LDS Temple Endowment & Masonry
Original Air Date: 2022-10-06
This video, an episode of the Mormon Stories Podcast titled "LDS Temple Endowment and Masonry," features host John Dehlin, Mike from LDS Discussions, and guest Nemo the Mormon 1. The discussion focuses on the historical and textual connections between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ temple endowment ceremony and the rituals of Freemasonry, analyzing the evidence that Joseph Smith borrowed heavily from the Masonic Lodge to create the Mormon temple rites 1, 2.
Here is a detailed summary of the video’s content and arguments:
The hosts highlight a critical seven-week timeline in 1842 that suggests a direct link between the two ceremonies:
The episode reacts to the LDS Church's "Now You Know" YouTube video on this topic. The Church acknowledges that early members noticed similarities in presentation and clothing but argues that the content, covenants, and truths were revealed to Joseph Smith prior to his encounter with Masonry 3, 4. The Church posits that God uses many means to inspire prophets and that the "presentation methods" might parallel Masonry, but the purposes (exaltation vs. fraternity) are distinct 3, 5.
The Hosts' Rebuttal:
Early Church leaders, such as Heber C. Kimball and Franklin D. Richards, taught that Freemasonry was a corrupted apostate version of the original priesthood rituals from Solomon’s Temple and that Joseph Smith was restoring them to their pure form 10, 11.
4. Specific Parallels and Plagiarism
The episode details numerous specific elements Joseph Smith incorporated from Masonry:
5. Controversial Elements and Changes
The video discusses elements of the temple ceremony that have been removed or altered, undermining the idea that the ritual is an unchangeable ancient ordinance:
6. Institutional Honesty
The episode features a clip of LDS Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland being interviewed by the BBC. When asked if temple initiates famously swore to slit their own throats, Holland initially denies it, only admitting it when pressed that he was referring to the "current" ceremony, despite having participated in the old ceremony himself 29, 30. Nemo cites this as an example of leadership being dishonest about the Masonic connection 30.
7. Conclusion
The hosts conclude that the endowment fits a broader pattern of Joseph Smith using his 19th-century environment (such as the mound builder myths for the Book of Mormon or the temperance movement for the Word of Wisdom) to create theology 31, 32. They argue that because the foundational claim—that Masonry is the ancient Solomon’s Temple ritual—is demonstrably false, the claim that the endowment is a divine restoration also falls apart 33, 34. The ceremony is presented as a 19th-century creation designed to enforce secrecy, particularly regarding polygamy, using Masonic tools 35.
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thank you hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I'm your host John delin it is September 7th 2022 and we are recording another episode in The Amazing series with Mike of LDS discussions um whose content can be found at ldsdiscussions.com today's episode is the connection between uh the Mormon or the LDS church temple ceremony and masonry or the Masonic Lodge uh for those of you who are just joining us for the first time uh we are about 24 or 25 episodes into an amazing Series where we discuss essays written by my friend Mike at again the the website ldsdiscussions.com and the focus is all around examining Mormon church truth claims uh based on the evidence with an attempt at uh observation or neutrality where we're trying to shed as much much of our biases as we can and just analyze the evidence to make make sense of it um without too much Prejudice and joining us today for the episode is of course Mike hey Mike thanks for joining us hey everybody and viewers and listeners will be happy to know that for today at least Nemo the Mormon from The Amazing channel uh Nemo the Mormon on YouTube is joining us all the way from the UK hey Nemo hey how you doing glad to have you it's good to see you Nemo yeah glad to be back you ready to talk masonry in the Masonic Lodge yeah yeah I am ready all righty um for those who don't don't know this or don't remember we're making all of these episodes available Standalone uh in a series either on Spotify you can go to LDS discussions on Spotify and view these video wise or listen to them in the audio format you can check out the playlist uh under the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel there's an LDS discussions playlist and of course these are all available in a sequence uh wherever you get your podcasts and I'll also say that sometimes we have intros that are a little bit longer at least in YouTube format if you go to YouTube and if you pay for the premium account especially but even if you don't in the description we have time codes where you could just jump ahead skip the introduction and jump right ahead to the very first slide and so without any further Ado let's go ahead and jump ahead to the very first slide Mike yeah this is just any introduction you want to give yeah this is basically the introduction which is to say this is obviously an episode that's going to cover some ground that is very sensitive to a lot of people and so we are going to outline how Joseph Smith used the Masonic ceremony to create the endowment but we're not going to recite or play any of the current text or video of the endowment ceremony we're not going to show pictures inside the temple you know we do I really do respect the fact that a lot of members find this to be sacred and so we're not gonna to make this episode about making fun of any of it or or showing the videos of it so what we are going to do though is include the elements and the text of the Masonic ceremonies which might be very familiar to members who have gone through the temple as well as highlighting parts of the endowment that have been removed or edited since Joseph Smith first created the ceremony so this is not being done to reveal the ceremony it's being done to illustrate where Joseph Smith was pulling materials from the Masonic ceremony from and also kind of looking at how in the year since the church has attempted to remove some of the Masonic elements out some of the uncomfortable teachings out but in doing this we're not going to be showing the current Temple stuff so we're going to try to be as sensitive as we possibly can to the fact that so many members do hold this to be sacred um I just wanted to get that up front so that people who want to watch this who are believing can feel comfortable that we're not going to be doing any of those things that you might see um in other areas of the internet and non-mormons may not even totally understand this disclaimer but I'll just reiterate what you just said there probably is no more kind of secret slash sacred uh aspect of Mormonism then the Mormon Temple ceremony we're sworn to secrecy we're not even told about it before we go into it and and so that's why we're exhibiting so much caution and such a big disclaimer yeah sure all right so uh let's jump to the timeline yeah so we like to do timelines on this series just because I think it's helpful to understanding sometimes how these ideas evolve and this one's a really simple one so on March 15th 1842 Joseph Smith has initiated as a Master Mason May 3rd of 1842 Joseph Smith introduces the endowment ceremony so exactly seven weeks after Joseph Smith becomes a Master Mason and being introduced to the Masonic ceremony he is going to introduce the endowment that will feature almost identical text symbols clothing handshakes and more so it's a seven week span between becoming a Mason and introducing the endowment I'm guessing there's a lot of listeners and viewers that really don't know much about the Masonic Lodge unless they've watched The Simpsons and there's The Simpsons episode which kind of did a parody of the Masons the stonecutters episode is one of the all-time greats yeah yeah I mean I I don't know much about the Masonic ceremony to be honest outside of going through Mormonism and the Stone Cutters those are my two sources of knowledge there yeah yeah just to go ahead Nemo let's say uh in Britain we know a little bit more about the Masons just in that there's a lot of masonic lodges around you'll see that kind of symbols all up and around on buildings and things a lot of formal lodges are now other kinds of buildings so yeah it's basically just this Brotherhood it's normally men and this is Brotherhood it goes back hundreds of years Thomas Jefferson was a Mason you know lots of the founders in the United States the founders of our country were considered George Washington et cetera Masons and just think of it as a secret Brotherhood um where there's a Temple involved and then this really super secret ceremony where they're sworn to secrecy I'll just I will say Masons are like Mormons in that they will tell you they're a Mason like it's not a secret that they are a Freemason necessarily because you know um I've met Masons who during covet have been wearing face coverings with masonry symbols embroidered on it oh wow right from their Lodge or whatever so it's not a secret that you are a Mason um some of the things they do are more secretive um but yeah it's not like they're Masons among you and you may not know yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly and I think um we'll touch on a little bit throughout the episode but I think masonry first started because as they were starting to build things I believe it was more of a fraternity of people who were um like in a way certified to do the work and so they had handshakes so that you knew you were dealing with someone who knew what they were doing and then I think it evolved from that into more of a Brotherhood and uh we'll touch on that because the church will kind of talk about that as well as to how well you know the Masonic kind of ceremony and traditions evolve and Joseph Smith kind of takes the later part of that and if you've ever seen someone with a ring that has a g on it and then like a compass and a square around G that's that's also a symbol that you'll see outside of these temples that Nemo just talked about all right so the church looks like the church has done a video on this yeah so we did when we did the word of wisdom episode we used a lot of the churches now you know video and we're going to do the same for this because the church doesn't have like a full out gospel topics essay but this gives a good indication as to what the church would teach today with regards to the parallels between the Masonic ceremony and the endowment ceremony so we'll let them kind of show it in their own words and then we can react to it so this is just part one all right here's part one of the LDS Churches uh now you know video masonry wasn't new to the thousands of Latter-day Saint converts already living in and around Nauvoo at the time although new to the faith some members of the church even those within the ranks of church leadership were already Masons eventually over 1500 members of the church were listed as Freemasons in Nauvoo alone more than in all the rest of Illinois in towns across early America many elected officials were Masons President George Washington Benjamin Franklin and many signers of the Declaration of Independence were also Masons and uh Nemo one of the roles I'm trying to play with Mike is kind of student Mike's the educator and I'm just going to say what we just saw is more education on the Masonic Lodge than I received in 45 years of membership in other words we were never told about it we were told about the temple ceremony but we were never told anything about the Masonic Lodge in all my years in the church and of course we were never told that there was a connection and I'm just going to say one of the most profound moments of my life is when an old friend of mine while I'm in the MTC the Missionary Training Center for the Mormon Church you know training to become a missionary one of my friends from high school writes me and says hey John I just want to let you know that I found out that the temple ceremony you just went through was was plagiarized from the Masonic Lodge ceremony and I was so sure she was lying with anti-mormon literature that I did the equivalent of a of a 1988 unfriending and I just said never write me again you're a liar you know get out of my world and that you know that's my experience with the Masonic Lodge in Mormonism so my experience uh just real quick was that I was a I was a missionary at the temple and I discovered this while serving as a missionary at the temple I discovered that uh masonry and the temple had connections so I went to my temple president and asked him the question and then I came back to him with a solution which was the whole Solomon's Temple argument uh and he's yeah sure okay fine didn't really he was happy that I'd found my own way around it and just let me let me run off with it yeah yep all right Mike yeah and you know this we don't have to go through this too much but this first part of this video here is just it's we see this with the church when we uh did the word of wisdom we also saw this um if you go to LDS discussions I did a write-up about the church's now you know video on use of using Seer Stones they try very hard to normalize things to make it feel more common and it's just one of those things that's kind of funny because when we did the Book of Mormon surrounding overviews episode we talked a lot about how there was this anti-masonic you know fervor across the you know Joseph Smith's area in the Northeast which may explain to the Book of Mormon so it's kind of funny to have that kind of juxtaposition of the Book of Mormon having these anti-masonic feelings and now the church says saying yeah it's totally normal and you know all these really you know big big time influential people are doing it and so um this is one of those areas we talk about often where the church WIll point to others who believed in similar things to try to imply that there's no big deal here and we talked about this a lot when we did our episodes with race and the scriptures of Mormonism where they'll say you know what the the church was founded in a time where there was a lot of racism so of course you'd expect some of the you know the prophets of God to be racist too and um I know some people might feel like that's mischaracterizing but if you read the church's essay they have sections where they literally will say you know that you know the the people in the church are product of their time and therefore when they come up through that it's it's normal to expect that they have some of that and then like I said earlier the searstone video and so this this is trying to set up to members of the church watching this video that um it's basically a normal respected um thing that was happening in Joseph Smith's time to be a Mason which again goes against the Book of Mormon but that's what the setup here is yeah and if it's no big deal why weren't we told this you know yeah exactly it's misrepresenting this new spin is a misrepresentation because if it wasn't a big deal first of all it was a big deal this was something that when it was brought up in let's just say in the 1970s and 80s and 60s and 50s many people said well that's well if Joseph got that from the Masons then then he can't really claim it's from God it seems a lot more like plagiarism than it does inspiration and that's why it was controversial that's why it was hidden from us and so um that's why to now say it's no big deal is not maybe fully honest yeah yeah I think that's good okay and so we're going to part yeah now we're going to the next part of the video okay in the Years prior to becoming a