Problematic Mormon Revelations after Joseph Smith

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast LDS discussions Edition I am one of your hosts for today John delin it is March 9th 2023 and we are uh now on to a part 38 of a historic and super well-received and popular series on Mormon stories podcast called LDS discussions where from as neutral and as objective and as evidence-based of a perspective as we can come from we analyze Mormon church truth claims um uh we are on part four of a series on Joseph Smith Revelations uh by my count uh and today's episode is going to be about problematic LDS prophet Revelations after Joseph Smith so we just covered three episodes on failed prophecies um backdated prophecies problematic patterns on Joseph Smith Revelations and now we're moving beyond Joseph Smith to problematic Revelations and prophecies from Brigham Young to modern day we have a lot to cover I will just quickly remind you all that um you can always enjoy the LDS discussion series um as a part of the integrated Mormon stories podcast feed but there's also a dedicated podcast feed on Spotify and on Apple podcasts called LDS discussions and you can go to the playlist on YouTube on the Mormon stories podcast Channel and you can see all the LDS discussions episodes in sequence we do we we uh we do uh pay our participants on this series and so we would like to specifically ask that if you enjoy this content if you value it and you want to see Mike and his work continue on Mormon story series please go to mormonstorage.org click on the Donate button and become a monthly donor and you can list LDS discussions in your description and we'll make sure and uh and and have as much of Mike as possible so without any further Ado um let's join our panelists for today hey Mike welcome back hey everybody how's it going uh I need to be back anything you want to say to begin no just this one will be fun just because I think it takes us a little bit away from all of these episodes we've done on Joseph Smith so now we can look at how the church has operated after Joseph Smith which I think will give us a lot of insight not just into our current leadership in 2023 but also into Joseph Smith because you now can compare and contrast how Revelation and discernment all of these things work um in the church not just with Joseph Smith but now up through today and I think it'll give us a much bigger picture um of what we're kind of how to evaluate that I guess I should say Perfect all right well we're happy to have you Mike uh you're already a legend and as always uh we are so delighted to have Nemo from Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel here as a uh as a partner in righteousness and Truth hey Nemo hey how's it going how's life in the UK these days excellent very rainy we've just had snow which was nice uh in in bloody England yeah we had snow in March okay um yeah all right well we're excited to have you for today's episode and again everyone please subscribe to Mormon stories podcast on YouTube and also please subscribe to Nemo the Mormons Channel um as well all right Mike uh where where do you want to begin with today's episode yeah we could just start with the the first slide and just kind of jump in okay yeah so our fourth episode on Revelation and just like we were saying a second ago I wanted to look at how the church has handled kind of Revelations and kind of this idea of this uh prophetic ability since Joseph Smith's death death and um you know as we've said up until now we've done 30 something episodes they've almost exclusively been on Joseph Smith um in early church history and so now we're kind of getting into the home stretch of the at least this original series of episodes and wanted to focus a little bit more on getting towards more the modern church and you know one thing people have asked me is why we're not covering certain things like under Brigham Young and when I did the overview project the reason I I did it the way I did it is pretty simple which is to say is if Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God then the church today is not the one true church of god and so for me I believe these overviews have shown Beyond any reasonable doubt that Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God and so I don't necessarily think that writing a ton of overviews about today's leaders and Brigham Young is really necessary because at this point we can be very confident they're just men well trying to run a church can I can I I don't want to overreach here because we have a commitment to try and be as objective and as neutral in as evidence-based as possible what we had and Nemo I want to get your review on this as well well we have shown is that Joseph Smith did a lot of Prophecy and Revelation back back dating that the DNC in the book of Commandments were changed in ways to hide failed or incorrect or changing policy and we've shown policies that didn't you know prophecies and Revelations that didn't come true it's still possible in theory that Joseph Smith got some prophecies of Revelations right and that it's you know maybe in someone's theology a prophet can get things right and wrong and that all we've done is just showed where he got it wrong but there's still room for him having gotten it right does that make so I just don't want to Poison the Well and make people turn it off because we make two sweeping of a charge I think that's fair I think it's it's interesting to look at um the example they'll throw at you immediately it would be Jonah refusing to do what God told him to do directly and then being corrected and you know things not going the way that they were meant to because Mormon's love agency uh the church does to teach about agency so ultimately Joseph can choose to get stuff wrong he can choose to write things down his own way rather than the way God revealed them to him there's a chance you know yeah because the apologetic is often that you know and I actually remember having these thoughts in high school it's like Noah got drunk Peter denied Christ um David you know David committed adultery and had his you know Nemesis kill bathsheba's husband Uriah I think it was his name like you can you know Judas uh betrayed Christ like you could always find Prophet series and revelators that make mistakes and even Joseph himself said I've made a gazillion mistakes and so modern modern apologists are going to say hey just because the prophet gets it wrong or makes mistakes they can still be a prophet anyway I don't want to belabor this point Mike do you have a quick reaction to that well I guess what what I'm saying in here is is more along the lines of this entire project so when I was asked to do this I was asked to put together um basically everything I had that showed whether or not the truth clay the Mormonism are true or false and so when I did it my mindset was if the foundation and I'm not talking just about Revelation I'm talking about the Book of Mormon the book of Abraham um you know the word of wisdom uh polygamy all of these things together to me if if all of those things are pointing to this not being from God then Wilford Woodruff while obviously a historical figure in the church doesn't really to me and that's just to me that that's why in the overview project it didn't include it you know I don't know if that makes sense because I'm not talking just about Revelation so it's not like saying Joseph Smith you know said we were gonna have a temple in Missouri it didn't happen therefore the church isn't true I'm not saying that I'm saying the overwhelming abundance of evidence when you talk about truth claims is ultimately going to rest on Joseph Smith because that's really where almost all of this is going to come from and so to me that's what's important just to evaluate kind of true versus untrue and now we're getting more into like still in the truth claims but also good versus not good we'll see more of that as we get through the kind of remainder and and if I may I think perhaps the thing to say to cap this point off would be if you're joining us now at episode 38 what might be worth doing is going back to the beginning watching these and then when you get to this point again deciding whether the point that Mike's making is a fair point or not because then you've been exposed to all the evidence that we've been exposed to having gone through these episodes but if you're coming at this cold that may seem like a strong statement so go back watch more decide yeah it makes sense I think that's a very fair point and that was my you know this this slide is kind of partly something I wrote Into the overview it's just because a lot of people did ask why aren't you focused more on you know post Manifesto polygamy and my point was it matters of course it matters it's history and it impacts a lot of people but to me when you talk about Mormon truth claims it really rests on Joseph Smith and you hear um leaders of the church make that claim uh the Gordon B Hinckley one which is you know everything rests on the first Vision either it's true or this is the biggest fraud ever you know perpetrated on man or whatever it is so is that you know it's not just me I'm just saying and maybe this is too too blunt of a way to start the episode I'm just saying that that's the reason that most of these episodes are on Joseph Smith as opposed to being on kind of say the last 150 years of the church because I think that the validity of Mormonism especially when you talk about truth claims is going to rest on what Joseph Smith did because not a lot has happened since he was killed I I do want to say that I just got a tip that this month March of 2023 there's an Insider who's saying that the Mormon church is about to come out with some sort of statement or video or something around addressing prophetic fallibility and that's why I think this is an important thing to bring up now is I think especially and probably you're laughing Nemo prompted that yeah exactly what's your suspicion Nemo I might it might have something to do with them having their dirty laundry aired in public about the way they manage their finances something like that the SC the settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States and the Mormon church and the fact that the church just got busted for in what I call financial fraud or dishonesty and I've been sending out emails to Stakes around the world I've sent it to All State presidents in the UK but people have been sending it all over the world calling for church discipline um for those involved because the handbook and scripture would indicate that that's necessary so possibly it might be dictionary to say or hold on of course we're fallible we shouldn't be facing church discipline yeah perhaps yeah so we'll be looking for that and that's all going to be Fighter for discussion okay Mike should we go should we go to the next slide yeah let me go to the next slide okay so uh is uh did we cover the slide we did I think the last point I just made is just saying it is still important to look at how profits have operated in Proclaim Revelation just to get the insights into what connection they have to God and also to look at how it you know contrasts from what Joseph Smith was doing so that's uh we can go to the next slide okay next slide and and this is honestly this one minute I don't even think it's a minute long video that we're gonna play for you is the best explanation of Revelation that I've ever heard and it's from Wendy Nelson who is Russell Nelson's second wife and um I I think this is a quote that should be at the beginning of every Church article about what Revelation is because she is being almost too honest here unintentionally and so this is an interview she gave with the church uh I think it's with church news it could be with like Deseret News um shortly after Russell Nelson became prophet and so you can read the quote on the slide but I think it's more effective just to listen to it so we're gonna play you a short clip and just listen to how Wendy Nelson explains what Revelation in the church actually is okay so this is the current wife of the current Mormon church Prophet president Russell M Nelson I have seen him changing in the last 10 months of it is as though he's been Unleashed he's free to finally do what he came to Earth to do is my big thing and also he's free to follow through with things he's been concerned about but could never do now that he's president of he can do those things because aren't things meant to be done by the twelve by unanimous consent so if he's had these concerns and he raised them in a meeting of the twelve why would they not dealt with then why has he got to wait until he's the boss and he can essentially make the others do what he wants to then be out if we laid that Foundation that that the 12 has to you know consent I may not have yeah but that that's that's essentially the way that it works the way that they portray it to the public is that if they have a decision to make the the 12 and the first presidency you get together so all 15 of them get together and they won't uh action or they won't act on it until it's unanimous now there are I mean there are other stories about how that isn't necessarily true or even always the case but that's the image they present to the public so my question based on that image would be if he's had these concerns all this time why is it only when he's the boss man that he's now able to address them because if he'd had them before surely they would have stopped anything moving forward because he didn't consent and people may not even have the history of what you're talking about Nemo because a lot of our listeners and viewers have never been Mormons so they don't know about the flurry of changes that Russell and Nelson has made since it became profit but Mike what did you want to emphasize about that video no I mean it's kind of what Nemo said which is just it really to me Wendy Nelson is saying without saying it that becoming profit means that you are able to implement your world view on the church because you now have the power to do it unquestioned and so by saying he's Unleashed it's like saying Russell Nelson had all these ideas that were so awesome but he was leashed by the fact that he wasn't the oldest member to be prophet and all of a sudden he does it he's Unleashed and just starts doing all the things he always wanted to do and it's just to me we're going to get to that in Russell Nelson's Revelations later in this episode but I think that that quote doesn't just apply to Nelson it applies to every Prophet because it shows that at the end of the day every prophet in the Mormon church from Joseph Smith to Russell Nelson is constrained by their own worldview and is limited to their own worldview it's why they don't have information about the future it's it's it's entirely things they've wanted to do anyways but now can do it in the name of God so if so if a non-president of the church who's a sitting member of the Quorum of The Twelve is storing up ideas of once the guy's ahead of me die I here's all the changes I want to make which is obviously what Wendy Nelson is here saying her husband Russell Nelson Has Done then then it's more problematic to claim that those Revelations come from God it signals that it's more just the ideas and the pet projects of the Apostle slash prophet in Waiting than than really coming from God yeah is that the argument here okay yeah okay so my understanding from Reading dialogue a journal of Mormon thought is that when Joseph Smith died he was referred to by subsequent presidents of the church as um as the prophet and that Brigham from Brigham Young to the guy who comes before David O McKay um uh George Albert Smith I believe that none of those presidents of the church were comfortable being referred to as the prophet and even Brigham Young himself who you skipped over we just if you just notice we skipped over to John Taylor my understanding and you guys can tell me if you've have a different understanding is that Brigham Young didn't think of himself as a prophet he thought of himself as the caretaker of the church and a president almost like a corporate manager of the church after Joseph Smith died now I'm sure that you would find contradictions to what I'm saying in the Journal of discourses but I'm pretty confident there's at least something to what I'm saying it would explain a lot they would explain about about the current attitude of the presidents of the church and about the sort of corporate nature of their involvement with the church they oversee far more of the managerial aspects of the church than you would expect someone who is acting solely in the role of a prophet as like a spiritual leader you wouldn't expect them to be as involved in the sort of management and administrative tasks of the running of a church right as the current Quorum of the twelve and first parenthesis Mike anything you want to add have you read any of that that's that's what I've heard too is that they didn't refer to the prophets of the church as Prophet they refer to him as the president of the church and I I think until um like you said was it was George A Smith or no it was Dave McKay right it was the first one that surrogated yeah yeah David McKay so he started getting called profit and all of a sudden it just kind of stuck again and I think it's why you have this weird interchange like a lot of times when Russell Nelson does like a public event so it's like the NAACP or another church they kind of refer to him as like President Nelson because I think it feels more formal as opposed to like they want the members to think of as profit because obviously that's the whole kind of Secret Sauce of Mormonism but yeah I think there was that Gap where people didn't really feel maybe like they were worthy enough to call them self-profit and you see that in the fact that Mormon leaders don't really have anything new to say at least from the voice of God yeah and the other the other context I just wanted to lay before we jump to John Taylor that our viewers and listeners will probably have thought about but I just want to make sure they have a chance to think about it if we look at all the sections that Joseph Smith added to what Mormons call the Doctrine and Covenants which is canonized scripture and and of course it's complicated because there was the book of Commandments before the Doctrine and Covenants but let's just put the number at around 140 you know Revelations that were added to the Doctrine and Covenants during Joseph Smith's life give or take however many five or ten or whatever almost none have been added since then and that should be immediately suspicious because if we think about all the profits from Brigham Young to present as Prophet Sears and revelators likened to Joseph Smith why did they not continue to add Revelations to the Doctrine and Covenants the only things that have really been added I think is is the ones that I know over the Declarations that we're going to talk about later which is the uh the cessation of polygamy the first cessation of polygamy which is the Declaration one I believe and by the way there was a second cessation of polygamy called the second Manifesto that conveniently they didn't add because it was embarrassing so there's the first Manifesto and then the second Manifesto is when um black members of the church were allowed to have the males related the priesthood and the official declarations the official declarations right so so other than that you know and maybe a maybe a Wilford Woodruff Vision I'm not sure but there's like been almost nothing added and I think that's an important thing to note before we talk about John Taylor and that's that's why um I think down late jokes is pushing so hard for family proclamation to essentially become canonized scripture but even that even that thing that would be added but even that as of 2023 is not scripture No it's not yeah and this is why I want a big up Community of Christ right here this is their book of Doctrine and Covenants and the last thing they added was section 165 right which was given in 2016. yeah and they uh in Independence Missouri and they make a point of saying here that this document is offered humbly for that purpose as an expression of