The following presentation is in our Marvis Studios production.
You're listening to the Fact Hunter Radio Network.
Here is your host, George Hobbs.
Welcome back Truth Seekers from Around the World.
It's time for another edition of the Fact Hunter Podcast, as we record on this Monday evening,
November 17th, 2025.
We're here to do a lot of spring clean up here in the fall, but we'll be ready for the spring for sure when we get our new batch of chickens.
We plan everything we're very excited.
I hope everybody had a great weekend.
Obviously, we're starting to get into that period where people get very busy with Thanksgiving, and a Christmas, and for us again,
this Saturday is our daughter's wedding, so very busy indeed.
This week, pretty interesting subject.
It's something we're definitely going to have to come back to in the near future and revisit because the depth of this subject was looked to be honest as many times is much deeper than we initially suspected.
We're talking about the Mormons, the LDS movement.
We're talking about a movement that started with a farm boy in upstate New York.
You could consider that.
But the story is, here's this farm boy in upstate New York staring into a hat and somehow all of that turns into this religious corporate empire, and it truly is.
It sits, and again, depending on which report you look at, over a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets, including assets in Jerusalem in Israel.
They run their own investment company on Wall Street, and they quietly place its people in Congress in the courts, and within the security state.
We're talking about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which most of us knew, you know, we called them the Mormons.
In our neck of the woods, back in the 80s, into the 90s, we got the nox on the door.
Out here, in rural land, we don't see too many people knocking on the door.
Now, let's be forward. I'm not saying that every aspect of these folks are nefarious, right? I'm not attacking ordinary LDS folks.
Honestly, the rank and file that they're sincere, and I think most of them are family-oriented, and they're very disciplined, right, with all their rules.
But the problem so much isn't the people in the pews. It's the structure around it.
The founder, Joseph Smith, right?
He went from treasured digging with a magic stone to claiming he alone could restore the church, and then his successor, Brigham Young.
If you know that name, obviously, BYU, Brigham Young University. This guy took it to a whole new level.
He built a theocracy in the desert. He legalized polygamy.
He preached some pretty dark doctrines. And again, these are the things we never get taught in school, right?
This guy ran Utah like it was his personal kingdom.
And the secretive financial machine behind the modern LDS church, especially Enzine Peak Advisors, which runs a portfolio of tens of billions of dollars, while telling members to keep paying their full 10% tithing if they want temple access.
And yeah, I've been to weird churches before where they encourage you like electronic tithing. You know, you go into the office, they want you to put in your bank account number, your routing number, and set up.
I've been to churches who, you know, the tithing, they go around with the, they call them the offering plates and the pastor's like, "And I've been, honestly, I have been in a church."
The pastor looked at the offering plates and we can do better than that. And they passed them around again. But they're serious about their 10% tithing.
Now, we're going to talk about the history they don't lead within the missionary pamphlets, right? We're going to talk about the Danites, the early Mormon vigilante group that really acted like a church sanctioned enforcement arm in Missouri.
And we're going to talk about the mountains Meadow Massacre where the Mormon militia and their native allies slaughtered a wagon train of about 120 men, women and children in 1857, and then spent decades trying to shift the blame.
We're also going to talk about the book of Abraham, this translation that Joseph Smith claimed came from this Egyptian paparai, you know, that modern Egyptian theologians later translated and found had nothing to do with Abraham.
But what do we do on this podcast? We'll always follow the money. Now, the LDS church has not released full US financials in 1959.
Now, the problem is, and listen, many churches do not, but most churches, 99% of churches, I mean, you have the Catholic church, billions and billions of dollars.
You have the LDS church, billions, millions of dollars, even the Methodist now, they're barely keeping their head above water. They don't have any reach like these folks do, right?
So they have their investment arm and son peak that the SEC's find just two years ago. The LDS were using shell companies to hide the size of their portfolio.
Right? And it kills me. These people who claim to be, you know, these Christ-like-minded people hoarding billions of dollars.
By the way, there have been independent analysis that now peg the church's total wealth in the ballpark of $275 billion.
You have to understand that rivals and even exceeds in many cases, these huge corporations.
And then we'll get into why Mormons are overrepresented in Congress and intelligence. Why be why you has become a quiet feeder into government and corporate pipelines?
And most importantly, I will touch on the theology itself. Why is it a different gospel than the one delivered to us?
So this is about a whole lot. And we're going to start with Joseph Smith. So again, if you grew up on the missionary version of this story, you know, here's Joseph Smith, this humble farm boy, confused by all the denominations and he goes to the woods and he prays and he gets a visit from God, the Father, and Jesus Christ.
Now later an angel named Maroney shows him golden plates buried in a hill and he translates them by the power of God and boom, the Book of Mormon is born.
Now that's the official story. Let's talk about the historical one. Joseph Smith was born in 1805 in Vermont and grew up in a poor family that bounced around New England and upstate New York.
The area he lived in, the burned over district, it was full of revivals and visions and even occult practices which were still quietly prevalent at that time and treasure seeking.
Now before Joseph ever claimed to be a prophet, he was involved in treasure digging and he used a seer stone or a peep stone that he said could help locate buried treasure or even lost items.
Even the LDS friendly scholarship now acknowledges that yes, Joseph really did this. So what he do, he put the stone in a hat, he presses face into it and claim that words or images appeared.
Right? That's the same basic method later used to translate the golden plates for the Book of Mormon.
Hat stone and dictated text. Now critics will argue that treasure digging was the training ground. Once you've convinced people you can see into the earth with a stone, it's a short hop to God chose me to restore the true church and to reveal the new scriptures.
Now in the missionary pamphlets, the first vision is simple. It's 1820 Joseph, praise God the Father and Jesus appear bodily and tell him all churches are corrupt.
But historically Joseph gave differing accounts of this version over time. Early versions mentioned just a single heavenly passage or an angel later accounts clarify the Father and the Son together.
And the story grows in detail as the movement matures and as Joseph claims about his own authority rise. So you know, this is a huge red flag.
When someone's founding vision evolves over time to elevate their personal status at a minimum, you're looking at a very fluid relationship with the truth.
Right? Then we get the golden plates narrative. According to Smith and angel directed him to a hill near his home where metal plates inscribed in reformed Egyptian were buried.
Those pesky Egyptian tablets in the Northeast. He claimed to translate them into the Book of Mormon around 1829 or 1830. Now here's what's interesting. Joseph never let anyone else examine the plates.
The famous witnesses, the three witnesses and eight witnesses later had complicated relationships with Joseph and the church. At least some of them eventually left or were excommunicated probably because they didn't stick with the story.
Even at one point, one of the key witnesses, met his experience was visionary rather than physical saying he saw them with a spiritual eye, which he was probably manipulated and told to believe that.
Again, if there were any other 19th century claimant saying, I alone can see this artifact. And if you doubt me, you're fighting God.
We'd all call it what it looks like a fraud. And to this day we still scratch our heads, the Robert Tiltons and the Benny Hens and the Joel Osteens.
Is it just people are so desperate? They'll cling to anything if somebody looks good and smiles at them and promises them prosperity.
So after publishing the Book of Mormon, Joseph organizes the church in 1830 and he moves the center of gravity to Kirtland, Ohio. There he builds a temple, he expands the hierarchy and introduces new priesthood offices.
But this is when you start seeing other things. You start seeing an illegal or uncharted bank, you could call it the Kirtland Safety Society, which collapses and wipes out many believers financially.
And that brought growing dissent because people started questioning this guy's handling of money and power.
And then began the early whispers of polygamy, which Joseph is already practicing privately while publicly denying that such a doctrine exists.
So, you know, those patterns never really go away.
So when things finally fall apart, no, Ohio, Joseph looks to Missouri as the promised land. He calls it Zion, right?
And the conflict with non-Mormon settlers explodes. And out of that pressure cooker comes a secretive group known as the Danites and they're organized around 1838.
And even the church's own historical essays acknowledge that they were a brotherhood of Mormon men in Missouri and they acted as an internal enforcement arm dealing with dissenters and sometimes non-Mormon neighbors.
Now historians, quote unquote, debate exactly how much Joseph personally directed every Danite action.
But they generally agree that he approved of the group and that it operated within the context of his leadership.
So you're less than a decade into this movement and you got money schemes going bad.
You have violent conflicts with neighbors.
And now you have a secret band of loyalists enforcing order all in the name of God.
That's not the New Testament church, man. That is, you can call it proto-theocracy.
So now they're driven out of Missouri.
Joseph and the saints regroup in Illinois and they build the city of Nauvoo on the Mississippi River.
And he secures an unusually generous city charter and he sets up his own militia, the Nauvoo Legion.
And he becomes mayor and he centralizes power within his own hands.
Now, you know, this is his third city and this guy must have had a lot of charm.
And he must have had enough cash to buy off the local mayors or the town folks because he just moves from town to town.
And he keeps on going. Right.
So while all this is going on, the polygamy is expanding even more.
At this point, Joseph begins marrying multiple women, including some already married to other men.
And some very young. What do you call your hives? What do you call your wives husband, your husband-in-law?
That is just weird. A number of his close associates later testify that he taught plural marriage as a revelation from God.
Publicly, he and church leaders deny that polygamy is being practiced, even as the inner circle is well deep into it.
You know, you can only even in the 1800s and get away with those kind of things for so long. And it became impossible to hide.
And it came to the point when the centers in Nauvoo print a newspaper exposing polygamy and raising alarms about political power.
So Joseph does what Lincoln would do a decade or two later. He destroyed the press.
And that act is one of the sparks that lead Illinois authorities to move in against him.
So it's also in this later period that Joseph runs for president of the United States. He organizes the secret council of 50 to consider a theocratic kingdom of God on earth.
And he preaches increasingly radical doctrines about God once being a man and men among God's ideas that will later be developed more underbring him young.
Now I've seen this multiple times where a young charismatic church leader pastor catches fire.
You know, we could we could point to Greg Locke. Right.
Somebody who was admired by many people in 2020. He he had a church in a tent.
And I believe it was Tennessee. Forgive me if I'm wrong. And the revival starting getting bigger and bigger and I went to his head.
And ended up cheating on his wife marrying his secretary. And I think that's just what happens.
I think most of these people. Well, I don't know about this guy with his lies or maybe he was just some people are not all there. Right. Let's let's call it what it is.
But a lot of people they get caught up in the fame and standing up on that stage in the lights on them and looking down and seeing.
You know, a thousand people telling you how awesome you are. If you're not careful, if you're not grounded, it can go to your head. Right.
So here's this guy. He builds a semi autonomous city. Commands his own militia runs a private bank secretly takes dozens of wives.
Destroy a printing press that criticizes him then runs for president while forming a shadow council to plan world governments.
So if that's not cult leader meets aspiring theocrat. I don't know what is.
So fast forward to 1844 after the destruction of the Navu expositor.
The press and the rising tension he submits to arrest and is held in Carthage jail with his brother Hyram.
At that point, a mob storms the jail and kills the both of them. Now what the problem is in many cases when you kill people, they become martyrs.
And their voice gets louder than they were while they were alive. And that's what happened.
I mean, listen, he wasn't jail and serious charges. Right.
He, you know, his decision to use state power to destroy free press. Now there's also.
I witnessed a council that he was firing a pistol during a melee. Returning fire is the mob attacked.
You know, you can argue that he didn't get his due process.
We know that justice was a lot different 170 years ago. Right. People saw things differently.
And he certainly was someone who abused power and his position. Again, not saying he deserved to die.
But I'm not sure we know the whole story. When you start getting into dozens of wives and those wives are married, you're asking for trouble.
That's all I can say, right. But from a Christian perspective, you know, martyrs die for the gospel.
They preach. And that's where it gets skewed. Not for running an illegal bank.
Not for destroying printing presses and hiding polygamy while consolidating power.
So now you have the fallout. You have this movement built on a shaky foundation.
He's dead at 38, right. Interesting number. He claimed to restore the one and only true church. Right.
He produced new scriptures that can't be independently verified. He led people into repeated financial and physical disasters.
Built a city and a state militia. And again, when he died, I think he had upwards of 40 wives.
So the foundation is broken as it was was there. And that's when Brigham Young inherits it and he amplifies it in Utah.
But I mean, it really multiplies more polygamy, harsher rhetoric, blood atonement, style preaching, and the kind of militant culture
that eventually produces the mountain meadows massacre. We'll get to that.
But before we talk about massacres and Danites and Wall Street portfolios, we have to keep one big question on the table for our Christian listeners.
If the roots are corrupt, if the founding prophet's record looks like this, how trustworthy is the fruit?
And you know, Jesus said, "You shall know them by their fruits." And listen, when the roots are fraud and secrecy and manipulation, the fruit will eventually show it.
And whether that's in the theology, the money or abuse of power. Right.
So moving on, we're going to talk about Brigham Young, the desert theocracy. Right. So Joseph Smith dies in 1844.
And when he died, the one thing, there was no clear succession plan. There was at least three or four men who claimed authority.
He had Sigmund, Rigden, who was his counselor, he had a gentleman by the name of James Strang, who later actually produced a letter allegedly naming him successor.
Then you had Joseph Smith's family and the quorum of the 12 apostles led by Brigham Young. Now here's what's remarkable.
Early LDS journals record that during a pivotal meeting in Nauvou, members said Brigham appeared to look and sound like Joseph.
So whether you believe that or not, we'll leave that up to the listener. But from that point on, Brigham's goal is simple.
Survive, consolidate and build Zion in the wilderness. And listen, he will do anything to pull it off.
So after a while, Illinois turns hostile, they burned another bridge.
So what he does is Brigham Young organizes what he calls the Saints to leave the United States entirely. Now remember, not to a new state leave the country.
Remember, pardon me. At that time, Utah is Mexican, Mexican territory. Right.
So this is when Brigham Young's true power emerges. He coordinates wagon companies, supply lines, advanced parties. He was a very smart logistical guy.
He dictates routes and schedules and survival strategies. And he considers himself not just a quarter master, but a profit.
And when the first Vanguard company reaches the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Young reportedly looks over the barren desert and declares, "This is the place." Right.
So once in the valley, he decides to build a church run state, not metaphorically, literally.
So Brigham Young becomes the governor, the prophet of the church, the commander of the Navu Legion, which is again the Mormon militia, the chief judge in many disputes, distributor of land and resources.
So he's building the society that they take church tithing funds and use them for public projects.
How would you feel if you went to church on Sunday and you tithe and you're like, you know, you hear the pastor say, "What a wonderful tithing today.
We're going to fix the potholes on I-95 with this money and everybody's going to say what?"
So the church tithing is actually funding public projects. The church authority decides on land allocation, the militia enforces community discipline, which sounds a little bit like Islam, right? More even Noah Hyd law. And settlers take loyalty oaths.
This is in no way, shape, or form a separation of church and state. It is the fusion of both under one single man, and that man was Brigham Young.
He even initiates the state of Desiree. And that was a proposed Mormon nation spanning Utah, Nevada, even parts of California, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming.
This guy was ready to form his own country. And their map of Desiree is huge. They wanted a quarter of the American West as the Mormon homeland.
And of course, at that point, the US government steps in and says, "I don't think so." So, you know, back to polygamy, right?
We know for the most part, Joseph practiced polygamy in secret. Brigham, he didn't have time for that.
Brigham Young had 55 wives. Give or take a few, you know, depending again on the historian. Most people agree that he had 57 children.
Like, you tell me you can remember the name of all your wives and all your children. Wow, better memory than me.
Under his leadership, man, there's, we must have gone broke on birthday presents. Polygamy becomes a pillar. Polygamy becomes a pillar of LDS identity.
Leaders preach that plural marriage. It's not important, but it's essential to exaltation. Right? The idea that men become gods.
Families become massive, interconnected political networks. And polygamy wasn't fringe. It was the social fabric. It was the economic and political structure.
Most high-ranking men took up multiple wives. It wasn't just a quirk. It was the engine that the LDS was built in Utah.
Now, this is the part where things get a little dark. Brigham Young preached something a doctrine historians later call blood atonement.
So here's the idea. Some sins are so severe that Christ sacrifice does not cover them. A sinner must have their blood literally shed to a tone.
Now, I'm going to pause for a second in my notes and just let you know that anybody who tries to tell you you have to do something to earn salvation.
You cut them off immediately. There is nothing any you can walk a thousand old ladies across the street. You can catch a nuclear missile before it hits the ground.
You are saved by grace through faith. That's it. Okay, but not Brigham Young. Now, you that's that's too much for Jesus. You're going to have to blood atonement. Right?
Now, this is one of the bigger arguments within the history of the LDS church. People say did they formally practice this well officially? No, but historically many historians said yes, this took place. Many did.
Now listen, there are sermons recorded were not on audio, obviously, but written down where Brigham says that executing an unrepentant sinner could save his soul. Okay, I'm going to say this one more time. There are sermons that are recorded pen to paper.
Where Brigham Young says that executing an unrepentant sinner could save his soul. There are even many frontier era accounts, some reliable, some disputed of extra judicial killings among the saints justify through rhetoric that matches blood atonement teaching.
You know, what we're offering here, what we're saying here is that Brigham Young, this guy whose name bears one of the wealthiest colleges in the world, fostered a climate where violence could be framed as divine justice, especially against post AIDS or traders.
And it's precisely this climate that feeds into what happens at the mountain meadows. Okay, then that's coming up here in a minute.
So by the way, under Brigham Young, the LDS church institutes a ban on black men receiving the priesthood, black members participating in temple rituals.
And this lasts, oh, George, that was only a few years, it lasted from 1852 to 1978. So 126 years.
You see, Brigham Young preached that black people descend from Cain and ham. They bear a divine curse and that they should be segregated until the Millennium reign.
And again, this isn't French, this isn't debatable. This was the official LDS teaching for over a century. That's just the fact.
And then there's the Utah War. By the mid 1850s, you know, all the reports were coming out of Utah describing this rogue theocratic regime, you know, think of a apocalypse now, right?
You got polygamy, you've got descent, you've got church run courts, you've got church money going for public projects, you have militia intimidation, it's just straight gangster.
Exactly what it is. Call it what it is. It was straight gangster.
So you have President James Buchanan. He sends 2500 federal troops to unseat Brigham and install a new territorial governor.
Now Brigham responds by mobilizing the Navu Legion and declaring martial law.
And for months, the US Army sits 700 miles from supplies in a standoff with a religious kingdom in the mountains.
Now Brigham Young would call it a test of the Saints loyalty. Washington, DC called it in subordination.
We call it the Utah War. One of the weirdest, you know, strangest standoffs in American history.
It ends peacefully, thankfully, but the distrust paranoia and isolation, it really set the stage for the single darkest chapter in Mormon history.
And that's the mountain meadows massacre. And let's get into that now.
So we need to talk about something that's, you know, darker and a lot of people don't know about this about the Mormon history.
So the denied man said mind set, say that three times faster, a holy enforcer mentality that showed up first in Missouri as we discussed, right?
And this is how that same us versus them culture that was baptized in Brigham's war rhetoric and in one of the worst civilian massacres on American soil.
And that says a lot because we've had a few, right? It was the mountain meadows massacre of 1857.
So back in Missouri in 1838, again, some of the Saints organized a group called the Daughters of Zion or the Danites.
And even the Church's own history page now admits their objectives was to defend the community and intimidate the centers and hostile Miss Orrens.
Now the historians, if you do a little research, they'll call them vigilantes, paramilitary, initially formed a purge internal descent, right?
To quell any uprising. People who question Joseph Smith's leadership, then they deployed in conflicts with non-Morban neighbors during the Missouri Mormon War of 1830A, right?
And, you know, they acted as bodyguards for leadership, the mussels, the mussel for church decisions on and on.
And membership lists over time include the names that become legendary in the LDS folklore. You have Porter Rockwell, Bill Hickman, and others who later surfaces destroying angels in the Utah period.
Right? So again, you've got this persecuted group, a charismatic prophet, and a secretive and form an arm that believes it's doing God's work by intimidating and attacking enemies.
Even when the informal Danites supposedly dissolve, the idea doesn't. You can bury the name, but you really can't always bury the mindset.