Mason Joseph Smith had received instruction from God Revelations about eternal promises which God desired to make with church members these promises are often called Covenants some of these covenants along with instruction about the purpose of life are presented to members of the church in a ceremony called the endowment held in holy temples so does the temple endowment ceremony borrow from Masonic ritual at the time Latter-Day Saints in Nauvoo who experienced both Masonic rights and the temple endowment did notice some common characteristics between the two ceremonies specifically the common methods of presentation and clothing of the participants they acknowledge parallels between masonry and the temple ceremony as given to Joseph based on their experience with both they concluded the temple ceremony it was of divine origin already I'm just going to say number one we saw that little G there and then also um I think the answer is just yes like just like when we talked about the word of wisdom episode like where did Joseph get it it was clearly from the temperance movement that was going on in Kirtland at the time like the answer to the question was the temple ceremony borrowed from the Masonic Lodge isn't anything other than absolutely Nemo you were smiling I I just want to get my soapbox for a moment right because throughout this video I did I did my own reaction to this video on my channel um but throughout this video essentially the question was I'm gonna because I made notes on this does the temple endowment ceremony borrow from Masonic ritual that's the explicit question the answer is well the members thought it was of divine origin it's not an answer to the question at all and in the same way they don't answer the question they also provide no evidence throughout this entire video of what years and what Revelations Joseph received which supposedly pre-date Freemasonry there's uh because the claim was um that you know the endowment and the covenants God wanted to make were revealed before Joseph Smith became a Mason that's the implied claim in this video but the only other endowment ceremony that was received was the curtain and endowment and that has nothing to do with the parts that Joseph took from masonry because that's all Washings and anointings which is found in the Bible yeah yeah that makes sense sorry that's just that's my soapbox on this no it's a good point because we see that a lot in these essays and in these videos where you kind of go like they they'll ask a question or they'll they'll bring up like kind of a point of controversy and then they never actually answer it and so all of a sudden at the end if you're a member you're like oh yeah they answered it but then if you actually read it like no they they didn't they just kind of Go a different way and like you said it's amazing how there's no there's no citation I I know you can't do a citation in a video but like on their online stuff they'll constantly say oh they had early Revelations it's like but where are they you know why aren't they written down and we have 132 sections or maybe more how many sections production because 136 is it there's more something like that yeah 136 sections of Doctrine covenants and uh they can't point to a specific one yeah because surely if this is this is a significant Revelation no yeah yeah that's just it and it's it's not in Journey you know they don't have it in Joseph's journals or anything so there's no like there's no you know Temple script before the endowment before the Masonic ceremony and so um you know kind of what you're saying this is the part of the video that everyone needs to pay attention to because what they're doing is they're trying to concede the fact that early members who were Masons immediately noticed how similar they were so this was not something where like people there's no vagueness here immediate like holy crap this is the Masonic ceremony and so what happens is Joseph Smith then is going to tell these members that the Masonic ceremony was of divine origin but then was kind of apostasized or corrupted and so we have Hebrew C Kimball in 1858 he says we have the true masonry the masonry of today is received from the apostasy which took place in the days of Solomon and David they have now and then a thing that is correct but we have the real thing and then we have another one from Heber C Kimball where he says there is a similarity of priesthood and masonry Brother Joseph says masonry was taken from priesthood but has become degenerated but many things are perfect and so Joseph Smith when people realize that he's taking the Masonic ceremony he's like well of course yeah because this was the original Temple ceremony and I'm now restoring it back to where it was so when they kind of make it sound like oh early members thought it was um you know of divine origin it's like well yeah because Joseph is telling him that and so they don't tell you that Joseph is telling people that the Masonic ceremony was a divine origin because of course as we'll get into that's not true but they're they're very carefully squirting around this in a way that is intentionally misleading but also they could say well we're not really not saying it or we're not outright lying we're just not saying it and and Joseph is telling them this this is not something the members are coming up with on their own and just another quick Point um just looking back at my notes there is 126 sections of doctrine of covenants that were written before March of 1842 when Joseph Smith encountered masonry yeah there's 120 sorry 126 sections yeah so if you look through all of them for the word endowment the only ones you'll find are about the Kirtland endowment yeah so yeah an endowment is a word uh when I was doing the Saints book the chapter by chapter I remember them building up to endowment and there was a lot of I mean I haven't read it read it since then so this I don't really go too much because I'll probably kind of misspeak a little bit but it felt like they were conflating the Kirtland endowment with what the navu one would be later you know it was almost like they were like building up to the endowment and they're like okay now it's on pause because obviously they had to leave and and in reality the Kirtland Temple was completely different and so that's why you run into these problems where all of a sudden now they're redoing the temple ceremony in a way that's pulling from surrounding ideas it's hard to get away from it and Mike and Nemo tell me if I've got this right like this is all happening in this context of this kind of restorationist context and I I think Mike if I remembering right this comes at least in part from Sydney Rigdon and Alexander Campbell but it's this idea that Jesus set up the one true thing and then it all got corrupted and and now it all needs to be restored to its proper order so you know one way to interpret this if you're a Believer is that God is giving the true Temple ceremony to Joseph but if you're not buying that then what makes a lot more sense is it's just like with Joseph's you know rewriting of the of the King James version of the Bible and of the New Testament and other sorts of things he sees things that are in his milieu he brings them in and then tweaks them and then calls it a restoration of all things yeah conveniently his translation of the Bible existed in his milieu in the form of Adam commentary on the Bible but you know well yeah it's totally a point I that's what I did to myself I said oh well then you know it's just been restored from a corrupted version of the ceremony from Solomon's Temple that's how I got through it yeah it's just you know it's one of those things where I think I have it on this slide but just a few of them but maybe at some point we'll do an episode because on the website when I first started doing I had like the section it was called I call it Joseph Smith's mixtape Theory where it's like you know he's like creating this mixtape just I like this okay repurpose it for this and you know I know David Bach boy in your episode said you know that's how profits do it you actualize um information in the way you need it to work for you the problem though is that Joseph Smith is going to again cement this as an ancient um endowment and we're going to show that there's no connection and once you can show that there's no connection that Joseph Smith's claims fall apart once is you know I mean and that's the whole thing like it's the House of Cards Thing Once the found the bottom comes out everything falls down it's almost like permission to plagiarize because if you're just stealing stuff left and right then everybody's just saying well you're just a plagiarist but if you're actually you know if you're actually like quote improving it and claiming that you're restoring it to its divine origins well then you're a prophet of God you're not a plagiarist well that's fanfic right perfect that's kind of what yeah that's what comes down to it and we'll get in we'll get into too much too but like one of the biggest purposes of the of the Masonic ceremony is is the focus on secrecy and Joseph Smith at this time needs secrecy and so I think there's a big reason why Joseph finds a ton of value in this because he needs he needs people to keep their mouths shut and um we'll get into that more it's all about polygamy right yeah well yeah certainly I mean I you know yeah we'll get into that so um here's some more quotes from um early leaders about masonry being the original endowment so this is the Journal of Joseph Fielding Smith where he says many have joined the Masonic institution this seems to have been a stepping stone or preparation for something else the true origin of Masonry um we have uh President Franklin D Richards in 1890 saying certain Mystic rights which are practiced throughout Christendom claim Antiquity with Solomon's Temple and then we've got Elder Andrew Jensen in 1913 saying if the Freemasonry of today is a Remnant and Corruption of the true signs and tokens of the priesthood revealed in the days of Solomon when the Temple of Solomon was built then it is easy for us to understand and believe that the mythology of the north is simply a Corruption of the true Jehovah worship as Abraham knew and taught it to his children so we have all these different quotes where they're making allusions to the fact that Joseph Smith is restoring it and so here's two last ones before we kind of uh move on a bit here and so this is from Benjamin F Johnson he says he Joseph Smith told me Freemasonry as at present was the apostate endowments as sectarian religion was the apostate religion and then we have um president uh Franklin D Richards again saying Joseph the prophet was aware that there were some things about masonry which had come down from the beginning and he desired to know what what they were hence the lodge the Masons admitted some keys of knowledge appearing appertaining to masonry lost Joseph inquired of the Lord concerning the matter and he revealed to the prophet the true masonry or to the prophet true masonry as we have in our temples owing to the matter uh or sorry oh owning owing to the superior knowledge Joseph had received the Masons became jealous and cut off the Mormon Lodge and so to Nemo's Point here's uh you know Prophet Franklin D Richards saying that Joseph saw it inquired of the Lord got a revelation and yet there's no Revelation so that's putting a lot of words into Joseph's mouth right there definitely and and even even with the argument that you know this stuff wouldn't have been recorded in DNC because it's too sacred you're not gonna if we don't share the temple ceremony outside the temple then why would any of it be written down in Doctrine and Covenants yep but that it's not Beyond Joseph to write that the Lord revealed to me a temple ceremony which I cannot record here but yeah right there's there's no reason for him not and that's the sort of thing he almost would do if it happened because that alludes to his ability to get stuff from God and his ability to control that information yeah because if it controls the information he keeps himself relevant yeah and think about the book of Abraham the facsimiles has those symbols where it says something like to be revealed in the temple or whatever I mean to your point he could have a revelation that's like because you know he has these journals of what he's doing each day and he could say uh wrote down or received a revelation of the true ceremony for ceiling ordinances or for the endowment and then he could say I cannot write down the ceremony for it is too sacred it's just some note that he did it but there's just nothing yeah and so this is where things get messy for this claim that Joseph Smith was making because he's telling all the early members of the close connection between the Masonic ceremony and the endowment being Divine uh because they had the apostate endowments in masonry which he is then going to restore as a prophet of God and we now know that the Masonic ceremony did not originate until about 2 000 years after Solomon's Temple and that it was Solomon's Temple was about animal sacrifice it had nothing to do with masonry anyway so there's no real Connection in the first place it's not like masonry was trying to copy Salman's Temple and then you know we copied that so none of these inconvenient facts are mentioned in the now you know video and so to kind of drive this point home you know Fair Mormon was doing a q a and they were kind of forced to concede this fact and so this is an area where Joseph Smith saw an idea he liked molded it to fit what his desire was and then when members kind of questioned it because they realized it was the Masonic ceremony he taught him that God was just restoring something that was lost in the great apostasy but um this is a question they ask at a fair Mormon conference they say wouldn't it be more correct to say that masonry came out of the endowment and the answer is it would be if you believe that Freemasonry has a continuous historical line from King Solomon's Temple to the current unfortunately there is no historical evidence to support a continuous functioning line from Solomon's Temple to present we know what went on in Solomon's Temple it's the ritualistic slaughter of animals and so I don't know what to say I'll say that Joseph Smith made claims that are false I was gonna say it's it as far as I understand it it's not something that Joseph Smith would necessarily know was false it was a common myth amongst Freemasonry at the time that this comes from Solomon's Temple yeah and it's only with modern understanding that we that that kind of freemasonly essentially we've realized it goes back to you know 15th century stone masons but that was a com a common part of kind of the origin myths of masonry so no wonder Joseph Smith picked up on it and others also picked up on it and it's one of those things where it's like the mound builders myths and other myths of Joseph's time it's now notwithstanding the scrutiny of of modern research it almost reminds me of the of the curse of cane Doctrine it's not only Joseph Joseph Smith didn't come up with it but he certainly canonized it right yeah and that's just yeah that's it I mean we talk about patterns all the time right and this is another pattern where Joseph Smith is going to take an idea he likes he cements it his historical and then we now know it's not we've done so many episodes Adam and Eve literal the global flood being literal the long-ending a mark some of them all these things he cements and you look back on it and you're like oh and so if he's wrong on that and he's doing it in the voice of God telling other people it's Revelation that's what you've got massive problems two other quick points I'll add what believe it or not one of my very first episodes of Mormon stories