that these are the best questions they can think of. This week I've heard several people lament that the political candidates aren't intellectual giants. The problem isn't in the field of candidates; it's the morons setting up staged debates and asking vacuous questions.

I'm not at all offended at Huckabee's gentle slur against Mormonism; but I am instructed. He can play the hayseed and say, "I don't know much about Mormonism" but it really rings hollow with his follow-up query. It's the chestnut that every anti-Mormon drags out when he wants to put Mormons on the defensive. (Only Walter Martin's daughter couldn't even get that one right, claiming that Mormons believe Jesus and Lucifer are half brothers.) Even though LDS Church sources validated Huckabee's question, people all over the place are claiming that the Church is lying about it. While Huckabee's true colors are interesting to see, what's more interesting is how anti-Mormon rants get press without more than a modest rebuke.

Lawrence O'Donnell, appearing on the McLaughlin Group last week let fly with all kinds of speculative rhetoric about Mormonism and Joseph Smith. I wonder how they would have handled such comments had they been directed at Mohamed, or the Pope?

This is, however, in the words of Yogi Berra, deja vu all over again. There have been times when Mormons voted as one against those who wanted to harm them. I was once fairly liberal. I voted for George McGovern (my draft number was "1" and he said he'd stop the draft) and Jimmy Carter. I never thought that I could return to liberals, but this week I thought, "If Huckabee gets the nomination, I hope every Mormon votes for Hillary." For the time being, I'll just hope (and pray) for anyone but Huck.

Warren Jeffs' Resignation

2007-12-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Last week, the media reported that Warren Jeffs had resigned as president of the FLDS Church. Perhaps this is more an effort to maintain stability in the church's legal battles to retain ownership of its assets rather than Jeffs' actual abdication as the man allegedly holding the keys (at least in that corner of fundamentalism).

Unless Jeff's releases a statement indicating that he has resigned as "head of the priesthood" he has done little more than assign a temporary CEO for the corporate division. Fundamentalists have consistently maintained that the church is merely a corporate body designed to administer property and other temporal concerns. The spiritual authority rests with the Priesthood Council and specifically, the head of the Council who still is Warren Jeffs.

That particular theology allows them to conclude that excommunication from the church has no bearing on an individual's priesthood. According to that philosophy, resignation from the presidency of the church would also have no bearing on an individual's priesthood position.

It remains to be seen whether or not the FLDS priesthood organization will disintegrate together with its corporate presence as its current leader languishes in prison.

Same Old Same Old on the Book of Mormon

2007-11-18T18:14:00.001-07:00

About 20 years ago, I first heard the claim that a passage in the Book of Mormon had been surreptitiously revised in an attempt by the LDS Church leaders to make its scriptures conform to the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to all males regardless of race.

The Apostolic United Brethren, a polygamous church that opposes the LDS faith, had purchased a full page advertisement in the Salt Lake Tribune to complain about many LDS practices. They noted that this change in the Book of Mormon was clearly evidence of apostasy of the LDS Church. Before the 1980 edition of the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 30:6 said that Lamanites would become a "white and delightsome people" rather than "pure and delightsome" as it reads today. Those fundamentalists and many other people don't realize that that change was first made by Joseph Smith for the 1840 Nauvoo edition of the Book of Mormon.

When I recently noted that fact while replying to a blogger's criticism of the change , he replied,

How about this, I’ll challenge you to find a Book of Mormon prior to 1981 that has the word “pure” in it where “white” was replaced in the 1981 edition? Despite your claims above, it simply doesn’t exist.

I provided a link to a photograph of page 115 from the 1840 Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, the link doesn’t work consistently. Although he first maintained that I was mistaken or lying, he later posted comments from the Tanners that demonstrate that the change had indeed occurred in 1840; but, my correspondent feels that my comments were “silly and baseless” so I thought I might provide more data on my own site to which I could refer readers.

If Joseph Smith made the change in 1840, why then did subsequent editions revert to the word "white?"

It's due primarily to the LDS Church's expulsion from the United States in 1846. This exodus interrupted many church functions--including the process of producing subsequent publications of the Book of Mormon. However, the RLDS Church produced an edition of the Book of Mormon based upon the last version edited by Joseph Smith. That 1874 edition echoed the 1840 edition in 2 Nephi 30:6 with "pure" rather than "white." Obviously, its presence in 1840 and 1874 editions had no connection to the 1978 revelation on priesthood. In 1908, the RLDS Church produced another edition of the Book of Mormon and returned to the wording found in the first edition. This isn't surprising since they essentially rejected Joseph Smith's teachings from the Nauvoo era.

Even though American publishing efforts ceased for a time, Church headquarters in Britain continued to produce pamphlets as well as copies of the Book of Mormon based on the 1837 Kirtland edition. That 1841 British edition came to America with Mormon immigrants.
When Mormons in Utah set about publishing another American edition, they used one of the British copies as their template. Since it was merely a reprint of the Kirtland edition all of Joseph Smith's revisions from 1840 were lost. It wasn't until the mid 1900's that comparisons of extant versions revealed what had been lost.

Back from Vacation

2007-11-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

My wife and I went to LDS Church sites the end of October, and when I returned I was way behind at work, so blogging had to take a back seat for a few days. I'm catching up and hope to resume posting about splinter groups. However, before I get back to that, I have to share a couple of photos and comments from our trip.

We flew into Rochester Airport and drove to a wonderful--absolutely wonderful--Bed and Breakfast in Palmyra, New York. It's located almost exactly half way between the Palmyra Temple and the E. B. Grandin Building on Palmyra's Main Street. My GPS said the B&B was 2 minutes from Grandin's and 4 minutes from the Sacred Grove; but it seemed more like 2 minutes to either when we actually drove.

When we told friends the date of our trip they all opined that would would miss the beautiful autumn leaves of upstate New York. They were all wrong. Although we arrived at night, and the next morning it was raining, the leaves were breathtaking. We had an appointment first thing in the morning at 11:00 (that's early while on vacation) for a session at the Palmyra Temple. It was a change of pace from what I'm used to in Salt Lake, and the first tiny temple I had ever attended. It's dwarfed by the more than 400 room Salt Lake Temple, but the setting was gorgeous. Situated on part of the historic Joseph Smith Sr. farm, it overlooks the Sacred Grove and Smith family frame house.

If you're thinking of going to the Palmyra area, I recommend a couple of things.

1. Go in the off season. Walk along the banks of the Susquehanna River without anyone around except the wildlife. We came across a tree felled within minutes by a beaver. He had snipped off a few branches, but the leaves on the tree hadn't even started to wilt. Standing on the ground where Joseph and Emma's cabin stood and where Joseph and Oliver Cowdery translated the Book of Mormon is best done alone.

(Over the years, my wife and I have managed to take vacations in non-traditional times. Once in February, she and I appeared to be the only Caucasians in a sea of Japanese tourists at Disneyland. A trip to Italy in mid March brought us to the site of Julius Caesar's assassination precisely on the Ides of March. Air fare was less than half of normal and the average Spring temperatures of around 70 degrees were 44 degrees cooler than our first trip to Rome where 114 degrees was the hottest day on record.)

2. Stay at a B&B rather than a motel or hotel. I recommend the Five Pillars for several reasons: The owners (Richard and Daniela Dzinbal) are delightful; and they provide a spotless, cozy place with great breakfasts and entertaining conversation that you will never get at a hotel. See the attached pictures of the Dzinbals and their B&B. (She has a great New York accent.) She served us apple cider that has no equal.

3. Take a GPS along. I've spent some quality time being lost, but not on this trip. The GPS gave us several options (avoid toll roads or get there quick), and took a lot of stress out of driving in unfamiliar territory. We decided to avoid the freeway and drive through the countryside so we could enjoy the views. (I was disappointed to only see one Amish person--not in a carriage, just in Walmart.) But we were able to take adagio detours knowing that we wouldn't get lost.

After the session, we drove over to the Smith farm to walk through the Sacred Grove. It was too chilly for my wife's attire, so we went back to the B&B and changed into warmer clothes. By the time we got back, the sun had made its way through scattered clouds, giving the autumn leaves an almost electric appearance. As we walked through the Grove, sunbeams came down through the trees in pillars of light. (Honest.)
Since we were the only people in the grove for much of the time, it was very peaceful and serene.

I also happened across some fungus growing on a log that looked spectacular to this boy from the desert. I took a picture that hardly does it justice. As I look at it now, it looks like I placed a couple of leaves in the picture, but it was just a quick closeup of a random dead log.

Part 10 - Gathering Dispersed Fundamentalists

2007-10-14T18:54:00.000-06:00

Nearly 20 years ago, a fellow who knew that I was interviewing leaders of fundamentalist groups called me to see if I wanted to go with him to Manti, Utah for the weekend. He explained that Jim Harmston, leader of the so called “True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of the Last Days” (aka. TLC), held a sort of study group on certain weekends where he outlined the doctrines of his faith—called “the Models.” I initially thought it would be great fun—until he explained what it entailed.

He said we’d need to leave Salt Lake early enough Friday afternoon to get a motel room because the “models” began around 6:30 in the morning and continued until midnight for two days. I have always been interested in religious doctrines and how they compared to the teachings of the LDS Church—particularly those who claim to be the authentic heirs to the Church established by Joseph Smith; but I’ve also found it difficult to think rationally without adequate sleep. Going to two 18 hour seminars seemed to me to be designed to beat someone intellectually senseless, so I asked him, “Do you think that’s wise?” He said it would be lots of fun.

I countered that it didn’t sound like fun but rather a recipe for brainwashing.
I said I’d been in some lengthy meetings with opponents of Mormonism, but always with the chance to challenge the logic or illogic presented to me. Having to sit on my hands while my faith was harangued for 36 hours was definitely not a wise use of my time. He said he was still excited about going, even if he went alone, so I asked him to call me when he got back to give me his observations.

He didn’t call for several months. I later learned that after hearing “the models” he concluded that Jim Harmston was God’s prophet. He abandoned his wife and 10 children in favor of Harmston’s call to gather in Manti, Utah. He eventually dropped off about 20 pages of notes on "the models."

They claim to be a scriptural defense for the belief in reincarnation—or, as the Harmston group calls it—"Multiple Mortal Probations." With the idea that individuals lived previously on the earth, the TLC patriarch declares not only an individual’s lineage, but also previous lives. Harmston claims to be the reincarnation of King Arthur, Joseph Smith and the prophet Isaiah. Additionally, the TLC embraces a concept they call “Rescue.” That means that a woman may be rescued from her current spouse by anyone who has superior priesthood and pretty much for any reason.

Harmston claims that it isn’t only recent LDS leaders who have promoted apostate principles. He says that Brigham Young erred in sending people to colonize the west when he should have insisted that the saints gather to one place. Apparently, Harmston isn’t aware that Joseph Smith taught that the purpose of gathering was to build temples. Had it not been for Young’s colonizing efforts, there would have been no temples in Manti, St. George, or Logan. Young taught in 1846 that “we should go to into the Great Basin, which is the place to build Temples.”

Harmston was born into an LDS home in November, 1940. In the late 1980’s, he and his wife Elaine broke away from the LDS faith, claiming that it had veered from the pristine doctrines taught by Joseph Smith. Harmston claims that five days after his 50th birthday, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Moses appeared and laid their hands upon him and bestowed priesthood keys that they had repossessed from LDS Church leaders. Although he didn’t initially indicate a plan to found a church, in 1994, he and fifteen other men met in the mountains and organized the TLC with Harmston as prophet, president, seer and revelator.

Many of Harmston’s followers appear to have come from other branches of fundamentalism. This may have been the result of two circumstances.

1) In 1979, J. Max Anderson, an LDS Architect, published a book titled, The polygamy Story: Fiction and Fact. It methodically analyzes the claims of fundamentalism that trace back to Lorin C. Woolley. The book shows that Woolley’s claims to priesthood authority don’t agree with the personal journals of those he claimed were participants in the alleged events of 1886. Even though most fundamentalists have huge doctrinal differences with Mormonism, they ultimately recognize that Joseph Smith’s premise of a restoration rests wholly upon the idea of priesthood authority. When people realized that Woolley’s claim to authority was untenable, some looked to other claims such as those propounded by Jim Harmston.

2) Many who once were LDS and left for fundamentalism, did so because they think the most important function of a prophet is to issue prophecies. While LDS people believe that a prophet may issue prophecies, they believe that his most important role is to guide the Church, interpret doctrine and proclaim his witness of Jesus Christ. (see Revelation 19:10) Former Mormons who left Mormonism due to a paucity prophecies about the future, didn’t find what they were looking for in fundamentalism; and Jim Harmston was predicting lots of future events.

A year after founding the TLC, a power struggle resulted in the loss of about 40% of the church’s membership. A few years later, there was a short lived surge in membership due to the TLC’s website that was dismantled after Harmston set a date for the Second Coming that failed to come to pass. Recently, the TLC has installed a new web presence though most of its links are broken.

Harmston has identified Manti, Utah as the site for gathering of the elect. His disciples “consecrate” their properties and 10 years ago, several commercial properties had signs indicating that they were part of the TLC “consecration” movement. The Church’s headquarters is a red brick building on Manti’s Main Street. (This is an allusion to Joseph Smith’s store in Nauvoo, Ill., the site of first LDS temple ordinances.)

In the mid-1990’s I visited the Red Brick Store where I met with Jim Harmston’s first wife Elaine. She gave me several pamphlets that are generic enough to have come from any faction of fundamentalism—preaching doom, gloom and the iniquitous state of present day Mormonism. As with other polygamous groups, they promote polygamy, united order, racial separation and accusing the brethren. They remind me of Orson Hyde’s aside about apostates from 1846: “[They] cherish no desire to convert and save the world, but [are] content to confine [their] operations to the church, which [they] slander, defame, and, like a ravening wolf, [try] to tear in pieces and destroy;” (Millennial Star 11/20/1846, p. 136)

Harmston’s group doesn’t seem to have yet resorted to bloodshed or to have taught immunity from criminal law—but it’s a very young group. It may depend upon how desperate they become to attract or retain disciples.

I called Harmston’s number today and left a message for him to call me back. His daughter-in-law indicated I shouldn’t hold my breath.

As a note of personal commentary, several years ago, I went through 10 years of publications of TRUTH, the periodical of fundamentalists. I was looking for references to the first principles and ordinances of the gospel. In going through the indexes, faith appeared only once--as an abstract concept, not as a principle of the gospel or as faith in Christ. The other three, (repentance
baptism and reception of the Holy Spirit) never appeared. Contrast that with a similar search of the LDS periodical Ensign.

Part 9 - From Crossfield to Skarin

2007-10-13T08:50:00.000-06:00

Robert Crossfield and The Laffertys

Robert Crossfield is a Canadian who converted to the LDS faith in the 1950s. He started receiving revelations in the 1960 that said many of the LDS leaders had been false prophets and to “beware” of David O. McKay, then president of the Mormon Church. Crossfield was excommunicated from the LDS Church and attracted a small following. He designated himself as the “Prophet Onias” and moved to Provo, Utah where he established a “School of the Prophets.” His two counselors in Provo were Dan and Ron Lafferty. Crossfield still has a small group of disciples and has published over 200 of his revelations.

The Lafferty brothers struck out on their own and decided that they should practice polygamy; but as is often the case, Ron’s first wife wouldn’t have anything to do with it and divorced him. Her sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty, encouraged her to divorce Ron—who in turn, received a revelation that Brenda and her 15 month old daughter needed to be executed. Consequently, Brenda and her daughter were murdered. The revelation named others who also needed to be eliminated. Henry Richards, an LDS leader was number three on the list. Fortunately, the police found a copy of the revelation and warned Richards who was able to drop out of sight until the Lafferty brothers were apprehended. They were both found guilty of murder. Ron is awaiting execution on death row and Dan is serving a life sentence sharing his cell with Mark Hoffmann at the Utah State prison.

On the Lighter Side of Mormon Apostates

Occasionally someone arises claiming some special calling or gift but they don’t end up with any followers. Even so, their story sometimes is worth a chuckle. Such is the case of Annalee Skarin. Born in 1899 in Idaho, she married young and was quickly divorced. She was called on a mission to California where she met her second husband. For 20 years, they lived an apparently normal life of active Latter-day Saints. However, a man she had taught while a missionary named Reason Skarin found her and told her it had been made known to him that “Annalee needs you.” She obtained a divorce in Nevada, married Skarin and moved to New York. There she began teaching her unique doctrines. They then moved to Logan, Utah where she became a popular speaker at LDS gatherings. Although lots of people were impressed by her ideas, her Stake President asked her to discontinue public speaking because her teachings were not consonant with LDS doctrines. She was excommunicated in 1952 for apostasy and immediately indicated that she was soon to be translated into heaven.

Five days later, she disappeared leaving all of her worldly goods behind. A few days later, she returned to retrieve her dentures and then mysteriously disappeared again.

Four years later, she and her husband were in a serious automobile accident in California where they had been living under assumed names.

Deleted Post

2007-10-11T11:54:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I wrote about some political history that I thought related to current events. After posting it, however, I felt kind of sleazy and decided to delete it. I apologize for the tenor of those messages.

Part 8 - The Evil that Men Do Lives On

2007-10-04T12:03:00.001-06:00

A week before Ervil died, I got an eleven page pamphlet in the mail from the "Millennial Church of Jesus Christ." I wasn't familiar with that church so I sat down to read it. It started out slow but by page three I had a pretty good idea who was behind the pamphlet. It contained an ultimatum to the state of Utah that "Ervil M. LeBaron, the great and persistent patriarch" be immediately released from prison. It included some other demands that were equally likely to be fulfilled. Ronald Reagan was to be anointed the king of the United States and all religious and secular teaching that didn't conform to Ervil's teachings was immediately suspended.

I made some telephone calls and couldn't find anyone else who had received the pamphlet. I contacted the police and a detective working on organized crime came and got the pamphlet. I wish I'd kept a copy. A month later I got another letter from the same organization with three crazy messages. This one included Ervil's promise of nuclear destruction on the LDS Church specifically and America in general.

The two letters had obviously been written by Ervil, but the second wasn't mailed until after his death. Now that he was dead, most people expected the bloodshed to stop; but this indicated that he had hands reaching out from the grave. I don't know the policy for state prisoners, but it seems odd that he would have been given the ability to communicate such threats while in prison. He did. Eddie Marston, Mark Chynoweth and others were to be executed.

In 1987, Dan Jordan was killed by an unknown assailant while deer hunting in southern Utah. The following year, Marston, Duane and Mark Chynoweth and Duane's 8 year old daughter were killed in coordinated attacks in Dallas and Houston, Texas. The little girl was killed because she could identify the assassin. Their assailants were quickly captured and prosecuted under the RICO statute designed to fight organized crime. (For failing to allow the victims the free exercise of religion who chose not to participate further in Ervil's church.)