our cherished principle of continuing Revelation yeah doing it yeah so this you know one of the break-offs of Mormonism former reorganized Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints currently Community of Christ they actually do add to their Doctrine and Covenants yes yeah you know things things anyway I it was super rude to me interrupt you Mike but I think that's important background to add here yeah I mean it's been 100 years I think since they've had a canonized Revelation so obviously that's a big deal and one thing if you if you look at the churches I think it might be their in their actual gospel topics I say they refer to as the um proclamation of polygamy I believe is an inspired document or is it inspired it's they don't really call it like a revelation from God because it doesn't it reads like a legal document so yeah that's a that's a bit we'll note that a lot with the priesthood lifting because we're going to talk about that as well so it is good foundation and if you're in the church today A lot of times you know I always come across it when people are talking to me I'm like what's the last Revelation and they'll say oh it's the the uh family proclamation or oh it's the changing from three to two hours it's like no no what's the last real Revelation and it's it's a question that is definitely a red flag because yeah it's been 100 years since we've had one and it doesn't really make sense given how crazy the world has been over the last hundred years that we don't have them so that's and that's where we're talking about the beginning the contrast between how Joseph Smith could get a revelation when someone would come up to him and ask if they should go on a mission it would be like a literal canonized Revelation saying you need to go on a mission sell your stuff we're going to send you out in the spring and then today they're like we need to know who heavenly mother is and the leaders are like yeah we have no idea who she is it really does show or LG or LGBT stuff yeah or it's like indigestion indigestion could prompt Joseph Smith to have a revelation nowadays you can't buy it with with his wife not wanting to clean up tobacco mess prompted a revelation yeah nowadays you couldn't buy a revelation for 200 billion dollars literally you couldn't even buy a revolution yeah and and let's just to jump on that for a second let's just put it this way Joseph Smith had a revelation because the waters were too choppy that he was afraid to travel on the water and today we are told that the leaders of the church clearly didn't get a revelation from God or maybe they did but it's there's no Canada's Revelation from God saying let's create 13 shell companies to hide your money from your members I mean that's the thing it sounds really like snarky to say that but that's what it is Joseph Smith is a canonized Revelation because he was afraid to travel on water the church is handling 150 billion dollars in an investment fund it with a lot of illicit activity that they had to settle with the SEC on and yet they can't get a revelation to know what the best way to do it is I think that tells you a lot about how Joseph Smith had no qualms about claiming to speak for God whereas the leaders today are terrified to do so so to round it off nicely I guess you could say that um the reason then that they weren't calling themselves profits after Joseph Smith was because they weren't fulfilling that function and if they continued to not call themselves prophets you could almost excuse them not fulfilling the function that Joseph Smith filled yeah but as we're gonna do now going through all these we're going to look at how these people compared to Joseph Smith who claimed the title of profit that they also claim okay Mike well let's go ahead and go now that we've got that background on on you know prophets and Revelations between um Joseph Smith and uh and John Taylor will say let's go ahead and talk about John Taylor's 1886 Revelation on polygamy yeah and so this is an important one we talked about this in the episode on polygamy but in 1886 John Taylor receives a revelation from God that was recorded in the voice of God and that's obviously very important um this Revelation was a very clear and direct commandment to continue polygamy even against the increasing pressure from the US government and this is a revelation that was not canonized but I I think most Scholars agree it's an authentic one and so um I don't know if Neymar John would like to read uh the the text of the Revelation that's fine uh specifically because John Taylor was an English Prophet so we so we've given the background on the story for those who don't know it do you think that we've given sufficient background I think so I mean basically Joseph Smith dies um polygamy becomes a big deal in Utah and the government doesn't like it and so the US government is threatening effectively to take all of the church's assets if they don't stop polygamy and so John Taylor is effectively in hiding he's hiding from the government because you know God can't protect him from the government which we talked about in the last episode which is also another issue where God constantly promises protection and yet never gives it um and so this Revelation is written I believe with like seven other people as Witnesses and they make like seven copies or something like that and that's why it's not canonized because it's done while John Taylor's in hiding and as we'll get into with the history it just never really has a chance to be canonized um but yeah this is this is being written um at a time when the church is under insane pressure from the government to stop polygamy with the threats of literally taking the temple away um so the pressure is just immense on the church all right all right let's go to Nemo reading uh the revelation my son John you have asked me concerning the new and Everlasting Covenant how far it is binding upon my people thus saith the Lord all commandments that I give must be obeyed by those calling themselves by my name unless they are revoked by me or by my authority and how can I revoke an Everlasting Covenant for I the Lord am Everlasting and my Everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated nor done away with but they stand forever have I not given my word in great plainness on this subject yet have not great numbers of my people been negligent in the observance of my law and the keeping of my Commandments and yet I and yet have I born with them these many years and this because of their weakness because of the perilous times and furthermore it is more pleasing to me that men should use their free agency in regard to these matters nevertheless I the Lord do not change and my word and my covenants and my law do not and as I have heretofors said by my servant Joseph all those who would enter into my glory must and shall obey my law and have I not commanded men that if they were Abraham's seed and would enter into my glory they must do the works of Abraham I have not revoked this law nor will I for it is Everlasting and those who will enter into my glory must obey the conditions thereof even so amen okay really quickly Mike we've talked about this in past episodes we don't want to go too deep on it but my understanding is is that John Taylor's son is is the one who claims that that John Taylor the prophet gave this Revelation is that right Mike I think that's right because like I said this is going to happen right before John Taylor basically dies so there's just a lot of and because a lot of the leaders of the church are in hiding it it really is not like a time when there's a lot of organization um as far as this stuff so I think it is his son who brings it Forward after the fact okay I'm not 100 sure on the timeline and it's probably fair to say that the current LDS church might um contest the validity of this Revelation and probably has in the past but I will also add that number one they lied about polygamy for decades number two they sent Mormons literally Southern Alberta you know Southern Alberta Cardston area um you know Lethbridge and Northern Mexico where both areas literally settled to be able to continue practicing polygamy in spite of the federal government's prohibitions and even when we did that declaration one the church lied and including prophets and apostles kept performing plural marriages after the manifesto um the first Manifesto was given and we promised the world we would stop such that it required a second Manifesto so for those who are inclined to not believe that we would continue practicing polygamy um even when we had promised the world we were going to stop I'm going to cite those factual current modern day Church confirmed um instances to to kind of back up the likely validity of this John Taylor um Revelation saying to his son which was the foundation of the flds and the break-off polygamous groups in like Colorado and Southern Utah this letter becomes the foundation of what becomes the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ the Latter-Day Saints and all the spin-offs I think there's probably more evidence that would support the validity of this quote Revelation than would undermine it Nemo anything you want to add to that no I agree I I think you know that that it's very likely that he would have received this sort of thing to back up his position bear in mind he's hiding because of his polygamy so as far as he's concerned God is clearly commanding him to keep doing this yeah and I think there were previous Prophet decision revelators who again said well it was called the new and Everlasting Covenant so it would make sense to John Taylor and that's inductor in the covenants 132. it would make sense that John Taylor would not back down um because it was called the new and Everlasting Covenant Mike anything else you want to add no I just I would point out that when I was doing the research for this early on a lot of Scholars basically say yeah this looks authentic so I don't think that there's a lot of I don't think there's a lot of people in the church that would argue that it's a false rep like a like a forged man uh Revelation I think what they argue is that because it wasn't voted I wouldn't have to worry about it which is um something that we talked about in our last episode which creates a lot of problems when you start to get down that road of like well it's not voted on we don't have to worry about it because then as I said last last episode why are we watching General Conference because until it's voted on everything they're saying is just basically you know to quote kind of the the line the opinions of men and so yeah I I don't think there's any reason to think that this is not an authentic Revelation at least from John Taylor's mind and that's why I think it's so important because as we're gonna go into um it's gonna get reversed in just a few years yeah all right well let's go ahead and go to the next slide which are the implications of John Taylor's 1886 Revelation on polygamy yeah and so you know I think this one this is one of those ones I never heard of as a member so I I just I always thought when I when I came across it doing the Deep dive how important this is because it shows that John Taylor was able to record a revelation in the voice of God which really is rare for prophets after Joseph Smith um it shows that John Taylor was receiving a revelation that confirmed his prior belief that polygamy was a commandment from God and that it was the new and Everlasting Covenant which follows the pattern um that I mentioned with the Wendy Nelson quote that prophets receive Revelations that just happen to match their predetermined beliefs and World Views I think that's really important um but the third one and this one's gonna be really important for this episode this Revelation shows that when a new Prophet takes over God often changes his mind and so this Revelation was recorded on September 27 1886 but polygamy for time it's you know as we've talked about before it's still Doctrine for eternity I was revoked less than four years later on September 24th 1890. so we're gonna see this happen again as we continue this episode but it's really difficult to imagine in all knowing an all-powerful God who is literally just throwing down the gauntlet and saying what part of everlasting do you not understand changing his mind just four years after telling John Taylor that polygamy was the new and Everlasting Covenant and would never be revoked and so um as we talked about I understand that apologists will contend that polygamy is not the new and Everlasting Covenant but Celestial marriages I just again we talk about this in the episode on polygamy but this is so important that when John Taylor says in the voice of God that um I have and have I not commanded men that if they were Abraham's seed they would enter into my glory they must do the works of Abraham I have not revoked this law nor will I for it is Everlasting um The Works of Abraham 100 is is linked to polygamy as we see over and over in DNC 132 so this is God telling John Taylor that you have to do the works of Abraham which means polygamy and it's never going to be revoked four years later it's revoked by the next Prophet I think that's a really important thing to understand because we're going to see it again later in this episode and Mike I'm just uh you know we just did the failed Prophecies of Joseph Smith did you include polygamy as one of the failed prophecies well I don't really know how to I mean I don't know if it really is considered a failed prophecy it's an incorrect one I'm just gonna note that you could you could argue that it is because if he's gonna call it you know the new and Everlasting Covenant if God's Gonna implement it if he's going to like die you know because because of it and if the church was going to suffer incredibly for it and again it's called Everlasting the fact that they're renouncing it you know by 1890 that seems to be and you could argue I think that that's a failed prophecy although the church isn't going to own up to it being a failed prophecy I think just like the Gathering in Independence Missouri the Zion stuff you know United order it seems to fit within those in the same type of category to me and it's okay it's okay if you don't agree that's a fair point I mean from a church damn like the way I look at it is from a church standpoint polygamy is still Doctrine it's still Doctrine for eternity so they've just kind of changed except when Joseph Smith goes on Larry King sorry when Gordon B except when Gordon B Hinckley goes on Larry King live and says you know it's not doctrinal okay so this is the quote that Gordon B Hinckley made on Larry King live about polygamy he says I condemn it polygamy guess as a practice because I think it is not doctrinal it is not legal and this church takes the position that we will abide by the law we believe in being subject to Kings presidents rulers magistrates and honoring obeying and sustaining the law and and so that quote obviously is kind of relevant today yeah that has not aged well given the the fact that they they basically hid their money in Shell companies for 13 years and just got fined by the SEC but yeah I mean Gordon Hinckley there is absolutely lying to the public by saying it's not doctrinal because it's canonized as DNC 132 um yeah so yeah I mean that's just that's just being dishonest yeah so it makes sense that John Taylor would publish this Revelation saying it's never going to be uh changed um you know okay cool all right well that's that's the first one uh are we ready to go on to the second which is the lifting of the the priesthood ban on on black adults uh within the Mormon church yeah all right let's go to the lifting of the priesthood band is the next uh you know problematic policy slash Revelation and this is one you know a little bit ago I said you know when you ask members what the last Revelation was a lot of them will say the proclamation on the family and a lot will say the lifting in the priesthood ban and um this is one we covered we did two episodes on this um and this is frequently hailed as a modern day Revelation and so I'm going to include some of what we already kind of talked about um in the previous episodes and this is from the church's own essay on race and the priesthood they say and I put this in bold because it's important they say this Revelation on the priesthood as it is commonly known in the church was a landmark Revelation and a historic event those who were present at the time described it in reverent terms Gordon B Hinckley then a member of the Quorum of The Twelve remembered it this way there was a hallowed and Sanctified atmosphere in the room for me it felt as if a conduit opened between the Heavenly throne and the kneeling pleading prophet of God who was joined by his Brethren every man in that Circle by the power of the Holy Ghost knew the same thing not one of us who was present on that occasion was ever quite the same after that nor has the church been quite the same and and and one thing I'll point out in that is that Gordon B Hinckley says every man who was there because I believe there were two that were sent away because they knew that they wouldn't agree to it and so they sent them away um it was a Marky Peterson I think there was one other one but it might have just been Marky Peterson um because they needed it to be unanimous so they got him out of there um so they could get a pass which I find kind of an interesting thing um but the second one which we'll talk about in a second is just that the way Gordon B Hinckley describes as a revelation is is absolutely not how it's describes when you get behind behind the scenes so to just give a tiny bit of background for those who've never been Mormon the Mormon Church you know Joseph Smith ordained black men uh to to the priesthood uh and that happened a few at least a few black men were ordained to the priesthood between the founding of the church and kind of early Utah period and but at some point Brigham Young who was super racist you know implemented the policy to to keep black men from receiving the priesthood and to keep black adults from entering the temple and doing Temple work and that ban um persisted from uh you know uh from Jose from Brigham Young's time let's just say all the way through to 1978 when it was lifted so Mike you're talking about the lifting of the priesthood band in 1978. do are you going to be mentioning that that at least two first presidencies confirmed the the priesthood ban as Doctrine are you going to be mentioning that already Mike you know what I don't think I have it in here just because we we were we did that before but yeah and that's another important point to note is that we have first presidencies that signed um the one that is literally signed you can you can see it online by the first president he says this is Doctrine from God the ban on those of black skin is Doctrine from God and and so it's another area where you've got the one Prophet who has a world view that God doesn't want people with black skin holding the priesthood holding the line and then you've got another one who's obviously there's a lot of outside pressure too but it's amazing how these profits are getting different different um answers from an unchangeable God it really is something that is striking and we'll ask Maven to include in the show notes a link to First presidency statements that confirm the the priesthood ban on on black members of the church okay so what you just read is sort of like almost it sounds like spin from Gordon B Hinckley was it about how miraculous the lifting of the priesthood band was how it was pure Revelation now let's go to the slide that actually talks about well should we say how the sausage is made actually yeah how the Revelation sausage is actually made and we covered this in our episodes on raising the priesthood but this is so important and this is an interview that's being done by Apostle LeGrand Richards to uh Wesley Walters and if I understand correctly LeGrand Richards was not happy that this interview got published because he's being a little too candid here and so I don't know if Neymar or John want to read this because it's it's a bit of uh of a of a of a a bunch of text but it's important