Changes to the Doctrine & Covenants
Original Air Date: 2022-09-08
This video features host John Dehlin and Mike from "LDS Discussions" examining significant textual changes made to Joseph Smith’s revelations between their original publication in the 1833 Book of Commandments and the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants (D&C). The discussion argues that Joseph Smith retroactively altered the "word of God" to expand his own authority, erase folk magic origins, and accommodate evolving theology, while Church leaders have historically denied or downplayed these alterations.
Historical Context and the "Official Line"
The episode establishes that in 1833, the Church attempted to publish Joseph Smith's revelations as the Book of Commandments, but the printing press was destroyed by mobs, leaving only a few copies 1. In 1835, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery revised and republished these revelations as the Doctrine and Covenants 2.
The hosts contrast the historical record with statements from LDS leaders. For example, Apostle LeGrand Richards and President Joseph Fielding Smith claimed there were no changes, or that changes were merely grammatical 3. Apostle Boyd K. Packer is quoted asserting that "nothing fundamental has been altered" and that the changes were "minor refinements" 4.
However, the hosts present a dissenting view from David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses. Whitmer wrote that the revelations were printed correctly in 1833 but were later changed because the leaders had "gone too far" and "drifted into error," particularly under the influence of Sidney Rigdon 5, 6, 7. Whitmer viewed these changes as evidence that Joseph had become a fallen prophet who was expanding his authority beyond God's original command 8, 9.
Significant Changes Detailed in the Video
The episode details several specific revelations where the text was altered to change the meaning fundamentally:
4. The Parchment of John (D&C 7)Joseph Smith claimed to translate a lost parchment written by John the Beloved using his seer stone.
5. Polygamy (D&C 101 - Removed)The 1835 D&C included a section (Article 101) explicitly denying polygamy: "we believe that one man should have one wife" 24.
6. The Law of Consecration (D&C 42)The command to "consecrate all thy properties" was changed to "consecrate of thy properties" 26.
Analysis of Apologetics
The hosts critique various apologetic defenses for these changes:
Conclusion
The video concludes that the D&C is not a record of static divine will, but a document that evolved to suit Joseph Smith’s changing needs, particularly regarding his authority and the introduction of new doctrines like the priesthood 38. The hosts suggest this pattern of revision—and the subsequent denial of it by leadership—undermines the Church's truth claims and the reliability of its prophets 39.
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hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I am your host for today John delin it's August 25th 2022 and we are super excited to be continuing our series on examining Mormon church truth claims with LDS discussions uh today the topic is going to be changes to the Doctrine and Covenants with LDS discussions for those of you who don't have a Mormon background the Mormons can the the churches Christ celebrity Saints considers four main scriptures to be kind of part of their Canon the Holy Bible which is the Old Testament the New Testament uh the The Book of Mormon and then there's something called the doctrine of covenants and then something called the Pearly great price so the Doctrine and Covenants is basically Joseph Smith's Revelations while he was a prophet with a couple other things added on at the end um and and obviously uh since Joseph Smith was our founding Prophet coming to understand uh the revelations that he gave the way that they were shared with members and then if and when they were changed or altered over time uh is an important way to understand his role or power or authority um as a prophet or not and so that's what we're going to be talking about today I just want to remind everyone that all of these episodes that we're doing as part of the LDS discussion series can be found at ldsdiscussions.com it's an amazing uh resource with with a wealth of information we also want you to know that for this series of audio and video episodes we have released all these episodes in audio and video format on anchor but they're also available on Spotify and you can even watch them video wise on Spotify and they're also available on um YouTube there's a playlist under the Mormon stories podcast Channel where you can watch all these episodes in sequence and of course you can watch them listen to them on uh Spotify and on Apple podcast and hopefully wherever you however you consume um your podcasts so uh now it's time to bring on our amazing uh guest uh for this series hey Mike how's it going welcome back thanks I think we're gonna I'm gonna at some point if I haven't already set the record for a person that's been on your show the most right yeah you're gonna set it for sure all right no one I'm gonna be like the like the Cal Ripken Iron Man Shake no one's breaking this record ever hopefully well that won't disappoint me unless there's someone better who can you know I don't know better better is the right word but unless there's somebody any better compelling content yeah and as prolific as you they've got to be having as compelling of content and be as prolific when that will be hard to beat but we'll see I'll put that in my gravestone all right so we've done a bunch of episodes so far for those of you who haven't checked out uh the previous episodes with LDS discussions we've covered Book of Mormon Joseph Smith treasure digging history bible stuff and all of it kind of builds so we really do recommend that you not just start with this episode you're welcome to but we really do feel like these episodes intentionally build on each other so having said that let's jump into today's episode Mike all right let's do it um the episode for today is at ldsdiscussions.com and the the URL is in the show notes it's basically changes Dash two dash Revelations but the focus is on the Doctrine and Covenants yeah and and this is going to work really well as John said if you haven't listened to last week's episode on the priesthood restoration I would recommend that because this is going to almost continue straight from the end of that with regards to talking about how Joseph had to go back and change Revelations to kind of adjust to the needs that he had at different times um when he was running the church yeah yep absolutely and that was I try to stay as neutral as I can but that one got me emotionally riled up that was upsetting to me so yeah that one's I mean I think you know when you look at all the episodes and the essays on the website you know there's certain ones I think that are obviously more impactful and more important than others with regards to like truth claims versus is the church you know doing good things or bad things or true or not true whatever I think the priesthood one is really important because it's so Central to everything that happens in the church and so that episode to me when I was listening to all the podcasts before I started doing the essays the priesthood restoration to me was one that was just shocking because it's like holy cow as a convert I was taught all these things and then you find out it's not at all how it happened and then you find out a lot of people know that and still teach it anyways and so um that's a really important episode it's a really difficult episode but it also is a great segue into this episode which is kind of talking about how Joseph Smith changed to Revelations from God um as needed in many instances that are very important yeah all right well I give a brief introduction with the doctrine of covenants is but let's have you do the real job yeah and so we talked about this uh in previous weeks and basically in 1833 the church collected all of the revelations that Joseph Smith had claimed to have up until that point they put it together in a book that is known as the book of Commandments and what happened was they're doing the printing of this and there were mobs that were going into Missouri at this point and they destroyed the printing press as they were printing these books up and there's the story about um is it Mary Elizabeth Lightner Rollins Smith I think um I believe who was in the field and she was protecting um the manuscript pages and because she did that they were able to keep some of the revelations and make some of the books and long story short there's only a few hundred copies of these that are bound together um most of the church membership would not have it I believe at this point they were in well into the thousands and so in 1835 Joseph Smith undertakes us again and creates a book that includes all the revelations from Joseph Smith as well as the lectures on faith which which I think were mostly written by Sydney Rigdon some were just by Joseph Smith and so the the doctrine is the lectures on faith on the covenants are the revelations and effectively when they're doing this in 1835 Joseph and Oliver are going through all the revelations and editing them before they put them into what is now known as adoption and Covenants and because of that there are a lot of changes we can track between the book of Commandments and the Doctrine and Covenants and it's really important to look at what has changed against how the church frames those changes got it okay um and and if people want to read the book of Commandments the 1833 book of Commandments they're they're digital copies right there are and the Joseph Smith papers project has most of the original Revelations on their website and you can see kind of the handwriting handwritten original um Revelations which is really helpful too because they also do give historical um Source notes and stuff and so I know a lot of people would you know if you're not a Believer you might kind of cringe at that but they do a really good job of you know giving accurate dates there are instances where they'll kind of in their introductory notes give some comments that'll kind of give you pause as a Believer because it's it's conceding a lot of things uh that would have been called anti-mormon lies and um I highly recommend if you want I recommend looking at their website you could search like go on to Google you know say for example we're gonna go over dnc7 later if you search like dnc7 original Revelation it'll be one of the first ones and you can see the handwriting they'll give you a bunch of source notes it's actually pretty cool and and that is a good way to track that against you could just obviously then look up dnc7 and your scriptures are online and compare the two yeah okay and and I guess I guess it's worth just noting that I guess this discussion implies a certain expectation for how you know the the Mormon Church teaches its members that God communicates with prophets and I'll just say it really briefly that you know from from kindergarten you know from primary you know Nursery to Sunday school to Seminary even in the missionary discussions it's usually pretty straightforward it's basically you know one of the probably the very first missionary discussion is just like in ancient days when God spoke to Noah or God spoke to Abraham or God spoke to Moses you know God communicate with them and then they wrote down what they heard from God and a lot of people believe that that ended with uh you know with the Holy Bible but the real value proposition of the Mormon church and the restoration is that God once again starting in 1820 God is speaking with man again and even though there was an apostasy where the church fell out of you know God's blessing from like you know Jesus's death until 1830 Joseph brings back God's one true church and he brings back prophets to the Earth and so basically God speaks to Joseph Joseph writes it down and we we know God's Will and so there is a level of sort of accuracy or consistency that I think Mormons gain uh you know credibly or or with good you know with good reason right it's you know because we're going to be talking about changes that were made to Revelations and maybe if there's a period out of place or a comma or like a spelling but but what we wouldn't expect would be fundamental changes to a revelation once it's received correct yeah and and you are a convert so you might say that you can share from your perspective yeah I mean from my perspective going through the missionary discussions it was told that basically what you said is the Commandments from God ended when the church fell into apostasy and it was restored through Joseph Smith and I think one of the things that's interesting about it is when I think about the missionary discussions then it was described not just as Joseph Smith getting Revelations but that all of the profits through them so Gordon B Hinckley at the time would be getting Revelations from God um about the latter days and the whole selling point of the church with regard to Revelations at least to me as a convert was that not only did Joseph Smith restore the church but that we were getting constant Revelation to guide us through these these last days or the latter days whatever you want to call it and I think one of the things that for me was an early thing that I noticed but didn't really put too much weight into was what does a DNC end with like what 100 years ago or whatever I think there hasn't been a canonized Revelation like 100 years so um you would expect to your point um to have more consistency within Revelation but more importantly these are being described as Revelations from God directly to the prophets which would then beg the question of why are they being changed Beyond grammatical to your point you're going to have changes in style of language between 1830s and 1840s and today you can understand that it's when you're changing the fundamental content and the purposes and all that of the revelations it really does make you go why in the world are these being changed and as we talked about last week if Joseph Smith feels that he's okay changing them in substantial ways and all of a sudden how do you trust the rest of it because all of a sudden you can see he's more than willing to take the words that are supposed to be directly from God and alter them in ways that tend to benefit his current Theology and current needs yeah okay so anything else on this uh on this first slide no this one's just pretty much just setting up the fact that there's there's two versions and um it leads to this next quote and we talked about David Whitmer a lot okay can you clarify there's more than two versions right because even after the 1835 version yeah there's been many instances after that but changes and yeah we'll get to that a little bit because there's obviously some that get pulled out and yeah okay yeah and so we talked last week about David Whitmer he was one of the three Witnesses obviously very involved in the production of the Book of Mormon very involved in the production of the early church and all of the early ideas that Joseph Smith was bringing forth and so this is from um his in address to all believers in Christ which he printed up near the end of his life kind of talking about what his thoughts were on Joseph Smith and the church and so he says some of the revelations as they are now in the book of Doctrine and Covenants have been changed and added to some of the changes being of the greatest importance as the meaning is entirely changed on some very important matters as if the Lord had changed his mind a few years after he gave the revelations and after having commanded his servants as they claim to print them in the book of Commandments and after giving his servants a revelation being a preface until his book of Commandments which says behold this is mine Authority and the authority of my servants and my preface unto the book of Commandments which I have given them to publish unto you o inhabitants of the earth also in this he says behold I am God and have spoken it these Commandments are of me search these Commandments for they are true and faithful the revelations were printed in the book of Commandments correctly this I know and will prove to you these Revelations were arranged for publication by brothers Joseph Smith Sydney Rigdon Orson Hyde and others in Hiram Ohio while I was there were sent to Independence to be published and were printed just exactly as they were arranged by Brother Joseph and the others and when the book of Commandments was printed Joseph and the church received it as being printed correctly this I know in the winter of 1834 they saw that some of the revelations in the book of Commandments had to be changed because the heads of the church had gone too far and had done things in which they had already gone ahead of some of the former Revelations so the book of Doctrine and Covenants was printed in 1835 and some of the revelations changed in Attitude okay so he's just saying what we're going to show in this episode which is that they print these revelations in 1833 and then all of a sudden Joseph Smith realizes that he's contradicting them in what he's teaching out you know after 1833 and so in order to fix that you have to retrofit that back into your history and in this case not only are you changing your history as we talked about with like say the first Vision they're actually altering what are claimed to be the words of God in many of these Revelations would have been taken directly off The Rock in a hat he received his early revelations in the exact same manner he translated The Book of Mormon which is he would put his peeps last year stone and a hat put his head in the Hat read the words to a scribe so these Revelations would be very much under that tight translation and so to go back and change the words of God either gives you that either or choice and I'm sure a lot of people say it's not black and white but either God changed his mind as David Whitmer said or the people who are making the changes are making it up and I guess you could have a third option which is that the words were correct the first time and then Joseph changed them so you guys I guess you have three options but it really does give you pause when you see one of the three Witnesses who caught it at the time wondering why they're making these changes and he flat out says it's because they got out ahead of him and had to back fit the story in order to be consistent so um I there's a couple things that really stood out to me in this quote one is that again one of the three Witnesses is saying man what's going on these things really have been changed between 1833 and 1835 and they've been changed to totally alter their meaning and you know that's there's a problem there so so that's a really important admission and then the thing is he seems I'm trying to understand his explanation of why they had to have been changed whether he's saying I'm upset at these changes or whether he's just saying well maybe some of the heads of the church went too far and now we've got to correct it but it's almost like a bit of an apologetic answer instead of saying hey something's wrong here he's basically saying yeah we went too far and now we're correcting them but but he's not really