Jeff Roundy, Author at Latter-day Saints Q & A

August 28, 2019 By Jeff Roundy Leave a Comment

Religious Health – Evidences

This video discusses a fascinating study done by the Visual Communications Guy using the latest Pew Research Religious Landscape Survey. The study compares the largest 11 religions in the world in categories of happiness and religious devotion and finds some fascinating and surprising correlations. The best part of the study is the Latter-day Saints had the highest OVERALL score by a significant margin.

Okay, so on this video in the Evidences series, I wanted to talk about a fascinating article I saw the other day on the Religious Health-O-Meter. So this is something that was put together by The Visual Communication Guy. He’s got a great website. He does a lot of infographics and teaches communications, does a lot of corporate consulting. Anyway, he did this piece using the Pew Research study. The latest one, it’s the Pew Research Religious Landscape Survey. The last one that was done was in 2013. He used the data, collected some key metrics, and put together this Religious Health-O-Meter, he called it. It’s not scientific, but it was quite fascinating. The article that I saw that caught my attention said that the Latter-Day Saints won in a landslide on this study.

Anyway, so, looking at the detail, what he did, he wanted to compare and contrast religious devotion statistics with he called it the happiness factor. In fact, he said that there were a lot of surveys, “happiness surveys repeatedly repeat that the three main factors contribute to a happy life are financial stability, marriage, and a good education.” So those were the three he used for the happiness factors. And let me first tell you that there were 11 categories of religions. The four major world religions, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists. And then for the Christians, he actually broke into seven categories. He did Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Jehovah Witnesses, Historically Black Churches, Mainline Christians, Latter-Day Saints, and Orthodox Christians.

All 11 were then stack ranked from the Pew Research survey from 1 to 11. And that was your score for that category. So if you were at the top, you got 11 points. If you were at the bottom, you got 1 point. So that’s how it worked.

So if you first look at wealth, this was if you have income of over 50,000 per year. So take a look at the slide. If you look there, the number one there were the Jews. Number two were the Hindus. The bottom two, let’s see. Mainline Christians at 35% and then Historically Black Churches, 27%. Okay, to go to the next slide, education, at least some college. The top two is Hindus and Jews. The bottom two, Historically Black Churches and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Marital status. Number one, Hindu. 79%. And then Latter-Day Saints at 71%. The bottom there was Historically Black Churches at 33% and then Buddhists at 45%.

Now, the three categories for religious devotion. Number one, prayers claimed to be answered multiple times per month. Latter-Day Saints, number one. 54%. Closely followed by Historically Black Churches at 50%. Look at the Hindus at the bottom, 23%, and then the Jews at 12%. Then you go down to the next category under religious devotion was religious intensity. This is religion is important in one’s life. Number one at 98%, Historically Black Churches. Latter-Day Saints tied for second there at 96%. The bottom two it looks like were Buddhists and Jews. And then the last of the religious devotion, attend church at least weekly. Of the survey respondents, 85% for Jehovah Witnesses, number one. Latter-Day Saints were number two. The bottom two there, almost tied with each other, were Buddhists and Jews at 16 and 17%.

So, when you roll all this up, this is what the chart looks like for the overall Religious Health-O-Meter. You can see why they said the Latter-Day Saints won in a landslide. We were at 55 points on the overall score. Quite a bit of distance to number two which would have been it looks like the Hindus on there.

Then, if you actually look, it’s very fascinating what the facts suggest in the top right there. I’ll read this carefully. He says, “While no definitive conclusion can be made about a religious organization’s true well-being, it is interesting to note that there is a clear discrepancy between wealth and education, and religious devotion. Churches who scored high in wealth and education, Hindus and Jews for example, scored quite low in religious devotion. Conversely, churches who scored low in wealth and education, Historically Black Churches and Jehovah’s Witnesses, scored high in religious devotion. Most of the churches remain somewhere in the middle. Mormons are the anomaly in this chart as the only religious organization that scored high or relatively high in all six categories, making their comprehensive score, a 55, much higher than the others.”

So there’s not a whole lot you can put in the statistics on all this. I just thought it was a fun thing to share on one of the Evidences videos. Hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe for more.

Resources:

Original study:

https://thevisualcommunicationguy.com…

Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.

August 28, 2019 By Jeff Roundy 2 Comments

Explosion of Light After 1830 (Joel Prophecy)! – Evidences

The world economy was stagnant for much of world history until an explosion happened in 1830 (see the graph on the video thumbnail). This video discusses the dramatic fulfillment of the latter day prophecy given by the Biblical Prophet Joel after the gospel was restored in 1830. Many quotes are shared from latter day prophets and apostles from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (otherwise known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church) discussing the evidence.

Okay. On this video on the Evidences series, I’m excited to show you a phenomenal graph. One of my favorite graphs. I just love it, from one of my favorite books. But to lead up to that graph, I want to first give you a quote from Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, he became a prophet of the church, but this is when he was in the Quorum of the Twelve, General Conference, April 1966.

He said, “The words of the prophets are rapidly being fulfilled, but it is done on such natural principles that most of us fail to see it. Joel promised that the Lord would pour out his spirit upon all flesh: the sons and daughters should prophesy, old men should see dreams, and young men should see visions. Have you ever tried to associate the outpouring of knowledge, the great discoveries and inventions during the past 136 years … ” Remember this was 1966, “…with the restoration of the gospel?

“Do you not think there is some connection? It is not because we are more intelligent than our fathers that we have received this knowledge, but because God has willed it so in our generation. Yet men take the honor unto themselves and fail to recognize the hand of the Almighty in these things.”

Then if I could actually share that scripture there in Joel, but before I even do that, let’s look on the screen here of Joseph Smith History, verse 41 of that. This specific verse occurred in 1823 when the angel Moroni came to Joseph Smith, and this reads, “He, the angel Moroni also quoted the second chapter of Joel from the 28th verse to the last. He also said that this was not yet fulfilled, but was soon to be.”

Now, let’s look at some of these verses in Joel 3, Verse 28. “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions; And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit, and I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth.”

Now, to show you the graph, and this is from a book … Let me just show you. This book is called The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, one of my favorite on my bookshelf in the business category here, but I just love this book. It’s fascinating. Check this chart out. 2000 years of history of the world economy, and this is on a per capita basis, so think of this as the economy overall for the world per person.

So if you look at this, this goes back to the birth of Christ, year zero basically, to the year 2000, and if you look at this chart, basically was flat. And then if you … and I actually took a ruler out and tried to figure out about where the chart started to go parabolic. Literally went almost straight up, and it was approximately the year 1830, which is when the gospel was restored. That’s when the Church started, and it is fascinating when you read about why.

You keep asking the questions, “why?” There’s lots of explanation as to why it happened here, but you have to keep saying, “But why did that happen? Why did that happen?” as light was poured out. Now, in the book here, I like what he said here. “The most fundamental feature of the modern world since 180, more profound than flight, radio, nuclear weapons or websites, more momentous than science, health and material well-being, has been the continuing discovery of increasing returns, so rapid that they outpace even the population explosion. The more you prosper, the more you can prosper. The more you invent, the more inventions become possible.”

In fact, this chapter is titled The Invention Of Invention. That happened in the early 1830s for some reason. “How can this be possible? The world of things, of pecans or power stations is indeed often subject to diminishing returns, but the world of ideas is not. The more knowledge you generate, the more you can generate, and the engine that is driving prosperity in the modern world is the accelerating generation of useful knowledge.”

