Word of Wisdom

foreign and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I'm your host John delin it is August 25th 2022 and we are excited to have another episode in our amazing series with uh Mike from LDS discussions today's episode is on the word of wisdom for those of you who don't have a Mormon background the word of wisdom is a health code that Mormons live by Mormons are often known as being those people who don't drink alcohol or don't drink tea or don't chew tobacco or smoke or don't uh drink alcohol or anything like that or do drugs now we're going to get into it today and of course we're not the only group or even religious group who have beliefs like that um but regardless the word of wisdom is what a Mormon would think of when they're thinking of their health code and it was a health code that was given uh by Revelation uh according to our founder Joseph Smith two our founder Joseph Smith way back in the Kirtland days which is in the 1830s um and today we're going to be talking about its Origins and uh you know how it's been emphasized over time and maybe some of the issues or problems with it if you're trying to understand or look at the CH the Mormon Church uh kind of objectively as it relates to its truth claims so that is today's episode I do want to remind everyone that this is all based on the amazing work done by Mike at ldsdiscussions.com where he has a series of essays that he has released and has done so much important work please check it out um it's it's a real contribution to our people I also want to just remind people that all of these LDS discussions episodes are available on anchor they're available on Spotify both in audio format and in video format they're available on the Apple uh podcast app and audio format pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts and of course the video versions are available on YouTube in the LDS discussions uh YouTube playlist under the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel so that is uh kind of the introduction for today we're trying to make these in introductions tight and welcome back to Mormon stories podcast what's up everybody it's great to have you it's nice to be back for another one and and uh I think it's kind of been nice the last few weeks kind of doing them uh that are not quite going through like biblical scholarship and uh Book of Mormon scripture stuff it's nice to have a little bit of a change in going through some of the history and so today we'll kind of be a good continuation from last week's episode on changes to the doctrine of covenants that go over the word of wisdom which is obviously a very impactful uh Revelation in in the church today and and um looking at kind of how it was treated at the time and and what may have changed with regards to how the church has interpreted it absolutely all right well let's just jump in tell us a bit about uh your first slide yeah and just we're kind of as we've been doing these overview episodes we've been talking about how they all kind of tie into each other in different ways and uh we've talked about how Joseph Smith has had a pattern of pulling surrounding ideas and repurposing them in the name of God as a theological vehicle as David bakavoy would say he's kind of actualizing um information in a way that makes sense and fits in with his theological goals and the word of wisdom feels like a perfect example of this because it's going to incorporate ideas that are very strong in his lifetime in his time and place um that are not only going to be repurposed by Joseph but later the leaders of the church are going to have to repurpose them again as they try to figure out how to implement a revelation that was never a commandment in the first place and also becomes kind of dated as we get advances in nutrition and Science and all that and so this particular topic does not have like a full out uh gospel topics essay so we're going to use a video that the church put out I believe three years ago I think it was 2019 and it's a series of videos they did called now you know and it features kind of like a cartoony in my opinion somewhat childish kind of artwork um and highlights uh some of these more goof uh troubling controversial uh issues of the church um in a very short concise video so we're going to use that almost as if it's an essay because they give us how they view it as a history how they view it as the Revelation and also how the church interprets it today and so I think it'll be a good backdrop almost as a way to look at kind of the apologetic response will be to look directly at how the church frames it excellent all right so let's uh let's jump in and and I'm and I think these videos are kind of campy they're kind of fun and and we'll have a bit of a multimedia Extravaganza yeah instead of just kind of text and images so yeah so hopefully this will be a little bit of a change with some breakup with some video and and hopefully that'll give a little break from hearing us talk as well so I'll be good all right so here we have the first video uh from from the LDS church introducing the word of wisdom right yep all right let's kick it off members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints live by a health code called The Word of Wisdom what is the word of wisdom and why do millions of Latter-day Saints around the world follow it let's take a closer look Prophet Joseph Smith received the word of wisdom by Revelation in 1833 he wrote the Revelation down and canonized it in a collection of Revelations called the Doctrine and Covenants which Latter-Day Saints view of scripture the Revelation is recognized by most as the reason why Latter-Day Saints abstain from Alcohol Tobacco coffee tea and drug use but to understand why the word of wisdom came about we first need to know some historical context okay so that's uh that's kind of the introduction and so far as someone raised Mormon as someone who was Mormon until I was 45. there was nothing there I heard that was wrong or objectionable or misleading yep I agree so yeah that's uh oh no I'm so yeah sir so if we go to the next slide it's I agree with you I think the opening paragraph is fairly straightforward I think they're stating um basically what the word of wisdom is with regards to how the church gives it today um the one thing I wanted to add and you see this a lot in their videos is that when they do the imagery of Joseph Smith writing down the revolu Revelation they have them sitting there kind of writing in himself super scholarly um and I'm not positive on the word of wisdom but I believe this is early enough to where Joseph is still using the Rock and the hat to read the revelations and so of course historically speaking I believe they should be using uh the video clip of Joseph with his head in the Hat with a scribe uh writing down the words next to them and you know it's a small thing I get it and the word of wisdom might have been after he um stopped using the stone I don't think it is but it could be it's kind of in that gray area but it's just one of those areas where and we're going to see this more as this video goes along they try to make this imagery incredibly positive and Faith promoting when it comes to the church and then when it comes to the outside the church um they do not give such charity and the other part I would just add is well the word of wisdom today is why members are not allowed to drink alcohol uh the text of the word of wisdom does allow itself for beer which we're going to get into as we go but it just shows right off the bat here that the messiness of the wording of the Revelation is going to be um problematic for this video and also for you know we'll mention the overview and just to note right off the bat that the church is proclaiming the word of wisdom as it has been redefined today by leaders is kind of the way it was originally intended and it just does not match um with how the Revelation was originally recorded and that's not even getting into the historical background of it okay all right so a couple little quibbles a little bit Yeah but pretty straightforward yeah so far pretty straightforward and I agree with you that has been a major point of deception for Mormons for over a century the church well at least for 70 80 years the church has depicted consistently Joseph Smith as translating with the eurom thumb uh with the breastplate and the spectacles when we now know it's a stone in the Hat and it was only when the internet embarrassed the church into coming up with other depictions um yeah Fair that's a fair criticism well yeah I think when you talk about Revelations um a lot of times especially even when I first started reading about the stone and the hat for the Book of Mormon I did not realize the revelations were done the same way at first um and then you start seeing I think it's some of the headers that'll say like receive through the year and thumb and also you're like oh crap that means he was receiving the revelations just as he did uh claim to translate the book Mormon oh and also just as he claimed to see hidden treasure that he charged people the money to look for and that's why we talk about these episodes being connected because treasure digging is using the same technique as translating The Book of Mormon which is using the same technique as receiving his early Revelations and we talked about that a lot in the last episode but it is important to note even though we did talk about it a lot in the last episode just that that is something that the church is not going to put in these videos that Joseph is using that rock and a hat to receive these early Revelations and I know this one's possibly after that I'm not positive but it's right in that that kind of area where he's starting to to not use it as much yeah it's an example of white washing yeah your history yeah and sanitizing it which is a form of deception okay let's continue with the video the word of wisdom appeared at a time of intense public debate in the United States about alcohol abuse as early as the 1810s rapidly growing industrialization and alcohol use had begun breaking down previously held social norms by the 1830s many adults in the United States have been raised in families where alcoholic beverages were consumed at breakfast lunch and dinner many people became concerned about the Social and Health consequences of increased alcohol consumption the temperance movement grew as reformers called for abstinence from hard liquor any involved with the movement went further taking a pledge against all alcoholic beverages including beer some even recommended coffee as a substitute for alcohol given that clean water was not always available at the same time some reformers spoke out against tobacco use okay do you mind if I give you my quick reaction to that no go ahead as as someone who has not really seen these videos or paid attention to them but as someone who has raised Mormon for 45 years that's more of a background on the word of wisdom than I ever received in my 45 years in the church it was always sort of like Emma saw that some of the elders in Kirtland were chewing tobacco and spitting the Tobacco on the floor of the temple she complained Joseph went to God and got a revelation never was the word of wisdom discussed to me as something coming out of the context of the temperance movement that I mean I love it that they're doing that now but that was not my my experience for four and a half decades because it was important I think for the church to have us all believe that Joseph just got his Revelations from God if the church is just telling us oh Joseph saw that thing and then brought it in and then he saw that thing and brought it in it makes it a lot less Oculus um you know that if he's getting it straight from God and that's why I believe a lot of that context was never given to us now that's just my my gut reaction no that's pretty much it so yeah I mean my reaction's on the slides and I pretty much did the same thing because we're validating each other well as a convert I remember very very specifically because when I took the discussions I took them with people I knew and um who were in the church and um at the time it was my girlfriend who's now my wife and I remember very specifically my now mother-in-law telling me about how Joseph Smith knew that smoking and drinking was bad before anyone else knew it and because he got through God and I remember thinking at the time that that was pretty cool because you know this was in the late 90s so you figure in the late 90s they were still just really kind of getting to the point where they were really hammering down on you know advertising smoking and really outlining the the health danger I mean they knew it was bad at that point but it was really becoming more mainstream and so you're thinking you're living in a time when it's kind of becoming common knowledge but like to think that 160 years earlier Joseph Smith was one of the first people was declared I thought that's amazing so to find this out you're like oh he just took another thing that was being talked about heavily in his area in his time and place there's nothing like you said there's nothing miraculous about it and as we've talked about like with the Book of Mormon it's explainable you when when you claim something's a miracle and then you have all of these ways you can explain it uh it's just it's very ordinary and it's actually what you expect at this point um from Joseph Smith so I won't read all of