which one do you want to be John do you want to be Walters or Richards oh there you go I'll be Walters okay cool okay uh Walters on this revelation of the priesthood to the Negro I've heard all kinds of stories I've heard that Christ appeared to the apostles I've heard that Joseph Smith appeared and then I heard another story that Spencer W Kimball had had a concern about this for some time and simply shared it with the apostles and they decided that this was the right time to move in that direction now are any of those stories true or are they all well the last one is pretty true and I might tell you what provoked it in a way down in Brazil there is so much negro blood in the population there that it's hard to get leaders that don't have negro blood in them we just built a temple down there it's going to be a dedicated in October all those people with negro blood and learn have been raising money to build that Temple and then if we don't change then they can't even use it so brother Kimball worried about it and he prayed about it a lot he asked each one of us the 12 if we would pray and we did that the Lord would give him the inspiration to know what the will of the Lord was and then he invited each of us in his office individually because you know when you're in a group you can't always express everything that's in your heart you're part of the group you see so he interviewed each one of us personally to see how we felt about it and he asked us to pray about it and then he asked each one of us to hand in all the references we had for or against that proposal see he was thinking favorably towards giving the colored people the priesthood then we had a meeting where we met where we meet every week in the temple and we discussed it as a group together and then we prayed about it in our prayer circle and then we held another prayer circle after the close of the meeting and he President Kimball LED in the prayer praying that the Lord would give us the inspiration that we needed to do the things that would be pleasing to him and for the blessing of his children and then the next Thursday we meet every Thursday the presidency came with this little document written out to make the announcement to see how we'd feel about it and present it in written form well some of the members of the 12 suggested a few changes in the announcement and then in our meeting where there we all voted in favor of it the 12 and the presidency one member of The Twelve Mark Peterson was down in South America but brother Benson our president had arranged to know where he could be reached by phone and right while we were in that meeting in the temple brother Kimball talked with brother Peterson and read him this article and he Peterson approved of it um this is Walters again now there wasn't a special document as a revelation that he had and wrote down we we discussed it in our meeting what else should we say besides that announcement and we decided that was sufficient that no more needed to be said okay and I'm just going to let everyone know I just uh I just went out and Googled and I found a document called interview with Mormon Apostle Le Grand Richards concerning the 1978 negro Revelation and I've included a link to it in the show notes but you know for those who don't want to believe that what you just read was anything important that was a Mormon Apostle Le Grand Richards giving a detailed account of of uh of actually how the you know what led to the priesthood Band Mike do you want to call out or highlight what you think is most interesting about that exchange I just think when you read The Exchange LeGrand Richards is saying there's no like Grand Revelation here that's being recorded and being voted on is basically they're being called in and say basically the church is saying we're thinking about doing this what are your thoughts um and then they give them all a statement and they can all kind of make their edits or suggestions then basically they they take all of those suggestions they come up with a final statement that's voted on and once it's voted on its release to the public and the ban is lifted so at no point in there are they mentioning that God is coming down in the same way that Joseph Smith would claim or even John Taylor with a direct Revelation this is basically the church trying to find a way to end the ban um and just basically getting the input of the 12th so that they can get that unanimous vote and so it just doesn't fit with the way Gordon Binkley uh Gordon B Hinckley describes it in my opinion in my opinion it reads more like uh if you had a corporate boardroom and they're trying to do a press release and they're trying to make sure they hit the right notes that's more what LeGrand Richards is saying and I think that's why he was upset this interview got released yeah um and I'm going to say Nemo I want to get your reactions to it I just want to note the fact that somehow it wasn't at all bothersome or problematic to Mormon prophet steers and revelators that black people and the specifically black black Africans and black African Americans were being denied the priesthood it was like oh oh wait um Brazilians of color are being denied the priesthood all of a sudden that's a problem and of course we all know that for those who knew Spencer W Kimball will know that he had a special place in his heart for quote the lamanites and what what we mean by that term which is now deemed offensive the lamanites what he meant was you know members of the church in Central and South America it's almost like well because Kimball really cared about Latinos and Brazilians or Latinos then he wanted the church to grow in Brazil then the they all realized that a lot of the a lot of the Brazilian Saints had African ancestry then all of a sudden in the 70s if they're going to build a temple there and a bunch of Brazilians want to go to the temple and get married in the temple all of a sudden they have a problem on their hands because they've been giving the priesthood to Brazilians for a long long time while they've been denying the priesthood to Africans for Allah and African-Americans for a long long time well then all of a sudden it's important and it just shows to me tell me Nemo if I've got that wrong it sort of sends the message we really didn't care about African Americans and we really didn't care about black Africans you know blacks white South Africans were okay but certainly not black Africans but but yeah I guess we did care about black Brazilians I think it's it's an expediency thing it's an incredibly expedient and convenient and pragmatic Revelation to receive at the time they received it and the regrand Richards kind of made that obvious so well we've just built a temple and how else are we going to run that Temple without members another members down there currently can have the priesthood so I guess that's not to change that's that's it seems that was the main motivation for it yeah and Mike you've got you've got you've got some of your takeaways on this next slide so we'll just go to that yeah I mean we you know for the most part we've covered a little bit but you know to me it just it reads like the band was lifted uh more in a solution to a problem in Revelation as we talked about you know it's it's basically as Nemo just said it's a sign statement that allowed the church to solve an attendance problem and as we kind of have talked about in these previous episodes in Revelation it's really shocking this one in particular because usually the church responds to outside events you know Joseph Smith with the temperance movement um you know obviously I'm a catalyst there but the Civil Rights Movement was going on and it did not change the church's mind about whether or not God would want people with black skin to be able to have saving ordinances but a desire to increase attendance at a new Temple where the population was predominantly um of those with dark skin uh all of a sudden gets them to make the change and you know when you think of all the struggles that members with black skin had in the church you know basically since the ban was implemented it was as apostle Richards admits the desire that all those people with negro blood in them were able to attend the new Temple in Brazil that finally pushed the prophet's ears and revelators to action which again is stunning given that we have signed statements saying this is Doctrine from God and you know just I I don't really know what more to say outside just saying any idea that the lifting of the ban was some kind of grand Revelation that was implied in the gospel topics essay and is taught today is just simply not how it happened especially when we have an account from someone who's there and who's talking you know very candidly in this interview and um even with a statement that lifted the ban on members of the African blood the church still left all of the scriptures that led to the ban in place and they are in place today and so I do think um that's another problem that you would think if they're gonna have some Grand revelation God would all say hey you might want to get all that racism out of the Book of Mormon the book of Moses and the Book of Abraham but they are all still there yeah the point I'd like to raise just real quick is that um the justification they tried to use because I've actually just done some shorts on this uh the justification they used when they announced the the removal of the ban was that it is the long-awaited day foretold by prophets before us so they try and put it on Brigham Young when he said that there will come a day when black people will get the priesthood the problem is bringing me on made it very clear that black people wouldn't get the priesthood until all the non-black people had been redeemed he talks about the seed of Abel needs to be redeemed before the seed of Cain can receive salvation or Redemption so that doesn't wash but I just think it's important to note oh no it's very important for sure and all said not only you know did the prophets not you know get a Mormon prophets did not like lead the civil rights movement that that's a problem in the United States it seems like they should have been the ones leading it but not only do they not lead it not only did they not join it and support it they denounced it and we you know we've got entire you know a series on Mormon stories with Matt Matthew Harris talking about Ezra Benson and the civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s and Matt Harris has a book coming out about that but that's another huge problem is Mormon's Mormon prophet series and revelators are like consistently a generation or two behind the Civil Rights movements and if anything should have changed the the the priesthood band it should have been um the Civil Rights Movement but but but but but people like Ezra Benson and Marky Peterson and Harold B Lee and others were opposed to it and I do want to add one more thing if you read Michael Quinn's book it's either origins of power extensions of power I'm not sure which he talks about how how um Hubie Brown who was in the first presidency under David O McKay's Administration Hubie Brown in the early 60s wanted the priesthood band lifted and he lobbied and lobbied and lobbied for but then he weighed then finally when David O McKay is really old and David O McKay is almost invalid Hubie Brown is able to sort of like you know call a meeting I think in 1968 and actually persuade the you know he waits until like the right Apostles are like traveling and then he actually calls a vote that the apostles agree that the priesthood ban should be lifted 10 years before it was but then apparently certain Apostles get back into town and they Scuttle what was voted on and agreed to and then it took another 10 years before it was lifted so again you can call you know a progressive or liberal Mormon is going to say yeah that's Revelation it's messy it's lobbying and it's backroom deals and it's you know calling for a vote when a certain Apostle's out of town you could say that that's all Revelation but once you know how the sausage gets made and then when you add to it the fact that Revelations as important as law of consecration or United order you know Zion in the New Jerusalem and the new Everlasting Covenant of polygamy if you can see that not only can they get repealed but they're clearly only repealed when there's massive social pressure or the whims of the current profit I think all of that really really calls into question what is what's the value of Prophecy in Revelation um if this is really how how it's made yeah and and I would know you know it we have the 12 and the first president presidents here all ordained profit seers and revelators right and how is it that you can have 15 men who are ordained prophet seers and revelators getting different ideas from God in in that to me is the biggest indication that as I've mentioned in these last episodes either these men are beholden to their own worldview as Wendy Nelson said they're basically leashed to the world view and to the power they hold or God does not have the ability to reach any of these people and so if you have 15 men who cannot tell the will of God from the will of their own world dude that's a problem and that is the exact kind of organization you want to run from because they cannot tell what's coming from God and what's coming from their own prejudices and their own experiences and I think that is the biggest indicator from the priesthood ban is that they had to work so hard to get these Apostles to line up and even then they had to send Mark Peterson out of town because God apparently couldn't go to Mark Peterson and say dude cut the racist crap out we're done with that but instead Marky Peterson has some of the most vile quotes you'll ever hear as an apostle of the lord of the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter-Day Saints that tells you that God is either very powerless or these men don't speak to God and they're basically just trying to persuade people out of their own worldview it's like politics and that that should not be how Revelation is if God really has a conduit to these people yeah all right well uh if that weren't enough uh we're gonna we're gonna talk about something near and dear to my heart and that's the uh the changes to the temple ceremony now just to refer to past episodes we've we've given a lot of background and context to uh the the Mormon endowment um there's an episode on masonry in the temple that we can have Maven include in the show notes right right Mike yeah we did an episode that's going to cover a lot of this but this will so this will be a kind of a quick just look back at that okay so just just the background really quickly is that Jill Smith was a Mason he went through the Mason Temple ceremony when he was in Nauvoo he Incorporated really horrific penalties where he's slicing his throat and disemballing himself the handshakes um you know the signs and tokens the the the Garb the clothing and the the Five Points of Fellowship so much of the Mormon temp the Mason Temple ceremony was just like stolen from and imported into the Mormon Temple ceremony and that it that it that existed all the way through my time um all the way through 1990 I mean there were changes all along the way but um up and up until 1990 in my lifetime a lot of these horrific things were still in the temple ceremony now let's go ahead and go to this slide about changes to the temple ceremony and so just as we noted and we have a whole episode on the endowment ceremony and masonry and you know we mentioned in that episode that a lot of changes have been made to the temple over the years um and these are changes oftentimes that came after surveys were sent to members about their Temple experience and we talked about that in the episode but just as with all of the other changes to the church's doctrines and policies this is an area where we were originally told that the temple ceremony would never be changed because changes in ancient times were for the convenience of men and so this is uh David B height at the October 79 General Conference sorry Mormons hate so we explained briefly the apostasy and the restoration that there is vast evidence in history of an apostasy from the doctrine taught by Jesus and his Apostles that the organization of the original Church became corrupted and sacred ordinances were changed to suit the convenience of men and that today good people all over the world are confused with contending religions with differing Doctrine and methods of worship and so he's making making it very clear that the original church had these these um ceremonies but that they changed them to basically suit their own convenience and um to make you know I would say more clear Brigham Young worked to create what is called a perfected version of the in Temple ceremony um they had many drafts to make sure that the ceremony was exactly as God wanted it on March 21st 1877 Wilford Woodruff recorded the following in his journal president young has been laboring all winter to get up a perfect form of endowments as far as possible they having been perfected I read them to the company today and so the church is saying that basically the original Church made changes because basically they were corrupted and Brigham Young is saying that he got the perfect endowment ceremony and that is recorded and so what you should have is a temple ceremony that would never change okay and I think what we're going to learn in the next slide is well what we've already said is that the truth is there have been a ton of changes to the temperature Temple ceremony yeah are you gonna list them or should we list them now uh you can listen now I don't I don't think I have like a whole list okay so I'll just say I'll just say they've changed the film they've they've take out the Five Points of Fellowship that was Masonic uh they took out all the all the horrible penalties like slicing your neck they took out that women hearken to their husbands as the hark as the husband's Covenant with God they took off the women veiling their face uh they they took off um oh when you when you went through and you did your Washings and anointings you used to wear this super super um uh immodest Poncho called The Shield a shield that it was that went over just a hole that went over your sides were fully exposed they would put oil touch different parts of your body including your groin with oil um you know all of this without you know previous written consent um there used to be a preacher in the temple ceremony there were a collar that used to condemn other religions including the Catholic church I know that they used to condemn the state of Illinois in the Mormon Temple ceremony and um and have everyone Covenant you know that you know something about the condemnation of the state of Illinois or Missouri I forget which ones um and those are just the ones coming to the top of my brain Nemo any other changes you wanna they got rid of the Covenant to avoid loud laughter very important that's the most recent change that happened in February this year um and you're getting the most important change of all John the little tie between the cap and the robes gone oh yeah that's huge you used to tie your your hat used to tie your Baker's cap to like a little I don't know thing on your shoulder basically all right Mike so lots all I'm saying is massive massive changes to the temple ceremony yeah just just real quick not to like just the presentation methods or you know the joke about the tying from the cap right whatever that can change but actual changes to the nature and the conditions of the covenants that you make so people going through at different times essentially make different covenants with Gods that's the key to those changes that they they change the nature of the covenants that you're making so the nature of the Theology of the ceremony sorry okay no that's a good point and it's a very true one it's just the the the slicing your own throw uh cutting out your bowels you know a lot of that was taken out largely because people didn't want to go to the temple because it's really creepy to vow to kill yourself if you reveal the temple um I went through the temple before uh the changes in 2005 so I had the shield on and