podcast was with Greg Kearney who's the guy you just referenced at the fair conference and he is a Master Mason so the fact that he is saying I am a Master Mason and this stuff does not originate with Solomon's Temple that should mean something to people that are looking for evidence yeah because you know he he should know right yeah he's an expert if there is one the only other thing I'll say is that you know maybe I'm maybe I'm overstating here but you guys tell me if you think I'm wrong on this something I heard someone once say is is that if the Jews are really good at anything they're good at preserving their ritual so if the Jews were are doing the Masonic Lodge ceremony equivalent you know three or four thousand years ago they would still be doing something very much like it today but they're not and so what why would we believe that they were doing their most sacred ritual you know three or four thousand years ago but that there's no remnant of it now and the only remnant of it just happens to be something that Joseph stumbled on when he was in Kirtland and then imported it into Mormonism with a little bit of remix I think it it stems from this uh Mormon need to assimilate with the Jewish people and that's a really complex conversation and we could have a really long talk about that but ultimately Mormonism is all about trying to essentially get cred it's like oh the more we can connect ourselves to Judaism and the old world and the real ancient religions then we're golden then then we've got credibility we've got strength we're not just Christians we go back to the Jews as well that's something unique about Mormonism I think I heard someone say once that Mormons want to outdo the Jews I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase but love the Jewish people yeah yeah and we have Jewish Envy in some ways yeah well I mean I think yeah that's all like Joseph Smith absolutely loved like the Old Testament ideas and brought him in everywhere and unfortunately he did it in a way that's just not historically accurate and so I mentioned earlier the church does not have a gospel topics essay on masonry but they do have like a little topics entry so it's a very short um kind of explainer about masonry and so one in that they say there are no known Masonic documents before about 1400 the earliest records tell a story of masonry originating during Old Testament times the oldest surviving minutes of masonic lodges date to about 1600 and indicate that the organization was primarily concerned with regulating the trade of stone masonry later minutes showed that The Lodges were generally overtaken by men who are not stone masons these members transformed the organization from a trade Guild into a fraternity Masons told a story about how their ancient forebears had learned stone masonry used it to build Solomon's Temple protected the temple site and held knowledge about their craft as a closely guarded Secret by Joseph Smith day the boundaries between masonry's early European history and its founding myths and traditions had long since been blurred the rituals of Freemasonry appear to have originated in early modern Europe aspects of these ceremonies bear resemblance to religious rights in many cultures ancient and modern and so The church here is saying that by Joseph Smith's time the the basically the actual history of masonry and the myths had been blurred and as Nemo said earlier Joseph Smith was coming in at a time when those myths were being blurred and just took them as history and so I guess the church in a way is kind of funny to me because the value of a prophet is to be able to tell the difference between you know truth and in fiction and myth and history and yet this is the church basically saying yeah Joseph Smith came when those lines were being blurred and what they don't tell you is that Joseph Smith was you know literally telling everybody that he was restoring it but this is a really good admission that masonry is not what Joseph Smith claimed it was in the name of God you know telling people it was revealed to him and right here this tells you that the entire value of a prophet is just relegated to almost nothing if you want to take the Church of their word with this essay comparing to what Joseph Smith said was Revelation it's this is really damning stuff if you know at least in my opinion I I think this shows that Joseph didn't know what he was working with but I think it also shows I think something that we we don't always talk about is sometimes the earnestness of Joseph's intentions um we can never truly know what his intentions were but I think sometimes he was taking things that he legitimately believed to be ancient and trying to pull them into his religion so he took masonry which he may have believed was truly ancient and thought Mormonism needs this yep yeah it could be I mean there's a lot of instances where it seems like Joseph Smith is is really actively trying to learn and do into to be able to you know bring those Concepts in in a way that would would be to make the church grow and you know to your point I'm not saying that Joseph is you know sitting in a room laughing like oh my goodness I can't believe these people are buying buying what I'm saying but I think the fact is that whether you know I know Dan Vogel has the pious fraud Theory where he really believed he was helping but my my point is like to a certain extent and it sounds kind of cold but I don't really care if he believed if he was helping because if he if he's wrong he's wrong like if he's getting basic stuff wrong then it doesn't really matter to me if he if he meant well because there are a lot of people that meanwhile that cause a lot of harm or take a lot from people um but yeah I I think your points are good it undermines his his claim that he is speaking as a prophet of God and he's revealing things from an omnipotent deity yeah it undermines that regardless of whether he thought he's hoping or not yeah no go ahead go ahead Mike I'm finished I was just gonna say if you're a member of the church today and someone says I need you to go to the temple where Church required underwear give us 10 of your time give you know countless hours every week and these callings um because Russell Nelson isn't actually a prophet of God but he's a really nice guy I think you'd be like yeah no I mean the whole value proposition of Mormonism is that you have a living prophet and I think the I think Joseph Smith was one of those people that will never be able to go in his head obviously but I think he really did treat people that were close to him well and people who felt you know kind of broke away from him he treated like horrible obviously as we know uh but at the same time like that kind of drama isn't really something that is too interesting to me because once you realize that he's not speaking for God then all of that is just like you know stuff you can get anywhere where you get people who are trying to do good and angering some people other people love you it's like it's just a controversial figure and it's there's no value to it with regards to religion if he's getting things wrong that he claims are from God and if I could just draw another quick parallel in a summary I mentioned already uh you know how the word of wisdom DNC one DNC section 89 likely comes from the temperance movement that was running around the curtain Society back in the early 1830s uh you know another example of of this would be the mound builder myth that was running around you know let's just say a New England and Upstate New York in the in the 1820s that influences view of the Hebrews and and likely influences the Spalding manuscript and many other things and of course that becomes a foundational you know backbone or framing for much of the Book of Mormon narrative and this is where you'll see modern Mormon apologists like Terrell Gibbons use words like uh bricolage or you know fancy words like bricolage or uh inspired syncretist it's this idea that people who actually value evidence in history we'll go wait a minute it looks a lot like Joseph was just basically taking anything that he learned or experienced and kind of imp you know even even the idea of a Melchizedek priesthood we we now have identified that it probably came from Sydney Rigdon in the Campbell lights and so whether it's Melchizedek priesthood or you know a health code out of the temperate Society or you know the mound builder myth Into the Book of Mormon or the Masonic temple ceremony he's just looking around him finding cool things that he likes importing them tweaking them um putting a stamp of approval on it calling it ancient saying that he's restoring it and and that's his creative and by the way like you said Mike all of that can be sincere he can literally believe that this Temple Ceremony this Mason ceremony is ancient it doesn't mean that he's lying he could be sincere in believing that all these things really do have an ancient origin I just think it strains maybe it's strange credulity a little bit Yeah is the The Three Degrees Of Glory he clearly gets that from Swedenburg right yeah as a Brit I can't get mad at him for that because we've run around the world taking cool stuff that we liked so yeah that's true props to the guy yeah you in the United States have not had that problem so yeah never all right so we've got a video now let's should we continue the video all right yeah okay this is more from the church's now you know video about uh the temple and masonry and consider that the ideas within the culture that surrounded Joseph Smith frequently contributed to the process by which he obtained Revelations from God regarding the temple endowment as well as other subjects not surprising since God uses many means to inspire His prophets and help them receive revelation hey Mike what did you want us to grab from that yeah I mean you could just go to the next slide it's just basically and this is an area where the church is going to kind of have to admit or at least they can no longer deny that Joseph Smith is using surrounding ideas to create his Theology and so you know we've talked about this in other episodes already like you said the word of wisdom the priesthood restoration the mountain Builder myth all these ideas um that you know we were told oh as members we weren't really told about most of them but you know I think you can look at it and see they're all in the 19th century and so we're told that these ideas are uh ancient with their origins in the church but then when you look at them they all tend to point back to a 19th century and so um this is a quote we've read before but this is Richard Bushman who is a faithful um Mormon historian he was a patriarch he's you know very well regarded he says about the Book of Mormon and there is the fact that there is phrasing everywhere long phrases that if you Google them you'll find them in 19th century writings the Theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century Theology and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament that is it has Christ in the way the Protestant saw Christ everywhere in the Old Testament that's why we now call it the Hebrew Bible because the Jews never saw it quite that way so these are all problems we have to deal with and I know he's talking about the Book of Mormon but this is just again talking about the fact that Joseph Smith is constantly pulling 19th century ideas 19th century beliefs and repurposing them into ancient ideas and now the church in this video is kind of saying yeah of course he would process it that way because that's all he knows but I think this is a shift from the way at least it was taught to me as a convert it was always taught to me as being restored from ancient not like restored through Modern lenses and I think that's a huge kind of at least for for me a shift in the way they kind of approach it but it's also a big concession yeah yep nothing else to say on that yeah I mean you know and and this is kind of like you know we talk about you know the video kind of saying well of course they kind of pull from ideas from from their world view or whatever this is some of the things we've already covered in the series um that our surrounding ideas that Joseph takes from his time and place and we've covered some things already today the mound builder myth is in the Book of Mormon uh Joseph Smith's treasure digging is in the Book of Mormon the first Vision we talk about there's about three dozen accounts of similar experiences uh the aaronic and Melchizedek priest says we talk about the Melchizedek priesthood likely coming from the Campbell lights at least they were teaching at first the word of wisdom and the temperance movement Adam Clark's commentary being in the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible the curse of Kane and the curse of ham in the book of Moses and Abraham those are ideas that are more uh the way that they're produced in the book of Moses and Abraham really reflect the 19th century 18th century belief I'm super honored that that uh you've taught me so well that I that you know we between me and Nemo we've been able to come up with kind of 95 of the bullets without it and we've already exactly we've already covered all and that's why it's cool because like we haven't gotten to the three tiers of Heaven much that's what I'm saying I guess so yeah and you know it's just one of those like when those ideas in Revelations are proven to be nothing more than really incorrect beliefs from the 19th century then what are you left with and in this case Joseph Smith was teaching that the Masonic ceremony was the original endowment and that it was lost in apostasy but we know the Masonic ceremony was not invented until like thousands of years later so at that point Joseph Smith's entire underpinnings of this of this teaching are just completely gone and we see this in all of these things the model builder myth is not real no one's ever found buried treasure using a rock and a hat all of these things you know we don't need to rehash all of them it just shows that the church is now kind of falling back to this kind of more loose translation of Revelation where Joseph's allowed to incorporate his worldview and once you start watering it down it's because of the fact that he's being proven wrong and they need to find a fallback to it but the problem with that the the real that the real problem the real pin issue is that if that is allowed to happen if God is inspiring Joseph by the things around him and he is taking incorrect ideas in and using them to inspire inspiration from God and Revelation from God why is God allowing that to happen why is God giving Joseph incorrect Inspirations and allowing incorrect Revelations to come forward yeah it goes beyond the fallibility of prophets because yeah profits can be valuable but God doesn't allow them to lead his children astray by yep in the by canonizing revelations that are based on or can or revealing scripture based on incorrect beliefs yeah exactly because the church will always fall back on them the prophets are not infallible the prophets are imperfect men but the problem is the prophets are telling us they're telling us that they're only telling us what God told them so it's not that the prophets are imperfect men it's that they're giving us incorrect information from God so that like you said that all of a sudden you're not doing their job yeah if God is telling them something and they're telling us wrong things they're not doing their job and God has swallowed profits in fish for Less yeah that's just it and that's why when you really take a step back and look at this you're like you the the church tries very hard not to throw got under the bus but they will throw God under the bus if they need to to protect their current leadership we see that all the time but