this just because we kind of covered it but yeah it's the same thing like I want to give them credit because this video does state that this was something that was being talked about that there was a growing public movement against Alcohol Tobacco and other substances um because of the way people acted when they were drunk because of the fact that you know tobacco was leaving stains all over and smoke and just kind of gross and um you know as I mentioned here too it's just when I was took the discussions it was told me that no one could have possibly known this and this is just another area where Joseph Smith's bringing surrounding influence and so as we talked about in the last few weeks alone Joseph Smith um you know didn't mention the Melchizedek and aaronic priesthoods until the camellite movement brought over the idea of split priesthoods uh you mentioned before the multiple tears of Heaven is from Emmanuel swedenberg uh the first Vision we talked about in that episode that there were like three dozen accounts um in Joseph Smith's area they had very similar language almost identical language to Joseph Smith's first Vision the temple endowment from the Masonic ceremony and so we're just seeing more and more patterns of Joseph Smith taking surrounding material and then using that as a vehicle for his own ideas and so I want to give credit to the church for declaring this up front because it is something that was not talked about certainly in my time in the church and um so while I give him credit for it it also is quite a surprise um to learn that this was not very unique for Joseph Smith to come up with yeah yeah yeah and so I I love it that they're now kind of acknowledging the surrounding influences Terrell Gibbons has now said that Joseph was an inspired syncretist which is his elegant way of of creating a euphemism to explain the fact that basically he just he just imported uh surrounding influences into all his doctrines and Revelations but I you know I've already said it but that was not the Mormonism I was raised in and that's not the Joseph Smith I was sold and so this is a bit of a bait and switch to me yeah I mean it is it's just one of those things where you know we it's just different than it was told and now it's almost being told like it's been told the whole time and that's one of those things we're like come on like we know this is not I could tell you I mean I remember though there's certain there are certain things I was told during those discussions and during my temple experience that I will never forget and that's one of them just because it was at the time like holy crap I that's a pretty good proof he was a prophet but like you said you find out that this is not how it happened and certainly not um pulling it out of thin air so it's it's a problem yeah yeah okay let's go to the next slide yeah so next slide um it's just you know again we're talking about how unique is Joseph's Word of Wisdom Revelation and so they mentioned the temperance movement in the video and the temperance movement was very much a thing by the 1820s uh Simplicity of health and this is actually from the Mormon stories essay on the word of wisdom that's on your website I think Michael Brown Put it together I believe right yep yep and it's super good and um so I copied from you guys because it was easier than typing this out myself and it was really well done so um he said the temperance movement was very much a thing by the late 1820s Simplicity of Health published in 1829 elaborates on every item in the word of wisdom means of preserving Health was published in 1806 and contains every bit of the word of wisdom avoidance of alcohol coffee tea and tobacco and sparing use of meat as well as eating fruits in season the Journal of Health published in Philadelphia August 25th 1830 also contains every aspect of the word of wisdom the Kirtland chapter of The Temper Society found formed in 1830 shortly before Mormons arrived from New York Presbyterian Minister Sylvester Graham conducted a speaking tour for almost 15 years extolling the virtues of abstaining from alcohol smoking tea coffee and eating a diet of mainly of grains local fruits and vegetables meat was expressly forbidden he was popular and well known in the late 1820s to 1840 and also invented the graham cracker it's kind of a cool fact February 26 1833 was national day of temperance which prompted much discussion in Nauvoo um it might mean Kirtland I'm not sure it was common practice at the school of Elders to choose spit and smoke tobacco the ladies as tradition would have it were tasked with cleaning up the boys mess Emma was prompted to lament it would be a good thing if a revelation could be had declaring the use of tobacco sin and commanding its suppression the matter was taken up and joked about one of the Brethren suggests that the Revelation should also provide for a total abstinence from coffee and tea drinking intending this as a counter dig at the sisters far from a groundbreaking Revelation from God about health Joseph Smith Emma and the school of Elders were simply discussing the events of their day imagine their surprise when the following day February 27 1833 Smith brought fourth Revelation from God that conveniently ended the debate using the very language of the temperance movement I mean it's just I don't know what else to say so I'll give you my reaction to that on the one hand yeah it sounds like uh how's that Revelation if Joseph's like paying attention to the temperance movement all around him in Kirtland he's getting feedback from Emma talking to the elders about some things goes back to God comes back and basically puts all that into King James English kind of Revelation so like you know all that's true and um uh you know it's it's super it's not it would be like I watched Oprah and Dr Phil and or or uh you know who's the Dave Ramsey guy and he's like don't go to don't get yeah yeah and then I go back and and receive a revelation that that's bad like you know it's not super remarkable it's clearly influenced by those around you surrounding you you don't even give them credit right and then you call it Revelation so on the one hand that's problematic the apologetic voice in me is saying what do you expect Joseph to kind of pull things out of thin air of course he's gonna you know and the church would even probably admit this earlier that of course he he received revelations in response to questions he was asking or situations he was confronting and so I could hear a progressive Mormon apologist say come on Mike of course he's influenced by people surround him and that's a feature not a bug that Emma's influencing because it shows that he cares about his wife and he cares about women and then he's able to take influence so like and I think at the end you claim this isn't a Smoking Gun I'm just trying to be fair in my response to what I've read so far yeah and my response though to that would be it's one because yeah they have the the apologetic response absolutely is to say Joseph Smith himself says that you are to seek knowledge out of the best books out of the best sources all that stuff so I get that my problem is when you claim to get a revelation even if it is prompted by Emma I have no problem with that either because of course you're going to be prompted by something right but when you give a revelation that is taking everything you know in your world view and adding nothing else it shows that the Revelation is not from a source other than your own mind because Joseph Smith and we're gonna we're gonna hit this a few times in this thing he could have saved lives in the church if his Revelation included boiling water which happened to be something nobody knew at that time was a way to keep healthy I mean part of the reason they drank alcohol for breakfast is because it was a way to keep water from making you sick and yet in this Revelation Joseph Smith does not get anything that is not talked about the time such as boiling water and we'll mention this later in this episode that leads to people in in the early church being killed are dying and a lot of them getting very very sick because God apparently didn't seem deem fit to give Joseph any knowledge beyond what he knew and I realize that sounds very sharp but at the same time that's the reality so if you want to say isn't it great that Emma prompted it I would say absolutely that being said that prompting should lead to something more than what was already being talked about in his day yeah wouldn't it be amazing if dnc89 began with for behold there are these things called germs and this thing called germ Theory yeah and there's bacteria and microbes things behold that thou cannot see yet make thy sick you know yeah even reasons you know yeah just in this way so that you don't get sick now that would be Revelation that's just it just imagine if there's a verse in there that says am I the Lord deem that um ye shall boil all water before consuming for unboiled water can lead to Great illness something like that that's something that wasn't known very well at the time and yet we don't have any of that and you know it would be kind of like um I don't mean want to sound like a jerk here but if you had a pandemic in America in the 2020s and you had a prophet who was a church and you had apologies saying or a prophet in the church who was a doctor and he had apologies saying oh my goodness how lucky are we that we have a doctor as a prophet during a pandemic and that profit didn't give us any information beyond what the CDC was giving us I would say that's a pretty good tell that God's not speaking to him because he couldn't even give us the information to keep us healthy before the government could which tells you there's no real use for a profit when you've got the government who's going to get there first anyways right I mean just hypothetically speaking of course of course of course yeah all right well let's go to the next little video clip it was in this social climate in the early 1830s that Joseph Smith started a series of formal classes called the school of the prophets this school was an assembly of church leaders who met to discuss and instruct one another in theological and secular learning such as religion economics philosophy and Civic matters but the attendees frequently smoked chewed and spat tobacco all in the same space where Joseph taught the school and recorded Revelations in addition Emma Smith Joseph's wife was left to clean up the mess and she was disturbed by the men's actions she spoke to Joseph about it Joseph inquired of the Lord and received the Revelation known as the word of wisdom okay so there it's mentioning Emma's influence yeah and and that's pretty straightforward as well I mean I don't know if he because some of these don't have like tons of reaction I just I feel like sometimes yeah and you'll see in the slides I have some thoughts on it but it's not like anything so one thing I'll know and this is one of the things that drives me nuts about these videos is they use very cartoony graphics and in a lot of ways they do it in a way that privileges the church and it kind of goes against Outsiders so if you look at this when they show people in the church smoking and drinking they're up like that top image they're super scholarly it's almost like they're sitting there in a class like going over like these really deep philosophical ideas and then when they talk about anyone outside the church drinking they look like a bunch of hunched over drunks on the bottom I just feel like that's a very um manipulative way to use imagery to you know try to Elevate Church members like saying even when we did it we were still looking better than them and I feel that's just you know it it might be splitting hairs a bit but I just that's why these now you know videos I've covered a few of them on the website they're misleading in the data but they're also really misleading in the imagery and so imagery is important they know that that's why they're putting these together um so you know that's just it's just I know it's a small thing but I just like using the images because it's it's easy to show um how they frame you know us versus them it's a little bit manipulative I think so but a little bit marketing yeah and you know one of the things that people in the church don't know and I certainly didn't know as a member is that Joseph Smith drank after the word of wisdom and so almost every member of the church was drinking after the word of wisdom and um we even have record that Joseph Smith was drinking wine on the day he died which is crazy to think considering at that point he would have had his endowment all these other things and yet he was drinking on the day he died and um John Taylor recalled um from the history of the church sometime after dinner we sent for some wine it has been reported by some that this was taken as a Sacrament it was no such thing our Spirits were generally dull and heavy and it was sent for to revive us I think it was Captain Jones who went after it but they would not suffer him to return I believe we all drank of the wine and gave some to one or two of the prison guards and so um you know it's pretty clear that that they drink wine and um so three years after the revelation we have from the history of the church we then partook of some refreshments and our hearts were made glad with the fruit of the vine this is an accord this is according to the pattern set by our savior himself and we feel disposed