seeming to imply something nefarious or deceiving you know deceptive I don't know I feel like it's pretty sharp in the way he's saying it I think he's saying basically I mean to me it reads almost like he's saying you know the the start of the church was true then Joseph Smith was almost like a fallen prophet and fell into bad ideas and therefore got out ahead of the original like I think okay okay I think he believes in the original Revelations I think he believes in the Book of Mormon but I think he in his mind Joseph Smith then becomes a fallen Prophet starts doing things we talked last week about how he mentioned how the priesthood is was completely retrofitted and was not necessary in the early days which makes you wonder why it would have been um necessary uh you know later do you know what I mean and um so I to me I think it's a sharp way of him saying that he fell away um without maybe being a little bit more yeah antagonistic I don't know okay no that's good I feel like it's pretty sharp okay yeah and I'll just say this this is something I like to do I did this uh last time when we talked about um uh when we talked about the priesthood like given the narrative that we've already basically established which is that we there seems to be this pattern of there being you know you know no no evidence of certain some important things happening and then all of a sudden some really bold claims but then those claims changing over time as Joseph's beliefs in the in and associations evolve um if we were to sort of say what would we expect to have happened with the doctrine of covenants in the book of Commandments given that pattern I can just say right now I just want to say this up front well we would expect to happen is the earlier versions of the Doctrine and Covenants would reflect Joseph's earlier beliefs or his earlier positions or his earlier associations and then over time they would change and then have to be kind of either edited or deleted or replaced to sort of stay up with his evolving beliefs and his evolving associations with other people I think that's what we would expect knowing nothing about the actual data right yeah I mean it's just it and and this is this is basically David Whitmer saying hey that's what happened right off the gate yeah it's funny too because when I first started doing the Deep dive I would often get a response from people that would say something along the lines of you're looking for all these problems none of the early church members had a problem with it and he would have been doing it right in front of them and at this time I'm like oh yeah but but you do see that there are people mentioning it I mean you have David Whitmer here I think William law brings up uh that um oh yeah brings it up I mean so there are people that early church we're leaving and saying he is just making stuff up now and the truth is a lot of people at the time did see it and a lot of people that didn't see it you know we just don't know but the fact is it was being noted then and now we have a lot more hindsight a lot more data a lot more documentary evidence to go against and it's pretty clear he's changing the words of God now if you will get to the Apologetics at the end but the fact is this is this is not a matter of opinion this is a matter of very tangible facts and very tangible documents that we can show he's changing and there's just no way around that all right well let's jump in let's jump into the data yeah and so one of the things I want to go through first because we're going to go into the um actual revelations in a second but this is what some of the church leaders have said about some of the changes he made so Apostle LeGrand Richards said in a 1978 interview as far as I know there have been no changes at all in any of the revelations if there ever if there have been any changes it would excuse me have all been fixing grammar or something like that so he's saying no major no major changes okay Joseph Fielding Smith um who we know hit the 1832 First Vision when he saw it said inspiration is discovered in the fact that each part as it was revealed dovetailed perfectly with what had come before there was no need for eliminating changing or adjusting any part to make it fit but each new revelation on Doctrine and priesthood fitted in its place perfectly to complete the whole structure as it had been prepared by the master builder we covered last week that is just not the case because he was making changes constantly that absolutely contradicted all of the earlier Revelations um and then Apostle John widsoe said within a few years after its organization the church had received practically all necessary supplementary laws and regulations these also have remained unchanged there has been no tampering with God's word the whole body of church laws forms a harmonious unit which does not anywhere contradict itself nor has it been found necessary to alter any part of it and so and that's the real that's three Apostles really laying down the gauntlet yeah and and it's I mean it's clear and this is this is the company line and I don't want to um sound like I'm being disrespectful but this is the same thing here at the Book of Mormon there's lots of changes it's all grammatical don't worry about it don't think about it and it's just not true yeah and in the Book of Mormon we talked earlier about some of the more substantial changes with the first Vision in Joseph's view on the godhead I would argue with the Revelation it's a lot more obvious it's a lot more clear and it's a lot more detail because we have the source material to compare whereas with the Book of Mormon we could show where you changed from 1830 to 1837 but we obviously don't have the source material of the gold plate so it makes it a little trickier this one we can show a really good way of looking at his linear changes in Theology and how he retrofits them back in so these these quotes are just and we I don't know if they knew better um I know Joseph Fielding Smith probably did but yeah I mean we we'll we'll see whether those words are true or not based on the evidence you lay out but yeah I mean basically last episode already establishes that but I just want to note to non-mormons or Mormons that these are these are Apostles are ordained as prophet seers and revelators yeah so when they deceive or lie or are ignorant like best case if they if these statements turn out to be false best case they were ignorant which is a problem if you're a prophet Syrian Revelator and special witness of Christ but worst case they're being outright deceptive but let's just see if they're right or wrong because we haven't even established that totally yet there's a second set of quotes right yeah so just two more quotes on this because I want to try to really make clear this is how the church has taught it so this is a Mormon writer John Stewart from um Joseph Smith the Mormon prophet published in 1966 he says several of his associates sitting in his presence when some of the revelations were received reported that Joseph would dictate them to a clerk and as fast as steady a pace as the clerk was able to write maintaining an even flow of delivery and never altering the word spoken which again that is a Thai translation it's also matches what we know about the Revelation so that is a true quote outside of the fact that we're going to show they were changed and that Apostle Hugh Brown said none of the early Revelations of the church have been revised and the Doctrine and Covenants stands as printed including sections five and seven those these two sections and some others are addressed directly to certain individuals but there are lessons in them for all of us and therefore they have not been deleted and I just want you to remember that quote because we're going to go back to that one at the end because dnc7 in particular is a really he's being dishonest 100 on that in that quote he is lying so um yeah I will just I know lying is a strong word he's lying it's just very dishonest so let's get to the evidence so let's start with dnc5 here's dnc5 which is what uh Hugh Brown said was not changed and um so in the book of Commandments um Joseph Smith has the original Revelation and this is a revelation from March of 1829 which is as he's getting ready to translate The Book of Mormon and Joseph is told by God and he has a gift to translate the book The Book of Mormon and I have commanded him that he shall pretend to no other gift for I will grant him no other gift so what he's saying is Joseph Smith is going to have the power to translate The Book of Mormon and nothing else that's from God um and David Whitmer confirms this in his address to all believers in Christ and he says after the translation of the Book of Mormon was finished early in the spring of 1830 before April 6 Joseph gave the stone to Oliver cowdery and told me as well as the rest that he was through with it and he did not use the stone anymore he said he was through the work that God had given him the gift to perform except to preach the gospel he told us that we would all have to depend on the Holy Ghost Hereafter to be guided into truth and obtain the will of the Lord so David Whitmer is confirming what this Revelation was stating which is that once Joseph Smith translates The Book of Mormon he will have no more power from God and he should not pretend to have that interesting interesting uh I mean a couple things come into my mind one one I know that that he ends up trying to translate uh the book of Abraham among other things the Egyptian Papyrus and the scroll in the cave that we'll talk about so that's a little weird the other thing I'm just thinking of is it must have been a huge pain in the rear for him to be doing the stone and the hat thing and hiding it and sticking his head in the Hat especially if it was all made up anyway and so I could see him wanting to shed the stone in the Hat and just say that I'm getting this just directly from God um I don't know that we I guess when we covered the episode on Joseph's folk magic when he was doing some of that Book of Mormon translation people didn't you know people around him didn't believe you could just like get Revelation directly from God you had to have a magic object right like like uh like a stone you know we talked about like magic mirrors or Jupiter Talisman yep so I I can see why he needed to claim that he had a magic object because of the superstitions around him but I could also see why he would want to get rid of it um the the one thing that is I'm looking at this I'm trying to think about this idea that no other gift like that that seems really Global and extreme he goes on to become Prophet Seer Revelator mayor Chief cook bottle washer like head of the Legion like it seems like he ends up saying his his leadership and and powers and abilities have no bound eventually he's like crowned as king of the world right but I'm also hearing apologists say now come on you're taking a word out of context you know you're being you're being too extreme and literal with what he's saying you know well uh I would go the next slide then because I think to be fair there's no real I don't think there's a good apologetic way to get around this okay yeah so he's going to change this now and the doctrine of covenants so remember it said um you will pretend to have no other gift now he changes it to say and you have a gift to translate the plates and this is the first gift that I have bestowed upon you first gift and I have commanded that you shall pretend to know other gift until my purpose is fulfilled in this for I will grant you no other gift until it is finished so here Joseph Smith is changing the Revelation to say that in the original revelation God was saying oh I'm going to give you more stuff to do but not until the book is finished if you read DNC 5 the original in no possible way is there room for that okay is it book of Commandments five versus dnc5 it is um book of Commandments is chapter four it's dnc5 currently so when okay so did this change between book of Commandments and the first DNC when they did the DNC um they have uh I think they might order it a little differently and I think they might have added some stuff in and so the order just changes so there's okay I tried to put try to put the side by side or you know so most people obviously look at the DNC but so in that visual right now the yellow sentence is the sentence that was added in the 1835 DNC uh added to what was previously in the book of Commandments okay so on the slides you're on right now you're on the book of Commandments I'm just putting it in yellow because that's where I want people to I think that's point of emphasis is what's changing and so um so if you go to the next slide that's the book of Commandments now if you go to the next slide and that's gonna be the one we just talked about where he's now uh go back one more so this is where he is going to change it and this is because he needs to address when he's doing the 1835 one why he is doing all of these other things why is he still getting Revelations why is he doing the book of Abraham why did he do the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible all of those things are happening before 18 or around this time I think the book of Abraham is right around this time I'm not positive if it's right before right after but he is obviously still translating he's still giving Revelations he's still doing everything he's leading the church he's altering the priest and altering the first Vision all of these things and and that's why you know again from David Whitmore he says as if God had commanded Joseph to pretend to know other gift but to translate The Book of Mormon that he would Grant him no other gift in quotes and then afterwards God had changed his mind and concluded to Grant him another gift God does not change and work in this manner which you'll hear the church say all the time God's never does not change the way the Revelation has been changed 22 words being added to it it would appear that God has broken his word after giving his forward in plainness commanding Brother Joseph to pretend to no other gift but to translate The Book of Mormon and then the Lord had changed and concluded to Grant Joseph the gift of a Seer to the church so that's really that's really super damning yeah he's stating the obvious because he's saying Joseph Smith made clear that he can pretend to know other gift so either Joseph Smith is breaking the Commandment by pretending to get Revelations pretending to these other translations or God's like you know what you did such a great job I'm going to change my mind in I'm just saying if this was another church and you had this you'd look at this and you go oh yeah this person's making it up because this idea that God is just that you know flip-floppy with something as important as the restoration of his church is nonsensical and you've got to remember these Revelations this Revelation here would have been off of The Rock in a hat this is not something that Joseph's just winging this is something that he is at least pretending or claiming to read off of a rock word for word from God not translated from reformed Egyptian directly from God so how is it changing it's such a Monumental way and you know like I said we'll get back to at the end but you know we have an apostle of the church telling us this Revelation wasn't changed I want to ask you if you're watching this was this or was this not changed because if it was change that Apostle is outright lying and that Apostle would know that this has changed because they would have had access to all of this so yeah this is this is a big change does it is it a Smoking Gun well kind of because it shows Joseph Smith is willing to deceive I don't think it's as bad as the book him but it does show you Joseph is willing to lie about the words of God in order to give himself an elevated status in the church and he does that and what's damning about this to me is that number one David Whitmer is one of the three Witnesses and one of the early founders of the church to the Book of Mormon so you can't discredit him he writes it in a book called an address to all believers in Christ we should probably do an episode just on that pamphlet at some point it'd be a fun one because it's really important but but here we've got the words and the and the exact change and we've got we've even got David Whitmer complaining about the change specifically saying that as an eyewitness Joseph gave up the rock said he wouldn't do it anymore then he changes the Revelation and keeps doing it that is a slam dunk I mean it's just it this is a change that you can't you like I said earlier this is not a matter of opinion this is you can see it for yourself and I've said so many times in these episodes I've said a lot like on Twitter and stuff a lot of people will come back and they'll say you just have to have faith you have to have faith it all work out and I just want to point out again faith is not faith is the belief in what you can see faith is or I'm sorry let me start that over faith is the belief in things you can't see and you can't know it is not belief in spite of what you can look at with your own eyes and read and understand and this is to have faith that that God meant this when he when it was written down differently I think goes from Faith to something altogether different because we can see that we can track the differences and see where Joseph Smith is making these changes that just happened to benefit Joseph Smith yeah it's toxic faith if it denies reality right yeah I mean if you're willing to throw out evidence you're no longer doing Faith that's that's something altogether different because you can see it you're just choosing to ignore it so yeah um I don't you know I'm not trying to bash people who make that argument I'm just saying the argument itself is bad so all right um let's look at this yeah do yourself visually yeah just go to the next we could just spend a second on this so if you go to the next slide this is just the Tanners put these together um and big shout out to them for doing this because it's just a good way if you're watching this to look at this and if you go to ld's discussion if you're not watching I have it on there as well and you can see all of the areas where Joseph is changing it and you can get an idea of how expansive these Revelations can be when he gets to 1835 and while they do show there are some grammatical changes some wording changes they also are showing you there's some huge ones as well yeah that that visual is stunning and it's super damning and I don't I I just would love to hear Patrick Mason or Richard bushmer Terrell Givens defend this yeah I mean I think well like I said I think Richard Bushman we talked about last week and I think he's in the Apologetics section as well just basically says Joseph did want to be constrained by the revelations and felt he was authorized to change him because he saw fit and I just I think that's a terrible yeah apologetic because again that that to me makes it indistinguishable from fraud when you're claiming to have the words of God and then also claiming that you can change them whenever you need to to suit later needs just does not make sense because why can't we do that today you know I mean like why can't we uh say that you know the word of wisdom I feel is uh not what God wants for me so