So fast forward to Utah, you now have local bishops doubling as militia officers. You have church courts and civic courts intertwined.
So you get to the mid 1950s, Utah is a simmering powder cake. You've got, you know, we talk about the reformation often on this podcast and the 1500s, but there's something called the Mormon reformation.
And that was a religious crackdown led by Brigham Young and other leaders. They were pushing rebaptisms, which I'm sure you got for $9.95. Right?
Fiery sermons about sin, which listen, you know, as long as you back end it with the gospel and you're not manipulating people, but he also included things like vengeance and loyalty. There's only one person you should be loyal to.
And then we talked about the blood atonement rhetoric, the Utah war in 1857 to 1858. And it's, you know, by 1857 Southern Utah was on the edge. You've got the rumors of the federal armies marching. You have orders to stockpile grain. Right? They were like preppin.
They were told to harass or burn supply trains. And a drumbeat from Salt Lake that Zion is under siege. So it's that atmosphere that a wagon train from Arkansas starts rolling toward California. And they had no idea what they were walking into.
And that group became known as the Baker Fanshire wagon train. There was 120 to 140 immigrants headed to from Arkansas to California.
They passed through Southern Utah in the late summer, 1857. And during this time, right? Brigham's telling his local leaders to prepare for war sermons, ratcheting up the rhetoric against Gentiles, which when they use the term Gentiles, they mean non-warmens.
And memories of past persecutions in Missouri and Illinois are being stoked. And there's other local stories and accounts. But the bottom line is by the time that train reach the region around Cedar City and mountain meadows.
Local leaders already see them as enemies, not tired travelers. And here's the best historical reconstructions of what happened. It starts interestingly enough September 7th to September 11th.
And those numbers, huh? Local militia units of the Navu Legion from iron county, some disguised as Native Americans, launching attack on the Baker Fanshire camp at mountain meadows.
They expect a quick route. Right? They were just going to run through a rattle and be done. But they didn't know these immigrants. They dug in. They fought back. And it was a five day siege, right? 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
But over time, the immigrants, they start to run low on water and food and ammunition. Some may have glimpsed white men among the attackers realizing that these aren't just, you know, Navajo warriors, but some local Mormons and war paint.
And that realization is really crucial. Think about this. If word ever got out, that Mormon militiamen slaughtered a whole wagon train, you can bet that that territory is finished in the eyes of the US public.
And the US government is probably going to roll in the regular army and all bets would have been off at that point. So here's what happened. The local militia leaders devise a plan. So they raise a white flag, right? We give up.
So the militia members approach the camp under a flag of truce posing as rescuers coming to escort them to safety.
These are members of the Mormon Church. They persuade the exhausted, hungry, and tired immigrants to lay down their arms, promising them protection.
Then comes the betrayal. The immigrants are separated into groups, men, women, and older children. They're marched away from camp accompanied by armed militiamen.
At a pre-arranged signal, the Mormons and their allies turn on the defenseless immigrants and massacre them at close range, shooting them and stabbing them to death.
So by the end, about 120 people are dead, men, women, and older children. Now, they decided because there were such good people that 17 of them, the 17 children who were aged six and under were spared.
They were considered too young to tell tales. So they, quote-unquote, "adopted them into local Mormon families." Now, let's be frank here.
If we read this story about this happening in the Middle East or in some third-world country, we would call it what it was.
A mass execution of disarmed civilians under a false flag of truce. That did not happen in the Middle East. That happened in Utah.
So immediately after the killings, local leaders move into cover-up mode. The bodies are hastily buried and partially exposed by animals later.
The name is publicly shifted into the tribes with the Mormon involvement and minimized or denied. And then as we mentioned, the children are placed into Mormon homes.
And the story is tightly controlled because they controlled the media in that area. And nobody dared run a story against Brigham Young.
And for years, the church controlled newspapers and public statements downplayer deny Mormon responsibility. Oh, that's slander.
But eventually the truth leaks out. And non-Mormon investigators and Army officers visit the site.
Testimonies and rumors circulate about Mormon militial involvement. And even the US press starts branding Mount Meadows as a Mormon atrocity.
And eventually the federal government wants a head, want a pike. The man they choose is John D. Lee.
A local church leader, a militial officer, and the adopted son of Brigham Young. He was tried twice, convicted in the second trial.
And by the way, he was executed by firing squad at mountain Meadows in 1877. The very grounds where the massacre happened. Just as was a lot different back then.
You can find, I'm not telling you to do so, but there are photographs showing him seated in his coffin, facing the place of the slaughter.
The Audiist leaders excommunicate him. And for decades becomes the official villain. They hung the story on him. One bad apple who supposedly acted without salt lakes knowledge.
It's a scapegoat. It's classic scapegoat. Right? You pin the crime on one man. You execute him and declare the ledger balanced.
All the things that happen in our history, they find one guy to blame it on. That's a wrap. That is a wrap.
And we're going to continue to, we don't need to, that's the entire story with that.
What I want to talk about now is the theology problem with the Book of Abraham and false gods, etc. And something that may shock you if you don't know it. Right?
And that's the LDS gospel is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Okay? Their God is not the God of Scripture.
Their Christ is not the Christ of the Bible. And some people may what?
And again, the cornerstone of this problem is the Book of Abraham. And it's one of the most demonstrably false scriptures ever presented in a religion claiming divine inspiration.
Let's talk about the biggest red flag of all the doctrines. And again, many Christians don't realize this.
But this is an absolute mainstream LDS teaching. Okay? God the Father, who was once a man on another world, according to LDS doctrine, has a wife, the heavenly mother.
Together they produce spirit children in the pre-mortal realm.
Among those spirit children are Jesus and Lucifer. In the LDS version of the pre-mortal council, Lucifer proposes a coercive salvation plan, and Jesus proposes a free will plan.
And God chooses Jesus and His plan.
Lucifer rebels become Satan and the war in heaven begins. That is the official LDS cosmogyny.
It's in their manuals. It's in their prophet sermons. It is their temple theology. Again, just to be clear, according to them, Jesus Christ and Satan are literal spirit siblings, born of the same heavenly Father. Jesus is the first born.
Lucifer is one of the spirit children who rebelled.
That is not Christianity. It's not even close. What that is, if you had to wrap that up into some type of verbiage, you would call that a pagan cosmic myth, or just wrapped in biblical language.
Okay?
Jesus Christ is eternal, like John 1-1, and the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He does not have, you know, on and on and on.
It's hard to believe when he hears this, right? But this type of theology should shut the door on Mormonism for any believer. But as they say, but wait, there's more.
So the LDS doctrine of God, a man who became God. Now Joseph Smith would eventually teach that God himself was once as we are now. He was once a man.
A man is God once was, as God is, may man become. That is the heartbeat of Mormon theology. God, the Father, was once a mortal man on a previous world.
He had a God above him. That God had a God above him, on and on this infinite regression of deities.
That's not Christianity. That is polytheism on training wheels. Now let's talk about the book of Abraham, right?
And this is where, to me, this is the LDS Achilles heel, if the other presentations didn't quite do it.
So here's what Joseph Smith claimed. Again, in 1835, he buys the Egyptian papyrus, papyrus from a traveling antiquities dealer, right? He says God reveals that these papyrus contain the writings of Abraham himself written in Abraham's own hand and translates, etc.
He talked about this, right? But the problem is, in the 1960s, the original documents that were thought lost in a fire, they were discovered in a museum archive.
And all these Egyptologists from all backgrounds, including non-Christian scholars with zero anti-Mormon virus, bias, pardon me, translated them.
And their conclusion was they were simply ordinary Egyptian funeral text dating to 100 BC, 1500 years after Abraham containing standard book of breathings and book of the dead content.
So nothing absolutely nothing, and I say again, absolutely nothing related to Abraham, nothing related to creation, nothing related to pre-mortal councils.
So this just matter of fact, he lays out that these translations are completely wrong.
And there is no gray area here. This isn't where we differ on interpretation, right? This isn't about perception. This is verifiable fraud and canonized Mormon scripture.
So think about this. If someone claims God himself told them that a piece of papyrus is written by Abraham, and that papyrus turns out to be a first century funerary spell, what do you call that?
I'll tell you, if you look at Deuteronomy 1822, it says, "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the things follow not nor come to pass, this is the thing which the Lord have not spoken."
Deuteronomy 1822. If the book of Abraham collapses, so does the prophet who wrote it, and the system that he built.
Right. And the salvation plan and all of it is nonsense. Let's talk about the money now. We're going to move along. We're already 50 minutes in.
Let's look at the money, the tithing revenue base. Members of the church are taught to pay 10% of their income as tithing.
Now this is framed as a sacred covenant. The church itself has said that tithing is more about commitment than about the church's need for money.
But here's some key points. With approximately 17 million members worldwide, even a modest average income, and 10% tithing adds up to billions of dollars of revenue per year.
Revenue for lack of better word, okay?
According to whistleblower allegations, roughly $1 billion per year of tithing and related contributions are directed into a reserve fund managed by Enzine Peak.
The church continues to demand full tithing payment for temple access, missionary participation, which is a huge thing with them, right, to recruit more people, which why, you know, to be frank, that's why they're appealing to the federal government, which plays a moral pressure on members regardless of transportation.
Now from a Christian perspective, if the institution claims to be the body of Christ concerned for the poor, the widows, the orphans, what should we expect from their stewardship of billions?
Now with Enzine Peak advisors, this is where it really gets remarkable.
Again, they're the investment arm of the church based in Salt Lake City. Now here's some facts, according to the official church statement from 1997 to 2019, Enzine Peak advisors use 13 shell LLCs to file required SEC disclosures, thereby concealing the size of the portfolio.
In February 2023, the SEC charged EPA and the church for failing to accurately disclose the size of the investments and using shell companies.
They paid a $4 million penalty and the church a $1 million penalty. That's like a lunch bill for these people, right.
The Skloser Show Quarter 3, Enzine Peak's 2025 portfolio public reports reached about $61 billion.
Independent analysts estimate the church's total invested assets about $200 to $300 billion.
A religious institution funded by mandatory tithing has built a private investment machine with tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, which most is not transparently disclosed to its average member.
It's really shocking.
By the way, part of the money machine connects to other sectors, higher education and political influence, BYU, and they have satellite groups in Idaho, Hawaii, and they even have one in Jerusalem.
We'll talk about their connection with Israel and Freemason, a few minutes.
But it's endowment benefit from church financial backing, real estate holdings, and tithing derived resources.
Now, exact figures are opaque. The institution is part of the broader network of church power.
This means leaders educated in BYU or its affiliated institutions often go into government, business, intelligence, and even the church's corporate arms.
The money flows, the networks align, and influence accumulates.
The money isn't just sitting. It is doing work.
But just like in the mid 19th century, it's more than church.
It's building malls, universities, media outlets, publishing houses, insurance companies, real estate portfolios.
But it's a nonprofit. It's tithing.
The loopholes in this country are amazing. And the thing that is shocking, and this is not hyperbole, this is not conspiracy theory, many of these ventures are for profit funded by religious money.
How do they get that loophole? How are for profit, for profit corporations funded by religious money? How is that possible?
And there's been many whistleblowers, and they claim for profit bailouts linked to the reserve fund.
So, again, if an institution demands tithes from faithful people while withholding full disclosure, that is a moral mismatch.
Right? It's not good.
So, you know, we talked about the polygamy and all of this, but I'm going to skip ahead because we've already talked about much of this.
We talked about polygamy and death, but we need to talk about now, because I still want to read this article by Fritz Springmire.
He wrote this article on a website. It was conspiracy theories.com back in September of 2003. It's pretty interesting.
There was with the assistance of an ex-mormon. We'll get to that.
But want to talk about why Mormons dominate the government, intelligence, bureaucracy, et cetera.
And it's smaller than Catholics, right? It's crazy. It's a very small, you know, about 2% of US adults identify as Latter-day Saints.
That is smaller than Catholics, smaller than evangelicals, smaller than mainline Protestants, right?
But they have their own cultural culture on quarter across Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, and Hawaii.
They have a worldwide reach. They have a culture that pushes education, language skills, clean living, right?
An institutional loyalty. That's why they transition so well to the government, right? They are obedient.
As of the current one hundred and 19th Congress, 2025 to 2027, there are nine Latter-day Saints in Congress, three senators and six representatives. That is 1.7% of Congress compared to about 2% of the US population.
So on paper, that's proportional representation.
But look at the concentration. Most LDS members of Congress come from Utah and the Mormon quarter. So what that does, that gives the church disproportionate influence over the entire state delegation plus key Western seats, right?
And let's talk a little bit more about Brigham Young, right? The church's flagship university in Provo. Their endowment is in the ballpark of about $3.3 billion.
That puts it in the upper tier of many US universities. Remember, BYU's endowments sits on top of the much larger LDS church asset base and tithing system.
It's not just another private school. It is the training arm of this worldwide church corporation. Look how they market itself. The Kennedy Center at BYU. They openly host events like careers and intelligence and national security.
And they actually have CIA representatives recruiting students there. They had and listen, this isn't the only institution right Harvard, Yale, they have the same.
But they have professional networking language programs internships. It's a very tight community where if you're in the club, you're going to move up the ladder, right?
And like everywhere else, they're full. And the NGOs, they have a huge representative in the non governmental organization.
So just to wrap that up, BYU wasn't just a campus. It's an on ramp into American professional class, but also the security state, right? The FBI, the CIA, the NSA, right?
And for decades, at least since the 90s, there's been rumors that agencies that we just mentioned have a disproportionate representation from the LDS ranks.
Let's look at these numbers here from this article. A 1971 ramparts article claim that Latter-day Saints provided both the CIA and the FBI with some of their best men.
There was a 1981 story from the Associated Press reports that the CIA does some of its most successful recruiting in predominantly LDS, Utah.
Ten years ago, there was an atlas obscura piece titled, "Why Mormons Make Great FBI Recruits?" And they said agencies like DHS, FBI, the CIA, they see Mormons as a particularly desirable recruit and have a representation for hiring this disproportionate number of Latter-day Saints.
There was even a book written in 2017 that was called the FBI and religion. That book called LDS members a natural recruiting ground for agents, right?
And they are also somewhat overrepresented in corporate and bureaucratic leadership. But I'm not going to delve very deep into this. But what I would like to do is to touch on Mitt Romney, right? Because he is, you know, what you could call the public face of LDS power, right?
And you can't talk about Mormon influence in American government without talking about Willard Mitt Romney, right?
And he checks every box in the Mormon elite playbook. He was born into an LDS political dynasty.
His father, George Romney, if you did not know, was the governor of Michigan and the HUD secretary. He was a lifelong temple, recommended carrying Latter-day Saint. He was a BYU graduate, did his Mormon mission in France, held local church leadership roles.
He went into not just regular business accounts, he was like the elite business counseling. Then he got into BYU capital, right? Private equity, then governor, then senator, and then the first major party presidential nominee in US history from the LDS church.
So if you were trying to design the ideal front facing Mormon for national power, Romney was it, right? Clean cut, disciplined, ultra wealthy, polished, spoke well, obedient to hierarchy, right?
Spoke the language of service, but operated with the logic of a CEO.
And, you know, it was interesting because if you actually take the time to research Mitt Romney, you would see that he really navigated two identities, right? There was the private Mormon identity, right?
His family lineage goes back to the early pioneers. The temple marriage served as a bishop, right? And then there's the public American identity, right? He never discussed the book of Abraham.
Never explains the celestial marriage or exaltation. You know, never mentioned that LDS doctrine teaches that Jesus and Satan are brothers on and on and on.
And this two world navigation, one face to insiders and another to the nation. That's the exact pattern that the LDS institution follows.
So in that sense, Romney's not just unusual, and their eyes, he's exemplary, right?
He is corporate Mormon personified. He truly is. And, you know, he was a bridge between the LDS wealth and national power, right?
He had Wall Street capital, political machinery.
It would have been, you know, would have been interesting if he took the presidency.
It's just such a weird web of things between BYU, Enzine Peak's wealth, the LDS business empire, and how they're able to cross over from non-profit to for profit. Nobody bats an eye, right?
But, you know, it's important to understand that Romney matters as a big part of this because he embodies many of the things we talked about today.
He was for many years the brand ambassador of the LDS church.
So, you know, I want to close this out before we get into, I want to close with the Fritz Spring Myer article from 22 years ago.
But, you can't. It's impossible to wrap this up in 60 to 90 minutes. I mean, every facet of the things we talked about, you could do an hour to 90 minute presentation on every section that we talked about, right?
So, we're talking about a profit who lot about polygamy. It translated a bogus Egyptian document into Ken and I scripture.
He ran illegal banking schemes, destroyed a free press that exposed him, and then Brickham Young walks in.
He fused church, state, militia, normalized polygamy. It's broken theology, a financial system, you know, that is just unethical to be kind, and a cultural machine.
And I think that's one reason why they put their culture that way. Nobody's going to question a clean cut, white shirt, you know, glass protectors in the pocket, you know, just sport in the nerd look.
It's the same thing when we talk about Switzerland, right? When you think about Switzerland, you think about chocolate and this young girl yodeling in the mountains, right?
I was so relieved on social media the other day, I had somebody else posted something about Switzerland. It's not as clean cut as you think it is.
It's the home to the Bank of International Celments, right? All of these things that we've talked about over the last five years. And it's the same with the LDS. And again, we're not saying that every family is nefarious or has a dark agenda. I just believe they're misled.
They're very misled. But I think that's one of the reasons why they intentionally present the scrubbed Christian image while keeping the real doctrine, you know, varied many, many layers deep, right?
And I think that's the big thing. And again, I'm not questioning their sincerity. I just think that you've been given a version of Jesus Christ that does not match the scripture that God already gave us.
You've been told that you must trust prophets more than the plain reading of the Bible, right? That the book of Abraham is scripture that the temple endowment is essential, even though Christ's veil was torn.
And that the church is God's only authorized corporation on earth. What I'm asking you to do is do what the brands did in Acts 17 11, right? They received the word with all readiness of mind and search the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
Right. Don't be afraid to do that with Mormonism. Compare that, you know, the Jesus of the Bible to the Jesus of the missionaries. Compare the God of Isaiah. Compare the grace of Ephesians to eight to the checklist of temple worthiness.
And if those don't match, you know what? You don't owe your soul to Salt Lake City, you owe your soul to Christ. This is from Fritz Spring Mile, spring Meyer and from September of 2003.
One of the things that the Illuminati has done. And by the way, I had a section where we're already, you know, 70 minutes in, but let it be known that the Mormons, the LDS have very deep ties with Israel and Freemasonry.
Joseph Smith, it's, it's not debated. He was a Freemason, right? The LDS church is very devoted to Israel and Jewish identity. That's why they call non-Mormons Gentiles. But they have very deep and undeniable ties between Mormonism and Freemasonry, right? They claim they're Israel. So that's why they use the term Gentile.
And they, again, they have a college, the BYU Jerusalem Center. You can put that in your Google machine. This enormous educational complex overlooking the amount of olives.
Something many Christians groups could never secure politically. Israel permitted it on one condition.
The Mormons must make legally binding promises to another, you know, Depproke Jews. So think about that. A church whose whole identity is missionary work agreed, right? And Israel allowed them to build it anyway.
Now there's one part that you, you will hear. I should say LDS Apologist that hate discussing.
So again, when Joseph Smith introduced the temple endowment ceremony in Navu in 1842, everybody, whether it's LDS, X LDS or secular, they acknowledge one fact. And this is truth.
Joseph Smith borrowed heavily from Freemasonry. Okay, this is documented history. March 15, 1842, Joseph becomes a master Mason in Navu Lodge. Okay.
In March 16, 1842, the Lodge confers additional degrees. And about two months later, Joseph Smith unveils the Mormon temple endowment two months.
And suddenly the restored temple ceremony appears. And it is filled with Masonic elements, right? Tokens, handshakes, passwords, oaths, aprons, compass and square symbolism, the all-seeing eye.
Now, you know, the LDS Apologist will say, oh, it's inspired parallelism. It's nonsense. Joseph took Masonic ritual structure and wrapped it into a new theology.
And all of the early Mormon leadership was Mason heavy.