Love that. Very cool. Okay, now some amazing quotes here. So, Elder Russell M. Nelson, our current prophet, when he was in the Quorum of the Twelve in conference April, 1990 said, “The Lord’s Spirit is being poured out upon all inhabitants of the earth, precisely as the prophet Joel foretold. His prophecy was of such significance that the angel Moroni reaffirmed it to the prophet Joseph Smith.

“For millennia, methods of farming, travel, and communication were largely unchanged from ancient techniques. Developments since the birth of Joseph Smith, however, have risen in remarkable contrast.”

Now 10 years later, President Faust put some numbers to this growth in a sense, and fascinating stats here. He says, “I do not believe that this great outpouring of knowledge happened by chance. All the secular knowledge did not come solely from the creative minds of men and women. Mankind has been on the earth a long time. Over the centuries, knowledge came at a snail’s pace.” You just saw the chart.

“I believe that the appearance of God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ in 1820 to Joseph Smith unlocked the heavens, not only to the great spiritual knowledge revealed in this dispensation, but also to secular knowledge. New ideas …” Here’s some numbers, “including scientific inventions and discoveries of better ways of doing things were being produced annually at 39 a year from 4,000 B.C. to 1 A.D. Contrast it to 3,840 new ideas a year in the 19th century. While today, they are created at the rate of 110,000 a year.”

Pretty phenomenal. Okay. President Hinckley put an exclamation point on this the next year. 2001 October General Conference. He says, “The era in which we live is the fullness of times spoken of in the scriptures, when God has brought together all of the elements of previous dispensations. From the day that He and His beloved Son manifested themselves to the boy Joseph, there has been a tremendous cascade of enlightenment poured out upon the world. The vision of Joel has been fulfilled.”

“Wherein he declared”, he quotes Joel. “…there has been more of scientific discovery during these years than during all of the previous history of mankind. Transportation, communication, medicine, public hygiene, the unlocking of the atom, the miracle of the computer with all of its ramifications, have blossomed forth, particularly in our own era. During my own lifetime, I have witnessed miracle after wondrous miracle come to pass. We take it for granted.”

So then, Elder Holland three years later told the young adults of the Church how this was benefiting the Church, the impact this was all having. We’ve been blessed, unlike any people in the history of the earth. He said, “Think about the missionaries.” At that time, this was in 2004, there were 55,000 missionaries out in 170 different countries. We published scriptures in over a hundred different languages. He was talking about all of these benefits that we have from a missionary perspective.

He talked about the temples. He said there was one temple in the old world. It was rebuilt several times in the same spot. The Book of Mormon times had just several temples and he says, “Think about all the temples throughout the world being built today.” He talked about the miracles of the computer and what that’s allowing us to do with family history work, and being able to perform the saving ordinances for our dead.

Modern transportation, allowing the First Presidency and the Twelves, and all the general authorities to travel throughout the globe, and even satellite broadcast to send the message out throughout the world, and the modern transportation allowing the work to move forward.

Then he finished with this at the end, and I’ll put this up on the screen. “Add all the elements of education, science, technology, communication, transportation, medicine, nutrition and revelation that surround us, and we begin to realize what the angel Moroni meant when he said repeatedly to the boy prophet Joseph Smith, quoting the Old Testament prophet Joel, that in the last days, God would pour out His Spirit upon all flesh and that the whole world, all humankind, would be blessed by the light coming in all fields of endeavor as part of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Then the final exclamation point on why and how. Go back to 1954, Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, a couple of snippets from this, published in his Doctrines of Salvation. He says, “Since the establishment of the gospel, these discoveries and inventions have been increasing more rapidly.” He says, “They all have a bearing upon the restoration of the gospel in preparation for the time which is yet future, but which is shortly to come when Christ shall reign on the earth, and for a thousand years peace shall be established. That is what it is all for.”

“I maintain that had there been no restoration of the gospel, and no organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day-Saints, there would have been no radio. There would have been no airplane, and there would have not been the wonderful discoveries in medicine, chemistry, electricity, and the many other things wherein the world has been benefited by such discoveries.”

“They belong to the dispensation of the fullness of times in which the restoration of the gospel and the organization of the Church constitute the central point from which radiates the Spirit of the Lord throughout the world. I do not believe for one moment that these discoveries have come by chance, or that they have come because of superior intelligence possessed by man today over those who lived in ages that are past. They have come and are coming because the time is right, because the Lord has willed it, and because He has poured out His Spirit on all flesh.”

Now in conclusion, I’m going to show you the graph one more time, and I’m going to read you a snippet about the time dividend that we’re getting from these inventions, and I want you to think and ponder about how this time dividend can help facilitate the work of God on earth. This has to do with light.

“So an hour of work today earns you 300 days worth of reading light. An hour of work in 1800 earned you 10 minutes of reading light. Or turn it around and ask how long you would have to work an extra hour of reading light, say the light of an 18 watt compact fluorescent light bulb burning for an hour.”

“Today, it will have cost you less than half a second of your working time if you are on the average wage. Half a second of work for an hour of light. In 1950, with a conventional filament lamp and then wage, you would have had to work for eight seconds to get the same amount of light.

“Had you been using a kerosene lamp in the 1880s, you would have had to work for about 15 minutes to get the same amount of light. A tallow candle in the 1800s, over six hours of work.” So think about that, the Restoration. Six hours of work for that, that would be half of one second today. “And to get that much light from a sesame oil lamp in Babylon in 1750 BC would have cost you more than 50 hours of work.

“So, let’s go back to the 1800s, from six hours to half a second. That’s a 43,200 fold improvement for an hour of light. That is how much better off you are than your ancestor was in 1800, using the currency that counts, your time.”

I hope you enjoyed this video. I thought it was an inspirational one on evidences of the restoration. Click for more videos, and subscribe.

Resources:

Book:

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley

August 28, 2019 By Jeff Roundy 3 Comments

Pre-Mortal Life Teachings Restored – Evidences

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only major Christian denomination, today, teaching that we lived with God as spirit children before we were born. WHY? This video describes that this doctrine was taught by Biblical prophets, believed by the early Christian Church, and then was dramatically rejected in the 6th century by Roman Emperor Justinian, whose violence towards anyone who opposed him led to the doctrine being labeled as heresy.

Okay. So on this Evidences video I want to talk about the premortal existence of man. If you think about this, this is one of the great truths of all religion is that we are children of God, not in a metaphorical sense, which are what many Christians believe, but literal children. Our spirits. Our Father in Heaven is our Father of our spirits. And that we lived with him before we were born brings our relationship so much closer to Him. And if you think about it, Satan would love to extinguish that knowledge and that doctrine.

Think about when he came to Christ to tempt Him. He said, “If thou be the son of God,” doubting him. Think when he came to Moses and he called him a son of man, and Moses stood up to him and said, “I am a son of God.” And so this is important. This is important. This would be a great victory for Satan if he can pull this knowledge away from people of this relationship that they had, that they existed before they were born.

So I want to talk about Christian religions today and their teachings on this topic or their belief in this topic, comparing them to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints. I want to look at what the Bible says, what the early Christian Church had to say with different Christian Fathers, Church Fathers, and then how everything blew up in the sixth century and why and how that led to everything where it is today in Christianity. So I’m going to read to you. This is a great resource. I highly recommend it, religionresourcesonline.org. You can actually go in and they’ve got the doctrine for the major Christian denominations. They actually have world religions in there as well.