In February of 1986, we were at the Saturday night session of our stake conference when a teenage boy came to the door of the chapel asking to speak with the bishop. He stepped out to talk and then came back and asked me to go to the young man's house. The boy's mother was a young widow who had allowed two missionaries into their home. They were dressed like regular LDS missionaries except without name tags. They had asked if they could stay the night at her home and she was uncomfortable about it. The bishop asked me to go over and see if I could figure out what was going on.

When I got there, they told me they were missionaries traveling without purse or scrip and needed a place to stay for the night. I told them I didn't think it was appropriate for them to stay here in the home of a single sister so I invited them to come to our home. I learned that they were missionaries from the Church of the Lamb of God. I took a deep breath and wondered what would be wise and Christian. I said the invitation was still good but that I needed to notify my wife first.

I called her and explained the situation. She agreed that it was probably best for them to come to our home. We had a small house and no spare bedroom but I offered them a couple of sleeping bags on the floor of the living room and dinner. They expressed their thanks. While they ate, we discussed a little about theology. They knew my family--as well as my unwillingness to accept their message. When they went to bed, my wife and I went to our room.

As we knelt together at the end of our bed, my wife looked at me with absolute sincerity and asked, "What if these guys decide tonight that it's their job to execute us as infidels?"

I said, "Well, we're about to pray together just like we do every night and ask God to watch over us and protect us. Only tonight, we REALLY MEAN IT."

The next morning they ate breakfast and went on their way. We were relieved and grateful to be alive. A few weeks later, I learned that these two fellows real names. When they were at my home, they introduced themselves but only with partial names. I found they had given me only their first and middle names. They left off their last names of Jordan and LeBaron--sons of Dan Jordan and Ervil LeBaron. It wasn't our last experience with remnants of Ervil's Church.

That missionaries from a murderous polygamy sect were going door to door in our neighborhood looking for converts wasn't the best news. I know that general church leadership was concerned as well. A few months after our visitors left, the LDS missionaries happened across the mission headquarters for the Church of the Lamb of God only a few blocks away from our home. (That explained why the earlier missionaries were able to travel without "purse or scrip"--they had plan "B" just down the street.) The LDS missionaries had been invited into the house where they were (ordinarily I'd use the euphemism "hit by both barrels" but in this case that would be inappropriate) blindsided by people who had practiced all their life to attack LDS theology--from an especially esoteric perspective. Startled by this encounter, they went to our stake president's home (LDS leader who oversees 6-10 congregations) to ask him some of the questions they had never even considered.

He suggested they come to my house since he knew I was familiar with the teachings of fundamentalism. We talked for a while and they said that the people had told them there were no answers to the question they had--and that they knew the LDS missionaries would never come back as a result. Neither of the missionaries wanted to leave it at that and said they wanted to at least tell these people that there were valid answers to their questions. They wanted to go back and tell them. Looking back on it now, I'm surprised I didn't just grab them by the shoulders and say, "Are you totally nuts? They kill people! Let them live in their fantasies, don't go back."

They were determined to tell them they had answers and left. A couple of days later they came back and said that they had spoken with the people and they wanted a meeting. "Our landlady said we can't meet them in our apartment so we told them to come here on Saturday. Is that OK?"

My wife sighed and I said "That would be fine." (I lied. It wasn't "fine" it more like "yikes! OK.")

The following Saturday, I invited a good friend named Elden Watson to come over as well. Elden compiled the "Manuscript History of Brigham Young," which was one of the primary sources for the Priesthood/Relief Society Manual on Brigham Young from a few years ago. One of the problems I've found in fundamentalism is a tendency to rely on lots of folklore and bogus quotes, so I knew it would be good to have Elden there. If somebody is going to say Brigham said something, he knows whether or not Brigham really did say it. The missionaries showed up at about 11:30 and a little while later, two men and a young woman from the Lamb of God mission home arrived.

She introduced herself and acknowledged that she was one of Dan Jordan's daughters. The two men hardly said anything as we discussed LDS Church history, the teachings of Joseph Smith and other LDS prophets--and the Old Testament. She was pretty intent on stating that the right to enforce the judgments and statutes of Moses resided with her and others who shared her beliefs. About 3:00 in the afternoon, I went into the kitchen to see if I could rustle up some refreshments. My wife had already put together some cookies and punch and she and my eight-year-old son had been sitting in there listening intently for several hours. He said, "Dad, this is pretty interesting. What you guys are saying just seems right... and that lady is nuts!"

I told him to remember how it felt to listen to the different sides.

The meeting lasted 8 hours. Our missionaries learned a lot of history and doctrine that probably had a good impact on them. I learned something very important from Elden. We didn't use all of the argument and information we had. The Church of the Lamb people left feeling as though they still had a defensible position. I had followed Elden's lead in this and after they left he explained, "Don't give them all your ammunition. If you fully demonstrate that they are in error, they will not change their mind. When backed up against the wall they think, 'Hmmmm. We can't overcome that argument. There's nothing left to do but kill them.'"

I really think that's what happened to Stephen in the New Testament. He gave a masterful defense of Christianity and his accusers thought the same thing. Had he been less persuasive, they might have not decided that his argument merited death.

That was my last personal contact with members of Ervil's movement. I don't know if he has followers who persist even today. If they do, I can only hope that they forsake bloodshed. I didn't discuss the details concerning those who killed the Chynoweths and others because I felt like the subject was getting too far away from my intended discussion of splinter groups from the LDS Church. A son of Ervil, Heber LeBaron, Douglas Barlow and Patricia LeBaron were convicted of the latest murders and the appeal of their conviction was denied in 1994. In that appeal, the Federal justices noted that "The religion practiced by Joel's organization was based on various distortions of early Mormon teachings." I can't help but see how Joel's and especially Ervil's concept of forcing obedience--to the point of murdering even his own children--contrasted with the premise of leadership articulated by Joseph Smith:

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. ...No power or influence can or ought to be maintained ..[except] by persuasion, long suffering, gentleness and meekness and by love unfeigned." (Doctrine and Covenants 121:39, 41)

I wonder why the French missionaries weren't able to immediately recognize the difference?

Sects and Violence Part 8 - No Rest for the Wicked

2007-10-03T21:01:00.000-06:00

Nearly two years after Allred's death, police had been able to build a good case for murder against the two women who had actually committed the crime and the men who had facilitated it. Unable to find Ervil LeBaron, however, the trial against Rena Chynoweth (rhymes with "the-moth"), Mark and Victor Chynoweth and Eddie Marston began. Eddie had already been tried and found not guilty for the murder of Robert Simons a few months earlier. Ramona Marston, Eddie's sister who was believed to be the second assassin with Rena Chynoweth had been arrested but opted to forfeit bail and skip the trial.

The prosecution had great prospects of success because many eyewitnesses to the meetings planning Allred's murder had fled from Ervil's church and had turned state's evidence. The best prospective witness was Isaac LeBaron, terrified teenage son of Ervil who had first hand knowledge of his father's malevolent ways. Other witnesses helped re-open the murder case against Vonda White in California.

The downside, however, was that Ervil couldn't be found and everyone knew that he still had the capability of ordering more murders--including that of jurors who might find his disciples guilty. When the case concluded, the jurors deliberated only four hours, finding the defendants not guilty on all charges. Many people believed the case would have been different had Ervil also been in custody. Within a few weeks, that circumstance changed.

In the last week of May, 1979, Utah detectives were apprised that Ervil had been taken into custody and would be dropped off in Laredo, Texas on June first. Not wanting to appear too cooperative with U.S. law enforcement, Mexican authorities often preferred to avoid things like extradition and would simply "unarrest" people at the border where our law officers could retrieve them.

The trial for Ervil began the following January. I hadn't attended any of the previous trial for a couple of reasons: First of all, it was scary to think who might be there and the rest of the reasons didn't really matter after that. I did attend a couple of days of this trial. It was handled much differently than the first. It took place in a much smaller courtroom that had seating for only about two dozen spectators. This significantly reduced the ability of LeBaron supporters to intimidate people from the anonymity of a sea of faces. I sat next to the reporter from the Salt Lake Tribune, a former friend from high school named Con Psarras. During a recess he asked me for a statement from the family but I wasn't about to be quoted.

It was absolutely unnerving to see Ervil LeBaron come into the courtroom and then slowly look at those seated in the gallery. As he looked at me, I thought immediately of Rasputin, the evil Russian monk who reportedly could control people with his intense stare. He was big--much taller than his other brothers I had met.

The trial wasn't at all like television trials. Hours passed with pretty dull witness testimony. I wasn't there the day that Isaac took the stand and provided heartfelt and terrified testimony against his father; but I was there for what to me was an astonishing event. They called to the stand a young man named Jack Strothman. As he walked up to be sworn in, I immediately recognized him. Though his hair was closely cropped and he was in a U.S. Army uniform, he was a cleaned up version of the unkempt fellow with long hair I saw come in the door at my uncle's funeral. He told how he and two others had been instructed by Ervil to go to the funeral to kill Verlan LeBaron. He said that Don Sullivan was supposed to kill Verlan and "me an Ed was to get anybody that looked at us."

He explained how he went in to the high school alone to check it out. He felt that there were too many cameras and police at the entrance to risk being seen with weapons so he went down one of the hallways and out a side door. He placed a matchbook at the door strike so that it couldn't completely close. He then went to get Eddie and Don where they got fully automatic weapons and returned to the side entrance. The door was closed so they decided to call it off.

"Yikes!" I couldn't believe what I just heard. I thought about contacting someone to tell what I had seen, but thought better of it. I was certain they had enough information to put him away without me jumping in and endangering my young family. I did, however, rush to a phone booth where I called my brother to tell him what I had just learned.

Several other witnesses testified over several more days but I didn't attend. The whole thing gave me the willies. The jury was only out for three hours.

"Guilty" of first degree capital homicide of Rulon Allred and conspiracy to murder Verlan LeBaron.

The penalty phase didn't proceed because that night the news media reported that LeBaron was suspected in at least eight more homicides. Two of the jurors heard about the report and so the jury was dismissed. The judge sentenced Ervil M. LeBaron to life in prison. Once again, his stay there was cut short. He died August 15th 1981 of heart failure. Strangely, his brother Verlan died two days later in an automobile accident in Mexico City. Their oldest brother had died August 16th three years earlier.

Unfortunately, Ervil's death didn't stop the evil he had set in motion. - To be continued.

Sects and Violence Part 7

2007-10-01T21:11:00.000-06:00

Though Verlan Lebaron seemed able to evade Ervil and his avenging angels, others weren't as fortunate. Neomi Zarate told others she didn't agree with Ervil's policies. A few days after the raid on Los Molinos, two of Ervil's followers took her away from her home and five children and never returned.

Dean Vest also expressed disenchantment with Ervil's leadership. Dean was believed to have been the one who made the firebombs for the Los Molinos raid. One of Ervil's wives, Vonda White called the police from Vest's home claiming she had been upstairs when strangers came into the house and killed Vest.

Robert Simons, an independent fundamentalist living in Grantsville, Utah, with no known connection to LeBaron, left his home with Lloyd Sullivan. His body was found later in a shallow grave. Sullivan was one of Ervil's disciples.

Two years after Simons disappeared, on May 10, 1977, my father called me at my work to tell me that his brother Rulon had just been murdered by two women who had come into his Dr.'s office in Murray, Utah. The women shot him 6 times. As they left the offices, a man in the waiting room tried to restrain one of the women and grabbed her by the arms. She placed her pistol at his head and pulled the trigger. The weapon didn't fire. The terrified man let go and the women fled.

I was personally devastated. Even though we were members of the LDS faith and he wasn't, he had raised my father from the time he was twelve and stood more in the role of a grandfather than an uncle. He had been our family doctor. He was also indirectly responsible for my father being active in the LDS faith, having told him many years before that he should be active in the Church, receive the ordinances of the temple and be faithful his whole life, adding, "I only regret that it's too late for me to do so."

The news media initially speculated that he had been killed by feminists of some kind or former wives seeking revenge; but we knew that Ervil was responsible. Rulon had been threatened to turn over all tithes of his group or face retribution.

The funeral took place in the auditorium of Bingham High School. National and local media were there. Family invited my father to give the funeral's invocation. He said he'd let them know after talking to his local bishop--who thought it was a great idea. Even though every speaker at the funeral referred often to "the principle," the media missed that and concluded that the only reference to polygamy in the entire funeral was when Clarence Allred asked God to comfort Rulon's widows during the opening prayer.

As we entered the school for the funeral, I was surprised at the number of police present. They seemed to be checking out everyone who entered the building as if they were expecting something. My father took a seat on the stage with those conducting the funeral and my brothers and our spouses sat in the audience. The police presence was a little unnerving, so I went back out to the hall to watch. Most of the people coming into the school looked like genuine mourners--except one. He had shoulder-length, greasy hair. He looked entirely out of place to me but the sheriff's deputies and FBI agents didn't give him a second look. I thought, "Hey, guys, what about that one? He doesn't belong here." On top of that, he didn't go into the auditorium like everyone else. He turned down the hallway in the opposite direction. Since nobody seemed to notice, I followed him from a distance. He went out one of the side doors and put a match book into the latch so the door stayed open. I thought somebody ought to know about it and went back into the auditorium and told my brother what I'd seen. He suggested we notify one of the deputies. We asked one of them to come see how the door had been jimmied open. He looked at it and said, "Why don't you take the match book out and pull it closed?" So that's what we did. He didn't seem to think it was important and went back to watching the people at the entrance.

The funeral proceeded without interruption, due to the missing match book. - to be continued.

Sects and Violence Part 6

2007-09-30T20:57:00.001-06:00

Part 4 and 5 mentioned only briefly the two primary actors in the LeBaron story. Joel and Ervil are the stuff novels are are made of--really scary ones. They were in many ways inseparable. They served a brief mission together-cut short by their excommunications for apostasy. When their brother Verlan wrote a book about the family, he gave each brother and sister a separate chapter, with one natural exception: chapter 11 was titled, "Joel and Ervil."

Spencer W. Kimball met them with a third brother in 1942 in Mesa, Arizona. Their mother had invited Elder Kimball to meet with her because she was contemplating asking to be rebaptized into the Church. His journal shows the discernment of an apostle: "Never before have I come in such close contact with Lucifer and his devils."

As teenagers, Joel and his younger brother tortured animals and set fires--two of the three indicators of future serial killers called the "MacDonald Triad." Their younger brother Verlan wrote about this behavior as though it were typical of teenagers--illustrating that amoral behavior, devoid of empathy may have been ordinary in that family.

Joel and Ervil "occasionally" would tie up a female dog in estrus and put her in the barn. They would then capture male dogs that came to investigate and tie strings of cans to their tails, setting the terrified dogs loose. They also wired an oily rag to at least one dog and set fire to the rag, causing it to "run through dry fields and pastures, flipping flames as he went."

Joel and Ervil went on a mission in Mexico where they traveled together as companions. They both left their mission without notifying anyone and were subsequently excommunicated. It was the following year that they encountered Elder Kimball speaking with their mother. Spencer W. Kimball wrote:

She seemed to have a good spirit and attitude and began telling me of her problems when her three tall apostate sons came uninvited into the room. They had also been excommunicated for apostasy and they were very belligerent, cold, haughty, defiant. ...the one boy had his shirt off with his garments prominently displayed. I am sure it was intended to impress me. I told her and later them that if they wished to see me further I would be at the hotel and that I would do anything I could for them.

As is the case with most apostates, they went out of their way to antagonize the Church and its leaders. Orson Hyde wrote about this tendency in the Millennial Star, noting:

When the spirit of apostasy takes possession of a man's heart, he becomes completely blind to every true principle, and is filled with strife, debate, deceit, false accusation, and treachery. He cherishes no desire to convert and save the world, but is content to confine his operations to the church, which he slanders, defames, and, like a ravening wolf, tries to tear in pieces and destroy; and having no merit of his own to bring him into notice, he seeks to obtain notoriety by contention and debate, which the Lord declares are not of him, but of the devil. Their hearts being a fountain of evil, they can speak nothing but evil; they, being disciples of the "accuser of our brethren," can do nothing but accuse the brethren like their master whom they serve; they, having a beam in their own eye, can see nothing but the mote in their brother's eye; and well did the Saviour ask such characters, "How can ye, being evil, speak good things?"

Eight years later, Ervil showed up after a general conference priesthood meeting at the Tabernacle. He shook hands with Elder Kimball asking for his name.
"I am brother Kimball."
"Which Kimball?"
"Spencer W. Kimball."
"Oh, well, I am the great LeBaron."

At that juncture, Elder Kimball told him, "You were not invited to this meeting. In fact, you were invited not to come. You hold no priesthood. Leave the Tabernacle. Don't ever come to such a meeting again. If you can repent and get back into the church, you had better do it, while there is still time."

As President of the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times, Joel appointed his younger, but much larger brother as the Church Patriarch. He also appointed John Butchereit, a former LDS immigrant from Germany, as his first counselor. Butchereit had earlier followed John Y. Barlow and lived in Colorado City but had become disillusioned with that group, concluding they were more interested in accumulating wealth at the expense of their disciples than in pure religion. He joined the LeBarons hoping for more scrupulous leadership. He began to speak out against what he believed was "priestcraft" and was murdered by an unknown assailant.

Ervil and Joel added to the standard tenets of fundamentalism an emphasis on the "Civil Law of God," the idea that civil law and church law were both to be administered by them as God's leaders. Ervil took this idea much further than Joel, openly teaching that those who stood in the way of their kingdom were guilty of treason against God and "should be exposed, hunted down and put to death." Ervil's rhetoric continued to escalate to the point that he was teaching that civil law--as interpreted by him--was now mandatory, and all people were to be compelled to attend church to be taught the law.

When some pointed out that this sounded not only vaguely but explicitly like Satan's plan, Ervil agreed, noting that "the devil's plan would be used all the way to the end and then a switch would be made." As Ervil's doctrines became more frightening, he and his primary disciple, Dan Jordan, were first released as patriarch and apostle and then expelled from Joel's church.

As a result, Ervil started yet another LeBaron Church, this one called the Church of the Lamb of God.

Even though both men had been publishing open letters announcing their intention to execute those who crossed them, nobody seems to have taken these threats seriously. The list of offenses meriting capital punishment continued to expand. It included women who did not accept plural marriage or who wore revealing clothing, non tithe payers, tithe payers who paid money to false organizations, Sabbath breakers and all covetous persons.

Ervil became consumed with the idea of killing his brothers Joel and Verlan. On an appointed day, Joel was lured to an abandoned house where witnesses said Dan Jordan first beat up and then shot Joel to death. Other followers of Ervil went the same day to get Verlan but weren't able to find him.

A few months following the murder of Joel, Ervil surrendered to the Mexican authorities. He was convicted of murder the following November and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was released from prison the following month for "lack of evidence." The following year, several of Ervil's followers fire bombed the Mexican community of Los Molinos, shooting at those who tried to put out the fires. They then placed boards with exposed nails on the roads out of town so that ambulances taking the wounded would be disabled.