it's just like this is priesthood erase the November 15 policy you see all of these different areas where but yeah raising the priesthood is a big one because they'll say well we don't really understand why God did it but we just had to go with it anyways and the truth is we have a God that will send an angel down to tell Joseph to have you know polygamous relationships and yet apparently allows the prophets to just preach really incorrect Revelation you can't have it both ways the inconsistency is just overwhelming and at some point it it kind of takes over everything because you then have to go really bad apologetics to excuse that and that just creates more problems another way to summarize this is every time science or evidence or uh you know are are more accurate understanding of the world advances or increases are claims about prophetic power or the are the scriptures or the mystical you know source of the scriptures or the revelation of the prophets it shrinks when science advances when history advances the exorbitant Mormon truth claims shrink you know perfect example would be dinosaurs right but evolution uh age of the Earth like you can make these bold predictions or book of Abraham you make these bold predictions when there is an efforts to disprove it then when you disprove it all of a sudden it's myth all of a sudden it's metaphor all of a sudden prophets in scripture aren't perfect yeah and that's the problem yeah oh I've got some things to say about this next video I'm looking forward to this all right so here is the the next portion of the church's now you know video on the temple and Masonry the temple ceremony was not an imitation or copy of masonry it was Revelation from God yes the presentation methods may have parallels to Masonic ritual but the content of the instruction the covenants in truths introduced by Joseph Smith as part of the endowment were revealed to him prior to his encounter with masonry so what are some key differences between Masonic rituals and the temple endowment ceremony practiced by Latter-day Saints Masonic rituals based on Legend promote self-improvement Brotherhood charity and Fidelity to Truth for the purpose of making better men who in turn make a better Society in the endowment ceremony one of many important ceremonies held in sacred temples men and women promised God to obey his laws for the purpose of gaining exaltation eternal life with God through Jesus Christ and his atonement and this Temple ceremony draws upon the revelations from God for its content man I'm just shaking my head but I want to hear what you have to say Nemo oh dear I mean they're not addressing the things that are in common as specifically obviously you know the Masonic symbols signs and tokens repetitive nature of instruction knowledge testing the clothing of the participants they haven't grouped all that together in a convenient list and and I find it really interesting when they say many other ceremonies um because it's an association fallacy they're trying to bolster up uh the endowments only by including it with all the other stuff that gets done in the temple which isn't copied from masonry so they're trying to kind of cast your mind to all that sort of stuff but then the Mason the Masonic rituals and the endowment are all about Fidelity both of them they say that that's a difference but it's not it's just how are they not of improvement like yeah exactly that's Improvement or a Brotherhood or a Sisterhood like yeah it's uh it's it's mad and then they they're trying to I think is it in this video where they say they're used for different purposes because I think so essentially just because Joseph is using the Masonic ceremony for a different purpose it doesn't mean they can't have come from the same place that's those things aren't mutually exclusives you can't say oh well Joseph's using this for something else it's about God not about not about a fraternity so therefore it's not copied so I can copy The Book of Mormon entirely and then use it to create an entire different religion if I wanted yeah wouldn't mean I didn't copy it yeah that's that's learning what fan fiction is you you have your own ideas so you know they're basically making the argument that well Joseph had a few ideas before he ever you know merged them with the temple Sir with the Masonic Lodge ceremony to create the temple ceremony but just because he had some pre-existing ideas and ended up synthesizing them with the Masonic ceremony doesn't mean he didn't plagiarize the temple ceremony the Masonic ceremony yeah yeah and the only other thing I just really want to press on is it's super quick is that they say that again that these things were revealed to Joseph before he became a Freemason they still provide no evidence of when that happened the church is silent on when this actually came to him before March of 1842. yeah and we probably just said what's on Mike's next slide no it's fine so Nemo have you ever seen a show in England called chopped it's a cooking show okay so it's this cooking show it's on Food Network I think they have internationally but they give three contestants a basket of food they get the same food and then they have to make the best dish with the food so you might get like a like a you know a steak a potato and then some weird sweet thing and you gotta create like the best dish so you they create them and all three of them are going to have very different final products under the idea of this video you'd be like well because they have different products they weren't pulling from the same basket they're all pulling from the same you know so if you pull them the same ingredients and you come up with a different product and each person that creates a basket are cooking to their strength so one might be really good with Mexican food one might be really good with Asian food and so this idea that Joseph Smith is going to pull from the Masonic ceremony and the yet have some differences of course he's gonna have differences because that's the whole point otherwise it would be copying something that isn't relevant to the church it's your Point's a really good one and just the fact that just because they're different in the ultimate purpose doesn't have no bearing on the origins and um so anyways with that out of the way um yeah we cover most of this so this is just one of those having it both way issues where you know this video is going to tell us um that while the ceremony is from God the presentation has nothing to do with it but then we have Joseph Smith saying that the presentation was the original endowment and so I I don't understand why the church is trying to make that argument except for the fact that they don't tell you and the video that Joseph Smith was teaching him that this was the original endowment ceremony and so this is again one of those yeah it's one of those issues that the church would never have to make a video on if the historical connection between masonry and Solomon's Temple was there but because Joseph Smith taught it wrong the church is now saying well it really you know it really wasn't meant to be the exactly the same but it goes against what the person who created is telling us and so I think to to reframe what Joseph was saying in these videos without giving the listeners context is very misleading and so you know the church says I'm just kind of copying what Nemo said the presentation methods may have parallels to Masonic ritual but the content of instruction the covenants and truths introduced by Joseph Smith as part of the endowment were revealed to him prior to his encounter with masonry and again as Nemo said why not provide the revelations that show it was given to him before he became a Mason to at least make this point have some credibility because as of right now they're just inferring that and this is kind of the whole we did this in the preset episode where they'll say well Joseph Smith made this mention about Angelic visits so that could mean the first Vision that could mean that you you just make it whatever you want and this is another area where they'll say oh well you mentioned endowments in Kirtland that was clearly the same thing except we can kind of show it's not and yeah um and this is another area where they're just trying to keep you from getting underneath the surface because it just doesn't help the particular area I think that people will try and go to is DNC 3832 which promises an endowment that will come forth with but that's the Kirtland endowment that's specifically what they're talking about what's the current the current endowment is essentially the Washington anointings yeah um as found in the Old Testament the idea of washing and anointing people oh that's why those different stages one comes from the New Testament and then the other comes from the Masonic Lodge I never thought about that before that's an important connection and that's why when you read the Saints book and you get to the stuff about Kirtland they do a really good job of kind of like almost I I don't know if conflating is the right word but they make you think it's basically the foreshadowing of the navu one and it just really is a is not the same thing and as you said the Kirtland one had no concept of the ceilings of the endowment because if they did they would have done it but they didn't so I mean it wasn't and the thing is it's just really quick is that if as a temple worker when you're doing the Washings and anointings you have the words on a laminated piece of paper right and they have it in various languages so I've done it in in English German French I've done it in a few um but on all of them they have it for the Washington's anointings in brackets they have scripture references Leviticus Exodus places where you can find scriptural backing for the watchings and anointings you tell me where we're given any idea where any of this comes from in scripture when we're talking specifically about the endowment yeah where in reality it's because it's all from Masonry yeah and that's a problem with the bits that are obviously from scripture like the Garden of Eden and that sort of thing yeah and so we talk about this at the start of the episode we're not showing the handshakes in the temple but we are showing the Masonic handshakes and you know this is one of those things you know from my personal experience when I went to the temple we were told not to talk about the signs and tokens we're not talking about the words and the text at the veil um that we would need to know as when we die to get into Celestial Kingdom and so while we make covenants with God during the endowment we make a lot of those same promises and other you know ceremonies in the church such as baptism and Sacrament and so one of the things I always get kind of bothered by with the way the church frames is if the presentation of the endowment is not part of the divine revelation from God why are we not allowed to talk about the handshakes why are we not allowed to talk about the text of the veil because it's so similar to masonry and so to me as we've kind of harped down a little bit here if Joseph had these Revelations before becoming a Mason as a video says why are the crucial parts of this ceremony that we're not allowed to be to talk about the parts that are taken directly from the Masons I think that's a huge uh red flag to me that there is no secondary Revelation because if there was something sacred that we were that Joseph had before and the Masonic ceremony is merely the vehicle we should be able to talk about everything that's taken from the Masonic ceremony in public and yet if you look at the one on the right we cannot talk about the Masonic handshakes and those just happen to possibly match the ones you do in the temple and I think that's a huge tell that that is what we are told is is revelation and it's not and those are also the bits that are secret in masonry yeah so he's he's not only is he keeping them sacred so the the connection isn't necessarily seen but it's also just because that's in the thing he took it from those are the bits you keep sacred so yep that's the sacred part of the ceremony so let's keep it the sacred part of the ceremony when we're using it to exactly it's like when you get a secret from a friend in high school and you go to another friend you're like I want to tell you this but you cannot tell anyone else and this is Joseph Smith pulling something I was supposed to be secret and going I can use this to keep secrecy in my church and which he does and like I said earlier this is a time when Joseph Smith needs secrecy but like you said if this is not part of the the Revelation because this is just the vehicle why are we now allowed we should be able to do this in public otherwise you can't have it both ways and in another part that's just absurd that we're probably not going to cover today it's just the idea that you know for those who don't know about the temple ceremony what we're taught is that these handshakes are required it's required to learn them because when you go to heaven and you're standing at the veil in heaven God's gonna make you actually perform the handshakes with an angel as a prerequisite for entering in the kingdom and the fact that God requires handshakes to go to heaven it's a little bit weird and arbitrary and does that mean like if you forget them God's not going to let you in but if he is going to let you win after you forget them then why did you need you know to learn them in the first place right and it's Brigham Young that taught uh he is that famous quote from Brigham Young being unable to pass the angels that Santa Sentinels give them the the size tokens and keywords that sort of thing right there and that's that's set outside the temple um but these are so important just to press that point home John these are so important that they are got right that when you go through someone like me or another Temple worker will stand next to you and make sure for this exchange with uh you know with deity as presented in simple is done correctly yep um yeah and I think just next slide reinforces that exchange and just like the handshakes are going to sound very familiar and these next words are going to sound very familiar yeah yeah and so as I said this this is text from the Masonic Ceremony this is not text from from the temple ceremony so it says you know beyond the grips here is the text so when they're given the sign uh the handshakes basically in the tokens for each grip the worshipful master says pass what is that and then the senior Deacon says the past script of a fellow craft and then the master says has it a name it has we give it to me I did not so receive it neither will I so impart it and so we're not going to post you know talk about the the script of the church's endowment but if you've been through the temple that will seem very familiar and that again is the type of thing you need to know um in Mormon you know um beliefs to get into the Celestial Kingdom you need to kind of do this kind of uh back and forth fourth discussion knowing the different uh you know signs and tokens and so again if this is not part of um if this is merely the vehicle and not the sacred Revelation why are we not allowed to talk about this in public these are the parts I was told you specifically cannot talk about outside of the temple and I'll say this this part is so important that when I have been involved in it as a temple worker I have withdrawn my hand I've taken myself away um because someone's got it wrong and we've started again yeah and uh you know as a small side note we talked in our treasure digging episode way back at the beginning about how in folk magic the belief was if you didn't do the incantation exactly right all of the magic was lost and we talked about how um in in Mormonism we still practice folk magic today in