to patronize all the institutions of heaven so clearly they view the word of wisdom different than the church has redefined it today and until the day he died he was drinking alcohol yeah yeah and I'm just gonna say that that part is significant to me and it's meaningful because never that I can remember in all of my church education in 45 years including Seminary four years of early morning seminary in high school all the Sunday school and priesthood lessons and then all the religious education at BYU never was I told that Joseph kept drinking alcohol yeah it wasn't just the it wasn't just the drinking wine the night before he was martyred the Nauvoo house had a bar yep like he drank you know strong liquor he drank wine all the other members of the church did and I'm sure you're going to get to this but Prophet Sears and revelators all the way into the 20th century the early 20th century the Pioneers they were all still drinking alcohol and they were all still drinking alcohol and that was that information was withheld from us I believe intentionally in fact I don't know if you mentioned this but like when Leonard Arrington was called to be church historian in 1972 and he started releasing by the church he was a credible historian and he started releasing articles I seem to recall that like some of the Articles he released talked about alcohol or tobacco consumption by some of the Apostles after Joseph Smith died and that literally made some of the modern Apostles the Contemporary Apostles like I don't know Benson or wood K Packer or whoever it was um that that made them uncomfortable such that they would tell Leonard Arrington that they were uncomfortable with these articles and ultimately after 10 years they shut Leonard Arrington down closed down the history department and uh and scuttled it all for another couple decades until the internet internet kind of came about and again that just showed that the church made a conscious effort to hide and or deceive us as members from this important information about the word of wisdom yeah and I don't have the Arrington stuff so I'm glad you brought that up I do have instances where they do whitewash their history because they don't want you to realize it so yeah I mean it's it's just like we talked about these last few episodes there have been intentional um actions by church leaders to hide information from members and and that should tell people that this is a problem and not you know again unless you're using special pleading to say well it's different because we trust these leaders um you know what would you say if other leaders were constantly rewriting their history and hiding it from members and it would not be a positive reaction so yeah it's not good yeah yeah okay um so all right let's go to uh uh the next slide and the next slide is one that I think is really interesting because this was one that to me was kind of a shocker which is that many of the early Visionary experiences within the church all included and involved alcohol so um I think the first time I came across it was when I was doing the Saints chapter by chapter stuff and you're reading about basically they were having so many Visions in Kirtland when they were dedicating the temple that Joseph Smith had to basically tell them to stop drinking because they were basically acting out of control and it's not to say that all the church members were habitual drunks it's just to say that it sure seems like when you fast and then you drink a lot of alcohol things happen pretty quick and so um from the temple dedication in Kirtland they said during this meeting the men began to speak in tongues as the savior's Apostles had done at Pentecost some at the meeting saw Heavenly Fire resting on those who spoke others saw angels outside Saints saw a bright cloud in a pillar of fire rest over the temple and then there's another mention of about these experiences having uh having uh been begun after you know taking bread and wine after fasting in the temple and says Joseph and his counselors went home leaving the twelve to take charge of the meeting the spirit again descended up on the men in the temple and they began to prophesy speak in tongues and exhort one another in the gospel ministering Angels appeared to some men and a few others had visions of the Savior and this is one of those ones that obviously has to do with the with the word of wisdom because of the fact that they were drinking after the word of wisdom um it also shows how uh these visions that you talk about in the church and and sometimes uh tend to happen after uh drinking wine with Joseph Smith and and I know there's a lot of theories on if Joseph put anything in there and I have no idea what to make of that I would just point out that even without putting anything in there if you have people fasting all day and then you drink a bunch of wine you're very much more likely to start having visions or experiences that would not happen if you were you know not drinking or you know even if you just had a full stomach and you drank something so um you know alcohol played a role in some of these to the point where Joseph Smith had to actually clamp down on the church for having too many Visionary experiences which again imagine this kind of stuff happening today it wouldn't because people don't have this world view today but it just shows how um it shows the world view that the early members had with regards to how you could have visions how you could speak in tongues when today we look at that and go yeah none of this happens so I just want to point that out for not just the word of wisdom but the idea of Revelation the idea of personal revelation the idea of visions and just to note that you can induce them by using substances such as alcohol on an empty stomach yeah and we may talk about this later but you know these days psychedelics are all the rage in the United States but also amongst ex-mormons and even some active devoted Mormons and there's been a lot of people theorizing that maybe Joseph Smith or early Saints used entheogens or psychedelics yeah magic mushrooms or you know who knows but what we do know is that things like peyote or marijuana or you know even alcohol can uh you know can influence certain parts of your brain that can make it more likely that you would experience what some would call a spiritual experience and that's again this is something that was never mentioned to us growing up yeah we're told the Miracles of Kirtland and you know the spirit of God like a fire is burning and that pillars are descending from the sky and angels are being seen above the temple never are we told that a bunch of the members are drunk yeah I mean that's just it and like I said I I've listened to some of the um podcasts and presentations on like the whole entheogen Theory and and all like using mushrooms all that stuff I don't know what to make of it it's compelling but at the same time I don't have like direct evidence for it I would just say that you can see in your own life if you uh are with people who are drinking a lot especially if you know they haven't eaten anything that day they're going to be acting in a way where they are more likely to think they're experiencing something or claim to be experiencing something and as you said this is just something that's not noted it would be nice if in the scripture that said after they fasted all day before the temple dedication and drank a bunch of wine with Joseph Smith they began to see these things and you go oh yeah okay that makes more sense um but of course they leave that part out so it seems more miraculous when again a lot of these early Miracles are explained or at least we can look at the Contemporary accounts and show that they're maybe not quite what they were but either way they're not what we're being told later on that they are and it's just important to note that here because it not only shows that maybe these Visions were impacted by alcohol but it's impacted by alcohol after the word of wisdom was written yeah and and it's always about informed consent the church is just systematically withheld changed edited or withheld or whitewashed information from its membership and from the general public and that's that's going to be a stain until they just don't up to that well yeah yep I mean yeah yeah we don't need to keep going that so and and you know one of the things we mentioned is that one of the biggest issues with the word of wisdom is kind of how and why the Revelation happened and the church does note in the video that Emma's frustrated with cleaning up after these meetings which led to Joseph inquiring of the Lord which makes sense and what's particularly interesting about this Revelation is a late reminiscence from David Whitmer as to the origin of the Revelation he said some of the men were excessive chewers of the filthy weed and their disgusting slobbering and spitting caused Mrs Smith to make the ironical remark that it would be a good thing if a revelation could be had declaring the use of tobacco a sin and commanding its suppression the matter was taken up and joked about one of the Brethren suggested that the Revelation should also provide for a total abstinence from tea and coffee drinking including intending this as a counter dig at the sisters and you know it needs to be noted this is a late account um from after the Revelation took place but it's by somebody who was with everyone in the early church and it's also fits the pattern of Joseph receiving Revelation um in a way that seemed to take care of the problems he had at a given moment and it's also kind of funny that you know they um mentioned tea and coffee drinking uh to basically get back at Emma and that one to me I don't know because they don't mention coffee or tea they just mentioned hot drinks it's just that was kind of the way um it was framed and it just to me the bigger picture shows a pattern of Joseph Smith being able to pull from surrounding ideas when he's asked to to create vehicles to basically fix problems whether it's like we talked about in recent weeks with the priesthood to gain Authority the first Vision to establish himself as a one-person visited by God we're going to have it later when it comes to polygamy and stuff and it just shows that Revelation is a vehicle for Joseph Smith to get credibility for things that maybe people would listen to otherwise and um the fact that it came a day after Emma asked for it just shows how easily he could receive Revelation compared to today absolutely Okay so we've got another another video yep another piece of the video another piece of the video yeah let's go ahead and run it the Revelation helped the Saints navigate many of the issues debated by reformers and I also addressed Emma's specific concerns for example the Lord warned against the consumption of strong drinks which Latter-Day Saints understand to mean alcohol also the Lord cautioned that hot drinks understood as coffee and tea were not for the belly in other words not to be consumed neither was tobacco which was better used as an herb for sick cattle also at the time some groups like the Shakers advised against eating meat while other groups advocated no restrictions at all however in the word of wisdom the Lord revealed that he ordained meat both beast and fowl for the use of man on condition that it be eaten sparingly the word of wisdom given in its early American context did not specifically mention many substances that have since become common as the world's Industries began mass production of such substances church leaders encouraged Latter-Day Saints to use common sense and stay away from harmful habit-forming substances for example recreational drugs should be avoided while the authorized and correct use of prescription drugs is okay in the word of wisdom the Lord also warns against conspiring men with evil designs foreshadowing a surge of substance abuse addiction and death okay uh so what are your uh kind of immediate thoughts or reactions to that I guess uh I guess for that we just go to the next slide because I otherwise I'll keep repeating myself but yeah I think yeah I think for for me I think the church is glossing over some of the big issues and for example the first thing that I think stuck out to me is they present this idea that DNC 89 which is the word of wisdom that it's understood to mean coffee and tea for hot drinks and that's just nonsensical and so I want to read what DNC 89 says about that they say and again hot drinks are not for the body or belly so early church members took this not only as coffee and tea but I mean hot soups which we know can be quite healthy um it can mean coffee it can mean tea could mean hot chocolate which is also allowed under the word of wisdom apparently today and so we have a very inconsistent use of what hot drinks is and today you can drink hot chocolate at a temple recommend interview and get your temple recommend but if you were to say you're a habitual coffee drinker I guess depending on the bishop some will still give it to you but you can easily be forbidden from it and so they make it sound like we've talked about in these previous episodes about how church history makes everything seem so clean and the word of wisdom is just not a logical revelation you know we're told that hot drinks are in reference to coffee and tea but you can't drink iced coffee or iced tea and keep a temple recommend and some apologists will say it's about caffeine except that you can now drink