Hiram Smith, Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, John Bennett, Orson Whitney, scores of Navu elite. In fact, the Navu Lodge grew so rapidly that the Masonic authorities in Illinois were spooked.
I mean, overnight it became the largest lodge in the state. So it's not a coincidence that, you know, Freemasonry offered this hierarchal structure, secret rituals, loyalty oaths, symbolism.
And it worked its way. You look at the temple, the Masonic architecture with LDS theology. You look at any LDS temple room. You look at the layout, the checkered floors, the pillars, the veil work, the symbolic compass and square, the ritual progression throughout rooms.
And I will tell you one of the few groups that would be able to pull off nonprofit money into for profit outside of reads across America is the Masons.
All right, let's get to Mr. Springmire's document. One of the things that the Illuminati has done is instill apathy in people toward resisting their wickedness.
A letter by an ex-mormon said it better than I could. There are many reason why these people will not come forth, even though they know of the corruption in the Mormon church.
One is due to their belief in Mormon scripture, which they associate with the Mormon church.
The leadership has usurped power and authority over this scripture. Thus the members of the Mormon church think that God expects them to support their misguided leaders.
This is much of the rationalization that many Americans make about our government. Interesting thought there.
They all know of the corruption, but they rationalize it that it's unpatriotic to talk about the government or ungrateful to complain when they enjoy superficial prosperity.
And that's really what we have, a superficial prosperity. Good point.
It's interesting that this Mormon recognizes that the process of the common man's reaction is the same to both Mormon and American leadership.
Because we will discuss the top leadership in both the reader. We'll learn that they are related to each other under the control of the top 13 Illuminati families.
We haven't got his collection, go on eBay. I'm not sure if it's on Amazon, but the bloodlines of the Illuminati. It was his work, his Magnus Opus, if you will.
Mormon President Ezra Taft Benson, and he was considered a prophet amongst Mormons, was a fan of the John Birch Society.
Most people have not read my exposés on both the Mormon Church and the John Birch Society. We'll not be able to protect themselves from the Illuminati.
I don't expose these organizations without a great deal of proof. I say this because I know from too many sources and too many angles that both organizations were initiated and have been run by the Illuminati.
So for its assay in the Mormon Church and the John Birch Society is run by the Illuminati.
The Mormon Church has long prophesied that they would defend the US Constitution in the last days. They are moving to fill that with men like Bo Gritz, who sprinkles has talks with buzzwords from Mormon prophecy.
The John Birch Society was part of the process of the Hagellian dialects of the Cold War. They pretend to be the defenders of the people against the New World Order, but like many they are the fake and controlled opposition.
In my B.Y.s. is Serpent's book, I gave the genealogical evidence to show that the Mormon leadership connected to the 13th top Illuminati family, the holy bloodline of what purports to be Jesus' lineage.
I've also showed numerous other connections between the Mormon leaders and the elite Illuminati bloodlines.
Ezra Taft Benson's genealogy helps tie together some of the various parts of the Illuminati beast.
The Taft is Hussain's name because Ezra Taft Benson is a descendant of a Fanzo Taft, who along with one of the Russell family, and Russell one of the top 13 families, William Russell, started the Order of the Skull and Bones.
Now legally it was known as the Russell Trust, but we know it today as the Order of the Skull and Bones, 3-2-2.
And remember, both Bushes, all three, Prescott, H.W. and Georgie, all Skull and Bonesmen.
And Fritz says that George Bush is also a descendant of the 13th top Illuminati families, and that family has ties with British royalty.
Now the man who just beat George Bush in the presidential race, William Jefferson Clinton, is a descendant of the Russell.
So you're starting to see what Fritz is saying here is what we heard before that all these people who take over leadership of this country, they're all related, or they have lineage that goes back to the 13 families.
So Fritz says this newsletter hasn't gotten to an individual article on the Russell family, but they go way back in the Illuminati.
The Russells are responsible for starting the Skull and Bones, the Pilgrim Society, which we've talked about, the Watch Tower Bible and Track Society, and the Masonic Daughters of Isabella.
Archibald Russell, a Mason from Scotland, set up still other organizations. And as we know, Scotland has played a key role in the Illuminati.
One example of thousands is Mariner Eccles, governor of the Federal Reserve Board and supporter of FDR, who is a member of the wealthy Mormon Illuminati Eccles family,
which came over from Scotland. Now this is interesting. The Russells played a key role in the opian trade in the early 1800s and early Mormonism.
Now, one of the Russell businesses and their partners was Warren Delano Jr., chief of Russell and company operations in Canton, China.
And again, all this ties together, Delano was the grandfather of FDR.
The Russell and company logo was a Skull and Bones. The Taft family, which was also related to the Bush's by-blood, and the Haramon family are two families that have been intimately connected to the Skull and Bones order.
Again, which is an entry point into the Illuminati. And again, on the surface, I was just a fraternity.
And the Haramon family was very prominent in Bill Clinton's life.
A Varyll Haramon was the CEO of George Bush's father's company. Averall Haramon's wife was Pamela, who was played an extremely important part in Bill Clinton's life.
Pamela Haramon raised more money for the Democratic Party than any other person, and that was according to Newsweek, May 15, 1987's article.
She created a political action committee, nicknamed Pam Pack.
Now, when Old Billy lost his race for governor of Arkansas, Pamela made Bill Clinton chairman of Pam Pack.
And by the way, it took Brian Quig, a Christian researcher, Lightfretz, to expose the connections between Bill Clinton and Pamela Haramon.
Now, when Bill Clinton was in high school, he shook hands with President John F. Kennedy. And again, the Kennedy's are members of the top 13 Illuminati bloodlines.
And that picture is widely circulated.
You can find it easily online to Bill Clinton shaking hands with JFK.
But the master of ceremonies at the affair where JFK and Clinton meant was Winthrop Rockefeller. He was the, I think, at the time governor of New York.
Now, in the film clips of this event, which the establishment media have used recently, the establishment media also edited out Winthrop Rockefeller from the scenes of Clinton and JFK.
And by the way, the Aster family who we did a podcast on one of the 13 bloodlines was intimately connected to the creation of the Rhodes Scholarship.
Clinton was a Rhodes scholar and looked up Professor Carol Quigley, one of the archivists of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations, as a mentor.
So the Quigley Clinton connection really introduces more connection between Clinton and the Illuminati. Quigley sidetracked people by making people think that, you know, the elites, you know, wanted the British to rule the world.
Although the elite are partial to the English language, in the heart, their allegiance is not to Britain, but to Satan.
Now, Clinton has been compared to JFK and FDR by people. Perhaps in a negative sense, the comparison isn't appropriate.
So Fritz goes on to say, let's review some of the items, which stuck out as red flags to me about Bill Clinton.
Several ex-witches who were now Christians identified Clinton's running mate, Al Gore is a witch. Al Gore's book promotes several witchcraft themes such as Mother Gain Worship.
Senator Al Gore has intimately worked with other men who were Illuminati for years. Al Gore was close friends with Armand Hammer, the Illuminati Currier, who shuttled back and forth between Moscow and America on a regular basis.
By the way, Hammer bankrolled both Al Gore and his father Al Gore senior.
Both Al Gore and Bill Clinton raised their hands at the DNC, at the convention, and declared that their administration would be the new covenant.
Now, remember Bill Clinton's brother ended up in prison in connection to the illegal drug trade while he was governor of Arkansas.
Bill Clinton's chief campaign advisor, James Carville, he still turns up on the news every now and then, right?
He's been tortured in People's Magazine wearing a pentagram in the middle of his forehead. Bill Clinton, again, in People's Magazine, page 50 of what was the date on that?
Bill Clinton calls his first press conference as president, according to the astrologically correct full moon day.
I've heard a lot about that, that the president speak on full moons. Somebody eed me on that within the last week or two.
When the presidents come out and do certain things during the moon phases.
He said in his inaugural speech that the ceremony is held in the depth of winter, but by the words we speak and the phases we show the world, we force the spring.
And he reported, or he repeated the words, we force the spring later in the speech.
Now, that's a very unusual expression to force the spring. Many say that's witchcraft language, right? In witchcraft, Satanism, Lucifer, Bale, they rise from the underworld on May 1st, right?
We talked about that timeline from April 19th to May 1st, historically has seen the most carnage.
It's not a coincidence. There are 12 cabinet members, which when they assemble with their head Bill Clinton to make the number 13.
Bill Clinton choose to force the spring with his cabinet coming. And in true witchcraft tradition, the cabinet of Bill Clinton followed the pattern to force the spring.
And of course, there's a picture of him doing the devil horns, which we see. We saw the bushes do quite often over and over.
Now, many of these people do not realize the full satanic implications of what they're in.
If one reviews the various levels of the Bavarian Luminati, which started was at May 1st, 1776, right? You'll realize that the process of corruption was gradual.
And that the lower levels had no idea what they were involved in. And I believe that goes on to this day.
And that the lower level may have no clue what they're involved in.
But if you take the time and look at Clinton as cabinet, you know, I touched on all this during my...
I haven't done a podcast on Clinton in a long time. I probably need to revisit. But everybody, you know, Bill Clinton, trilateral commission, builderburgs, Lloyd Benson, the Treasury secretary.
He was a builder burger. He was in the CFR. And he was connected to the savings and loan scandal. Right?
H H H S secretary Donna Shalala. She was a CF CFR agent and Trilateral Commission and a confident of Hillary Clinton.
And remember less Aspen, the secretary of the secretary of defense. He was a straight-out socialist.
He was top assistant to a pro-communist named Morton Halpern. And this goes on and on. Warren Christopher, CFR. Bruce Babitt, CFR. On and on and on.
It's an interesting article. And I will include this in the show notes. But it's interesting that he ties, you know, the closest descriptions of ceiling rituals that matches the description.
And these hierarchy rituals from satanic hierarchy to Mormon rituals. And there was a Mormon scholar. I think his name was D Michael Quinn. And he wrote a book entitled Early Mormonism and the Magical World View.
And he shows that this early Mormonism was based on magic and witchcraft.
Now Quinn, who was a Mormon and good standing, tries to point out that in the book that these things can't be held against Mormonism because most everyone back in the 1800s practice witchcraft. Right? That's, that's irrelevant. And that's silly to even say something like that.
But the great Bill Snowblin, which we've had him on classic audio before on the power of prophecy. He did like a three hour presentation. He wrote a book called Mormonism Temple of Doom. And he does an excellent job of showing and illustrating how the Mormon temple ceremony coincide with the Masonic rituals.
And the same thing with very, very minor minor variations. There's lots of books out there. I have an entire list here of books that expose it.
Even Manlope Ha in his book, Masonic Symbology, describes a seal involved with black magic and the pact that is made with a conjured demon in a section entitled Modus operandi for the invocation of spirits.
And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really interesting and it's a deep dive. And I'm going to wrap it up there. I think we're about 90 minutes in and I could go on and on and on from the field of the experiment to all these other things.
But it's interesting how all these things connect. Right?
And how many times have we talked about these nonprofits? Right? These loopholes that have been created and allow the wealthy to become wealthier. And when they become wealthier, they gain more control. Right?
And in the realm of the conspiracy world, we often just talk about Rockefeller's Rothschilds. But how many times have you heard,
and Brigham Young mentioned on a conspiracy show? Do you know what I mean? On a truth or show? It's, and you know, I haven't even gotten to the Roman Catholic church yet.
These numbers you're heard today were pretty astounding, but when we get to Rome, it's going to knock your socks off.
And Tex Mars, he's, he's another guy that wrote a great book and has talked an awful lot about Mormonism. So there you go. I'll leave it at that. We'll have some links for you in the show notes. Check it out. Do your own research. Tell us what you think our email address is the fact hunter at mail.com.
A lot of, if I didn't mention it at the opening, a lot of great positive responses from our Sunday night episode from the ram to the lamb. We've already sent out several Bibles to folks. If you need one, please email me the fact hunter at mail.com. And we'll get one out to you on the way.
God bless each and every one of you. Have a great week. Keep my family and your prayers this week. We have a lot of people traveling and friends and family from all over the country.
So thank you for your con words. Continue to support. Keep your head on a swivel in Jesus in your heart. And until we meet again, my friends, we will see you.
As they say, but wait, there's more. I did find that lecture that Bill Schnabel and did with the prophecy club 20 or 30 years ago entitled, what's wrong with Mormonism? And again, it runs about two and a half hours. And it touches on a lot of the things that we discussed in our podcast tonight.
But what's intriguing is about the first 30 or 40 minutes he talks about his personal interactions with the Mormon church. So that's certainly worth a listen. Again, after that, much of it is repetitive in nature to what I mentioned tonight. But I think it's a good listen. And if you're looking for something to consume, it's a great listen. And without any further ado, here is the one and only Bill Schnabel.
And now your host for the prophecy club, Stan Johnson. Welcome to the prophecy club where we study and research Bible prophecy.
Well, the Bible says in 1 Timothy 4 verses 1 through 2 says, "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter time some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to disoucing spirits and doctrines of devils."
Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with hot iron. And today we're going to be talking about probably the fulfillment to a large degree of part of that. Our topic today is, what is wrong with Mormonism?
Your speaker was a professional theology teacher for the Mormon church and elders, Quorum, President, which he'll explain, and a temple Mormon. He was a member of the Mormon church for five years.
Bill says that Mormons believe in another Jesus, another gospel, and another eschatology. He exposes the historical errors of the Mormon church, the errors of Joseph Smith, their errors of salvation,
errors of inerancy, and the Book of Mormon, that Joseph Smith was a Mason and a warlock. We help you welcome. Bill, Schnabelind.
[Applause]
Well, praise the Lord, it is certainly good to be here. That really says it all, but there's a lot more to unpack in that brief introduction.
The Mormon church is really one of the fastest growing churches in the world today, and it's a formidable force, it really is.
And I want to say right up front that there's much about the people of the Mormon church that is admirable. They're good people, they're lost people, but they're good people, and they have a lot of what they're doing right.
And I hate to say it, but in some cases they do put many Christian churches to shame, especially in terms of how they take care of their people in terms of physical needs and so on.
A lot of you who are seeing this video know something in my background, and you might wonder, well, how on earth did somebody like me who used to be a witch and a satanist and all this kind of weird stuff?
How did I ever join such a white bread, square, picket fence, all American kind of wholesome leave it to be for church like the Mormon church?
And I wanted to address that real quickly before we actually get into the meat of the program, what happened, how did I end up there? But before I start there is one Bible passage that I think describes the LDS church, which is another name for the Mormons, the official name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And so for short they say the LDS church, that's not LSD, that's LDS, although I think Joseph Smith might have been on some LSD when he wrote some of his doctrines down, but anyhow.
In Romans 10, which of course contains the heart of the gospel many people say, but in the first few verses there's a passage that could very easily be ascribed to the people in the LDS church, especially since they believe they are Israel.
You need to know that up front in terms of Bible prophecy, they believe they are Israel, they do not believe the Jewish people are Israel, they don't believe the Gentile churches Israel.
And here's what Paul says, "Redd in my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel as they might be saved." And this is the Mormons, "For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, for they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness."
"Have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God, for Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness to everyone that believe us."
And to that I can say a hearty amen. Now how did I get into all of this? Well, I came into the LDS church a little bit differently than most people do.
I had a hearty amen nation of the church by the Grand Master Druid of North America back in 1973. He told me that I should join the Mormon church, if I ever got into any kind of deep spiritual trouble.
And so that's what I did. I was in the moment of a spiritual crisis in my life, everything was falling apart around me.
And I prayed to Lucifer, this was in 1980, and asked him for a sign. Now, you're not supposed to really do that. Jesus says a wicked and adulterous generation asked to seek it after a sign.
And to make a long story short, Mormon missionaries shut a door within a phase. And because of what this Druid guy had told me a few years earlier, I figured, "Ah, this is the sign."
So we virtually grabbed them by their lapels and hauled them in and said, "You know, tell us how to become Mormons," which of course is not their usual response. I got in somebody's door.
And as it happened, we had to go out and grocery shop at that moment. We just begged them to come back later. And so they did.
And it was funny, even at first, in the Mormon church, I need to say this, they have a term they call it a golden moment or a golden contact. We call it a divine appointment.
And somebody like the fish sort of jump into the boat. Well, these guys thought we were golden contacts because we were probably begging the join, you know, which, as I said, is not typical.
And the more questions we asked, they realized we knew more about their church than they did, because we were talking about things like, "Oh, you believe in a heavenly mother, right? Oh, well, we don't already tell people that, but yes, we do."
And, you know, you believe you can come gods, right? Well, yeah, we do believe that. We're taught that in the temple, but we don't really tell people that.
And so anyway, they were kind of astonished that our zeal and our knowledge, level of knowledge of what they thought were church doctrines, but actually they were druidic doctrines.
And so within a few weeks, I think it was August 8th of that year, we were both baptized as Mormons. And my wife was never real crazy about this idea, because of course she knew that Mormons are kind of repressive about women.
And she was just afraid of how it was going to go, but she went along with it because she thought it was probably as good a place as any to hide out.
And so we went through the first year of the church, and I was a real zealous Mormon. I tried to give up all of my vices that I had acquired over all those years of being a witch and a devil worshiper and everything.
And I stopped smoking dope, I stopped having orgies and I was trying to be a real good little Mormon, you know, because Mormons, their ethical code is pretty much solidly biblical.
I mean, they believe in family values and chastity and their pro life and they're not much to argue with. So I was trying to be for the first time in my adult life, I was trying to be a good Christian.
And I didn't realize at that time that you can't try to be a Christian anymore than if you're a wolf and you can try to be a sheep.
It just doesn't work out of you are, you're not.
So I was working and working and basically kind of an overachiever and everything that I do, whether spiritually or otherwise.
And after a year we were deemed worthy that I would receive the elders priesthood, it's, see, I should explain this, the Mormon church, every boy over the age of 12 holds the priesthood.
So like if you are a deacon in the Mormon church, typically you're 12 years old.
And I think it's when you're 13 or 14, you become a priest, apart me, you become a teacher, then when you're 16 you become a priest.
And this is in what is called the eronic priesthood. That's not the erroneous priesthood, it's the eronic priesthood, okay.
Then if you're considered worthy and most young men are, when you turn 18 you become an elder. That's not funny, you're an 18 year old elder.
And you're not even shave yet and you're an elder, but anyhow, that's how they do it. And then when I was in the church they had two levels above that, they had a 70 and then a high priest.
And usually you didn't get the high priesthood unless you were made a bishop or something.
So I became an elder and my wife and I went out to the Salt Lake Temple because you know we wanted to be married for time and all eternity.
And this Druid fellow years earlier had told us that we would achieve one of the most ultimate occultic initiations inside of that Mormon temple.
And so we went to that temple and we were married for time and all eternity. And bizarre ceremonies, I mean nothing that you ever experience in the Mormon temple or in the Mormon church ever could be parry you for what happens in the Mormon temple.
So we're going to talk a little more about that later. But anyway, so here I am, you know, I'm in the temple and we had a very interesting thing happen because both my wife and I have been given certain key words and signs and tokens by the Druids to let people know in the church where we were at and you know what we knew and all that.
And by using some of those we got an audience with one of the 12 apostles of the Mormon church. Now this is a big deal because you know these are like at the very pinnacle of the Mormon church they're right underneath the prophet.
So think of them as being like the second tier on the pyramid of the Mormon authority. And we sat down with this guy and share with them some stuff.
And he basically he bore us his solemn testimony that the things we were telling him about Lucifer in the temple were true and that Lucifer was indeed the God of the Mormon temple.
So we thought we were in the right place, you know, because here we were, you know, we were basically we got into most of our cult stuff except we had been led to believe that the leadership of the LDS church were some sort of sorcerers or witches.
And so we felt it was still okay to be a white witch and and apparently we were right because here this guy was telling us that Lucifer was the God of the Mormon temple and he was one of the 12 apostles.
So we went back and ultimately I was called to be an elders quorum president and basically that meant that I had charge of the past care of the ward underneath the bishop.
So I would go out with some of my priesthood companions every month and visit many different families see how they were doing. It's called home teaching.