a lot of ways and one of the ways I mentioned was the sacrament can't be passed unless the wording is done exactly right and this is an area where with uh the temple and this is kind of borrowed from masonry as well if this stuff isn't done exactly right then all of a sudden the magic Is Lost whereas you know we're told that God knows every fiber of our being so you would think when you die and you get to the you know the veil or whatever that God would know if you deserve to be in there or not but instead we're taught you have to know these um handshakes and you need to know this kind of back and forth or else you won't get in it's it's very uh speaks so it speaks to the broader um the broader pattern within Mormonism of this constant battle we have between grace and works this idea that God's grace would just allow you to enter Heaven because he knows your heart and he knows what what you are your you know your desires and whether you deserve to be there but you have to do the works because Mormons is all about these covenants and getting all these things exactly right you've got to do the works to get in yeah yeah and yeah you know Nemo just for fun let's role play this script you play worshipful master I'll play senior Deacon okay pass what is that the pass grip of a fellow craft has its a name it has will you give it to me I did not receive it neither will I so impart it and obviously Mormons who have been to the temple are going to very much recognize both the words and kind of the exchange and the Cadence as something uh think of these mellow dulcit tones you would have had in your temples Army yeah and speaking of things people are going to recognize the the signs and symbols on this slide people are definitely going to recognize yeah yeah so this is one I you know I the the image on the right I put together in about three minutes and so these are Masonic symbols the square the compass and the ruler are all Masonic symbols and you know they talk about the compass in the square and it says from the Masonic ceremony the candidate then enters the senior deacon at the same time pressing his left breast with the point of the compass as he enters the angle of the square is pressed against his right breast and so that kind of matches the position on this image on the right and these same symbols are on the church's temple garments which are the underwear that you're required to wear once you go through the temple and I had no idea as a member that when I was wearing garments I was wearing Masonic symbols I was told those symbols were revealed to Joseph Smith because they symbolize covenants we're making and instead these are Masonic symbols and to me and and this might be too loaded a word for some but it was really creepy to understand that I was wearing Masonic underwear um under my my clothes and I just um I have a lot of issues with garments as a convert because I wasn't no I was never told about him until like literally the days before I went into the temple no one bothered to tell me so um knowing now that their Masonic symbols it really bothers me a lot and you know again as I was saying if the endowment was a revelation from God long before Joseph was initiating a masonry why do we have every aspect of masonry in the endowment not just in the ceremony but in the clothes that we're supposed to wear to remember the ceremony by I just I can't get past the fact that every aspect of this that we are not allowed to show other people or talk about is directly from Masonry to the point I I don't know what I can say it's but to the point where essentially the the top two they share the same name they're not even called something different yeah right and again just for those who aren't or have never been Mormon and don't understand when you wear you you get a garment a two-piece underwear in you know 2022 a T-shirt and kind of like these biker shorts or boxer shorts and in the T-shirt there are three marks that are put in in the t-shirt and one over the right breast one over the left breast and then one kind of over the belly let's just say and it's literally uh these three symbols the the compass where and the ruler are sewn into the garments and I know I'm I'm repeating a little bit I'm just trying to make it really explicit to the people that are like working and they're they're so sacred that when you dispose of your garments you're instructed that you should remove these uh Cuts up the Garment in such a way that you can't tell where they came from and then destroy the symbols yeah I was told to burn them and it just yeah I just like I said I um don't want to get too much into my personal stuff here but the temple was the moment for me because I was a convert and I wasn't prepared for it where I and um we won't get into a lot of the some of the changes but I you know back then uh I went before 2005 and you were completely naked under a shield and during the Washington of the initials whatever the old man there's an old man he touches your body with oil he touched me in my naked inner thigh with oil and I I remember just sitting there like I don't know what to do and then you get these garments which are underwear that you're required to wear day and night and I know they've kind of loosened the the way the wording on the temple recommend but it's still you're still expected to wear them 24 7. and I remembered hating wearing those for all sorts of reasons um but then you find out later that it's Masonic symbols and you're told like Nemo said that you have to cut the symbols out and burn them because they're too sacred but if somebody saw them and Googled them you'd be like oh these are Masonic symbols you wouldn't be you know what I mean I just find people that wouldn't hang them out to dry on their washing line oh yeah there's a lot of I mean we could get into all the different I've heard so many stories about I was told that they should never touch the ground I was told you shouldn't wash them with other with regular clothes absolutely um but yeah just the fact is that what is you know and I I know this is an area where that might be offensive to Believers but what why do we have Masonic symbols on on underwear that's supposed to remind us of God unless you're then saying that masonry is the ancient um endowment but we know that's not the case and so that's why all of these things we're talking about kind of reflect on each other because if it's not if masonry is not ancient then what in the world do we have Masonic ceremony on our underwear for I I don't get it I mean I think that there is a slight answer to it uh in that I do believe without saying what what is said um I do believe that the explanation for what these symbols mean uh certainly within the endowment ceremony um are to remind us of of course and things like that um particularly the bottom two marks um so so there is some of it in there but I totally take your point that ultimately at the most sacred and most uh that yeah the inner sanctum of Mormonism there is masonry and you have to ask the question of what is it doing there why is it there yep all right so more parallels yeah and so this like we're going to kind of hammer somebody's parallels home because the church kind of makes it sound like it's just a few and so um both the Masonic ceremony and the church endowment ceremony begins with the washing and anointing um this is another area uh that also was really shocking because when we went to the temple um again as a converter I wasn't aware of a lot of it I know even being born in the church members aren't aware of a lot of it but so I'm told I'm going to be giving a new name that I was known by in heaven and they implied heavily that it was Revelation um and so you get there and they give you your new name and they they don't do it like they're reading off of a card um they they talk to you as if they're getting it directly from God and they're Temple workers and they're in you know ordained to do this and this one floored me when I found out you know four years ago that every single person that goes to the temple on a given day is given the exact same name and I just this is another one that's that's just crazy to me but this is also something that is done in some of the Masonic ceremonies so this is also um the whole idea of getting a new name is also something that's done in masonry so that's interesting too permission to share a quick Story please yeah so I was the name issue coordinator um it's part of what I did is the temple so it's my job to go to the recorder's office in the temple get the new name um for the day I would I knew it if people have forgotten it they would come and ask me this sort of stuff yeah but at the beginning of the day Temple workers all go into a meeting we go into one of the endowment rooms and we have a prep meeting and the the woman's name is shown at the front of the room on a card and the men and women both learned the woman's name for the day and the alternate name because if someone comes to the temple with the name of the day they're given a alternate right right and that ultimate never changes so that's shown then the women leave the room and then the men are showing the men's name and the alternate because women in Mormonism cannot know men's new names to do with to do with all sorts of reasons about you know uh when you get married you learn your wife's name your wife doesn't learn yours and there's there's all these you know kind of patriarchal power dynamics at play but that's something that struck me is that you know I couldn't say the men's new name out loud if someone needed reminding if there's a woman around I'd have to see if there was a woman around and pull a brother out the way and then tell him because women weren't allowed to know the secrecy even within the temple around these names yeah and when I received my new name you know to me the impression was given that it was like God was giving me a new name yeah so that's how we're meant to deliver it it would be a lot less special if Mormons were told oh it's Tuesday you know it's like yeah cheeseburger day oh this is you know the 12th of the month the only other thing I'll say and I don't say this to be offensive it's just a fact that if you if you go through the list of telltale signs of a cult it's pretty much standard operating procedure for most Colts to assign members new names and that's that's not to call the Mormon Church occult it's only to to notice an unfortunate characteristic or trait of Cults that in this case the church you know uh imported apparently into its most sacred practice and um fun fact that I saw online which we could fact check but I I don't doubt it apparently you have a 32 of getting as a woman you have a 32 percent chance of getting one of the names of one of Joseph Smith's plural wives as your new name in the temple oh because those were some of the names they used I mean is the Bible in the Book of Mormon don't have uh as many female names as as the Book of Mormon as male names and so the church had to stretch and go outside the Bible in the Book of Mormon because you've got to find 31 names or the names yeah and so they had to go to Joseph's plural wives that's funny okay so uh here's uh here's a visual that means a lot to me but it's not going to mean as much to people who went through the Mormon Temple for the first time after 1990. yeah so this one because you're old John yeah this is one of those rare times I can feel young uh but yeah this is um so this is what is known as the Five Points of fellowship and this was removed from the temple so I'm not feeling uncomfortable talking about it because of the fact that the church removed it and they have said that the stuff that is from God has never been altered in the temple so if they've removed it then I'm assuming this is not from God and I hope people uh who are watching this as Believers can at least understand where I'm coming from and that we're not talking about active stuff yeah so um this is something that was pulled from from masonry and um this is basically where you place your bodies in a way that aligns foot to foot knee to knee breast to breast hand to back cheek to cheek or mouth to ear and that's from the Masonic text and this is a very close and intimate alignment that would never be allowed to the church dance but was used in the temple ceremony until being removed in 1990 likely because it is extremely uncomfortable for women to place their breasts against you know a male temper worker at the Veil and this is another area that Joseph Smith took directly from the Masonic ceremony and um like I said I I have serious issues with the fact that I was touching my naked inner thigh in the temple I could only imagine um if you had to do this as well because this is just a really uncomfortable position and then to learn later it's just strictly a masonic element it's just imagine because I did it dozens and dozens and dozens of times yeah it was super weird to embrace a stranger in this way to lock your inner knee and your inner thigh and the other thing I'll say is they left nothing to the imagination they literally called it the Five Points of Fellowship in the Tempest ceremony with an exact exact uh replica of what that photo shows so that's you couldn't have a more blatant example of of plagiarism than that yep yeah all right and then there's the penalties right yeah probably the most well-known and disturbing part yeah so this one was one that when I found this I was absolutely just floored and so this was something that was kind of um they watered these down throughout the years I think they finally kind of removed them in 1990 but they're still elements of the penalties that remain today and the Masonic ceremony introduced I rather say included penalties uh to the initiates that if they revealed the signs and tokens they were given harm would come to them and this was a way to ensure secrecy which is exactly what Joseph Smith needed as the endowment ceremony was introduced just as Joseph Smith was was ramping up polygamy and as I said just in the last slide because these have been removed I don't feel uncomfortable talking about the text that was used um as you know we mentioned they were moved so they clearly are not part of the unchanging sacred text and so I think every member should understand uh what people were saying in the temple before 1990 and so we're going to go through the three of them do you guys want to just do the three and then we'll talk about them after reading all three yeah so so we'll read the next three slides and this is from the ninth pre-1930 uh Temple um script and so do you want me to read these give you a voice a break yeah yeah that'd be great okay Masonic penalty having my throat cut across my tongue torn out by its roots and my body buried in the rough Sands of the sea at low water mark where the tide Ebbs and flows twice in 24 hours should I ever knowingly violate this my Entered Apprentice obligation than the endowment penalty we and each of us Covenant and promise that we will not reveal any of the secrets of this should we do so we agree that our throats be cut from ear to ear and our tongues torn out by their roots the Masonic position and movement uh the explanation of the Entered Apprentice sign is draw the right hand rapidly across the neck as represented and drop the arm to the side this action shows the penalty of having the throat cut and the tongue ripped out I'll just quickly say number one that's super violent and the God would be requiring this or endorsing it is weird and then the other thing I'm going to say is I did that for for many many years I would make the hand motion of slitting my own throat using my thumb I did that I was a part of it so it's disturbing that God would would endorse something so violent I did it and uh and this is identical to the Masonic I think