caffeinated soda and BYU just made a big PR move in selling Coke products I think like a year or two I think I wrote this last year so it really makes no sense when you look at you can drink um you can't drink hot drinks but you also can't drink iced coffee and tea then they'll say it's caffeine but you can drink Coke you can drink Monster energy drinks or you know Red Bull or whatever and so habitual substances or substances that alter your body really aren't the issue it's very um subjective and so there's no further Revelation that clarifies hot drinks means just coffee and even if that were true it still wouldn't excuse the whole problem of why iced coffee is not okay and so none of this adds up and the fact is all of this is dated to Joseph Smith's time and place which strips the word of wisdom of any sense of Revelation because nothing is unknown from this time yeah and that has always been a super confusing and inconsistent part of Mormonism because people be like you can't drink coffee and tea how come it's like well some dude a couple hundred years ago received a revelation that said you can't have hot drinks and they're like hot drinks well can you drink cold drinks if they're copying tea well no because modern day profits have revealed that it's the caffeine oh you can't drink any caffeine well you could drink you know some say you could drink Coke and Diet Coke and some say you can't well Bark's root beer has caffeine well some don't know that and well doesn't chocolate have caffeine and like you were saying when you were at BYU when I was growing up and I think still at church headquarters you literally can't get or you couldn't get like you said Coca-Cola with regular caffeine you would get uh caffeine free Coke yep right and uh caffeine free diet coke uh for for decades and decades and decades and so many or Orthodox Mormons would kind of flex over yeah other types of Mormons by saying well I'm a real Mormon because I don't drink any you know there it was a it was the thing you bragged about in the 80s if you had never tried Coke or you'd never tried a Dr Pepper that was a way for you to flex and show that you were super Orthodox member but putting all of that silliness aside like you said where's the Revelation what does it mean why isn't any of this specified we're taught that the scriptures are written for our day and yet it's very very clear just in DNC 89 alone that this wasn't written for our day because it makes no sense in in 1980 or or even 2022. yeah we're stuck with it because they don't give any additional Revelations right yeah and it makes a lot more sense when you realize that in the 1830s people believe that if you drank drinks that were too hot it could ruin it could hurt hurt your internal organs so there was a belief that drinking coffee was harmful because it could sculge your insides which is why hot drinks or hot soup would have been in that same room or hot chocolate and so the fact that they're misreading the temperance movement into this it just shows that it's not Revelation and it's it's just it's the way they the way they redefine it which I guess we'll get to on the next slide it just tells us that they don't know or at least they're not getting any information that we couldn't get on our own yeah so let's go to the next slide and so for me one of the the best ways to know that this is not from God is what we mentioned earlier is that we there's no thing in here that's unknown at the time especially the idea of boiling water and if you read the Saints book in chapter 19 of the first Saints book uh there's a cholera outbreak outbreak that happens and it sickens over 60 members of the church and over a dozen early members of the church die from it this outbreak happened the year after the word of wisdom was recorded and like I said what better way to know that Joseph Smith was receiving real Revelation from God than to learn such a basic necessity such as boiling their water before consuming it which Not only would help the the church but it would help the world let's be honest this would have been something that would have been not only big for the church but it would have been a huge way to get people to join the church be able to say hey we found out this thing that'll keep you from getting sick and we didn't know it until him and it's just to re to reiterate this every Concept in the word of wisdom was known to Joseph Smith through outside movements such as the temperance movement yet the most important Revelations that we could have known uh such as boiling water were left unsaid and for me that's a red flag because just like the Book of Mormon every Revelation stops the moment the Book of Mormon is being written and the word of wisdom every um idea of what is called a health code is dated to the moment it was written and not for the latter days not for the church today this is for the 1830s because it's limited to what the 1830s new yeah and that's just so profound why does God care about I mean now we're going to get to this but like now we know that many people say coffee and tea is actually healthy so why why have we been avoiding why was it so important for God to give us this ambiguous Revelation in these Arcane or archaic words that don't even make sense to us so that then we're avoiding a couple beverages that are actually healthy for us substituting them was super unhealthy um beverages like Diet Coke and all the chemicals in in soda and Monster drinks Etc and then he's completely forgetting some of the actual dietary things you know let's let's agree like smoking causes cancer that's a hit that's a win to about yeah causes mouth cancer that's a win but but coffee and tea is that a win and and why in the fetch didn't God you know tell us things like boiling water germ Theory other things that have been made way more important yeah I agree yes it's inconsistent okay all right so uh next next slide is did the word of wisdom warn of substance abuse yeah so the video really goes hard at saying that the word of wisdom is warning against substance abuse and it's really convenient to say that but one has to remember in Joseph Smith's time they believe the world was ending in a matter of years the the reference in the word of wisdom to the consequence of evils and Designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days has to be taken in that context that they believe they were in those last days they're not specifically referring to substances 200 years later because they believe the world is going to be over in 200 years they believe the second coming is happening you know within the next 40 50 years I think Joseph Smith had that one Revelation if he lived like 86 it would happen and a lot of the patriarchal blessings at the time said that they'd live long enough to see Jesus they believed fully that the world was going to be done and the second coming was going to happen before 1900 so this is another area where they are imposing into this Revelation um things that not only are not there but things that are kind of contradicted against by looking at the text in the context of the Revelation um because this Revelation is very very very boxed into in 1830s mindset yeah absolutely which which fits the model of Joseph Smith importing things from his you know surrounding influences yeah and so this one this one's mind-blowing to me yeah this one this one shows well two things one is the word of wisdom says beer is okay so from DNC 89 it says nevertheless wheat for man and corn for the ox and oats for the horse and ride for the files and for this for swine and for all Beasts of the fields and barley for all useful animals and for mild drinks as also other grain so this is literally saying that mild drinks are okay as barley is used you know primarily for beer and I think some of the hard liquor actually uses you know grains as well so so whiskey whiskey I mean I guess that would not be considered mild drinks I think beer would be considered more mild but yeah I mean this is expressly saying that basically beer is okay but lay off the hard stuff and um it matches because the church continued to drink for long after the word of wisdom was recorded and so drink beer yeah so it's not to say that everyone in the church should start chugging beers on Sunday I'm just pointing out that you'd be within the revelation of God to do so and as we mentioned earlier when we talk about the church whitewashing history I want you to look on the right if you're watching if you're listening I'll read it but in Joseph Smith's personal journal from June 1st 1844 it says then went to John P Green's and paid him another paid him and another brother 200 drank a glass of beer at Mosers called it William Clayton's so he's saying he went and uh dropped off 200 for somebody he owed money to drank a glass of beer and then he called it William Clayton's now they're going to revise that history in 1902 and I want to read that to you and see if you notice anything missing then went to John P Greene's in paid him and another brother 200 called it William Clayton's so the church is removing that Joseph Smith drank beer because they don't want members to know he drank beer long after the word of wisdom was written Smoking Gun of deception yeah I mean egregious outrageous yeah wise This Is A Lie this is intentionally altering the history so that members don't realize that moly yeah in this in 1902 just happens to be when the church starts really emphasizing the word of wisdom so isn't it convenient that you change the history just as Joseph Smith did when he changes Revelations when he changes foundational Stories the church after Joseph Smith is doing the exact same thing because now that in 1902 they're going to make the word of wisdom a very high emphasis they need to go back and change the history and that's exactly what they do yeah and again you just made this point but like you could fault them for doing that except that they're only doing what they learned from Joseph yeah this is what's been done since since the start of the church but you don't like the historical record rewrite it yep and just make sure you try to make sure that people don't realize it but yeah it's it's just it's a bad rewrite it and then it's bad punish anyone who mentions it you know yeah I mean rewrite it deny it and then punish anyone who talks about it and the thing is I don't want to go too far on this but the problem is if we talk about this with Joseph Smith in the last few weeks once you show that they're willing to intentionally deceive people by changing by altering by creating new stories you then it's hard to trust anything they say it would be like if you uh if you're if your spouse suspected you of cheating and you're like no I wasn't out with another woman I was at a work meeting at a restaurant and then they found out you were at a bar or you're at someone's house and you go I wasn't actually cheating I just went out to a bar that person's not going to trust the other stuff you say because you've already shown you're willing to lie to cover Your Tracks so I'm not saying that this shows the church is lying about every little thing about the church I'm just saying you now know they are more than willing to alter their history in order to keep members from understanding what really happened we show that with Joseph Smith we've shown that with um the priesthood the first Vision the last few weeks of these episodes we've shown that on how they've removed um some of the references to treasure digging or they kind of reframe it and this is another instance where the church after Joseph Smith is more than willing to alter their own history so that you don't know what happened totally okay the next slide is the word of wisdom a credible health code yeah this is just one we already kind of hinted at it and so we don't need to go too far but it's just to say it's a very inconsistent Revelation when you read it at face value and so today we're kind of taught that it's like this really consistent clean and prophetic health code and it just doesn't really work that way because as you said earlier there are study after study showing that there are a lot of health effects of mild coffee and tea consumption and on the flip side we can show that coffee is way healthier than um soda or pop and BYU now proudly serves Coke and uh you can go to anywhere I've never been to Utah actually but you can see all the videos of people from Utah going to you know there's like a soda shop on every corner you can also see all of the people that are in the church who drink Red Bulls and Monster energy drinks which are way unhealthy compared to coffee and tea and so while people will say oh well Joseph Smith knew that drinking alcohol was bad well yeah and that's good but again a lot of people at the time knew that they knew it was bad because they saw how it made people act and they saw how it could basically debilitate people that had a problem with alcohol same thing with with smoking they could see uh the smoke smelled horrible it was disgusting and so a lot of the the hits that people claim are good but then you also have to address the fact that there's misses and when you're when your batting average is still at best say 500 that's not really a profits here in revelry that's what anyone else in that time frame was doing in the temperance movement so it's just to say it's inconsistent it's contradictory and then when you look at the way that Revelation was written compared to how it