I had a naked old man touch my inner my name could inner thigh with oil I had no idea that was going to happen those are the things and I remember just feeling shattered inside and then the worst part of all is you've got this naked old guy rubbing oil on your and naked in her thigh and all the people around you have to get out of it are looking at you and smiling as if it's somehow normal and I think that's the reason that now you go through with with the um the churches in um garments with the Masonic symbols on it you go through with those on and I think you're just tapped in the forehead now but but the point is a lot of these changes are being made at the exact same time that we've got or I should say a little bit after um you've got people saying that they were done in ancient times for the convenience of men it's it's a little bit um you know it's a problem uh when you compare the fact that they're doing exactly what they're you know accusing the ancient Church of doing got it okay so what are the implications of the changes to the temple ceremony yeah and so oh that's another big one that we forgot is that the Adam God Doctrine was present in the temple ceremony Brigham Young added that Adam was our God into the temple ceremony and after Brigham Young died they got that out there pretty quickly because you know it's a problem and it's one that the church tries to say was more the philosophy of men well guess what it's in the temple ceremony and this is another thing where you go how in the world is Brigham Young perfecting the temple ceremony and adding in something that the church today is running away from as fast they can that is another sign that these are all men that are just thinking on their own and have their own philosophies and their own theologies and yet the church had to yank that one out and today they pretend like it was never in there but it was absolutely in the lectures at the veil we should probably add um LDS discussions episode specifically about Temple changes don't you think I think we covered we covered a lot of them in that episode we have to look to see if which one I'm just saying for for SEO reasons having an episode just dedicated to that yeah you know probably helps people who want to find that specific topic find it anyway the resource just just an idea I think it would be useful to do that yeah okay so other other implications on the changes to the temple ceremony yeah and so you know we talked about They removed the penalties where you animate your own death um that they remove some of the sexism from the church and apologists will contend that these changes are the result of ongoing Revelation um but the truth is like we said Adam God Doctrine was claimed to be received directly from God by uh Prophet Brigham Young or he would like to call President Brigham Young are we to believe that God told one Prophet that Adam is our God our Father and our God and the only god with with whom we have to do but then told the other future prophets never mind um it really explains how Revelation Works Brigham Young believed that those were the teachings of Joseph Smith and were Revelation from God in every Prophet after room did not believe that and so they dropped the doctrine and current day leaders try to pretend it was never a part of the temple ceremony in other words The People Under Brigham Young believed that Brigham Young was wrong but they were leashed and then they became prophet and as Wendy Nelson says they became Unleashed and were able to do the things they always wanted to do and the reality is that the changes to the temple have been explicitly to appease the convenience of men the penalties were removed because people realized how barbaric they are and did not like mimicking their own suicide for talking about the temple and the removal of some of the sexism in 2019 was done because women did not like that men gave themselves to God while women were giving themselves to their husband which is a direct remnant of polygamy's influence on the temple ceremony we were constantly taught in the church that God is the same yesterday today and tomorrow yet we were also constantly given Revelations at a reversing previous Revelations from God changing perfected Temple ceremonies and or even sometimes at odds with the scriptures and I think when you look at all that from the big picture it becomes really clear just as Wendy Nelson said these are all men who are basically just doing the things they always wanted to do but lack the power to do and also the results of surveys that are telling people that members are extremely creeped out by the the Mormon Temple which I would have to agree I was I'm going to say it's not suicide I think it's homicide because it says suffer my life to be taken yeah it doesn't say take my own life it's true some people yeah some people do say like they'll say like when you slit your own throat it's not that you're you're actually studying it it's that you're basically saying this is going to happen to me if I reveal it someone else will do it and then apologists will say yeah they said it but like no one ever was killed for it so you can't really worry about it but the fact is and to me more importantly one um the the part about I forgot what the phrase is that Joseph Smith used but it's like basically the best part about masonry is secrecy and so he was pulling this from the Mason the Masonic ceremony because it's very effective to get people to stop to not talk about it but at the same time whether you're doing it or someone else is doing it um it's pretty insane that that God would want you to think that your your throat will be slid if you talk about the temple outside the temple it's just it's one of those things where when you leave you're like holy well first of all I didn't that all those words were taken out I think in 1978 they took they took the rest of it out but or not 1990 and so like Mitt Romney would have had to gone through with that and so um that was one of the things in the BBC interview uh but yeah that it's it's these changes are being made because people are at this point where they're like yeah that's weird and and the um garments have changed because people are realizing it's a little weird to wear underwear with Masonic symbols that would go from ankle to to sleeve so now they're shorter they're still very long but they're shorter and so these changes are being made for the convenience of men and some everyone saw the convenience of women as well yeah Nemo anything you want to add not particularly I mean it's okay it's wild that it changes you know yeah yeah and you just have to ask why would God's revealed holy sacred most sacred Temple ceremony most sacred ceremony of all restoration of ancient rights yeah you know why would you need to change and not just change but change radically and not just change radically but change multiple times radically and not just change multiple times radically but always change multiple times radically in response to complaints or or the godmakers or you know feminists in you know in in the 2010s complaining on the internet it just always seems like the changes it just seems like whenever there's you know since Joseph Smith any Revelation is really the undoing of a failed Revelation previous I mean there may be exceptions to that but even if you want to say the proclamation of the family isn't necessarily A reversal of failed revelation we know that the proclamation of the family started as a legal brief in a lawsuit in Hawaii That Grew into um a declaration that has not been canonized yet so I mean where are the pro would the prophetiers and revelators please stand up yeah I'm waiting for Russell Nelson's little thing that he did at the April Conference of 2020 to end up somehow canonized his kind of think of the First Missionary discussion as um as a special little oh yeah yeah yeah I know yeah yep okay well uh let's go ahead and go to the next one which man it's just hard to view this as Revelation it's hard to even swallow this one um but uh yeah it's it's it's uh the the Revelation by Russell Nelson that we need to not use the word Mormon let's cover it yeah and this is this was like literally right after I started looking into church history and so to come across this was just when he announces you're like you really like this is this is where you're going and so um after Russell Nelson became the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints his first major action was to warn the church against using the name Mormon to describe the church and many members felt this was a true Revelation from God because Nelson said that the Lord impressed upon his mind the importance of the name he decreed for his church even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so Russell Nelson is basically saying God put this in my head it's Revelation so he's not using the word revelation but he's saying everything else so that members get the direct implication that this is revelation and this was the problem that most members are not aware of and I certainly wasn't going to happen Nelson was pushing this exact line of thought for 28 years before he was sustained as prophet of the church in April 1990 Nelson gave a talk appropriately called the shall my church be called where Nelson Maps out the exact same arguments he made in 2018 as a prophet and he had two prophets who basically just laughed him off and I think to me that is the biggest sign ever that God does not speak to these men because how in the world are three prophets getting very different ideas of what God is offended by and spending millions of dollars on that very cause which I'm sure will come to yes yeah yeah exactly Okay so we've actually I think it's beautiful I think we've got some video clips comparing uh you know Gordon B Hinckley with Russell and Nelson past profit versus current profit is that right yeah in this video yeah this video is on on YouTube and it's amazing because it really it's gonna take what Nelson is saying in 2020 um or 2018 I'm sorry and it's going to compare it to um Gord B Hinckley and now Gordon B Hinckley is going to give a talk six months after Nelson um gave his thus shall my church be called talk in 1990. six months later Gordon B Hinckley is going to go out there and just basically smack Nelson down upside the head to basically say like dude you are like this is ridiculous and so watch the video and just look at how um Gordon B Hinckley just basically takes what Nelson does body slams him into the ground and then does like a you know a flying elbow smash off the turnbuckles um because it it's amazing to see how Russell Nelson is 20 years later gonna be like yeah God revealed this to me and yet Hinckley here is just basically apparently disconnected from the same God this video is amazing as far as just showing how profits are getting completely different messages from God all right all right let's go to the video today I feel compelled to discuss with you a matter of great importance some weeks ago I released a statement regarding a course correction for the name of the church many of our people are disturbed by the practice of the media and of many others to disregard totally the true name of the church and to use the nickname the Mormon church six months ago in our conference Elder Russell M Nelson delivered an excellent address on the correct name of the church I did this because the Lord impressed upon my mind the importance of the name he decreed for his church even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he quoted the words of the Lord himself thus shall my church be called in the last days even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as you would expect responses to this statement and to the revised style guide have been mixed many members immediately corrected the name of the church on their blogs and social media pages others wondered why with all that's going on in the world it was necessary to emphasize something so inconsequential the Mormon Church of course is a nickname and nicknames have a way of becoming fixed I think of the verse concerning a boy in his name father calls me William mother calls me will sister calls me Willy but the Fellers call me Bill I suppose that regardless of our efforts we may never convert the world to General use of the full and correct name of the church because of the shortness of the word Mormon and the ease with which it is spoken and written they will continue to call us the Mormons the Mormon church and so forth they could do worse and Solomon said it couldn't be done so why even try more than 50 years ago when I was a missionary in England I said to one of my associates how can we get people including our own members to speak of the church by its proper name he replied you can't the word Mormon is too too deeply ingrained and too easy to say he went on I've quit trying let me explain why we care so deeply so deeply about this issue and it is not inconsequential I am not ashamed of the nickname Mormon look he went on to say if there is any name that is totally Honorable in its derivation it is the name Ormond so when someone asked me about it and what it means I quietly say Mormon means more good instead it is a correction it is the command of the Lord and so while I sometimes regret that people do not call this church by its proper name I am happy that the nickname they use is one of great honor made so by a remarkable man and a book which gives an unmatched testimony concerning the Redeemer of the world Joseph Smith did not name the church restored through him neither did Mormons anyone who comes to know the man more who's the Savior himself who said through the reading and pondering of his word for thou shall my church be called in the last days even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint Anyone who reads this precious troll of History which was assembled and preserved in large measure by him will come to know that Mormon is not a word of disrepute but that it represents the greatest good that good which is of god it was a modern translator of this ancient record who declared the through Reading of a man would come closer to God than through the reading of any other book all of this places Upon Us of this church and this generation and incumbent and demanding responsibility to recognize that as we are spoken of as Mormons we must so live that our example will enhance the perception that Mormon can mean in a very real way more good the name of the church is not negotiable if there is any name that is totally Honorable in its derivation it is the name Ormond Mormon is not a word of disrepute but it represents the greatest good when the Savior clearly states what the name of his church should be and even precedes his declaration with thus shall my church be called he's serious and if we allow nicknames to be used or adopt or even sponsor of those nicknames ourselves I am not ashamed of the nickname Mormon he is offended when it comes to nicknames of the church the Mormons the Mormon church and so forth such as LDS church the Mormon church or the Church of the Latter-Day Saints they could do worse the most glaring Omission is the absence of the savior's name to remove the lord's name from The Lord's church is a major victory for Satan when we discard the savior's name we are subtly disregarding all that Jesus Christ did for us even his atonement after all he had endured and after all he had done for humankind I realized with profound regret that we have unwittingly acquiesced in the Lord's restored Church being called by other names Each of which expunges the sacred name of Jesus Christ I testify that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that when people speak of us by the name of this book they will complement us if we will live worthy of the name remembering that in a very real sense Mormonism must mean that greater good which the Lord Jesus Christ exemplifies wow all right well Nemo do you want to share your reactions to that first yeah I mean Hinckley was the pr guy right he knew what a good Public Image looked like it's why he did the public interviews it's why he tried to put a good face forth uh with Larry King Etc um Nelson doesn't give a crap bluntly he doesn't care what other people think of him he has his own objectives and that's the way he wants things to be I object to two parts of what Nelson said that it is a major victory for Satan because that as we will see in a moment becomes very problematic in terms of what other prophets did with the nickname Mormon and I also object to the idea that Jesus is offended because as David A Bednar teaches us it is a choice to be offended and it is a choice that is often an indicator of a much deeper spiritual malady I believe for his exact words so if Jesus is getting offended over this that's problematic so I I don't agree with I with uh postulating that Jesus is offended by the use of nicknames I think he's just happy if his church is being talked about in a positive light frankly yeah that's my thoughts all right Mike what do you want to add yeah so just the thing I'll note is that you know uh Russell Nelson is getting really upset about people kind of calling it a different name but what he doesn't explain to members is that the church changed their name three times so the original name of the church was the Church of Christ from 1829 to 34. then they change it to the Church of the Latter-Day Saints from 34 to 38 and then they changed it to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and so he actually mentions that God is offended when people call it the Church of the Latter-Day Saints without noting that it was the church that changed their name to that in the 30s so I think that's really important and then the other part I would just note is that this video is showing Nelson from 2018 but he's making those same arguments in 1990 and so Gordon B Hinckley here with a wink and a smile is just basically you know knocking Nelson down and then hitting him with the chair a few times so um just to have two prophets um getting their wires crossed so badly it's just a really good indication that God is not offended um by the use of the word Mormon or else God would not do what we're going to reveal in the next two slides yeah so let's go and jump to that so to show how absurd Russell M Nelson's uh it's almost orwellian to show how orwellian Nelson's Revelation about the word Mormon is let's tell some people some history about the animal Mormon campaign so this is a campaign that launched in 2010 and was done by the Mormon church and this uh was part of the press release that was released by the Mormon Newsroom and it said the church's National media campaign called I'm a Mormon included television spots Billboards and ads on buses and on the internet the ads give a glimpse into the lives of Latter-day Saints from all over the world and refer people to the mormon.org website where they can read the profiles of tens of thousands of Mormons chat live with Representatives who will answer questions about the faith and watch dozens of videos about members of the church and so again if God is so offended by the nickname of Mormon as Nelson is proclaimed why in the world would God allow His prophets seers and revelators to run a campaign such as the I'm a Mormon one where it was broadcast through TV it was all over the Internet they were they were buying faith I think they're doing Facebook ads they were telling members to flood Facebook and all these other um social media platforms with the I'm a Mormon hashtag um and so we're told that leaders constantly pray about every major decision especially when tithing dollars are being used and this would be no exception because they were trying to help boost the image of the church so I just if God felt this was an error that had corrupted over time clearly the leaders would have received a response to not move forward with this campaign and yet they're going to spend Millions on it Times Square they covered in their Billboards I'm a Mormon London do you know how expensive it is to advertise in London very they spent Millions on the sides of buses whole tube stations underground train stations covered all along the walls I'm a Mormon all the way along if that's a major victory for Satan as