I'm gonna go out and get smashed tonight and I'm being facetious a little bit but I'm just saying once you start changing them once you allow that and you say there's that Authority where do you stop because that the whole point is that the word of God is supposed to be unchanging and you know non-negotiable and here we are so and what's you know honestly you know we showed those five quotes I think four of them for Mormon apostles we've already we've already disproved we've already shown them to be wrong or deceitful in their statements certainly misleading um whether it's intention or not we can't know their hearts but we've got like 20 more slides yeah I mean we're just getting started here I mean we've already we've already proven them to be either ignorant or or dishonest I think in those particular quotes they're being intentionally dishonest because they and you gotta remember too and I I don't want to beat a dead horse here but at this point when they're making these quotes in the 60s and the 70s people can't hop on Google and search original dnc5 and so I think you're not going to hear although you do hear some Apostles make those claims a little bit now for the most part it's it's a lot more carefully worded because this is something you cannot say didn't happen because we have we have the documentation there's no way around it and um and so yeah I think at the time they thought as my as the person close to me said about changing stories back in the old days you used to be able to get away with that before Google Now you can and so um yeah obviously they're they're showing themselves to be lying for the Lord in this case all right let's go to the next one yep so this is the this is what is now DNC 18 and um in June of 1829 Joseph claimed a revelation through the stone regarding the formation of the church and the poor the part of the original Revelation is from chapter 15 of the book of Commandments and it says behold I give you a Commandment that you rely upon the things which are written for in them are all things written concerning my church my gospel and my rock wherefore if you shall build up my church and my gospel my rock the Gates of Hell shall not Prevail against you and the the words here that are important is the the phrase in them so he says for in Them All Things are Written because the in them is supposed to be the gold plates because remember he's translating The Book of Mormon he protects he's allowed to have no other gift to pretend to so when God says for in Them All Things are Written concerning my church my gospel Iraq he's saying in the gold plates of the Book of Mormon that is something we've talked about in previous episodes which is at the Book of Mormon obviously contains almost none of the unique Mormon doctrines um and so obviously after the Book of Mormon everything that is kind of uniquely Mormon is really still going to be evolved and so Joseph Smith actually starts doing all these new things we talk about the priesthood restoration um baptisms for the dead um this idea of the endowment which I know the temple is a while away but you know they're building the Kirtland Temple and all that you know they're getting ready to build it so Joseph Smith realizes that a lot of what he's going to be doing and what he is doing is not in the Book of Mormon and so he needs to change that in order to adjust for the fact that it's not all in the gold plates okay um so let's see how it gets it gets changed yep so the next slide um he's gonna need to reconcile it so he says behold I give you a Commandment that you rely upon the things which are written for in them all things are all things written concerning the foundation at my church my gospel my rock wherefore if you shall build up my church upon the foundation of of my gospel my rock the Gates of Hell shall not Prevail against you and so Dave Whitmer says these changes were made by the leaders of the church who had drifted into air in spiritual blindness through the influence of Sydney Rigdon we talk last week he really does not like Sydney Rigdon um Brother Joseph was led on and on into receiving Revelations every year to establish offices and doctrines which are not even mentioned in the teachings of Christ in the written word um in a few years they had gone way ahead of the written word so that they had to change these Revelations and you will understand when I have finished he's talking about all the the writing and so so will you will you will you kind of rephrase first of all what the change was so in the first one uh it's probably to give you a commandment they reply upon all things which are written for in them are all things written concerning the foundation of my church so what he's doing is he's trying to say later so okay so if you look at the previous one it'll say here's the previous the yellow should be a little bit longer so it says for in them all are all things written concerning my church my gospel my rock and so if you go to the next one he's going to add in the phrase concerning the foundation of my church which is to say that now what he's saying is the gold plates have what's needed to found the church to create the foundation and then I can build upon it yeah and then that point he can build upon it so it says if you shall build up up my church upon the foundation of my gospel and rock so it's a small change and again this this one I don't think is is as impactful as the last one but he's making that little phrase to avoid the problem that the gold plates do not have any of the uniquely Mormon stuff you'll have after 1830 um and by changing that to saying it gives you what you need to get started yeah and that gives Joseph freedom to add to it later okay and and so a couple things here I think now you read what what Sydney Rigdon wrote about why or sorry you wrote you you read what David Whitmer wrote about his concern and I'll just kind of read it again he's basically saying the church had it right when they started but then they drifted into error and spiritual blindness um through the influence of Sydney Rigdon Brother Joseph was led on into receiving Revelations and to establish offices and doctrines that are not even mentioned originally and I so I'm going to just say two things that I see going on here you tell me if you see it is right number one is you know Joseph's Joseph Smith puts his stake in the ground with the Book of Mormon and with the book of Commandments and even as 1832 account of the first Vision he's putting these stakes in the ground doctrinally theologically and with his own history but then like as he meets Sydney Rigdon and Sydney Rigdon starts to influence him Sydney Rigdon starts taking Joseph's Doctrine in theology in ways that David Whitmer maybe doesn't like or doesn't agree with and so the the 1835 version is reflecting Sydney Rigdon and other people's influence but it's changing and David whitmer's saying I don't like these changes and by the way it's unethical to be changing God's word that's is not how God works and so the church wants it both ways they want us to believe David Whitmer is one of the three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon because he's essential but then when David Whitmer saying the church is basically going into apostasy and overriding the doctrines um the the church doesn't want us to even know that he did that let alone believe that his objections have credibility right yeah and you know I think you can see we talked last week about his dislike towards Sydney Rigdon and I think there was a lot of infighting because you think about David Whitmer and Martin Harris um Oliver cowjay and Joseph Smith are the original four you know the three Witnesses and Joseph Smith and also Sydney origin came in and was elevated in that church so quickly and became the number two so I think there is a lot of people uh who were foundational to the church who kind of got pushed aside a bit by Sydney Rigdon and then all of a sudden you see Joseph Smith incorporating Sydney rigdon's ideas and I think that would make you pretty upset and I think you see that in this response where he constant refers to the fact that when Sydney Rigdon came Joseph Smith started putting in these bad ideas so I think you have you're right in the fact that he's noticing that he's changing a lot of things that he said to these original Witnesses original members of the church were foundational and non-changing and then you also see what you believe to be a really bad influence who may have brought him down I honestly think that Joseph Smith while he did take some of Sydney rigdon's ideas on the priesthood um you know I think he also truly believed what he was doing was from him I don't think he was implementing polygamy because of Sydney Rigdon I don't think he was implementing you know the temple ceremony uh the book of Abraham I don't think was a big Sidney Rickman thing so you have all these things he's doing on his own I think Joseph Smith um whether he believed that he was doing something from God or whether he just you know sometimes people start to believe in themselves when you when you fake it enough and um so I you know I don't know but I do feel like David Whitmer here does have a real big accident with Sydney Rigdon which of course we need to be aware of but at the same time in the last week's pre-setup restoration we showed you why he has an extra grind and why that does track historically even if David Whitmer seems overly angry at Sydney Rigdon and over like in an overall sense yeah and certainly Sydney Rigdon was only one of the influences of Joseph Smith and it's normal in any Corporation let's just say for leaders to emerge Founders to emerge and then some to fall out of Graces and then new new influencers to come in so it's not particularly pernicious that Joseph had people come and go in his life the other thing is Joseph Smith was certainly a sponge whether it was learning from The Three Degrees Of Glory from Emmanuel swedenberg or getting the temple ceremony from the Masonic Lodge or as we'll talk about in the word of wisdom from the temperance Societies or whatever he was kind of a sponge and I think everybody admits that what's inconvenient about that is as your theology evolves you're kind of stuck with the writings that you published and so he needs to get people used to um in those early years just allowing him to like literally delete or edit or change or move on and not be held accountable like you said Richard Bushman fell I just want to say one other quick thing that I'm observing tell me if you agree with this when Joseph first starts the church even in 1829 and 1830 you get the sense that he's kind of said to his colleagues Hey listen I know this is a lot of power but I'm not going to get you know I'm not going to let the power go to my head I'm gonna you know God's Gonna constrict what I can do and we're all gonna be kind of team team you know team members here and we're going to be leading this together and it's not going to be all about me you almost get the sense that that's kind of the vibe God or Joseph is trying to give off in those early years but then kind of like the Lord of the Rings or The Ring the power seems to get to him and he seems to be uncomfortable ever being put in a box and so even though he promises that his power is going to be constrained you just see him growing and growing and growing his power over time even at the expense of assurances or prophecies or Revelations earlier stated that he was gonna that his power and authority was going to be constricted is that fair or not fair um well I mean I think it's fair I think one of the things I always think about is that Joseph Smith realizes at some point um wants to be at the top of the church but I think at the beginning he's trying to find a way to organize it in a way where you know it's everyone is is is that the you know kind of involved and that's why you we talked about last week at the priest said you have Joseph Smith constantly elevating himself when he's challenged um so I yeah I don't think he likes being in a box I think he also as you see so often with people that become empowered whether it's in business whether it's in politics whether it's in religion when they get power and they get followers and they get people who are just fawning over them and treat them as a Divine figure uh yeah it goes to your head and it does alter the way you're going to interact and it also in a lot of ways will um let you maybe go on a road that you probably shouldn't go down because you now have people who are allowing you to do it and so yeah it's hard to look at like the motivations of what Joseph was doing I just think the fact that you could show that he's making those changes so that he is the only one who can do it to me is telling and I also think one of the things about David whitmer's response that keeps pointing at Sydney Rigdon one of the things that's interesting to me on that is I think as people we constantly have this this need if we believe in something to always blame something else for it and I think David Whitmer just doesn't want to say that Joseph Smith made it up I think he wants to put the blame on someone else so that he doesn't have to accept the fact that he was part of something that was not what it was claimed to be so I think there's a little bit of that too where I think he's trying to find somewhere to shift that blame so that he can leave at least his experiences with Joseph Smith clean even though the evidence in the history would tell us today that those have just as many problems as the later ones do yeah okay well let's go on to the next uh let's go on to the next slide so this is going to be something we covered over the last two weeks which is the priesthood restoration so this is what is now known today as dnc20 DNC 27. so we covered this a lot last week if you haven't listened to the priesthood restoration episode I would highly recommend that I think that's a very important one but to cover it in a more shorter uh way here uh when Joseph Smith originally published the restoration of the priesthood there is absolutely no mention of John the Baptist um nor is there a mention of the aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood uh there's no mention of Peter James and John and just as we've been talking about Sydney Rigdon a lot these ideas did not come over until Sydney Rigdon joined the church as his Branch was the Campbell branch and they were talking about multiple priesthoods with a aeronic and a Melchizedek priesthood and so Rigdon comes over he brings these ideas over and as we talked about last week the next year Joseph Smith introduces the higher priesthood in 1831 which is the first time Joseph was ever ordained to it and then as the years go on the story evolves into what we have as DNC 2027 but really not until about 1835 because they did not mention the visitations by Peter James and John or John the Baptist until after I believe February of 1835 is the first time so this is a story that takes six years to develop and as we talked about last week this this is all about Authority this is all about retrofitting a story that was effectively started by Oliver and then finished by Joseph to put themselves above everybody else in the church and obviously went through all of this last week in Greater detail but this is a huge element to looking at the changes to the DNC yeah and I I think it's super significant just really is I'm kind of observing this not only do we know that the whole and we talked about this the Peter James and John John the Baptist priesthood restoration higher lower priesthood that doesn't really fully evolve until 1835. I think it's so significant that we know the source of the introduction of those ideas which is Cindy Rigdon it's one thing for the church to claim oh we didn't you know it was known in the minds of everyone it was just never written down but we actually know where the idea came from in this case and I think that's yes that's really that's to me that's significant okay yeah it's huge and so um we talked about this last week so this is um a change as we talked about a little bit last week Joseph Smith makes a significant change which elevates this Authority and the church to be unmatched until 1835 um both Joseph Smith and Oliver cowdery were referred to as Elders in the church the book of Commandments States the following um which Commandments were given to Joseph who was called of God and ordained an apostle of Jesus Christ and Elder of this church and also to Oliver cowdery who was called of God and Apostle of Jesus Christ and an elder of this church and ordained under his hand and now if you look at the DNC 20 entry it says which Commandments were given to Joseph Smith Jr who was called of God and ordained an apostle of Jesus Christ to be the first Elder of the church and to Oliver cowdery who was also called of God an apostle of Jesus Christ to be the second Elder of this church and ordained under his hand and so here Joseph is basically stating I'm the Top Gun Oliver's you know my my second in command and this all happens after Oliver cowdery creates the Angelic visitation in 1834 and because of that Joseph makes him the number number two later in the year which then leads to all these changes in 1835 so as we detailed last week this is something that is years in the making and is absolutely a significant change to make sure that their Authority can no longer be questioned by the Missouri Branch or anyone else who has a problem with the way Joseph Smith is running things so in this one it's it's Joseph becoming first Elder and Oliver becoming second Elder yes that that's a that's a significant change yeah it seems small but it's huge yeah because it's basically Joseph pulling Rank and what we what we see over time with you know humans not just you know leaders of Cults or high demand religions it's that power gains over time whether you know Warren Jeffs is the perfect example of how he started out is just like the school teacher you know in in some Bountiful school or you know sandy school but over time he he gains all power possibly right yeah well yeah I mean and like um you could look at like David Crush obviously at you know watching the Waco series you could see how all of a sudden people are starting to believe in him and when they believe in him he believes in himself more but you can even look at things like business people you have those stories of the last few years where a business person or like a TV personality yeah you know they kind of start small and also they get this big job and you've got these women in their Department that maybe he that this man feels is making an interest in him and all of a sudden he abuses his power yeah you have this everywhere where people are constantly the more power they get the more they want and the more they're willing to abuse it not everyone but it happens a lot no I mean I think I don't know who it was Lord Acton or whoever who said power crops and absolute power crops absolutely yeah and uh you know and George Orwell an animal farm and and all that uh show and and even Lord of the Rings and the ring is just all about power corrupting which is it's true for all of us not just Joseph but it's certainly it is well I mean you know and the the question I've always had with this stuff especially after doing the Deep dive is it's like why did God have to give Joseph Smith