is today there's no way to reconcile it all in a way that makes it seem like it's logical from God who again could see that the Lost 116 Pages would be lost and create a second set of plates who we are told could could know thousands of years ago that Joseph son of Joseph was going to translate The Book of Mormon and yet can't give us a Word of Wisdom in a way that makes sense in 2020 or even in like 1900 and so so all of that combined with the fact that there's no unknown deals details such as boiling water all of this is a huge tell that this is not a credible health code nor is it a revelation from God all right makes sense next slide is the church did not make the word of wisdom a commandment until 1919 and this is something that Mormons are not told yeah this is something I certainly wasn't aware of generally yeah generally speaking and so the church did not require the word of wisdom to be obeyed as a temple requirement question until 1919 and I Believe In 1902 they began making it more of an emphasis so I think in 1902 there was kind of like that open idea that you could be rejected for it and I think in 1919 it was the first year it was an actual Temple recommend question and you know the thing is the word of wisdom itself specifically goes out of its way to tell you it's not a commandment it says to be sent by greeting not by commandment or constraint so until 1851 it wasn't considered a commandment and then Brigham Young started to kind of come down on people who were abusing it in bad ways like if you were drunk a lot and all of that um Brigham Young though owned and profited from the Salt Lake City Distillery um church members continue to drink and smoke for 70 years after the Revelation was recorded and that's why we're left with a revelation not just church members but actual apartment leaders leaders rebelators continue to you know Smoke Drink Alcohol Tobacco coffee tea Etc yeah yeah I mean so it was it was widespread use and you know it's just to point out that this was not adhered to uh by even the leaders of the church until you got to the 1920s when it became a temple recommend question and you know it's just um to me it's an interesting thing and I Know It lines up really well with prohibition um I've heard you know back and forth as to to why that is and we'll get to more of that later but yeah I mean we're talking 80 years basically before this is considered 80 plus years before this is a temple recommend question and it's just not the way it's taught today because you know it this is not a commandment it literally says it's not a commandment but just kind of like a warning or like a guideline yeah and on the one hand I think I can hear Mormons and Mormon apologists saying well that's a feature not a bug the Mormon Church believes an ongoing Revelation and if Joseph Smith says that it's you know just not by way of commandment but just you know by uh you know by suggestion but then a future Prophet changes it you should always pay attention to the most current profit because God is you know it's a it's an ongoing unfolding restoration and God you know will change things depending on the time and sometimes he'll improve things so you know on the one hand that's what I think the church is going to say on the other hand um Jesus freaking Jesus the son of God drank wine for heaven's sakes right yeah it's like Joseph Smith drank wine the night before he was martyred what the fetch why in the fetch would it be something that would keep you out of the temple which keeps you from Gaining the ordinances that you need for salvation including your endowment your Washings and anointings including your temple marriage including the temple marriages of your siblings or your children your own children why would it be you know elevated to something that literally means spiritual life and death if Jesus and Joseph themselves partook in all those things yeah I mean it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense and yeah I've joked before um that you know Jesus couldn't um he would be uh reported for honor code violations of BYU because he had a beard he drank I mean it's just you were sandals he wore sandals it's just it's silly and I the thing is like you know um you just you look at the way you know what you said about the Apologetics and they'll say you're right they'll say we believe in ongoing Revelation and my response would be then where's the Revelation why can the leaders not say you know I received a revelation um I wrote it down on the yellow PAD as Russell Nelson claims and it said you know my beloved you know you know servant um I don't know I can't remember who who was the prophet when they first started doing it but um you know uh the time has now come for um my previous Revelation to be a commandment um you have now had plenty of time to prepare for this because I know one of the arguments is that you know when they came up with the word of wisdom a lot of people were drinking and smoking and it was too much to ask of them to give that up even though they asked that when missionaries come to people's doors asking you to convert and give up your coffee tea smoking all that and so I guess I would just say it's like one of those things like where's the paper trail because this just comes out of thin air as far as um the reinterpretation of it why is there not another Revelation why don't they change DNC to fit it then I mean I just I feel like it's a great apologetic it just doesn't work when you look at the pattern of how this stuff has happened before with Joseph Smith they're just pulling this one out and redefining it in a way as we'll talk about later that really takes it away from being a law of health and more just a law of obedience because there are healthy things that the church is forbidding and a lot of unhealthy things that the church seems fine with and it's just inconsistent yeah it's inconsistent and that inconsistency has caused a lot of pain and suffering over the years yes and you hear stories um it might be John Larson I think he did a uh I think one of his episodes it might be him might be someone else and they did their mission in Japan and they were saying people in Japan drink tea and so you're going these people and tell them to join your church and they're like well I don't want to give up tea and it's like well you have to because this is the rule and I mean it's just unnecessary because like there's so many health benefits to tea to tell someone they're not worthy of being in the temple because of that it's just it's silly and it's um it's again it just shows that this is not something coming from God or it's just that God is really inconsistent and not a good uh or or a measure of health or I guess you might have some people say which I've also heard that in time science is always wrong so in time we'll see that coffee and tea are actually really dangerous but again I I don't think that's an argument you would make unless you had to to defend a policy of the church I just think it makes zero sense that early church leaders were and Jesus himself yeah it doesn't make sense or and or using tobacco and yet an investigator in Chile who's just learning about the church is going to be prevented from baptism because he has a cup of coffee which is completely healthy and it's really appropriate yeah exactly and in some ways the only way to get clean water right yeah that's another thing I mean I know today in America we're blessed that we don't have to worry about that but there are third world countries where drinking coffee is a good way to make sure you get rid of any of that stuff and you yet in the church you're being told you can't do that and also that you need to pay tithing to get out of poverty it's just I should have thrown that last day again but yeah it's just it's the inconsistency of it the way that it just it's not logical and I think at some point I I mean I would not be surprised if at some point this this is relaxed off the temple recommend because younger younger members of the church you see them all the time online drinking coffee um drinking iced coffee not wearing garments I mean there are things in the church that they're losing a little bit of control over and I would not be surprised to see them loosen this butt until then yeah it's very inconsistent coffee shops are popping up all over Provo and yeah BYU students are there all the time there's a reason yeah they're getting coffee but they're calling it hot chocolate I've seen a lot of people online who are drinking coffee and people will reply to them online and say you're you're Mormon you can't do that and they say no this one's between me and God I don't have to you know I have to tell my Bishop about it I'm like yeah which that's true it is not between you and your Bishop but you're just seeing that this is not sustainable I'm also going to say that I know at least one former you know General slash area Authority in modern times let's just say in the past 20 to 30 years who drank alcohol as a general slash area Authority yeah I know this because you know family members of his told me that yeah there's there's this kind of Unwritten kind of separate set of rules that the more wealthy or Elite Mormons live by where they know that what they drink in the privacy of their own homes is their business yeah and they get to play by separate rules you know yeah and you know yeah it goes and like I said I've seen I I know people who drink alcohol and they do it in a way that they justify as like being a medical thing to help them sleep or to help them you know people get around it like oh if I have a glass of wine it's necessary to help me sleep it's like yeah okay sure well like you said beer is explicitly allowed I know everyone like I said everyone has you know should grab a beer I mean I'm I I've had it like once in my life and I thought it tasted disgusting but that's probably because I was raised not to drink it and so after I yeah I didn't like it but that being said I probably should because it's it's totally allowed and I would be more um in with the word of wisdom than a lot of other people so you know for the record I've never tried any form of tobacco or alcohol in my life and I'm 53. yeah that's just me so you know and the thing is and we don't need to get on tangent about this but you mentioned diet or Coke earlier so I've got I've got Diet Coke in here because I have developed this insane Sweet Tooth as part of being in the Mormon church because you can't drink coffee which is bitter you can't drink beer which is bitter and so I never tried beer until after I kind of lost belief and we were at a work function and someone kept asking me and so finally I just I took it and I took a sip like this is disgusting and so I'm carrying around with me and anyone drink it because it's gross and um and that yeah that was pretty much the beginning and the end of that I know a lot of people say it's Acquired and it's not really important to this episode but yeah it is funny that um being in the church and not being able to drink coffee and stuff it really does make a lot of people have more of a sweet tooth which is why you see those soda shops everywhere and that's not a great thing I kind of wish I did drink coffee because I think it'll be a lot healthier for me than drinking Coke so yeah and I and I you I hope you don't get to this but given the given the massive you know like like heart disease in the United States kills infinitely more people than probably any drug certainly more than marijuana coffee or tea and probably more than even tobacco and and yet there's nothing in here about about refined sugars yeah about saturated fats nothing about cheeseburgers nothing about French fries nothing about you know hydrogenated vegetable oil or you know how amazing would that have been if Joseph had received a revelation about saturated fats and and uh you know hydrogenated oils uh or or even cheeseburgers and french fries or milkshakes long long long before those words even came into our vernacular yep or don't use pesticides on your crops or you know you know just you could go on all day and that's the problem is everything is completely in an 1830s mindset there's nothing else in it we're beating a dead horse but it's for a good reason because you have to illustrate just how dated this Revelation is the heart disease one itself is is just so significant okay let's go to the next slide which is more video of what what the word of wisdom really serves as in Mormonism this is Boyd K Packer my friend but Latter-Day Saints see the word of wisdom as more than just a health code adherence to the word of wisdom not only teaches members how to control appetites and guard their health it is also part of what makes them eligible for temple worship and Promises spiritual benefits most importantly following the word of wisdom helps engender greater receptivity to personal revelation through the spirit of the Lord as Boyd K Packer an apostle of the Lord in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints once said fundamental purpose of the word of wisdom has to do with revelation someone under the influence can hardly listen to Plain Talk how can they respond to spiritual promptings that touch their most delicate feelings as valuable as the word of wisdom is as a law of Health it may be much more valuable to you spiritually than it is physically so let's review what is the word of wisdom and why is it important to Latter-day Saints the word of