we should say we should say that the the end position or or um essentially you will end up uh still by implication taking upon these penalties if they removed it like how weird is it that it was originally revelation part of God's Holy Scripture and then it was taken out but we'll get to that too okay okay yeah so having your heart look down this is penalty number two right yeah okay bouncing number two Masonic penalty having my left breast torn open my heart plucked out and given to the wild beasts of the field and the fowls of the air then the endowment penalty we and each of us do covenants a promise that we will not reveal the secrets of this should we do so we agree to have our breasts cut open and our hearts and vitals torn from our bodies and given to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field and then the position of movement the explanation of the fellow craft sign is the action of cupping one hand over the left breast and it drawing quickly across the body signifies the heart being ripped out if the candidate should violate his fellow craft obligation yeah and again super violent again I did this and again it's in the exact same sequence so you the first one is you slit your throat and then the second one is you do the hand motion so you're cutting out your own heart I did it and it was in this exact sequence yeah number three having your bowels burn to ashes the Masonic penalty to have my body cut into my bowels removed and burned to ashes which are then to be scattered to the Four Winds of Heaven the endowment penalty we and each of us do covenants a promise that we will not reveal any of the secrets of this should we do so we agree that our bodies be cut asunder in the midst of and all our bowels gush out the Masonic position of movement uh here's the explanation the sign is made by drawing the thumb quickly across the waist to the right hip then dropping the hand to the side this action shows the stomach being ripped open these penalties were mostly removed in 1990 after a 1988 Temple survey about the experience of members was conducted and it's just so ironic because I I went to serve my mission in 1988 so I would have done this before uh going you know in in the in the Jordan River temple in Salt Lake City this is how my temporary ceremony would have uh first been experienced and yes you do uh make the motion of slitting your stomach open and having your bowels gushed out in all fairness I'll say there was nothing about um them being burned to ashes that's something that wasn't imported or that was left but but again the third penalty identical in the same sequence and and it was called you know slicing open your bowels so that they gush out so in that sense again it's a check it's check check yeah because this this text is from uh the temple ceremony up until 1930 and then they started to water it down before pulling it all out and this is just you know it sounds weird but in a way I kind of wish it was still in there because I think for me this might have been something where if I had seen this considering how I would wanted to run as it was that might have been where I'm like okay I'm out I mean maybe not because the problem is when you're in there it's really you have a lot of pressure to stay in there um inside the endowment and windowless room yeah let's and and for you know well yeah it's just it this stuff is just it's one of those things I read it and I'm just like you know it's like you know like gasping like there's no way and and and and then I think about the fact that all these people did it and John did it and and once you start doing it I think you just you just do it you know and and um Millions do it and usually when you go yeah you go through the temple for the first time you're with your loved ones you're with your immigrants or your siblings or heaven forbid your spouse or your the person you're engaged to and and obviously if Millions did it before we would say now that if I had done that then I would have ran out of the room but the truth is social pressure yeah is so um significant that you probably would have just done done that I would have I would have absolutely yeah so this is a pretty Infamous clip about um Apostle Jeffrey Holland and he's kind of caught um misstating about whether or not there are penalties in the temple until the reporter forces him to admit that and um Ohio British journalism yeah this is from Britain and this is a reason why church leaders are just simply too afraid to do any interviews with unscreen that go unscripted with non-friendly sources and why you almost always see the interviews be through like Deseret news or like church news because they will not put their profit seers and revelators in a position where they're talking to people who will question you know where they're at I'm I was told by an Insider that the head of PR for the church was fired for letting Jeffrey R Holland do this interview with a Brit of all people like what was he the church sent people to the BBC and kicked off with the BBC saying this was a hit job this is unacceptable all this other stuff yeah all right so here's and this is by the way this was one of the clips that led to bill real you know releasing the episode I think it was liar liar pants yeah we basically does something that's pretty offensive to a Mormon is to claim that an Apostle Prophet Syrian Revelator would actually lie yeah let's just let's just see it for ourselves well it's just beautiful yeah I mean you know it it just shows that the leaders are aware at least of some of the problematic issues and will still you know I'm sure in his head he's probably doing like the Bill Clinton like I don't know what the definition of is is kind of a thing but he's being dishonest it's just such good journalism it's uh much props to John Sweeney the journalist there yeah because he didn't allow him to change the time period because he was trying to say oh um yeah we used to and he's like okay what so you used to so the answer to my question is he said no right and then he said we don't do that now right yeah we lied but then he caught him in it and then he said we don't do that now Holland was being slimy there he was he lied I mean by the very definition of lying he lied and I know we've talked it's a it's a very loaded word the fact is he said no and he knew what was being asked and then he had to backtrack when when the journalist uh knew exactly he knew what he was talking about and and that's why you will never see a leader of the church even talk to someone like me who is just like some amateur idiot they would never talk to me because these are people that are supposed to be the propheteers and revelators who can get answers and yet they cannot talk because their history is is bad and and problematic and they cannot be out there because there are no answers for this stuff outside of just trying to give the Apologetics we're covering today in the video that this is a really great capsule of why they do not talk to people in public I can assure you when when you ask them why they lie they don't answer yeah yeah they they just they have no answers for people there are no answers and that's why they have other people do their work for them with regards to apologetics and so we'll continue on and this one this picture on the right is from the Royal Arch Masons and it's from Illinois uh I think from like 1910 1913 or something maybe 1930 somewhere in there and you know again we're not showing a Sonic or at the endowment clothing but if you look at this picture of the Royal Arch Masons um this is uh showing them wearing kind of like uh caps and um aprons and uh you know robes and stuff and so it'll look familiar to anyone who's gone through the endowment and I will note that Joseph was never um at least we don't have any records of Joseph being initiated to the Royal Arch Masons um but they would also during their ceremony uh wear separate robes and then go through a veil to the holy of holies during their ceremony which also will sound very familiar to somebody uh who's gone through the temple yep absolutely yeah and so you know kind of again the church keeps saying in this video there's just similarities it's just parallels and so beyond what we've already talked about with the clothing the handshakes the penalties the Washings the signs the tokens and the structure of the ceremony there are a bunch of other symbols that are used in masonry that ended up in the LDS temples and so both the Masonic lodges and the Mormon temples use the same symbols such as the beehive the All-Seeing Eye squaring the compass the Five Points of Fellowship which we covered the phrase Holiness to the Lord um the sun moon and stars and there's other stuff too I'm just like just to show there are so many it's not just text it's not just clothing it's symbols it's uh the manner of presentation all of this is coming from the Masonic ceremony yep and if anybody has actually visited the Salt Lake City Temple and looked at the stones and looked at the symbolism and the Arches and and the doors you'll see all seeing eyes The Beehive is the obviously on the Seal of the flag of the state of Utah the square in the compass is on all these Mormon temples yeah the temple says Holiness of the Lord uh on the temple sun moon and stars that's all I'm just validating that that's all it's what you'll find on the Salt Lake City Temple just yeah fact yeah I'll also say that Nemo Nemo on your channel name of the Mormon you actually share the full interview between Sweeney and Elder Holland I do so I'm going to share a link with that uh in the show notes for those who want to watch yeah I break that down and and points it all out yeah which is an important thing to do I think members should see kind of what the how the leaders respond when they're actually pushed on this stuff because it's important to know what answers they have and what answers they don't have um you know we've been kind of going through this for a few slides now but when the church keeps calling this parallels I just don't know what else to say to make it clear that Joseph Smith used the endowment ceremonies the foundation or I'm sorry use the Masonic ceremony for the foundation of the endowment ceremony and that is further backed up by the fact that when people apparently realized pretty quickly it was the Masonic ceremony he told them that he was just restoring what was the original Endowment in Solomon's Temple and so Joseph Smith is creating the endowment right as polygamy is being introduced to other members which requires extreme secrecy and extreme penalties for talking about outside um where other polygamous members would be um and members have to wear garments featuring the symbols of the temple which we talked about um are from the Masonic you know ceremony in the symbolism and so every day when you put your garments on you are wearing Masonic symbols and I know Nemo's point is fair that the church will say well it's just symbols to remind you of your covenants but again they're still coming from the Masonic ceremony it's like Nemo said earlier they might have different parallels but the fact is they're all coming from the same origin and um you know unless we've already kind of talked about uh the purposes are different in the sense that Masons weren't believed to be becoming endowed with power before being sealed in you know at the time secret marriages but if you look at Joseph Smith taking the Masonic rituals and then teaching members they had the original endowment that fell into apostasy it actually makes a lot more sense than just trying to claim they are merely parallels with no connection in origin purpose or Divinity and so this is another pattern we talk about in these episodes to come you know to compare this with where Joseph Smith is pulling from all the ideas around him um and it becomes a really clear pattern that these are you know ideas and doctrines that are coming from Joseph Smith and not God and just to say how many parallels do you need before you stop saying the word parallel and you just look at the bigger picture to realize these are not coming from God absolutely yeah Fair Point all right so let's take Occam's razor and look at the endowment ceremony in masonry yeah so just kind of to go back to that to kind of put a bow on it I guess but you know look at these similarities the same you look at any other religious leader or church or organization the fingerprints are all there we have multiple early members who say explicitly at Joseph taught masonry as the original endowment even now that we know historically masonry did not begin until thousands of years later and has nothing to do with Solomon's Temple and really the moment we stopped privileging Joseph Smith is the moment that we can kind of see that this is all of Joseph's creation using his surrounding milieu to put something together in the voice of God to give it Authority and you know as we've talked about in previous episodes just as with the Book of Mormon with his Revelations the moment that you can show that the foundational material that he's pulling from is not historically correct is the moment that any Authority that anything that comes from that Foundation just is gone like in this case once you realize that the Masonic ceremony did not come from ancient times everything Joseph Smith thought about it falls apart because that is the foundation he was working from and once you see that everything falls apart and if this was any other church and you knew these things I I don't think anybody would be like oh yeah it's still from God I think they'd be like oh yeah this guy's making it up I don't know how else you know this is one of those things where it's really obvious to anyone except for somebody inside of it makes sense yeah and that's not to belittle those inside of it because there are countless reasons why you wouldn't see it yeah and that's the thing I didn't see it until my until I finally gave myself permission to look and that was years after I went through the temple and when I went through the temple and that was the first moment I felt like I'm in an unhealthy place like that the moment I got touched on my thigh it was the moment where I'm like I can't do this and I still stayed years longer and I still didn't look for years after that so I mean I'm not in any way trying to judge people who go through the temple and who stay in the church I'm just saying that if you were to start with a clean slate and before you went to the temple before you joined the church you were told this I would bet I bet everything I have that 95 plus percent would say yeah that person's making it up I I would bet oh so much money on that take away the cognitive preloading take away the confirmation bias yeah and just show it to someone as role it would be like if somebody produced a religious text and it mentioned Hobbits in Frodo and a guy named Gandalf and a ring of Doom you know and someone named Saruman you you wouldn't you wouldn't go wow there must have been an original ancient you know Lord of the Rings trilogy that has been corrupted by J.R.R Tolkien and then uh a magic Prophet a special prophet in the modern days is restored it you would just never that that's not the conclusion you would draw careful John you know believing Mormons don't like comparisons to Lord of the Rings yeah yeah they do I think they actually do I've actually seen a lot of people who do which is kind of funny because I've seen people get really mad about it and I've seen people who have written articles or posts about the comparisons which I mean I don't know what to do with that like I said I know people get really upset when you try to compare Mormonism to something we know is false like the Book of Mormon or sorry like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or something