And as I did this, I discovered something. I discovered that the LDS church had a slimy underbelly that no one knew about.
I discovered that there were all sorts of people in the Mormon church whose needs were not being met, who were floundering spiritually, they were floundering emotionally, they were floundering in every possible way and the church didn't seem to have any answers for them.
And one guy comes to mind. I won't say his name but he was a sweet guy. He was in his 40s and he was a deacon. Now mine's you, most deacons in the Mormon church are 12.
Why was this guy a deacon at the age of 40? Guess what? He was an adult convert, okay? Which doesn't mean that much. Usually you go through the whole thing in a few months but he smoked.
Now Mormons aren't supposed to smoke tobacco or anything else, you know. But anyway, he smoked. And so he was stuck.
Even though this guy loved the Lord or what he thought was the Lord and he was in church every time the door was open, he was damned as far as the Mormon church was concerned.
Because he couldn't give up smoking. I mean we prayed for him. He prayed. He fasted. I gave him priesthood blessings. He was a sweetest guy. I knew in the whole ward and he couldn't get past these cigarettes.
And if any of you have smoked, you know that's not an easy monkey to get off your back. But the problem is that man he could never achieve the highest degree of glory. He was stuck no matter how good his heart was.
And that made me wonder, why is this going on? Why can't the church because supposedly I had the power of the priesthood.
I mean why couldn't this lay hands on this guy like Jesus would lay hands on people and poofs they'd be healed of all sorts of bizarre diseases. Why couldn't I lay hands on this guy and get rid of his nicotine habit for heaven's sakes.
And I talked to the bishop about it because we have we have our PPI see Mormons love all these initials. And a PPI is your personal priesthood interview.
And because I was the other's current president, I got mine straight from the bishop, you know. And I would talk about these things. They were bottoming. He says, he says, you know, president Snablin, he says, some of these people would almost have been better if they had enjoying the church.
Now think of that. What a statement to make because he says they have all of this light and yet they're not living up to it. And so they're damned. And if you understand we'll get into a little bit of theology later.
It means that basically the Mormon church has a 90% failure rate. And I was starting to realize this. And then the other thing that happened is they called me to teach a course in a new testament for the church educational system. Now you understand how rare this is.
There aren't many people in the Mormon church who get paid to do something because all of their labor is volunteer. I mean, the head their pastors, which are called bishops are volunteer. Everybody just works for free.
But I was teaching in what is called the church educational system, which is an extension of Brigham Young University's Department of Religion. And so I actually got a paycheck, however meager. So I could say I was a professional theology teacher. That wasn't why I did it.
But they wanted to, they were evaluating to see if I could get on the faculty. Why they hadn't you do it. And so I taught a course in a new testament. And you know what? For the first time in my life. Now mind you, I had at this time a master's degree from a Catholic seminary.
A bachelor's degree from a Catholic college. I had never read Romans. I took a course in Paul I ont theology at the Catholic seminary. Never read Romans. Never read Galatians. Never read Ephesians. I didn't know what Paul was talking about. And so when I started reading this book, I realized there was no way Paul could have been a Mormon. Just no way.
So that was me. And then the fact that the church did not seem to be meeting the needs of its people were bothering me. The fact that I would go to families and visit them at home teaching and they would tell me, you know, President Stemple and we went to the temple. We thought it was going to be this great experience. But what we saw in that temple was so freaky. That was their words. We aren't ever going back. We aren't ever going back.
So I find you the Mormon temple experience is supposed to be the high point of any Mormon's experience. It's so sacred and so important that only probably one in ten Mormons ever gets to do it.
So anyway, here I was in this dilemma and basically I didn't know what to do. So I started praying and fasting. And that's what you're supposed to do if you're a Mormon's.
The Mormons have this interesting approach to spiritual discernment. They say that if you have a spiritual dilemma, you want to pray and fast.
And if the answer is a true answer that you're seeking, you'll get a burning in your bosom. If it's a false answer, if the answer is no, the Lord will supposedly cause a stupor to fall upon you and you'll even forget what you were even thinking about.
So either you get a heartburner, you get stupid. That's your choice. And I prayed and I fasted and I didn't need to get an answer.
And so for various reasons, my wife and I moved back from Milwaukee to my wife's hometown of Dubuque, Iowa. And there I found a prophecy seminar flyer one day in one of the local little nickel advertisers, you know.
And this and they were going to talk about the truth in the book of Revelation. And I thought, gee, I just taught a course in the book of revelations.
Plus, I come from a church that has a living prophet. And so therefore, I could really show these people what's going on. You know, I thought I was going to steal some sheep. I didn't think about that way, of course.
But so I went there and mind you, this was the first time I had ever crossed swords with a guy that knew the Bible. No one had ever witnessed to me. And I was, let's see, I would have been 35 years old at this point.
I didn't know what was going on. And this guy, no matter what I threw at him, he had an answer. He was slashing me alive with the sword of the Holy Spirit, which is, of course, this book.
And finally, I threw the one thing at him that Mormons always used on Protestants.
Where do you get the authority to baptize people so they can be saved? Now, why is that such an important question? Well, you see Mormons believe there's only two possible true churches. Either the Catholics are right, and they have this unbroken line of success, you know, all the way back to Peter the Apostle and, you know, all the way up the line.
Or the Mormon church is right because the Mormon church teaches that the Catholic church apostasized in the third century, and there was darkness for like 1200 years. And then Joseph Smith came along and restored the gospel and his fullness and pristine, wonderfulness.
So, you know, if you're Protestant, you don't have a leg to stand on because either you're an offshoot of the Catholic church and they cut off the branch so you're going to fall in the dirt. Or you're not a Mormon, so therefore you have no authority. Where do you get your authority? So that was the question I raised.
You know what this guy answered me with? It was so great because he knew my issue was nothing to do with authority.
He said, "Where do you get the idea that you have to be baptized to be saved?" It says in Acts 1631, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and now shall be saved and I house." And that verse went through me like a bullet through a sheet of wet tissue paper.
And I was just, you know, when I threw my magic Mormon underwear too, I'll tell you. And anyway, I couldn't believe it. I was trembling and I went home that night and I remember my hands were shaking on the steering wheel. And I thought to myself, could it be that easy? Could it be that easy? Just believe and be saved.
So I went home and I prayed and fasted some more and prayed and fasted some more. And I remember a few years prior to this before joining the Mormon Church Invent that I had these comic books that some believe in on some Satanist's giving either a Christian comics.
And I remember they had in the back this thing about four steps that you can do if you want to become a born again Christian. And I thought, well, Jesus, I've tried everything else, practically. And those of you that know my story know that I virtually blonde to the cult of the month club, you know.
I tried everything I thought I might as well try this. And so I rummaged around, found one of those comics. I took off my magic Mormon underwear because I didn't want any static on the line. I knelt at the foot of my bed.
And you know, just me and God here, you know. And I prayed through those four things and you know what? Jesus Christ saved my soul at that moment. And I became born again, hallelujah. And at that moment I was translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.
And I'll tell you, I nearly went through some spiritual decompression at that moment. You know, these fish that are way down the depths of the sea and you bring out the top of the...
They explode like a balloon. Well, that almost happened to me, but not quite. It was really a wonderful experience. And at that point, I felt so full of joy.
I felt so full of life. It was like, you know, someone was pumping electricity through my veins, you know. And I never felt this way before in years of practicing magic and years of being this devout hard working because at this time I've been in the Mormon church over four years.
And so I thought, well, maybe this is some kind of supercharged Mormonism. You know, so I went back to the Mormon church. And I was a Sunday school teacher at this new ward in Dubuque.
And so I'd go into class and people would say, well, how are you? But I'm great. How hallelujah, praise the Lord. And Mormons don't do that. I mean, you don't hear Mormon talk about that. They're all very quiet and self-spoken.
And, you know, they'll talk about how they love God and everything, but they're just very... They're not very exuberant, you know. And so people started looking at me funny.
And along the way, my wife discovered what had happened. And she said she'd realized she'd come back to the Lord a few years, not a few years, a few months before that. And so she realized, okay, we're back together now, you know.
So we realized we were both saved. And so we decided, okay, we're going here. And so we prayed about it. We stayed in the church a while. I had some conversation with various church leaders.
I remember this one fellow. He was my elders, Quorum President, because I was in a new ward and had a different position. And he asked me why I was thinking of leaving the church. And I said, well, I'll tell you what.
I have 32 questions about the Book of Mormon. And if you can answer me those questions, I'll stay in the church. So I asked him these 32 questions, and he couldn't answer one of them. He just could not answer one of them.
And so very soon after that, I demanded a high council court, because I was an elder, and so I could get a high council court. And the minute I had my name taken off the church roles, because I asked for the court,
I got to sit there in that court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Cedar Rapids stake of the LDS church. And I got to, because once they gave me the floor, they couldn't take it away. So for three solid hours, I witnessed to them.
And I, my pastor was allowed to be in the room with me as long as he didn't say anything. So he was behind me, praying up a storm, I'm sure. And so ultimately, you know, of course none of them would admit I was right.
But they had no answers. All I could do was say, well, I just want to bury you in my testimony that Jesus is the Christ, and Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, and the Book of Mormon is true.
And so at that point, I went on my way, but at that meeting is when God gave me a vision.
Now, if I'm spooking any of you out by saying that, but I had a vision of a sidewalk, a solid sidewalk, which represented the cults. And all of a sudden these flowers were cracking up through the cement.
And they were like new people being saved every day out of the cults. And this is what God was calling me to do. And that was the beginning of our ministry with one accord. Right then and there, that was in 1985.
And about a year later, I started in full-time ministry. So anyhow, praise the Lord for that. Let's get into now what's going on with the Mormon church.
First of all, we need to talk about where it came from. What's the story? It's a quintessentially American religion. In fact, there's pulling out a religion out there that is more American than Mormonism.
And I say that in both the best and the worst senses of the word. And we'll see what I mean by that in a moment. How did Joseph Smith get his start? Well, the Smith family was a peculiar family.
He grew up in upstate New York at the beginning of the 19th century, rural family. And basically they were involved in some rather odd practices.
The father of the family, Joseph Smith's senior was a full-blown occultist. He was involved in an occult group that went out and did water-witching, endowsing, and digging for buried treasure that was called the wood scrape. Don't ask me why they called it that.
Mrs. Smith, Joseph's mother, that that's her. I don't know how you can see that picture. She looks kind of creepy to me. But anyway, her name was Lucy Mac Smith. And she said in her autobiography that her family cast magical circles and practiced the faculty of Abraq.
It's from the word Abraqadabra, which is everybody knows, you know, Abraqadabra, it's a magic word. So that was a turn that was used in that time for practicing not just this isn't just minor league of cultism. This is high level ceremonial magic. They were casting magic circles and they were doing occult things.
So anyhow, at this time, there was a revival sweeping through the area. This is again, Laurent Palmyre, New York. And I guess the Methodists were having revival meetings and the Presbyterians were over here having revival meetings. And lots of people were getting saved. There was a great excitement.
In fact, it was so there was so much going on spirit. They called that area of the East Coast, the burned over district because there were so many revivals, you know, it was almost burned over with revival fire.
And Joseph Smith's story, the official story is that he was wondering which the join because the Methodists were saying join us. The Presbyterians were saying join us and the Methodist Episcopal Church was saying join us.
And he didn't know which church to join. Now, he supposedly had never read the Bible in his life. He was like a teenager. And they had this big old, honken family Bible. It was obviously gathering dust in the spider web somewhere in the Smith cupboard. And he hauled it out and the book just happened to open to James 1.
And he looked at James 1 and it says, "If you act with him, let him ask of God, give it to all men liberally and up braideth not and it shall be given him."
Now, that sounded pretty good to him. So what he did is he went out and went to the woods and prayed. This is the official story. And what happened is first of all, he supposedly was overwhelmed with great darkness.
To such an extent that he thought he was going to lose his very life. It was so dark and suffocating. Then all of a sudden, this pillar of light shone down upon him. And he saw these two glorious personages, as he called him, a spring in the light.
And the one person is gestured to the other and said, "This is my beloved son. Hear him. I have to apologize for what I need to go get in book as I forgot to get. So give me a second here."
This is my old triple combination from when I was a Mormon. It's got the Book of Mormon, "Dotern Covenants, Pearl of Great Price in it." Because I want to read this verbatim.
This is what they said. He says, "I asked the personages which stood above me in the light, which of all these sects were right. For at this time, I had never entered my heart that they were all wrong. And which of them I should join."
And in verse 19, this is Joseph Smith history, chapter 1 verse 19. "I was answered that I must join none of them for they were all wrong. And the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight, that those professors, in other words, the people who professed those creeds, in other words, Christians, were all corrupt.
That they draw near to me with their lips, with their hearts are far from me. For doctrines, the commandments of men have a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."
In verse 20, it says, "He again forbade me to join with any of them." That's right out of the Mormons. So realize that the Mormons believe that your church, whatever church you're going to, is an abomination.
Whether you're a Baptist or a Pentecostal or a Lutheran or a Methodist, it's an abomination. And then all you are corrupt.
So when they start talking about how ecumenical they are, this is right in their standard works. So anyhow, then we have the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.
Joseph Smith, later on, was given a vision of an angel, supposedly who appeared in his bedroom. And this angel was another glorious personage in glowing robes.
And he identified himself as being the angel Moroni. Now if you haven't found the angel Moroni, you're a Bible, don't worry. He's not in there.
He, it's a unique name out of the Book of Mormon. And Moroni was supposedly a living prophet back 400 years after the time of Christ in the Americas.
And he told Joseph Smith over the course of several visits like this that there was ancient scripture buried nearby on golden plates.
And that this was the story of an ancient American civilization that it existed thousands of years ago. And Joseph Smith would do the right stuff and prove himself worthy that he would get these plates.
So for three separate years on the night of the autumn equinox, this angel would appear to him at September 21st.
And finally, the third time he led him to where the plates were. This is all right out of the official history of the church.
dug up the plates and then by gift and power of God he translated them because naturally these plates were in English. They were in a strange language called reformed Egyptian, which by the way does not exist.
But that's what Joseph Smith clandered. And as he brought forth this story, it was about basically, and I've got to keep this brief, but that there were some Jewish people who fled Jerusalem by boat at the time of the prophet Jeremiah.
When the city was about ready to fall, okay. And they came by boat to the new world. And this headed up by Lehigh. And he had two sons, well two main sons, Nephi and layman.
And layman was kind of a stinker. And Lehigh was just pardon me. Nephi was very good. So you have kind of like the old K and Abel thing again.
When when Lehigh died, the the sentence of layman started getting really nasty. And the sentence of Nephi all became very righteous and good for a while. And because these laymanites as they came to be called were so bad and so wicked, so evil, the Lord smote them with a dark skin.
And they came to be known as what today we call the Native Americans. So that's the Mormon explanation for where the Native Americans came from, is that their Jews that had their skin darkened because they were so loathsome and filthy and evil.
Whereas the Nephites, this is right out of the Book of Mormon, were white and delightsome. So you can see what's happening here, okay.
So anyhow, this goes on for several centuries and there's so many bizarre things in the Book of Mormon. I wouldn't even have time to go into them. But suffice it to say that in the climactic moment of the Book of Mormon is that when Jesus dies, darkness comes over the face of the New World.
And after he rises from the, I think there's this big earthquake too in which thousands of people are killed. And then after that, Jesus comes to the New World. He descends down on a glorified resurrected body and starts a church in the New World.
And he sets up 12 just like he had in Jerusalem and sets up his church just like in Jerusalem.
This is how they will often portray the Book of Mormon as another testament of Jesus Christ. And we tell people, no, it's a testament of another Jesus Christ because the Jesus of Mormon is not the Jesus of the good book. Anyway, so this, everything is fine for a while. The Lamanites become converted, the Nephites are all holy and righteous and white and delightsome.
But then some bad stuff starts happening. It starts to be wars. And from by the time of the year 421, there's this climactic battle. And I don't know how well you can see that, but that is an old engraving of a hill, an upstate New York called Hill Kumora.
And this is where the final apocalyptic battle took place in the New World, where over 150,000 Lamanites slaughtered a handful of Nephites. And this is worse than the Battle of the Alamo folks. I mean, this is bad. Now, the thing you got to realize is this picture you're seeing there, the hill is roughly about two city blocks in size.
And supposedly 150,000 people were slain on this spot. I am amazed they had room to fall down, amen. But I mean, because you think about it. I mean, two blocks. You know, how could you fit that many people? And then the funny thing is is that the Mormon church has been digging around that hill for a long, long time trying to find and having found an arrow.
And now mind you, the Lamanites during this period supposedly had full armor. You know, they had breastplates, they had little helmets. You know, they had swords and they haven't found any of this ever.
So in the last just before I left the church, the Mormon church came up with an interesting explanation for this. Are you ready for this? They say that what happened is, is that this ancient battle actually took place in ancient America.
Down in like, Mesoamerica, say you could tan or someplace like that. But since Joseph Smith lived in upstate New York, God had to pick up hill, Camara and move it up to upstate New York for a few months so Joseph could find the plates and then he moved it back down to Central America.
Now, if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn, I'm going to sell you, but anyway.
So that's the end of it. Now, one final thing though. Oops, went the wrong way. At this battle, where is one surviving guy? And his name was Moroni. I believe. Now, it could have been Mormon, I forget this. I had a Mormon or Moroni, but those are two of the last great American prophets.
I'm a little rusty at this folks. I left this church in 1985. So anyhow, I think it was Moroni went and took this chronicle of all of these events, which was on these gold plates and buried it, knowing that someday God would lead some great prophet of God to find them.
Okay, and that's, that's the story behind the book of Mormon. So Joseph had this book.
And basically what he did is, he used a peepstone, which is like a crystal ball to translate this from Reformed Egyptian into English.
He got the book published. He somehow raised the money to publish the book. And then in 1830, he started what he originally called the Church of Christ.
Later on, it came to be known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Now, here's an interesting thing about this. Is it a cornerstone idea in the Mormon church? Is it you can't be baptized unless you have authority?
Okay, I mean, unless the person who baptizes you has authority. Where does the authority come from? Well, the authority comes from the priesthood.
So if you know how to hold a priesthood, you can't baptize anyone. So folks, I'm sorry, all of you are not really baptized. Even though you probably hope all of them baptized by immersion at some point in your life.
Well, it didn't count because the person who baptized you did not have the priesthood. Now, you might ask, well, how did this get started? Well, when I talk about the great baptismal charade, this is what I mean.
Supposedly, on the banks of the Susquehanna River, I think it was near Harmony, Pennsylvania. John the Baptist appeared to Joseph Smith in one of his compatriots. I think it was Oliver Caldry.
And told him that they had to be baptized. And so he gave them instructions. And he said, okay, here's what we're going to do. Joseph, you're going to baptize Oliver.
And then you're going to give Oliver the priesthood. And then the Oliver is going to baptize you and give you the priesthood. Now, think about this. Where did this come from? I mean, you know, if you can't hold the priesthood unless you're baptized.
So even though Joseph baptized Oliver, he didn't have the priesthood to do it. This is confusing, isn't it? And then you think about why didn't just John the Baptist do it? He was there. He's like the world's greatest expert on baptizing people. Amen.
I mean, you think if anybody can go out of baptized, it'll be John the Baptist. Plus Mormons are taught that John the Baptist held the fullness of the Aaronic priesthood. He was the last great Aaronic priest.
But he didn't do it. He just stood there and held his hands while, you know, Oliver's jumping Joseph and Joseph's dunking Oliver and I know one of them has a priesthood authority to do it.
And on that shaky foundation, I mean, you think the Catholic church has problems. This is the shaky foundation upon which Mormon priesthood and the whole idea of the Mormon authority comes from.
And see, this is interesting. When I was made in elder, I was given a card that I could carry around in my wallet that had my priesthood line of succession.
And it told me this guy ordained me in elder and he was ordained in elder by so on so on. All the way back to either Joseph Smith or one of the three witnesses.
And it's all a sham. It's all a charade. Now, this is one of the few pictures, a gravings we have of Joseph Smith.