wisdom is a revelation in it the Lord promises that those who follow his guidelines will have better health but he also promises greater happiness wisdom and spiritual blessings too most of all the word of wisdom shows us that God loves us he wants us to be healthy and spiritually receptive to his words now you know all right well now we know I'm just gonna say really quickly obviously we've already talked about the fact that many of the early saints were on the earth under the influence of alcohol when the Kirtland miracles happen so obviously there's a problem with their statement that you can't have spiritual experiences when you're under the influence of some of these things certainly coffee and tea aren't going to keep you from having spiritual experiences in tobacco I'm also just going to say that for my friends that have tried psychedelics uh you know especially magic mushrooms or peyote or Ayahuasca they all universally tell me that psychedelics have provided them with the most spiritually uplifting experiences of their life hands down and so I just think that's flatly wrong what they just said in that article yeah it's like I said it's just so inconsistent it doesn't add up it doesn't match what the reality is and these are you know and Boyd kid Packer and his quote is um you know again an ordained you know prophets here in Revelator and he's just saying stuff that just doesn't line up with what the text of the word wisdom is and the utilization of it you know to what you said earlier like coffee makes you more receptive to what you're doing I mean at times you hear people drinking coffee at nights they have to get a project done for school or to to focus I know people actually I know people who are Mormon who get coffee when they do road trips because it helps them focus on the road because they want to make sure that they stay awake and alert so I would argue in a lot of ways that helps you focus a lot more um than maybe drinking a crap ton of uh sugary drinks would do and um and and I think that really gets down to the point of it which is this is just not at this point a law of Health it's it's it's a law of obedience it's about getting members to Rally around something that is something that requires you to do something you might not want to do to stick out a little bit and um you know to kind of obey the leaders of the church in order to get the the prize which is you know um the endowment and you know your temple recommend yeah all right so what is the word of wisdom then if it's not necessarily a health code given by Revelation yeah and so we've kind of hit all these points at this point but at the end of the day we have health studies showing coffee and tea have tons of benefits and we have no consistency when it comes to Banning coffee because it's a hot drink but then also Banning iced coffee as a cold drink um because the word of wisdom is really clear uh that you can not have hot drinks but has nothing about cold drinks and it's not about caffeine so it just shows there's just the subjectiveness about how it's being used that is just not really consistent or logical and and to that point it kind of to me screams that since the 1919 being a Temple recommend question really shows that this is about a law of obedience and you know um we'll get to a little bit but I think there's reasons why they went hard on that when they did and I think it's just about you know again being willing to obey what the what the leaders want you to do and um you know it's a lot of times they'll say it's it's not about you know us it's not about it's about you being willing to sacrifice for God and I think this is another instance where it makes no sense from a logical standpoint except that it's keeping you in tune with what the leaders want you to do which of course is in their minds what God wants you to do but of course that's always through the filter of the leaders yeah and this is always a difficult area to try but I I think it's important to mention Stephen Hassan is the world's uh expert in Cults or high demand religions and he has put together what he calls the bite model which is an acronym to represent uh signs of a high demand religion or a cult because nobody who's in a cult thinks they're in a cult they just think they're in the one true way or in a really great organization or God's true church but the b in the bite model stands for Behavior whenever a organization or religion starts controlling your behavior in unreasonable or excessive ways whether it's how you dress whether it's the words you use whether it's the food you eat whether it's you know particulars around your sexuality that's those are warning signs that you're that you're the member of a culture a high demand religion and if you if you go to any any high demand religion or cult you will find very very strict Health codes or could controls or rules around food in addition to dress and sex and language and so forth and so that's not to say that the Mormon church is a cult because it prohibits coffee and tea it is to say that you know know when the church starts saying that the word of wisdom is a sign of obedience and not so much health that's when it starts to Veer into control unnecessary control territory that I think gets it you know gets it in in kind of that high demand religion or cult territory that's just how I feel yeah I mean you know for me when I joined I was still getting out of high school so I wasn't drinking coffee um I kind of wanted to because that was right around the age when a lot of people did and then when you go to college and all that but it wasn't like a huge deal because I wasn't already drinking it and so that wasn't a huge deal but then it's like you compound that with you know um going through the temple and I did not know you had to wear Church required underwear so then all of a sudden you're like okay so they're telling you what you can and can't eat they're telling you what you have to wear they're telling you how you have to spend your money and that stuff does add up you know a lot of these things and um you know one of the things that I think is um a characteristic of not just with Joseph Smith but what the church does today is it's always like if we can get you to do this we can get you to do that and I'm not saying it's evil I'm just saying if we can get you not to drink coffee and tea and we can get you to give us of your income then we can get you to where the garments uh Church required underwear at the temple and then we you know and when you talk about polygamy let me get you to enter into polygmy because it's always one step further and I'm not saying that's necessarily what it is I just feel like there are a lot of um steps of obedience you have to take that don't really make sense and then all of a sudden when you start doing them it's a lot easier to keep doing them because you're like well I'm already in this Farm I might as well keep going and and that is an element of high demand religions in order to keep you loyal to the church and we'll get to it in a few minutes but this is something that becomes a huge um concern of the church after polygamy's ended and it almost feels like polygamy was a rallying cry for the church until it had to end at least for for now and then the word of wisdom comes in as a rallying cry as a thing that makes you unique and that you have to obey to and I do feel like there are elements of the church that want that need for obedience because it keeps you more loyal to the church if you were allowed to wear your own underwear if you were allowed to drink coffee and tea it would be a little easier to step away because you don't have a structure that you're so tied to and I I don't know if I'm phrasing this in the best way I'm just saying that because you make it a law of obedience and I'm not saying the church phrases that way they but they do emphasize it's not really as much about health is about you being able to hear the spirit so it does feel like it's more about like you need to obey this so you can be a better member in the church and I do feel like it does allow Behavior patterns that link you to the church even stronger and it becomes over time a very important identity marker yes you can have an US versus them kind of mindset as a way to make members feel like they're different A peculiar people yeah in some ways a better better people than than their neighbors you know the bad people who drink and smoke which is super common in the more in context okay what is this document bill of particulars for me so this is a bill of particulars that each family was supposed to take when they traveled from Nauvoo to Utah and you'll just notice that every member was was told to bring coffee and tea with them and it's just funny because with the word of wisdom you would think there'd be no reason to do that and yet you know here we are and so they do also tell you to bring a gallon of alcohol but that could very well be for for cleaning I don't I don't know so I didn't want to highlight that one because I'm not entirely sure if that alcohol you know you don't drink straight alcohol I don't think anyone did but um I thought they had isopropyl alcohol on the planes but maybe yeah I doubt it too so I'm trying to give benefit the doubt so but either way you're at least being told to bring tea and coffee in 1845 which just again shows that at this point um you know the word of wisdom was just not being obeyed in the way we're expected to obey it today and I think that's worth noting because of the fact that you know they're literally told to use what little amount of space they had to pack stuff with to bring coffee and tea yeah that's really interesting and really important and so now we are now we get to my favorite part of the yeah apologetics yeah so some apologists argue the reason it was not considered a temple recommend question until 1919 or a big Focus until 1902 was because church members needed time to get away from the addiction of these substances but like I said we this is you know almost 90 years between when it was recorded and when it became a hard Temple recommend question so anyone using these substances when the Revelation was recorded would have been long gone and so beyond that you know we've got Brigham Young uh declaring it as a commandment in 1851 and a lot of people will say well see it was you know it was already a commandment in 1851 it just wasn't enforce them as much but you know if you want to use Brigham Young as the you know being basically saying he was making a prophetic call here to make it a commandment then you also have to then look at you know the other things that Brigham Young declared as a prophet such as the ban on those with black skin Adam God blood atonement and those are things the church wants no part of so it is kind of that way that they sometimes cherry pick with Brigham Young to say see Brigham Young was teaching this this amazing idea and then when you mention all of the other ideas he taught that are disavowed today they kind of run from it and so it's just the consistency of of using Brigham Young as one of your sources here it's a it's also a dumb argument because why didn't Joseph Smith live the higher law was he not ready yet yeah exactly Jesus Christ himself why didn't he live the higher law why is he drinking wine was he not enlightened enough yet he was supposed to be a perfect human yeah it's just it makes no sense that's a dumb apologetic argument that's why I'm an apologist oh just I hate Mormon apologetic arguments I think they're dumb yeah I hate the argument too because again it's like by that logic do they tell people who want to join the church yeah you can take 20 years to get out no they're like you have to stop drinking I've stopped smoking you have to stop um you know drinking tea and coffee yeah and it's just it you know it's just inconsistent I I I've said it so many times through these episodes I hate inconsistencies that's why I hate the loose versus tight stuff when you jump between the two because it's like you pick a Lane and go with it and if you want to go with this this idea that you know it took 90 years to get used to it I just I feel like you're opening up more problems and it just the data itself will tell you that you don't need that long I mean most people were dead so you know they yeah it's it's nonsense and it's important whenever we note a problematic change that we can always find a historical reason for why the change was made and that's to the next slide what led to the decision to make the word of wisdom a commandment yeah and so I mentioned this earlier but you know one other element that to me would make sense as to why this being kind of a law of obedience is that the word of wisdom became a requirement for temple recommends shortly after the church released their second Manifesto on polygamy and this caused a lot of uproar because imagine that you went into the new and Everlasting Covenant of polygamy and you took plural wives and um you maybe you are a polygamous wife and you're like I did this for nothing you know what I mean and and so there is a lot of I I would imagine there'd be a lot of hard feelings by people who basically realize they could have had a marriage of actual love and and instead they're married to a dude that's 30 years older than them who can't take care of them and so a lot of the to me the timing of the word of wisdom being more of a focus in 1902 and then a temple recommended 1919 kind of seems