it's just the problem is there when we have this many red flags that show and all of these different claims of antiquity that Joseph Smith is making that they're all wrong it then becomes I would argue yeah I would argue it's insulting to to say that you should give special pleading to Mormonism at that point because at that point if you were to do the same thing with something we know is fictional people say you're crazy and so it's a really delicate walk because people get upset but there's this is there's too many of these to deny so all right well let's go to the next section with the show the final section of the now you know video though elements of the instructional methods and the clothing worn by participants in each ceremony share some characteristics the purposes and Origins stand distinct from one another so is it okay for Latter-Day Saints to be Masons today the policy is simple members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not prohibited from becoming Masons nor are masons prohibited from becoming members of the church Latter-Day Saints believe that good can be found in many places God loves all his children and wants them to learn of him and return to him through the endowment ceremony in his temples God reveals profound truths about his plan for the happiness of his children Joseph Smith and Freemasonry now you know except you don't ah there you go now we know all right yeah so uh so what else what else did you have a reflection on that Mike or Nemo or should we just go the next slide I have I have a really quick reflection yeah please that's all right it's just I when I looked at this myself last time I basically said um what were the original questions when they did all this summing up what were the original questions questions were Joseph was Joseph Smith a Freemason and if so what connection does it have to Temple worship worship practice by members of the church Jesus Christ lastly Saints those are the questions they confirmed that Joseph Smith is a Mason and they failed to provide any evidence that Joseph Smith did not plagiarize the Freemasonry ceremony from March 1842 they have no evidence that he did anything to do with the endowment before March 1842 when he was contacted with masonry and then may 1842 when he shared it for the first time so they didn't that those the answers to the original questions is that yes he was a Mason and there's no evidence to say he didn't copy it yeah all right well uh let's go ahead for the sake of time and jump to the next slide Mike yeah so now we're just going to do a couple of slides to just talk about some of the things that have been removed from the temple so this doesn't really reflect to the video so much because obviously aren't going to mention these but um following the death of Joseph Smith the temple ceremony had an oath of Vengeance that was added um to uh have members commit to avenging the death of the prophet and this is from the ceremony it says you and each of you do Covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets Upon This Nation and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation and this was removed in the 1930s today it's not spoken of it's not referred to by the church it just goes to show like the temple was used for a lot of things and this is obviously something that would be used kind of in the name of God um I would argue to to not better ourselves to not you know um do the things that the temple video said but instead to you know pretty violent reaction and I get it that as a member you would have felt just beyond furious at what happened um to Joseph Smith and I totally understand that but at the same time this is something that's in the house of the Lord uh to basically avenge blood uh on people it's a little weird if Jesus is the prince of peace and he's teaching us to love our enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that you that thankfully use you it just seems inconsistent with Christianity to have an oath of Vengeance in God's most sacred revealed ordinance and then have it taken out later uh even adds adds confusion to the whole thing for me yeah yeah yeah and so kind of this almost piggyback it kind of does piggyback off it so this is one that I was one of those ones another one of those shocking moments when I was going through all this stuff and this was um in the Mormon Temple they were cursing uh names of people that they wanted basically the Lord to to bring down on uh you know how long I guess and this included all of the leaders of the us at the time and so this is from dialogue and it says in an effort that bears striking resemblance to the oath of Vengeance a list was compiled of over 400 names of persons to be held in remembrance before the Lord for their evil deeds and who have raised their hands against the Lord's anointed the list included four U.S presidents Martin Van Buren Ulysses S Grant Rutherford B Hayes and James Buchanan to secure God's judgments against those on the list Woodruff was instructed to gather the 12 and wash their feet as a testimony against their enemies the apostles were then to clothe themselves in Temple robes and form a prayer circle and let's go to the next slide real quick we'll finish this part up or whatever um and then uh Wilford Woodruff describes the eventual performance of this ordinance in solemn terms uh Orson Pratt was very feeble yet we all performed the ordinance of washing our feet against our enemies and the enemies of the kingdom of God according to the Commandment of God unto us Wilford Woodruff opened by prayer and John Taylor with the mouth in the washing of feet or was mouth in the washing feet at the prayer circle Lorenzo Snow was mouth at the opening and John Taylor was mouth at the altar and pres and presented the prayer written by Wilford Woodruff By Request of President Taylor and the names were presented before the Lord according to the Commandment it was a truly solemn scene and I presumed to say it was the first thing of the kind since the creation of the world we were three hours in the meeting and ordinances and actually go one more we'll just read the curse and then we'll we can kind of go through that so this is the the curse that was read in the temple now O Lord Our God we bear Our Testimony against these men before thee and the Heavenly hosts and we bear testimony unto thee our heavenly father that we according to thy Commandments unto us we have gone Alone by ourselves and cleansed our feet in pure water in Born testimony unto thee and thy son Jesus Christ and to the Heavenly Host against these wicked men by name as far as the spirit has manifested them unto us we have borne Our Testimony against those who have shed the blood of the of thy prophets and apostles and anointed ones or have given even consent to their death and against those who have driven thy Saints and imprisoned them and those who are still ready to deprive us of life liberty and the privilege of keeping the Commandments of God and now O Lord Our God thou has commanded us that when we have done this we should gather ourselves together in our holy places enclosed in the Robes of the Holy pries to unite ourselves together in prayer and supplication and that we should bear Our Testimony against these men by name as far as wisdom should dictate oh Lord hear us from Heaven thy holy dwelling place and answer our petitions sustain thine anointed ones and Deliver Us from the hands of our enemy overthrow the evil designs of the wicked and ungodly against thy sayings and break every weapon formed against us so yeah it's just so weird to see um it's so weird to see such a personal curse somehow incorporated into again a really sacred ceremony that's supposed to be all about Jesus right yeah it's like an inverted prayer rule you know you got the prayer roll where you put someone's name on that we're praying from this is where you're putting people on on the prayer World basically to you know have harm come to them and uh it's a little weird and um yeah the dialogue article kind of Recaps it by saying this episode is notable for a shift and the provocation to curse in the past curses had been performed primarily against those who rejected a process proselytizers message here the curse was called down upon the church's political enemies and you know God we were saying I get that the church was under intense pressure from the government fears were running rampant but I also have a hard time believing that God commanded that they put a curse on 400 U.S leaders um you know because they say it was done by the spirit you know and obviously that was not the case and so um you know one of the things we talk about in some of these episodes is that the curse was not effective all the leaders lived on um and the church ultimately put polygamy on hold just a few years later and it just shows again how these leaders talk about having these great powers and yet whenever they need it to happen God never seems to to come through to protect them or to give them their land back and stuff and in this case you know cursing them in the temple did absolutely nothing to change anything yeah yeah so why are we adding curses and then why are we taking them out yeah both of those are condemning yeah strange it just seemed expedient at the time clearly yeah yeah you know yep all right so now you Brigham Young's Adam God Doctrine which we haven't even stories yeah you need to have that up there or but let's go yeah and include it yes we won't go down God too much but just to say that we talked about Adam got a little bit in the Adam and Eve episode um but just to note that it was actually taught in the temple as Divine truth and the last paragraph of the lecture at the veil illustrates the point that these ideas were ones that originated with Joseph Smith's teachings and Revelations and um just noting again these are removed from the temple so that's why we're reading them um this was put into the temple ceremony and it says father Adam's oldest son Jesus the Savior who is the heir of the family is Father Adam's first begotten in the spirit world and the only begotten according to the flesh as it is written adamant is Divinity having gone back to the spirit into the spirit world and come into the spirit to marry and she conceived for when Adam and Eve got through with their work in this earth they did not lay their bodies down in the dust but returned to the spirit world from once they came and uh you know just noting that this is God allowing what is now considered disavowed Doctrine into the temple ceremony that seems like a big problem and I want I want to make a really clear point that it is is explicitly disavowed I have here a quote from Spencer W Kimball 12th President of the church so a man in the same position as Brigham Young president of the church he said we warn you against the dissemination of doctrines which are not according to the scriptures and which are alleged to have been taught by some of the general authorities of past Generations search for instance is the Adam God Theory we'd announce that theory and hope that everyone will be cautioned against this and other kinds of false Doctrine so it was declared false Doctrine by a president of the church but yet put in the endowment ceremony by an earlier president of the church yeah so even though Spence W Kimball said that you know God's still allowed the Adam God Theory into the temple ceremony yeah like it's so bad that it takes a president of the church to disavow it as false Doctrine yeah that's amazing and I think it's disturbing for Mormons that again are taught to view the temple ceremony is revelation from God and is the most sacred ordinance that should be unchangeable to find out that Brigham Young's inserting weird doctrines that aren't really scriptural and then they're being yanked back out again Mike did you want to did you want to talk to this slide yeah just just to show you know it just becomes difficult to say that Brigham was speaking only as a man with Adam God when he put it into the temple ceremony um and we're taught that prophets can't leave the church astray I just I feel like you know we're told that what happens in the temple is so sacred and so directly from God and yet we had for a period of time um this belief that Adam was our God put into the temple and God allowed it and I just feel like that is another indicator that these are people whether or not they're doing the best they can or whether or not they're intentionally deceiving I think to me that's more irrelevant but the fact is that God is allowing them to put what is now a disavowed Doctrine into what is supposed to be the holiest place in the world and I think that the fact that this was removed so quickly after Brigham Young died also gives us really good insight into the fact that every prophet of the church is incorporating their worldview into the doctrines and policies of the church and not because of direct Revelation from God just because of the fact that we could show that every single Prophet seems to get Revelation from God that confirms what they already he wanted to do including Russell Nelson today and so once you start to see that and then you start to see the temple as basically being dictated by people who are incorporating what they personally think is best and not necessarily a consistent God from profit to profit it kind of shows you that the temple ceremony starting with Joseph Smith all the way up until today is being modified and changed and created by people using the ideas in their worldview and not from Revelation that's coming straight from God yeah exactly yeah other evidence do we need yeah that's just there you just don't expect that type of shenanigans going on with the temple you know yeah and you know so just we're starting to recap here and just you know say I know these episodes especially right now with with the race and the priesthood episodes and this one and the polygamy are really emotional ones um and I know this one particular because of how sacred the temple is to people who go through it um but you know the problem is Joseph Smith and the church have given us very testable truth claims and in this case they gave us a very testable one that the Masonic ceremony was ancient and goes back to Solomon's Temple and that is something that has been disproven to the point where even fair Mormon has to concede that and I think when you start to have a pattern of those and not just a you know one thing um those patterns kind of give us an indication as to the overall credibility of the people making it and so just to say as we've been saying throughout these episodes not to focus on one problem at a time but to step back and look at the bigger picture because this episode that we're doing right now ties into the word of wisdom it ties into the First Vision the priesthood restoration and once you start to see that pattern it really shows you that these men especially in you know for these episodes right now Joseph Smith is creating using the material around them but that the material he's creating is is basically you know founded in material that is not what Joseph Smith claimed it was and that is the easiest way to know that they are not speaking for God but just using the material they have to make sense of it whether it's in a good intentioned way or not um it's not coming from God it's coming from the material they have around them it's it's a beautifully ironic situation to be in where you are dealing with apologists whose favorite insult of those who um make these sort of criticisms or these sorts of observations is to call them myopic and to say that they take things out of context and yet it is the key tenet of apologetics to isolate and to keep separate the issues so that they don't form a pattern yeah a pattern of behavior that is testable yeah that's just