this Revelation if it's just through a rock and a hat why couldn't anybody grab a rock and have the words appear to say yes you know I God have um made Joseph Smith Jr my servant like why is it always yeah um put down like basically a pyramid you know you start at the top and then it funnels down it's like why if God really is all-powerful yeah why do we have to jump through hoops and that's something that why can't it be that every why can't it be that this is a great Point Mike why can't it be that every member who has faith and is obedient gets their own rock and everyone can simultaneously see what God wants why does it have to always filter through usually a white man male who just happens to want your your wives sometimes you know it's just like well it's like kind of I mentioned last week about you know how the priesthood restoration is almost as if you know Joseph Smith is the the dad and he's telling his kids to do something the kids are like no you know you're not my dad or whatever and he's like yes I am you know and then creates Revelation to be like yeah I'm the dude and it's the same thing here it's like the church will will tell you God told me this specific thing right whether it's like the November 15 policy Russell Nelson said this was Revelation from God and then they'll tell you we'll go pray and have a good feeling about it they're not going to tell you go pray and God's gonna give you those same words because it just doesn't happen and it's the same thing here it's like why are we supposed to believe that God is so powerful and yet also I mean that's I I'm not saying it I'm saying it in the the sense of the way the Mormon Church Works he's so powerful that he can foresee everything that's gonna happen from the beginning to the end he can do everything and yet also so weak that he can't give the same message to other people people and we're going to get to that more with polygamy where it's like Joseph Smith's like hey I got this Revelation from God I need to take another wife and he told me you're the one like he literally tells women God told me you're the one you think God would just come to them and be like hey just so you know yeah um I need this new principle to be established and you're going to be the person because you've been faithful it doesn't work that way and that's it always filters through Joseph it always filters sir Joseph and so these these Revelations are to make sure that nobody questions the fact that it always has to come through one person and and we know in Mormonism that if the prophet says something and then you get an individual Revelation that that's wrong if you take that back to your leaders and say hey the Lord told me the prophet's wrong that's not never going to fly that's literally Never Gonna Fly um the other thing I'll I'll just say um is that I I really like the quote we came up with last episode you have to have a rank to pull Rank and this this scripture particularly the scripture change is an episode is an example of Joseph Smith needing to establish published rank so that he can pull rank on Oliver later okay it is so tell us about this next visual slide I'm assuming this comes from the Tanners again this comes from the Tanners and so this is um dnc20 on the left and DNC 27 on the right and this is just a visual of all of the text that was added to the Revelation that was claimed to have come directly from God and so you could see I mean these are blocks of text and you can obviously on our website we have these images uh you can go to the Tanners and they have it um as well since obviously I grabbed it from them and it just shows how these are not like the leaders will tell you oh just small changes these are massive additions to Revelations that were claimed to have happened in this case you're talking six years from 1829 to 1835 Joseph Smith is going to make I mean really these changes from 1833 but the point is over six years from when the Revelation was originally supposed to have happened this is how much information Joseph Smith has to add to make the stories line up and that's a huge red flag that these are not historical events so we haven't gone into detail on all these changes that we see right now on the screen right we did last week with the priesthood because a lot of this is him saying you know now I bring to you my servants okay Peter James and Johnson like that so it's definitely covered last week but yeah so okay um dnc20 is establishing more of the first to second Elder 27 I believe is where you've got the visitations and there were ordinations and all that so um yeah previous episode yep so this will link into our previous one a lot and yeah we showed those yeah we show those images there too okay perfect perfect that makes sense yeah that's an important visual okay so we're going to polygamy and plural marriage this is a big one yes this is a huge one because this is um DNC 101 from the original action of covenants and this is not in the church today and so this is a dramatic change because it's removed and um Joseph Smith entered a revelation into DNC 101 that included the following statement inasmuch as this church has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife and one woman but one husband except in the case of death when either is it Liberty to marry again and I will note right off the bat because apologists throw this out there Joseph did not write this this was written while Joseph was gone but it was written because the church was basically Under Fire because people had rumors about Joseph Smith having affairs with his followers and in this case this is right after he had had a sexual relationship with Fanny Alger um apologists want to claim that was his first polygamous wife there is absolutely no way that happened as we'll get into in the polygamy episodes because he did not even claim ceiling keys at this point um and so I just want to say while Joseph Smith did not write this he absolutely included it intentionally with Oliver cowdricks as we talked about when Joseph Smith and Oliver cowdery went to go do the DNC they worked on it they edited this together so this would have been in there with his approval and the church had to remove it in 1876 because obviously this is not what the church was following and had to remove it because it completely contradicted DNC 132. yeah and I don't know uh okay yeah I don't see any more on this slide no I like one like like as I understand it when was DNC 101 removed from the Doctrine and Covenants do you know which version of the doctrine of covenants so it was removed in 1876 right and so for the majority of the time I think I think this is super important for the majority of the time that polygamy was practiced 80 I don't know it was it was being practiced encounter to the written scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants also secretly also something that people lied about and we've we've already talked about the fact that we would send missionaries to the UK you know to England and into Western Europe they would ask hey we hear you Mormons are practicing polygamy and missionaries who were polygamists themselves would show the Doctrine and Covenants they would show them that it polygamy is forbidden and they would tell them that no polygamy was being practiced while they were practicing polygamy is that am I right or am I wrong about that yeah I mean there are accounts of that where they would they would use the DNC as a way to say see we don't do that and then they come over and most of the time they had no money no food and then they're left with the option of being married to an old dude or you know being on their own and um it's a horrific horrific horrific yeah um thing that happened and when we get to plug me episodes I yeah I mean that's those are gonna be tough for me because those are the ones that still really anger me because they're uh you know we talk about abuses of power or at least Joseph Smith altering Revelations to to grow as power I think when you get into polygamy that also shows how Joseph Smith uses the voice of God to establish his authority in some really really bad ways and again we have documentation on that as well that shows how he was doing it and um it is it's all about Authority it's all about um you know Authority gives you power power gives you Authority all that stuff and um it's it's rough and we'll dig into this more but because it's relevant to this exact section apologists apologists want you know the fact that Joseph Smith started his polygamy years before DNC 132 was ever introduced without telling Emma lying to Emma apologists want to say well back in 1831 he did get this Revelation about you know Native Americans and missionaries and Native Americans and how you know if you're a missionary to the Native Americans you're you're maybe you're allowed to take on a concubine or an extra wife or two and like while that's revolting and racist in and of itself they want their cake and eat it too because they want to be able to say Joseph Smith was receiving Revelations about polygamy as early as 1831 to help justify the Fannie Alger Affair but at the same time that doesn't make any sense when we know it was codified in both the book of Commandments I believe but certainly the 1835 version of the Doctrine and Covenants that um you know man should have one wife and one woman but one husband so it makes no sense that Joseph was receiving Revelation from God in 1831 allowing for his polygamy and allowing for Fannie Alger in explicit contradiction with his written scripture am I wrong no I mean when we get into DNC 132 we're going to do basically an entire episode on the creation of DNC 132 in the history behind it because of what you're saying in the timelines you know we talk about timelines a lot with the first Vision the priesthood you can do the same thing with polygamy and yeah it's I mean the fact that they put this in an 1835 you know I think in a lot of ways to me indicates that Joseph wasn't planning on doing any system of polygamy at this point um but I also think he got to a point where for whatever motivation I know from an apologetic standpoint you would say God commanded it but from from a historical standpoint something you know we talked earlier in this episode about how sometimes you start to believe your own your own talking and it could just be that he believed he could get away with it or he believed he could use the voice of God to get what he needed or maybe he even believed that that's what God wanted because that's what he wanted uh you know we can highlight some of those motivations when we get into those episodes because there is some some little hints of that in some of the writings he did to some of the women and some of the things he told them yeah uh but yeah it's it's just it's it's bad that that whole yeah all the polygamy stuff to me is just horrific and it gets worse the deeper you get into it which is why we typically don't hear much about it in church yeah and then just to check back in with those four statements made by Prophet series and revelators their statements that no significant changes were made deeply fail when it comes to the DNC you know the polygamy the polygamy changes um you know with DNC 101 I mean that that's another explicit example of their deception or lying or ignorance right yeah I mean the the like when you read the way they taught about all of this stuff it's it's just it's they they know better and they they made a choice you know and we uh talk I've talked about this a lot lately on not really so much these episodes but when I posted on Twitter about certain things that have happened in the church recently and you know one of the things I keep saying is they made a choice you sometimes you make a choice and For Better or For Worse you you made a calculated decision and in this case the leaders of the church were making a choice to tell people there's nothing to see here and the the simple fact is the evidence tells us we can see it clearly with our eyes I mean unless we can't yeah read uh unless we're supposed to read these differently than the written which is another apologetic tactic it's it's just beyond obvious that these are significant changes yeah absolutely okay let's go on to I think law of consecration right yep so this is DNC 42 um and this is one that's not like a massive change I would say it's not as important as cnc5 but in the book of Commandments in chapter 44 this answer commanded to consecrate all of their properties to the church and uh going back to Sydney Rigdon this was likely a revelation that was at least influenced by him um as his Campbell a branch lived in a more you know communistic communal order and Joseph probably sought to adapt that concept as well because again Joseph uh was when Sydney Reagan came in he he rose into the church extremely quickly and a lot of his ideas like the priesthood were eventually uh integrated and so this isn't a very small but significant change because when he edits DNC 42 which is this the same Revelation he changes consecrate all to consecrate of uh which changes the meaning because all of a sudden it goes from you know giving everything you have to the church to consecrating of your property so giving at least a portion of your property and like I said this was a change that was made after the church was trying to run in that more communistic socialistic manner yeah and it failed and Fon Brody wrote that Joseph's enthusiasm for the United order was always tempered by the fact that it was rigdon's conception so it's documented that Sydney Rigdon was influencing this and the fact is it just didn't work very good yeah I think it was like his his enthusiasm for United order was probably all septembered by the fact that it failed miserably exactly yeah I mean I think it failed I think yeah the enthusiasm probably gets tempered by the fact that it failed and then you probably are looking over at Sydney Rudman going you got to be kidding me why'd you bring you know why did you think this was going to work you know and uh but yeah I mean but you're right it's a small change but it's a it's a significant and meaningful change and it isn't just a change of like a a spelling error or a correction or something that was in a previous manuscript and then like oh whoops in the printer's manuscript it was right but then in the type setting they got it wrong no the church what the church walked away from United order from law of Consecration and so they needed to make the change to to change the change in direction that the church was making and that's why it's significant right yeah because United odor was saying God wants you to give everything you have to the church and then that failed and so all of a sudden you have to change God's words because no longer is that part of what the church is doing so otherwise you would go why is God commanding us to give everything we have in here but we're not actually practicing it so this is another area where something changes and Joseph has to go back and change God's words to make it work yep and in this case to Joseph's credit I guess he's decreasing his power and money instead of interesting I guess sometimes when you have a big failure you do have to you know take a step back and go you know how do I you know kind of regroup and reform and go forward yeah so I'm assuming this is a Sandra Tanner visualization of those changes yeah so it's another Sandra Tanner Andrew Tanner a production of the changes it just shows again that these are not small changes you know you're going to have some in there if you look at and you go yeah that's no big deal you know it's just changing a little word or it's adding one word to make it a little bit more readable but there are also within that very significant changes uh that are again altering the word that is claimed to be given from God either through the Seer stone or later on uh directly through Joseph through prayer so either way Joseph Joseph is claiming to be uh relaying or dictating the exact words of God to ascribe and yet look at how much has to be changed just a few years later yeah those are big changes and we know why they made the challenges that's just it so we know why and that's that's a big big deal so okay the next one is a sprout a rod or the gift of Aaron dnc8 yeah so this one is an interesting one because one of the things we always talk about Joseph in his magical worldview and using the rock and a hat um Oliver cowdery was also a very magical world view-minded person and he used what was called a a dowsing rod and so that was his background was also in Magic and so um they call it divining Rod a dowsing Rod water witching and so this is a revelation that actually changes three times so in the original commandment it says this is a revelation from God to Oliver cowdry it says remember this is thy gift now this is not all for thou Hast another gift which is the gift of working with the Sprout that's the rod behold it hath told you things behold there is no other power save God that can cause the thing of nature to work in your hands and just as a real quick thing so when you believe in this you're holding like this little rod and um so actually can you show me real quick so you're holding like a little Rod go ahead and we're going to pretend this Popsicle stick is like a dousing rod and so you're you're praying or you're you're asking or a lot of times when they're looking for water they're walking over over land and all of a sudden it'll start going like this when you're over water or you'll pray and you say um you know dear uh heavenly father is it true through that I should marry so and so and then you hold it real steady on some you know that's yes and it sounds it looks stupid but that's what they did so that's a magical worldview so that is what the water I'm sure people would say I'm I'm kind of characterizing it but yeah the whole idea is you're holding it and God will answer by moving that for you um and that's how that's how Oliver believed he had a connection with the supernatural or the Divine and so this Revelation is saying uh this thing of nature uh God is the only thing that could can cause this thing of nature to work in your hands he's saying God's the only thing that is making this Rod work so this is another Revelation from God saying that yes I absolutely am conducting folk Magic on on the earth even though as we've shown in previous episodes it doesn't actually work so if we go back to the slide um that first revelation is the original Revelation and can I just say never in the history of any of my time in the church did you know in all the movies and all the film strips that the church created you know film strips you know or the movies that came later all those cinematic Productions that that the church shows at Temple Square in The Visitor Center never did I see Oliver cowdery walking around with the Sprout like looking for water right or or anything and there's a reason for that it's because it's superstitious and kooky and weird and even though stupid even though a lot of people did it back then it takes away from The credibility of the narrative in Modern Times And that explains the changes you are about to tell us yeah and that's why because they don't they want to get this stripped out and so when they do the book of Commandments in 1833 now remember in 1833 all of this treasure digging stuff is still following