But you can go and pick a topic and they’ll give you what different churches, their stance is on that. So this one is the premortal existence of man. So the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints, ours, as you know: “Before life, we lived as spirits with God our Heavenly Father. When we are born, the spirit unites with a body of earthly substance. The spirit is immortal.”

Okay, so let’s look at these major religions here. Seventh Day Adventists: “There is no mortal existence of man. Pre-mortal existence of man. Man begins to exist when he is born into the world.” Okay. Baptist: “Do not believe in pre-mortal existence of man. Jesus Christ, God, only had such. He lived before this life.” Okay. Catholics: “Christ, as God, was from all eternity. Do not believe in the pre-mortal existence of man.” Let’s go to Eastern Orthodox: “God, meaning the Holy Trinity, only had pre-existence. All of us were created on this earth by God, spirit.” Okay. Episcopalian: “God lived before His birth at Bethlehem and is the only one to live before birth. Do not have any knowledge of the pre-mortal existence of man.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses: “Christ had what is called the pre-human existence as a spirit person, was born a mortal man, and does not have an immortal soul. Our personal existence begins with our birth.” Lutherans: “Do you not believe in the pre-mortal existence of man.” Methodist: “Do not believe in the pre-mortal existence of man.” Presbyterian: “No doctrine as such. Only speculation.” The Unitarians: “There was no pre-mortal existence of man. Man began here on this earth.” The United Church of Christ: “Most do not believe in an existence before birth, but there may be some that do. This is a matter that is left up to the individual, and is not a matter of concern for the church.”

Now to to be fair, this can vary somewhat by congregation to congregation. The only two major religions that have correlated teachings worldwide are the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that come from one central place remain the same across the globe there. So there could be some variations, like I said, from local congregations.

Okay, so now let’s look at some scriptures. So Job 38 verses 4 and 7, “Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast to understanding. When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” So here are all these sons of God shouting for joy when the foundations of the earth were laid. That certainly sounds like some people were existing before earth, the very beginning.

Jeremiah 1:5, of course, this is the famous one to Jeremiah. This is so specific. “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” Very powerful. This isn’t just the foreknowledge of God. He’s saying he ordained him.

Ecclesiastes 12:7, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” How can you return somewhere that you haven’t already been.

John 9, in the New Testament now verses 1, 2, and 3, “And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him saying, ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither hath this man sin, or his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.'” Read between the lines. It was just given that everyone believed that you were born maybe from different things in a pre-mortal life that would have triggered you to be born blind. So he existed before, this sort of reading between the lines clearly there.

Revelations 12: 7-11, “And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out.” Now think when this happened. Cast out. “That old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Now think when this happened, the Garden of Eden time, the beginning. “And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death.”

This is a great one. I love it. This war in heaven happened, and this was before Satan was cast down, which was the beginning, in the Garden of Eden. So I love that one.

Okay. Now a couple of early Christian Fathers, Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria, “The Logos is not to be despised as something new, for even in Jeremiah the Lord says, ‘Say not “I am too young,” for before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee, and before that camest forth from thy mother I sanctified thee.’ It is possible that in speaking these things, the prophet is referring to us as being known to God as faithful before the foundation of the world.”

And then Origen of Alexandria, who is considered by many to be the most important Christian theologian of all time, “Writing in the third century, he stated a belief that differences evident among men on earth were attributable to differences in rank and glory attained by those man as pre-mortal angels. According to Origen, God could not be viewed as no respecter of persons without such a pre-mortal existence. In fact, if the differences of men on earth were not related in some way to our pre-mortal condition, then God could be viewed as arbitrary, capricious, and unjust. Origen felt that just as there would be a judgment after this life, that a sort of judgment had already taken place based on our pre-mortal merit, with the result being the station to which we were appointed in this life. As an example of this concept supported in the Bible, Origen referred to the Old Testament story of Jacob being preferred over Esau. Why was this so?” He says, “According to Origen, because we believe that he was even then chosen by God because of merits acquired before this life.”

Now the Reverend William De Arteaga, a noted Christian historian, 1983, wrote this book, Past Life Visions: A Christian Exploration, and this quote in there, he said, “This question was hotly debated by Christians of late antiquity,” of pre-mortal existence, “and the faction of the Church which was bitterly opposed to pre-existence gained the upper hand. By the sixth century, belief in pre-existence was declared heresy. All of this is quite astonishing in view of the clear and repeated biblical evidence for pre-existence.”

Now, maybe Origen had gone too far with his pre-existence assumptions, and they kind of threw the baby out with the bath water in a sense. Now, how did it happen? How did this happen in the sixth century? How did this all blow up? That really led, if you can see, there’s not a single major Christian religion today that believes in the pre-existence, pre-mortal existence of man.

It all came back to this in 543 A.D. Here’s what happened. And this is in Ramsay MacMullen’s book, “Christianity and Paganism in the 4th to 8th Centuries.” So he says here, “In the sixth century, there was an edict by Pope Vigilius in 543 A.D. that rejected the doctrine of pre-existence taught by Origen of Alexandria. Historical records indicate that the edict, called Anathemas Against Origen was actually pinned by the Roman emperor Justinian.” Now take a note here, look at my little asterisk, and go down to Justinian. “An energetically brutal ruler. Enjoying a very long reign, he pursued the goal of religious uniformity as no one before him. He did not see it as a murder if the victims did not share his own beliefs. Those he disagreed with, he was likely to mutilate if he didn’t behead or crucify them.”

So this edict that was signed by the Pope was actually pinned by this brutal Roman Emperor, Justinian, and signed by the Pope and other bishops present at the Second Council of Constantinople. “Tales of the relationships between early Popes and Roman emperors make for great reading. The relationship between Pope Vigilius and Emperor Justinian is no exception. Many records indicate that the anathemas declared against Origen had their roots in political posturing regarding doctrines of the early church. Regardless, many scholars regard the papal edict in 543 A.D. as the reason that the concept of pre-existence is generally considered extra-biblical today. It is clear from the record that before this time, the concept was freely taught by many within the church.”

And if I can share one last time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the statement “Before life, we lived as spirits with God, our Heavenly Father. When we are born, the spirit unites with a body of earthly substance. The spirit is immortal.” To me, that is comforting. It feels right, and correlates with the Old and New Testaments and with the early Christian Fathers and their teachings.

I hope you enjoy this Evidences video. Subscribe for more.

Resources:

Poem:

I forgot to mention this beautiful poem in the video: William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Ode on Intimations of Immortality (from Recollections of Early Childhood) — excerpt:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home

Websites:

Fairmormon website links: https://www.fairmormon.org/evidences/…

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Pl…

August 28, 2019 By Jeff Roundy 1 Comment

Adam God Theory

This video discusses the Adam God Theory, which was briefly taught a few times by Brigham Young. While some possible reasons behind his comments are given, the most important aspects of the video are how this has never been a doctrine of the Church and why this doesn’t make Brigham Young a ‘false prophet’ in any way, shape or form.