Within a short time, Ervil contacted Merlin Kingston in Utah, giving him a deadline for his people to start paying him tithing. He reportedly told Kingston that he was going to destroy the Church of the Firstborn, then other fundamentalists, then the Mormon Church. He would then take over the United States before ultimate world domination. Repeated efforts to kill his brother Verlan, however, kept getting in the way of world domination.

He did have a plan, though, that would bring his brother out of hiding. It only required the murder of another fundamentalist leader: Rulon Allred. - To be continued.

Sects and Violence Part 5 - continued

2007-09-28T21:11:00.002-06:00

Joel LeBaron returned to Mexico where he converted his mother and several other brothers to his religion. He appointed his younger brother Ervil as church Patriarch and the two began to proselytize for their new religion. They produced a pamphlet titled Pristhood Expounded that found its way to bookstores in Utah. A recently returned missionary from the French Mission named David Shore sent a copy of the booklet to his former companion William Tucker.

Tucker and Shore had worked together in Marseille, France where they had significantly modified mission rules. They believed in "preparation" to an extent that was bound to drive away the Spirit of the Lord. At that time, missionaries were expected to study 8 to 10 hours per week and proselytize forty-five hours. Tucker and Shore studied 60 to 70 hours and proselytized six to eight hours per week. Tucker began experiencing great success in the number of people who attended branch meetings.

Within a short time, he was called as 2nd counselor in the mission presidency where he had great freedom to recruit confederates. He would bring up controversial topics while meeting with a missionary. If he met with determined resistance he would drop the subject. If he noticed a willingness to entertain the subject, he would try to recruit the elder to his theories.

Over a period of several months, Tucker found three major disciples: Dan Jordan, Bruce Wakeham, and Stephen Silver.

He arranged for them to be transferred to the mission center in Paris, giving them the ability to team teach apostate doctrines throughout the mission. When one missionary stated in a testimony meeting a belief in the so called Adam-God theory, his senior companion, Bob Johnson, objected so strongly that it nearly led to a fistfight. As a result, Johnson wrote a letter to Elder Joseph Fielding Smith asking for clarification. Soon, the mission president heard from Church headquarters that there may be problems in Marseille, France among the elders. The mission president went to his go to guy, William Tucker--sending the proverbial fox to check on the hen house.

It was during this time that David Shore (Tucker's former companion) sent a copy of the LeBaron pamphlet to Tucker--who in turn got a sister missionary to periodically type extracts from the pamphlet which were then distributed to their cohorts. One of those elders, Ron Jarvis, wrote directly to Ervil LeBaron in Mexico, asking for more information. When it arrived, he and his companion prayed about it and about plural marriage. Jarvis wrote, "...after being plagued a bit by the presence of evil spirits the light of the Holy Ghost fell upon me and I received a testimony of the truth..."

As a result both he and his companion decided they could not continue as missionaries. They contacted the mission president who counseled with them and invited them to fast and pray and meet with him on the following day. Elder Tucker also came to the next day's meeting where the mission president ended up asking some direct questions that Tucker couldn't evade fast enough. When President Christensen realized the possible scope of the problem, he telephoned Church headquarters and Elder Hugh B. Brown arrived within a few days.

The two missionaries couldn't be dissuaded from leaving their missions by Elder Brown and returned home. Next, Elder Brown sent for Elder Tucker. After an interview he was released as a member of the mission presidency.

Although the seeds of apostasy had taken root in perhaps as many as 30 missionaries, something providential happened: the dedication of the London Temple--a little more than two weeks after Elder Brown's interview with Tucker.

Missionaries from the French Mission were invited to the dedication pending worthiness interviews. Each French missionary met with a General Authority. Ten missionaries failed their interviews and weren't allowed to attend the dedication. As a result of additional interviews 9 missionaries requested excommunication: six elders and three sisters. A fourth sister left the mission with these LeBaron converts although she later returned to finish her mission.

The departing missionaries posed for a picture aboard ship on their way home. They are as follows: standing: Dan Jordan, Steve Silver, Nancy Fulk, Bill Tucker, Marilyn Lamborn, Neil Poulson. front: Marlene Wessle, Bruce Wakeham and Juna Abbott.

Tucker, Wakeham, Jordan, Silver and David Shore all moved to Colonia LeBaron where they became members of Joel's first Quorum of Twelve Apostles. Tucker married two of the sister missionaries but they eventually divorced. Within a few years Tucker left the movement. He died as an atheist of a burst appendix nine years after leaving France, in 1967.

David Shore returned to the Church. Wakeham stayed with the LeBaron movement longer than any of the other French missionaries. After Joel's death Wakeham announced that he was Joel's successor. Given the opportunity to explain his position, none followed him except his wife Juna. Silver married several women and abandoned his families for several years when he moved with one wife to Israel where they lived in a Kibbutz. He returned to Mexico where he died perhaps 20 years ago. Dan Jordan reportedly became an assassin for Ervil LeBaron, killing Joel LeBaron and others in succeeding years. He was murdered in turn by an unknown assailant while in camp on a deer hunt in southern Utah in 1987.

No Smooch For You!

2007-09-28T20:09:00.000-06:00

I really wanted to have posted more about the various splinter groups, but I've been a little under the weather. I even stayed home from work. When my wife left for school yesterday, I went over to kiss her goodbye and she reminded me that I was sick by pointing her teacher finger at me and announcing: "No Smooch for you!"

I'll upload the next installment in a few minutes...

Academic Freedom

2007-09-25T18:34:00.000-06:00

With Columbia University inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak there, I was reminded of how I concluded that diversity is a sham in academia. When I came to the University of Utah as an employee, it was during the administration of Dr. Chase Peterson. Shortly after he announced his intention to return to practicing medicine, a faculty member was in my office complaining about a particular university policy. He was upset that some Mormon had implemented the policy (it was actually a Baptist)and then he slammed the top of my desk with his palm and said, "And the next president better not be another Mormon or there will be all kinds of trouble!"

I noted that I wasn't likely to be given any input in the decision and let the other comments about Mormons slide. As he left my office, I wondered how such a rant might be viewed in Boston or New York if a professor had said that about Catholics or Jews?

Well, the next President was a non-Mormon. He liked to mention that he was the first non-Mormon president of the University of Utah (it was even a question on Jeopardy). He was actually the second non Mormon--the first was Joseph Kingsbury, a very vocal non-Mormon.

It had been the practice of the Institute of Religion to invite the president of the university to speak at the Institute each year. With the first non-LDS president for many years, they wondered if it would be appropriate to continue the practice. The Institute director thought it might be good to offer. Arthur Smith accepted the offer and gave an impressive speech. When he left for Texas, his replacement also accepted the offer to speak at the Institute. It didn't work out as well. He basically chastised the LDS students for not being more receptive to homosexuals and for historically having defended the principle of plural marriage. He essentially said that it was time to admit it was a mistake.

In a succeeding year, the Associated Students promoted a program that had the support if not the direction of the University president. The slogan appeared across campus on posters: "No tolerance for intolerance." That is, you'd better not express any opinions of disapproval of anyone's lifestyle--unless it was a lifestyle that taught chastity and sobriety--that was OK to denigrate.

It was in this milieu that I happened across the university president at an outdoor concert. I tried to slip away unnoticed; but he stepped up to me and said, "I'm supposed to know you. Who are you?"

"I'm Alma Allred, the director of Parking Services."

"Ah yes, the infamous director of Parking...I've been meaning to ask you if you're related to those infamous Allreds I read about in the newspaper?"

"Well, yes I am; but you can't choose your relatives." I answered.

"No, I suppose not." He agreed. "Is your wife here tonight?"

"Oh, yes." I said, turning around to point her out. "That's my first wife over there in the red dress."

I've used that line before and it always gets a chuckle. This time there was silence. I looked back at the president and he looked absolutely livid. I quickly backtracked and said, "That's kind of a family joke."

He pointed at me and said, "It had better be." and he walked away.

A couple of weeks before, I had heard him address the faculty and insist that even if he had to fight the legislature, he was going to make sure we had diversity in the faculty, students and staff. Now at this concert I realized that it didn't mean diversity as in "lots of ideas," it meant diversity as in "only approved ideas--no discussion would take place." It really irritated me that my job would have been in jeopardy had I been a fundamentalist, but had I been a practicing homosexual there would have been no problem. His intolerance was not only tolerated it was celebrated.

News of the Week

2007-09-25T14:42:00.001-06:00

Marcel Marceau passed away yesterday without making a statement.

Warren Jeffs convicted of rape by accomplice.

Sects and Violence Part 5

2007-09-23T20:00:00.002-06:00

Parts one through four dealt primarily with "sects" with only bare mention of violent elements of fundamentalism. Certainly the most malevolent branch of fundamentalism was manifest among the LeBaron movement--particularly with one of several brothers--Ervil Lebaron.

I had heard stories about Joel, Ervil, Ross Wesley, Ben, David and Verlan since I was a little kid. These brothers, who once belonged to the group under John Y. Barlow's leadership, conveyed a sense of danger that was almost palpable. Perhaps this feeling of danger accompanied what seemed to me to be the natural conclusion that these guys weren't completely sane. They had incorporated many of the doctrinal facets believed in other groups (that polygamy was essential to salvation, that Joseph Smith is the Holy Ghost and that Adam is our Father in Heaven) but claimed a different source of priesthood authority than the alleged meeting of 1886 in Centerville, Utah. They claimed that Joseph Smith had secretly conferred priesthood keys on their ancestor, Benjamin F. Johnson. The LeBarons claimed that Benjamin Johnson conferred these keys upon Alma Dayer LeBaron--the father of many sons, several of whom would eventually claim to be the heir to the keys. The LeBarons also brought back a recurring theme in Mormon splinter groups: The One Mighty and Strong.

Section 85 of the Doctrine and Covenants talks about someone "mighty and strong" who will set in order the Church. One of the LeBaron boys (Ben) understood this literally as he held up traffic in Salt Lake City's State Street while he did 50 one-handed push ups in the middle of the intersection. As the police took him away, he said, "That proves I'm the one mighty and strong. Nobody else can do that." Ben was the oldest of these brothers and his struggle with mental illness is possibly indicative of several of his siblings. Ben's behavior was odd enough to keep him confined for much of his life in mental institutions. He once tried to escape from the Utah State Mental Hospital and the guards claimed he would have made it to freedom if he hadn't stopped to do some push ups. He seemed absolutely sincere in claiming to be a prophet. At one time in his life, he was working on inventing a spiral pump. He explained to his brother Verlan that he had figured out that the hole in the bottom of the pump had to be one third larger than what God had erroneously told him.

In 1962, he wrote a letter to Rulon Allred, instructing him to gather all the tithing on the earth and turn it over to him so that he could build and maintain temples and churches. He explained that he had taken a place in the Trinity since Adam "went to Mars nearly 300 years ago, leaving Jesus and Joseph Smith and myself in charge." He ended the letter with these words of instruction to Allred: "Take two more wives. Thus saith the Lord."

Ben was killed in an accident in Little Rock, Arkansas in August 16, 1978.

The LeBaron story actually begins with Alma Dayer LeBaron, son of first cousins Benjamin Lebaron and Sarah Johnson. Known by his middle name, Dayer grew up in Mesa, Arizona and moved to Colonia Juarez, Mexico where he married his first wife. They were later divorced and Dayer married Maude McDonald of Thatcher, Arizona. They had 13 children together.

In 1923, Dayer contacted Joseph Musser (see Part 2) asking him to perform a marriage ceremony for an additional wife. While such contact seems odd, fundamentalists haven't been very selective about making sure applicants for plural marriage were in fellowship with each other--or even living up to any particular gospel standards. It seems that the primary qualification to receive a plural wife was simply to want another wife.

For several years, there appears to have been a loose confederation between LeBaron and other followers of Lorin Woolley. However, Dayer's claim to hold the keys of the priesthood as a result of an ordination from his maternal grandfather (Benjamin F. Johnson) placed him on the fringe of a fringe movement. After Dayer's death in 1951, his sons spent a few years working out the specifics of their priesthood doctrine. In September of 1955, three of these brothers (Wesley, Joel and Floren) incorporated the "Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times." Eventually, several of Dayer's sons each claimed to be their father's successor--as the one holding the keys of a priesthood that presided over all others.

Three months after the organization of their church, Ross seceded and organized his own Church--essentially the same theology but without the term "of the Fulness of Times." And thus we see, "a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued—priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions." Ross set up his church headquarters in Salt Lake City and his brothers retreated to Mexico. Ross lived until 1996 drawing to himself as many as three disciples in his church's heyday. While the Church might not have garnered much notice, his disciples, Tom Green, Robert Black and Fred Collier went on to national media attention. (Green was released on parole from prison last month.)

Ross was mostly a harmless eccentric who often spoke to the media about religion, UFO's and extra-terrestrials.

I came across Ross in 1976. I had a job delivering freight and was having trouble locating an address. I ended up standing on the porch of a house that had been converted into some kind of a machine shop. While trying to find someone, an older fellow in dirty coveralls approached me and asked what I wanted. I told him the address I was looking for and he said he couldn't help. I noticed something odd about him and asked him if we had met somewhere else. He thought it likely and I asked his name. He said, "I am Ross Wesley LeBaron!"

I screamed. Right in his face. It wasn't a girlie scream, it was just one of complete surprise as though I had just noticed a giant spider crawling up my neck. He said, "I guess you do know me. What's your name?"

I told him my name and he brightened up and said, "You must be Rulon's boy!" I shook my head no. "Owen's?"

"Nope."

"Marvin's?"

"Nope again."

"Well, whose boy are you?"

I told him my dad's name; but since my father wasn't a fundamentalist he'd never heard of him. I let out a quiet, "whew" and said I had to get back to work. I could hardly wait to get home and tell my folks who I had met. I ran in the door and found my mother in the kitchen. "Guess who I just met? Ross Wesely LeBaron!" My mom let out the same scream I had when I heard his name. My dad ran downstairs to find out what I'd said and he screamed too. Ross LeBaron's reputation had preceded him.

I never met Joel LeBaron. He was murdered in 1972 in Ensenada, Mexico by disciples of his other brother, Ervil. That story, however, will come after the account of the apostasy of the French Mission of 1958. -to be continued.

Sects and Violence Part 4

2007-09-21T17:26:00.000-06:00

In Part 3, I discussed the 1950 and 1985 schisms of Fundamentalism. While I’m reluctant to call them “Mormon” fundamentalists, (due to the inevitable connection that will be made with the LDS Church) they’re certainly a different breed than either Islamic or Baptist fundamentalists. However, for the purpose of these entries, I use the term to apply to groups whose doctrines and practices go back to the claims of Lorin C. Woolley.

In 1896, Lorin Woolley was serving as a missionary in the Indian Territory Mission, under the presidency of one of Heber C. Kimball’s sons Andrew Kimball. Andrew was also the father of the future LDS Church prophet Spencer W. Kimball. Woolley told a few of his fellow missionaries that even though the Church had publicly discontinued the practice of plural marriage, that this didn’t apply to church members outside of the United States. If you talked to the right people, it still wasn’t too late to enter into the “principle.” He suggested that interested individuals contact either John W. Taylor or Matthias Cowley who would arrange for men to take plural wives in Mexico or Canada. He also told of a secret meeting from the days of John Taylor’s administration where polygamy became the secret goal of a select group of men –claiming that he was one of them. For the next 8 years, several men made arrangements with LDS Apostles to take additional wives outside of the United States. Invariably, the authority for these plural marriages came from within the Church hierarchy. Some of the Mexico marriages were performed by the stake president, Anthony W. Ivins, who was authorized to perform sealings outside of the temple since the saints in his jurisdiction were far from a temple.

President Ivins would receive instruction from a member of the Twelve who would instruct him to perform sealings for people carrying such authorization. Indications are that Ivins disagreed with these instructions but believed they were given authoritatively. In 1904, Joseph F. Smith issued what became known as the “Little Manifesto” which put everyone on notice that any violations of the Church’s law of monogamy would be met with excommunication. As Apostles Cowley and Taylor continued to advocate plural marriages as well as perform them, they were dropped from the Quorum of the Twelve but did not initially lose their priesthood office or membership in the Church.

Concurrent with the polygamous activity in Mexico, a couple of stake patriarchs were excommunicated for performing plural marriages. John W. Woolley (father of Lorin) and Judson Tolman were two such patriarchs. Judson Tolman was Rulon Jeffs’ contact with post-manifesto polygamy.

As LDS leaders removed post manifesto polygamists from positions of leadership and membership, they sought out each other to continue to promote polygamy. Matthias Cowley’s employer provided a place for these dispossessed religionists to gather. Nathaniel Baldwin was a former associate professor of physics at BYU. He held several patents and had a manufacturing plant in East Millcreek, Utah. He patented radio earphones in 1910 and became quite wealthy selling earphones to the armed forces during World War I.

Polygamists and sympathizers attended meetings at the Baldwin manufacturing plant until two events made it necessary to find authority to practice polygamy. John W. Taylor was excommunicated and died during the flu epidemic in 1916 and Matthias Cowley distanced himself from the movement in order to return to full fellowship in the Church.

In this power vacuum, Lorin Calvin Woolley stepped forward remembering that he had been given the authority to perform plural sealings during a secret meeting back in 1886. He later explained that he had forgotten this event, but as the years progressed he was able to tell how John Taylor had preached while standing in mid-air and how John Taylor had introduced him to the resurrected Prophet Joseph Smith. Accounts of this and other meetings grew in scope and importance until Woolley could claim with a straight face that he had been endowed and ordained an apostle at the age of 13 by President Brigham Young.

Woolley led the fundamentalist movement until his death in 1934 when he was succeeded by J. Leslie Broadbent.

When Broadbent’s brief tenure as leader of the “Priesthood Group” ended with his death in 1935, a power struggle ensued with John Y. Barlow assuming leadership and Charles Elden Kingston leaving to start his own group.

The Kingston faction is the most secretive that came out of this movement--known today as the Davis County Cooperative Society. Overseen by members of the Kingston family—not the King family you’d see often on the Lawrence Welk program—this is an even bigger family. Less like the FLDS group portrayed on HBO’s Big Love and more like the family of Tony Soprano, the most notable thing about this group is its invisibility while controlling a very visible portfolio.

The Co-op has real estate and business holdings that are astonishing. Their enterprises include waste disposal, coal mining, private schools, video stores, restaurant store supply, athletic clubs, interest in casinos, financial firms, grocery, hardware and probably Dish Network.