Joseph around so of course you don't want to uh be as Folk magic so in the book of Commandments they change the word sprout to the word Rod so instead of saying working with the Sprout it's working with the rod and then it says um I guess is that because Rod sounds a little bit better than Sprout I think so because Sprouts kind of like you know it just sounds like you're holding a stick you know I think Rod at least gives it maybe more of a credible more formal kind of thing you know I'm thinking hold to the rod the iron yeah I mean like it sounds I don't think that's it but maybe I mean I yeah I think it sounds better I'm just saying it's scriptural that I don't know anything in the Bible that says behold grab your Sprout you know what I mean no I think yeah I think they just want to get that word out of there because it sounds so folksy and and so they change that and then um it says you know no other power save God that can cause this Rod of nature to work in your hands so they're putting the word rod in there to try to make it a little bit more I think credible or at least a little less folk magicy but then when they changed it in 1835 so they've gone from Sprout to rod and then they go from that to the gift of Aaron and then later they say no other power but the uh no save the power of God that can cause this gift of Aaron to be with you and so they are absolutely now stripping all of the folk magic out and now they're calling a basically a stick that's a water divining water witching stick the gift of Aaron which is which makes it more it gives a general more General applicability it can mean anything right and it takes it out of the weird folksy Sprout thing into Rod which is a little more biblical a little more solid sounding into the gift of Aaron which really can mean have nothing to do with folk magic at all yeah right yeah exactly that's and that's just it they're trying to say Oliver was given a gift by God and they're gonna call it the gift of Aaron so that when people read it especially if you're a potential convert or even an outsider who has questions you're going to read it and you're not going to think oh this guy was walking around with a stick you know or you know trying because there's um we don't have in here because it's not really a change but you know one point Oliver's like hey can I try translating The Book of Mormon and Joseph's like yeah sure go ahead and give it see if you could do it and then um he tries to do it and then he gets the Revelation from God saying you didn't see you didn't seek it out in your mind understudy on your mind therefore you don't get to do it and it's because again like Joseph Smith is claiming to read words off of a rock Oliver cowder would probably be like thinking up a sentence and then holding a stick going okay is that the right you know it's looks silly because it is silly and um you know I think that's one of those things where when you look at the folk magic origins of the church it it's embarrassing and that's why they're stripping it out of their scriptures and that's why they have stripped out of their history so well because if you know like I said as a convert if they'd come to me and said had a picture Joseph with his head and a hat and Oliver with a stick on the side I would just be like this is nonsensical and that's why they don't show it to you and and until recently I would argue they don't even like even in Saints they'll kind of they kind of hit you with it a little bit but they don't really they still try to make it more of using the Nephi interpreters and the breastplate and German and all of that as we showed in the earlier episodes it's all retrofitted language uh German thumb is anyways and um yeah so it's just it's just an attempt to downplay the magical origins of the church yeah yep because that's embarrassing and it makes it seem more folk magic than actually scriptural so there's a there's another slide yeah yeah socialize and we already kind of covered the fact that the German thumbum is a term that was was was retrofitted later it was not something they talked about early and then there's just this quote uh it's from Marvin Hill he was an assistant professor of history at BYU and he admitted that when Oliver cowdery took up his duties as a scribe for Joseph Smith in 1829 he had a rod in his possession with Joseph Smith sanctioned um he says some of the rodsmen or money diggers who moved into Mormonism were Oliver cowdery Martin Harris or in Rockwell Joseph and Newell Knight and Josiah stole and it's just worth noting that two of the three Witnesses were known to be treasure diggers or money diggers or water witchers which means that they are absolutely believing in things that are just as we know today nonsensical and it's really important to note that in the early church A Large element of the the early uh founding members were from a world view that I think today if you told a member of the church you explained it to him without saying who they were or that they were Mormons or the early Mormon Witnesses they would say oh my goodness those people are making it up it's just you know it's it's important to note that because the church has worked so hard to strip out all of the magical folk magic references to all of these early members of the church yeah and like in the case of Michael Quinn he comes out with the book you know Mormonism in the early early Mormonism in the magic world view and he gets communicated for it so it's not it's not just that they tried to strip out all the folk magic and downplay it uh they excommunicated people who talked about it right yeah exactly yeah so that shows you know that's when the church starts to become cult-like when it's suppressing information and punishing its truth tellers so what's this this is a this is a lovely graphic that actually shows what Oliver with yeah so this is a painting and I don't know who did it I found it online at some point and I don't know exactly what originated but this is effectively kind of an artist's rendition of what uh using a dividing around my piece you find kind of like a stick that you feel is special and you hold it and then that stick will move if it's confirming what you're asking or if you're on top if you're looking for water it would move when you're looking for water and stuff like that and I know Dan Vogel talked about it once and he said a lot of them believed it because you know your body can can when you're walking along looking for water can make things move you know because subconsciously you're you're in such a mode of looking for also you notice a little movement in your hand that you don't even realize you did um and and so that's kind of what Oliver cowdery did and then on the right is just the little bit of changes from the you know to to use the gift to Aaron instead of the the rod and just shows from the Tanners again that these are changes being made to direct Revelations from God I think this practice maybe you've already said this is also called water witching and I think that there are people today in 2022 who still believe in this and do it I think you can still hire water witchers to help you find Wells on your land in Utah yeah I think there are I mean I don't I don't think it's very successful but I think there are people that do it yeah okay next slide adding in New Church positions DNC 20. yeah so we kind of highlighted this a little bit earlier with the priesthood restoration but in dnc20 not only are they starting to add in these Visions to um the priesthood restoration but they're also changing the structure of the church and so in the book of Commandments um The Heading of it is as follows the Articles and Covenants of the Church of Christ given in Fayette New York June 1830 two paragraphs have been added to it having been thrust into the middle of it paragraphs 16 and 17 is the part added which speaks of high priests and other high offices um that the church never knew of until almost two years after its beginning as if God had made a mistake and the first organization of the church and left out these high important offices which are all above an elder and as if God had made a mistake and left these high offices out of that Revelation when it was first given oh the weakness and blindness of man that again is from David Whitmer um and his address to all believers which he's stating that you know there throwing two paragraphs in there to effectively elevate Joseph to make sure he can't be challenged so I'm looking on the next slide do you have the actual words that got added or changed visually you know what I don't actually I think that was an area um but I can read them oh yeah read them to us because I I heard you read the text but I don't think I have a clear sense so it's it's important that we know David Whitmer is complaining about what was added but I don't think I totally know what what was added uh so let's see it says like no person is to be ordained to any office in this church where there is a regularly organized branch of the same without the vote of that church but the presiding Elders traveling Bishops High counselors High priests and Elders okay they have the privilege of ordaining where there is no branch you know I don't think that's actually I'm gonna have to find it because I'm looking at the Tanner's thing I need to to look up the well it would make sense based on what we've talked about yeah it wouldn't say high priests now there's no way it would say high priests in in the book of Commandments because that evolves later right that wouldn't be in there and so and so if if if just high priest was not in the previous version and then it it it was in the later version that would be enough for me to go oh that makes total sense given our discussion of the evolving priesthood um and that's the type of thing that David Whitmer would complain about yeah the one thing um the one thing I want to address is the church likes to do this game where a heading is not it's not bad if like an introduction page or a heading has changed because that's not the actual scripture versus if it's like chapter verse changes do you want to address that because I think that's a typical apologetic as far as like changing the headers well I mean the headers are well in this case it's an introduction right or the heading over the book of command I believe the heading over the DNC was written long after Joseph Smith was written by the church to explain kind of what it is no the heading over the book of Commandments oh this is from um from what David Whitmer said right yeah yeah so I think what they're saying is what I'm saying is an apologist would go oh Joseph changed the heading over the book of Commandments well that's not scripture I think what David Whitmer is saying that um the the book of Commandments is saying that it's the Articles and Covenants of the church given in June of 1830 and then I think he's saying into the DNC now they're going to add two paragraphs um speaking of high priests and so he's saying okay I think what he's trying to say is look The Heading of the book of Commandments is making very clear these are the Articles and Covenants of the church and yet Joseph Smith is still going to go in and change them years after the fact I think that's what he's trying to to get at okay okay so this next slide a visual of the DNC 20 changes anything anything you want to say about that uh hang on let's say sorry I was looking back at DNC yeah I mean like I said I was just looking uh and you know you've got some notes like um in dnc20 it says every president of the high priesthood or presiding Elder Bishop High Council and high priest is to be ordained by the direction of a high Council or general conference um you know I think they're they're adding in these positions that were not there um obviously in 1830 because we discussed there were no high there was no high priesthood then so I think what David Whitmer is saying is they're adding all of these things in and they're you know these are now higher than an elder so it is an area where you can see Joseph Smith is changing his theology on the priesthood he's also being challenged by early members and he needs to restructure the church in a way that keeps him on top delineates the priesthood so you can have people below him and you know as we've been kind of going through this we've been saying one of the apology here in the church is that God reveals line by line precept upon precept and they would say that God just wanted to give this to him as he was ready for it he couldn't give it to him all at once because it'd be too much and I would just respond and say again that going through last week's priest restoration episode the most obvious rational logical conclusion is that Joseph Smith was the author of these Revelations had been changing what he was doing being challenged by everybody around him and he changed them also the church was growing and when you have a growing organization you need a more sophisticated leadership right and what you would expect is that God would give the Revelation ahead I mean Prophet Seer Revelator seeing ahead of time God could use the stone to give Joseph the correct organization that it would grow to in three or four or five years but instead they just changed the Revelation as if God said it originally and then they tell everyone no changes were ever made when really what's clearly happening is the the organization's growing the offices and structures need to change and so they're retrofitting original scripture um yeah you know or they're changing original scripture to modify it and then telling everyone it was always that way it's yeah it's deceptive well it is and it we we talked last week in this church or to believe that God knew Joseph was going to lose 116 pages and had a second set of plates created thousands of years earlier preserved protected just so Joseph would have the exact information he would need to replace that text with and yet God did not realize Joseph was going to be challenged and would need to have positions in the church that would make sure that people knew he was the highest Authority it it is the inconsistency of the god in Mormonism that always seems to come out on the side of benefiting Joseph Smith or even in today the leaders and it is a red flag when the people who claim to be prophetiers and revelators claim all these Revelations when you can't really show the wrong like say they lost 116 pages and yet when you can show they're making changes when they're being challenged all of a sudden they're going to throw down you know the the Revelation card in order to protect themselves while keeping everybody else you know at arm's length so that they can't challenge them yeah it's the it's the changes that it's the lack of foresight it's the changes and then the denial that any changes were ever made right right and the punishing of people who mention the changes right okay well that's that let's go on to uh the parchment of John this is one of my favorites yeah so this is dnc7 and this is our kind of our last example before we get into the Apologetics but this is a revelation where Joseph Smith is claiming to translate a lost parchment from John the Beloved through his Stone so to this is happening during the Book of Mormon translation Oliver and Joseph are having a discussion uh maybe some disagreements um about whether John the Beloved Terry and the flesher died um as a quick note that is something that even the Joseph Smith's paper project um notes in their historical introduction that that was something being discussed heavily during their lifetime this was a big question within the Bible you know with the religious community so they're trying to figure it out and so Joseph claims to see the parchment he's reading off of the literal parchment with the Seer peepstone which of course they're going to retrofit into the urban thumum and he translates the writing directly off the parchment and the crazy thing is this tells you it is an extremely tight translation because he is reading a parchment and then giving the translation through the stone of what it says and yet when he revises it um in 1835 the number of words in the Revelation go from 143 to 252 Words which almost doubles the text and this is obviously a huge problem because we're being told he's reading it directly off a parchment so how in the world does he almost doubling the length of the Revelation if he had already translated it through the stone years earlier yeah yep and that's such a weird idea at all that Joseph's like oh Oliver I can see this parchment that's in this cave back in the Middle East somewhere now let me use my stone to tell me what it says like that that that introduces a couple really significant problems that immediately destroy a couple critical apologetics number one is why were the plates ever needed at all if Joseph just could have looked into his Stone and produced The Book of Mormon so so the fact that plates you know John Larson even said this that probably tens of thousands of people died to create and preserve the Book of Mormon the golden place for the Book of Mormon and then we find out that Joseph didn't even need the plates to be able to produce the Book of Mormon why why all that effort why all that all this etching and scratching into the gold which we know never happened now but why put people through all that when Joseph didn't even need it and then you go to the the book of Abraham like Joseph didn't need the Papyrus to to create the the book of Abraham if he had the power to do that with his peep Stone and so this idea of a catalyst Theory where he needed the Scrolls to inspire him to be able to produce the text of the book of Abraham no he didn't the the parchment of John shows that he could have just read the gosh darn stoned so there was no need for any Papyrus for him to be able to give a perfect translation of what would have been on the Papyrus but we know what was on the Papyrus and the word Abraham Abraham wasn't even there and so this is a really in my view probably an under discussed but devastating um response to to critical uh apologetics made around the Book of Mormon in the book of Abraham and probably other things I haven't even thought about yeah well I mean to me and before we even get to the changes here this one to me sticks out the most when I think of current day leadership because Joseph Smith as a prophet Syrian Revelator had a question about the Bible went to God ask the question Not only was he given the answer but he was given a vision of a parchment where he could read the writings of John who I think a lot of Bible scholars think was illiterate in the first place that's not really irrelevant and yet we have leaders today who get up at General Conference and tell members not to even discuss heavenly mother because they know as much about it as we do and I'm thinking to myself so Joseph Smith could ask a fairly mundane question about the Bible and be shown a vision of a Parchman sitting in a cave that's been undisturbed and apparently un found since and yeah current day uh profits in the Mormon church tell us basically you're expecting too much if you think we can get just good answers this shows that Joseph Smith was able to get answers to any small thing he wanted to in the quickest amount of time and it just shows you not just the consistency of God and Mormonism but the consistency of the leaders