And I apologize. It's just a little black and white etching. But as you can see, he wasn't a particularly good looking guy. Kind of had interesting nose and everything.
But he was quite a charismatic figure, apparently. And he drew a lot of people to him. But what was this guy really like? Well, first of all, was he a bolster? He most certainly was. Listen to this. This is from history of the church. This is an official Mormon document.
And it's from history. You want to look it up? It's history of the church volume six, 408 and 409. This is what he wrote. I have more to boast of than any man ever had.
I am the only man who has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. Neither Paul nor John, nor Peter nor Jesus ever did it. I boasted no man ever did such a work as I.
The followers of Jesus ran away from him, but the latter day Saints never ran away from me yet. Now, isn't that just godly and humble and all of that?
The interesting thing is, is the other thing, he claimed to be descended from Jesus Christ. See, in the inner circles of Mormonism, they are taught that Jesus was married and that he, in fact, he was a polygamist.
He had many wives. He had Mary, Mary, Mary, he had Martha. He had Salome. He had this little harem that followed him around because there's that one passage in Luke where it says that Jesus had these women that followed him and ministered to him of their substance.
And they claim that means that these women were his wives. And so Joseph taught, I think it's in the DNC, I should explain, when I say DNC, I'm not talking about a gynecological procedure.
DNC is doctrine of covenants in Mormonese. And I believe it's in doctrine of covenants 113.
He talks here about the fact that it says, what is the rod spoken of in the final verse 11, chapter of Isaiah.
It is a servant in the hands of Christ who is partly descended to the house of Jesse of the house of Ephraim and upon whom there's laid such power. And then it goes on to say that is the descendant of Joseph, upon whom Riley belongs the keys of the priesthood.
And later on it indicates this is, in fact, Joseph Smith.
Now, was he a glass looker? Well, what's that mean? Well, a glass looker is someone who looks in a crystal balls. And you see that little picture up there. That is one of Joseph's peepstones.
It was one of his special seer stones, which he translated the book of Mormon. And if you read David Whitmer's and address to all believers in Christ by eyewitness accounts, it says, what he did is, now figure this.
He had the gold plates over here underneath the blanket. He wouldn't even look at them. And he had this big stovepipe hat, think Abraham Lincoln.
And he put this peepstone in the hat and he put his face in the hat. And the peepstone would light up and give him the word and reformed Egyptian. And then it would give him the word in English.
And then he would tell the person who was there to scribe it down and that person would write it down. That's how the book of Mormon was translated.
Now, was he a money digger? Well, what does that mean? That's not like being a gold digger, okay, for that term. But this is a money digger. And the term in those days meant someone who fraudulently, all around and sell his services to, to, to, to, to, to, gullible people and claim that he could use a cult powers to find buried treasure.
See, now remember, this is the early part of the 19th century and there were a lot of these old pirates that had been found maybe 50 years before that. So there are all these stories about like blackbeards, treasure and all these different treasures.
And so Joseph Smith, and he was actually convicted of this in 1828.
Oh, I'm sorry, not in 1828. It was 1826. He was actually convicted in court of being an disorderly person and an imposter because he was selling his services. And this is, you know, six years after he got the book of Mormon, and you, and yet he was still running around claiming he defrauded people because he would claim to find buried treasure.
And he'd say dig there and they'd dig up the whole field and it wasn't there and he says, oh, I'm sorry, the evil spirits moved it. Pay me another dollar and I'll tell you where it went, you know. So, you know, the guy was, he was a con man. Now, what about this? Is he going to be our judge? Believe it or not? Yes.
Second prophet of the Mormon church taught in journal discourses volume 7289. This is Brigham Young. You probably all heard of Brigham Young. If nothing else, the university. He said, no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith.
He will be our judge. So we got Jesus and we got Joseph to contend with now. So if you are on Joseph's good side, I'm afraid you're going to get into a lower kingdom. Okay. Now, here's the other thing. Was he a Methodist? Now, people might say, well, what's wrong with being a Methodist? Absolutely nothing.
But see, here's the deal. Eight years prior to this, Joseph Smith, and I read you the account right out of Mormon scriptures, was forbidden from joining any church. And yet in 1828, he joined the Episcopal church.
Apart me, Methodist Episcopal church. He didn't stay long. You know why? They kicked him out because he was an occultist. But here he was. He was a voiceless, fledgling prophet of God who was never supposed to join any other church. And he ends up joining the Methodist church Methodist Episcopal church.
Another question, was he a free Mason? Yes, he was. According to the history of the church volume, 4551 and following, he got the first degree of Masonry on March 15, 1842. That was two years before his death. Then on March 16, one day later, he got the sublime degree of a master Mason.
Masonry is, of course, a competing religion. It is a false religion to any Christian religion. Now another question, did Joseph bed other men's wives? Yes, he did. See, he taught in section 132 of doctrine and covenants.
He taught that the new and everlasting covenant of marriage abrogated all old weddings, all old marriages were null and void. And that if you wanted to be married, you would have to come to the priesthood.
So he would go around and see that your wife was attractive. God has given me a revelation. And your wife has become my wife. And if you didn't want to get on the bad side of the prophet of God, you let him have your wife. And that was the end of your marriage, basically.
So when Joseph died, he had, I think 27 wives as the last cow. Okay, did he die in a cultist? Well, yes, he did. Because when he was shot, and we'll talk more about that in a few minutes, when he was shot, they found in his pocket.
You see that funny little occult thing up there on the screen? That is a Jupiter talisman. That is a picture of the Jupiter talisman, which he had in his pocket at the time of his death. Now that Jupiter talisman is supposed to be there to give him two things.
If you look it up in Francis Barrett's massive textbook, the Magus in the Magus, it is said that this particular talisman is number one to give someone success with women. And number two, it's supposed to help you have worldly power and possessions.
So it wasn't that spiritual. He wanted to get girls and he wanted to get money and power. So there we go. That's Joseph Smith.
Now, what happened is, is because of a lot of these obscure teachings, Joseph Smith was run from one town to another. Sometimes literally really not of town on a rail or tart and feathered.
And he went to Kirkland, Ohio first and there they built their first temple, but they were run out of town. Then he ultimately moved to Navu, Illinois, where they started their own little city there.
And Joseph Smith ruled this city like a tiny kingdom. And it wasn't that tiny because by this time Mormons were being converted all over the English-speaking world.
And believe it or not, Navu was bigger than Chicago. In the 1840s, it was huge. Of course, Chicago wasn't that big. Either you got to realize that.
Now, at this point is when Smith became a Mason, and this is interesting because he was made a master Mason in March of 1842. And just a couple weeks later on May 4th, well actually six weeks later, he suddenly from God got this revelation for the temple endowment.
Now the temple endowment are the secret rituals of the Mormon temple, which are about 70% similar to Freemasonry.
G, is that a coincidence or what? Anyway, well of course you know God works in mysterious ways. So at that point, he began secretly teaching to a handful of his inner followers the temple endowment as it is called.
Now, in section 132, I've already alluded to this, a doctrine of covenants, he introduced to a handful of inner people the concept of plural marriage.
And this is of course what most Mormons are famous for, even though they don't officially do this anymore. But listen to this, this is the beginning. This is Mormon scripture, okay.
Barely, let's say at the Lord unto my servant Joseph, then it is much as you inquired in my hand to no one understand where in I the Lord, talk about Burbian verbose, have justified by servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants as touching the principal doctrine of having many wives and concubines.
Behold and oh, I am the Lord, die God, and I will answer thee as touching this manner. Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive an obey the instructions that I am about to give you for all those who have this law reveal unto them must obey the same. Now here's the law. Behold, I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant. And if you abide not that covenant, you are damned.
For no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory. And if you go on to verse 18, he say, you know, if you marry a wife and make a covenant with her for time and for eternity, if that covenant is not by me or my word, which is my law and is not sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise through him whom I have anointed and appointed unto him, then it is not valid neither of force, whether they are out of the world or in the world, because they are not joined by me, stay at the Lord.
Neither by my word when they are out of the world, because they cannot be received there, because the angels and the gods are appointed there. And it says that these people will become gods, because they their siege shall have no end.
And now here's the killer verse verse 21 says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you abide my law, you cannot attain to this glory." So at this passage, I don't know how time to read the whole thing because it's several pages long, including a passage here where Emma Smith, Joseph's wife, is commanded to accept other people, other wives.
And Joseph's first wife was 14 years old, and at the time he was in his probably as late, I'd say early to mid-30s. Her name was Fanny Alger. And anyway, she was told that if she didn't approve of this, she was going to be in deep trouble.
I can imagine how fun it was to be in the Smith House hold for a while. So anyway, remember this, because this is important later. If you don't accept plural marriage, you're damned in the Mormon church.
Okay, so things got progressively stranger. Joseph Smith was crowned king of the USA later on in the year 1844, and he even ran for president. How many of you knew that? The Joseph Smith ran for president.
Not that he was really a viable candidate, but what can you say? Let's see. What happened next is kind of interesting. He was incited for riot because you know what happened? A mob of people.
Pardon me, let me back up one step. Some people who were disaffected Mormons printed a newspaper in Nahu that revealed the fact that Joseph Smith had more than one wife.
This has never been revealed before. Even though it was sort of like the worst kept secret in the city of Nahu. And so Joseph ordered a mob to trash the printing press and destroy it. When the governor of the state heard about this, he had no choice but to order Joseph Smith arrested.
So he was arrested and because they knew there would be riots if they kept him in the jail at Nahu. Because see, Joseph Smith imagined a sinister version of Mayberry. Joseph was the mayor. He was the justice of the peace. He was the sheriff. And he was the general of the Nahu Legion, which was an actual army that he was raising.
On top of which, he was the prophet, seer, and revelator of the Mormon church. So this guy had all the power he could possibly have in that city. So they trundled him over to Carthage jail in Carthage, Illinois.
And a couple days later, a mob stormed the jail and he was shot by the mob. There's two theories as to why he was shot.
One is that the people had shot him and there were several. It was a fuselage of gunfire. Several rifles were involved. Is it some of them were guys whose wives he had stolen and they were upset with him.
The other theory is that the fingers on the triggers of those rifles had Masonic rings on them because he had revealed secrets of masonry to people who were not mason.
Now the other thing is that if you listen to some of the talk about Joseph Smith in the Mormon church, they say that he died as a martyr. That he shed his blood for us. Now think of that.
Now the thing you got to realize is that what he hears, here's what happened. Joseph Smith was up in the jail on the second floor and locked up, but someone had smuggled him a pistol.
And so people broke in the jail door and they were coming into the room after him and he shot and he fired two bullets and killed one guy and seriously wounded another guy.
And then he realized then the gun jammed. And so he started to climb out the window. And that's when he was shot by all these people who were out in the square.
And as he fell to earth, the official Mormon version is that when he landed on the ground, he laid down and he said, "My Lord and my God." And then he died.
Now that's not what the witnesses actually say. The witnesses actually say that as he was falling, he said, "Oh Lord my God, is there no help for the widow's son."
Now those of you that may have heard my talk on Mason, you would know that that is the grand Masonic hailing sign of distress.
And it's given by a Mason when they're in dire need of help. And of course he was. He was falling out of a second story window with bullets hitting him in several places.
But you know, and the interesting thing is, is that moment he was the son of a widow.
Because his mother had been widowed, his father had died a few years before that.
So, and really we don't know to this day who actually shot Joseph Smith, but he died and very unexpectedly.
And then we get into the controversy. Because prior to that time Smith had left a revelation.
That is, son Joseph Smith III would be a successor as prophet. But at the time of his death his son was just a kid.
There you see, Brigham Young. He was a very forceful personality and he was a senior apostle.
And he managed more or less by the sheer force of his will to kind of shove M.F. Smith, who was Joseph's widow, well one of his widows, out of the way.
And basically staged a bloodless coup and he became a new prophet. And he set the standard of succession.
Because ever since that time the Mormon church has been running the way that whoever is a senior apostle when the prophet dies, he becomes the next prophet.
Now Brigham was a really, you know, a very interesting fellow. He was a good leader. He was probably, in fact, a better leader than Joseph Smith was.
He didn't have a lot of Joseph Smith's character defects.
What happened with Emma Smith is that she took the child Joseph Smith's son and went off into hiding because she was afraid that Brigham might order him killed.
And then later on she started the RLDS church whose headquarters are not far away from here in Springfield, Missouri.
So that's where the RLDS church, the reorganized church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints comes from.
And it continues today as a very small church by comparison with the Mormon church.
They do not call themselves Mormons, by the way, even though they do use the Book of Mormon, they do believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, but they do not have a lot of the same weird doctrines as the Mormon church has.
Now, soon after this, the Mormons were run out of town by mob violence. Their temple is burned to the ground, which they were, "Oh, I should tell you this. This picture here, where did it go? I'm going the wrong way."
This is a deal. One of the few sketches we have of the Nauvoo temple before it was destroyed. They are just now rebuilding it.
And it's going to be, I think, open very soon. They're going to have a temple now in Nauvoo. If any of you want to go and have a special spiritual experience, you can go see it.
It's just over the river there on the other side of the Mississippi.
So anyhow, they're run out of town and Brigham Young gets the inspiration to move west.
And so he goes out there and in the Salt Lake Valley, this is the famous moment. It's immortalized by a statue now in downtown Salt Lake, where he stands there on the mountains and looks down on the Salt Lake Valley and says, "This is the place."
And that statue is there this day and the funny thing is, is he standing there and his hand is out and right in front of where his hand is, is the Zion State Bank.
A lot of Mormons find that rather amusing. But anyway, so they set up shop out there because they figured they were that far away from America that they wouldn't get hassled about their polygamy.
So he gets the inspiration to have all of these devout Mormons that are still in Nauvoo to pack up all their belongings because they didn't have enough money to get wagons, covered wagons or prairie scooners or conestobas or whatever.
And so they had hand carts and they trunnel across the prairie and the hand carts.
And this is, if you're a Mormon and you're descended from one of these hand cart pioneers, as they're called, that's one of the proudest things in your and your family is that you made it because most of them didn't.
A lot of them didn't. A lot of them died in the middle of the great plains and especially as they got further west because they had no shelter.
They were attacked by Indians. They were attacked by wild animals. A lot of them were just babes and woods. Many of them, in fact, were recent immigrants from England.
They didn't even speak the language. Sorry. We were over in England in January and December. It's hard to understand some English people.
Anyway, so a lot of Mormon people died in the middle of the wilderness. Even though they were trying their best and you've got to give them credit but they were following a pretty foolish council.
Now out in Utah, basically Brigham set up a kingdom out there. He ruled, in fact, many writers who've explored this period of Mormon history said if you want a good example of how Brigham young ruled out there, think of Jim Jones.
Think of Hitler because that's basically his word was absolute law. And he had his avenging angels, the Danites, people like Wild Bill Hickman, John De Lee,
and others who were gun slingers. And if you were someone like me, see I'm in a postate Mormon. I would be killed back then. Brigham young actually stood up in the tabernacle of the Salt Lake tabernacle.
I mean, the pulpit of the Salt Lake tabernacle and he had this big bowie knife and he waved it over his head to the congregation which was packed. And he said, anybody who was, I'm not quoting directly or anyone who was a nasty apostate,
we're going to go out and we're going to slip their throats and he waved and everybody goes, yes, yes, go, go.
And if you were an apostate, if you were not living according to all the laws of Mormonism, your life was in danger back in those days because of the avenging angels.
And it's interesting that to this day, the state of Utah is the only state in the union that has a church police force that can arrest people.
The church security system can arrest you if you're in Utah. So people joke that the Constitution is null and void when you cross the borders of Utah.
And I know I've had a few dealings with the church security system in there and not particularly nice people. But the interesting thing is, is because you see many of you may know I'm going to talk about this more later.
A lot of Mormons get into the FBI, they get into the CIA, they get into government. And so most of the church security people are former secret service former FBI or former CIA.
In fact, the guy that I dealt with, he had just been fired from the LA office of the FBI as the special aid in charge because he was a victim, wasn't a victim.
He was wrong, but he was the target of a lawsuit because he was refusing to promote agents of color, Hispanic agents and African-American agents were filing lawsuits against him and the FBI because, you know, Mormons have this little racist thing which we'll talk about in a few minutes.
So anyhow, additionally, of course, there was a lot of oppression of women because women were expected to be married and this usually meant polygamy because that was the law out there.
And many of these women, you know, they might be, you know, 15, 16 years old and they'd be forced to marry some guy who was old enough to be their grandfather because it was a sign of status, the whole year you were the more wives you had.
And I think Brigham Young when he died had over 50 wives. So in fact, the joke was that toward the end of his life, he was so fat, Brigham was that he had to be carried around in a chair by six guys and he had barely enough energy to sit up and bet every now and then and get married.
So anyhow, we talked about the Danites or the Avenging Angels, we already mentioned that.
And what happens is this became an increasing scandal in the United States. This was a big deal in 19th century politics in the 1860s. After the Civil War kind of settled down and was over and they were kind of that whole thing around the South and sort of, you know, kind of settled down.
And the next big thing the United States had to deal with and so they had what they called the Mormon Wars where the US Army actually went into Utah and started, you know, basically driving these church leaders from pillar to post.
And at one point, of course, this is Brigham and been dead by now. And I think it was the second or third prophet after him was running the show at this time.
The two things the church wanted, a it wanted to be left alone, be it wanted statehood for Utah for the territory of Utah. And the US government said, no way we are going to prosecute you guys because you're late past a federal law against plural marriage.
They were out there in force to enforce it. And so President Wilford Woodruff, who was the prophet at that time, he had a revelation in 1890 that this new and everlasting covenant marriage was now abrogated. It was null and void.
If you're a Mormon and you have another wife, you can be executed for it. For as before, if you didn't have another wife, you were damned. So, you know, it's interesting church, what did you say?
So anyhow, Utah got its statehood, but at the cost of it's a most important doctrine. And that's where the Mormon fundamentalists come from. Because to this day, there are over 35,000 polygamists in Utah.
And most of them are in fact fundamentalist Mormons who believe that the original LDS Church of Joseph Smith has apostatized and is out of line with God. And so they're the one true church.
Then we go along in the middle of the century, the church started to get established and began to move out of the fringe in the mainstream, probably the two first prominent Mormons to come into the public consciousness.
Some may old enough to remember when Ezra Taft Benson was secretary of agriculture in the Eisenhower administration. He was a Mormon. Some others you may remember when George Romney ran for president. He was a Mormon and he probably lost the presidential primary because of the Mormon stands on blacks.
Now, what does the Mormon stand on black people? Well, basically in the old days prior to 1878, black people could be baptized, but they could not hold any offices in the priesthood or anywhere else in the church. They could not go to the temple, they could not be sealed for time and all eternity.
You might well ask, why is this? Well, see Mormons have this cosmology. They believe that what happened is that before the creation of the earth there was this meeting of the gods. And yeah, Mormons are polymists, they believe in many gods.
And if there was this committee meeting, decide what to do about the earth. And Jesus raised his hand and said, I would ask that you would create all these wonderful people on earth and that I would go down there and I would show them by my example how to live a good life and in this way men might be saved.
Then Jesus's younger brother Lucifer raised his hand and said, I will go down and I will teach these people the gospel principles and I will force them. I will take away their free agency, which is the Mormon term for free will.
And I will force them to obey the gospel laws and in this way I will get all the glory. Well, the council voted down Lucifer and voted for Jesus' plan.
And so Lucifer got all ticked off and he managed to talk a third of the angels of heaven into rebelling. And a third of the angels lined up behind Jesus, including the archangel Michael, who will become Adam later.
There's a little secret you learn in the temple is that the archangel Michael is actually Adam. But anyway, sort of this big fight between a third of the angels that are good and a third of the angels that are evil.
And in the middle, where's the other third? Well, they sat on a sidelines and drank coke and waited. That's not literally what they believe. But they sat on a sidelines and waited to see who would win.
Now what happened? Of course, we all know Jesus won. The devil and his angels were kicked out of heaven and they became the demons.