like maybe it was something that the church leaders were trying to get members to Rally around and as you said earlier identify themselves with and I think a lot of people say prohibition and that could be the reason it was really clamped down on because prohibition starts in January 1919 and a letter on October 8th 1919 from the first presidency makes it a temple worthiness requirement and so um it does make sense that they were trying to line up with prohibition and basically saying see we were doing this anyways now there's prohibition we're going to make it official because you can't drink in the US anyways but I think because they made it a focus around 1902 It lines up also with the fact that they needed some identity markers because they were losing such a big one with polygamy and I think those two things really led to the decision to go from it being kind of like a Loosely enforced Revelation to a temple recommend question that was a strict commandment yep um and that makes sense yeah and and when you read when you read did uh Gregory Prince's David O McKay and the rise of modern Mormonism and I'm sure there are others that pointed this out prior to David O McKay there was kind of a look between Joseph Smith and David O McKay there was kind of this look of a Mormon prophet it was you know long beard older uh Frontier looking guy and they were pretty much all almost all of them were polygamists yeah that was you know that was that was the Mart that was the brand of of Mormon prophets and of Mormons but once you lose once you lose polygamy um and once you have to get rid of that and once you're entering into the modern era and you're gonna try and change your brand which I think is literally a a fair way to describe what happened you're gonna need a new appearance you're going to need an updated appearance and probably an update related emphasis on the things that you're going to emphasize yeah I'm not going to be emphasizing that you're not polygamists so what are you emphasizing you know we kind of become McDonald's IBM you know All-American Donnie Marie Osmond uh sort of people like homemade Like Richard Cunningham Happy Days beaver and Wally Cleaver uh Stepford Wives kind of 1950s America that's what our new brand becomes and being squeaky clean in terms of like alcohol and drugs and tobacco and short hair and no beard that becomes the new Mormon brand and it pretty much starts with David O McKay and then it continues forward but it but it also starts with the end of polygamy yeah that's a really important observation yeah it's a big transition period for them because they're trying to find I mean you lose one of the main things you're rallying around and you have to find other things to hold on to and I honestly think that has as much to do with his prohibition because it really does it's around 1902 when they start making they start rejecting people um for temple recommends at that point but it appears 1919 is when it was a firm question and so and again that's so fascinating that just like the temperance movement sort of was the impetus to the 18th or 30 whatever Revelation it was the Prohibition movement that was the impetus to the making it the word of wisdom is a command nothing you know it's one of those things and I think I mentioned the slide didn't say it but nothing seems to alter church policy and Doctrine more than outside events you know it's the same thing with the 1970 lifting of the band it was because at some point it becomes socially unacceptable um and you know changing the introduction of the Book of Mormon came across because you know DNA events told them that the Book of Mormons claims were were not backed up by science and so yeah it's outside events are the greatest uh the the thing that leads to the most Revelation is is when you have outside pressure it's the same thing with the November 2015 policy that was revelation according to Russell Nelson and three and a half years later because the social pressure was just so strong and the member the young members especially were not having it God gave Russell Nelson another Revelation to remove it and yeah it's it's just it every time you can you can see the fingerprints you can see the path that these things taken they're very common threads across all of them yeah absolutely okay so uh next slide is compare the words of the word of wisdom versus today's use yeah and so we just want to kind of look at how the word of wisdom declares basically health status or health data points so they say wine and other strong drinks should not be used except in the case of the sacrament as well as the washing of the body so obviously that's been changed because there's no more wine used for the sacrament tobacco should not be used by men but as an herb for bruises and all sick cattle I'd like you to I mean I've asked this before and some people swear that they do use tobacco for uh bruises and for sick cattle and I have just not seen that as any kind of a uh you know best practice kind of a thing hot drinks which would mean soup hot chocolate coffee and tea are not for the body or belly and again think of how it's used today they declare that as coffee and tea but you can't drink hot chocolate you can eat hot soup you can eat hot stews I mean all of these things that are kind of liquidy hot things herbal tea is okay yeah or so it's it's very very inconsistent all herbs and fruits are ordained to be used by God and should be used with prudence and so your friends wanted to say that cannabis should be yeah I note that yeah it's true wisdom yeah I mean it's true and that's the thing you know right there is telling you mushrooms are organic yep right yeah I mean so basically what this what this Revelation is saying is if it's growing uh it's from God and should be used with prudence and so you know that's I say at the end you know isn't marijuana and herb and it is and um meat is to be eaten sparingly only in times of winter or if cold or famine that was ridiculous because more heavy heavy heavy meat eaters yeah certainly not only eating meat in times of winter cold or famine no I just I just went to Matic Steakhouse in Brigham City Utah for my birthday last week and there was literally a 45 minute wait yeah there were pretty much all Mormons there at Maddox you know what I'm saying yeah I mean it's it's a little summer right well why is that not keeping people on the temple yeah meat not in Winter or times of famine why aren't they all kept out of the temple it's totally it is that's the thing it's it's very subjective arbitrary is a good word it's it's rough and All Grain is to be used by both man and beasts and barley for all useful animals and for mild drinks beer and also as also other grain and so you know by the wording of DNC 132 the church should allow any iced coffee or iced tea drinks beer or wine for the sacrament furthermore and as I said a number of times now this is being written without any foresight or prophetic knowledge doesn't mention boiling water it doesn't mention overabundance of sugary Foods doesn't mention anything about energy drinks that are going to stimulate your body it doesn't mention that all food should be taken out of with moderation and like we said I mean if you want to read this as the Revelation is as the word of God is marijuana is an herb that apparently is ordained to be used by God with Prudence so on that one the church's credit apparently if marijuana use or cannabis use is legal in a state I haven't heard of them going after people for using cannabis yeah it's kind of new what I was just gonna say I would love to see someone in a state um where it's legal go to their their Temple recommend question and say I've been using marijuana whether it's smoking it or you know through gummies or brownies or whatever you can tell I don't use it because I don't quite know the terminology well but um tell their Bishop that and have their Bishop go oh you're cool I'm telling you right now here's the deal here's the deal uh number one I've never tried cannabis either but number two um there are Bishops that allow cannabis use really it's just but that's where Bishop roulette comes oh yeah there's always that the church doesn't dare um state that publicly and of course they tried to fight and and beat down the Cannabis legislation that Utah citizens passed and they've you know in some ways made it really hard for people to even get cannabis but but overall if you get the right Mormon Bishop he's totally okay with canvas shoes I almost want to send an email to like Church Headquarters if I can find a good contact and just ask them yeah because I I actually think I might just because I'm curious to see if I could get a response to that because I guarantee you that is not something that they would would ever say out loud is okay so I'm curious sure there's if it's I know for sure I'm pretty sure that the church has made some sort of statement saying if it's drive by a doctor oh yeah that's that's yeah that's different then medical cannabis is okay yeah I'm talking more like you know in a lot of States now it's recreational is legal so I'm just curious on that because I I guarantee I'm gonna try to send them an email and just send them quote dnc89 Yeah and say under under the word of wisdom this is allowed and my state now has it legal for recreational use is this allowed and I'm just curious to see I know what they're going to say but I just want to see it because there's no way that's church policy whatsoever there's no chance the church doesn't like to have policies no that that's that's 100 Bishop roulette I know there are a lot of Bishops where people say I drink coffee and he's like they don't I don't care that's fine you know I mean I think a lot of Bishops understand how but how important it is but by not including it in the temple recommend questions by not explicitly asking about marijuana they're kind of yeah it's kind of a don't ask don't tell well they've yeah they did that when they changed that Temple recommend question on garments right because a lot a lot of the young members are like hey it doesn't they have to wear it day and night it just says as they promised in the temple so they'll wear it when they go to church they'll wear it when they go to Temple and then they're done which I think is a great thing I think garments are awful but um you know you talk to a a member who went through the temple with you know more than five or six years ago and they'll tell you oh the real Mormons were garmin's 24 7. so as we talked about earlier it is definitely a culture identifying kind of thing so anyways yeah let's go to the next slide about yeah vilifying abusers of the word of wisdom I just you know I pointed this out earlier and I know it's splitting hairs and so we don't have to spend much time on this it's just when they talk about conspiring men with evil designs it's just so cartoony and Disney asks to put this image of these four guys smoking cigars with counting money and I just you know again again they show at the beginning of this thing uh that people um who were at the school of profits that are smoking cigars just looking so super scholarly and and it's just this is how they speak of the 99 plus percent of the world that ignore the word of wisdom you know it's like I realize that they don't view everyone who's not in the church's conspiring evil designs and all that but it just it feels like just such a cartoony Us Versus Them thing and these videos are meant for I think you know I think they're meant for Outsiders who just are curious but I think they're more meant for members in the church who are looking for a library of videos to explain topics and I just think it's such a crappy way to um well Define other people to me there's something more Insidious behind this slide that I thought you might mention and that's that when you're the average Mormon growing up you really really do believe that people that smoke uh tobacco or or chew tobacco or drink alcohol or do drugs are bad people yeah and and I I know that people are going to take umbrage at me saying that but every one of our kids is like I don't know if I want Uncle so and so over because he smokes and aren't people who smoke bad you know I remember when my my oldest sister married a non-member she was a smoker at the time and then she marries a non-member who also was a smoker and then once she stopped smoking he kept smoking and it was always a thing we talked about it was like maybe never to his face but he hiding his back it's like does does he still smoke he still smokes oh well you know what I mean yeah and we view people who drink you know as being Partiers and as being you know drunkards and people who do drugs as druggies and Stoners and even more importantly we view ourselves as better than other people that partake in those things and it literally is just an identity way to feel Superior well if anyone if any Mormon argues with me about that being the common Mormon view I I would be willing to have that conversation no and I actually get it because when I joined the church my mom still smoked and obviously they weren't members and I remember hearing it in church when they talk about oh you know when you don't obey the word of wisdom you can't get the goodness of God you can't feel the spirit you can't and I just remember it killed me because I'm like no I know my mom's a good person and that does not change who she is as a person obviously I didn't like it because I was afraid it