Mormonism and that again is a red flag because we're told that God is leading this church and is unchanging and yet God seems to be giving answers to everything Joseph wants including given visions of parchments that are written by somebody who a lot of Bible scholars believe could not have written and then all of a sudden you have this and it's just it shows all of the problems um not just with the past foundational events but I would argue with some of the current events as well with regards to the power or lack of power that some of the leaders have yeah and it's so weird that in modern times all of the of the first presidency of the Quorum of The Twelve are ordained and sustained as prophet seers and revelators so they've kept the term Seer and we all knew what Seer meant it meant you could look into a stone right and see things so they've kept the title but as far as we know from Joseph to now there's no other Prophet Seer or Revelator that's actually done any seeing so why did they preserve the title if they're not even going to use it and we haven't even gotten to the change in dnc7 out of the change this is a really important one because I don't know if we really covered this last week um in the priesthood episode I'm not positive I may have forgotten to put this one in there so this alteration among the almost doubling the text uh Joseph Smith actually is going to retrofit the priesthood restoration into this parchment and so um he adds the following text and I will make thee to minister for him and for my thy brother James and unto you three Peter James and John I will give this power in the keys of the this ministry until I come and this is fitting in to try to make the priesthood restoration visitation by Peter James and John and John the Baptist make sense um because again the story is not created until 1835 and Joseph Smith is going to retrofit it into DNC 27 as well and like these changes are not isolated changes they're all being done here because Joseph Smith is trying to find a way to make this um consistent for his new ideas of the priesthood restoration I get a little lost in all the words can you tell me what the exact change is between the old and the new version this quote right here is completely added this is not this is just completely added to the initial and I'm going to read can I read it again yeah and I will make thee to minister for him and for thy brother James and unto you three Peter James and John I will give this power and the keys of this ministry until I come so number one we know that there was no Peter James and John in 1833 so we we can understand why that was added later yeah but just that whole sentence wasn't there before yeah not at all that's a complete edition that's not even a change so that's just because see how he almost doubles the tax and so he needs to add that in there because he needs to establish the fact that they have the keys of the priesthood to give to to bestow to Joseph and ER and Oliver and so this is his way of trying to backfit that idea that they hold the keys and that they will give it to Joseph which again is something he has not thought of in any way yeah but this Revelation was written down yeah and now has to make it now wants to add it in there to give himself a little bit of extra oomph into his story of the preset restoration yeah because it's one thing it's one thing if if he just claims that oh I didn't mention Peter James and John but I was thinking it the whole time but when he's adding it to multiple places in a new version where in multiple places it wasn't in the previous version well then you know he's he's making stuff up and adding it yeah I mean that's why you say it's a massive fingerprint this is a massive fingerprint because he's reading off a parchment in a cave and now all of a sudden five years later six years later he's saying oh crap I forgot on that parchment was also the sentence which totally backs up my new story about the priest illustration and you go yeah no otherwise no that's obscene yeah I mean just imagine you know that's like saying that this piece of paper I wrote and have preserved somewhere that nobody can get to magically includes more Tech six years later that just happens to back up my new story it's absurd and yeah um you know we'll get to it at the at the end of this episode but this is the second um Revelation that Apostle Hugh Brown said was never changed and again he's lying this is absolutely changed in very significant ways yeah that that really is a Smoking Gun that's a big deal I can't believe I I didn't I don't know most of this stuff so yeah I didn't know about that one until later because you think of DNC 20 and 27 as the big changes but this is also being changed in order to make that story work so they're going through these in 1835 and I think Joseph's like you know what we need to establish that line of the chain of custody of the priesthood to make sure that we can claim for sure that they have the keys to give to us um in the 1835 you know claims story that is also retrofitted into that same DNC yeah I maybe you just said this but it almost seems like that that little verse belonged in the previous episode on the priesthood restoration yeah I don't I you know what I think I actually forgot to put that in there which probably means I forgot to put that in the last one page that's why we tell people to watch these in order yeah I mean it's true because this is just like Joseph Smith we reserve the right to change things in future episodes that's right exactly yeah I'm gonna go back in and we'll go back in and dub this in somewhere just so so uh you know we'll have the different clothes on and stuff we'll just say no no I was always there and claim we never changed it yeah exactly okay so now we move to responding to apologetics and I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna love this part okay yeah so this is um one of the kind of ways that this is thought of and so this is from uh Joseph Smith history of the church edited by uh BH Roberts and they say some of the early Revelations were first published in the book of Commandments in 1833 were revised by the prophet himself in the way of correcting heirs made by the scribes and Publishers and some additional Clauses were inserted to throw increased light upon the subjects treated in the Revelation and paragraphs added to make the principles for instructions apply to officers not in the church at the time some of the earlier Revelations were given the additions of verses 65 66 and 67 and I'm not sure what section that is but I'm assuming it's one of the ones that talks about um the different offices is an example and so what he's saying here is that a lot of the changes were made to correct errors by scribes and Publishers and again this is um kind of something we talked about with the Book of Mormon where it's like Joseph Smith is claiming that the The Book of Mormon translation and would be the same for the revelations are coming off the rock in a hat and unless they're written down correctly are not going to change so you can't really have errors by the scribes because of the fact that it would have meant that The Rock would not have kept giving him the the text that he needed so I think that's a really bad apologetic yeah and if I could just read if I can react to that like number one I'm a little sad to see this comes from BH Roberts because I think of him as one of the good guys as being um you know more of a truth teller than a deceiver but he did have the role as apologist so you know I guess it is a little bit on brand for him but for him to lead with the the the primary reason for the changes being correcting errors made by the scribes and publishers of of all the changes we've just shown what percentage have any evidence that the errors were were the scribes or the Publishers and none none so that's an outrageous I mean and to put that first like let's just say there would have been a couple examples I'm sure I believe that scribes and Publishers make errors but but you wouldn't lead with the one with with the one that has the least examples and if it's somewhere between none and very few then it's deceptive to lead with the least feasible uh apologetic answer I think well I think too when you talk about you know he'll say well a lot of them are done because like the officers are referring to weren't known at the time because they weren't created then you go well one why weren't they created earlier but even even more importantly than that um one of the things we've talked about in these episodes is not just that they were created it's why they were created they were created for a reason and it wasn't just because the church was growing it was because Joseph was being challenged and we have documentation of literally uh in the last episode where uh Bishop Partridge gives him a hard time he goes back and immediately creates um the high Office of the President of high priesthood and writes into the Revelation literally writes in there this a bishop is not equal to to this position to basically tell Bishop Partridge you are now under me stop questioning me so to say they weren't like uh officers weren't really known at the time well yeah there's some truth there but you also then have to address why weren't they known and why were the changes made because we can show that those changes are being made through Revelation in a way to um squash the um a little bit of you know kind of blowback he's getting from Missouri yeah but then when you add to it the fact that they don't they don't tell you in subsequent dncs what what changes were made in footnotes or there's no effort to inform the reader that massive significant changes have been made but then they go on to deny say publicly deny that any changes were made to not inform people and then to punish people who actually talk about the changes being made none of that lines up it doesn't and that's it's just one of those things where it's like I one of the blog posts I have on the website it's from um Elder Corbridge and it's uh this talk he gave to BYU and it's basically like to say focus on the four primary questions and of course the primary questions all basically Circle back to the church is true and he says don't focus on the secondary questions and the blog post was from a few years ago I think it's called like please don't look under the hood and it's another one this feels like that where it's like here's some here's why they did it please don't look any deeper because if you open up the hood you're going to see that the engine is not what we claim it to be there's all sorts of parts that are not where they should be and I just feel like a lot of times with apologetics it's doing everything they can to keep you from opening the box it's like you know you're you're walking up to the box and you're putting your hand in the lid and they're like please don't open that and they're just throwing everything they can to keep from doing it and I feel like this is another one of those areas where it's like they'll give you the most basic watered-down explanations without giving you the background as to why to how and the second you start to see that then you see the patterns and you see why um these chains were made and once you see why the changes were made it gives you a better understanding of what happen but it obviously is not going to be Faith promoting yeah it's not Faith promoting and I think the church kind of over the years has had this position where you can pretty much do anything if if it's under the guise of wanting to promote Faith even if it's totally dishonest you know I mean it's like the whole lying for the Lord thing I know it's a cliche but there's a reason for it because there are people in the church throughout the history who have you know outright and and sometimes because they feel like it's the right thing to do sometimes because they feel like they need to keep people faithful to the church but regardless of the reason they are lying and in this case pH Roberts is avoiding telling people that the significant changes are very important by kind of trying to throw a few examples where it might not seem so bad and it's just very misleading yeah it is okay what is parley P Pratt have to say about Joseph's revelatory process so parley P Pratt said after we had joined in prayer in the Translating room he dictated in our presence the following Revelation each excuse me each sentence was uttered slowly and very distinctly and with a pause between each sufficiently long for it to be recorded by an ordinary writer in longhand this was a manner in which all of his written Revelations were dictated and written there was never any hesitation reviewing or reading back in order to keep the run of the subject neither did any of these communications undergo revisions interlinings or corrections as he dictated them so they stood so far as I have witnessed and I was present to witness the dictation of several Communications of several pages each and so this is basically describing the Book of Mormon translation which is Joseph Smith is going to read like a phrase or a sentence pause to give time to to read it or to write it down and then continue the only little change you'd see here is that it according to parley P Pratt he's not asking the Scribe to read it back to him as he continues but this is still a very tight translation and would give you very little room I would argue to blame the scribes even though partly saying the scribes didn't write it down or didn't read it back you do also have to remember that Joseph Smith also was editing the 1833 book of commandments so the changes between 1833 and 1835 are distinctly Joseph even if it was a scribal error that would have been corrected in 1833 in the first place so this gives you a good indication it's a tight translation and I think it also gives you a good indication that these are early members telling us that the words of God were not revised yeah yeah probably P Pratt that's the name we should all recommend yes absolutely okay Richard Bushman yep and so this we referred to last week but um in rough Stone Rolling Richard Bushman said he revised his own Revelations adding new material and splicing one to another altering the word wording as he saw fit he felt authorized to expand the revelations as his understanding expanded Joseph once said that methodists have Creeds which a man must believe or be kicked out of the church I want the Liberty to believe I said please it feels so good not to be trampled Revelation meant freedom to Joseph freedom to expand his mind through time and space seeking truth wherever it might be the balance between freedom and control makes it difficult to keep Mormonism in Focus was it author authoritarian or an anarchic disciplined or Unbound the printed word of God constituted a doctrinal Authority that at the same time was open-ended allowing Visionary freedom to Joseph's successors after his death and yeah and that's fine Richard Bushman the problem I have with that is that when we're growing up when we're raised in Mormonism when we convert to Mormonism we're not taught oh DNC is scripture um but you know Joseph Smith changed it and and altered it and uh added things and took things away and completely removed things and so you know this reflected Joseph Smith's best understanding at the time but who knows maybe even got things wrong you are just simply taught that it has always been this way it is this way it always will be this way and Joseph communicated to us God's will so so the the church wants it both ways they want you to follow and obey the prophet unquestioningly and believe that Joseph got all his words from God without any problems and Richard Bushman wants to tell us that Joseph wanted to be expansive but but if we're all taught when we're converting to the church or in the church that Joseph was basically constantly changing and editing and adding based on what he's seeing around him and literally reversing the meaning of Prior versions we're going to think about the scriptures very differently right yeah I think Richard bushman's quote I think to me is making some sort of a inference that the revelations are Joseph's mind and that he's allowed to expand that with his you know change and ideas and and you know being able to ponder it but when you're taught not just by the church but by early leaders by Joseph Smith that these are Revelations directly from God and then you're also saying well Joseph felt like he was able to change him as his ideas changed I just I feel like there's a disconnect there when you're saying these are the words of God yet Joseph also felt like he was free to change him as he saw fit do are we really to believe that God is is you know unchanging and at the same time cool if somebody changing you know his very specific Revelations as this particular person um felt you know that you know was necessary at any given time and I think that's I I said it last week a lot but it feels like you're now indistinguishable from fraud when you're saying these are both God's words and you know God's also cool if you change them it just feels like such a big disconnect there yeah yeah it does it does so that's when Richard Bushman pulls this stuff I'm I'm honestly I know people love him he's brilliant we have a lot to be grateful to him for and this is this garbage is super disappointing and it's why it's why Farm Brody to me or Dan Vogel are the legends and not Richard Bushman yeah it's just it's frustrating because I feel like he is doing this balance of trying to put a lot of information that a lot of members haven't read but also giving you ways to maintain faith and and in that regard I don't blame him the problem is I'm pretty sure that he'd be like an amazing person to just sit down and have dinner with and just go through some of these things and just get his thoughts on it and I just I cannot believe um that you could kind of and maybe I'm maybe he would have a better way to explain it but I just feel like there's that disconnect there by basically saying that these are Revelations but Joseph also felt like God's words were you know uh perfectly okay to change as he saw fit and I just I feel like that is something that would never fly in general conference if you said oh yeah you know God told me this but I don't really like this part so I'm going to change this but it's okay I I there's no way that would ever happen and so I feel like that's where there's this Gap that you're just jumping from point A to point B without filling it in and I think that's where I just can't get past it yeah and what what these apologists never do is just say hey the church is misled us or deceived us or harmed us or withheld information they will never actually take that extra step and hold the church leaders accountable for the things they've done and that's why I consider them enablers um you know because they enable the bad behavior without calling it to account and I know why they do it but I just think it's ethically problematic okay oh yeah someone that I Blake Osler um not a fan but let's let's talk about Blake Hustler well so now this in particular is referring more specifically to the Book of Mormon um but I you know I just want to read it because I think it's kind of coral uh you know carries over pretty well so he says the model of Revelation I propose here is that of creative