Wikipedia lists these as Utah holdings of the group:

A-1 Disposal
AAA Security
Advance Vending
AM Security Alarm Co.
American Digital Systems (Dish Network?)
ANR Company Inc.
Bail Bond Specialists
Best Distributing Amusement Games
C.O.P. Coal Development Co.
C.W. Mining Co. (Related entities: Co-Op Mine; CoOp Mining Co.)
Coalt Inc.
D.U. Company Inc.
Davis County Cooperative Society Inc.
East Side Market
Family Stores True Value
Fidelity Funding Corp.
Fountain of Youth Health & Atheletic Club
Garco Industrial Park
H.K. Engineering Inc.
Hiawatha Coal Co. Inc.
Holtz Inc.
IA Castle Corp.
K.C.P.C. Inc.
K.J.E. Inc.
Kearns Property Company
Kingston & Associates
Kingston Dairy
Kwik Industries
Little Red School House Montessori
Michael's Shoe Repair and Men's Store
Mountain Coin Machine Distributors
N.U.B. Corp.
National Business Management Inc.
P.P.M.C. Inc
PGAC Inc.
RE Company Inc.
Speciality Consulting Services Inc.
Spectrum Inc.
Spiffy Ice & Cold Storage
Sportsman's Bail Bond Specialists
Sportsman's Fast Cash
Sportsman's Pawn Shops
Standard Industries Inc.
Standard Restaurant Equipment Company
The Washakie Ranch
U.P.C. Inc
West Deep Creek Irrigation & Power Co.
Westwood Inc.
World Enterprises

Charles Elden Kingston’s photos look more like a Mafia Don than the typical polygamist.

He was succeeded by his brother John Ortell Kingston in 1948.

John O. started the practice in his group of intermarriage among close relatives--including that of siblings, having first "married" his own niece. He died and went to hell in 1987.

The current leader of the Kingston group is Paul Kingston.

Sects and Violence Part 3

2007-09-19T19:12:00.000-06:00

In Part 2, most of the information came from the perspective of adherents of the UAB (United Apostolic Brethren). The following version of events comes from an interview I had with Rulon Jeffs nearly 20 years ago. He claimed the split of 1950 started earlier while Joseph Musser edited the TRUTH magazine, and was rooted in theology rather than personality.

According to Jeffs, in the March 1942 edition, Musser cited a revelation received by Wilford Woodruff in 1880. John Y. Barlow, head of the fundamentalist movement at the time, reportedly rebuked Musser for citing this revelation, explaining that the source of the revelation was not God. Jeffs claimed that Barlow forbade Musser from citing it again. He continued to cite the revelation as authoritative however in subsequent articles. The point of contention was that God told Woodruff that all the apostles held the keys of the kingdom in common. Barlow and subsequent leaders of the FLDS group concluded that this idea conflicted with the statement in the 132nd section of the D&C that the keys reside only in one man at a time. Musser's insistence on appealing to this revelation doesn't seem to have distanced him from his file leader John Y. Barlow. He, with several others went to prison in 1945 for violations of the Mann Act (taking women across state lines for immoral purposes) and for sending obscene material through the mail (literature promoting plural marriage) although the indictment that TRUTH magazine was obscene was later overturned. Most of the men were released from prison a short time later and in 1947 John Y. Barlow died and Joseph Musser was appointed the leader of the group. According to Rulon Jeffs, Musser's continued acceptance of the 1880 revelation ultimately led the rest of the FLDS leaders to reject his leadership. Interestingly, the 1880 revelation was definitely the cause of another schism among the FLDS leadership in 1985.

In 1985, leadership of the FLDS group had devolved upon LeRoy Johnson. In a leadership meeting with other members of his priesthood council, Johnson had outlined a course of action that other members didn't want to follow. Johnson explained that it wasn't a democracy and that he didn't need their support since he held all the keys. Marion Hammon, second in authority, questioned that position by asking, "What about the revelation of 1880?"

Johnson insisted that the source of the revelation was the devil and wouldn't countenance any discussion about it. He then asked the members of his council whether or not they would follow him. Guy Musser said, "You are senile and apostate and I will not follow you." Hammon and Del Timpson, other members of the council agreed with Guy Musser.

At this point of the interview with Rulon Jeffs, I was astonished. I imagined what would happen in the First Presidency of the LDS Church if the first counselor announced that the prophet was "apostate." I was certain that the next day would bring a swift end to that counselor's position in both the First Presidency and the Church. From my LDS paradigm, I asked, "What did Roy Johnson do?"

"He suffered them." Jeffs replied.

"He suffered them? What the heck does that mean?"

"There wasn't anything else he could do except ask them not to sit on the stand or take the lead of meetings." Jeffs explained.

"There wasn't anything he could do? Wasn't he the prophet? Why didn't he excommunicate them and announce to the people that these men had been removed from the priesthood council?" I asked, even more astonished.

"You have to understand the position we've taken for many years. We have always taught that only God can remove a man's priesthood. We'd all been excommunicated from the Church and said men couldn't take away our priesthood. We couldn't very well change that procedure now. We just expected the people to realize that God had taken their priesthood and that had to be an individual decision."

So, when LeRoy Johnson died, about a third of the people followed Guy Musser, Marion Hammon and Del Timpson while the rest concluded that Johnson's true successor was Rulon Jeffs. The Hammon group built their own meeting house and thus began the first and second "wards" of Colorado City. --still to follow: The "Don" Elden Kingston, the LeBarons and French missionaries, the Woolleys, and maybe even Art Bulla.

Sects and Violence Part 2

2007-09-18T08:36:00.002-06:00

Two weeks ago, the Salt Lake City Deseret News published an article about the United Apostolic Brethren, a fundamentalist group with headquarters in Bluffdale, Utah. The reporter claimed “The Corporation of the Presiding Elder of the Apostolic United Brethren is a fundamentalist group that broke off from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1886.”
That date is off by nearly 70 years and involves too much fiction to stand without comment.
In October of 1950, Joseph W. Musser, who led a group of polygamists decided to call Rulon Allred as one of his counselors in the leadership of what was referred to as the “Priesthood Group.” Allred had gained Musser’s confidence as they served prison sentences with several other polygamists in the 1940’s. Musser’s proposal met with rigid opposition from the other members of his council. Faced with open rebellion, Musser demanded that those who supported him accompany him out of the meeting.
A minority followed Musser, made up mostly of Rulon Allred, Allred’s brothers and some of their in-laws.

The division didn’t strictly follow family lines, since Guy Musser refused to follow his own father. Other families fractured as well. One of Rulon Allred’s wives, Leona Jeffs remained with her brother, raising Allred’s children in what became known as the “Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
John Butcherite, who eventually left both these factions for the LeBaron movement (where he was murdered) said that several men from the FLDS group claimed that Allred was a “devil” and wielded unrighteous power over Joseph Musser, and offered to kill Allred to resolve the problem. From this split in 1950 came both the FLDS and AUB organizations. The genesis of their movement, however, really began in East Millcreek, Utah with the inventor of headphones, Nathaniel Baldwin. -to be continued

Sects and Violence Part 1

2007-09-14T22:49:00.001-06:00

I started this post earlier tonight and ended up writing something entirely different. With Warren Jeffs' trial in the news, and some of the comments I got from people about the correspondence posted a couple of days ago, I thought I'd write a brief history of splinter groups, including Fundamentalists and the Community of Christ nee RLDS Church.

Over the years, lots of people have stepped forward to explain that the body of the Church had gone astray and they had been appointed to straighten it out. It's a continuing saga and every time the prophet passes away, some people step forward to claim they should lead the Church. In the words of Elder Mark E. Peterson,

"They endeavor to say that the Church has gone astray, that the leaders are no longer inspired, and that "one mighty and strong" is needed to take over the affairs of the Lord. And without any evidence of modesty whatsoever on their parts. they themselves volunteer for the position." (April 1973 Conference)

George A. Smith said, "Charles Thompson, Francis Gladden Bishop, G. J. Adams, and others arose, until prophets for awhile were at a discount." (JD 7:117)

Over the next few days, I hope to discuss the histories of several of these groups--some have been violent and others more benign. Have you ever wondered how the RLDS Church ended up with the Kirtland Temple but not the Independence Temple lot? Hopefully, I can provide an interesting narrative.

At the time of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph, the Saints were being gathered and were building a Temple, baptizing for the dead, etc., which work unceasingly has been kept up by those who under the leadership of the Twelve came to the Rocky Mountains notwithstanding the various factions which have separated themselves from the true Gospel tree. The writer (Elder Stevenson) heard the prophet say on a stand at the east end of the Nauvoo Temple, that the time was coming when there would be many dissensions from the Church. "But," said he, "I now see the time which I have long desired to see. Let me go where I may, the Gospel tree is planted never more to be rooted up, for there are those present who are prepared to carry on the Gospel, whatever may become of me." He also said: "I will give you a key by which you may never be deceived, if you will observe these facts: Where the true Church is, there will always be a majority of the Saints, and the records and history of the Church also." (Infancy of the Church p. 5)

"All that want to draw away a party from the Church after them let them do it if they can but they will not prosper." (Brigham Young WW Journal Augst 8, 1844)

I think Pres. Monson remembers me.

2007-09-14T20:20:00.000-06:00

It was June, 1972. I was in the tabernacle on Temple Square waiting to present the theme for the upcoming year in MIA (that's short for Mutual Improvement Association--a definite improvement over Brigham Young's suggestion of "Young Men's and Young Women's Retrenchment Societies.") Back then, the Church still held June Conference for the auxiliaries. I had been selected by a woman in our stake along with a couple of other high school age kids. We had arrived early so that we could do the presentation before anyone came into the tabernacle. When they opened the doors for the public, we went back behind the podium where there are several rooms for production work. We had about an hour to kill before the session would start and wanted to explore. Sister Sorensen took me and another fellow and told us to wait next to this door until she got back. I leaned up against the wall and tried to be obedient. The other kid decided he'd look around some more and disappeared. After a couple of minutes, the door opened and I was face to face with President Harold B. Lee. He looked kind of surprised and asked, "What are you doing here?" I stammered,"I was just told to wait here." He said, "Well it's good that you were obedient." He asked my name, shook my hand and introduced me to his first counselor who was standing behind him. Presidents Tanner and Romney each shook my hand and then introduced me to President Kimball behind them. I shook hands with him and the rest of the twelve. A couple of minutes later, Sister Sorensen came back with a big smile and asked, "Did anybody come by here while I was gone?"

A couple of years ago, I got a call from our stake executive secretary telling me that the high councilman who was assigned to speak at the rest home the next day had to leave town suddenly. Since I didn't have an assignment, he asked if I could fill in and speak in the Sacrament meeting. It's not really a rest home, it's more of a rehabilitation center for stroke victims and people in the last stages of Alzheimer's. How hard could that be? I was happy to oblige. I threw together a 20 minute talk, knowing that even if I did give a good talk no one would care. The next morning, just as the Branch President stood up to start the meeting, in came President Thomas S. Monson. The Branch President told me to cut my talk down to 2 minutes and we'd give the balance of the time to Pres. Monson. During the songs and sacrament, I tried to turn my talk into a coherent 2 minute message. My mind raced as I tried to figure out what to say. I basically crossed out everything and started over. By the time I stood up, it was an entirely different message. As I approached the pulpit, Pres. Monson leaned forward and said, "Go ahead and give your whole talk, I won't speak." I looked at my notes and there wasn't anything legible on the paper. I spoke for about 5 minutes and gave the worst talk I have ever heard. It wasn't just the worst talk I'd ever given, it was the worst talk I've ever heard anywhere--and I've heard some really, really bad talks.

Pres. Monson graciously stood up and took the rest of the time. I went home and went to bed for the rest of the day.

Three months later, I returned to the branch as the high council speaker. I asked the branch presidency if Pres. Monson had been there since I had and they said no. The branch president noted that my talk had been so bad that he didn't expect to see him there again. The counselors agreed that it was probably the worst talk they'd ever heard as well. They said they generally weren't this candid but had heard me give some really good talks in the past and figured I already knew how bad the talk had been.

This time, I was determined that I would be prepared to speak to these saints with an appropriate message under any circumstance. I had three talks prepared: 2 minutes, 7 minutes and 20 minutes. As we began to sing the opening song, Pres. Monson came in to the chapel and took a seat on the stand next to me. He looked at me and I could see in his eyes, "You're speaking AGAIN?"

Pres. Monson suggested that we each speak for fifteen minutes. I didn't have a 15 minute talk! So, I left my three talks in my pockets and spoke about the conditions that made people susceptible to splinter groups. In the time of Joseph Smith, it was an unwillingness on the part of some of the people to give heed to Joseph's instructions.

When the saints were driven out of Missouri, many of them felt like the reason the saints had been driven was because they gathered together. When they got to Illinois, some of them didn’t want to go to Nauvoo because they thought it would only be a short time before they were driven out of that place. So, even though the prophet told them it was the will of the Lord to gather to Nauvoo, some went to Dixon and Amboy Ill. where they concluded that they were wiser than Joseph. For the next several years, Joseph taught the saints in Nauvoo about the importance of the temple, the endowment and the opportunity to be sealed as families. Joseph's discourses were reported in the local LDS newspapers that didn't really circulate beyond Nauvoo. When the saints were driven from Nauvoo, those people who had refused to gather felt to say, “I told you so” and felt like the Nauvoo saints should have seen it coming. They declined to follow the saints west, pointing out that they weren’t having problems with their neighbors. Of course, none of them knew anything about the temple or the important ordinances that were given to the Nauvoo saints who had obediently gathered to Nauvoo. To this day many of their descendants hold to the idea that temple ordinances were the invention of Brigham Young. If only they had been obedient. I bore witness of the importance of giving heed to the prophets in our midst and then sat down. Pres. Monson turned around and said, "We generally have three talks when we stand before the people: the one you prepare, the one you give and the one you should have given. This time, you gave the right one. You've redeemed yourself." Unfortunately, with Pres. Monson's memory, I'm sure he remembers both of those talks.

My dad also had an interesting experience with a couple of the Brethren. Our next door neighbors were totally less active, but their children came to church. They asked my father to baptize and confirm their son who was eight years old. On fast Sunday, my dad went to church expecting to confirm the boy later in the day. The bishop took my father off to the side during priesthood meeting and explained that he had received a letter from the Presiding Bishop's Office implementing a new policy. If a child of record's father wasn't able to confirm the child, it should be performed by the bishop. My father said that didn't sound right and bishop sort of agreed, but said they should follow the instructions.

After priesthood meeting, my dad went home and felt that he wanted to talk to somebody about it. He opened the phone book and looked up---"McKay, David O." He picked up the phone and dialed the number listed in the telephone book. Sister McKay answered the phone and my dad said, "Could I please speak to President McKay?" She said, "Just a moment" and called, "David, you're wanted on the telephone." President McKay came to the phone and my dad explained what he and the bishop had discussed. President McKay asked, "Brother Allred, are you worthy to perform that ordinance?" My dad said he was and President McKay said, "Harold B. Lee oversees this, so would you please call him and tell him that we have talked?" My dad thanked the prophet and then turned to the "L's" in the phone book. He found, "Lee, Harold B." and called him. Elder Lee explained that this policy hadn't been authorized by the First Presidency and another letter had already been sent correcting it. He said to go back to the bishop and if the bishop needed to he could call Elder Lee. Not only were they listed in the phone book, they were home to answer their telephones on Sunday morning between priesthood meeting and Sunday school.

Joseph F. Smith and Frederick Smith Correspondence

2007-09-11T20:01:00.001-06:00

In the biography of President Joseph F. Smith, written by his son and namesake Joseph Fielding Smith, there is an account of the visit of RLDS missionaries who came to Salt Lake City to proselytize the Saints. They were led by Frederick M. Smith, grandson of the Prophet who later became president of the Reorganized Church. He sent a letter to Joseph F. Smith, president of the Church at the time, asking for permission to use the LDS meeting houses to deliver their message.

Joseph Fielding Smith writes that Frederick Smith's letter is reminiscent of Giddianhi's letter to Lachoneus in 3 Nephi 3. Although Elder Smith didn't include the actual correspondence in his father's biography, I found a pamphlet of the letters about 30 years ago while going through some papers I had. I came across it again this week. I think the exchange is fascinating for several reasons. It follows below without comment.

123 C Street, Salt Lake City, Utah
August 21, 1905
Pres. Joseph F. Smith
Salt Lake City, Utah

Dear Sir and Kinsman

--Feeling that I have a message to deliver to the people over whom you preside, a message the deliverance of which is made a duty upon me because I am of the seed of the man through the instrumentality of whom God saw fit to establish His church in these latter days, and feeling that you can not but be interested in what might come through the seed of that man, and feeling, too, that you can be of service to me in preparing to some extent the way for me to deliver this message to the "Mormon" people, I address you with a request that you shall signify to me your willingness that the various houses of worship controlled by your people throughout this section of country shall be opened to me for the purpose of speaking to the people. If you are so willing, I shall be pleased to have a letter from you, stating so, that those having charge of such houses may thus know that you are willing the houses should be opened to me.

It is my purpose to make a thorough a canvass of the state of Utah and other parts of the country in which your people are numerous, as circumstances ill permit, for the purpose of delivering my message; and when I have done so, then my responsibility in this particular work shall have ceased and that of the people begins, so far as my call is concerned. As you well know, I feel that you and your people have to an extent more or less great wandered away from the truth as established by Joseph Smith the prophet, and as one of the seed of that man there rests upon me the serious duty of calling to repentance those who have wandered thus. I have made the call through such channels as have been opened to me, and it is my determination to do all in my power to give all your people a chance to hear the call. I am most sincere and earnest, for I feel that dire consequences are sure to follow the refusal of your people to heed the call. No amount of ridicule hurled at me, no amount of derision, will forestall such consequences. They can be stayed only by heeding the call made by the promptings of the Spirit to repent of your ways and return to the truth as established by him whom you revere as your prophet. Even should I from any cause fail to fill the mission with which I am now commissioned, and should those who are placing themselves in opposition to me succeed in completely crushing me as an individual, the necessity for repentance on the part of the Mormon people still remains, and others of the seed of Joseph will be sent of God to call you to repentance.

Do not make the mistake in believing that in coming among you I am impelled by motives springing from sources of jealousy or envy of the prosperity or prestige enjoyed by you and your people; for I care neither for your material prosperity nor your prestige. I come not of myself, but because duty and the Spirit demand. Had I considered my own choice, I should have remained among our own people, a people being richly blessed of God, and worked among them quietly along spiritual lines. As you know full well, and as you can not but know that I know full well, material prosperity or worldly success does not necessarily mean full acceptance with Deity, and no amount of commercial success will justify illegal succession or sanctify unrighteous courses. As an example, note how the Nephites were, by reason of their great prosperity, led so from the ways of God that He sent His prophet among them to warn them; and note further how, because they refused to heed the call to repentance they were scourged and suffered greatly, not because they were the people of God, but because they had wandered from the paths of righteousness. See Mosiah 11.

I warn you once more, beware how you reject the call coming through the seed of Joseph.

May I not have a letter from you indicating that you are at least not unwilling that your houses of worship shall be opened to me to speak to the people?

Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) Fredk. M. Smith

President Smith's Reply

President's Office, S.L.C., Utah,
August 24, 1905
Dear Sir and Kinsman --

Your communication dated 21st inst. is before me; its contents have been carefully noted.

In answer thereto, I first call your attention to a fact of past and present history, viz --the general willingness of our people to open their meeting houses to the representatives of different sects, who apply for such privilege in a spirit of sincerity and peace, and whose purpose it is to present their views in the same spirit.