was going to cause health issues for her but at the same time I didn't think blessed her as a person I just didn't like it because I was afraid and and and you know um the church will come out and they'll say listen what we're talking about right here that's culture that's not us but then this is a video produced by the church and so you want to say it's not us it's the it's just the culture but then it's right in their videos it's again spoken this is spoken at general conference right yeah and this one I think a lot of people if you're involved in listening to podcasts or stuff you've seen this but this is from uh Julie Beck I believe uh General Conference and she's talking about what happens when you drink a cup of coffee and I think stocks are pre-approved yeah yeah this approved by the church this is not someone going rogue this is fully approved as a way to tell people what happens when you drink a cup of coffee so this thing's outrageous and it's totally true yeah she was the daughter of faithful Pioneer parents who had sacrificed much for the gospel she'd been married in the temple and was the mother of ten children she was a talented woman who taught her children how to pray to work hard and to love each other she paid her tithing and the family rode to the church together on Sunday in their wagon though she knew it was contrary to the word of wisdom she developed the habit of drinking coffee and kept a coffee pot on the back of her stove she claimed that the Lord will not keep me out of heaven for a little cup of coffee but because of that little cup of coffee she could not qualify for temple recommend and neither could those of her children who drank coffee with her she lived to a good old age and she did eventually qualify to re-enter and serve in the temple but only one of her ten children had a worthy Temple marriage and a great number of her posterity which is now in its fifth generation live outside of the blessings of the restored gospel she believed in and her forefathers sacrificed so much for that man that's some powerful coffee it's keeping yeah explorations of people out of Eternal salvation what a crappy plan by heavenly father that he's gonna keep his own children out of out of his own presence and out of their own salvation basically condemning them to the Mormon equivalent of hell because someone's parents or grandparents during coffee it's so ridiculous yeah it's uh it's the most emotionally manipulative crap you're gonna hear and it's just one of those things because you've got you know I don't know how many people watch General Conference a couple million who are watching that and they're watching it with their parents and these kids and they she has just the right timing and when she cries I mean I know that's I think it's fake for a lot of people I know some people think it's genuine and for some people it is some people are giving these stories and they do cry but I feel like they practice this talk enough to where it's rehearsed and um it's just manipulative to tell these people if you drink one cup of coffee not only you're risking your own salvation but you're gonna destroy the the Eternal happiness of of everyone beneath you and not only that she makes sure to mention um the the people that before their ancestors and how strong they were and how you're effectively offending them I just it's it's the most manipulative garbage and um this is you know I think a microcosm of how the church uses emotional manipulation in their materials and you know it's uh like you said I mean what kind of a plan um basically screws people for eternity because they drink a drink that's way healthier than a lot of the other stuff they could be drinking it's just you know but it's real like in 2022 in 2022 if a faithful Mormon drinks coffee or tea they will not be allowed and admits it they will not be allowed to attend their own childhood not exaggerating they won't be able to attend a wedding in 2022 if a if a Peruvian or a Brazilian or an African 20 year old male or eight-year-old child wants to join the church but they drink coffee um you know because it's the only way for them to get sanitized water in the morning for a morning beverage they will be denied baptism and it's the most ridiculous thing on the planet well not the most but not the most but it's just it's it's silly and you know um I've said in these overviews a lot you know I I don't want to make fun of this stuff I don't want to present this stuff in a way that's mocking the beliefs of the church because I don't think that's helpful in any way it's not constructive and I'm not trying to make fun of this I'm trying to point out the fact that this is truly emotionally manipulative and it's based off of a Word of Wisdom that never even mentions coffee like all of this talk that she's talking about here is based on someone that is drinking coffee that's not mentioned the word of wisdom I mean maybe she's drinking iced coffee or you know it's just all of these things are just so inconsistent and you're you're telling you're putting this fear into people that they're going to lose not just their own salvation but that they're going to destroy their their kids salvation or their grandkids and in the process you're going to lose your parents who were faithful and it's just it it creates a lot of um stress where it doesn't need to be and it's it's just it's based off of something that is is as we've shown today is just not not only is it just not illogical but they're interpreting this Revelation in a way that it was never meant to be in the first place so she's telling people that they're going to that that her she has now lost her salvation or no she got it back because she came back but all of her kids now are not gonna be with her in heaven because she drank a cup of coffee from a revelation that says it's not a commandment but by Senpai greeting like it's just it's very um frustrating but it also you know shows I think how Revelations and how policies and how all of this can function in the church and how it can be so you know troubling and and painful for people yeah not to mention how in God's mind letting Joseph Smith through whoever Hebrew J Grant and all the members into this Kingdom who all drank coffee but then you know the ones decades later yeah well Joseph drank coffee but but it wasn't a commandment at the time coffee when it was a commandment so you're out but Joseph's in just yeah anyway would be to that horse all right so here is the here's the concluding slide yeah and so you'd mention this at the start but yeah I don't think the word of wisdom is a Smoking Gun I mean if we're if we're ranking the problems of the church it's certainly knocking me in at the very top of it by any stretch but I think it again um show some of the elements of Joseph Smith's Productions that we've talked about in the previous episodes and that's why I think it's so important so Joseph Smith uses the surrounding ideas of the temperance movement to create a revelation from God that give his ideas more Authority we've talked about that with the priesthood restoration we talked about that with the Book of Mormon all of that stuff same kind of pattern here we talk about how Joseph Smith was able to create a revelation almost on request from Emma so she says she's sick of tired of cleaning it according to the one account from David Whitmer she says it'll be awful nice if you get a revelation he gets one like the next day the Mormon church has a very uh redefined explanation from a very clear Revelation from God and so they've redefined God's very clear statement that this is not a commandment but sent by greeting and so without having a second Revelation to clarify the first it does feel like they're just arbitrarily changing it and when they arbitrarily change it they're still showing that they have some of the same problems with legitimacy of the claims made in the word of wisdom that they did back then which you know we've said before you know from a scientific nutritional standpoint there are some serious problems with the word of wisdom especially when you look at the fact that coffee and tea are healthy um and yet we are allowed to drink sugary drinks um like we've mentioned before they don't talk about overeating on sugar we've gone through it all it's very inconsistent and the final point which is one that we see over and over again is everything Joseph Smith produces is limited to the knowledge he has at the time he's writing it there is for someone who is you know proclaimed to be you know the greatest Prophet since you know the time of Jesus he has nothing um that he prophesies on that wasn't known in his time and place um that has been proven true and it just shows us that he you know doesn't have any foresight it doesn't have that channeling of a supernatural um messenger that can can warn us of of anything coming up and that continues to this day and I think that pattern is one that at first I think a lot of people people just kind of go that's not fair if we kind of look at some of the vague statements they may we can attribute it here but we can show over and over and that pattern goes all the way to Russell Nelson as we've talked about with you know covid and um you know the church not warning about 9 11 just stuff in our lifetimes it's it's a consistent pattern where they don't know anything that's going to happen Beyond Today yeah because if their Prophet series and revelators now even if the word of wisdom of DNC one DNC 89 is outdated why why wouldn't they come up with an updated Word of Wisdom add a hundred and exactly section 139 or 145 of the DNC and say behold I the Lord have have unfolded a new word of wisdom and then gives it not only gives us the best advice for the day but even stuff that we wouldn't have been able to predict later anyway wonderful stuff Mike thank you so much for preparing this in a wonderful episode and uh and I should say we've got many more to come yeah we've got uh you know we've got race and race and Mormonism the temple endowment and masonry we've got polygamy multiple Parts on polygamy book of Abraham Kinder hook plates spiritual Witnesses and testimonies doubt Revelations uh apologetics Transfiguration of Brigham Young so so many cool episodes and if people want to request important episodes yes Mike is willing to write some new essays to accommodate additional essays as well yeah and you know I'll just say now since we're heading into this part of the the episodes the next six episodes are going to be tough ones um we're gonna be doing about race in the scriptures uh and then basically the five after that we've got the temple and then Forum polygamy and I just want to say up front they're going to be really difficult they're going to be really tough I think they're going to be ones that elicit emotional responses if you're a Believer or a non-believer and so I just want to say we're going to do our best to make them as calm and neutral as we can and I just like I guess I'm just giving a little bit of a trigger warning on those because I think those are gonna be tough for me too because those are the areas where you can see some things that were done that are just really not good and do not line up with um you know what you would expect and so uh you know buckle up because it's going to be a really important episode episodes but they're gonna be really difficult so hopefully we can all kind of get through them in a way that is constructive and helpful because I know that's my biggest concern with these is making them consumable to people who are going through where I was a few years ago and you you need um the little bit of extra context and hopefully you need it done in a way that's not going to anger you or anger maybe someone who is still a Believer and um so we're going to do it as honest as we can but just as a warning these next six are going to be a little bit tougher as far as kind of maybe like the emotional response from them all right and uh you know today's essay is LDS discussions.com wow or wow you can find all these essays at ldsdiscussions.com it's a great resource um also all these episodes have been Consolidated uh in Anchor but also in Spotify you can listen to them via Spotify and in apple the podcast app and wherever you get your audio podcast and you can also watch them on video in Spotify and you can watch them on YouTube um uh under the Mormon stories podcast Channel under the LDS discussions YouTube video playlist all this is included in the uh time codes and show notes along with any other links that we reference today so Mike you're awesome thanks so much keep up thanks everybody yep see you guys next week and thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon stories we hope you enjoy this episode uh we couldn't do this without your support those of you who don't donate and make it happen also the staff here at the open stories Foundation we couldn't do it without staff support as well so thanks to the Mormon story staff and board of directors and to the donors if you value this type of content and want to see it continue if you want to see it live long and prosper for other people please become a monthly donor go to the mormonsories.org website click on the Donate button become a monthly donor we're transparent in our finances uh your tax your donations are tax deductible in the U.S and all the money we try and dedicate to the mission and the cause of the open 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