So, on this video I’m going to talk about the Adam-God theory, a very confusing set of statements made by Brigham Young along the way. Out of 1500 sermons, he’s explicitly talked about this 6 different times, so not a lot, but the times he did talk about it was very confusing. Most of the time he talked about things the way we understand them today, and so there were a lot of contradictions along the way. But also I want to talk how the critics attack this, which they do heavily, but there are a lot of faulty assumptions that are being made. I want to talk about this in the video. Why we shouldn’t be concerned about it upfront, then wrestle with what was said, addressing the critics, and talking about the concept of infallible prophets, and then also talk about possible understandings or interpretations on what Brigham Young was saying.

First of all, let me start with this quote from BYU professor Stephen Robinson in his book Are Mormons Christians? “Yet another way in which anti-Mormon critics often misrepresent LDS doctrine is in the presentation of anomalies as though they were doctrine of the Church. Anomalies occur in every field of human endeavor, even in science. An anomaly is something unexpected that cannot be explained by the existing laws or theories, but which does not constitute evidence for changing the laws and theories. An anomaly is a glitch… A classic example of an anomaly in the LDS tradition is the so-called ‘Adam-God theory.’ During the latter half of the 19th century, Brigham Young made some remarks about the relationship between Adam and God that the Latter-Day Saints have never been able to understand. The reported statements conflict with LDS teachings before and after Brigham Young, as well as with statements of President Young himself during the same period of time.”

“So how do Latter-Day Saints deal with the phenomenon? We don’t. We simply set it aside. It is an anomaly. On occasion, my colleagues and I at Brigham Young University have tried to figure out what Brigham Young might have actually said and what it might have meant, but the attempts have always failed. The reported statements simply do not compute. We cannot make sense out of them. This is not a matter of believing it or disbelieving it. We simply don’t know what ‘it’ is. If Brigham Young were here, we could ask him what he actually said and what he meant by it, but he’s not here. For the Latter-day Saints, however, the point is moot, since whatever Brigham Young said, true or false, was never presented to the Church for a sustaining vote. It was not then and it is not now doctrine of the Church, and the Church has merely set the phenomenon aside as an anomaly.”

So this is one of the big attacks critics make is that this is what is taught as a doctrine. The video that I did on what constitutes doctrine, it’s called Doctrines, Opinions, Practices, Sorting It All Out. It’s a great video talking about this. One of the quotes in that was from the Church Newsroom website in 2007 clarifying church doctrine. “Not every statement made by a church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church. With divine inspiration, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles counsel together to establish doctrine that is consistently proclaimed in official Church publications. This doctrine resides in the four standard works of scripture, official declarations and proclamations, and the Articles of Faith. Isolated statements are often taken out of context, leaving their original meaning distorted.”

President Kimball in the October 1976 General Conferences is very clear on this. He said, “We warn you against the dissemination of doctrines which are not according to the scriptures and which are alleged to have been taught by some of the General Authorities of past generations. Such for instance, is the Adam-God theory. We denounce that theory and hope that everyone will be cautioned against this and other kinds of false doctrine.

Now, specifically, Brigham Young when he introduced this concept of Adam and God being possibly the same person was in an 1852 sermon. Here it is. These are the famous quotes. Now, before I share this. Think of Brigham Young. Brigham Young was a bold, outspoken leader. He was who the Lord needed for the trek west and settling the frontier, but he spoke his mind. He had fiery rhetoric, and so that came with Brigham, and we needed his personality for what he did to establish the kingdom then. But also, like I said, some of these quotes are strong in this talk.

He says, “He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days. He is our Father and our God and the only God with whom we have to do. When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten Him in His own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family, and when he took a tabernacle it was begotten by his Father in heaven, from the fruits of this earth the first earthly tabernacles were originated by the Father.

“Jesus our elder brother was begotten in the flesh by the same character who was in the Garden of Eden and who was our Father in heaven.” Kind of confusing. “Now, let all who may hear these doctrines pause before they make light of them or treat them with indifference,” and the critics point this out, “for they will prove their salvation or damnation. I have given you a few leading items upon this subject, but a great deal more remains to be told.”

Now, based upon these remarks and others that he made in public and in private, Brigham Young may have possibly believed these four things, possibly in the sense that there are many statements to the contrary: Adam was the father of the spirits of mankind as well as being the first parent of our physical bodies, Adam and Eve came to this earth as resurrected exalted personages, Adam and Eve fell and became mortal in order to create physical bodies for their spirit children, and fourth Adam was the spiritual and physical father of Jesus Christ. He was God the Father.

Now, in Brigham Young’s next sermon when he mentions this two and a half years later, it was extremely different. Now, some of the comments that he made were quite controversial even among leaders or some press spoke out against it heavily. Listen to the way he says this in this 1854 sermon. He says, “I propose to speak upon a subject that does not immediately concern yours or my welfare. I do not pretend to say that the items of doctrine and ideas I shall advance are necessary for the people to know or that they should give themselves any trouble about them whatsoever.” It’s very different than what he said in 1852 about this. “These are my views,” notice my views, “with regard to the gods and eternities. I will tell you what I think about it.” Then he used a very significant term 13 times. He said, “I will tell you what I reckon.” And what did he admit that he was guessing about in his sermon? The very elements of the Adam-God theory that are the most problematic, which are the ones I just shared with you.

I’d like to share this with you and again with critics who point this out that Brigham said he received this by revelation. Well, the LDS researcher Van Hale, I am going to share this. I thought he put it very well and I’ll link this piece that he put out on the Adam-God theory, but he says “No revelation was ever presented by Brigham Young on the Adam-God theory, nor does it appear that he ever claimed to have received a direct revelation on the subject. Opponents would challenge my claim with this quotation from President Young which critics use. He says, ‘How much unbelief exists in the minds of Latter-day Saints in regard to one particular doctrine which I revealed to them and which God revealed to me, namely that Adam is our Father and God.”

Van says “It is not all certain that Brigham Young intended this to be an announcement of a direct revelation. It was his belief that God is the source of all truth in every field. To him, every truth known to any man has come by revelation from God, sometimes directly, but usually indirectly upon such natural principles as observation, study inquiry, and meditation. Since he believed that the Adam-God theory was true, no matter how he arrived at that conclusion, to him was revealed by God. But even if this is to be accepted as a claim of direct revelation, the extent of it seems to be namely that Adam is our Father and God.

“The more specific idea that God the Father became Adam may be Brigham Young’s own expansion or interpretation. There is, however, another possible interpretation that as the Lord made Moses a god to Pharaoh and as Paul,” and that’s in Exodus 7, “and as Paul was as Christ Jesus to the Galatians, Adam, our great progenitor, will preside over the human family as quote, ‘Father and God.'”

“This was the interpretation of Brigham Young’s statement advocated in 1853 by Samuel Richards, who first published Brigham Young’s initial sermon on the subject. His successor, Apostle Franklin D. Richards also advanced this interpretation, as have most of Brigham Young’s successors.”

And then the quote from President Woodruff through a letter that Joseph F. Smith wrote outlined by President Woodruff in 1897. “President Woodruff partially outlined what I should say. I am happy to know that he and I are in court on the subject. In his April 1852 discourse, President Young no doubt expressed his personal opinion or views upon the subject. What he said was not given as revelation or commandment from the Lord. The doctrine was never submitted to the councils of the Priesthood nor to the Church for approval or ratification and was never formally or otherwise accepted by the Church. It is therefore in no sense binding upon the Church nor upon the consciousness of any of the members thereof.”