ruslam Nelson says then why did they pay that much money to put it everywhere how did Satan win so well yeah yeah also I'm gonna add the I'm a Mormon campaign was literally stolen from the scientologists so for those who don't know you know you watch these I'm a Mormon videos the church like almost it almost seems like they paid they certainly paid you know super expensive video producers but you've got like skateboarders and artists and actors who who kind of look pretty and handsome and talented to all do a short little one to two three minute video and then at the end say I'm a Mormon you can literally Google um I'm a Scientology uh videos on YouTube and you can find videos made in the few years prior to the Mormon church uh where where it's just clear that the Mormon Church took Pages out of the Scientology Playbook to help restore its image which is also in and of itself kind of dark and ironic but even more kind of begs the question why would the church plan a gazillion dollar campaign to then not only have it erased but then to have Nelson come back and and say you know Mormon's a bad name it makes no sense victory for Satan yeah major victory for Satan yeah that's strong language that is a really strong language it's almost like Nelson was really hurt that Hinckley had publicly flogged him for stepping out Beyond because let's be clear Nelson said we shouldn't use the term Mormon in a general conference talk before Hinckley gave that talk where he corrected him Am I Wrong guys nope no you're correct yeah 100 it's almost like Nelson held on to a grudge and having been publicly rebuked for what a couple decades and then once Hinckley was dead he had his revenge on the dead Prophet which again is super weird isn't it I think that's what Wendy was alluding to when she said that those things he's been concerned about for a long time he can finally do something about now he's finally the boss man he can he can push that agenda that he's been holding on to since 1990. yeah yeah I mean it it certainly seems that that Russell Nelson had a massive uh you know ax to to grind with Hinckley I mean the fact that Hinckley went six months later in general conference and made a talk basically just I mean that if you read between the lines Hinckley is using a talk at General Conference to beat down you know another member of The Twelve I I just I you can't like overstate how weird that is when you actually kind of understand the politics behind it and then to see Nelson as soon as he becomes Profit just immediately go right after that I think is is beyond telling that this is as Wendy Nelson said Russell Nelson Unleashed and and um yeah I I think it's personal for sure oh go ahead Nemo I was gonna say to that point uh I think it's what further backs up the idea of possibly a grudge is how prolific Nelson's been in building temples to the point where people from the temple Department are saying he's just ignoring all rules that used to govern where and when we'd build a temple and how many members they used to need to be and all this he's just torn that rule book up and gone just he's gone Oprah Winfrey on he's like you get a template and you get a template and you get a temple yep because he wanted to build more than uh Gordon B Hinckley and he's achieved that now yeah um he he's he's did a specific number not the last conference but the conference before that got him above the amount that Hinckley did and then the conference after he did a specific number him to 300 total announced constructed or in construction yeah because Hinckley Hinckley did 78 and Nelson beat 78 I think Nelson's over 100 now so yeah whatever the total number is but yeah it it there you hear stories about how the temple department is like guys we can't even do all this stuff and Nelson's just you know announcing a lesson right and a lot of people would argue that because he does seem to have a grudge against Hinckley what better way to cement your legacy especially to submit your legacy stomping on the guy who stomped on you but to announce more temples um than he did because Hinckley was known as being the guy that announced a ton of temples so yeah it does seem that that Nelson definitely um has some added motivation to announce all these temples and I'm sure at the next general conference he'll announce another dozen or whatever too but um yeah but yeah it does it it seems very personal especially like I said the the idea that Nelson would or that Hinckley would go out six months later and call him out that way at General Conference just that seems personal too so there's definitely something there yeah but wait there's more if the I'm a Mormon campaign wasn't enough there is also the Meet The Mormons movie um that has its own kind of interesting's tale Mike do you want to do you want to start and tell us a little bit about that background and what happened yeah and so this one is another one that people point to really quickly when they kind of talk about Russell and Nelson having this Revelation because in 2014 the church is going to produce and release a movie called Meet The Mormons which follows six members of the church uh basically so the public could better understand what it's like to be a Mormon and you know once again we have sacred Church dollars as they always refer to the sacritizing dollars are spent and leaders were out there telling members to see the movie on the opening weekend to help boost the ticket sales in the hopes that it would generate some Buzz so that non-members would actually go and see it um that didn't really happen they had a strong first weekend around Salt Lake and then it just died off but um Elder uh Bednar was encouraging members to flood social media with the hashtag Meet The Mormons and members were asked to post about the movie to friends and family to increase awareness and so you know as we've been saying the question is raised as to why Thomas S Monson undertook these two massive campaigns to promote the Mormon name when God was as we you know heard from Nelson offended and it was called a victory for Satan to use these terms and you know these are not small undertakings and yet the church leadership felt they were both vital to the work of growing the church and the spreading the Book of Mormon that they spent millions of dollars on the process yeah and that's all true and if it weren't if that weren't interesting enough there's actually a UK tie to this meet the Mormon story Nemo do you want to give us the background on that because there's an amazing video that you actually released on Meet the Mormon that that connects to all this yeah so um there's a couple of connections first the uh our very own Jane Christie of 21st century Saints as far as the Mormon campaign goes has their own I'm a Mormon uh campaign video it's quite interesting um and the other connection to this is that in 2014 when that video was released when the church released that film a documentary earlier that year had been released here in the UK called Meet The Mormons which was an investigative documentary about a young woman missionary going on his mission to the MTC here in the UK and the family that he got placed with beforehand and all this sort of stuff the church really didn't like that they'd invited this documentary maker to come along to make a documentary about their faith uh but she then started to notice some of the kind of controlling tactics that were being used in the MTC and how this mission was not comfortable at all and the lack of privacy animation all these sorts of things and so she kind of flipped gears a little bit also the church sent a Handler along for all the filming so there was always a church representative in in the room whenever they were being filmed so there was a lot of problems with that but anyway she put this out it was called Meet The Mormons and then the church buried it in terms of SEO by releasing their own film called Meet The Mormons um to try and wash this thing down the memory hall because they really didn't like it she put pictures of of garments on the screen she you know she really put things out there about I think what goes on the temple all that sort of stuff yeah and and what Sweeney was the journalist right who covered that no so that was it was Lynn Alloway who made uh that one Sweeney was the journalist who had the run-in in 2012 he did the this world uh BBC another BBC thing that was around the Mitt Romney presidential campaign but but there wasn't that was called the Mormon moment that one oh okay okay so I've got those confused okay but is it fair to say that some believe that that maybe you just said this that that this whole Meet The Mormons movie was kind of an SEO play a search engine optimization play to try and bury good journalism about Mormonism that happened in the UK is that right yeah because both the Sweeney documentary uh that this world uh the Mormon moment that one on the BBC and the channel 4 documentary Meet The Mormons which particularly they wanted to try and bury because it it had that title and then their film has that same title um a lot of people have said that that film being called that was a play to really try and suppress both Sweeney's work and um Lynne alloway's work which was very good journalism about the church but they didn't like how it made them look yeah and that's really interesting again to use sacred dollars with the name Mormon plastered all over it to try and bury someone else's coverage of what you're doing only to then say it's evil to even use the word Mormon that's all kind of I mean some would say it's a little bit sketchy Mike anything you want to add to this conversation no I mean just the fact that you know as Nemo said sometimes the church will do this kind of double speak where they're out in public um really trying to boost their image especially in response to a story that comes out and we've seen a little bit of that with the SEC report where they're kind of flooding their own um you know I don't want to refer to a state media but like their their media that they own they're flooding with a lot of information that is not correct about the SEC report in order to kind of neutralize um at least the damage being done to members finding out about it um in this case it was more of a public um Adventure where they're trying to get to the public especially because if you know you remember when this is released this is right after Mitt Romney uh ran for president so there's a lot of interest in the Mormon church and I think this was their way to try to get out in front of it but it just it didn't work very well and as Nemo said now they're sitting there scrubbing everything online trying to get rid of the fact that they spent millions of dollars on this campaign and so if you go on YouTube you can find these old videos where they'll say you know I'm Janine and I'm a Mormon and now you'll find the same video to be like won't even say that at the end because they don't really refilm it they're just scrubbing it out and so it'll end with like some quote about what they're doing in their life and I find that to be really uh telling again about the fact that God seems to not know what God wants to be offended about yeah okay all right so uh so that's kind of uh our coverage of the Mormon moment and the Mormon is a victory for sacred moment um as it relates to prophetic you know inspiration and Revelation should we go on to the next uh yeah before we move on yeah somebody's just come to mind a very recent UK documentary um which is called the Mormons are coming uh which you know props to the documentary makers for just completely ignoring Russell Nelson's style guide um they just went no no we're gonna call them Mormons anyway uh in that documentary they asserted that more people have seen the Book of Mormon musical then there are actual members of the church so when you get to that point that more people worldwide have seen the book of more musical than our actual Mormons and that's the stated amount that's not you know active or inactive that's just the whole membership that whole 17 Million number when you get to that point I think you've lost the battle for SEO and I wonder whether that's an extra element to why they're just okay we can't lean into this name Mormon anymore we've lost control of the nickname let's pull back from it and reassert ourselves differently that's just my thought yeah absolutely all right well the next one I mean the Meet The Mormons thing is just kind of odd and marketing and branding and identity and silliness this next topic is kind of in my mind where I don't know the rubber meets the road where the church bungling the church Mormon church prophets bungling Revelation can actually have fatal I'll just say fatal consequences it's the 2015 uh policy of exclusion for lgbtq members and their kids and then the ultimate reversal do you want to give us some background on that Mike yeah I mean basically this was ironically enough this was kind of after I had stopped believing in the church but before I started doing the Deep dive and so I saw headlines about it but I didn't really even jump in because I I was still in that mindset of like being very afraid of information that kind of was bad mouthing Mormonism and effectively they created this policy um in response to the fact that the Supreme Court had effectively um given the right of same-sex marriage across the U.S with uh the ogrefell decision and so they created this policy which um effectively labels uh LGBT members of the church who are in active relationships as apostates and it tells their kids that they cannot be baptized until they're 18 and only when they basically disavow um the lifestyle of their parents and so it really had a lot of bad press right away because you know the whole thing is that you're not supposed to blame the kids with you know the sins of the father and all that stuff so you're not supposed to hold the kids accountable for what the parents are doing and in this case the church did and it really felt like a really bad knee-jerk reaction to the fact that they were losing horribly losing the battle um against same-sex marriage in in the country and um this is an area I think where they um injected their world view as we've talked about over and over in this episode uh directly into um perceived Revelation we're going to go into how the church has framed this and why it created such a bigger problem for the church to call this a revelation yeah yeah absolutely um and let me just see there I'm trying to see if there are more slides on this yeah there's more slides on this yeah we got a couple yeah I'll just say as someone who has really dug deep on the lgbtq issue when the church basically declares same-sex sexuality to be worse than rape and murder and what I mean by that is they made it a mandatory excommunication um or disciplinary Council slash excommunication for the crime of same-sex marriage that's a huge deal because even rapists and spouse abusers and murderers didn't necessarily um buy church policy have a mandated uh excommunication and disciplinary Council so that was severe plus their excommunicating people for loving each other and making what for many would be a monogamous lifetime commitment that's a problem but then also Jesus Jesus himself said suffer not that the children come unto me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven when they're telling eight-year-olds when they're telling babies that they can't be blessed if they're the babies of of you know same-sex married couples or or you know eight-year-olds that they can't get baptized if their parent is in a same-sex married couple plus if if they're asking 18 year old adults to denounce their same-sex married parents marriage to then be able to join the church and it's it's just such a horrific policy um did it just the backlash was was justifiably overwhelming Nemo did you want to add anything to that yeah just a lot of the justifications I heard for it was they didn't want to create conflict between the children and the parents they didn't want the children being taught one thing at church and then their parents living a different lifestyle they didn't want children being taught to church that their parents lifestyle was wrong well there's two solutions to that I mean or there's at least one solution to that which is you know stop teaching that their parents are evil maybe that's a good thing to do um but what they then instead done if that is true to the argument is instead they've gone right well then when you hit 18 we're going to force you if you want to stay with us to actually just cut them off or denounce them or drive a wedge between yourself and them rather than allowing those two things to coexist they're like no okay you can stay out you can't you can't be one of us until you're 18 and then you're gonna have to put a wedge in so the argument that it's trying to reduce tension and conflict in those families just doesn't work yeah absolutely yeah that's the worst part you just think about kids who might go to church and you know you can go to church without being baptized and you could you could participate without being a member of the church right and so just picture you've got this 11 year old kid and these parents love each other and they're two men or two women or whatever and um they bring this kid and this kid's in class and it's you're constantly everyone knows you are not baptized and everyone knows why you are not baptized it's so this idea that doing this is somehow um compassionate towards children is it's just ridiculously bad this was a policy that was designed to inflict pain on the people who are LGBT in order I believe to get them to stop being actively in loving relationships relationships because it's kind of like when you watch a um a movie and the villain knows that they can't really get to the to the main the main hero of the movie but they know if they go after that person's family that their Heroes can be more willing to to bend and you know I don't mean to say that Russell Nelson and Oaks and all them are super villains but I will say that I believe this policy was designed to inflict pain on the families of LG LGBT people so that they would back away from the relationships because there's really no other way for me to look at it because if there was really just trying to get um compassionate towards the kids this did the exact opposite I mean because there's there's like two things right the church can wants to achieve they either want those people out of the relationships and playing by their rules or they want those people out of the church so that they're not bothering the church anymore and there's not because the biggest problem for the church would be the idea that there is a minority with group within the church who want to remain in the church but feel like they are second class because then they're going to push that point and say no we feel second class we want equality with uh our peers and so the way to to nullify that is to get them out of your hair get them gone or get them to stop doing the thing that makes them second class which is being in those relationships yeah and that's just it and and they're doing all of this um with the expressly stated decree that this is from God that this is what God wants so it's not Russell Nelson or down Oaks I know Thomas Monson was a prophet there's a lot of um stories that he wasn't quite all together at this point no no for sure let's not play around this he had dementia he had full-on dementia and so it was probably Nelson and or Oaks or a combination of the two that did this while Monson was basically incapacitated yeah and so you know yeah I just to me um this is one of the the easiest ways for me to know that they don't speak for God because you're going to see in these next few slides how they're inflicting pain on these families as Nemo said to either force them out or to force them out of these relationships and then they're going to do it literally by saying God wanted us to do this and then all of a sudden as we all know they're going to reverse it just like they did with John Taylor's polygamy Revelation a few years later and it just shows that it you know it it even they could not sustain this plan because they knew how badly it backfired but