We do not profess, however, such a degree of liberality as to offer our houses of worship to individuals or organizations whose avowed purpose is that of antagonism toward the Church, and to make hostile attacks upon its members. We have extended no general welcome to those whose profession it is continually to misrepresent, abuse, insult, and malign our people and the Church. Our pulpits and platforms have not been made for the use and convenience of such as come amongst us to defame and falsify.

Now, sir, you come to us with a declaration of hostility. You openly assume an attitude of avowed opposition. And yet you ask that our people be called together in their several places of worship, there to submit to your attacks. But, you profess to be especially commissioned for this undertaking in that you bear a message of great import.

By what authority, real or assumed, do you thus appear? According to your letter you base your authority on the fact that you are "of the seed of the man through the instrumentality of whom God saw fit to establish His Church in these latter days."

You claim to have a special message to the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that it is your personal duty to deliver that message because you are of that seed. You seek to emphasize your own importance as the bearer of the message of which you speak, by these words: "I warn you once more, beware how you reject the call coming through the seed of Joseph."

Let me assure you that the descendants of Joseph Smith, and those of Hyrum Smith, my father, stand before God as do all other men, assured of honor or dishonor, exaltation or degradation, according to their individual works.

You, sir, may well be proud of your lineage, but remember this, your worthy parentage can no more bring you authority in the Priesthood, than it can secure you exemption from the results of sin, or unearned exaltation at the bar of the Great Judge.

My interest in you as a descendant or "seed" of Joseph Smith the Prophet, ends absolutely when and where your interest in his divine mission, in its entirety, ends. In other words, my interest in you as a representative of the "seed" of Joseph Smith would begin where your faith and interest might begin in the whole divine mission of Joseph Smith, and must of necessity cease absolutely when and where your interest ends. The Church will ever receive the "seed" of Joseph Smith when they come to it in the faith; but never while they continue to be their most vindictive, relentless and inveterate foes.

Your boast that you are of the "seed of Joseph" partakes largely of the spirit manifested by the Jews, who, in their unholy pride declared that they were of Abraham's seed, and as such felt it incumbent upon them to reject the message of John and also that of our Redeemer. Do you not remember, sir, the stinging rebuke that they received? that God could of the very stones "raise up children unto Abraham!" And when they answered "Abraham is our Father," Jesus said to them: "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one father even God. Jesus saith unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do."

The seed of Christ, the Prophet Abinadi tells us, are "whosoever has heard the words of the prophets, yea, all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord; I say unto you, that all those who have hearkened unto their words, and believed that the Lord would redeem his people, and have looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins; I say unto you, that these are his seed, or they are the heirs of the kingdom of God."

And again, "whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two Priesthoods ... and the magnifying their calling ... become the sons of Moses and of Aaron and the seed of Abraham, and the Church and kingdom, and the elect of God," so say I to you: God is not dependent upon the immediate sons and grandsons of Joseph Smith to do His bidding, and to consummate His purposes, but is able to raise up other seed to the Prophet, as set forth in the foregoing, who will indeed be Joseph's seed in the Gospel, as are the Prophets and Saints who have been, are, and will be, true and faithful unto God, as the seed of Christ.

As to the message you say you have to deliver to the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I desire to call your attention to an historical fact: This Church has never been disorganized. The quorums of the Priesthood from the Deacons to the Apostles have had a continuous existence, from the time they were organized by the Prophet until the present. At the Prophet's death the quorum of Apostles, designated in the revelation on Priesthood as equal in authority to the First Presidency, took charge of the Church until the spirit indicated to them to appoint three men holding the High Priesthood to preside. There were some disgruntled persons who withdrew from the Church, such men as James J. Strang, William Smith, Gladden Bishop and others, who had more or less of a following, but they were not able to hold their members together, and so these scattered. Others, when they saw persecution raging, were too cowardly to remain with the body of the Church. They left it in its darkest hour of suffering, and they also scattered in different directions. Some years afterwards, out of such elements was formed the "New Organization," as it was first called, or the "Reorganized church," as it is now known. The keys of the Holy Priesthood which the Prophet held and which were bestowed by him upon the Twelve, have never been in the possession of the "Reorganization."

If God has a message for His Church He will not send it through such a source. Judging, sir, from the animus in your "open letter," and the tone of this private letter to me, I feel that I should greatly wrong our people, if I should open our houses of worship to you, and hence I must refuse to grant your request.

You hold up to ridicule the sacred principles taught by the Prophet, your honored grandfather. I refer to plural marriage and sealing for time and eternity. There are a number still living who testify that the Prophet taught the principle of plural marriage to them. Many acquainted with this fact have died, but hundreds in the different settlements throughout Zion have heard their testimony, and these people, knowing the truthfulness of those men and women are convinced that what they told is the truth. I myself know that my father married a second wife by the counsel and direction of his brother, the Prophet. Your denial of the Prophet's teaching this doctrine, your father's saying "I prefer not to believe it," does not change the fact, I know that he sealed a plural wife to my father.

More than a hundred sworn affidavits by men and women who lived in Nauvoo, testifying to the fact that the Prophet not only taught the principle, but also practiced it, are in possession of the Church. Even your own church members have testified of these things. Jason W. Briggs, one of the organizers of your church, and James Whitehead so testified in the Temple Lot suit, and the first editor of your *Saints' Herald,* Isaac Sheen, declared that the Prophet Joseph Smith had a revelation on the subject of plural and celestial marriage, and that he also taught it. He claims that this was the cause of the Prophet's death.

Hundreds were sealed by him as husbands and wives for time and eternity, many received their endowments under his administration, and some are still living who testify that to their positive knowledge the endowments that he gave are the same as now administered in the Church.

I earnestly warn you, dear sir and kinsman, against denying that the Prophet taught these sacred principles. When you do this you show that you are not in fellowship with him. I also warn you against saying, as did one of your preachers the other evening, "If he taught plural marriage he was a fallen prophet." I bear testimony to you that he was not a fallen Prophet, for what he taught was revealed to him from the Lord. He was true, and faithful to the last, and he and his brother, my father, sealed their testimony with their blood.

In your letter to me you speak about being ridiculed and that you may be crushed. If you make absurd statements these may be shown up in their true light, but as to crushing you, I can assure you, that not one Latter-day Saint would wish to hurt even a hair of your head. I cannot believe that you, for one moment, can harbor such a thought. The Saints bear no ill-feeling toward you, they may pity you when they see you take a course so contrary to you grandfather's teachings.

Your sneer at our prosperity seems curious to me. You have been in our home, you know that we are but common folk. I hope that we have not given you any cause to believe that we were like those Nephites that you allude to as being lifted up in their pride and riches. As we have no riches we are not much in danger of becoming like unto them. As to the Church itself I hope to see it out of debt, and what property it may own will be used for the purpose mentioned in the revelations, viz. --the redemption of Zion. These means I hold as the sacred trust of the Church, and they are accounted for to the last cent.

Your fling at "commercialism" shows the source whence you have drawn your inspiration, and it is a fling as much against your grandfather's course as against that of his successors. What he did in a business way was for the upbuilding of the Church of Christ, and no other object have his successors had in their business enterprises.

Now, sir, before I conclude, I solemnly call upon you to repent of misrepresenting the man whom God called to usher in the great dispensation of the fulness of times, and also of officiating in the ordinances of the Gospel without authority.

With only the best of feelings and with a desire for your spiritual welfare, I remain,

In sincerity, your kinsman,
(Signed)Joseph F. Smith

Comments on Mountain Meadows

2007-09-02T19:16:00.000-06:00

It's been interesting to follow the media chatter attending last week's release of the movie, "September Dawn." Reports fairly regularly note that Mormon fanatics murdered 120 innocent immigrants on their way to California. Occasionally this number gets conflated but never deflated. John Voight on the Michael Medved program put the number at 180. No matter how many were killed, it was too many; but I constantly hear the LDS Church criticized for bad history, and in this case I regret that no one has forcefully challenged those who keep maximizing the number of dead. Juanita Brooks, the author of the most scholarly treatment of the Massacre uncritically accepted the number of about 120 souls as accurate in her book. However, in the fourth printing, she added these comments:

III. HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE KILLED?

I am embarrassed that I did not earlier give closer scrutiny to this question. The monument and plaque had been in place for twelve years before I began this work; the number slain had been accepted. Only in the past year have I been forced to agree with Major J.H. Carleton that the number 123 people killed is greatly exaggerated. [57 Cong. I sess., House Doc. 605]. (Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1991. p. xix)

Wikipedia lists 58 individuals killed in the massacre. Historical records demonstrate that the entire train numbered 110 individuals before it left Salt Lake City and several wagons took other routes or remained in the Territory until the next year. Additionally 11 horsemen left the camp at Mountain Meadows and continued on without encountering difficulty. Reliable evidence demonstrates that the actual number of persons killed is less than half of that indicated at the monument and only one third of those claimed by John Voight.

I've encountered quite a few people who have claimed that they could no longer believe in Mormonism when they learned that its history didn't coincide with their views. I wonder how many anti-Mormons will lose faith in anti-Mormonism once they learn how history has been manipulated by anti-Mormons?

Over the years I've told my Church History classes that it's easy to judge when we don't have the full story. My ancestors were driven out of their homes three times when they lived in the United States. I don't know how they might have perceived events had they been settlers in that desolate part of Utah; but I surmise that the settlers who were there didn't know where else they could go. They were awaiting news of a secret army on its way to attack them. They were living in an arid wilderness on the edge of starvation and among competing bands of Indians. My own religious upbringing tells me that the people who follow my religion don't kill people--especially innocent women and children. Yet, some did. How horrific for those who participated on each side. How will they ever stand at the judgment seat of Christ?

Israel's Second God?

2007-08-02T10:30:00.000-06:00

I read two fascinating books recently by Old Testament scholar, Margaret Barker: The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God, and Temple Theology.

Margaret Barker is British, a Methodist Preacher and Old Testament scholar. In these books, the author proposes that the religion of the Patriarchs and pre-exilic Judaism is not the official Judaism that survived into New Testament times. She claims that the earliest Hebrew religion worshipped the Most High God--who was the Father of the angels and that the pre-eminent Angel was Yaweh (Jehovah). Through a process of revision of many of the canonical texts, these concepts were obscured, deleted, revised and combined by Deuteronomists who insisted on an absolute monotheism that could not allow for Yaweh to be a different being than El Elyon (the Highest God.) This revised theology wasn't able to entirely subsume the religion of the Patriarchs as demonstrated by the willingness of many Jews to accept Jesus Christ as THE LORD--not just the representative of Jehovah; but Jehovah himself.

Barker claims that distinctive doctrines such as a God who was visible in human form, the literal Father of the angels and who was the Father of Jehovah, were systematically removed from the religion of Judaism.

These concepts are most intriguing to Latter-day Saints; for we claim that these are the religion not just of the Patriarchs, but of the prophets and earliest Christians. We also recognize that the process of revision postulated by Barker (a Methodist) is precisely that claimed by the first LDS text. The Book of Mormon posits that the promise of Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice in human flesh was known to prophets and the people of God since the beginning of the earth. Barker's research shows that this outlandish claim of Joseph Smith is no longer outlandish, but consistent with the evidence of antiquity.

A few quotations worth mulling over:

In temple theology, resurrection was not a post mortem experience. It was theosis, the transformation of a human being into a divine being–which came with the gift of Wisdom; and theosis, described in various ways, was at the heart of temple tradition, together with the belief in a resurrected anointed one, a resurrected Messiah. (Temple Theology p. 23)

Israel had long had a belief in the vision of God, when the glory had been visible on the throne in human form, surrounded by the heavenly hosts. What happened to the visions of God? ... Israel had long regarded Yahweh as the Lord of the hosts of heaven, but the title Yahweh of Hosts was not used by the Deuteronomists. What happened to the hosts, the angels?
These ...examples will suffice to make the point: the religious practices which the Deuteronomists opposed are known to have had a place in the earlier religion of Israel. If they removed these as a part of their reform, and removed most of the references to them, how can their writings be evidence for anything other than their own ideals? (The Great Angel, p. 12)

The prophet has removed the idea that the creator God was the procreator, the father of gods and men. In other words, the idea of a procreator God with sons seems to have fallen out of favour among those who equated Yahweh and El. (The Great Angel, p. 19)

While reading these books, I remembered that the Sadducees were those who controlled the temple. They were the sect who denied both the resurrection and the existence of angels. It is interesting to me that the reforms implemented by Josiah weren't the result of God instructing a prophet that the religion needed to be reformed. It was rather the result of having found the law of the Lord and having concluded that their current worship didn't coincide with this book of Deuteronomy. How reliable is reform implemented by man's judgment rather than revelation from God?

The Dolt with a Dart

2007-06-21T12:19:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I started to write about an episode at Church that came to mind due to two recent events. The first was the man who appreciated my wife's smile while in the temple and the other was a news report about a robbery at a pharmacy. I recognized the pharmacist as the teacher over our quorum of priests around 1970. The two really are related, but a little explanation might be in order for those unacquainted with LDS Church organization.

The LDS Church ordains young boys to offices in the Aaronic priesthood. At 12 they're ordained deacons, at 14 teachers and at 16 priests. They're organized into quorums, with a president over each quorum chosen from among its members except for the priests' quorum. Its president is the bishop of the ward who also functions as the pastor of the congregation to which the boys belong. The bishop met with us during priesthood meeting where we would learn our duties and be instructed in church doctrines. The bishop generally delegated Sunday instruction to another adult known as an "advisor."

When I was that age, Mormon church services were on a very different schedule. All the ordained males in the congregation met early in the morning for priesthood meeting. That usually concluded at about 9:00 A.M. Sunday School followed with about an hour break in between. After Sunday School concluded, families would go home until the late afternoon when they would return for Sacrament meeting. All these meetings now occur in LDS meetinghouses during a 3 hour period. Since my house was only two doors away from the chapel, the priests (16-18 years old) would all go over to our home and hang out in our basement. We had a dart board and we'd have a couple of games of darts before Sunday School. There was an initiation of sorts that took place with all the new members of the quorum.

The opposite end from the point of a dart is what's called a "flight." It serves to stabilize the trajectory of the dart as the feather fletching does on an arrow. The plastic flight can be removed from the steel point by unscrewing it. Whenever we got a new member of our quorum, he would come to the house with the rest of the guys and watch the others play darts, waiting for his turn. We would maneuver him into position so that he was just off to the side of the dart board, but not in harm's way. One of the older members of the quorum who was playing darts would discreetly unscrew the flight from one of the darts, and then when it was his turn, he'd throw the flight at the newcomer's chest. The poor guy would panic, thinking that he had been attacked with a real dart and that there was going to be blood everywhere. When he calmed down enough to realize he wasn't hurt, he'd get a chuckle out of it with everyone else and then he'd look forward for his turn to surprise the next new member of the quorum. We didn't talk about this outside of our basement because we didn't want to spoil the surprise for incoming victims.

Rod Dunn was the advisor to the priests' quorum. He was an excellent advisor. We knew that he loved us and he was a great teacher. In addition to being a pharmacist, he taught an early morning seminary class to high school students every day of the week. His lessons were always interesting and showed great preparation.

On this particular Sunday, we came into class to see a dartboard set up at one end of the class. Brother Dunn asked me to volunteer to help out in an object lesson. He had me stand at the other end of the class from the dartboard facing away from it. He said, "I'm going to count to three; and then I want you to turn around and throw the dart at the board." I didn't have time to unscrew the flight before he counted to three, so I did just as I had been asked to do. However, that wasn't the end of the object lesson. He had me turn around again and then while I wasn't supposed to look, he turned the dartboard around so that there was a picture of the Church President on it. He said he would again count to three and then I should turn around and throw a second dart. This gave me plenty of time to remove the flight. Everyone in the room (about 20 guys) except for the bishop and brother Dunn knew what was going to happen next. Brother Dunn counted to three, I turned around and threw the flight with full force right at brother Dunn's chest. He wasn't able to get out of the way and stumbled backwards, clutching the dart against his chest and shouting, "Oh--you---stupid--- kid!"

The class erupted. I showed the bishop and brother Dunn that I had removed the flight and when brother Dunn had realized that neither he nor the dart were damaged, he calmed down and laughed with us. The bishop wiped tears of laughter out of his eyes and everyone else thought it was the best riot they'd ever attended. However, at the time of the attack, a roar of laughter erupted out of our classroom so that men and boys from all over the church came running to see what had happened--including my father. The bishop went over to tell my dad what had happened. I thought I was in deep trouble. I had ruined the object lesson as well as the lessons for all the classes in the area. My dad didn't say anything until we got home. There, he explained that the bishop had told him it was one of the funniest things he'd ever seen. He said that there is a time to laugh and this was one of them.

I think I'll call brother Dunn and see if he remembers the "dolt with a dart episode."

Holiness to the Lord

2007-06-20T16:19:00.000-06:00

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.” (Isaiah 2:2)

My wife and I both work one day a week in the Salt Lake Temple. Something happened the other day that prompted me to write today. As I was just leaving the temple, a fellow came up to me and told me to thank my wife for her smile. She does have a million dollar smile; and when I passed on the comment to her, she said, “I’m just so grateful to be here, I can hardly keep from smiling.”

That is precisely how I feel! When I think of what I have learned and experienced, I’m surprised that when the opportunity first afforded itself, that I hesitated. My parents were temple workers for many years, and I just didn’t think I was ancient enough to be there. But, I thought it was a duty that I would reluctantly accept. I have since realized that some duties are rare opportunities that bring with them wonderful blessings. Each week when I leave the temple, I love my wife more. I love my children more and I love people more that I don’t even know. I’m more appreciative of the Savior’s love for me and for His loving kindness to me and all mankind. It’s been a wonderful experience. I feel like shouting halleluiah all the time when I think that I have been privileged to work in the House of the Lord.

Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. (Isaiah 2:3)

More on 10 Amazing Facts of Mormonism

2007-06-20T12:47:00.000-06:00

Last March, I wrote about Jill Martin Rische's alleged facts of Mormonism. Since then, I've seen a couple of other blogs discussing it and this past weekend I found it again from a posting of June 14th. A non-LDS reader left a comment that I think is worth posting here. It's from a physician posting under the name drkc.

Sandy’s comment above brings up another point you may find interesting. I came to the conclusion about 10 years ago that Mormons are not going to Hell just because they are Mormons and that God’s miraculous grace extends even to the LDS church with their weird beliefs. You may not agree with me, but that’s OK. Most of the people I go to church with don’t agree with me, but I don’t think they're going to Hell either. To understand how I came to this conclusion I have to relate some personal experiences that are a little embarrassing. It may also help you understand why I have such a soft spot for Mormons.

First, I grew up in Utah. My family was Christian but we weren’t very religious. I wasn’t born again until I became involved in a campus Christian group in college. While I was an undergraduate, my youngest brother got mixed up with a bad crowd at his high school (yes, you can find bad crowds even in Utah). He became addicted to cocaine and methamphetamine. When he was 18 he left home and we didn’t hear from him for years. We didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

3 years later while I was attending medical school in Texas I got a call from my brother. He was living in Arizona, had met a Mormon girl to whom he was engaged, had quit drugs and alcohol and was joining the LDS church. I was so happy. He and I cried and talked on the phone for about an hour.