Okay, now I’m going to talk a little bit about how people have tried to maybe reconcile or harmonize with the teachings of the Church or just to try and understand maybe where Brigham Young was coming from. Number one, and Van already kind of mentioned this, was Adam as the patriarch of the human family. These different people, John Widtsoe, Joseph Fielding Smith, Charles Penrose, they thought of him as the presiding priesthood holder over all the human family, so in that sense he was our Father and our God.

Moses was called the God to Aaron and also to Pharaoh if you look in Exodus 4:16 or 7:1. Also, Michael, Adam was in D&C 78 verse 16, it says that he was our prince and was given the keys of salvation under the counsel and direction of the Holy One. So that’s one possibility, but it does ignore some of the other comments that Brigham made that seemed quite clear in his intent about Adam creating the spirits. So a little confusing.

Number two, scribal error is a possibility. Remember, there was no modern day recording equipment. There were 1500 sermons Brigham gave. Only six explicitly mentioned the Adam-God theory and only two are actually written. So it could’ve been scribal error.

Three could be, and I really like this one personally, is possibly Adam as a title. So Adam Senior and Adam Junior, and Elden Watson, who was actually the editor of the multi-volume Brigham Young addresses, this was his theory, was that there was a name title. Think of it like I said, God the Father as Adam Senior and then Adam that we think of as Adam Junior. Similar to how Elias was a title meaning forerunner and applied to various people. Now, one problem with this is Brigham never explained his teaching in this way, but he did talk about how Moses used “dark sayings” he called it, where he essentially taught maybe in parables to maybe intentionally veil the exact meaning of something. He used Eve being created through Adam’s rib as an example of that there. This could be a very interesting possibility that can reconcile a lot of things potentially, but that’s one idea.

So number four, Brigham was wrong. This is an approach championed by Van Hale. “Prophets can misunderstand complex doctrines on the subject, especially if there’s little or no revelation on it.” If you look on the screen here, I’m just going to read the highlighted spots here, because one of the challenges people will say, “Well, this means prophets are infallible.” Well, if you look here, what Van’s put together, I think this is very helpful. The question, “Can prophets differ in their views?” He says, “Most opponents who have made an issue of the Adam-God theory insist that true prophets have been infallible.”.

And if you look down, “Many devoted Christians who have examined this point have declared that the Bible in no way supports this assumption. Several subjects on which the authors of the Bible diverge include,” you can look at all the topics there. “No Latter-day Saint Christians who acknowledge these differences within the Bible have felt obligated to reject the biblical prophets because of their differences. Rather, they have proposed what they feel are valid explanations of them. As far as I’m concerned, the same explanations apply equally to Latter-day Saint prophets.” The two things, “prophets are not infallible, and two, their knowledge was fragmentary and incomplete.”

This is a quote from Reverend Dummelow. Quote, “We must not regard the Bible as an absolutely perfect book in which God is himself the author using human hands and brains only as a man might use a typewriter. God used men, not machines, men with like weaknesses and prejudice and passion as ourselves.” Apostle Paul, he claimed that only he knew in part and prophesied in part. If you remember, he talked about seeing through a glass darkly in this life.

So Brigham Young, and I love what Van did say here, it’s kind of just a fascinating little side note. He says, “Brigham Young believed that God the Father took upon himself mortality to begin the human race. God the Son took upon himself mortality to redeem the human race. I can understand how someone who believes the second statement could disbelieve the first one, but I am surprised that those who believe the second one do not hesitate to declare the first one absurd and blasphemous. Why is it any more absurd of blasphemous to believe that God the Father experienced mortality than it is to believe that God the Son did?

“The primary argument of those who do not accept the Adam-God theory is that it’s not scriptural. I concur with this. I do not believe that it can be supported from the Bible. To me, the biblical message is that Adam-God is our God, his Father is our Father.” There’s the quotes there, and this also seems to be the the message in our scripture as well, the Latter-day Saints modern day scripture.

Bruce R. McConkie in a letter to Eugene England in 1981 said, “Yes, President Young did teach that Adam was the father of our spirits. This, however, is not true. He expressed views that are out of harmony with the gospel, but be it known, Brigham Young also taught accurately and correctly the status and position of Adam in the eternal scheme of things. What I am saying is that Brigham Young contradicted Brigham Young, and the issue becomes one of which Brigham Young we will believe. The answer is we will believe the expressions that accord with the teachings in the Standard Works.

Which leads to the last of the five possibilities, that’s we don’t know the reason. This is really fascinating if you think about all of the times that Brigham spoke about God the Father and about Adam in those those times when he talked about it the way we’re used to talking about it today. There’s a list that was put together by a physics professor at BYU. I’ll link to this, and this is a great summary. Here are 13 points that any of the anti-church sites discussing the Adam-God theory ignore all these without exception as he says here.

If you want to just pause and look at the screen on here. I won’t take the time to read through it. Lots of different examples here that do make you kind of scratch your head and wonder do we have the full record here and does it make sense with some of these other things that Adam taught.

And then this last one, Brigham Young quote from an 1870 sermon, “The world may in vain ask the question, ‘Who are we?’ But the Gospel tells us that we are the sons and daughters of that God who we serve. Some say we are the children of Adam and Eve. So we are, and they are the children of our Heavenly Father. We are all the children of Adam and Eve, and they and we are the offspring of Him who dwells in the heavens, the highest intelligence that dwells anywhere that we have any knowledge of.” Sound familiar? That’s what I’m talking about.

The last quote I wanted to share from Fairmormon, and they do a great job on this topic, and I love the way they conclude this. “A final explanation is that Brigham Young believed and taught Adam-God, and what he taught was possibly true, but he didn’t see fit to explain all he knew or didn’t live long enough to develop the teaching into something that could be reconciled with LDS scripture and presented as official doctrine. In this view, we simply don’t know what Brigham Young meant, and modern leaders have warned us about accepting traditional explanations of Adam-God, so we should just leave that belief on the shelf until the Lord sees fit to reveal more about it.

I hope you found the video helpful. Subscribe for more.

Resources:

Blogs:

Blog Post by Van Hale – What About the Adam God Theory: http://www.lightplanet.com/response/a…

Websites:

Fairmormon Resources on the Adam God Theory: https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mo…

Miscellaneous :

BYU Physics Professor paper on Adam God Theory (mentioned in video): https://www.physics.byu.edu/faculty/c…

Matt Brown’s Presentation at the 2009 Fairmormon Conference – Brigham Young’s Teachings On Adam: https://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content…

August 28, 2019 By Jeff Roundy Leave a Comment

Tithing Observance – Evidences

This video discusses a review of the Biblical foundation and teachings across Christianity regarding the law of tithing, yet from surveys and available statistics, it appears the Latter-day Saints are the only Christian body observing this law of God and this serves as another evidence of the fruits of the restoration.

n this video in the Evidences series, I want to talk about the faithful observance of the law of tithing. I think this is one of the great evidences of the Restoration, and this has gotten a lot of attention over the last 10 or 15 years, particularly in the 2012 presidential election. Mitt Romney was running in the United States for president. His tax returns were released, and they showed him paying a very large sum in tithing.

This brought it up, and if you look on the screen here, this was the thumbnail for the video representing how even other Christians recognize there’s a strong difference between Latter-day Saints’ observance of the law of tithing and most other Christians. I’m going to get into that. Arthur Brooks wrote a fantastic book in 2006 called Who Really Cares.