yeah the you know there's a phrase you hear all the time online and it's like you know basically like the punishment is a point or the cruelty is the point with this policy the cruelty was the point and I think that Oaks and Nelson are both hardliners enough that they thought if they did it in the voice of God people would back off and unfortunately for them they do you know the greatest source of Revelation is outside pressure and in this case there was so much outside pressure eventually they had to bend yeah yeah and so the pressure came so this is in November of 2015 the pressure came and immediately there were some apologetics that kind of came out that basically said well this is just oh go ahead Nemo wasn't it leaked am I right in thinking it was it was leaked it was a change that was going to be made to the handbook and they had to kind of then try and get out ahead of it because they didn't launch it themselves well am I recalling that correctly well well somebody leaked the policy change to me and I leaked it on the internet and then the internet went wild and what I'm talking about now was what precipitated Nelson's doubling down that this was a direct Revelation so yeah so yes they pulled Christopherson into that meeting with Mike Otterson they set those two down together in a room which I mean we could get into how christopson didn't really know what was going on he kind of just this thing had happened he's like oh okay and then he gets rushed back and he's the one that gets put in front of the camera and has to kind of try and defend this policy see um but yeah and then all that pressure is building up and then we end up with Nelson trying to like go well hang on guys it is God yeah yeah it was definitely I I'm pretty sure it was Oaks and Christopherson that had to immediately field questions right and then as I recall it was a couple months later do you do you know the date of this clip or about the show Mike it's February I want to say yeah it's yeah it's early it's like January or February of the next year I can't remember the exactly so it's a couple months after and what I was trying to say Nemo before is so so the the policy is leaked there's all the damage control um I've even talked to people within Church Headquarters kind of uh you know contacts I have within where it was immediately acknowledged that this was not of God even employees of the church were even you know members of the media were like where did this come from this was like somebody's Pet Project we weren't give an advance notice this this policy change didn't go through the proper channels there was immediate backlash not just you know within ex-mormonism or Progressive Mormonism or even with the media within Church Headquarters there was such backlash that people like Oaks and and uh Christopherson had to do kind of damage control and then and and part of the damage control was to try and kind of leak out there that maybe this wasn't a doctrinal change this was just a policy change which was how over time the the priesthood banned on black members of the church that's how they did it over decades was to say well it wasn't really Doctrine which we've shown was wrong but it was it was kind of a policy it was it was The Heirs of men and isn't that an okay set up for this next video Mike yeah I mean this this video I think speaks for itself so this okay and that is a good lead up because it this this um Talk by Nelson it does come months after the it was kind of leaked in November so it this is to me interesting because this is Nelson knowing a few months have passed and it's just not really going away and this is how he's going to address it to the church in order to solidify it as you do not question this and I I do feel like this is I'm I'd like to think he'd wishes that he could take this back but I also you know just kind of the way Nelson is I'm pretty sure he fully you know thinks this is okay so so yeah let's play it and people can judge for themselves I guess all right so this is Russell M Nelson pres Now by this point this point he's not he's not profit yet right this is not profit yet at this point he is the senior Pro presiding Authority in the Quorum of The Twelve Apostles or the number two man in the church and he's not in the first presidency but he's kind of speaking out as Thomas S Monson is still on with dementia and kind of disabled right yeah and I would also know when you listen to this clip listen to it through the perspective of a guy who knows he's the prophet in Waiting because I I find it really interesting how much weight he gives to the prophet and to the the way that the prophet gets Revelation from God because he knows that it's only a matter of time until he takes over and so of course he wants to elevate Thomas Monson as much as he can because he's elevating himself in the process all right let's let's play the clip it speaks for itself this is uh the date says January 10th yeah 2016. so that's basically two months around two months after the policy was leaked all the damage control happens Progressive Mormons are like okay maybe maybe we don't have to even consider this to be Doctrine maybe it was a clerical error and then um Apostle Russell Nelson removes all doubt then this guy happens yeah then this guy happens after fasting praying studying pondering and counseling with my brethren about weighty matters it is not unusual for me to be awakened during the night with further Impressions about issues with which we are concerned and my brethren have the same experience the first presidency and Quorum of The Twelve Apostles counseled together and share all the Lord has directed us to understand and to feel individually and collectively and then we watched the Lord move upon the president of the church to proclaim the Lord's will this prophetic process was followed in 2012 with the change in minimum age for missionaries and again with the recent additions to the church's handbook consequence to the legalization of same-sex marriage in some countries filled with compassion for all and especially for the children we wrestled at length to understand the Lord's will in this matter ever mindful of God's Plan of Salvation and of his hope for eternal life for each of his children we considered countless permutations and combinations of possible scenarios that could arise [Music] we met repeatedly in the temple in fasting and prayer and sought further Direction and inspiration and then when the Lord inspired his prophet president Thomas S Monson to declare the mind of the Lord and the will of the Lord each of us during that sacred moment felt a spiritual confirmation it was our privilege as apostles to sustain what had been revealed to president Monson Revelation from the Lord to his servants is a sacred process and so is your privilege of receiving personal revelation my dear brothers and sisters you have as much access to the mind and will of the Lord for your own life as we Apostles do for his church just as the lord requires us to seek and Ponder fast and pray study and wrestle with difficult questions he requires you to do the same as you seek answers to your own questions you can learn to hear the voice of the Lord through the whisperings of the Holy Ghost as helpful as Google Twitter and Facebook may seem they simply do not provide answers to your most important questions my dear young friends you can know the mind and will of the Lord for your own life you do not have to wonder if you are where the Lord needs you to be or if you are doing what he needs you to do you can know the Holy Ghost will tell you all things what you should do all right well there you have it so Mike what analysis did you want to make of that of that video what do you think we should take from that I I just for me this is Russell Nelson proclaiming exactly how he believes this to be a revelation from God and just as we've said throughout this episode it's amazing how this Revelation from God just happens to match the world view of Russell Nelson in down Oaks and I find that to be um quite interesting that throughout church history every Prophet that claims to to know the will and mind of God uh happens to match almost perfectly uh exactly what they've always wanted to do but never were empowered to do as Wendy Nelson said so I I think that's for me the takeaway and then the secondary one of course as we have already talked about is just how the lengths he's going to to say that this is about compassion especially for the children and yet creating a policy that does the exact opposite I think is really telling just to show um I don't want to say that Russell Nelson doesn't care about kids I'm not saying that at all but I'm saying that he views um eradicating LGBT members from the church uh to be more important and worth the sacrifice of the kids at least in my opinion because this is just such a cruel policy and he's justifying it by putting it in the voice of God which I think to me is a really horrible thing to do and it's almost like he paid attention or remembered I don't know he probably wasn't even the Quorum in 78 I'm guessing I'm thinking that he was called also in the early 80s maybe right before Oaks this is something we could Google but it's almost like he really has to say we all got together we all prayed about it we all felt the Lord's you know Revelation and unanimity it's almost like he's recreating the you know a little bit dubious accounts of the 1978 Revelation given what we read already just previously in this episode about LeGrand Richards account for how the changes got made in 1978 it's almost like he had to recreate a similar experience to retell that reflected you know you know what also you know they claimed happened in 78 Nemo he was called in 84. okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um and then thoughts on that uh well actually no tell you what why don't we go to um to the reversal I guess we're going to go to the reversal right because my thoughts are on the way the reversal is framed okay so we can go the reversal okay so let's go to the next slide um and that is comparing Nelson's 2016 statement uh to the 2019 reversal this is good so should we talk about what the reversal was if yeah if you want to I mean uh you know for me it was more like it was almost like they were like oops we shouldn't have done that and they just kind of pulled back the policy and then they they did it right before general conference right in October I think 2019 or no April 2019 April so yeah and we should also add that it was you know tons of tons of resignations from the church I would say it's the thing you know in my lifetime it's probably one of the single most um you know resignation causing um decisions the church has made in terms of like hemorrhaging people who voluntarily resign their membership were those three or four years after the November 2015 policy Nemo what do you think well uh yeah I I can't recall exactly what it was but I remember a Salt Lake trip headline talking about the number of people that resigned like there was mass resignations going on people were all getting together in one group and resigning on mass um it was it was bad and the the reversal that we're about to hear is from a 2019 talk called the love and laws of God um and it's about 17 minutes into that if you're going to look up that video yourself um but it's worth it's worth a watch because you get to see him stood in almost the same sort of way as you just saw him announce it pull it back yeah yeah and which is it did God you know did did God make the original revelation or did God make the reversal or did he do both and then why would God reverse himself well renlin's gonna make that more problematic but we'll talk about that in a moment yeah okay so let's go to the slide go ahead Mike yeah so this is just you know they released a statement and the statement is from the first presidency of course and they say these policy changes come after an extended period of counseling with our brethren in the Quorum of The Twelve Apostles and after fervent United prayer to understand the will of the Lord on these matters and so they're using Nelson is using the exact same language used in 2016 which is that they are in fervent prayer to understand the will of God except that in three and a half years the will of the godson the will of God suddenly flipped upside down and you know as I said like there's no better way to show that Revelation in the church is often led by motivated reasoning and not God because we have this statement from Nelson completely contradicting the one he makes in 2016. both of which they're saying that they were in United forever to understand the will of the Lord both times they're saying they felt that spiritual confirmation of its truthfulness and yet now we're sitting here three and a half years later after so much harm being caused after so many members leaving the church and as I said at the beginning of this episode this is an exact mirror to John Taylor's 1886 Revelation um from God that polygamy was never going to end that it was Everlasting where God says how can I revoke an Everlasting Covenant for I the Lord am Everlasting and my Everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated nor done away with but they stand forever three and a half years later that one was reversed just like three and a half years later this one was reversed okay Nemo yeah so I mean the thing is if you listen to Dale G Rendon when he was telling us why we can't have any Revelation about heavenly mother he said that um essentially we shouldn't pray about things that God has already revealed his will about through His prophets Rendon said when we ask for Revelation about something for which God has already given clear direction we open ourselves up to misinterpreting our feelings and hearing what we want to hear so then how are members to know because Russell M Nelson said we continued to seek the Lord's guidance we continued to plead with him how are members then to know whether Russell Nelson is just hearing what he wants to hear because he's scared that members of the church are all leaving how do we know that he's not opened himself up to misinterpreting his own feelings as Roman said I agree with the verse in the policy I'm just saying there dot their their theology or their view on Revelation isn't aligning because they're saying that you shouldn't ask God about things that God's already revealed his will about well then why were they asking about the policy for the next interceding three and a half years before they reversed it why were they doing that absolutely it's a problem that's a huge problem yeah absolutely okay so um should we should we show the next slide yeah I think so okay so the next slide is called a picture is worth a thousand words you want to describe this for the listeners yeah so if you're if you're um listening and not watching you know when you call a policy Revelation that you wanted to implement it becomes that much more embarrassing when you have to remove it three and a half years later because I failed and so Nelson here is claiming that they calculated countless permutations to show compassion for God's children and yet it failed in just three and a half years and so on the left you're gonna see the Salt Lake Tribune headline that says Mormon gay policy is Will of the Lord through his Prophet senior Apostle says and it's got a picture of Russell Nelson from that devotional we just showed you and then on the right it says LDS church dumps its controversial Edge lgbtq policy and that's from 2019 and so it just shows that the will of the Lord could be dumped um when when the public relations gets too bad for it yeah yep well um and I guess I'll Channel Progressive liberal Mormons and saying yeah Paul himself said we see through a glass Darkly and yeah sometimes prophets and apostles are going to get it wrong and they can still be inspired and maybe they get it wrong more than they get it right and you're just focusing on you know one instance where they get it wrong but look how many times they get it right I guess you can still be a believing Mormon especially Progressive liberal believing Mormon and say I'm going to give Prophet series of revelators Grace that even even them could get it wrong sometimes and still I can still maintain a belief in in Mormon prophets and revelators yeah I'm guessing you guys wouldn't argue with that well I just you know um I can't speak for anyone else but I remember when the reversal happened and there were so many members of the church were like oh my goodness what a wonderful wonderful thing that happened today and I'm thinking to myself like that's like watching somebody set a house on fire and then applaud them for putting out the fire like this was entirely done by Nelson claiming to speak for God and then he claims to speak for God to get out of a jam and everyone's like unreal this is prophecy and I'm like what are you talking about like it's just to me it's just so disjointed and and it's it's shows in the bigger picture that throughout the history of the church this is revelation where it's just basically what you wanted to do yourself and then when you need to make changes it's usually because of public pressure and I don't think that there's any reason to give Applause for this I think there's reason to take a step back and go what should we learn about this about the role of Revelation and Mormonism because clearly God is out of control if he's speaking through these people because he has no way to communicate to His prophets um when it's the will of God versus when it's something they wanted to do but lack the power to do and now they become Unleashed yeah Nemo did you want to add any other input okay the only thing I'll add is that you know it's fine if you want to give Grace to Prophet series and revelators um as imperfect beings here's the problem is that you know they say when when elephants fight the grass you know suffers or the grass dies or whatever the metaphor is like because they claim to speak for God and Jesus when they declare you know lgbtq identities to be evil and and acts of apostates and excommunicable um and when they're you know going as far as preventing children from following Jesus they're making decisions that lead to real deaths real division in families real divorce real anxiety and depression and distress and so yes we can give them Grace but they should be more careful if they're gonna if we're gonna claim that they have are more likely to communicate the mind and will of God in Jesus they need to be more careful not less and and with the decision like this that has such in real life disastrous consequences um they should they should not be making such careless and disastrous decisions and if they do if they do make it they should be apologizing not copying out with well it was Revelation when we gave it and now it's Revelation when we're taking it away because that's just com that's irresponsible and deadly behavior in my life that is one thing I would like to say is actually that when he says he does that thing where he goes whenever the children of God weep for any reason we weep it's like why are you looking up at God you're the reason they're weeping so Own It apologize and move on again watch that video we'll put it down in the description the love and laws of God is Russell M Nelson uh in September of that year trying to explain it all the way it's just disingenuous yeah well it's the same thing as the um B1 speech when they did the B1 um 40th anniversary of lifting of the preset band and Dallin Oaks gets up there and he's like yeah I didn't apologize for the fact that Brigham Young was a horrible racist who intentionally created a slave state and tried to create some good will by the fact that you could say it but Dallin Oaks knows that if he does that he's watering down his own future Prophet uh being time as a prophet just as Russell Nelson knows that if he went up there in January 2016 and was like yeah you know this was a statement it wasn't a big deal he's watering down his own credibility his profit because he knew he was going to be it and that's why I think when you listen to those statements it's so important to listen to How Nelson is elevating Monson because he knows he's elevating