co-participation it seems to me that the Book of Mormon makes most sense if seen as both a revelation to Joseph Smith and as Joseph's expansions of the text this view requires a Theology of Revelation focusing on interpretation and inherent in human experience this view is grounded in two fundamental premises one our premises one there could be no Revelation without human experience and two there can be no human experience without interpretation according to this view Revelation is continuing Dynamic and incomplete it results from free human response to God and so I honestly I think this is the way that apologists should go with Revelation which is just to say that Joseph was a co-author of the revelations with god um I think it Waters down the authority of those Revelations um but this is effectively bringing with it all of the problems that a loose translation process has and in a lot of ways that's what Richard Bushman was just saying is that the revelations become a loose translation when Joseph Smith um decides he wants to change them and so I think this is probably the way they should go I just think it also is extremely problematic and it's really pulls a lot of the authority out of the revelations which is why they will never do it yeah yeah I just I just think I sometimes people have talked about Blake osler's expansion model of Revelation as being like profound I think it's trying to have your cake and eat it too yeah I think it's it's trying to say that when you need an explanation that's a tight translation of him reading you know really translating using you know as the word means with the stone in the Hat looking at the characters you know as if the plates were in the room and he was really doing the work of a translator because that gives him power and that that makes him actually special and that's actually what the revelations about him said then we're gonna have the tight translation Theory plates in the room you know and Joseph having special powers but then when he gets it wrong which he does almost in every case almost with every single set of scripture that he ever engages with including the Kinderhook plates which were a fraud whenever he gets it wrong then you need it to be loose um you know so that so that you can explain away all the problems is that fair or am I being unfair to Blake costler well I just I think yeah I think the loose translation theory is one that comes out of necessity because there are problems that you cannot ignore and you can't just say it didn't happen I mean I we did that in the Book of Mormon a lot where we talked about the issues and the text and it's like you cannot maintain the Thai translation because the moment you do that you're like this is easily you know we could prove this false easily but then you fill it in by you know it's kind of the god in the gaps where it's saying well God gave him this Revelation and Joseph was able to change it so the errors uh come from Joseph Smith's worldview and God was okay with that because Joseph was putting it into a environment to an environment that was familiar to him and to the people who joined the church um but again at that point you're now indistinguishable from fraud because you're now saying that Joseph Smith was a co-author of the Book of Mormon Michael Ash has a book that that is making that same case and I think the moment you do that you're making it out of a position of weakness because now you're saying the book cannot stand on its own as an ancient historical translation directly from God so we need to put Joseph Smith in as a co-author because the heirs are now his and not God it's kind of what I said earlier about how David Whitmer seems to blame Sydney rigland for the problems of the church because he doesn't want to blame Joseph Smith directly because that would implicate his own beliefs in the church being true and I think that we see this here where it's like we don't want to put God under the bus uh so we put Joseph Smith kinda under the bus by saying he uh was a loose it was loose translation so Joseph Smith bringing his own world you that brings in anachronism and stuff because that's how he understood it so you're taking the problems away from God and saying well there's still an ancient core from God and The Heirs are from men but that's what you're supposed to be avoiding by doing the translation and so that's the whole value proposition is that you get the pure word yeah adulterated now Progressive Mormons are going to say we're we're holding scripture and Prophets to too high a standard but I I think that's how I was taught it all worked so I think that's on the church so you actually have a slide where you respond to osler's uh Theory yeah and again in this particular one Blake also was talking more about the Book of Mormon I just wanted to include it because it is um he was speaking about Revelation and speaking about how Revelation is processed and all that so I felt like it was a good fit and you know one of the things that I mentioned um when I hear that Richard Bushman again was making a similar argument is just that a lot of these Revelations tend to benefit Joseph Smith so he has a revelation uh from God condemning Martin because my Martin doesn't want to give up more money for the Book of Mormon and so then we have Revelations from Joseph Smith when he's proposing to women in polygamy that just happened to benefit him um in the things he's looking for we have the revelations about the 116 Pages which effectively give Joseph Smith out of a jam we have the Revelation where the waters are choppy and Joseph doesn't want to go on the waters because he's scared and he and the other leaders that are with him get to take a train or something really fancy or carriage or whatever and all of the people that are under him have to ride the waters that are horrible Waters and you just have a lot of Revelations where you look at and you go man these are awful convenient and so to me it it feels like once you start granting him that ability to be a co-author it feels like you could take a lot of privileges with that to then take it to the next level and go you know what if I'm a co-author I'm going to get a little bit more for me and I feel like that alone is the reason why you cannot go that way with Revelation because if it's the word of God then you cannot allow it to be corrupted by a guy who has a history of as we've shown in the Treasure digging we have evidence he was deceiving somebody who believed in him with treasure digging once you show he's willing to use intentional deception for that and then you're also going to say he was a co-author of the revelations or of the Book of Mormon and you've already shown he's willing to use deception to better himself it's really hard then to say that all of these errors are just something we can just kind of live with because it completely destroys the claims they're making and it also almost always ends up being on the side of benefiting Joseph Smith and I think those are things that are red flags not things that are you know features of a of a grand Revelation ability yeah yeah absolutely yep apologetics is pretty much always special pleading to explain uh you know errors or problems or things that were hid from us or taught to us or you know failed expectations and who's Blake Osler who's Blake Osler to tell us how to look at scripture he's just some lawyer who's a philosopher like why should he have any authority over how we look at scripture well you know I know people would say about me it's like who are you to tell us what this means and I guess my only point is you know Blake also has his opinions I have my opinions and I would just say that for me the approach I take is to look at the stuff at face value and to say what does the evidence what does the surrounding evidence say I'm not trying to make something like I'm not taking a you know trying to make a circle whole Fitness square peg or whatever the phrase is I'm just trying to say what is it at face value I'm not trying to redefine it and so I I don't want to be mean or interrupt but I don't know there's a difference because because you're just observing the data and trying to come up with conclusions and it's fine for Blake to do that too my point is it's a profit Syrian revelator's job to tell us what scripture you know should and should mean and what's going on and what you showed at the very beginning this episode is that the professors of revelators are trying to explain away what Revelation means or what translation means they're simply telling us these are not the droids you're looking for and there were never any changes to begin with so it's it's just the point that neither you nor Blake Osler have authority to tell us what scripture should or shouldn't mean that's the prophet series of revelator's job and they're either completely missing in action or they're literally explicitly and intentionally deceiving us yeah I mean like I said I think I think the fact that they should be able to get answers on this stuff and don't even try to give it to us you know you're not going to have Russell Nelson get up at General Conference and even try to answer the stuff because you can't I mean the problem is to answer this stuff in a way that is is logically consistent would completely undermine all of the authority of the church and so yeah you have to just sit there and just basically ignore the people like me who are pointing this out because you can't let members know uh that it's there and to try to explain it would just make it worse I think I think trying to explain it as we've seen from apologetics doesn't work because as soon as you have that second layer they give the Apologetics you go that doesn't work because this this and this and then and then it's it's just like it's screwed and that's why when we look at the initial quotes and you go that's just not true and here's why yeah it's a problem that just doesn't go away and here we've got Boyd K Packer addressing these issues so maybe he'll save us yeah okay Packer this is from the enzyme in 1974. so so it's not recent but it's also you know in a in a published Magazine from the church and he says some have alleged that these books of Revelation are false and they place an Evidence changes that have occurred in the text of these scriptures since their original publication they cite these changes of which there are many examples as though they themselves were announcing Revelation as though they were the only ones that knew of them of course there have been changes in Corrections anyone who has done even limited research knows that when properly reviewed such Corrections become a testimony for not against the truth of the books The Prophet Joseph Smith was an unschooled Farm Boy to read some of his early letters in the original shows him to be somewhat unpolished in spelling and grammar and an expression that the revelations came through him in any form of literary refinement is nothing short of a miracle that some perfecting should continue strengthens my respect for them now I add with emphasis that such changes have been basically minor refinements and grammar expression punctuation clarification nothing fundamental has been altered that is that's another Whopper that's a huge Whopper yeah yeah it's a Whopper it's deceptive like they're going back to the Joseph Smith was a Yokel except when people joined the church in 1830 it's because he was a prophet Seer Revelator and translator who had special powers to read into a Seer Stone to discern God's word for word literal will because he had translated from gold plates so they want us to simultaneously hail him as the greatest human who's ever lived since Jesus and they want to dismiss him as a Yokel uneducated farm boy but that wasn't how he was sold to the world and that's not what made you convert did you convert to the church because Joseph Smith was a dumb uneducated Yokel well I mean I won't lie to you there is something to be said about I was told that story as a convert where they said this guy had no education and he had produced The Book of Mormon and then you read the book of Mormon not knowing that there were what tens or hundreds of thousands of grammatical changes to make it look as polished as it is but when you read it you're like holy crap this is actually a pretty good book for a you know well at the time they may not sound younger they was what was he like 23 when he did or whatever but um to to write a book that actually reads as the book Mormon does today if you're an uneducated is really impressive except for the fact is the Book of Mormon doesn't read anything like uh the original Book of Mormon doesn't read anything like it does today so yeah it does kind of read like someone wrote it in a in a you know a woodsy area that doesn't have a lot of formal education that being said they like you said it's like you have type versus loose translation The Book of Mormon then you have like brilliant versus dumb Joseph Smith and you talk about how brilliant and gifted he was in some areas and then when you have these other problems you say oh you'll see it's just an uneducated you know hick farm boy that could barely speak a coherent sentence which we also know is not true he wrote during this time that are using pretty you know flowery language they're well written I mean I'm not saying he's writing like you know novels but he could dictate a letter that read very well and we have proof of that outside of the Book of Mormon doctor Covenant so it's just it's a false equation and this quote from Boyd K Packer is in a nationally published magazine by the church and he's saying it as an ordained Prophet Syrian Revelation yes so here we have an apostle of the Mormon Church writing in a national publication that these um changes to the revelations which people might hear about is much to do about nothing then he's going to use what I would argue is kind of emotional manipulation to tell the members that not only are these changes not a problem but they're actually going to strengthen your testimony and then he's going to then use kind of that thought stopping technique of trying to get people not to look further by saying I add with emphasis that such changes have been basically minor refinements in grammar expression punctuation clarification no nothing fundamental has been altered this is a very manipulative dishonest statement he knows better and he's using his position of authority to make sure that members reading this Nationwide worldwide don't look further because an apostle is telling you he's done the work and it's not there and he's lying outright lying about what the changes are yeah I would yeah and I would say we've proven that number one they were not basically minor refinements and grammar expression punctuation clarification and number two they're not Faith affirming no they're not like reading these changes does not Bolter bolster my faith it it adds to the mounting evidence that Joseph was making this up as he went along and that God was not revealing this stuff to him he was just picking up influences from around him making changes and then back dating and changing things as he went along so anyway yeah no I mean Packers shame on you boy K Packer yeah you passed away but shame on you you for deceiving the members okay so what's the the next slide yeah so the next slide is just kind of I guess what we've already said but it's like Boyd K Packer is correct that the research shows there were changes and it doesn't take a lot of research to find them but it's making a calculated lie that the changes are not fundamental he's using weasel words to assure members there's nothing to worry about and as I added he's I think he's being kind of emotionally manipulative to say it strengthens his testimony as a way to keep members from thinking it's a problem because it's like well if an apostle is strengthened by it then surely I should be um and then I want to revisit a quote from um Hubie Brown Apostle Huey Brown that I said at the beginning when he said none of the earliest Revelations of the church have been revised and the Doctrine and Covenants stands as printed including sections five and seven these two sections and some others are addressed directly to certain individuals but there are lessons in them for all of us and therefore they have not been deleted and as we have shown we went through both dnc5 and dnc7 this is an outright lie Joseph Smith changed both of them in very very big ways and this is a claim you could make before Google made the information more available because you could see this in a quick Google search you can even see it just through the Joseph Smith paper project this is just it's an outright lie and this is how early church members taught it and how it would have been taught to me even in the 90s when I joined the late 90s because at that point it was very hard to find this information and so the point is a lot of these early leaders and I think the leaders today they've all known better and they want to make sure the members don't because they know it's not Faith promoting and I don't know what more to say because I just I feel like if we were on the other side if I was was lying about stuff like this in these episodes with you people would rightfully call me out for lying and these are people that claim to speak for God they're ordained as Apostles and yet they are lying about very basic stuff because they don't want you to know yeah let's go to the Hubie Brown quote yep so just to put a little bit of a cap on this so not only have earlier Revelations been revised but DNC 5 and 7 are both outlined above meaning earlier in the episode detailing just how much they would change uh not just in grammar but changing the meanings of the parts of Revelation dnc7 was as we talked about sitting him and right off of a parchment in a cave and then was expanded to back up the priesthood restoration and so dnc7 is a great example of how Joseph Smith claimed Revelation from God to literally be able to answer any question such as them having a question about a Bible verse in John and being given a question almost an answer almost instantly you know Joseph Smith could get a revelation on which young women in the church he was commanded to marry um and yet today we can't get anything to clarify some of the problematic parts of the doctrine such as why the book of Abraham doesn't match um some of the anachronisms you know you think leaders could get answers to that and it's just to know wouldn't it be great if modern leaders could get Revelations on why the book Abraham translation is wrong why the church's scripture say dark skin is a curse from God or who our heavenly mother is and then to you know to look back at all these changes even if they did claim these Revelations how long would it be until someone else down the road had to revise them and I think that's the problem when you allow revisions to what you claim are God's word to stand and to defend that it's like then at that point what change could be made down the road where you'd say okay that's too far yeah yeah and and this really does bring it home because it it ties back to kind of how we began which is how we're sold either you know as children in the church or as Commerce to the church that the whole value proposition of the restoration is that God speaks to men through prophets and they can you know profit means you know