Arthur is a Catholic and he came and he spoke at BYU actually, in 2009 and he gave a great address. I’m going to link to it in the video notes down below, but he actually talked about Utah. Of the 50 states in the United States, Utah was the number one state for charitable giving and the next closest one to them was 50%.

Interesting statistic, but I’ll get to some of the things he shared in a minute, but I do want to talk about the biblical foundation for tithing, what some Christians use today as a rationale for not paying tithing, or maybe paying much less than a full tithe, talk about major denominations and their teachings on tithing, and then statistics on Latter-day Saints versus other Christians in the payment of tithing, and then finish up with some scientific research on the blessings of tithing.

First of all, biblical foundations. If we start with Genesis 14, keep in mind this was many, many centuries before Moses, before the Law of Moses, Abraham says that, “Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him and said, ‘Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand, and he gave him tithes of all.”

Now, the biblical definition of tithe. If you look at Strong’s Concordance here, you can see there, tenth part. In fact, the Englishman’s Concordance, if you look at these other ways to read this instead of the King James Version, “He gave him a tenth of all,” or, “Your hand gave a tenth of all.” If you look at the Webster’s Dictionary of tithing, we used to use this on my mission. I would have them get their dictionary out to look this up. “A tenth part of something paid as a voluntary contribution, or as a tax, especially for the support of a religious establishment, or the obligation represented by individual tithes. Then you have a verb down there, at the very bottom, “to give a tenth of one’s income as a tithe.”

Genesis 28, this is Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. Again, it’s multiple centuries before the Law of Moses. If you look at verse 22, “Which I accept for a pillar shall be God’s house and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” That was Jacob saying he was going to pay tithing.

Then the classic, this is the best, I think, on tithing. This is the Lord saying to test Him, to see if He won’t bless us as we honor Him through paying tithing. He says, “Will a man rob God?” Think of the wording of this, it’s very unique in scripture in a sense, speaking through Malachi the prophet, but in first person to us. He said, “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, ‘Wherein have we robbed thee?’ In tithes and offerings.”

He declares, that’s how we’re robbing him. “Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.”

Then, if you go to, in the New Testament, Matthew 23:23, Christ himself talks about payment of tithes. He says, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone.” The critical nature of that in the sense of not to have left the payment of tithing undone.

A major theme was the Law. If you think about the Sermon on the Mount, was to take the Law of Moses and elevate it. If you recall the way that many of those things were said there. Here’s the verse that many Christians will look to say, “This is the new way.” The Law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ and tithing was part of the Law of Moses, which it was, but it was also a practice well, for centuries, many centuries before the Law of Moses as well, but they said, “This is the new way.”.

2 Corinthians 9: 6-7, “But this, I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

The challenge I have with this, I can understand this maybe in isolation, but collectively with all the other scriptures that we read, particularly with the intensity of Malachi, of robbing God and of thinking of the elevation of the Law of Moses. We are to give even more. All of the scriptures, there’s 29 verses in the Bible talking about tithing, over 100 talk about giving, so it’s hard to imagine that we are to give less from the Law of Moses being fulfilled here.

Okay, now one last verse in the Bible, in the New Testament, this was after the death of Christ, the fulfillment of the Law of Moses. Here it is in Hebrews 7: 1-4, talking about tithing again. Talking about Melchizedek, who Abraham met, to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all. Verse four, “Onto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.”

There, now, here’s a great resource, beliefnet.com does a composite of … and here I’m listing Catholics, Protestants, and the Latter-day Saints on the approach that’s used typically for tithing and what is taught there. If you look here, Catholics, it says, “Most Catholic churches suggest that parishioners contribute 10% of their income to charity, with 5% going to the local church and 5% going to the parishioner’s charity of choice.”

The spiritual component of this is, “The concept of sacrificial giving is very important to Catholicism, both to help those less fortunate and to show gratitude for God’s gifts. The source, “Catholics follow the Bible’s words about tithing and giving, active love for the poor is also emphasized in the catechism’s treatment of the commandment, ‘You shall not steal.'”

Now, protestants. “Many Protestant churches follow the biblical exhortation to give 10% of one’s income back to God. The tithe goes to wherever a person receives his or her spiritual teaching.” Spiritual component. It says, “Many Protestant churches emphasize stewardship as the path to receiving God’s blessings and both spiritual and material abundance.” Then they quote Malachi 3, of course, and many other biblical verses for the source.

Okay, Latter-day saints “…are required to tithe 10% of their income to the church. The tithe is used to pay for the operating costs of the church, as well as the funding of new temples, missionary programs, and more. Latter-day Saints consider tithes to be sacred money and tithing is seen as a duty and a test of faithfulness.” The laws of tithing are outlined in the Latter-day Saints’ Doctrine and Covenants.

Okay, now some statistics. This is if you go to nonprofitsource.com you can see these statistics yourself. I’ll link to this in the video. First of all, and I’m going to show you the Latter-day Saints next, but to give you an idea, only 5% tithe, and this would be at a full tithing level of 10%, and 80% of Americans only give 2% of their income to charity. Christians are giving at 2.5% of income. During the Great Depression, it was 3.3%.

Only “4% of Americans, who give to their local church, do so through regular tithing. Yet when surveyed, 17% of Americans state that they regularly tithe. Okay, for families making 75,000 or greater, 1% of them gave at least 10% in tithing. The average giving by adults who attended US protestant churches is about $17 a week. 37% of regular church attendees and evangelicals don’t give money to church. 17% of American families have reduced the amount that they give to the local church this last year.”

Okay, now let’s look at the Latter-day Saints. This is the Pew Research National Survey of Latter-day Saints. The last they did on, where tithing was mentioned, is 2011. Question, “Do you pay tithing?” Those surveyed responded, 79%, “Yes,” 19%, “No.” Then, look at this, “Yes, but not a full 10%,” 1%. In other words, those that said, yes, meant that they paid 10% officially. That’s how they viewed that question and then those that refused to answer the question, 1%. Powerful.

Now, Pew actually broke down the statistics a little bit farther for the Latter-day Saints. If you look at the screen here, they actually said those that were the most active paid 96%. Those that were less active paid 41%. Also, correlated with educational attainment and income, higher education, higher income led to actually more faithful tithe paying, which is the opposite of the religious health video that I did.

If you look at that, religions that have higher income levels on average in education attainment actually have lower religious devotion. It’s a great video to watch, but the Latter-day Saints are going the opposite in that respect. I want to finish with some great thoughts on the blessings of paying tithing.

Greg Trimble is a blogger than I like to read. He’s got a great book recently, talked about, one of the chapters was on tithing. I love the way you put it. He viewed it as an investment, both the short term and the long term. Short term, the great feeling you get as, when you’re sitting in a chapel or a temple, feeling that you’re part of the contribution that built that.

God does not need our money. He needs our heart, and where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. This is part of laying up our treasures in heaven and that’s the long-term investment Greg talks about. Really fascinating.

Now, Malachi, he does use that language, prove me. Or in modern-day language, it says, test me. There’s some great links I’m going to share for the video on some scientific studies showing charitable giving increases happiness, it increases well-being, contentment, reduces stress and increases overall health. Fascinating things. Nothing to do with financial.