The next week I went to a Christian fellowship group I attended for medical and dental students at my school. At the beginning of each meeting they allowed us to share scriptures and experiences we’d had in the last week. I had always been quiet in the meetings up until then, but that day I decided to share the scripture about the prodigal son in Luke 15:32, “It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: For this thy brother was dead and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” I then told them how my family’s prayers had been answered and how my brother had found Christ and was getting married and joining the Mormon church. To my surprise the people in the group reacted with horror that my brother was becoming a Mormon rather than joy that he was finally getting his life together. They advised me to do everything I could to prevent him from becoming a Mormon.

That Sunday I spoke to my pastor about this. He reacted similarly, telling me it was important that my brother not be baptized a Mormon because Mormons didn’t believe in Jesus Christ. I disagreed with a pastor for the first time in my life, telling him I knew Mormons believed in Christ because my best friends were Mormons and that they talked about Jesus and read the Bible all the time. He told me that “Mormons believe in a different Jesus than we do.” I called my friend Kyle, who was going to BYU at the time, and asked him if he believed in the same Jesus that I did. He sighed. I could tell he had heard this before. He told me something like, “Buddy, I can only tell you about the Jesus I believe in and then you can decide for yourself. I believe Jesus was the Jehovah of the Old Testament who created the Universe, the Earth and every living thing on it. I believe He spoke to Moses through the burning bush. I believe He parted the Red Sea. I believe He sent fire from Heaven for Elijah. I believe He was miraculously conceived through Mary and that he is God’s literal Son. I believe he lived a perfect life and taught a perfect message. I believe He suffered and died for my sins and that He made it possible for me to be saved and to return to God’s presence someday.” That sounded good enough to me.

So I went back to my pastor and told him what my friend had said. He shook his head. “No. You see, Mormons don’t believe in the same Jesus as we do because they don’t believe in the Trinity.” The Trinity? I had never thought much about the Trinity before. I had always just taken it for granted that God consisted of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. So, for the first time in my life I started studying a topic in the Bible on my own. If the Trinity was so important that it was going to keep my brother and best friend out of Heaven I’d better try to understand it better myself. I was a little frustrated with what I was able to find. The Bible I was using back then didn’t have a great index. I know there are more scriptures about this subject then I was able to find, but at the time I found Luke 3:22 “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” and 1 John 5:7, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” This did not get me much closer to understanding the nature of the Trinity. So I decided to try to figure out what Mormons believed about the Trinity so I could know why they were so wrong. I dug up the copy of the Book of Mormon my friend Kyle had given me in high school which I had never opened. Under the index heading for the Godhead I found a verse in Mosiah 15:2-5 “God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son- the Father, because He was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son- and they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and earth. And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth himself to be mocked, and scourged and cast out, and disowned by his people.” This was ironic. In trying to find out what was wrong with Mormons' belief about the Trinity I found in the Book of Mormon a pretty good explanation of what I had always believed about the Trinity myself.

But there was one last sticking point I couldn’t get past. It was the old “faith vs. works” argument Evangelicals and Mormons have been having for years. I spent several months finding every scripture I could that talked about being saved by faith and grace so I could confront my friend about it when I went home for Christmas. I had the scripture Sandy mentioned in Titus 3:4-7, as well as Romans 4:16, Romans 5:1, a bunch more from Romans and others. I couldn’t wait to confront my friend with these. How could he refute them? When we finally got together in December and opened our Bibles to bash, I was surprised that he agreed with me completely on every scripture I read to him. He even had several of the same scriptures marked in his Bible. Although he did point out that James 2:17 says that, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” he assured me that Mormons believe completely in salvation through faith and the grace of Christ. It turns out that this is another misunderstanding of semantics between Mormons and other Christians. Mormons believe they are saved by their faith in Jesus Christ, but that works are the manifestations of that faith and that works are what help their faith in Christ grow.

So, since that time I’ve never worried much about my brother or best friend going to Hell. They may believe in the Book of Mormon, but they also have faith in Christ so they are saved. They may believe in Joseph Smith, but they also have faith in Christ so they are saved. If Christ’s sacrifice is great enough to save me from all of the sins I’ve committed in my life, surely it is great enough to save Mormons despite their strange beliefs. In short, Mormons may have some big misconceptions about God, the Universe and Everything, but because I have a finite mind, I’m sure I do too. Thank goodness for the Blood of Christ and its power to save that will put us all straight someday.

The Arrogance of Ignorance

2007-06-11T16:45:00.000-06:00

Today’s New York Times has an article questioning Mitt Romney’s integrity via a prominent blogger (John Dehlin) and a less prominent talk show host (Tom Grover) out of ~~Sleepy Hollow~~ Logan, Utah. While I’m not generally confident that what reporters report actually represents what they were told, I’ll assume for the sake of this article that Grover’s comments accurately represent him. Grover said his listeners were “astounded” to hear Romney claim that Mormons believe Jesus Christ will return to Jerusalem: “‘That's not true; Jesus is coming back to Missouri,’ Grover said. ‘It's the LDS Church's 10th article of faith that Zion will be built upon the American continent.’”

Upon reading that, I immediately thought of Joseph F. Smith’s comments on one of the primary sources of false doctrine in the Church:

The hopelessly ignorant, whose lack of intelligence is due to their indolence and sloth, who make but feeble effort, if indeed any at all, to better themselves by reading and study; (Gospel Doctrine p. 373)

Those people in Logan who were “astounded” at Romney’s comment would be well served to read section 45 in the Doctrine and Covenants or the entry in McConkie’s “Mormon Doctrine” where he explains that even though the Lord will appear in many different places, His return in the eyes of all nations will be in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. (See Mormon Doctrine p. 696.)

This is why Romney should never come out and say what he believes regarding Mormonism. No matter what he says, there will be no shortage of ignorant Mormons, misguided political pundits and ex-Mormons with recovered memories to tell him how wrong he is.

White Horse Prophecy

2007-06-06T10:55:00.000-06:00

Day before yesterday, the Salt Lake Tribune resurrected a faith promoting rumor known as the "White Horse Prophecy." It shows up every few years and the LDS Church authorities condemn it as originating from a bull rather than a horse but some people still like to think it's credible. You'll see lots of references to this alleged prophecy; but you'll rarely see it quoted in its entirety. Inveterate anti-Mormon Sandra Tanner did a piece on it in 1999 when Orrin Hatch was limping for the presidency, but she too managed only to refer to it while claiming that it was from Joseph Smith--due to similar language in statements of subsequent LDS authorities.

It isn't likely that this "White Horse Prophecy" was invented out of whole cloth, since the idea that the Constitution would be under assault has been a common theme in public discourse--even down to the language about it "hanging by a thread;" but it most likely is a reworked conflation based upon several unrelated comments made by Joseph Smith. Reports about the prophecy claim that the nation will be rescued by one man. The document, however, indicates that the "White Horse" is the LDS people who would as a group help to preserve equal rights on the earth. I don't give the so-called prophecy any credibility because it has been so consistently condemned by Church leaders and so consistently praised by fundamentalists.

Ogden Kraut, fundamentalist author and publisher of scores of books wrote this about the prophecy:

The White Horse Prophecy, attributed to Joseph Smith, is one of the most comprehensive and detailed prophecies given in the past 2,000 years, yet it has not received its rightful consideration and appreciation.

Contrast that to Joseph F. Smith, 5th president of the Church who said in 1918:

The ridiculous story about the "red horse," and "the black horse," and "the white horse," and a lot of trash that has been circulated about and printed and sent around as a great revelation given by the Prophet Joseph Smith, is a matter that was gotten up, I understand, some ten years after the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith, by two of our brethren who put together some broken sentences from the Prophet that they may have heard from time to time, and formulated this so-called revelation out of it, and it was never spoken by the prophet in the manner in which they have put it forth. It is simply false; that is all there is to it. (Messages of the First Presidency Vol. 5:107)

The full text of the alleged prophecy is as follows:

You will go to the Rocky Mountains and will establish a great and mighty people which I call the White Horse of Peace and Safety. You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed; it will hang by a thread as fine as the finest silk fiber. I love the Constitution; it was made under the inspiration of God, and will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse and the Red Horse who will come to its defense. A terrible revolution will take place in America such as has never been before, for the land will be bitterly left without a supreme government, and every species of wickedness will be rampant. It will be so terrible that father will be against Sun, mother against Dr. and Dr. against mother. The most terrible scenes of murder, bloodshed and repine that has ever been looked on will take place. Peace will be taken from the earth. The Turkist Empire of the Crescent will be the first great power to be disrupted, England and France will be allied together in order to keep Russia from conquering the world. While the terrible revolution is going on England and France will try to make peace in the United States. They will find the United States so broken up many claiming authority, still there will be no responsible government. Then it will appear to other countries at England has taken possession of the country. The Black Horse (India) will join Russia. Armed with British bayonets, the doings of the black horse will be terrible. There is a land in the Rocky Mountains that will be invaded by the Japanese unless care is taken. This last struggle that Zion (America) will face will be when the whole of America is made the Zion of our God.

Anti-Mormon Bigotry from Frank Pastore?

2007-06-05T14:09:00.000-06:00

Lately, I've been following a discussion between Hugh Hewitt and Frank Pastore about whether or not it's bigotry to refuse to vote for Mitt Romney because he's a Mormon. Hewitt has taken the affirmative in this fray and Pastore has argued the other side. Pastore countered Hewitt's position in an essay on Townhall where he suggested that refusing to vote for a Mormon isn't the same as refusing to vote for a Black or a Jew or a female. He said it was more like refusing to vote for a pornographer or a drug dealer. I can see strengths in both arguments. Mormonism isn't a race or a gender; it's a choice. Consequently, someone might be justified in refusing to vote for someone whose choices conflict with our own standards of morality. I'm a little troubled that Pastore equates Mormons with pornographers and drug dealers, but that really shows the weakness of his position. Pornographers and drug dealers engage in behavior that is detrimental to society. While Pastore believes that Mormonism is detrimental to his view of Chrisitanity, that relates more to his personal religious views that in practice have no more negative impact upon society than do the views of Mormons. What troubled me most about Pastore's essay was his claim that "Joseph Smith ... misrepresents the person and work of Jesus Christ, and the Book of Mormon is antithetical to the Bible." In response to that comment, I wrote Pastore an email, and then listened to his program yesterday to see if he might entertain discussion on the topic.

The last hour of his radio program, "The Intersection of Faith and Reason" did deal with his essay. I called the program and found his position to be that of a rather typical anti-Mormon. I don't use that term very broadly. I know many people who disagree with Mormonism and who speak out against it whom I do not classify as anti-Mormons. I reserve the term for people who think they know Mormonism better than Mormons or who willingly use false sources in their criticisms of Mormonism. I think it's entirely appropriate for someone who doesn't believe in Mormonism to witness to me of what they believe; but I do draw the line at them witnessing to me what I believe.

Before I came on the air, Pastore made one really absurd comment, claiming that Mormons went to Utah at their own instigation. When I joined the conversation we went the usual rounds about plural gods, Jesus being the spirit brother of Lucifer and other, typical anti-Mormon talking points. When I said that most of these topics are generally only heard in anti-Mormon literature, he asked me if I believed Jesus Christ was married. I said that I honestly didn't know. He then claimed to quote Brigham Young from the Journal of Discourses and said, "Journal of Discourses book one verse 50: 'Jesus Christ was a polygamist, Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus were his plural wives.'"

I disagreed with that citation and noted that it certainly did not come from JD 1:50. (That citation is perhaps the most oft quoted page of the 26 volume set; but it does not deal at all with Jesus being a polygamist. He told me he had the citation right in front of him and it certainly did say what he claimed. I affirmed as resolutely that he could not be citing from that page and clearly had a secondary source. I said that the quote was from Orson Hyde but definitely not from Brigham Young in volume 1 of the Journal of Discourses. We exchanged a couple of other thoughts and then the program continued without me. When Pastore returned from the commercial break, he again asserted that my source was in error and that he had that from several different internet sites. (see note below about his citation.)

At the close of the program, I wrote a follow-up email in which I provided a photocopy of page 50 from volume 1 of the Journal of Discourses. I actually meant to send one that wasn't underlined, but clicked on the wrong image (since rectified). As anyone can see who chooses to read this text, the phrase Pastore claimed to be reading to me simply doesn't exist. There is a similar statement by Orson Hyde from volume 2, but it's obvious that Pastore could not have been reading from the page he claimed to have in front of him. It's one of those things that I still don't understand about critics of Mormonism. What is to be gained from the manufacture and dissemination of bogus sources? Whose agenda do they promote when they leave the arena of truth?

In my email to Pastore, I said he owed me an apology. I'm willing to leave open the possibility that he has a misprinted volume 1 of the JD, and if so, I'd be happy to say I was mistaken; but I'm pretty familiar with the Journal of Discourses and its publication history. I have several editions in my home and each one is a replica of the first edition.

(note: There are no verses in the Journal of Discourses, there are 26 volumes, page numbers and occasionally an index. I knew Pastore was using a secondary source because he said "verse 50" rather than "page 50."

If Romney would just come out and explain himself and his religion.

2007-05-24T12:55:00.000-06:00

"Bottom line, if Romney would just come out and explain himself and his religion..." -- a pretty pervasive mantra on the blogs these days. Romney has been trying to explain himself; but what kind of an explanation do people expect on Mormonism? Do they want to know what Mormons believe? Everyone already knows what Mormons believe even when they don't believe it. Perhaps people who seem so worried about what a Mormon might do as POTUS might be interested to see what the first Mormon proposed should he be elected. Joseph Smith announced his candidacy in January of 1844. Missionaries across America became instant campaign workers who began to produce political pamphlets and promote Joseph Smith's candidacy. Those pamphlets give us a pretty good idea of what Joseph Smith proposed. He suggested that the cycle of inflation, recession and depression needed to be broken by having the government live within its means. He expected the government to balance the budget and not spend more than it collected in revenue. He suggested that slavery could be abolished in a way that didn't cheat the slaveholders out of what was their property. He suggested that the federal government sell land in the territories to settlers and to use that income to purchase the slaves and set them free. He wanted to invite both Mexico and Canada to join the United States and become one nation. He believed that the federal government was too bloated and needed to be slashed in size. Congress would be cut by 2/3 and prisons should be transformed into vocational schools where prisoners would be taught skills to succeed.

He wanted slavery abolished by 1850 and suggested the establishment of a national bank, with branches in each state and territory, with revenue generated to be applied to government interests.

I wonder if people would have expected him to explain Mormonism, and what relevance that might have had to his platform?

Is there a Mormon Menace?

2007-05-23T12:09:00.001-06:00

I came across something this week that I think is fascinating. I typed the word Mormon into the search engine on the website for Liberty University -- the University founded by the late Jerry Fallwell. The search returned five documents. Four very pedestrian references hardly worth mentioning and one that really caught my attention. It is the questionnaire to be filled out in the admissions process for Liberty Theological Seminary. I've been thinking about it for a couple of days and I'm just full of questions about this form. It consists of two pages. The second page asks applicants to share their personal salvation experience and affirm that they are in substantial agreement with the doctrinal statement of Liberty Seminary. The first page, however, asks applicants to indicate whether they agree or disagree with 11 different statements. Six of those statements relate directly to LDS theology--or more accurately--relate directly to Evangelical perceptions of LDS theology. It seems that whoever prepared this form is worried that potential applicants might be Mormons; or might be individuals who have embraced LDS theology and this would be a threat to the Seminary. Consider these questions and ask yourself why are they on this particular form?

The 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament are the only inspired books of Divine Revelation that are the completed canon of Scripture
God the Father was never a man, just as man will never become a god.
Jesus Christ is uniquely the only Son of God the Father. Satan is not His brother.
Ancient American tribes should not be equated with the lost tribes of Israel.
The Bible is the only written true revelation from God and other religious books (e.g., Koran, Book of Mormon) are not.
Satan was created, not born, and is a spirit-being who rebelled against God.

I recognize that the first question dealing with the sufficiency of the Bible may not have been asked with Mormonism in mind, but the others might as well be in flashing neon: “BEWARE OF MORMON IDEAS!”

Are that many Mormons really trying to sneak into Liberty? Are the LDS concepts regarding theosis, an open canon and creation becoming a problem in Falwell’s Baptist Seminary? Or is this form evidence of a wee bit of paranoia? This questionnaire seems entirely at odds with the statement on the web page for Liberty Seminary: “an unexamined faith is not worth having.” It reminds me of what Brigham Young said when he heard that people in the east were certain that building the railroad through Utah would be the demise of Mormonism. He said, “It would be a pretty poor religion if it could not stand one railroad.”

I’m not suggesting that Liberty encourage Mormons or even allow Mormons to attend their seminary, but I do wonder about the focus on LDS concepts on their admission form.

I know that the LDS Church allows people of other faiths to attend BYU even though their standards are very strict. Interestingly, BYU places its emphasis upon the conduct of its students rather than upon their beliefs. From their website, the following standards are expected of all students, faculty and staff:

Be honest
Live a chaste and virtuous life
Obey the law and all campus policies
Use clean language
Respect others
Abstain from alcoholic beverages, tobacco, tea, coffee, and substance abuse
Participate regularly in church services
Observe dress and grooming standards
Encourage others in their commitment to comply with the Honor Code.

I see the same distinction noted by Edwin Hatch, the British theologian. He wrote that the difference in both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed are clearly evident. He pointed out that Jesus’ sermon was concerned with behavior rather than belief and the Creed of Nicaea cared nothing about behavior; but only about belief. It seems that the same forces are at play today. It seems odd to me that the admissions people might be so concerned about theoretical rather than practical Christianity. When Jesus warned his apostles about the scribes and Pharisees. He said, "but do not after their works: for they say, and do not." (Matt. 23:3) If I had my own Seminary, I'd be more concerned about the actions of my students than their beliefs. I wonder why this admission form is so concerned about belief yet not at all about behavior?

PBS and the Mormons Part Deux

2007-05-04T16:04:00.000-06:00

Maybe I was inured from the first segment, but part 2 of the PBS special on Mormons was much less objectionable than the first--with elements that were thought provoking and positive.

I thought the segment discussing Margaret Toscano's excommunication was a little over the top. The room with one seat confronting a dozen others certainly didn't represent any of the disciplinary councils I've attended. They have invariably been circumstances where all the council members struggled spiritually and emotionally.

While Mrs. Toscano thought it odd that the members of the council offered to shake her hand after the council, that seems to be consistent with the attitude they should have portrayed--showing that the decision of the council was one of Church discipline rather than that of personal rancor. She doesn’t seem to understand that Church leaders have a responsibility to protect the Church from false teachers (and they determine orthodoxy), but her standing in the community as a friend and neighbor isn’t tied to her church membership. I wouldn’t hesitate to take a class from her at the University, or to encourage others to do so; but I’d have a big problem with her teaching a gospel doctrine class.