prophesy about the future Seer means you can see through a peep Stone and and translate documents when you don't have an understanding of the language Revelator means receive Revelations again about the future or about God's Doctrine and so this is the value proposition but but from Joseph Smith to now during Justice Miss time you get a bunch of Revelations and prophecies sincere ships that are problematic that are racist sexist or you know in some other way uh disproven and so you know there's some there's some stuff that people like but there's also a lot of problematic stuff that had to be changed and then since Joseph Smith to now we're sustaining all these men as prophets there's a revelators and all they're doing is basically undoing messes they're undoing polygamy they're undoing the the priesthood band on on black black people uh the temple ban on on black people and and they're not more importantly like you said they're not ahead of the times telling us that slavery's bad that slavery needs to be abolished they're not telling us that women should vote you know women should be voting before the women's suffrage movement they're not talking about the civil rights movement and how racism is evil and pernicious it's it's it's promoting racism instead of denying you know denouncing it nothing about LGBT people and transgender people nothing about uh you know anything that could prevent calamities or Wars or you know problems that are causing starvation and suffering and and everything where are the prophet series and revelators when we need them where are they yeah well and I think to what you were saying you know one of the our next episodes gonna be on the word of wisdom and actually that's going to Encompass a little bit what you're saying which is all of these Revelations are absolutely confined to what Joseph Smith knew up until the moment he recorded them and so that's why he had to go back and change because he's learning these new ideas that he likes he has to go back and retrofit it so that it doesn't seem like he's changing God's decisions you know as David Whitmer said apparently God changes his mind a lot because he's changing all these Revelations but the word of wisdom is great because uh Joseph Smith doesn't change it in 1835 because everything he knows up until then is basically the temperance movement and it is very inconsistent and illogical from a nutritional standpoint so the later leaders can't go back they don't want to go back and alter the DNC um because they are I think honestly probably too afraid to alter God's words or at least what they believe to be and so they reinterpret it and completely reuse it differently than it's written and I think it's kind of a good segue into that because you're going to see how when you have these Revelations the leaders are now stuck with them and now they're trying to reinterpret them for a modern time when we're taught in the church that these Revelations are given so that we have direction for modern time in our time and you just you twist yourself into a pretzel trying to make it work which is what they're doing uh when they're you know telling us on Sunday that we can uh can't drink uh coffee even though the word of wisdom says hot drinks but you know and we can't drink iced coffee it's just it it's a mess and it's because all these Revelations relations are written only with the knowledge of what US what any person would have in the 1830s and 40s yeah and I'll just say to close before we hit the last slide and I just mean this very sincerely it's a hard world there's a lot of pain and suffering and death and famine and disease and starvation and poverty and Injustice and I would love there to be professors and revelators that talk to God that could help straighten things out I really wish there was that but what it seems to be that we have is we have we're sustaining people as prophetsters and revelators when they're doing none of those things and we're giving them our time and our money and our loyalty and our devotion in our lives and our children as if they really are uh speaking for God and telling us God's will when really they're not and they don't deserve that level of you know when we all stand up when one of the Apostles walks into the room and we all stand up to show them our respect that they're not doing the things the prophet says in Revelator should be doing to deserve that level of respect and money and devotion and time but I wish they really were I wish they really were speaking for God so let's go ahead and conclude um with this final slide yes this is just um kind of to put a little bit of an end to this which is to say the recent episodes we've done um are on church history and they're in the same patterns we saw early on so we have the issues with the Book of Mormon with treasure digging with the revelations on the Lost 116 pages and the simple fact is that Joseph Smith is changing his theology he's constantly changing his views he's constantly changing what he believes is kind of the way the church should be led and these patterns go throughout all of these issues and that's why we've said it since the beginning to try to watch these in order if you can just because they do we do refer back to a lot of them just because these problems are not isolated they Compound on each other uh there are common threads and you know Joseph Smith started the concept of changing Revelations but the current church today continues this tradition and it tells us that either God is really confused and indecisive on what leaders are supposed to and what we're supposed to do or the people who claim to speak for God are making it up and you know we saw that just recently with the November 15 policy of exclusion and then three and a half years God reversed it with another Revelation and the only real difference is that today officially they'll call a policy as opposed to Revelation but in that instance they did call it Revelation and we will get to that in a future episode but it's just to say that you know the leaders today are still inconsistent and as you said they don't they can't answer the questions that people have they have these face-to-face meetings with the youth and they ask questions and you would think these people as Apostles would say I prayed about it and God gave me the following statement you don't see that today and I don't know if it's because the leaders know they don't have that ability and they just don't feel confident making that kind of a statement or if it's because um you know they just don't want to make a decision that can be upended by you know future knowledge in science or whatever but they don't and so for me it's a big tell that Joseph Smith was able to pull Revelations whatever you needed to and made changes as he needed to and leader sense that are just basically silent when it comes to direct Revelation from God it's been 200 years almost since Joseph Smith and we've had very few Revelations that basically we're just in the the you know the well I think the Pres the prophet or two after him and it's just basically been silenced since yeah and I think that's also a huge Smoking Gun why in the world did Joseph Smith receive 130 plus Revelations during his lifetime and yet pretty much none of the profits since have released any Revelations other than ones like the Declarations to either undo polygamy or to undo the the priesthood ban um not to mention the second declaration to undo polygamy because the first one was never even offered sincerely right like yeah yeah and the Declaration to remove uh the priesthood ban was not even a revelation so and we'll get to that in our episode in a few weeks on racing the Priestess I mean even those are more statements that are basically being signed off on by everybody and so you know there's just they don't canonize Revelation and I honestly think to a large degree if you're a you know a leader in in the you know basically in the last 20 years and you know the internet's out there you know there are always people watching what you're saying you are a lot more careful on promises you make or on um predictions you make because you know that when the time comes and you're proven wrong you're going to look foolish and and we did not get into um we're gonna have episodes on Revelations down the road but you know we didn't we're focused today just on the DNC but there are Revelations that Joseph Smith made that failed there are Revelations that Joseph Smith made um that are just factually not correct when we get into polygm we'll get into that Word of Wisdom we'll get into that and so there the problems go beyond just the changes and so the changes to me are important because it shows Joseph Smith was willing to effectively alter God's words to um better to at least put his um personal or you know desires or needs at the Forefront whether it's establishing as Authority um changing his theology with polygamy to get women to to basically throw away their moral compass you know by being told this isn't just me asking this is God asking you and I think it really shows how powerful Revelations can be but I think this episode also shows that these Revelations are not what we're taught they are and they're certainly not the direct word of God that we've always been been taught they were and once you start to realize that once you realize how watered down the Revel revelatory process was for for Mormonism and then last week when she realized how watered down the priesthood Authority is because that story was created long after the fact all of these things start to water down and it's like a house of cards where everything's gonna fall because once you realize the pattern all of these things are not what they are claimed to be um it sucks and it's really difficult and if you're a member watching this or if you're someone who's just recently starting to question I feel for you because I was there it sucks and it sucks because you're going to feel alone because a lot of people that are are believing are not going to want to hear it or they're not going to accept where you're at or read what you've wanted want them to read I get all that I was there I still am there sometimes and I just all I can say is um as my family motto became over the last five or six years not because of church it's just it is what it is so um it sucks but the evidence is there you can't make that go away and claim its Faith because as I said earlier you know faith is the belief in what we can't see these are things we can see these are things we can show very well documented and as painful as they are and as much as it just sucks this is what it is and so these episodes are not going to be fun if you're a Believer and I don't ever want people to think they will be but I do hope that they are at least straightforward and hopefully it helps you make more sense of it because for me it took me a long time to get to a point where I could kind of make sense of it in a way that was more like chronological and orderly so I hope it's helpful to people it is and so just to close out I want to remind everyone that these essays can all be found at ldsdiscussions.com in the show notes we'll have a link to both the uh changes to the DNC essay uh that that was the the foundation for today's episode we'll also have links to various episodes and resources that we discussed today including David whitmer's uh you know the text to David Whitner MERS pamphlet which is really important also just quickly remind everyone these episodes can be found on anchor they can be found on Spotify and you can even watch the video on Spotify now which is a nice addition and you can also watch these on the YouTube LDS discussions playlist and of course they're also available on Apple Apple podcast app and hopefully wherever you consume your podcasts just in audio form so Mike you're the best you're a legend thank you so much for today I learned a lot and I'm learning so much through the series thanks everybody like I said I just I hope they're helpful I know sometimes I know I've gotten some emails where people are upset uh because it is really jarring and um like I said it it is what it is but at the same time I really do believe that it will be one that will be helpful to people that really are at a point where they want to know or uh people who are trying to find a way to make sense of it that kind of you know like where I was right you get to a party like this doesn't add up but I can't quite piece it together um I just hope they're helpful I hope they're not coming off as you know super antagonistic it's not what we're trying to do we're just trying to put it in a way that's not sugar coated but also we're not you know um trying to um withholding the info just putting out the info and let you do with it what you want and I could just try and like never talk and like never give my reactions but I'm literally reacting as someone who's raised Mormon who's learning a lot of this stuff for the first time and I'm both like saying well that's not what I was taught or I'm emotionally reacting and I hope people are too off put by my emotional reactions because I am human and this is a human process so well and you need someone to to be able to to respond to what I'm saying because there are times when I'm going through it I'm not thinking it from a certain perspective and so if you ask a question or you know you're trying to clarify it's helpful I think not just to me but to others and you know there are times too I mean I remember listening to podcasts from Mormon stories or Mormon expressions or um you know infants and Thrones more discussions all of those when I was especially when I was first going through it I I work uh my small business I A lot of times I'm working on my own um with with some of the products we deal with and I would be I haven't had my headphones on and I'd be like audibly gasping because I was like what you know and um and and that still happens sometimes not as much anymore but yeah I mean it's people have reactions when you're hearing this stuff for the first time it's just like you're like are you kidding me like I had no idea and um and so I think it's a very natural reaction It's just sometimes like you said it when you're a Believer you hear that and you're like oh my goodness you're piling on or they're being mean it's like no it's just it's a reaction because you're told as we talked about in these last few episodes especially because they're so foundational when I was a convert I am putting my life experience against the way I've learned it actually happened and so my experience in the church against what it really was and yeah that is going to elicit responses that are very shocked because you trust and you you believe especially if you're raised in the church and you're told from the time you're born um these primary stories and and these um you sing the songs and and you watch the videos I mean this is a very ingrained foundational account you have and then to find out that it's not at all what what that's claimed to be is it's it's yeah it's painful it it really it sucks and like I said earlier and I know a lot of people go through it when you are going through it and you're in a family where the other people are still Believers or your parents are believers or your all of your community that if you live in Utah or maybe in Arizona or Idaho and you've got a lot of people in your community that are built through the church you can't talk to anyone it means when you do your ostracized or they look at you like you're you know I was told by missionaries that came by after I started doing the Deep dive I think because I became a bit of a ward project and they told me that they could see the light going from my eyes they said that Satan had got a hold of me and I remember just being like guys I was going through it I was showing them sorry the the essays on the website I'm like guys if Satan has a hold of me then he also has a hold of the church because I'm reading it right off of the church's website and and um I just remember that they had like a very like surprise look in their eyes because they hadn't seen it either and um so it's painful it sucks and I feel for anyone that's going through this and is um in a situation where they can't talk to people and I hope that these episodes give you a chance to process the information in a way that's not hopefully going to make you angrier or at least gives you more perspective so that when you are ready to talk to people you're able to do so in a calmer way and I will say and I know I'm rambling here we really this is a bit beyond the one piece of advice I would give to anybody who is first uncovering this stuff and you want to talk to people your loved ones your community um the one piece of advice I would give is to take a lot of time before you talk to anyone and the reason is you need time to process this in a way that you can talk to other people without getting emotional and I made this mistake a lot of people make this mistake take this information let it sit with you do some more research talk to people online who are going through it too and not in a way that's going to make you angry but in a way that you can have actual conversations to process this and then when you can have a conversation with someone without getting upset without getting real emotional then talk to people because they're gonna be much more open to talking to you if you can maintain a calm presence than they are if you do like the thing where you just machine gun all of the issues out of them at once and you get emotional and I did it so I'm telling you right now it's the way that you don't want to go and it's the way most people go and I'm sorry to tag this on to the end of the show but I'll hope for people that are watching this that are in that position just give yourself patience give yourself the permission to wait it's not going to matter if you talk to your loved ones today or a week or a month from today to make sure you can process in a way that you can talk to them in a calm way to show them that you're willing to do it um in a way that's data driven that's not based on emotions and to show them that you've done your research and you're not coming to them after just reading one thing and and so it's a long-winded thing to say at the end of the episode but that's one thing I wish someone would have told me when I first started finding it so hopefully it helps somebody out there who's just now going through all of this yep it certainly will all right Mike you're the best uh thanks everybody and thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon stories thanks for your support we your donations make all this possible if you want to see this type of content continue please go to mormonsstories.org click on the Donate button become a monthly donor we'll keep this content up for as long as there's support for it be kind to each other be good to each other please share this with everyone so that they can learn and have informed consent as they engage Mormonism we love your feedback feel free to email us make comments on YouTube make comments on Facebook email us at Mormon stories gmail.com if you have ideas for other topics that you want Mike to cover or write essays about we would love to hear that too um and just uh be good to each other love you guys and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast take care