Spiritual blessings, I view, one of the great things in my life when I think of the blessings of paying tithing is the confidence that I get that I’m right with God when I go to pray and ask for things and blessings. That feeling of confidence from being a full tithe payer, but Malachi does say that, he has mentioned some things about fruit, that we’ll have food to eat basically, and we will not die, we will not starve to death and that we’ll be provided for, for sure.

There maybe a lot of blessings that are spiritual nature, but absolutely some will be temporal nature. If you think about it, I’ve never seen somebody starve that’s paying tithing. They will always be taken care of by God somehow. The Church will not let them starve.

Also, Arthur Brooks did this study in his book, and he talked about this at the devotional at BYU. 30,000 families were studied, and they were evaluated and analyzed. Trying to keep all things equal in doing comparisons, both race, gender, education attainment, number of kids, neighborhoods, et cetera, and then trying to just level out seeing those that were charitable, those that weren’t, and if there was a subsequent difference in income increase. They found there was a statistically significant difference that came out of this. A fascinating study. I’ll refer you to that in the notes.

The last quote I want to share is Elder Oaks in his talk on tithing. He said, “During the Great Depression, some of our bishops observed, the members who paid their tithing were able to support their families more effectively than those who did not. The tithe payers tended to keep their employment, enjoy good health, and be free from the most devastating effects of economic and spiritual depression.”

I thought that was a great quote here to finish with. I hope you enjoyed this video. Click for more. Thanks.

Resources:

Book :

Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide by Arthur Brooks

Video:

Arthur Brooks (Catholic) speaking at a BYU Devotional- Why Giving Matters https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/arthur…

Articles:

The Christian Century Article on Latter-day Saints observance of tithing: https://www.christiancentury.org/arti…

LDS Living Article – Science Links Paying Tithing with Happiness, Success & More http://www.ldsliving.com/Science-Link…

Christian denominations religious teachings on Tithing (beliefnet.com): https://www.beliefnet.com/Freeform/Lo…

Studies & Statistics:

National tithing donation statistics: https://nonprofitssource.com/online-g…

Pew Research Study/Survey of Latter-day Saints Religious Beliefs & Practices: http://www.pewforum.org/2012/01/12/mo…

August 28, 2019 By Jeff Roundy Leave a Comment

DNA & Book of Mormon – Untestable

This video discusses the many reasons why DNA can’t be used to prove or disprove the Book of Mormon.

In this video, I’m going to talk about DNA and The Book of Mormon. This is a complicated topic. There’s a lot of sub-issues, and I’ll link to lots of things from the video, but I’m just going to focus on the most critical issues here, and I’m hoping at the end of this video you’ll be very upset about anyone that uses this as a criticism of The Book of Mormon.

The biggest issue there, the population geneticists have a strong view that the population of America, the ancient population came from Asia, from Siberia over the land bridge called Beringia in the last ice age. Probably, 15,000 to 17,000 B.C. That’s where the population came from, and if there’s other genetic markers here from other areas they think was post-Columbus, post-1492 A.D.

I’m going to go through a bunch of different issues with this, but I will start with really, I think, maybe the biggest issue. That is, that there was a group of 30 to 50 people in Lehi’s party that came, and science says that there were several million people here, would be the estimates today, in 600 BC. Our biggest critic on this specific issue actually wrote about this.

Said, “In 600 BC, there were probably several million American Indians living in the Americas. If a small group of Israelites entered such a massive native population, it would be very, very hard to detect their genes 200, 2000, or even 20,000 years later. Does such a scenario fit with what the Book of Mormon plainly states, or what the prophets have taught for 175 years? Short answer, no!”

Notice how this has flipped over to a theological issue than a scientific issue, but he acknowledges the point that Lehi’s DNA would be completely absolved in the larger population. We’ll talk about more of why that would happen in a minute. What is the Church’s official position on this? Well, the Church really has not had an official position, until really recently.

It’s a part of the Gospel Topics Essay, DNA and The Book of Mormon. If you look specifically here on the screen, “What seems clear is that the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples likely represented only a fraction of all DNA in ancient America. Joseph Smith appears to have been open to the ideas of migrations, other than those described in The Book of Mormon.” It’s in Times and Seasons, September 1842. “Many Latter-Day Saint leaders and scholars over the past century have found The Book of Mormon account to be fully consistent with the presence of other established population. A 2006 update to the introduction of The Book of Mormon reflects this understanding, by stating that The Book of Mormon peoples were among the ancestors of the American-Indians. Now, some additional detail on that. A Church statement when this wording change happened in 2006 from “principal” to “among”.

On the screen here, you’ll see, “The introduction, which is not part of the text to the Book of Mormon, previously stated that the Lamanites were the principal ancestors of the American Indians. Even this statement, first published in 1981, implies the presence of others.”

“Early in The Book of Mormon, the name Lamanite refers to the descendants of Laman and Lemuel. Hundreds of years later, it came to identify all those with a different political or religious affiliation than the keepers of the Book of Mormon plates.” In fact, if you look at 4 Nephi verse 20, it actually states there … Let me get to that.

“There was still peace in the land, save it were a small part of the people who had revolted from the church and taken upon them the name of Lamanites; therefore there began to be Lamanites again in the land.” These were the people that opposed Christ and the Church, and essentially if you think about it, in 1492 when Columbus landed, there were no Christians here, as a evidence shows at that time. By that definition, they were all Lamanites, in that sense.

Now, one other criticism is of what Moroni told Joseph. Joseph writing this 15 years later, in Joseph Smith History verse 34, he talked about what Moroni said. He said about the golden plates, “Giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang.”

I can see how critics could argue that, but I think you could also argue that it’s talking about the people that were in The Book of Mormon. The inhabitants that were discussed there, and from where they came from, and so I don’t think there’s a problem there. Also, here’s a great quote from … quoted back in 1929 in General Conference from Anthony Ivins of the First Presidency.

He said, “We must be careful in the conclusion that we reach. The Book of Mormon does not tell us that there was no one here before them [the people it describes]. It does not tell us that people did not come after.” Now, what does The Book of Mormons say itself, the text? I’m going to link to this. This is an excellent paper, 34 pages from John Sorenson, When Lehi’s Party Arrived In The Land, Did They Find Others There? The Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.

Fantastic piece, lots of detail there. I will share just a couple of my favorites when I think about this. The lost 116 pages had on it the more secular history of the people, and we probably would’ve gotten some more details there, but this was a spiritual record, the small plates of Nephi, and Nephi doesn’t really mention anything about the land. They talk about when they left Laman and Lemuel’s group. He says that he took all the people and he names them all.

Then, he says, “and all who would come with me.” Then, when Nephi dies, Jacob talks about the people will be called Nephites that are friendly to Nephi. That’s the criteria there that would be called Nephites there. Then, Jacob, this is probably me favorite. Jacob 2, he calls into repentance the men for having concubines, which in the Old Testament was often labeled as foreign wives. Where would these have come from?

Remember, this is Nephi’s brother Jacob that we’re talking about. This is the first group really there, and where would these concubines have come from. Then Sherem in Jacob 7, Sherem the Anti-Christ comes on the scene, and he comes out of nowhere, and he says essentially that he had sought Jacob much to talk to him. If it was a small village, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case.

He also says that he had a perfect knowledge of their language. Why would you say that about a group of a couple hundred people? You all would be speaking the same thing, very interesting. Again, reading between the lines. If you’re looking for others, there’s 34 pages here of detail, but it’s all over the place there.