Although I thought that the first segment was little more than anti-Mormon propaganda, I’ve mellowed since watching the first. I doubt a more friendly treatment could have been viewed by a skeptical public as anything more than Mormon evangelism. So, I’m happy with it.

Taliban Left and a Grand Right - Whose Ox Is This Anyway?

2007-05-04T08:17:00.000-06:00

This morning, I read an article by Karen Hanretty, the Communications Director for the California Republican Party. She apparently agrees with Democratic strategist Garry South, who thinks that there are a number of "interesting questions about Mormonism" that ought to be asked of Mitt Romney--such as "whether he believes ...that every non-Mormon Christian was invalidly baptized into an illegitimate Church?" Should the question be posed, I'd suggest Romney reply, "That's irrelevant because we rebaptize them after they die anyway."

Honestly, how could the answer to that question tell anyone whether or not Mitt Romney would make a good president? It is, however, very instructive about the vacuous nature of political debate in America. While I admit that I'm interested in the political Fortunes of Romney--mainly because he's a descendant of one of my heroes (Parley P. Pratt) and secondarily because he's a Mormon, the media and the pundits aren't asking any of the questions that should concern Americans. This week, the big news story about Romney was that his favorite novel was a science fiction work by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Sure, it was worth a few guffaws on the Colber Repor but what is the purpose of such an infantile question in the first place. Was it followed up with "What's your favorite dessert and how will that effect your ability to lead the nation?"

How about this for a question of substance from Romney that is related to his Mormonism? "Given that you believe that homosexual practices are immoral, why did you support equal civil rights for gays and lesbians as Governor of Massachusetts?" Romney could then explain that "the religion of the Latter-day Saints stands for the rights of all men, whatever their standing may be in society. It teaches tolerance to those of all other religions or no religion." (Joseph F. Smith, 1907)

Such an explanation isn't likely--given the inability of the media and pundits to perceive that we face far more important issues than whether or not our nation's president thinks other Christians' baptisms are valid.

PBS and The Mormons

2007-05-01T13:52:00.000-06:00

With the first couple of sentences, my hopes that this might be a balanced and intelligent presentation were dashed. Even though it presented one of the better pictures I've ever seen of my grandmother (she's the elderly lady on the far right. She died when I was 1 month old - on the left is Rulon Allred who was murdered in 1977.) It seemed to me to be a slightly more subtle presentation of anti-Mormon propaganda. I mentioned that the first few sentences gave me a taste of the presentation. It noted that Mormons walk the halls of national leadership (displaying a photo of Senate Majority Leader Reid) and that a Mormon is even running for president--and then noted: "It has not always been so." I immediately thought, "Hmmm. Does the fact that the first Mormon also ran for president count?" It also said in the introduction that Mormonism is a "Church that will exile those who defy its authority and its teachings."

I don't think the show's writers are ignorant enough to think that exile and excommunicate are equivalent terms. It's not like when I was younger and my mother wanted all the kids back at a certain time and said, "OK everybody, let's scrutinize our watches." No, they want the audience to believe that Mormon authorities actually exile those who stand up to them--hence the malevolent sounding piano music--more suitable to a horror movie than a documentary--as the show begins in earnest.

I have been acquainted with many people who have defied the Mormon Church's authority and teachings yet not one of them was ever exiled. This may seem like a quibble, but this misuse of language is an effective tactic in manipulating people's perceptions. At the end of the show, I couldn't help but think that there must be something nefarious about those dang Mormons.

Even though the program implies that the church hierarchy opposes intellectual thought, education has always been in the forefront of LDS thought. The Church has established several universities, some of which have become State institutions such as the University of Utah and Utah State University. The Church hierarchy is full of advanced degrees and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles includes several PhD.s.

However, there are also some positives to the program. Read the comments of Anne Osborn, an MD and how she became a Mormon. Her account is about halfway down the page. I recommend it .

2007-04-21T20:02:00.001-06:00

Two things have been on my mind since my last post: the temple and the Book of Mormon. Both subjects continue to have a powerful impact on my life for good so tonight, I'll write about both. First, some observations about the Book of Mormon.

Several years ago, I decided to make an electronic comparison of the first edition of the Book of Mormon and today's edition published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm most interested in the 1980 edition because others maintain their own versions from a theological perspective rather than a textual one. The Community of Christ nee RLDS Church has a version very similar to the 1837 Kirtland, Ohio edition and the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) publishes another version that is sort of a combination of the 1830 and the RLDS 1908 editions. Having carefully examined much of the manuscript evidence and the changes made by Joseph Smith in the 1840's, I believe that the 1980 LDS edition's matches best the original manuscript and Joseph Smith's modifications.

I had often wondered why critics of Mormonism never were absolutely specific about the number of changes made to the BoM since 1830, and only ballparked their complaint by claiming more than 4,000 revisions. That is mostly a tactic of propaganda designed more to shock than inform. It's also impossible to determine the actual number for several reasons. As I've noted before on this blog, no two copies of the first edition Book of Mormon are identical. Typographical errors were located and corrected during the printing process but already printed pages weren't discarded. So, counting the number of changes will vary depending on which of the 5,000 originals is compared. Secondly, but most important: How do you count the changes in this sentence from the first and latest editions?

(1830) And now, if there be fault it be the mistake of men.
(1980) And now, if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men.

Does that reflect 5 changes (be to are, fault to faults, it be to they are, and mistake to mistakes), or does it reflect 10 changes by counting each added and deleted word? Should it represent only one change--that of updating the grammar from an archaic usage to something more euphonious--as a similar phrase in Exodus 19:13 has morphed from the KJV to later versions?

(KJV) whether it be beast or man, it shall not live:
(Today's NIV) Whether people or animals, they shall not be permitted to live.

Do spelling changes count when both words are valid as lustre to luster, or shewn to shown? Practically each page of the 1830 edition contains such revisions. What about homonyms? Joseph Smith dictated the text to scribes who wrote straight when context demonstrates strait is the correct word.

In order to find all the textual changes I took electronic versions of both editions and stripped out all of the punctuation and capitalization. I also inserted a line break after each common word such as and or the. I then had Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect compare the two and highlight the changes. I then stripped out the line breaks, restored capitalization and restored the chapter and book divisions and exported the new document to Microsoft Reader. I've been reading this personal version of the Book of Mormon and I've noticed something intriguing.

The typesetter for the first edition of the Book of Mormon said that each chapter in the manuscript given to him "was one solid paragraph, without a punctuation mark, from beginning to end." As I've been reading this version, devoid of punctuation, I have remembered that there is no sentence structure in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Joseph Smith and all of his scribes were well enough instructed in English to recognize the structure of sentences; yet this book of over 500 pages displayed no effort on the part of Joseph Smith or his scribes to divide it into standard English sentences. I'm intrigued that they didn't even try to punctuate it before taking it to the typesetter. Oliver Cowdery, who wrote the printer's manuscript was a school teacher; yet, he left the text without conventional punctuation. This is worth investigation. I personally think it points toward its antiquity.

Spiritual Paradox

2007-04-11T10:45:00.000-06:00

Today in class, we covered the last half of Galatians. It reminded me of an excellent discourse (I highly recommend downloading the mp3 and listening to it) by Bruce R. McConkie titled, "What Think Ye of Salvation By Grace?" His discourse follows the general outline found in Romans, Galatians and Ephesians beginning by emphasizing that salvation is by grace, not by the law, and concludes (as do these epistles) with the essential corollary of obedience to God and His commandments. These two seemingly contradictory concepts--grace and works--are but another example of a paradox, where two seemingly contradictory concepts are both true. How could God love his Son and yet require him to suffer? How can our robes be washed white in his blood? How can we be saved by grace through faith, not of works, yet still be required to obey any law? Paul emphasizes the fact that righteousness is by faith in Christ and yet he denounces the works of the flesh--saying that those who so indulge shall not inherit the kingdom of God. This is why I enjoy so much the perspective we get from the Book of Mormon. When God told Enos that his sins were forgiven, Enos asked, "Lord, how is it done?" God told him, "Because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen." Enos, Benjamin, Jacob and many others find that it is the righteousness of Jesus Christ that saves them by their faith in him. Not of works lest any should boast; neither in their sins lest God reward iniquity.

The link I provide above to Elder McConkie's discourse is a site that can also be searched for other remarkable sermons. I recommend Matthew Cowley's 1953 discourse titled "Miracles," and Spencer W. Kimball's 1966 "Priests and Kings." MP3 versions may be downloaded for free.

Railing Accusations and Concerned Christians

2007-04-02T10:03:00.000-06:00

Angels won't bring accusations before the Lord but that apparently doesn't stop "Concerned Christians" of Mesa, Arizona. Their most recent production boils down mostly to a series of accusations against Joseph Smith--Liar! Adulterer! Conman! Thief!--with the rest of the tired old arguments that get recycled anytime another anti-Mormon tome hits the bookstores.

There’s nothing new in this DVD—and I’m not far enough into Floyd McElveen’s companion book to make a cogent comment. Their complaints about the absence of proof for the Book of Mormon, their philosophical legerdemain, ignorant speculation and questionable sources all combine to provide a highly offensive rehash of standard anti-Mormon fare. While several of the topics discussed in this DVD seem to me to be contrary to Bible doctrine, I see two things as most troubling.

First of all, the tone of the DVD is so entirely abrasive and offensive that it’s clearly not intended to appeal to a Mormon’s perception of what would constitute a presentation of a gospel message. It seems much more likely that this production is in the same character as the Nauvoo Expositor--a newspaper published in the heart of the headquarters of Mormonism in June of 1844. The motive for publishing that newspaper was to provoke a confrontation between Mormons and its critics. The same idea motivates the hearts of the organization calling itself “Concerned Christians.”

The second troubling aspect of this DVD and book is its insistence on directly accusing Joseph Smith and his successors with all manner of depravity. As I noted above, angels know not to engage in such behavior and even the Archangel Michael declined even to accuse Lucifer himself. Why? Because that is the role of Satan and those who follow him. They are the accusers of the brethren and as Joseph Smith observed, have placed themselves in Satan’s seat. How well do Peter’s words apply in this circumstance!

Presumptuous are they, self willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities. Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord. But these, … speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;

This is the spirit of Revelation

2007-03-30T15:28:00.000-06:00

I watched the new anti-Mormon DVD being distributed by Concerned Christians. I'll comment on it a little later, but something else seems to me to be more pressing. One of the most persistent criticisms I hear about Mormonism is directed at what some people call the "burning in the bosom." They tend to lump all LDS experience into that phrase and often mock it as if it were indigestion or an upset stomach. I don't think I have ever used that term to describe the experience of revelation, but I can understand why others might do so. Perhaps the best explanations regarding personal revelation come from those given by Joseph Smith. He said,

A person may profit by noticing the first intimations of the Spirit of Revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing unto you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, ... and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of Revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus. (TPJS p. 151)

Sometimes, this experience is so surprising that we set it aside in our minds and go about our lives as though we really didn't receive pure knowledge from a pure source. That's one of the reasons I think missionaries are sent out into the world. They will often be present when an investigator receives an impression from the Holy Spirit. If the missionary is wise, he'll stop whatever it is being discussed and ask, "Did you feel that?" He knows to stop the discussion, because he feels it too; and he can explain that this is the Spirit of the Lord testifying of the truthfulness of what they've been teaching. But it isn't merely a "burning in the bosom."

Oliver Cowdery, an early convert to Mormonism, needed to learn this lesson. He needed to understand what had already been given to him and what would be given to him in the future. He was told, "I will tell you in your mind and in your heart by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart." I think this two-fold nature of revelation is misunderstood and minimized by those who have not experienced it. There is a feeling in the heart-- in the center of your being--but it also comes into your mind, chasing away all doubt, so that at that moment you know, you actually know a thing to be true. Although this moment had passed for Oliver Cowdery, the Lord only needed to remind him of what he had already experienced: "If you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things. Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?

It was more than just a feeling, more than just an emotional response. It was knowledge, and peace in his mind. It was an intellectual experience. Of course this isn't the only way revelation comes. It can come in dreams, visions, appearances, the whispered voice of actual words, or the countenance in someone's face. But all these things convey knowledge.

For some reason that I don't understand, these spiritual instructions, though very powerful to the mind and body, occasionally come to ears that will not hear, eyes that will not see and minds that will not understand. I'm perplexed at the actions of Laman and Lemuel in the Book of Mormon who experienced several of these revelatory experiences and remained in their wickedness. Nephi pointed out to them that God had spoken to them in a "still, small voice; but they were past feeling that they could not feel His words."

I had an experience many years ago, that taught me that spiritual impressions are more profound (and reliable) than the ordinary senses. Some of the most rewarding experiences I have had were opportunities to be able to know when someone else receives instruction from the Spirit and I have been able to point it out. That is an example of teaching by the Spirit when both the teacher and the student are edified and rejoice together.

The Bible Versus the Book of Mormon Video Part II

2007-03-28T10:17:00.000-06:00

I got a copy of the DVD being sent out to Mormons in a new campaign to convert Mormons. Before I watch it, or read any other reviews about it, I want to make one more comment on the video I briefly addressed yesterday. I don't imagine that any anti-Mormon production could be considered complete without trotting out the old canard derived from a cursory reading of Alma 7:10. In the video, they ask someone in Jerusalem to read the passage and then they ask if it's correct. Their source is certain that it cannot be correct; for Jesus wasn't born in Jerusalem. I find it hard to believe that our critics are really that dense. Probably they are not, but they assume that those to whom they're directing this argument are awfully dense.

The standard response to this criticism is that the passage is speaking of the "land" of Jerusalem rather than the "city." That answer certainly is legitimate and consistent with historical references to the "land of Jerusalem." Even my children's first CD encyclopedia explains that the earliest reference to the town of Bethlehem calls it a city in the "land of Jerusalem." However, even though I believe this response is valid, I think it avoids a more straightforward explanation that is evident to anyone who is moderately familiar with the English language.

The passage from Alma 7:10 tells us that Jesus would be born "at Jerusalem." The preposition "at" is so important that most critics of Alma 7:10 change it to "in" so that they can maintain this deception. This is because "in Jerusalem" is definitely a contradiction but "at Jerusalem" is not. Our critics have, by the subtle misuse of language, created a false dichotomy.

At does not necessarily mean in. It's a simple matter of English grammar and diction. At may be used to indicate nearness or direction towards, neither of which can be connoted by “in.” For example, “There is available parking at the library” is a very different meaning than “There is available parking in the library.” Consider these other instances where at clearly indicates either nearness or direction towards and cannot reasonably be synonymous with “in.”

Saddam fired missiles at Jerusalem. (They were all aimed at Jerusalem but some landed in Tel Aviv.)
He threw the ball at my head.
He yelled at me.
He is a grounds keeper at the high school.

About 20 years ago, I was discussing this fact with a critic who had a radio program where he addressed Alma 7:10 as a flaw that was fatal to Mormonism. I pointed out the differences between the two prepositions and he insisted that they were essentially synonymous, telling me, "At always means in. " I had hoped that he would take such a position because I had my favorite passage of "at" waiting for him. I asked him, "If 'at' always means 'in,' would you explain where Peter was sitting in this passage?"

Peter warmed himself at the fire. (Mark 14:54)

This particular criticism of the Book of Mormon should be retired because it should be offensive to most people who have access to a dictionary.

The Bible Versus the Book of Mormon Video

2007-03-27T08:06:00.000-06:00

I mentioned a few days ago that I had left a comment on a blog where the site owner had been “waiting for me.” He apparently wasn’t interested in any real dialogue and I’m not allowed to post there. Stephanie left a comment that a sort of a sister site to the one I had been banned from was accepting comments on the same subject and I might consider leaving a message there. I did write a short note there, but after nearly 24 hours it hasn’t passed moderation so I thought I’d post it here with a few modifications. I wrote my comment immediately following a very tender expression of faith in God and the restored gospel by Stephanie.

It would be impossible to improve on Steffielynn’s thoughtful comment. I would, however, like to point out a couple of things evident from this conversation and a couple of things I noticed about the “Bible Versus Book of Mormon” video. Notice not just the venom present in Independentconservative’s messages but also that they appeal largely to emotions–the natural man. He uses loaded words like “lying” and “cult” and “garbage.” It’s some of the best evidence I’ve seen that the natural man cannot understand the things of the spirit.

Secondly, the dishonesty of the video may not be readily apparent to people who aren’t familiar with both the Book of Mormon and a few of the scientific detractors try to use against it. At 45 minutes into the video, Thomas Murphy makes a comment that is instructive. He points out that the Book of Mormon mentions “wheat” and “barley.” This got very interesting because until about 20 years ago, this was a very common criticism. You don’t hear it quite as much today because barley has been discovered in American pre-Columbian settings. I thought it would be unlikely that Murphy would be unaware of the barley discovery so I paid close attention to what came next. He said, “We don’t see wheat. We don’t see uh…..” subject change. Even though half of his argument in that statement is invalid, he tries to imply that it isn’t. Consider how they handle the idea of horses:

Anyone familiar with the Book of Mormon can see that the “horse” discussed in the Book of Mormon probably isn't the same as the standard old-world horse familiar to everyone. The Book of Mormon horse is never ridden. Not one reference to it indicates that it carried a rider. 3 Nephi 4:4 implies that these horses were used for meat –clearly not a Hebrew custom. The video points out that Mormon defenders have suggested that this was a name given to indigenous animals (similar to the Romans having named a water mammal they found in Africa a “river-horse” hippo (horse) potamus (river). The video discounts this possibility, saying: “stories of riding horses into battle could not have occurred.” See how they slipped that in? There is no account of anyone riding a horse in the Book of Mormon–into battle or anywhere else. For an interesting discussion about why the Nephites would have named indigenous fauna with existing names see Orson Scott Card’s comments in Book of Mormon – Artifact or Artifice? under the heading Naming.

In trying to demonstrate that mention of the horse is anachronistic, the video highlights a passage from the Book of Mormon: "their land is also full of horses" without telling the audience that this is a quotation from Isaiah, not a description of Book of Mormon lands. That’s deception.

Their real paradigm, however, is reiterated time after time–and it is merely the atheistic paradigm of the anti-Christ Korihor in the Book of Mormon: “Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ.” That theme is repackaged in the video, by apparently the same author: “If there is no evidence, it could not be true.”

That idea is as devastating to faith in the resurrection as it is to the Book of Mormon. It’s also dishonest. The video implies that the major problem with the Book of Mormon is that since no specific sites can be demonstrated where this occurred that the Book of Mormon must be false and the Bible is consequently true–because they know where the miracles of the Bible occurred. If this were true, our critics would have no trouble accepting the Doctrine and Covenants since we can pinpoint on a map not only the city, and date but very often the precise room. But, as always, there is one standard for Mormonism and a different one for orthodox Christianity.