Okay, the angels that sat on a sidelines and did nothing, they were cursed with a black skin because of their laziness. And so they were sent to earth and were basically not going to ever get the priesthood until every white person on earth had gotten it.
Now what about the angels that fought on the size of Jesus? Well, they would be white and delight some. And they would come, this is the book of Mormon, you're white and delight some.
And anyhow, you go down there and you would get to be born into Mormon families. Oh boy, what a deal. And that way you can have the fullness of the everlasting gospel from when you're even a little kid.
So, and if you read the writings of Mormon prophets like Joseph F. Smith and Joseph Fielding Smith, these are all like we can probably tell relatives of the original Joseph Smith.
They would say stuff like, oh, the blacks are filthy and lazy and loads some people and they would talk about their ugly curly hair and their big noses. I mean, it was like reading Ku Klux Klan literature. Well, what happened?
Oh, the other thing I forgot to tell you is the interracial marriage is a definite no-no. The black people are basically under a curse because of their inability to fight valiantly in the pre-existence.
In the 1970s, though, two things happened. One is the Mormon church started growing like crazy in Brazil. Now, I don't know if any of you have been down to Brazil, but it's a very multiracial society. And it's very hard to tell down there, who's what?
And the Mormons used to teach you if you had even a single drop of black blood, you could not hold a priesthood. And basically, the Brazilian government told the Mormon church, if you don't get rid of this doctrine, we aren't going to let you in here.
We aren't going to let you build a temple down here. Then the other thing that happened is, guess what? The IRS came along. Everybody's favorite organization, right?
The IRS said, unless you change this doctrine, we're going to take away your tax exempt status. That hurts. You know, the same thing to Bob Jones University, if you remember.
So the Mormon church, guess what? See, this is how wonderful God is. He even obeys the internal revenue service, right?
In 1978, the prophet at that time was Spencer W. Kimball. He was this little guy that looked like Yoda. And I'm not kidding. He actually, you look at pictures of him. He looks like Yoda. He said he wasn't green, of course, but otherwise.
And he got this revelation in 1978 that now blacks could hold a priesthood, and that we're all one big, happy, interracial family now.
So that's the story on the black people. So since that time, blacks can hold priesthood offices. They can go to the temple if they I remember.
There's a big article in the church news, which is, you know, obviously the official church newspaper, the Mormon church, when the first black couple got sealed in the temple, and they were standing there in their white suits, because see in the temple, everybody wears white.
And they were, you know, so they were, I mean, can you imagine being a black person joining the Mormon church? I mean, that's like, you know, being a Jew and joining the Nazi party or being a black person and joining the Ku Klux Klan, but they do it.
They have, and most of now the black people are in the Mormon church. Either A, have never heard about this doctrine, because now it's like, you know, 22 years old. And the Mormons are great at rewriting their history.
And let me tell you a little story about Mormon history. Brigham Young University has always had very strict dress codes. If you're a man, you can't have sideburns below here. You can't have a beard. And you can't have any more than the most minimal moustaches. And of course, you have to have a nice short Mormon missionary type haircut. No hippies at BYU. Let me tell you.
Well, anyway, one of the wise and hymns, student leaders who happen to have a beard said, well, gee, there's a statue right in the courtyard of Brigham Young University of our founding president. And he had a beard.
Now, what do you suppose the response of the Mormon church was to that? They chiseled off the beard off the statue. I kid you not. I kid you not.
So as far as I know this day, you still can't have a beard. In fact, I was telling some brother here last night that or wherever it was, maybe it was this morning that.
That I had to shave off my beard. I had a beard most of my adult life. And when I became a, I was born president. They told me you got to get rid of that beard.
Because it's not godly. And I said, but Jesus had a beard. And he said, well, that was 2000 years ago. And I said, yeah, but Brigham Young had a beard. And you should have seen Joseph, wait, let me see. Joseph Fielding Smith's beard.
He looked like one of those zizi top guys or whatever they had had the real long beards. And as well, we don't care what dead prophets did. Our living prophet doesn't have a beard. And so therefore you can't have a beard.
So I shaved it off. And right after I got saved in 1924, my first act of rebellion, my first act of freedom in Jesus Christ was to grow this beard back. And I've had it ever since glory to God. Hallelujah.
Anyway, oh dear, let's see. All right. So moving along.
The Mormon church has always been rather infamous for not liking to talk about its past very much. They very much believe in the principle that was stated in the, I don't know how many of you read the book 1984.
In there, it was the model of the ministry of truth that those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future.
And so there's all these stories in the Mormon church, even among Mormons about the church vault and how there's this vault, big walk in kind of like a small bank vault in the first presidency's office building where all these secret documents are that have God knows what you know stuff in them.
And we don't know what any of this stuff is, but it's really exciting stuff. And of course Mormons are into genealogy. They're into, they love their history. They just don't like certain parts of it.
And so in fact, many, most Mormons are encouraged to do their family history to keep journals, you know, and all of that. There's nothing wrong with any of that in and of itself. So they're very much into that kind of thing because of that they're into documents.
Now what happened in the 1980s, was there was young fellow Mark Loffen who was picture you see there. He was a return Mormon missionary who was supposedly very good at finding documents ancient documents.
And he found several intriguing things and sold them for a lot of money. And then he found this letter that was called the can't even know as the salamander letter.
Because in this letter, it was supposedly written by the collider Joseph Smith, their closest associate of Joseph Smith about how the angel Moroni was actually a salamander.
And that the angel quote unquote that it brought forth the book of Mormon was a salamander. Now what's a salamander? I'm not talking about the lizard. The salamander is a fiery elemental being in the occult.
So basically what this guy did this often is he went to the church leadership. He actually went to the prophet at this time Spencer W. Kimball and he said,
"I don't want the church to be damaged by this. I love the Mormon church." And this could really hurt Joseph Smith's reputation in the book of Mormon.
So I'd be willing to sell this document to you for like $300,000. And they bought it. I'm not sure of that figure. Don't quote me on the figure, but it was a lot of money. It was at least a couple hundred grand.
And a church has, and it makes more money than that every time it turns around. But anyhow, later on it was found out to be a forgery.
Oops, there goes the prophet. I mean, you know, if he's a prophet, why couldn't he see this as a forgery? So this young man, he ended up getting into more and more financial trouble because he was selling documents that he himself had forged. And he was so good, the FBI couldn't even tell it was a forgery. That's how good this guy was.
And he got in some financial trouble and he ended up putting pipe bombs in two people's, one guy's office and one person's garage blew up one of his business associates to kingdom come. They were full of nails.
Nasty stuff. And then the other fellow, he put him in his driveway in a box and the fellow's poor wife went out, picked up the box, blew her up.
And over the course of a few way and then and then he in his own, I think he had a little VW it blew up with him in it.
They assumed he was another person who was a victim of the bomb, but then the forensic people got in there and realized he wasn't killed by the way.
Hoffman was not killed, he was just very badly injured that this was it, that he was the bomber. And so he was put on trial and was a big scandal for the church. And basically, Hoffman plea Barton and an exchange for, you know,
pleading down the crime because he murdered two people, basically in cold blood. And the Mormon church was terrified that it would have to get on the witness stand that it's leaders, Kimball and Hankley and some of the other high level leaders actually have to get on the witness stand because this made them look really bad because here it's supposed to be profit, steers and revelators.
And yet they were taken by this, you know, 25, 30 year old kid, you know, so he got basically a smaller sentence than a typical guy that knocks over a gas station in downtown Salt Lake.
So that's that's what's happened now in recent years something has happened since the presidency of the prophethood of David Oman Kay who rained from the 1950s to the early 60s.
He was a salesman, that's how he made his millions and he started getting the idea that the Mormon church should present itself door to door just like you sell vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias.
And they had a great sales pitch going and the church started really growing in the 1960s and it started mushrooming. I mean, there was like 4 million Mormons by the early 1970s by the time I was in the church, it was up to 8 million.
And it was growing and growing and growing and getting richer and richer and richer. And but at the time I left the church, the church was crowding 10 million people.
And today is one of the wealthiest, most powerful churches in the world.
The reason for this astonishing growth other than the fact that they use these sales type techniques I think is partly because especially in the last 20 years the Mormon church has gone to a lot of advertising.
I'm sure many of you have seen the TV commercials. They have tons of money to spend this church is wealthy beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
And in all their advertising and everything they've been doing in the last 15, 20 years, they've been de-emphasizing the things that make them unique.
And they've been trying to appear to be just another Protestant church. So for example, if you were to go in the visitor's center at Salt Lake Temple Square, you would find a lot of the things that I saw when I was a Mormon aren't there anymore.
Things about the vision that Joseph had and the sacred grove, things about the priesthood and all of this stuff. It's all gone now. Everything's now about Jesus.
And they keep talking about how the Book of Mormon is just another testament of Jesus Christ. So because they've managed to kind of if you will lie by omission.
And on the other hand, throw millions and millions of dollars of advertising money at this. They have really been able to grow very well to the point that they are one of the fastest growing churches really in the world today.
Now, what do these people believe? What makes them so far off course? Well, basically, first of all, one of the fundamental concepts underneath Mormonism is the idea of what they call the great apostasy.
This is the idea that at some point back in time, probably around the time of Constantine, the true Church of Jesus Christ fell from grace.
It basically went belly up and became co-opted by Constantine, who was of course the Roman Emperor that supposedly became Christian. And since that time, the church has been in darkness.
There's been no true gospel, no true prophets, et cetera, et cetera. So that was the first problem. Then, so we got over a thousand years of spiritual darkness.
Of course, this is interesting because Jesus said that you know, you would build this church upon the rock and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.
And he also said at the end of Matthew 28 that he would be with us always even under the end of the age. So something's a miss here. But anyway, they believe that then during the Protestant Reformation with Luther and Calvin and Knox and some of the others that the light began to redone.
But that was just a preparation. The real light dawned when Joseph Smith, Jr., in 1830 restored the fullness of the everlasting gospel as they call it.
So that is one fundamental belief. And that was reflected in the scripture I read you from their work out of the Joseph Smith history and the Pearl of Great Price that all churches today are basically apostate.
You know, what are Catholic Protestant evangelical pen and costal doesn't matter. All churches today are essentially apostate. So that's their one concept that's very central.
Therefore, we have a need for living prophets today. They will tell you, for example, that the Bible, for example, the eighth article of faith of the Mormon church says,
"We believe the Bible to be the Word of God and so far as it's translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God." Now, look at that. There's no caveat with the Book of Mormon. They believe the Book of Mormon is absolutely pristine, perfect and true because it was buried in a mountain for basically 6th, no, 2th, 1100, 1200 years.
Okay. So it's pure. The Bible, Joseph Smith has told us, has been tampered with by corrupt priests and monks over the centuries. And so therefore, it cannot be trusted and we need a living prophet to help us know how to interpret the scriptures.
So, you know, that's why we need a living prophet. Another concept within the Mormon church, and this sounds kind of funny, but a living prophet is better than a dead prophet. Now, in a way that sounds sensible. I mean, obviously if you're alive, it's better than if you're dead. But on the other hand, what that means is, is that if Isaiah says something and the living prophet today, Gordon B. Hinckley says something else, what Isaiah said doesn't matter.
Because Gordon Hinckley is our living prophet right now. And what he says is what counts. Okay. Now, in the Book of Mormon, basically they have what are called four standard works. And these are all canonical books for the Mormons. Okay. First of all, there's the Bible, of course. But then there's this triple combination I mentioned earlier. The Book of Mormon, the doctrine and covenants, and the pearl of great price.
So, these three books are also part of sacred scripture, according to Mormon doctrine. Now, another key belief that in the Mormon church it separates Mormons from other other churches, is their belief that families are forever.
In fact, I had a Mormon friend when I was a Mormon, told me that he says, if you don't really believe families are forever, you try going on a trip in a car to Disney World with eight children. And if families aren't forever, they sure seem like they're forever. By the time you get to Orlando.
So anyway, they believe the family unit continues after death. If, and only if you are a temple Mormon who is true and faithful to all your covenants. Now, see, they believe they can go to the temple. And we're going to talk more about this in a few minutes, but they can go to the temple and be sealed for time and all eternity and carry on their marriage into heaven and beyond. And my wife and I did that.
And what this means is they can have internal increase of their seed. And we'll talk more about that later. Another distinctive belief of Mormonism is they say that there's three duties of the church to preach the gospel, to perfect the saints and to redeem the dead.
Now, I don't have any problem with the first two, but the third one is a little bit odd. They believe they have to redeem the dead. Now, what does that mean? Well, that means that they see they look at there's those two passages in Peter where he talks about Jesus going and preaching the spirits in prison.
And for this cause is a gospel preached to them that are dead. They claim what happens is that if you died before the time of Jesus or if you died even say right now, but you were some kind of aborigining your person who lived out in the middle of Africa somewhere and you never heard about Jesus, you never heard about Joseph Smith.
You know, because you got to know about both of them to really be saved, you understand that. So therefore, what do you do? You go to, you die, you're going to hell. Well, first of all, Mormons don't exactly believe in hell, but we'll discuss that a bit later.
But the idea behind what they do is they believe it is their mandate to go and do genealogy for everyone who's ever lived.
They believe that they, they, and right now they have millions of names in their genealogical database. They spend untold amounts of money going all over the world.
And this is the church itself looking in church records in Europe, checking cemeteries, checking courthouse records all over the world, literally trying to find the names of as many dead people as possible.
And plus, each individual Mormon, part of your duty, one of your commandments as a Mormon, is you have to do your own personal family genealogy back at least four generations or more.
So you have to figure out who your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and great, great grandparents were, and get the days of their birth, the days of their death, and the days of their marriage, if they were married.
When you get that information, that is sent into the genealogical library and salt like city where it's processed. And if it's found to be acceptable, then you go and you do proxy work. It's called work temple proxy, proxy temple work for the dead.
And what this means is, is that you go to the temple, and if it's a relative of years, that's one thing, or it could be if you don't have anybody that you've done recently, they'll just give you a name and random like, you know, large store strand or something from Norway who died back in 1870, and you go through the temple for him.
And you get baptized for him, you receive the priesthood for him in proxy, you go through your endowans, and if he was married, you get married to his wife by proxy, if that information is available.
And what they believe happens then is that up in spirit prison, Mormon missionary angels come and knock at your door of lars, whatever is his name is, and Mrs. Lars, and says, okay.
You've just gone through all your ordinances down on earth. Do you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith? And if they say yes, then poof, they instantly go to the celestial kingdom. If they say no, they go down.
So that's how it works. And that's why Mormons are so into genealogy. And that's why if you, I mean, I'll tell you, if any of you are doing that as a hobby, and I don't believe there's anything wrong with genealogy,
the best place to go to get records is the Mormons now have a website, or you can go and you can look up your family line and everything. They're very good.
You know, they've spent, they've spent a king's ransom over the years. But here's the funny thing about this is if you look at it, it takes about an hour and a half to two hours to do somebody in the temple for the dead.
Because that's how on that, that's flat out as short a time as you can do the ritual. And you can only do it one at a time. And I can hear when I would go to the Washington temple in DC, because that was our temple.
They'd have a computer readout that actually show you, okay, tick, tick, tick, you know, because there might be 150 or 200 people in that temple at the same time all doing rituals for the dead.
They keep track of it, but the Mormons can't even keep up with the death rate. Right now people are dying faster than the Mormons can do them.
To say nothing of the fact that they're supposedly someone figured out Lord knows how, that there's over 13 billion people who have lived on the earth since the dawn of creation.
And the Mormons got to do all of them so far they've done several million, but that's a long way from 13 billion. So anyhow, it's kind of, of course they believe they'll have the millennium to do it. And that's what they think they're going to spend a lot of their time in the millennium is doing work for the dead because when they're in the millennium they won't have to work for a living. So anyway, who knows.
So that is, I don't know how you can see the picture, but this is where I was baptized for the dead 42 times in one day. That is the baptismal font for the dead. And if you'll notice it looks just like the Brazen Sea that's mentioned in the Bible. It's supported by 12 Brazen Oxen.
And the thing on top there that looks like a cereal bowl, that's the font. And by this is an older picture by the time I was in there to actually have a computer monitor there.
And it was a huge large monitor and it would bring up the name. And I would walk into the font and they'd say, you know, brother Snowblan having authority in the name of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for on behalf of Clement Snowblan in the name of the father and son of the Holy Ghost.
And then the next name would come up, brother Snowblan having authority, blah, blah, blah, and so I got baptized 42 times in one day because some lady in the war because you see only men can do men and only women can do women.
So like I had to ask my wife to go through for my departed mother. So that is the baptismal font in the temple in Salt Lake. It's the nicest one. And it is something to see. It's quite awesome.
Okay, I guess we talked about this. Okay, now here's the other thing. The other neat, not neat concept, but key concept in the LDS church is the need for the priesthood.
They believe that without the priesthood, you can't do anything. There is no authority without the priesthood. You can't be baptized, you can't be sealed, you can't be married, you can't have your sins forgiven, nothing.
All of the power is contained in the priesthood. It's not quite like what you're thinking of saying the Catholic church because in the Mormon church, everybody over the age of 14, it's a man has the priesthood. It's a male.
Unless you're some real low life or something. I mean, if you're some evil person that smokes or drinks coffee or is out there, you know, smoking or chewing or going with girls that do or whatever, you know, then you won't get the priesthood.
But normally you get the priesthood if you're 14 years old. Anybody at the age of 14 can do the sacrament, which means their Lord's supper. You can baptize at the age of, I think it's 14 or 14 years old, you can baptize people.
So all of this is within an entity. There can be no prophecy. There can be no authority without the priesthood. And I already talked about how shaky the foundation of their priesthood is about the baptismal charade and the cesspool of Hannah River.
So, but this is a key idea of theirs. They don't believe exactly like Christians do that there's a priesthood of all believers. If you're born again as Peter said, you're part of a royal nation, a holy peat, wait, no, peculiar people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. That isn't what the Mormons believe.
So they believe that only man hold the priesthood. All women have this cute little thing they say in the church. People say that women in our church don't hold the priesthood, but every night when I go to bed, I hold the priesthood.
Meaning she hugs her wife or husband, you know, in that cute, doesn't it just make you want to go, ooh, anyway, high level of triacle in the Mormon church, let me warn you.
Okay, what about the sacrament? Well, when the Mormons say to sacrament, it is a thing they do once a week and it's kind of like a Protestant communion service. They have two elders or occasionally priests up there in front and they have the table with the little cuppy things just like you probably doing your churches, except they use wonder bread and water.
That's what their sacrament is. They might occasionally if someone gets real ambitious, one of the relief society sisters, and I should tell you the relief society is the woman's auxiliary of the Mormon church. Their motto is charity never faileth.
And it's the relief society that is responsible for doing all of the charitable work in the church. They are famous for being able to produce a casserole on demand. Virtually instantly they can have a casserole. If someone is sicker of some sisters come home from the hospital just having a baby, bam, there's 20 casseroles door within five minutes.
I mean, it's phenomenal. But anyway, so every now and then a relief society sister will make some homemade bread, but they just use regular old bread. They just I can remember many times standing in the back of the the sacrament of the the meaning hall breaking up the loaves of wonder bread, the little chunks and having it sit on this little gold platter, you know, and then they go out there and they pray over it and they and it's not, you know, it's pretty much like the Protestant idea of communion.
But you know, the question is asked why water? I mean, does water look like blood or why I mean the least grape juice? Well, the story is that one time and this is this one of those Mormon stories, you get lots of what they call faith promoting stories in the Mormon church.
The story is that one day Joseph Smith had sent somebody out to get a cake of wine to use for sacrament meeting and they were coming back with this cake of wine on their back and this was in the middle of some controversies about the church and an angel stopped him.
And he said, why are you stopping me? And he says, because someone has put poison in that casc of wine. And so they dumped it out and they use water. And so Joseph Smith decreed at that point that we should always just use water because it's very hard to poison water and it's so easy to come by and everything.
Well, I believe there's a reason for this and that is it's a very good way of keeping people from thinking about the blood of Jesus.
Because if you're meditating on this hunk of winter bread and this little cup of water, where's the blood? It's a bloodless thing. And that's because Mormons don't believe they're saved by the blood of Jesus.