himself because they cannot say that prophets make mistakes because they know the people below them have a chance to be profit and they don't want to become profit and have people go you're just a dude who has as much inside of Heaven as I do and why am I gonna stand before you and give you all this reverence and so I think what you're talking about is true that they should apologize but the reason they can't apologize is because they're Mo not all of them but a lot of them are so narcissistic that they don't want to water down their own power when they get there and it's just a vicious cycle of people who work their entire lives to get to this position so they can lead this church and they they you know they don't want to do anything that that even limits their um infallible view of from the church members in any possible way yeah well that leads us to the next issue that is really really for me one of the most damaging teachings in all of modern Mormonism it's this teaching of discernment and I'll just give it an introduction because we're we're going to jump right in and tell why it's a problem discernment is the teaching that not just you know the prophet and the Quorum of the twelve and you know general authorities have the ability to discern the mind and will of God in Jesus but it's even Bishops and church leaders and Patriarchs in the home they all have the ability uh to discern the mind and will of God for the people who they have stewardship over and it's the idea that uh that if a bishop tells you to stay with your abusive spouse he's you know it's God and Jesus that are telling him to tell you that if a mission president tells you to stay on your mission even though you're suicidal well it's a mission presidents the the president that's channeling the mind and will of God if a patriarch prays and and tells you you know that that um you're gonna get married in the temple and serve a mission he's this patriarch is able to discern the minded will of God if a bishop you know tells a a mixed orientation married couple a gay man and a straight wife that he feels like God wants them to get married then then a member or if he tells a gay man or a gay woman you should engage in conversion therapy to try and fix your gayness you know members are more inclined to believe and do what the leader says because we're taught that they have What's called the gift of discernment or the ability to know the the mind and will of God so having given that sort of introduction to the concept Mike why don't you tell us why that's a problem especially with Prophet surgeon revelators yeah and so as we've been talking about you know in addition to receiving direct Revelation from God we're also told that the leaders of the church and really any man with the priesthood holds the power of discernment which can help guide us to make the right choices as we live and go through our daily lives um David Bednar describes the gift of discernment in the following way he said in 20 2006 the gift of discernment can help us one detect hidden error and evil and others to detect hidden errors and evil in ourselves three find and bring forth the good that may be concealed in others and four find and bring forth the good that may be concealed in us and it's almost like um you know uh when Superman can do x-ray vision it's like the gift of discernment you can talk to someone and you can kind of see right through what they're saying and know if they're lying or you know if you're a bishop you should be able to know if someone's um doing something horrible before you maybe give them a calling to work with young kids or something um and the simplest way to put it is that the power of discernment is absolutely 100 non-existent um among not just everyday prison holders but in the leaders themselves and we're going to give two quick examples here that are very well known to illustrate just how easily prophets of this church have been deceived and we can do an entire series on all of the ways that the Bishops of the church have been deceived um how the stake how the the people above the Bishops could be deceived when we have all of these people who are doing really bad things and getting called to to high positions in the church but it just shows that we're talking about this idea that these people speak to God they should not be able to be fooled on big matters and yet we're going to show two times when when they do it in the worst ways yeah as I was enumerating you know the the most damaging real life consequences of of the get of the teaching of the gift of discernment I forgot to mention that the trust that members Ward members Mormon Ward members put in people called to positions like Boy Scout leader or primary leader over children or youth leader over youth or even Bishop over youth leads to a level of trust that allows Children and Youth and vulnerable vulnerable adults to be sexually and or physically abused by those leaders because they trust that the bishop is inspired by God to call them to those positions that's a great thing to mention but let's focus right now on Prophet Sears and revelators and the first example we have that we're going to cover today is one that we've covered already on uh LDS discussions uh series which is the Kinderhook plates but let's cover it again in the specific context yeah and so we're going to go through these quickly so this example is is particularly good because it ends up not duping just Joseph Smith but church leaders all the way up until science proved these to be a hoax in the 1980s so this is something that is going to impact the church for like 140 years and so um in short William Fugate as we talked about was part of this hoax where Joseph Smith was presented with the Kinder plates in the hopes that he would translate the plates and prove himself a false prophet and so um as we talked about Joseph Smith never did a complete translation and then he was killed um he did give a partial translation to William Clayton um who was Joseph's personal scribe which was recorded in his journal and you know even after a Fugate comes out and admits that they were a hoax um church leaders not only continued to say that Joseph Smith did translate them but that the people claiming it was a hoax were the actual hoaxers and so um you know just to make this abundantly clear here is Apostle who would be a prophet Seer and Revelator Marky Peterson um just one year before science finally forces the church to abandon this idea that they're they're true once and for all and he says there are the Kinderhook plates too found in America and now in the possession of the Chicago historical society controversy has surrounded these plates and their Engravings but most experts agree they are of ancient vintage and so the church all the way up until 1980 is going to tell people these are authentic this is further proof of Joseph Smith's you know mantle is a prophet and yet Joseph Smith was completely fooled God did not warn him like don't give these guys the time of the day they're trying to deceive you he just went right in and he he gave a partial translation um we did a whole episode on us we don't need to go into all of that but whatever your belief is and how much he translated he did translate part and he did not know through the power of the discernment as David Bednar said that there was evil in others and um deception in others yeah all right Nemo we've covered Kinder hook plates already anything you want to quickly add to that one topic just that uh essentially um it's most experts agree is one of those sentences that's like scientists say is that all right okay can you point to the studies or can you point to like who these experts are or what they're actually saying don't just say most experts agree because as the science would go on to show a year later they didn't you also have to prove that those consensus when you say that right yeah very good yeah okay so Kendrick plates and that's a double whammy because it shows Joseph Smith's uh you know ability to be deceived but also we've got Marquis Peterson modern day Apostle so it's kind of a kind of a double double century uh whammy okay and if that weren't enough another great example is the mark Hoffman forgeries we did at least one if not a couple episodes on the mark Hoffman stuff we'll have uh Maven included in the show notes our link to um the murder among the Mormons interview that we did with Sandra Tanner and also the one with Jared Hess and and Tyler meesom about the the documentary about the mark Hoffman forgeries but Mike let's go and jump to the slide yeah so this one is one that um has been much uh in the news over the last few years because there was a Netflix series about the mark Hoffman forgeries called Murder among the Mormons um it's been a very successful release and this is a big one because um this is an area where the church is going to be duped by someone who was set out to fool them and they ended up spending quite a lot of money to suppress documents that were not only fake but in the case of the William McClellan collection they already owned them but did not realize it because they had hidden the documents away and so this is an area where if the gift of discernment were a real thing the church could have proved its prophetic Power by exposing Mark Harmon Mark Hoffman as a fraud which would have almost certainly saved the two lives that Hoffman would later take and um you know I hate saying like a cliche like it's as simple as that but in this case the spirit of discernment failed so badly that the church ended up looking Beyond foolish because they paid Mark Hoffman um both directly and indirectly to purchase documents that they knew could be damaging to the church and they only came out publicly with these documents because Hoffman was leaking the details to other historians to kind of embarrass the church and so this one has all of these layers of deception and no one from the church could see any of it yeah yeah and it's uh there's so many there's so many elements to that including the fact that people died including the fact that we were hiding history intentionally that we were using tithing money to hide and bury documents you know um you know and that they didn't have the discernment to know Mark Hoffman was a bad dude and that he was um deceiving and misleading people uh Nemo anything uh I name anything you want to add about that um just that here in the UK we're having massive trouble at the moment getting proper safeguarding in as as is happening around the world but particularly background checks for people that work with children and I think if members truly understood if people in truly understood just how uh much like discernment doesn't work with the case of Hoffman if it can go that badly wrong for men who claim to commune directly with God your local Bishop stands no chance of knowing if the person he's about to call to work with your child has got a background of abusing children or not he has no idea he has no way of knowing yeah and so it's that's we can't rely on that and the church is so hung up on this idea that we're award family and Bishops will be able to know they'll be guided by the spirit that it's just dangerous yeah yeah yep and and and if if it if you know and if we thought that this is just something that past Apostles and Prophets have done I really like it that now we're gonna pull in current uh first counselor in the first presidency and the second most senior um uh LDS church leader to date which is down a jokes into the uh Hoffman problem so let's go ahead and go there Mike yeah so on the day that Mark Hoffman killed two people he met with Dallin Oaks in the church office building just a few hours later and during this meeting Oaks was not able to discern that he had just murdered someone in Cold Blood um Not only was Hoffman defrauding the church without any of these prophets Sears and revelators figuring it out but he murdered innocent people and these leaders could still not figure out that Hoffman was doing horrible things because they were more focused on protecting the image of the church um against these documents they believed were real and I you know I feel like in our episodes we've picked on Dale and Oaks a lot but this is the guy who's going to be our the next prophet of the Mormon church and look at this quote that he gives in the 20 2004 General Conference which obviously is is decades later the Holy Ghost will protect us against being deceived but to realize that wonderful blessings we must always do the things necessary to retain that Spirit we must keep the Commandments pray for guidance and attend church and partake of the sacrament each Sunday and we must never do anything to drive away that Spirit specifically we should avoid pornography Alcohol Tobacco and drugs and always always avoid violations of the law of Chastity we must never take things into our body or do things with our bodies that drive away the spirit of the Lord and leave us without our spiritual protection against deception what are you saying Mike yeah what are they doing what have you been up to I'm saying what has downloads been up to because clearly what he's describing uh is kind of like one of those great self-owns because he's basically a guy that was deceived in the most public and humiliating way as a you know someone who's an ordained prophets here in Revelator and here he's sitting here telling us how you can be deceived so I'm just saying I mean something something must be happening if he got deceived and I'm just saying like you know if we're going to play that game you know um these are their rules these are their their layouts and and so yeah I know you're right by his own admission he should have been protected from deception unless he was doing one of those things that he outlined so if he is if he is putting that out there is the way that the world works then I would like to know from him which of those things he was doing and again I've already mentioned this early in the episode but the the apologetic that the church I hear is going to come out with this month is that yes even prophets and apostles are fallible and can get it wrong sometimes but I'm guessing they're going to say you should still put your trust and believe in them because on the really important things they get it right or they get it right enough on on the important things that they're still worth putting your faith and trust in maybe something but we don't we don't follow a profit for them to be right enough we follow a prophet because we're told they speak for God they speak on behalf of deity right enough when it comes to speaking on behalf of an omnipotent deity is not good enough frankly for Nemo for Nemo for anyone like that's the thing like imagine Rolex having a commercial like our watches are amazing and they're gonna give you the right time eighty percent of the time you know what I mean like or Google's like our GPS Google Maps is absolutely amazing you're going to get to the correct destination at least 73 of the time no one's going to use it don't see a Google out of a car in a lake and it's just like Google Maps it's good enough yeah it's like you know if we've talked about this before but you know um professional betters if thinking about 60 of sports betting right they're like a legend in sports betting right and the Mormon church is going to start to fall back on that like uh Jim Bennett who who I like but he's been on your show his a lot of the things he'll fall back on is the church gets more right than it gets wrong and I always go but what do they get right that isn't already out there like it's it's almost nothing and so it's kind of like the church is now falling back to like we're infallible but we do get it right most of the time so give us your money we're underwear with Masonic symbols give us your loyalty clean our bathrooms it's just like no your entire Special Sauce is to say we speak to God and so now you're saying we speak to God but we don't know when it's God talking to us or it's just us talking to ourselves and I I just I think that's an argument that is just so bad because what is left if you can't tell when Russell Nelson is speaking for himself or speaking for God he is of no use to me because at that point you already know that he's unreliable and so once you start to say that prophets are infallible and you admit that they make decisions in the name of God that are incorrect because they just don't know exactly what God wants then either God sucks as a communicator which I don't believe to be the case I'm just saying or these people are just winging it and as as the evidence is overwhelmingly showing and I know John likes to speak to the nevermos in the audience so I think it's important to mention that there as we've already mentioned in this episode there are the break-off groups of the LDS uh movement the last they say movement if you're looking at it from kind of historical religious perspective that believe in the Book of Mormon you know they believe in the book of mum they believe in Joseph Smith so the unique claim the actual USP of the brighamite movement of the church Jesus Christ last Saturday Saints the biggest movement is that they have a living Prophet on the earth Russell Nelson who speaks for God that is their USP so if they start to undermine that by saying well sort of then really what's the point you can go elsewhere you can find all the other things that you love about your belief in Mormonism elsewhere by people who are more honest about how their profit actually acts if you want yeah yeah well we're we're um we're really hitting this one hard and all I'm going to say is I would say that if I had to pick one issue that was most important and most sacred two top church leaders and there was most essential to the level of obedience and the level of harm that members experience it's prophetic fallibility versus infallibility and trust and and uh discernment so I think this is the thing if we're gonna really emphasize something I think this is it and I think that as you say in this next slide a picture is worth a thousand words this may be one of the most devastating pitchers ever taken in the history of Mormonism do you want to describe it Mike yeah so you know as we just joked about you know one must ask which of down oaks's requirements he was not following that allowed for him to be deceived was a pornography alcohol violating the law of Chastity but it gets worse because every other Prophet Syrian Revelator was fooled in the church so what were all of them doing and I'm joking but like this picture is Mark Hoffman I believe this is the press conference they did and you have all of these leaders of the church standing around with you know looking at these documents with a magnifying glass at a press conference hailing all of these documents had been found and they're all being fooled by Hoffman who's standing right next to them and so it really makes you wonder what God is doing and we talked about this with like say the book of Abraham like why would God let Joseph Smith look like an absolute fraud by giving him an incorrect translation of the Egyptian papyri well why would God allow these these leaders of his church to be absolutely humiliated by not being able to see that this man is deceiving them like this is the most basic thing that God could do and yet God is going to leave them hanging because as I would argue they don't speak to God and they're just doing the best they can and in this case it led them to a really embarrassing event and you may have just said this but I'm looking I'm looking right now so that's Kimball Spence W Kimball with the magnifying glass that's definitely Hinckley and Packer overlooking him and then I think there's Marion G Romney in there is that right it looks like and maybe an Eldon Tanner Nemo do you do are you able to identify all those people um so next to Hoffman I think is an eldantana and I think I think you're right between Pekka and uh Kimball is Marion G Romney but I mean that's a lot of that's a lot of uh discernment all gathered in one place that's a lot of big names a lot of big names yeah and then there's Mark Hoffman right there okay well uh that's pretty significant I think we made the case um let's go ahead and go to the