Mormon Temple Recommend Questions

2007-03-22T11:54:00.000-06:00

Lately, I've been teaching the temple preparation class in my ward. A few weeks ago, we were discussing the process of obtaining a temple recommend. I mentioned that I had a list of questions from 1857 and the class thought it would be fun to see and discuss them. The questions are instructive and give us a sense of the efforts of Church leaders in teaching the people to walk a godly life. I'm fascinated by the whole concept of a recommend interview and the fact that the individual seeking the recommend is the one who does most of the judging. While it's true that occasionally a bishop or stake president might be troubled by an occasional applicant's perceptions or commitment, the individual determines whether or not he pays a full tithe, is morally clean and abides by the standards of discipleship. It reminds me of Paul's instruction regarding participation in the Lord's supper: "But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup." (1 Corinthians 11:28)

As with today's questions, these from Brigham Young's day were designed to address real problems including honesty, morality, and even personal hygiene. I have to admit that once or twice I've thought about asking an applicant the one that says, "Do you wash your body and have your family do so, as often as health and cleanliness require and circumstances will permit?" I'm also glad not to have to answer "Have you borrowed anything that you have not returned, or paid for?" Perhaps we all ought to give these another look:

Questions
TO BE ASKED THE
LATTER DAY SAINTS.

Have you committed murder by shedding innocent blood, or consenting thereto?
Have you betrayed your brethren or sisters in anything?
Have you committed adultery, by having any connection with a woman that was not your wife, or a man that was not your husband?
Have you taken and made use of property not your own, without the consent of the owner?
Have you cut hay where you had no right to, or turned your animals into another person’s grain or field, without his knowledge and consent?
Have you lied about or maliciously misrepresented any person or thing?
Have you borrowed anything that you have not returned, or paid for?
Have you borne false witness against your neighbor?
Have you taken the name of Deity in vain?
Have you coveted anything not your own?
Have you been intoxicated with strong drink?
Have you found lost property and not returned it to the owner, or used all diligence to do so?
Have you branded an animal that you did not know to be your own?
Have you taken another’s horse or mule from the range and rode it, without the owner's consent?
Have you fulfilled your promises in paying your debts, or run into debt without prospect of paying?
Have you taken water to irrigate with, when it belonged to another person at the time you used it?
Do you pay your tithing promptly?
Do you teach her family the gospel of salvation?
Do you speak against your brethren, or against any principle taught in the Bible, Book of Mormon, book of Doctrine and Covenants, revelations given to Joseph Smith the Prophet and the Presidency of the Church as now organized?
Do you pray in your family night and morning and attend to secret prayer?
Do you wash your body and have your family do so, as often as health and cleanliness require and circumstances will permit?
Do you labor six days and rest, or go to the house of worship, on the seventh?
Do you preside over your household as a servant of God, and is your family subject to you?
Have you labored diligently and earned faithfully the wages paid you by your employers?
Do you oppress the hireling in his wages?
Have you taken up and converted any stray animal to your own use, or in any manner appropriated one to your benefit, without accounting therefore to the proper authorities?

In answer to the above questions, let all men and women confess to the persons they have injured and make restitution, or satisfaction. And when catechizing the people, the Bishops, Teachers, Missionaries and other officers in the Church are not at liberty to pry into sins that are between a person and his or her God; but let each person confess to the proper authority, that the adversary may not have an opportunity to take advantage of human weaknesses, and thereby destroy souls.

(1857)

The Futility of Apologetics

2007-03-21T10:01:00.000-06:00

Earlier this week, I watched a video: The Book of Mormon Versus the Bible, promoted by several web sites and produced by Living Hope Ministries. Needless to say, I wasn't left "hurting" even though the web site suggested that I probably would be if I were a Mormon. I was, however, reminded that many people don't seem to be able to think when their personal perceptions are challenged. Several years ago, I subscribed to a list serve dedicated to biblical discussion. Most of the participants were conservative Christians. I wanted to have someone explain to me from a biblical perspective why he felt abortion was murder. Since my anti-abortion stand didn't necessarily come from ancient scripture, and since what I had read in the bible didn't seem to equate abortion with murder, I asked if anyone would be willing to explain to me how they arrived at the premise that abortion was murder. There followed a number of messages attacking me for being a Mormon, or questioning my intelligence. Others simply reiterated the premise as established fact followed by dozens of exclamation points. No one cared to look at the question and provide a reasoned, thought out explanation.

I had experienced the same thing on many previous occasions discussing Mormonism and so-called orthodox Christianity. Those who engaged me didn't seem able to address the matter without becoming emotional, accusatory or insulting. I thought for a long time that this was simply a benchmark of anti-Mormons until I saw the same behavior in a discussion limited solely to Mormons. One of the participants, a university professor, mentioned that Joseph F. Smith had said something in the Reed Smoot Hearings. Having recently read the entire hearings, I didn't believe this fellow was correct in his assertion. I challenged him on his statement and he replied that he had read it many years before when in high school and couldn't be bothered to look it up. I answered that I had indexed the entire proceeding and couldn't find a statement of that nature. He became very offended, said he didn't appreciate being called a liar and ended the discussion. To this day, I remain convinced that the source of his pique was not the fact that I challenged him but that he knew he couldn't support his assertion.

The same scene played out yesterday. I watched a video that attacks the Book of Mormon. Since the web site includes a place for comments, I expressed my disdain for its scholarship. The site owner replied that he would give me "just one chance" to respond to a challenge before I would be banned. The challenge is that I provide proof for all the people and places mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Since he and I both know that this is impossible, it's clear that his challenge was no more than an excuse to suppress dialogue. It does, however, bring to mind the comments of Joseph Smith in noting the response he received from people who thought he was deluded or dishonest: "...persecuted by those who ought to have been my friends and to have treated me kindly, and if they supposed me to be deluded to have endeavored in a proper and affectionate manner to have reclaimed me..." If Mormonism is so easily demonstrated as false, if we are deceived, why the reluctance to engage its proponents? Is it because the emotional arguments against it are no match for the intellectual ones in its favor?

Rise and Fall of the last five Risches

2007-03-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

I've been commenting on the list of alleged facts--amazing facts--supplied by Jill Martin Rische on the topic of Mormonism. Her next claim is the result of very superficial information about the Book of Mormon:

American Indians are descendants of the wicked Lamanites, who were Israelites that God cursed with dark skin.

The Book of Mormon recounts that about 600 B.C. a small group of Israelites came to the western hemisphere where they eventually divided into two warring populations called Lamanites and Nephites. Early in the account, the Lamanites were cursed with a dark skin, but that curse was removed at the beginning of the Christian era, when they all became one people. Consequently, American Indians could possibly be descendants of both righteous and wicked people from the past, just as everyone else is. But that pre-supposes that the Book of Mormon teaches that all American Indians are only descended from this small group of ancient Israelites--which it does not. Migrations previous to and following the Book of Mormon account allow for a wide variety of genetic sources for American Indians.

7. God the Father had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus, who is the half brother of Lucifer.

All kinds of theories abound about the process involved in the conception of Jesus. LDS doctrine concerning the matter is found in scripture which states that Mary was a virgin after having given birth to Jesus Christ.

Mrs. Rische's information about Jesus being the half brother of Lucifer is another one she got wrong. Mormons believe that all spirits are the offspring of God. Hence, in the spirit realm we are all spirit siblings of both Lucifer and Christ. That would make them full brothers rather than half.

8. All Christian churches are an abomination.

That claim is patently false. It's derived from Joseph Smith's account of his vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith said that he asked God which church he should join and was answered that he should join none of them. He said God told him all their creeds were an abomination. Clearly, it's evident even to a casual observer that there is a difference between Christian Churches and the Creeds of Christianity. Edwin Hatch, a Greek scholar from the last century noted that there was a vast difference between the ethical standard of conduct promulgated by Jesus Christ and the philosophical constructs of the Nicene Creed. He claimed that the Nicene Creed would have been unintelligible to the disciples of Jesus Christ. I would think that if Peter, Paul and other early disciples would have perceived the creeds as unintelligible, their Master might well consider them an abomination--though still willing see the honest intent of Christian worship as acceptable before Him.

9. Mormons need 4 secret handshakes to get into the Celestial heaven.

Entrance into the celestial kingdom is obtained by baptism for the remission of sins for those with sufficient knowledge to repent. It is obtained by all others without any qualification.

10. Joseph Smith revealed that the actual Garden of Eden is in Jackson County, Missouri.

Probably more accurate to say that Joseph Smith said it was in Jackson County. Lots of things have changed since the flood. Also check out Mrs. Rische's sources for this claim. The first is section 116 from the Doctrine and Covenants. It reads: "Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet." Note that this passage has nothing at all to do with the either the Garden of Eden or Jackson County. Spring Hill is in Daviess County.

Jill Martin Rische's exposition on Mormon concepts is at least as inept as was Walter Martin's. As someone who has taught LDS history and doctrine for a number of years, I'd say that she got three out of 10 correct, but she fumbled the citations so badly even on those 3 that she loses credit for those. She has no business promoting that list as facts--amazing or otherwise. I give her the score of a peeled zero.

Top 10 Amazing Facts of Mormonism?

2007-03-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

Last week, Jill Martin Rische produced a list titled “Top 10 Amazing Facts of Mormonism” posted on the Christian Worldview Network. The Illinois Review blog copied the list with the comment that perhaps Obama’s religion might not prove to be as incendiary as Romney’s. I left a comment indicating that the list was mostly misleading or outright false and another reader suggested that Mormons are too thin-skinned and perhaps these are questions that need to be addressed. I promised to do so this afternoon.

I really enjoy theological dialogue, but even more, I am fascinated by the fact that people often misrepresent the tenets of my faith. So fascinated in fact, that when I was living in Southern California, I attended the Bible study of my favorite anti-Mormon as often as possible. I never got to hear “Dr.” Walter Martin while he was in Melodyland in Anaheim, but I did attend many of his lectures at the Costa Mesa Christian Center while he had a nationwide radio program as the “Bible Answer Man.” He wrote several books and two of them dealt extensively with his perspective of Mormonism. I say “his perspective” because it simply did not represent reality. While I have never heard his daughter Jill preach, I became aware a few years ago that she was carrying the standard of her father’s crusade now that he has passed on. Thanks to her website, I was able to obtain a quote I needed for a book review I wrote for the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. Having seen her top 10 list, it’s apparent to me that Mrs. Reiche’s efforts in explaining Mormonism aren’t any better than her late father’s.

As you see read the list, look at the “loaded” words--words intended to appeal to emotion rather than intellect..

Mormons can become gods and goddesses.

Are you appropriately shocked? Are you aware that many other Christians believe in a doctrine called theosis or deification? Have you ever considered what C.S. Lewis meant when he wrote, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, …?” A noted Christian author wrote about Christians becoming gods and goddesses and it hardly merits a second thought; but Mrs. Reiche writes it about Mormons and everyone wants to know if this can possibly be true--and how can a man who believes this even consider running for the presidency?

Note the sources Mrs. Reiche offers for this amazing fact: “Journal of Discourses 1:50-51, 8:115, and Doctrine and Covenants Section 132:20." Only the third citation teaches this concept, and no LDS scripture ever refers to "goddesses." The first two cites from the 26 volume set Journal of Discourses don’t even mention the concept of deification. Surely, had she been familiar with the source material she claims to cite she would have known this; but intellectual carelessness is a hallmark of anti-Mormon propaganda. (If anyone wants a photocopy of the three pages she claims teach about gods and goddesses, I’d be happy to email jpg’s.)I’ll have to finish this tomorrow. My wife has made strawberry shortcake and it’s calling louder than the remaining nine amazing facts.

Goddesses will spend eternity in full submission to their god-husband.

This amazing fact is so amazing that Mormons have never heard of it. Reiche's two sources are a passage of LDS scripture that nowhere mentions women or any kind of submission. Her other source is an article written by an alleged Mormon who takes the dubious position that Mormon women lead the world in anti-depressant medication. I suggest that most people take claim #2 the same way my Mormon wife did--with a hearty laugh. I'd also suggest that readers look up Rische's citation from Kent Ponder. Ponder is apparently a disillusioned Mormon who has written an article about depression among Mormon women. The quotation Rische provides from this article that "Mormon women can never, NEVER achieve equality with men" isn't a teaching of LDS scripture or leaders, it's merely the opinion of Kent Ponder's daughter.

3. Mormon women will give birth forever and ever to spirit-babies.

Mrs. Reiche supports this by citing a newspaper (The Seer) that was condemned by the united leadership of the LDS faith--including the author of the paper--for false doctrine. However, Reiche tweaked the meaning from having the capacity to procreate throughout all eternity to endlessly giving birth. God also has the capacity to destroy the wicked; but it doesn't necessarily follow that this will be His only activity throughout all eternity.

4. Mormon men can have multiple wives in heaven eternal polygamy.

Not only Mormon men, but men like Abraham, Moses and Israel will continue to live with their wives through all eternity. Mrs. Rische does add a rather puzzling and false aside in her freestyle reference: "Men can still be sealed for eternity (not time) to women other than their wives;..." Where she came up with that is anybody's guess.

5. Heavenly Father is an exalted man who lives with his goddess wife, Heavenly Mother, on a planet near the great star Kolob.

There isn't any mention anywhere in LDS scripture of God living on a planet. This is apparently more of Rische's embellishment. I also encourage readers to check her scriptural reference on this one to see if it says what she claims it says.

To be continued....

Noted Theologian George Stephanopoulis Corrects Mitt Romney on Mormon Doctrine

2007-02-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

A Christian zealot in Florida attacked Mitt Romney because, according to him, Romney doesn’t “know the Lord.” The impropriety of his comments immediately elicited boos from the audience and Romney provided an appropriate response. On Good Morning America, political partisan George Stephanopoulis slithered in with a question that Romney should have exposed rather than answered. The Florida attack deserved an answer – the Washington one deserved a rebuke and Romney missed the opportunity.

Clearly, Romney has prepared for assaults on his religious beliefs that he knew would come from individuals as well as the liberal main stream media (MSM). Religious zealots are worried about having to decide between an adulterer or a cultist; while the MSM feels obligated to ridicule the idea of religious faith if it manifests as anything more than a few convenient platitudes. Remember how concerned they were that Bush might not only be praying for guidance from God but also expecting it? It’s fine to ask God for help; but don’t ever let on that you think God might actually give you guidance. The MSM needs to keep harping on Romney’s faith so that he’s perceived as too odd to govern. Stephanopoulis knows that Romney is primed to answer attacks on his Mormonism that intend to deepen the chasm between him and Evangelicals. So Stephanopoulis worded his question to catch Romney off guard by placing it in a Muslim context:

Stephanopoulis: I asked him how Muslims might perceive the Mormon belief that Jesus will return to the United States and reign personally here for a thousand years.”

Notice how carefully he set up Romney. The question isn’t posed as part of the interview, we only get video from the interview of Romney’s answer, not what Stephanopoulis actually asked. The correct answer to the above question should have been a question back to Stephanopoulis: “Why would Muslims be interested at all in my views about Jesus Christ? Muslims couldn’t care less about Mormon theology related to the Christian Messiah.” Romney gave the correct answer that Mormons believe Jesus will return to Jerusalem—but Stephanopoulis, now outside of the interview, claimed Romney lied—citing an anonymous Mormon spokesman.

Stephanopoulos: Actually, we checked in with a Mormon spokesman who said that's not exactly true. They believe the New Jerusalem is here in the United States, in Missouri, and that's where Jesus is going to come.

A word of caution: Don’t get Mormon doctrine from anonymous spokesmen filtered through partisan journalists. While former Mormon bishops and stake presidents (Mitt Romney) aren’t infallible sources of LDS doctrine, they’re vastly more reliable than the legacy Media. While Mormonism does teach that there will be a New Jerusalem in this hemisphere, it’s also very solid on the return of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem at the Mount of Olives. Consider this comment from the late Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie:

The Mount of Olives, "the olive-orchard" -- hallowed spot! On this Mount is the Garden called Gethsemane where Jesus in agony took upon himself the sins of the world; here he now ascends in triumphant glory; and here he shall return in that same glory to begin his reign as Israel's King. (D. & C. 133:19-20.) (Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, Vol.2, p.28)

Let’s hope that future criticism of Mitt Romney is as forthright as the Floridian’s and not as Stephanopoulos’ snake in sheep’s clothing made all the more powerful by media staging and editing. As Romney learns to handle these subtle manipulations of truth, you’ll see more desperate measures adopted in further attempts to manipulate the election process. The Barber of Seville’s Don Basilio noted that calumny starts as a mere whisper on the breeze; and become the roar of a cannon in the process of time. Romney should take a lesson from his ancestor Parley P. Pratt--who knew how to handle dishonest critics. He faced them head on, pointing out their dishonest tactics and revealing their hypocrisy to the world. Pratt responded to a critic who wanted to excite prejudice rather than address real issues at hand. He said it reminded him of a man who wanted to get rid of a dog and said to the dog, "I will not kill you, I'll just give you a bad name." He then proceeded to cry out, "Mad dog! Mad dog!" and the neighbors did the rest. Stephanopoulos is just trying to give Romney a bad name as well.

The MSM wants to disqualify Romney because he belongs to an unpopular religion. In this, the MSM allies itself against the Constitution: "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article VI) As the media continues to harp at Romney's "Mormonism" they show what little regard they have for the source of their own freedom and what little interest they have in having vital issues debated before the people.

My nominee for "Worst of the Web" in January

2007-01-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

I downloaded an audio sermon this morning recommended by Webutante and listened to it on my way to and from church and finished it here at my desk. It was absolutely astonishing. Even though the pastor started slowly with only a few minor mistakes, by the end, he had so thoroughly misinformed his audience and included so much bogus information that I would give him credit for one of the most inaccurate and dishonest portrayals I have ever heard of my faith. He should be ashamed of such blatant misrepresentation and outright fabrications.

As time permits, I'm going to address some of the claims he made. If you'll listen to the sermon, you'll hear him claim that the Book of Mormon contains specific teachings about God being a man, baptism for the dead and spirit babies.

He says, "..the Mormon Church has spent literally, tens of millions of dollars to try to change public opinion about Mormons over the last twenty-five years." If it weren't for such dedicated campaigns of misinformation by Christian ministers, the LDS Church wouldn't need to do that. But, things haven't really changed over the past 150 years when it comes to religious bigotry. Now, I use the term "bigotry" when it employs more than obstinate intolerance and joins forces with willful ignorance and dishonesty. An early Mormon publisher wrote over a hundred years ago:

The Latter-day Saints have been so repeatedly and generally misrepresented and maligned, that ordinarily little has been done by way of refutation. Were the people to undertake to meet every lie uttered against them and set it right, they would devote the whole of their lives to it and then die without accomplishing the desired object. But there are times when a refutation is necessary; when the whole people awake in earnestness to deny the misrepresentations of those who purposely and wilfully assail them. (Junius F. Wells The Contributor, Vol. 13, No. 1, November 1891 p. 52)

This seems to me to be an appropriate time respond to such a recent misrepresentation from the pulpit of the MacLean Bible Church. Tune in tomorrow for the first real volley.