In fact, an early Mormon apostle, Orson Pratt, now hold on to your seats folks. He said that the blood of Jesus has no more power than the blood of a dead dog.
You know, imagine where he is now? Anyway, that's the sacrament and they do that once a week.
Now there's bearing your testimony. This is another important thing. Now when Christians think of testimony, they think of, you know, okay, this is how I got saved.
That's, I gave you my testimony an hour ago or so. Well, that's not what Mormons think. Mormons believe a testimony is when you get up there and you say something to this effect.
I bear you my testimony that God lives, that the Mormon church is true, that Jesus is the Christ, that the Book of Mormon is true. By the way, I really love my wife. And I really love my kids. And I love my little, my baby.
You know, they literally grown men break down and cry. It's kind of sweet in a way. And it's genuine. I don't doubt for a minute that it's genuine because I did it.
You know, they're up there in front of a 200 person ward, weeping about how much they love their wives or they'll have little kids, you know, five year old kid gets to think, I really easy.
That Joseph Smith is a prophet and I believe in Jesus' name, amen. They get him started real early, almost when you're knee high to a seagull, you're up there giving your testimony.
And notice how Jesus is hardly mentioned. Okay. Now, on fast and testimony, I mean, this is when they train people because once a month, and I don't think this is a bad idea, what the Mormon church requires is people to do is on one Sunday a month, they fast.
And they take all the money that they would have spent on food for that day and give it to the church welfare fund. And then that's distributed to the poor of the war.
And then the fasting is like, I like Christians believe it's supposed to help them be more spiritually attuned or whatever. And then it's the one week of the month where nothing is scripted.
Because usually everything in a Mormon church service is scripted. And I got to tell you one thing about the church. If you ever go to a Mormon church, prepare for some world class boredom.
There are no trained speakers or preachers in the Mormon church because there's no professional clergy. Usually it's teenagers getting up and reading some article out of the Ensign magazine or it's some insurance salesman.
I think Ensign's salesman, they're not great preachers usually, getting up and mumbling their way through some article they tried to write or some woman getting up and talking about how baking bread relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And how great it is to have home food storage. That's the Mormon meeting usually and every word has to be approved by the bishop. You have to present your cloth in advance to the bishop to be sure it's doctrinally correct.
And mine understand the bishop like a pastor. I mean, when we think of bishop, we think of some guy who's high up there somewhere. But in the Mormon church, a bishop is just the head of a local congregation.
So anyhow, this is this fast meeting. Testimony meeting is the one weekend of the month where you can get up there and say anything you want. And you got to understand something in Mormon circles. It's very bad etiquette to interrupt someone under bearing their testimony.
So some people might get up there and start out fine and say I want to bury my testimony to Jesus is the Christ and Joseph Smith is true and blah blah blah and he starts saying, Oh, and by the way, I believe that Jesus is coming back in a UFO and that they're ancient American air feels down and down and Peru and that flying saucers landed down there.
And by the way, I love my wife. I mean, it could go on for hours literally. We had some sacrament meetings that were fast meetings that ran like a half hour to 45 minutes over time because there's no way to stop them until they say in Jesus' name, Amen. That's it. You got to sit there and listen no matter what builds they might be spouting.
And so it's I used to kind of look forward to it, you know, because you never do it was going to have an otherwise everything was so drollingly monotonous and boring. I mean, you know, it was more interesting to watch ice melt than it was to go to a Mormon church service. But I did it out of a sense of duty because I really love the church. And I figure, well, somehow or other, I'm getting brownie points for this up in heaven. It's another brick in my celestial mansion. Yes.
You know, well, here's the thing. In fact, I got to talk. There's a cartoon. And one thing I will give the Mormons. They do laugh at themselves. There was a cartoon in a Mormon magazine where it showed these two guys coming up to heaven and there's this one guy who's like this, this haggard looking prophet, you know, and he's in chains and you you kind of think of a Dmitry Dutaman type person who's been horribly beaten for the gospel and tortured and you know, all of this.
And he's up there and the angel says, well, you know, why should I let you into heaven and he goes through this whole thing about how he was tortured and tormented horribly and this and that. And okay, you can go in.
The next side comes up and he's this sort of nice normal looking guy in a certain time. He says, how about you says, well, I was a fateful Mormon. I sat through sacramenies my whole life.
Oh, you get a higher place in heaven, you know, because it was more torture to do that than it was to be beaten with an inch of your life. The Mormons know it's boring. They just sort of put up with it. But the thing about these testimony meetings is it's a kind of mind control because Mormons are trained like this from birth.
And if you watch a Mormon and they start doing this to you because invariably they will if you start really witnessing to them and really kind of pressing them a little bit, of course you want to do it in love. But all of a sudden watch their eyes when they start doing this. Well, what do you say might be so, but I bury you my testimony that the Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and Jesus Christ lives and that the Mormon churches watch their eyes their eyes are like going.
You know, like, you know, they're like they're hypnotized and the weirdest thing you can do to them at this point give you a little secret. This is like spiritual warfare training. Okay. Is if they start doing this to you, you say, wait a minute.
And they'll go, I mean, it's like you you knock them out of their trance and you say, why do you believe Joseph Smith is true or true prophet or whatever. Why do you believe the church is true? What rational reason do you have?
And then what they'll tell you, well, I have a burning in my bosom. No, that's what they will say. They will literally say that.
My heart felt strangely warm when I read the book of Mormon. Yeah, what did you have for dinner that night? Anyway, so that's the sacrament meeting and the fast and testimony meeting and it's a very important part of the Mormon thing.
Now they also believe in temples and restored worship. They believe that their temples are virtually identical to the temple it's solemn built. And it's the holiest thing they can do is to go and part take of their own endowment. Now what's an endowment?
Well, it means literally a gift and they believe the endowment is the most important gift they can receive. And that's the ability to marry for time and all eternity and to receive the tokens of the priesthood, the sacred secret tokens of the priesthood.
Now, eternal marriages and work for the dead also can only be done in temples. Then there's the word of wisdom. This is the LDS health code that's found in section 89 of Doctor and Covenants. Basically, it's this no alcohol, no tobacco, no caffeine.
They didn't use that word, of course, in the original revelation because nobody knew what caffeine was. They basically said to stay away from hot drinks and the church over the years has interpreted that to mean coffee tea or any caffeinated beverages, what are their hotter cold.
And then it says, "And most Mormons ignore this last thing. It says, "Meet only sparingly or in winter."
Then they have the food storage in the bishops warehouses. It's true Mormons do take care of their own, but only their own. What do I mean by that? Well, they have an astonishing church welfare system that a lot of churches could learn from. They have their own industries. They have woolen mills, they have canneries, they have farms, they have ranches.
And what happens is if let's say you lose your job, which is happening a lot nowadays. Well, you go to your bishop. And you say, "Bishop, I'm sorry, I can't support my family right now." And they don't encourage people to go on welfare at all. In fact, they're very proud of the fact that very few Mormons are on welfare.
So what they'll do is they'll give you free food every week. For as long as you need, if necessary, they'll pay your electric bill. That's what this fast and testimony money is for. But additionally, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You have to go and work in the local cannery, the local woolen mill, the local farm, whatever.
And work the amount of money to pay that back because they believe that idleness is a sin. And none of this is really wrong. I think it's kind of a neat thing that they're doing. But they will never take care of someone that's not a Mormon. And this is kind of freaked out a few people.
And so sometimes people donate food and it's taken to what is called euphemistically the Bishop's warehouse, which is really not the Bishop's warehouse, but it's somewhere in the community. And they have, I mean, it's like going into a supermarket. You can actually go and shop there.
In a city where there's lots of Mormons. I mean, that may not be true around here. But if you were to go out to like Idaho or Utah, you would find Mormon supermarkets that are called Bishop's warehouse.
And if you present a note from your Bishop saying that you can go there, you can go and shop and it's all free. Doesn't cost a thing.
Okay. In fact, when I ran into some hard times and for a while the Mormon church provided us food. It provided us with insurance money every month, the parent medical insurance.
It was a good deal. Of course, you have to be faithful. If you're not a good Mormon, they won't do that. If you haven't been paying your, oh, we have to talk about tithing for a minute. Because Mormons don't get this.
A typical faithful Mormon ties at the rate of 25%. Now think of that. Because they're required to give 10% of gross. Whatever their gross income is, you've got to give that right off the top. God gets it.
And I think that's fine. But now in addition to that, they have their church welfare offering. They have their church building fund offering. And they also might give money to like, say, help build a temple in the region or something like that.
And so a lot of Mormons end up giving about 25% of their gross income to the Mormon church. And if you don't do that, A, you don't qualify for church welfare.
B, you don't get into the temple. You cannot ever go to the temple unless you're a faithful tithe pair. And they see the bishop.
If you go to the bishop and ask to have a temple recommend, which is a little card you get so you can go to the temple, they have the keys of discernment.
And they can tell if you're not a full tithe pair. And they can tell if you're cheating on your wife or they can tell if you're not paying all your income tax.
So that's another whole thing. But that's why the church is so wealthy. It's because partly, because first of all, it invests things very well.
It has some of the great captains of industry are the heads of the Mormon church from any given generation.
Most of the people that run the Mormon church are self-made millionaires. And they know how to use their money. They know how to invest it wisely. And also because people tithe so generously.
Because if they think if they don't, they're damned. See, because we have the age of grace, amen.
You know, we believe, oh, we can give whatever we want. You know, a lot of you know, here's a quarter for you, a pastry. You know, well, you know, and what are you going to do?
There are good things and bad things about grace. But I believe in grace, believe me, I'm not knocking it.
Now, here's what's wrong with the Mormon church. And I believe there's certain things that we can agree to disagree about.
You know, like do you have wine or grape juice in communion? Do you baptize by sprinkling or dunking? Do you sing the old standard hymns or do you do worship choruses? You know, that kind of stuff.
All of that's not important really in the vast scheme of things. But there are certain non-negotiable things that make you a Christian.
The nature of God, what do you believe about that? Who is Jesus? What must I do to be saved? And the Bible and the nature of Revelation?
So, when we look at these things, this, we're going to use this grid, so to speak, and examine what Mormons believe about these things.
Well, first of all, the Mormons deny the Trinity. They believe that the Trinity is a pagan concept. Instead, they believe in a polytheistic universe.
Now, that's a big word, but it means essentially that there's many gods. Early Mormon prophets taught that there are more gods out there in the universe than there are sands on the seashore.
They believe that our God, who rules over our solar system, his name is Elohim, and his son is Jehovah. Now, Jehovah is the pre-existent name of Jesus.
So, you know, already we're a little weird here, but anyhow, they believe that our God is under other gods.
That there's a committee of gods above him that if he does something wrong, they can fire him and replace him with a different God.
Okay? So, obviously, this is not the supreme being of the universe. This is just some local Tin Pot deity.
Now, also, God the Father is not a spirit, but he is a man of body, parts, and passions with everything that means. In other words, basically, if you'd want to imagine the Mormon God, think of it as kind of like Superman without the blue underwear.
That's what God is. He's an extraordinarily wise, extraordinarily powerful being, but he's not all powerful. He's not all present. He's not all knowing.
Okay? He might be in one corner of the universe need you have to send an angel to fly off to a different part of the universe and tell him what's going on over here in Pro-Mixus Centauri or something. So, he is not omniscient.
Now, additionally, they have a, I think it was Lorenzo Snow, who was one of the early Mormon prophets, he said this. As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.
In other words, you can become a God. If you're a worthy Mormon man, you can become a God. And if you're a worthy Mormon woman, you can become a domestic goddess.
You ever wonder where Rosanne got that expression domestic goddess? That's because she was raised as a Jew in Utah.
Did you know that? And believe it in a howler, this is totally irrelevant. Her father made his living selling crucifix's door to door in Utah. And he was Jewish.
No wonder she's a little screwed up anyway. So, that's literally what women believe. They believe that they will be goddesses someday and the men believe they will become gods.
And that is one of the cardinal Mormon doctrines called the law of eternal progression. Now, the Bible on the other hand says this. God is not a man that he should lie, not a son of man that he should repent.
I'm not going to read this whole passage, but in verse 8 there it says, God is speaking. He says, "You are my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yeah, there is no God. I know not any."
So if God doesn't know about any other gods, how come there are all these gods out there? Is he ignorant or what?
Okay. And of course the Bible also says, "I am the Lord. I change not." So this idea that God can evolve, that he can be a man and an evolve into Godhood is not true.
And of course Jesus himself said that God is a spirit. So, then we have Jesus. That's the famous statue of Jesus that is in the... It's an awesome statue.
It's about 20 feet high in the Mormon Visitor Center in Salt Lake. And basically Jesus is just the son of God, but he is not Almighty God.
He is our elder brother. His younger brother is Lucifer, and then we're behind somewhere where all Jesus is little brothers and sisters.
So we're all qualitatively the same. There's no difference between me and Jesus except Jesus is older and wiser and smarter.
Jesus is also begotten by God the Father having sex with Mary. Now most Mormons, they don't even know about that doctrine. But it was taught to me in a meeting by a general authority as recently as 1984.
So that isn't some ancient arcane doctrine they no longer believe in.
So basically think about it. Mary is one of God's daughters according to Mormon theology, and he came down and had sex with her to produce Jesus. So Jesus is a child of celestial incest.
The Atonement had nothing to do with the cross. We already... In fact they believe that the Atonement took place in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus suffered there and sweat great drops of blood.
So notice how all these different groups, all these tippy-toe around Calvary. They don't want to talk about Calvary. The J.Dubs don't, the Mormons don't.
Devil doesn't like that cross. But the Bible says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. First Timothy 3, 16 without controversy, great is the mystery of God in us. God was manifest in the flesh. That's Jesus folks. That's Jesus.
And of course this talks about how it says that the Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Matthew 1.20. I'm running out of time here. So again this is the same thing the Holy Ghost should come upon me, the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. That's what it teaches.
Now what about salvation? Well, there's three degrees of salvation in the Mormon church, three degrees of heaven. If you're this kind of couch potato boso who maybe you go to church on Christmas in Easter or maybe you're even some low life like a pimper, prostitute or a drug dealer, you know, whatever.
You're going to go to the celestial kingdom. And that is basically a place that just like this, it's got storms, it's got disease, it's got pain, it's got injury, it's got mosquitoes and gnats. And that's where you're going to be for all eternity.
Now if you're a worthy, hardworking member of any religion, Buddhist, Lutheran, Catholic or whatever, and you're living up to all the light you have, you'll go to the terrestrial kingdom as will most Mormons. This is a place that's like the Garden of Eden where you'll live on earth for all eternity in paradisical glory.
And you'll get to see Jesus because Jesus will reign over this kingdom, but you will never see Heavenly Father.
The celestial kingdom, this is for the elite few Mormons who have been to the temple and kept all their covenants therein. And there they will see Heavenly Father.
Now there's, you got to keep at least 600 commandments and also the word of wisdom.
Temple covenants are needed to be obeyed at all times, being true and faithful to those covenants. There's four laws that you're introduced to in the temple.
Law of obedience. Basically the husband swears, he puts his arm to the square and he swears that he will obey God and all church leaders as if they were God.
The wife swears that she will obey her husband as he obeys the Lord as if he were God.
The law of sacrifice is that you basically are willing to offer everything that you possess, everything that you have to the further and so the kingdom of God here on earth, in other words the Mormon church.
The law of the gospel is basically the idea that you have to be a member of the church in order to be saved. The law of chastity is that you are, you keep yourself pure. Basically it's what the church any Christian would believe.
You keep yourself pure until marriage and after marriage you're faithful to your wife.
Who is really damned? Well, Bruce Arma Kankee says that anybody in the Mormon church that is not making it to the celestial kingdom is eternally damned.
Now only one in ten Mormons goes to the temple and of them only about half of them ever return and of them only about half have their temple recommend and are considered worthy.
So that means the Mormon church is somewhere around a 95 to 97% failure rate. Most of those people are damned.
Wouldn't that be a great church? Join our church and you've got a one in ten chance of making it. Isn't it wonderful to be part of the true church of Jesus Christ where you're saved by simple faith and grace, you know, Hallelujah.
Blood atonement. Why are there firing squads in Utah? This doctrine is not well talked about anymore. Mormons are very embarrassed by it but it's in the books.
There are five things for which the blood of Jesus will never atone. Murder, adultery, homosexuality, apostasy from the true church and marrying a black person.
Those are the five unpardonable sins and if you commit one of those five sins the only way you will ever get into any of the kingdoms. Any of the kingdoms is to have your blood spilled out upon the earth so that the smoke of its incense might ascend to heaven.
Think about that. That's why I and Ed Deckherr and many others who have left the church of Ed death threats against us. But like I tell people my dad can beat up their daddy man, Hallelujah.
But they believe the only way to save us is to kill us. Think about that.
That's why if you ever heard of Gary Gilmore, he was a guy in Utah who was a gas station. I mean, I'm sorry he was a crook who robbed a gas station shot the guy and murdered him and he was not a very good Mormon but he was a Mormon and he begged to have a firing squad and they did they shot him because he knew that was the only way he was going to get to heaven.
But the Bible as we know says we are saved by grace through faith without works. Now what about Revelation? Well, Mormons believe the Bible is flawed and insufficient. It needs to be corrected by a living prophet. We've already kind of talked about that.
Now here's the funny thing. We've mentioned before what's in this triple combination. Book of Mormon, daughter of the Covenant, Pearl of Great Price. But there's problems with these things. For one thing they contradict one another.
The Book of Mormon for example contradicts many LDS doctrines. Now let me explain what we mean by that. Just as an example, I've mentioned already Mormons deny the Trinity.
Let me read to you. This is right out of Mormon scripture. Let's see. We're going to go to 2nd Nephi 11/7.
That's one of the books in the Book of Mormon. 2nd Nephi 11/7. Not to be confused with Great Nephi. Any of you watch "Mash" in the old days?
Okay. It says that there is a God and he is Christ and he comes us in the fullness of his own time.
That sounds like pretty good preaching, doesn't it? Jesus is God. Then we go to 26/12 with the same thing.
Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God. Pretty good. Now all of this is contrary to Mormon theology.
31, chapter 31. This is, listen to this. This is right out of the Book of Mormon.
And this is the doctrine of Christ and on the only and true doctrine of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God without end amen.
Now that's clear than the Bible. I mean there's only one verse in the whole Bible, which is 1 John 5, 7, which of course all the apostate Bibles remove, that teaches that.
You know, and there's about three or four other places where the Book of Mormon clearly teaches the Trinity and if the Trinity is a false doctrine. I could do that same thing with about five other major Mormon doctrines.
Why is that? Well, it's because the Mormon church is a quite, is a crazy quilt religion that was put together patchworked over time and Joseph's misteachings, believes changed from the 1830s to the 1840s.
But he was stuck with this book. He couldn't change it once he published it. You know. So there, the only answer to that is that a living prophet is better than a dead prophet.
And so therefore a dead prophet has the right to contradict, apart me, a living prophet has the right to contradict a dead prophet.
Here's some examples. Brigham Young said that no black person would hold a priesthood until every white man ever who lived on the earth, living her dead had received the priesthood.
Prophet Kimball contradicted this in 1978.
Joseph Smith said that no one could attain the highest degree of glory without plural marriage. President Woodruff made it a excommunicable offense to marry more than one wife.
So, you know, I tell people the Mormon God changes his mind more often than his underwear.
Then there's the temple. I wish I had time. If you want to know more about the temple, you really got to buy that book that Stan showed you Mormonism's temple of doom.
But basically there's three parts to the temple endowment ceremony. First of all, there's washings and anointings.
This is where you go through and you're virtually nude. You just have this little like, "Srap A thing over you."
And your private parts, et cetera, are washed and anointed by other members of your own sex.
And then you're given this magical underwear, this temple garment that's supposed to protect you from danger, from the power of the destroyer, as long as you're here on your mission, here on earth.
That's done first. Then you're given your little package of sacred temple robes and sent upstairs.
Then you go through the creation room, the garden room, the celestial room, and finally the veil on the celestial room.