next slide then on to the watering down of Revelation yeah and this is one we're going to talk about a lot in the next episode as well but when you compare the way that Joseph Smith received Revelation with how leaders today talk about getting Revelation you could see that Revelation in the church lives in two completely different universes and um you know John Taylor recorded a revelation in God's voice but since then we've had zero Revelations written in that manner and there has not been a single Revelation added to the DNC to the Doctrine and Covenants in over 100 years and you know just take a step back and and think about this because as a convert I was continually told that this is the only ongoing true and Living Church and so we are constantly told we're living in the last days we have a living Prophet for the main purpose of guiding us through increasingly tough times and yet the church has not a single canonized Revelation in over 100 years um DNC 138 which is the last canonized Revelation was recorded in 1918 and you know this is something that's not lost on members it's very well noticed especially by those who leave and Spencer W Kimball was seemingly aware of how bland and absent revelation have become since Joseph Smith and he made the following statement in 1960. he said the great volume of Revelation comes to today's prophets in the less spectacular way that of deep Impressions but without spectacle or glamor or dramatic events accompanying expecting the spectacular one may not be fully alerted to the constant flow of revealed communication which is a really good way of saying yeah this is pretty pretty mundane stuff that we're dealing with but we need you to keep believing in us because if you don't we lose all of our power because you know Joseph Smith this is not how Joseph Smith ever ran the church and yet today we're like yeah you really shouldn't have said anything more than Impressions it's just it's it's tough yeah not to go you know full atheist on you but it's almost like God as soon as someone invented the video camera it was like oh hold up I better stop doing miraculous things because that's going to undermine faith if people could you know like take video footage of these things happen yeah so I better I better just stop with all that nonsense why was this thing I was listening to um I was listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson interviewed uh I think it was on a Joe Rogan podcast or maybe it was Sam Harris but basically they made the point that UFO sightings have uh you know decreased you know proportion to the increase of mobile devices you know that that are available the image quality yeah and the idea is just that when there's more and more observers more and more evidence more and more science it's harder and harder to make fantastic claims you know yeah but but you know this is the value proposition if you had to pick one value proposition of the restoration I think you could argue that it is that God speaks to man today through prophets absolutely I mean I was I was a missionary I spent two years full-time serving the church that's what I took from my mission the value preposition of Joseph Smith's restoration is that God speaks to men and women today through prophets and so if that if that's tainted it's a problem and I'll just add it's not just to get it wrong I would add the problem is that they're behind the times that consistently and reliably what are the most important issues that have ever you know faced humankind in the past couple centuries oh I don't know slavery Civil War um you know civil rights you know the discrimination against people of color discrimination against women the discrimination against lgbtq minorities uh women's right to vote uh and if you pick any of those major issues crime and poverty pick any of them you can consistently see that Mormon church leaders not only don't lead not only do they not join but they oppose all of those important strides in human advancement and their two to three decades behind the times reliably on all those issues so it's not just that they're they don't receive prophecy in Revelation they actually or slowed down social progress through its wealth and its money and its power and its galvanized opposition whether it's whether it's denouncing the Civil Rights Movement as a communist plot um you know Martin Luther King is a communist whether it's literally mobilizing to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment whether it's Proposition 8 or in California or proposition 22 in California or whether it's same-sex marriage in 2015 we're gonna do everything we Mormon church leaders are going to do everything they can to defeat what ultimately becomes characterized as super crucial important social progress and that's why it's even worse than just getting it wrong in my opinion did I overstate that Nemo no no I've just been looking at priests my gospel here um and looking at the first lesson and they go straight in with Book of Mormon and we have profits that's yeah that's bam straight in like like I was saying earlier like you just said John the USP is that we have these men and so why are these men always behind as we said earlier in this episode Jeffrey R Holland said the world is here and then we're here and then the world goes there and then we go here and before you know it we're over here he admitted yeah they're just just doing this following along and it makes you ask the question the world is here why do profits not go actually but we should be here why is that not the case and for those listening I've just done a load of gesturing with my hands showing that the world is in one place and that the church is behind it and if you get a chance watch the Jeffrey arhon clip because it's worth it yeah and you know I'll just throw this out I love this example because I think it's so applicable to the church today but to Nemo's point we are to believe in the Mormon church that God knows everything that's going to happen to the most my new details so for example God knew that Joseph Smith was going to lose the first 116 pages of the Book of Mormon so that thousands of years earlier he had a second set of plates prepared knowing that Joseph Smith was going to allow Martin Harris to take the pages and Martin Harris would lose them and yet that same God has no idea that slavery is going to end that LGBT marriages are going to be allowed in the U.S that women are going to get more rights that Nazi Germany is going to get overtaken and defeated because the Mormon church was not willing to stand up in Germany during World War II and in some cases was actually sympathetic to the Nazi party in order to get exposure in Germany or access I would say to to being able to to maintain their Church in Germany so my point is you have to believe in Mormonism on one and that God knew everything that was going to happen up until the Book of Mormon was written yet seems to know nothing about what happens after and that's why that first episode we did on back dating prophecy is so important because it really shines a spotlight on everything we're seeing today as to why the church is behind on everything and why public pressure is the only true prophet of the Mormon church because public pressure is the only thing that is forcing them to make changes that they should be out there leading on but instead they're Generations behind on and now that we've violated Godwin's law and invoked Hitler in an argument go ahead Nemo you've got Mormonism Moroni in the swastika book by David Conley Nelson uh I've read some parts of it on my channel as shorts but it's definitely worth a read and if you don't want to buy it you can find his PhD thesis online which is broadly the same topic um which is free to read as a PDF yeah we even vote Godwin's law cheers Mike well not you know I apologize for doing that but it's one of those things it's fine don't worry it's fine yeah no I mean I think I think it's a good example because there is a well-documented thing no I know I I hate it because I do I I totally know that someone watching this is gonna be like oh you've got to be kidding you went there but it it really did happen I mean let's talk about the fact that J Reuben Clark used the word Aryan to describe members that should be allowed to get out of Germany and it should be allowed out but he deliberately denied paperwork that would have allowed Jewish converts to Mormonism to escape Nazi Germany J Reuben Clark who was a member of the first presidency at the time denied those members he he let his own personal anti-Semitism come in the way of doing what he should have been doing as Mormons claimed that the prophet and the the leaders for the whole world he should have been looking after his flock yeah across the whole world again they're just not living up to what they say profits are meant to be whether it's discernment whether it's actually caring for people all those sorts of things yeah yeah and that not to be ranty I'm gonna go one more one more example um we've talked about this in the polygamy episodes but this is the same God that sent an angel down to earth to tell Joseph Smith if you do not marry and have sex with teenage girls I'm going to kill you um yeah it's silent on slavery was silent on World War II was silent on so many other issues today whether it's heavenly mother or LGBT causes it really makes you wonder why it is that Joseph Smith was able to come up with all this stuff much of it is historically wrong whereas the leaders today are completely unable to do anything of the sort yeah and why God can't do anything of the sort if we're gonna go that route okay and now that we violated Godwin's law officially let's end with something very trivial which is Joseph's this is more kind of humorous than anything else it's Joseph F Smith's declaration that what men will never reach the moon should we end with that yeah and this is one um this is not something where he's saying the saith the Lord so I wasn't going to include it but but Nemo brought it up well Nemo brought up and it's a fun way to end this and so Joe said at a state conference in 1961 that men would never get to the moon um the USA is gonna have men on the moon just eight years later and fair Mormon is going to say that this quote was not a prophecy it was his opinion that reaching other worlds and discovering that Christ was also their savior would eliminate the need for Faith and I will let John or Nemo read the quote uh yeah I'll do that we won't we will never get a man into space this Earth is man's fear and it was never intended that he should get away from it the Moon is a superior planet to the Earth and it was never intended that man should go there you can write it down in your books that this will never happen seems pretty emphatic to me considering that fair Mormon said it was just his opinion um can I make a quick point about that yeah please because this idea that he is saying that because he said that over the pulpit he said it in his official capacity as a prophet serum Revelator so as far as I'm concerned that is The Benchmark for when someone is speaking for God if they're speaking in there publicly in their official capacity as a prophet Syrian Revelator you should be able to trust that what they're saying is on behalf of the deity they claim to speak for you know that it that it can be counted as Revelation or prophecy or whatever because anything less than that is exactly what we're warned against in the temple which is that they are speaking using scriptures and they're speaking using their opinions which is essentially then just the philosophies of men mingled with scripture which is useless to us and we're warned in the temple to avoid it at all costs so we that's why if they say over the pulpit in their official capacity we should be able to trust that it is on behalf of God and it is it is uh prophetic 100 agree yeah yeah that's the whole value proposition all right let's go to the next slide which is this is certainly not Joseph Smith's idea of Revelation anymore yeah and so I'm actually going back um because we added the slide in so if you think about what um Kimball said about how Revelation isn't really spectacular anymore um you know this is a church that is founded on constant Grand Revelation that just happened to die out after Joseph Smith's death and has now been reduced to as Spencer Kimball said deep Impressions which Russell Nelson loves to say use the word impression um that make clear that these leaders do not see God are not talking to God and are not channeling the words of God anymore then they are implementing their own World Views as Wendy Nelson confirmed to us a few years ago and Joseph Smith would mock the leaders of this church today if he was around and I just want to look at this quote from Joseph Smith about how other churches don't have the faith to produce Revelation and are content with just resting on the Bible and he said but we ask does it remain for a people who never had faith enough to call down one scrap of Revelation from heaven and for all they have now are indebted to the faith of another people who lived hundreds and thousands of years before them does it remain for them to say how much God has spoken and how much he has not spoken and I just find it funny because you could read that quote today and apply it to the church because basically every leader of this church is relying on what Joseph Smith said hundreds of years before them and this church continues to be the you know Joseph Smith's church with only minor tweaks along the way um as we've talked about that may or may not eventually be removed depending on how the Minor Adjustments or policy changes um are received by the the public or the future prophets and so I just I think it's pretty easy to say that what the church is doing today Joseph Smith would absolutely use this quote against them absolutely all right well this is a lengthy episode um but it's so important I hope people made it to the end but but we can't end without playing an excerpt of your favorite Mormon of all time Mike yeah and so we're just going to revisit the the quote from well Wendy Nelson from the first um slide or two just because you heard at the beginning and I want you to hear it again knowing what we've talked about today and just think about how how candidly she's describing what Revelation is in the Mormon Church um having you know being the current wife of the current prophet of the Mormon church all right so let's play it this is Wendy Nelson current wife of current Mormon church Prophet Russell M Nelson and Mike's favorite Mormon I have seen him changing in the last 10 months of it is as though he's been Unleashed he's free to finally do what he came to Earth to do is my big thing and also he's free to follow through with things he's been concerned about but could never do now that he's president of he can do those things all right closing thoughts Mike Mr President um no just there's a quote and I I think a lot of people have said over over the many years but they say that if any time you come across someone who speaks uh claims to speak for God but can't discern between his own worldview and in God's will you just need to turn around and run away and I think we have so many examples in Mormonism whether it's you know the priesthood ban or the LGBT or Joseph Smith from early on with polygamy where they're they're doing these things in the voice of God that today we know it just doesn't make sense in a lot of cases the church has disavowed some of those um it to me it tells you that um these men don't speak for God and they don't know even if even if you want to give them this this little bit of wiggle room to say that they do get deep Impressions from God the way they project them to members clearly they cannot um separate their own world view their own prejudices from what God is telling them and in that case they are absolutely worthless to us because they are as unreliable as any of the person you're going to meet and so you know that quote I think is really important which is just if they can't tell what's their own worldview and what's God's will then there's no reason to follow them and I think that this episode shows that throughout history that has been the case and so you know I just I think we should all keep that in mind especially as we go through these next you know General Conference just to see um you know what they say and and you know we'll see all right well this is long and we kind of really hit it hard but honestly I don't know this might be the single most important episode of the entire LDS discussion series because it really does strike at the heart of the Mormon value proposition and I think it gives a pretty compelling case about why at minimum it needs to be diluted and weakened to Kool-Aid levels or worse but um but a potentially I think made May deal a fatal blow Nemo that might be overstating it how would you how would you want to conclude today's discussion um I'd conclude it by looking at the idea that if you view what Joseph Smith did as a religious Revolution then all the prophets to come after him are the children of that Revolution and the children of Revolution often sit twiddling their thumbs wondering what they can revolt against and so it's kind of like you've got all these profits now sat wondering well what can we do to make our stamp to make our difference and they've got nothing and if you want to apply the principle of profits from Joseph Smith to Russell Nelson if you want to say that Russell M Nelson is modern day Moses he is like Joseph Smith then you have to ask has he done all the things that Joseph Smith claims to have done has he done all the prophesying that Joseph Smith claimed to have done the answer is no and then you have to ask yourself well why what's changed and um if this is meant to be the last dispensation there's no apostasy then why is there a reduction in the quality of our profits yeah all right Nemo thanks Mike any final thoughts before we sign off we've hit this pretty hard yeah I think we're I think we've we've done um everything we need to say and and just thinks if you made it this far thanks for making it this far all right well Mike thanks and Mike thanks Nemo this is really important discussion great work this concludes uh episode 38 of our LDS discussions we still have at least one more episode to go on uh this topic of Revelation next time for 39 we're going to be covering personal revelation um in kind of epistemology and whether you know feeling feelings you know amounts to knowledge and truth and then we've got at least another seven or eight if not ten more LDS discussions episodes to go so if you uh please comment please like please subscribe to our YouTube channel on Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel also subscribe to new of the Mormon YouTube Channel please subscribe to us on Facebook please like us and the best thing you can do is always share this stuff with everyone that you are able to share it with and of course we're trying to uh we we try to make this financially sustainable by paying everyone for their good work so if you love the LDS discussion series or Mormon stories podcast in general please donate uh through mormonsstories.org please become a monthly donor and while you're at it go over to Nemo the Mormon and uh follow the descriptions of the information where you can donate and support become a monthly donor to Nemo the Mormon as well because Nemo's now a full-time content creator and we want to see that continue any any objections Nemo nope okay Nemo's got his approval there so thanks for joining us everybody thanks for everything you do um please be good to each other please be kind to each other uh find out the truth for yourself never never believe us learn go to the source go to LDS discussions website read up click on the um click on the footnotes check out the original sources do your own research figure out what's true for you and then act accordingly and that's all we want at the end of the day is informed consent and then we want people to do what's best for them thanks everyone uh tune in next time for more Mormon stories and more LDS discussions and we'll see you all again soon on another episode take care everybody