that I mean you know they make testable claims and that's just it like if you make a claim that is untestable then we could sit here and argue all day and it doesn't matter but they're making claims throughout the early history of the church that are very testable whether or not it's because Joseph Smith didn't think anyone would ever be able to figure it out whether because he thought the world was going to end in a few years it doesn't matter because the fact is we can test them now and we know they're not true and then once you have that you can't then go back um to the foundational events of the church and say well I still believe in it because I have faith because now all of a sudden they've given us something to put that faith on and if that is not correct you're no longer practicing Faith by believing in it because now you're actually actively going against the evidence we have and I think that's it's a bad place it becomes rather than Faith because of lack of evidence it becomes faith in spite of evidence and that's a very different place to be in yeah it's a day and and that's a place that can lead people to do some dangerous things um I mean I'm not saying you know dangerous like going out and killing people I'm just saying it could lead you to beliefs uh that would lead you to do things that you maybe know are wrong and will obviously be getting into that with polygamy but it's just it it's a bad it's a bad space to be in and it's one that I think with the amount of information we have we should not allow ourselves to get into and yet we all do it I mean everyone does on certain things so It's You Know It's Tricky for sure yeah yeah and so people can draw their own conclusions but you know this evidence is is something that that people deserve to know about yeah it's something that I don't think any of us were told even no after we attended the temple it's something we were just never told yeah I certainly was not and you know we have been kind of going through that video and talking about the Apologetics where they'll say it's similar but the purpose is different so you can't claim that Joseph listed from the ceremony I just want to point out when we talk about Joseph Smith um having things happen around him and then turning it into scripture even though it's incorrect on incorrect beliefs this is a pattern and so we talked about this in the Adam and Eve episode but Joseph Smith claims uh through Revelation from God that the spot that the church happened to settle at in Missouri was where Adam and Eve lived in America which we now know is incorrect historically the first people were not in America that's just a really bad um thing where Joseph Smith was trying to give more purpose to where they they settled the church it's just it's wrong um and then Joseph Smith happened to claim that the Book of Mormon gold place just happened to be located in the hill Kimora which just was happened to be where he lived where hundreds of thousands of people would die yet there's obviously no archaeological evidence for that event I know the Apologetics is that there are two hill comores now it's not the way it was taught by early leaders um Joseph claimed via Revelation that Egyptian Scrolls that just happened to be the last ones that Michael Chandler had available were not only written by Abraham but contained his literal signature around the Papyrus we know that's modularly false even the church's essay admits the papyri fragments are way after the they would have happened and have nothing to do with Abraham and now Joseph Smith here is claiming that the Masonic ceremony he would learn just seven weeks prior just happened to be the apostasize um original endowment ceremony and it's just one of those things where I was like how many of these things do you need before you can see the pattern and go yeah this guy is a really good Storyteller but he's making it up I I just I mean look at all these times where Joseph Smith claims Revelation on kind of like a coincidental thing in almost I mean pretty much every one of them I think every one of them that is testable has been proven false yeah yeah but brilliantly put yeah I don't know where to go from that really yeah yeah there's a you know we talked about The Simpsons uh earlier with the Stone Cutters but there's The Simpsons uh episode and uh principal Skinner's uh Burning uh burgers in this kitchen and the superintendent is in the kitchen and I wish I could remember the quote and he said you know he's like what good whatever is in the kitchen he's like Aurora Borealis and then superintendent's like Aurora Borealis at this time of the year in this place uh at this time of the day or whatever like that and then princess Skinner's like yes and then he goes can I see it and then he's like no and this reminds me of that it's like so Adam and Eve lived in Missouri even though it didn't happen uh the book of Abraham is supposed to be on Papyrus that Abraham signed himself but we know it didn't happen uh The Book of Mormon happened to me in gold plates where hundreds of thousands of people died but there's no bones and then he learned the Masonic ceremony seven weeks prior to creating the endowment and then also the church like yeah and you're like and this doesn't ring of you know ring a bell no and it's just I I'm not trying to make light I'm just saying all of these coincidences that are testably demonstrably false happening that's a pattern that's not you know that's not just some isolated problem so and they're all they're all by the one man who yes out of all of them like you can believe that Brigham Young was a fallen Prophet you can believe that then John Taylor was a fallen Prophet you can believe any of the subsequent profits have fallen but if you're part of the LDS movement no matter what branch you're part of it all starts and ends with Joseph Smith and whether the claims he made about his divine inspiration from God are true or not and we've kept claiming things that are provably false to be from God you have to ask you have to start asking the question yeah and that's the thing too because sometimes the church will say you're putting too much into Joseph's mind you're putting too much into his words you're expecting too much of them Joseph Smith made the claims these are from God I didn't do it you didn't do it so when you make the claim they're from God then that leaves you with the whole thing where did God trick Joseph Smith that doesn't make sense or did Joseph Smith get it wrong and God allow that that doesn't make sense or did Joseph Smith make it up and that actually makes sense because of the fact fact that this is all 19th century stuff that happens to be thrown into ancient because we have to and I know with wrapping up we have to just catch the fact that the whole purpose of Joseph Smith Joseph's whole purpose and Mission was to restore God's one true church yeah so in the process of restoring something long lost something corrupted to bring in anything that isn't true why would the God be why would God be the author of such confusion yeah let's just say about the man himself yep and that's really where it ends it's like if either God's a god of confusion or the person who claims to speak for him is making it up because there are just too many problems that we can show and I know sometimes people say oh science always changes and all that fine but like even in the article I mentioned earlier from masonry the church itself admits that Joseph Smith lived when those myths were getting blurred into history but Joseph was pulling from those myths as history and that is where he's doing it in the voice of God and once you realize the foundation is rotten anything that grows from it is not going to be from God it's just that goes against everything we know and when you have a pattern of it um like I said if you start with a blank slate with Mormonism if I if I had a room of you know 20 people and I presented the history of the church and I did in the most neutral way possible I said do you think this a man from God I would bet anything that all 20 would say no but of course you might have like one person that's like yeah you know maybe but there's just no way um so I you know I don't know also say sometimes because John said it you know earlier I think in this one or maybe one of our other episodes recently was just like sometimes I feel like I don't even know what we're talking about this because it's so far out there and yet here we're talking about it for almost two hours because it is so fundamental to the church and the people we know and love and we've got to do it yeah you got to do it so because if we just took one it can be ignored but we've got it we've got to lay them all out so that the weight of them collectively concerned and that's what it is because it's you know one of the things about and I know we're wrapping up the CES letter is they'll take Fair we'll take it subject subject by subject and they'll try to divide it out conquer it and they'll jump to another one and they might use completely contradictory apologetics but it doesn't matter because they've already taken care of one so these episodes are really designed to say like you cannot have it that way because if you're going to take it in this one area we got to apply it to the next one and now you've created a new problem and and a lot of times like you said if you just do one it leaves openings for people to kind of distort what the history says and this way we're trying to say like this this episode ties to to so many other episodes we've already talked about and those patterns are undeniable and that's the reason that you know Jeffrey or Holland got caught in an interview and my the church doesn't do interviews because they don't want to be in a position where they're answering for things they know they have no answers for um so yeah there we go yeah all right so what are the conclusions and takeaways from this episode Mike yeah you know we've already said it probably a dozen times already but you know every aspect of the of the endowment ceremony is taken from the Masonic ceremony as outlined earlier and while you can say the purposes are different as Nemo pointed out um the purposes can be different while the origins can be the same and we have nothing uh before the endowment ceremony to show that Joseph Smith had received Revelations uh that could point us to an area where Joseph Smith had differing material than the endowment ceremony and we talked about this a little bit but if you strip out the elements of the endowment ceremony that are not taken from the Mesa the Masonic ceremony we're basically left with a story of creation along with a few elements that are really not much different than what you're taught in in any day Sunday school lesson or church video I mean once you strip out all of the the signs the tokens the penalties the symbols the clothing the new names you're really not left with much and so if you want to say that the Masonic ceremony was was merely a vehicle to provide this new information um one of the things when I went through the temple I noticed is that there's really not a whole lot there that I learned outside of the fact that you're just trying to memorize um these different you know kind of rituals and I think that's one of the things I would love to ask a church leader when they say that purposes are different and therefore it's not lifted I would say if you take everything that's Masonic out that we're not allowed to talk about what are you left with because at that point the um Temple ceremony I think would not look much different than you know a gospel Doctrine class or a church video you'd see in a visitor center um and so you know I would just end with how many times as we've said does Joseph Smith have to repurpose ideas with incorrect historical context before it becomes undeniable that these ideas are not from God but from Joseph Smith trying to find ways to to continue building on his theology yeah that's fair that's a great summary what an important episode thank you Mike thank you and thank you Nemo for coming on uh words I'm grateful that you put in print Nemo made a great Point yeah yeah I had to make sure I did that because well you I think it was one of those things where I I watched your video and I was like yeah that's a good point because you know uh you always hear that parallel versus origin for you know and your point was just like yeah that that really doesn't solve your problem it just you know kind of deflects it so it was a great point and um I'm really glad you were on if you have any final words feel free yeah I mean my final words are just come along have a look at the channel you know we've mentioned that I've done a video on this so feel free to to come along and have a look at that um build real get excommunicated for calling the profits Liars I've compiled a list of uh oh I think we're coming up close to seven now of the current profit series and Revelations have told public lies in their official capacity as a representative of the church um so there's a playlist on my channel go check that out spoiler alert there are more to come uh it seems like a systemic problem and much like with this that we've been talking about you could say oh well one of them's Rogue but when a group of them are doing it we have a problem so feel free to come along and look at that judge for yourself um but thank you very much Mike and John for having me on uh it's a privilege and an honor to be involved in um such a kind of seminal piece of of uh content so thank you thank you thanks Timo thanks Mike and for those who are more active in the church or believing if it feels abrasive or offensive for you to hear the word lie in association with Mormon church Apostles Prophet series of revelators I guess I would just say I understand that I feel that too and the best you can do is is just review the evidence and then just decide for yourself if if there there's an honesty problem we're not trying to you know yeah we're not trying to like have you draw that conclusion but we do as a part of this entire series we just want to provide evidence and that people make informed decisions so come tell me come tell me I'm wrong I I want to hear it if I'm wrong come tell me yeah all right thanks Nemo thanks Mike thank you everybody pleasure thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon stories uh again this is you know part of the LDS discussions uh examining Mormon truth claims series you can find all these essays at LDS discussions.com there is an essay on the temple endowment and masonry uh you you can access all of these episodes um either on Spotify and audio and video format or uh you can access it on our YouTube playlist or you can find you know these in Consolidated form on any anywhere where you consume your podcasts uh we're grateful to Mike we uh we're grateful to you who support us all our viewers and listeners and we'll just say uh thanks for your support please stay in touch please share this with anyone who you think might benefit benefit from it please give us your feedback we hope to incorporate it we're grateful for those who make Mormon stories in the open stories Foundation possible please do support Neema the Mormon and his channel he does great work and he deserves to be supported um be good to each other be kind into each other and uh most importantly we'll see you all again very soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast and on LDS discussions where we've got a a bunch of stuff to come I don't remember where this is going to fall but we're talking about polygamy we're talking about book of Abraham kinderhood plates Joseph Smith translations the the witnesses uh so much more to come uh so please check us out and stay tuned and uh we'll see you all again very soon take care everybody