This is, I don't know how long you can see it, but I was in this room. That is the celestial room of the Salt Lake Temple.
You see that little staircase there? That's where God pardon me, where Adam and Michael, pardon me, Adam and Jehovah come down the stairs to create the world.
And that little altar there, you see that little white cube in the center. That's where a person who represents everybody, kneels at that altar and swears, oaths and covenants to keep the laws of that particular room, of that particular world.
This is the celestial room. And what you do is, you go through and you learn these secret hand shakes and these secret words.
And finally, you're ready to go up to the veil. There's this veil that separates the rest of the temple from the celestial room.
And this veil has a square encompassing it. And the way it works is, you come up and you've been prompted on this.
You come up, you put your foot to the person on the other side of the veil's foot.
Knee to knee, hand to back, breast to breast, mouth to ear and you embrace through the veil and the guy on the other side, you've got your hand shake thing.
And the guy on the other side is representing Heavenly Father. And you whisper the secret and effable name of the second token of the Melchizedic priesthood into his ear.
And if you know it, he will usher you into the celestial kingdom. I bet you're all just dying to know what that secret and effable name is.
Well, you're ready? Health in the naval, marrow in the bones, strength in the loins and in the sinews, power in the priesthood be upon me and upon my posteriori throughout all generations of time and all eternity.
I want a heck of a name, isn't it? Now, it doesn't even mention Jesus. I mean, that's actually the incantation. It really is. I document that in my book.
But anyhow, you're ushered into this room. And it's important that you understand that they believe that God the Father literally is in this room. He's walking around in there.
It is like the holy place. Now, you see that little room in the center where the dark door is? That's the holy of holies.
No one is allowed in that room except the 12 apostles and the prophet. No one ever goes into that room.
But if you've gone through the temple, you can sit there a while and you can feel the presence of God in that room.
I didn't feel anything, but you know, who knows? Anyway, and then there's the marriage room.
That's it. That's the ceiling room. And this is where you get your eternal increase. If you can imagine the man, the groom, kneels on one side of that altar.
The bride kneels on the other side. It's beautiful marble with a polstered kneeler. You take each other's hands and the patriarchal grip across that altar.
And there's a, you see that kind of throne-like chair behind the sealer guy who is, he's a high priest who has direct keys from the prophet.
There's only, you know, probably a hundred of these men in the world that have this authority to do this. And he will stand there and he will seal you for time and all eternity.
And that means you will go on into the attorneys. You will have, whoops, wrong way. You will have eternal increase. That means you'll have babies all through the attorneys.
And, you know, you will have thousands and thousands of spirit children. If you're a more and wife, you're going to be eternally pregnant.
You're going to be always pregnant. Isn't that special? Anyway.
The temple ritual was so similar to Masonic ritual that for a century the grand lodge of Utah declared that the LDS church was a clandestine lodge. In other words, a fake Masonic lodge operating without warrant.
There are heavy influences, both witchcraft, occultism and free masonry in the temple rights.
Witches also believe you could be married for time and all eternity. Do you know that exact same idea except they, you know, you don't by the way that Mormons believe in heavenly mother.
There's actually a Mormon hymn about heavenly mother. And then God and heavenly mother are up there. One guy actually figured it out just to keep going with the United States. God has to have sex every seven seconds to keep up with the birth rate of the United States.
And the fellow said it's a wonder he has time to run the universe. You know, he's having sex every seven seconds. And of course that's why he needs many wives because obviously a woman can only have one or maybe two or maybe three babies at a time.
You know, under normal conditions. So he's got a harem up there of hundreds of wives because he's got to keep the whole earth populated.
This exaltation process, which is what they call becoming a God, they call it your exaltation. It could take millions of years. Now, this is what this is what you get.
If you make it through all this, if you keep all your covenants, you'll eventually get your own solar system, all yours.
You know, kind of like those sim city games, you know, on the computers. You populate it with your very own spirit children, millions of them, millions upon millions of these spirit children.
Families are really forever. Hallelujah. But what happens to your first born son? See, you're going to have to have your own Jesus.
Your first born son is going to have to go down there incarnate and die on the cross for that particular planetary system. And then they'll all be saved.
And of course, I already mentioned the idea of a spiritual of a celestial harem up there. So it's funny. A lot of people have called Islam, apart me, Mormon is in the American Islam.
There's a lot of resemblance as they both have a prophet that started that they both have fake scripture. They both have fake revelation. And they both have this polygamy thing going on.
And they both believe that heaven is basically going to be like the playboy club. Okay, I already talked about that. He will have to go down and be crucified to save the people on that planet.
Then there's a sociology of Mormonism. The tragedy of polygamy, polygamy is still going on today. You probably all heard last year in the news about that that fell out in Utah who had five wives and they really threw the book at him.
He was a fundamentalist Mormon and there's thousands of them in Utah. Plus it is still practiced secretly today, even within the Mormon church. I know because I was asked to take another wife myself because see there's a lot of women.
You got to realize women, if you join the Mormon church and you're single, you're damned. You will never get to the celestial kingdom.
Because if you're not married, you're out of luck. Sorry, ladies. And so the answer is especially for either women who might be married like this fellow that was or this woman who was presented to me, her husband was a Methodist, would never join the Mormon church. He made it very clear.
And the bishop came to me and said, "This guy is never, this woman is never going to make it unless you want to take her on as your second wife."
My first wife, Sharon, said, "Not surprisingly, so I do believe it is still done." Plus there are women who have come to us both before and after our salvation who told us that they had been horribly abused right up to an including clitorectomies when they would not obey the priesthood.
When they would not obey the patriarchal order in Utah, now that's not done out here, but that kind of stuff is done in Utah and in Idaho where the Mormons are in power and they pretty much know they can get away with almost anything.
Plus child abuse runs very high in the Mormon church, sadly enough.
Now also women have no voice, they have no priesthood power, and on resurrected morning you better watch it. Because here's what happens in the temple. When you go through the temple, I get my name, my secret name that nobody knows except the president of the temple.
My wife gets her secret name, but I know it. You know why I need to know it? It's because the Mormons believe that on resurrected resurrection morning Jesus will crack the skies and he will stand over the cemetery where I am praying and he will say, "My secret name happened to be Joseph."
He will say, "Joseph, come forth and be up by come." And then I'm supposed to turn around to my wife and call her forth by her secret name, but if my wife burned the pot grows too many times or if my wife was kind of a shrew or maybe I didn't like the way she wore her hair, and I've heard Mormon men do this.
You better watch it dear, you bring that pot grows one more time, I ain't calling you out on resurrection morning. Now maybe they were kidding and probably they were, but think how sexist that is. It's a kind of bondage.
Utah has the highest level of teen pregnancy of any state in the Union. Families really are forever. They have an usually high teen suicide rates. You want to know why that is?
They have very strict moral standards, which is fine, but any, and I repeat, any sexual sin must be confessed face to face to your bishop.
If you masturbate, if you fornicate, if you have a homosexual encounter, if you even look at a dirty picture, you have to go and confess that to the bishop or it's not forgiven.
Any sexual sin and some other serious sins have to be confessed to the bishop. And it's not even like the Catholic Church read to you under a little box of being anonymous.
You have to stand there and face this guy, you know, who you so admire and so look up to and blushing furiously, you have to say, "I masturbated."
And some of these young men and maybe young women, they actually go out and shoot themselves. They're so embarrassed because they can't live up, see there's no grace in the Mormon Church whatsoever.
And if you are caught with any of these sins, you cannot go on a mission with a very important kind of right of passage, if you will, especially for Mormon young men.
If you go to the bishop and say, "I have a problem with masturbation," your mission might be postponed for two or three years until you can prove that you're pure and you can go like a couple of years without committing any kind of improprieties.
So, you know, there's also a lot of spouse abuse because many men believe that they have the right to smack their women around, although to the Church's credit, just about the time I was leaving the Church, the Church leaders started speaking out against that.
Gee, it only took them 150 years. A lot of women have problems with addiction, not addiction to drugs, well addiction to drugs, but prescription drugs.
So, in the 1970s and 80s, had the highest rate of value of use of any state in the Union among women. Why do you think that is? Well, imagine this. You have 8, 9, 10, 14 children.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, one after another. You've got to be perfect all the time. You have to have this perfect Maribel Morgan smile on your face all the time.
You have to be constantly available to your children, to your husband, you know, whatever all the time you can ever have a problem.
You know, a friend of mine who was an ex-Morman too, he was in Idaho in a shopping center and he saw this sweet little Mormon wife and he knew she was Mormon because you can tell it 'cause the Temple Garment, you can often see it through their shirts or whatever.
And she was standing there waiting to check out and she had the perfect dress, you know, perfect, they all more and more like, look like June Cleaver, you know, dresses, pearls, perfect hair.
Except June Cleaver only had two kids and plus she had Ward. I mean, he was a real man's man, you know, anyway.
And what happened is this one of the standing there, she had an infant in the cart, a toddler beside the infant in the cart.
Another toddler just, it looked like they might have been twins down on the ground next to her who was pulling on her nylons and pulling them to the point that they were shredding it.
There was another kid who was about three years old who was like this in his own standing there and she was trying to have this smile and you can just see it and kind of start to crack.
Like at any moment she would, you know, grab something and go postal. You know, he said he really felt sorry for her because he could tell she was trying so hard to be perfect.
I mean, it's hard to raise that many kids even if you got the Holy Spirit. Amen, women, you know, imagine if you don't. Imagine if you got an unclean spirit.
And so there's only two ways Mormon women have an out. One is chocolate. The other one is prescription drugs.
And so usually you end up having either Mormon women that are chocolate addicts or a lot of them are addicted or abusing in some way psychotropic drugs with, you know, the consent of their doctor or psychiatrist.
So, and they're still struggling with a race issue.
To this very day, a lot of Mormons are very racist. It is still believed clandestinely. They don't talk about openly that marrying a black person is an unpardonable sin.
And plus the Mormons treat the Indians very badly. One fact, the only Navajo general authority, a general authority is like a high level kind of like a cardinal in the Catholic church.
There was a Navajo named George P. Lee, who was a general authority. He was a member of the council of 70. And he resigned from the church. He accused the church of spiritual genocide.
Because what it was doing, see Mormons used to teach that if a Lamanite that is to say an Indian became a Mormon, they would turn white.
That used to be part of church doctrine because that happens in the book of Mormon.
But since it never happened, they kind of backed off that. But they would adopt Indian kids off the reservation in the Mormon families, strip them of all their cultural identity, and make them be white in the lights, even if they weren't.
And this legal guy got real upset with the hand. It caused a big scandal in the late, in the early '90s. He stalked off the church, made a big mess.
And he even told a friend of Ed's, Ed Decker, I used to work with, he said, he stood in the room of the guy who is now the prophet of the church, the time he was second in command.
And this guy looked down from his office down into the, like a 60 story office building. And he said, he stood there like this, and he says,
"All the gold in the city flows through my veins, and I'm a living God." That's when he decided it was kind of bug-honest thing. This guy was like a Megalomaniac.
Okay, politically, they originally experimented the Mormons did what they called the United Order, which was a communist economy, which never worked very well, as we know communism never does. And they believe it when we brought back in the millennium.
They believe the Constitution will hang by a thread. This is right in their scriptures. And if the elders of Israel, meaning the church priesthood leaders, will save the United States, they will be the only ones who can do it.
Yet all LDS leaders who were 75 or 80 years old or older, in the early days when they went to the temple, one of the oaths they did is they had to promise that every single day they would call down curses upon the United States of America to avenge the blood of the prophets Joseph and Hiram Smith, who were both shot at Carthage Jail.
The guy who's the current prophet did that. They have never repented of doing that. Then there was the famous council of Yit Fif. This was started by Joseph Smith, clue, it's 50 spelled backwards.
Joseph Smith started this. This is the council that crowned him king. He was crowned king of the United States. Yeah, isn't that? A really clever conundrum there.
He also called this group the Illuminati. He believed he was going to become king of the world, ultimately. Of course he was shot first.
Today the Mormon church, actually in the 60s the Mormon church, I don't know how many of you heard of W. Cleone Scousam. Very famous constitutionalist, patriot, former FBI agent, he's a Mormon. I think he's now deceased.
But he started the Freeman Institute in the National Center for Constitutional Studies. These are inner groups within the Mormon church, although non-Mormons can certainly join them that are designed to further the political agenda of the Mormon church.
Because the Mormon church believes the Constitution was inspired. Their agenda is to get a Mormon in the White House. There are many huge numbers of Mormons in the CIA and the FBI.
At one time one of four of five of the joint chiefs of staff were Mormons. Many of the highest level presidential advisors have been Mormons.
Here you see some of the significant LDS statesmen in the US in the last 50 years.
Yeah, Orange Hatch is a very devout Mormon. In fact, if you if you know this, you can watch him in committee meetings on C-SPAN. He'll use his priesthood voice.
Mormon leaders actually have a priesthood voice. And if you know what to listen for, you can hear it's kind of this mellow authoritarian kind of voice.
They want to get a Mormon in the White House. What will happen probably, in fact, they were Mormons were hoping that Orange Hatch would be a vice presidential candidate.
They now don't think that's going to happen. And then they believe God will kill the president. And then the vice president will become president.
And away we go. And he will become prophet. And he will start a theocratic kingdom in which the one mighty and strong that's him will reign over the whole earth.
He will set up a religious dictatorship in the United States based on the United Order. And finally believe it or not.
There is a very strange secret about the Washington Temple. This is the most extraordinary temple a church ever built of cost 20 million in 1971 dollars. And what most people don't know is that on the top of that temple, there is a dome.
Underneath that dome is its telemetry array that is exactly like what they have at the White House on the fifth floor of that building where no one is allowed to go except church leaders is an exact replica of the Oval Office and exact replica.
And that is such a powerful communication center that airplanes are routed around it. It's in Bethesda in Sarli, Silver Springs, Maryland.
And they believe that someday they will reign from that temple that the president of the United States will be a Mormon prophet and that he will rule the world with an iron fist.
And he will be the one mighty and strong. And exactly it's exactly like what's in the book of revelations about the great beast.
And they have the money to do it. They are wealthy beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
And right now the Mormon church, the last I heard, is worth, it makes something like $15 million a day. That's not counting its vast holdings. It's stock options. It owns many CBS television affiliates. It used to own Safeway. It owns Bonneville Power International.
So this is something you need to watch for and take very seriously. But realize most rank and file Mormons just know about this in the most general way.
But I happen to have a friend who was a Mormon who was in the Secret Service and he actually told me that they have this up on the top floor of that building.
We need to take the Mormon church seriously partly because they're lost, but they need Jesus. And partly because they have a real agenda for what they would like the country.
And although they might look like real nice conservative people in most of them are, their agenda will not be anything you will want to be a part of.
So thank you for your attention. God bless.
Amen. And that is many videotapes that Bill has made. But you know we've been hearing about Mormonism. We've been hearing about all of the wrong ways to do religion.
So let me just, in a very brief sort of way, give you the right way.
And that is the big question we have to ask here today is how do we get to heaven? So let me just ask you a question. One of the questions I really like to ask people when I'm witnessing to them and I'm trying to lead someone to the Lord.
As a matter of fact, I, something just popped in my mind. I'll tell you the incident. I volunteered to go out to a prison to be with these fellas and they were doing prison ministry.
And so I went into this prison, a little local prison here. And they said, well, go on in there and sit down. So I walked into this jail sale and sat down. I mean, it's pretty scary.
And I turn around and they were gone. And I'm here all by myself. And a few minutes later they appeared and I said, man, where did you guys go? And so I went walking down the walk there, inviting some of the guys in.
And so they said, well, did you get any? Yeah, we got a couple. There's one guy in there really needs it, but he wouldn't come.
And all of a sudden, this boldness came over me moments earlier. I was afraid to be there and all of a sudden, I get this boldness. So I said, well, let me go talk time. So I walked down this walk and I felt pretty safe because I measured the difference between me and the wall behind me.
And I thought there's no way that could reach their hand through and get me if I got up against that wall. So I was pretty brave behind those bars.
And I walked over there in the fellow head on a orange jumpsuit. He had tied the top tied around his waist. So his top was bare. And he had tattoos all over him.
I mean, he looked like he just sat down off of a Harley.
Hell's Angels, not the good guy, not the Christian motorcycle, but the Hell's Angels guy. And he looked like he would slit your throat and smile about it.
And so I began talking to him and the Holy Spirit spoke to me in one of the most clear sways. And I made this comment to him in a conversation.
I said, you know, if you don't find true peace, one day you're going to find yourself in the middle of the field with a three feet to seven in your mouth pulling the trigger.
And I said, if you want to find true peace, you come in and I'll show you how to find it.
And here's what I showed the man. First of all, we have to realize that no one can go to heaven without Jesus, that all of sin to come short of the glory of God.
Romans 3, 23 says, for all of sin to come short of the glory of God. The next thing is we have to realize that we cannot earn it. Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9.
See, 4 is by grace, thou are saved, through faith. And then in the out of yourselves it is a gift of God, not of works, less than a man should boast.
We cannot do anything to earn our way to heaven. We also have to understand that we have to do a few things to get there.
So how do we get our name written into the book of life? How do we go to heaven?
Romans 10, 9 and 10 gives the answer. It says, if thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus.
And shall believe in thine heart that God has raised him through the dead, thou should be saved. For with the heart man believe it in righteousness.
But with the mouth confession is made into salvation. In other words, it's not enough to say it and not really mean it.
And it's not enough to mean it, really believe it, and never say it. We have to actually say it.
Acts 238 says, repent and we baptize. "Arabic one of you." And the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins and you should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
But what's that word repent? We don't hear that much in America anymore. So let me explain repent.
Let's say for example, over here, this side of the podium represents holiness. And let's say over here represents down in the sand.
Okay, so where we actually were when Jesus came along, we were over here and a lot of us were enjoying it.
Amen? Okay. And all of a sudden the Holy Spirit came knocking on our heart and we started realizing, hey, there's something wrong.
We needed to get over there the holiness, but the problem is we can't get over there ourselves. We have to get there through the blood of Jesus.
So what we do is we say, Jesus, come into my heart. He washes us clean, but that doesn't mean we're over here.
Then we have to say, Holy Spirit, we ask you to remove the things from me that are wrong.
And it's a walk. And here's the walk. We take a step and then we slide a little bit back. And then we take a step and then we slide a little bit back.
And then we take it right and it's a hard journey. Be holy from holy. It says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
In other words, just like Matthew 7, 21 says, not everyone that cries, Lord, Lord will enter into the kingdom of heaven.
But those that do it the will of my father, what's the will of the father? It means that we follow his laws.
We do our best to become that good kind of a Christian that we're supposed to be.
We love him. We try to live a holy life. And it takes a while to get over there knowing that we can never do it.
It's only by his blood. We have to hang on to his outtales and to heaven. Amen?
All right.
You may be a Christian that has made some mistakes in the past.
And now you want to clean up and you want to make certain that your name is written in the book of life.
You may be someone that has never received Jesus before.
But if you're in either one of those categories, matter of fact, I'm going to ask everybody to pray this prayer with me again.
But if you're a Christian that has made some mistakes and maybe you've fallen back into the world, you pray at and ask your sins to be forgiven again.
Matter of fact, I do every day. I want to make certain that blood is covering every one of them.
Sometimes even a couple of times a day.
And if you're one that's never prayed it before, you pray and ask the Lord to come into your heart.
Let's all pray together. Everyone bag your head and the one looking around.
And even though you said it before, say it again with me, "Dear Heavenly Father, I admit I'm a sinner."
And I confess with my mouth.
And I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, died on the cross, rose three days later, sets at the right hand of the Father.
I ask you to come into my life, wash me clean, write my name in the book of life, keep me holy, and save me the day of trouble.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Now, if you were someone that just prayed that prayer for the very first time, or if you're a Christian that prayed that prayer, asking for your sins to be forgiven again, just raise your hand.
Not gonna embarrass you. I promise I'm not gonna embarrass you.
Okay, if you raised your hand and either group, please stand.
And I have one question. Do you still want to say it? Amen.
[Music]
[BLANK_AUDIO]