Another big reason why this is untestable, is we do not have Lehi’s body. Think of it as like a sandbox, and Lehi is one grain of sand. Well even if you refine that grain of sand, you wouldn’t even know if you had the right thing, because you don’t have Lehi’s DNA. If you think about it, Lehi was not from the tribe of Judah, he was not a Jew per se. Even if you were to go back to 600 B.C., had DNA from Jerusalem at that time, did Lehi have representative DNA from that period, for that specific … for a Jew, if you will?

Lehi was from the tribe of Manasseh, Ishmael was from the tribe of Ephraim. They were from Joseph. That was part of the lost 10 tribes taken captive by the Assyrians 120 years earlier, so who knows what their DNA would look like. They didn’t contribute to the DNA for that area, essentially.

It’s very hard to label this. Also, if you think about Jerusalem at that time was the crossroads of three continents. A hotbed of change, lots of intermarriage, mingling, immigration that was happening. Also, if you look at modern Jews, their DNA really doesn’t match well with ancient DNA samples, if you will, and there’s even a lot of confusion within what does Jewish DNA look like.

Here’s a piece from the New York Times in 2002, “A new study now shows that the women in nine Jewish communities from Georgia to Morocco have vastly different genetic histories from the men. The women’s identities however are a mystery, because their genetics signatures are not related to one another, or to those that are present day Middle Eastern populations.”

Also, we have what’s called the founder effect, and this is critical in having the DNA of the founder of a population. This is from the Gospel Topics Essay, it says, “Descendants might inherit a genetic profile that would be unexpected, given their family’s place of origin. This phenomena is called the founder effect. Consider the case of Dr. Ugo A. Perego, a Latter-day Saint population geneticist.”

“His genealogy confirms that he is a multi-generational Italian, but the DNA of his paternal genetic lineage is from a branch of the Asian Native American haplogroup C. This likely means that somewhere along the line, a migratory event from Asia to Europe led to the introduction of DNA atypical of Perego’s place of origin.”

“If Perego and his family were to colonize and isolate a land mass, future geneticist conducting a study of his descendants’ Y-chromosomes might conclude that the original settlers of that land mass were from Asia rather than Italy.”

“This hypothetical story shows the conclusions about the genetics of a population must be informed by a clear understanding of the DNA of the population’s founders. In the case of The Book of Mormon, clear information of that kind is unavailable.” Now, another huge issue that comes in not being able to test well, is genetic drift. If you look at this picture, this is straight out of the Gospel Topics essay, this visual here.

“If you were to fill a jar with 20 marbles, 10 red, 10 blue, the jar represents a population and the marbles represent people with different genetic profiles. Draw a marble at random from the population, record its color, and place it back of the jar. Each jar represents the birth of a child. Draw 20 times to simulate a new generation within the population. The second generation could have an equal number of each color, but more likely, it will have an uneven number of the two colors.

Now, before you draw a third generation, adjust the proportion of each color in the jar to reflect the new mix of genetic profiles in the gene pool. As you continue drawing, the now uneven mix will lead to even more frequent draws of the dominant color. Over several generations, this drift toward one color will almost certainly result in the disappearance of the other color.

In fact, if you were to look back 10 generations, you’d have 1,024 ancestors, but only about 12% of the DNA would flow through. In fact that there was a big study in Iceland done of the genealogy and the genetics or the DNA. They found over 300 years, that all the people that were in Iceland came from a very tiny small subset of those that were there 300 years ago.

In fact, there were 95 mummies that were found in the Andes not long ago, and where they were able to do DNA studies and found that they had nothing to do with the people that were there in the Andes today. They attributed it to genetic drift. I’m going to give you this quote on the screen from Beth Shook and David Smith in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 2008.

“Genetic drift has been a significant force on Native American genetics, and together with a major population crash after European contact has altered haplogroup frequencies, and caused the loss of many haplotypes.” Speaking of the population crash. If you look at this picture here, population bottleneck. This is straight out of the Gospel Topics Essay as well.

If you look, you’re going to get dramatic reduction of populations, some genetic profiles represented in the picture here. Yellow, orange, green, and purple circles are lost. Subsequent generations inherit only the DNA of the survivors. In addition to the catastrophic war at the end of The Book of Mormon, the European conquest of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries touched off just such a cataclysmic chain of events.

As a result of war and the spread of disease, many Native American groups experienced devastating population losses. One molecular anthropologist observed that the conquest squeezed the entire American population through a genetic bottleneck. He concluded, “This population reduction has forever altered the genetics of the surviving groups, thus complicating any attempts at reconstructing the pre-Columbian genetic structure of most new world groups.”

Estimates are that the European conquest and the diseases actually eliminated about 80% to 90% of the Native American population, so that was a significant population bottleneck problem there today in the testing. If you were to … Just, the last couple of … Some quick quotes from the Gospel Topics Essay.

“Additional DNA markers from Europe, West Asia, and Africa exist in the DNA of modern native populations, but it is difficult to determine whether they are the result of migrations that predated Columbus, such as those described in The Book of Mormon, or whether they stem from genetic mixing that occurred after the European conquests.”

“This is due in part to the fact that the ‘molecular clock’ used by scientists to date Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers is not sufficiently sensitive to pinpoint the timing of migrations that occurred as recently as a few hundred or even a few thousand years ago. Moreover, no molecular clock is currently available for complete genomes.”

Then last, “Scientists do not rule out the possibility of additional, small-scale migrations to the Americas. In fact, there’s a quote there from Stanford University. A professor, he says, “Models that suggest a single one-time migration are generally regarded as idealized system. There may have been small amounts of migrations going on for millennia.”

In fact, Science Magazine did a piece in 2017, if you look on the screen here, and the title, Most Archaeologist Think That The First Americans Arrived By Boat. Now They’re Beginning To Prove It, so an interesting piece. I’ll link to that article there, and that’s from an archaeological perspective, rather than a genetics, a DNA perspective.

Now, if you were to truly test this and be able to test it, I love what Dr Perego in a paper, about what you would need, and you’d have to answer the following questions, these six questions: What did the DNA of The Book of Mormon people look like? What is the typical DNA found in the population of Jerusalem in 600 B.C.? Can their DNA be differentiated from the Europeans arriving after 1492? Is the current molecular clock adequate to determine pre from post-Columbian genetic contributions to the new world within the last 3,000 years?

Fifth, what degree of mixture did the Nephites and/or Lamanites experience with local natives? Sixth, how long were the Nephites and/or Lumanites an isolated population after their arrival to the American continent? Obtaining answers to these questions would enable the design of research that could contribute to our understanding of The Book of Mormon as a historical record from a scientific approach.

Without such information, we risk forming conclusions based on personal interpretation and biased assumptions. In fact, the conclusion of the Gospel Topics Essay is fairly strong about this. It says, “Much as critics and defenders of the Book of Mormon would like to use DNA studies to support their views, the evidence is simply inconclusive.”

“Nothing is known about the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples. Even if such information were known, processes such as population bottleneck, genetic drift, and post-Columbian immigration from West Eurasia make it unlikely that their DNA could be detected today.”

“As Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Twelve observed, “It is our position that secular evidence can either prove nor disprove the authenticity of The Book of Mormon.” As far as defenders of The Book of Mormon in this, they talk about this haplogroup X that was found in the Great Lakes area, and I won’t go into a lot, but I will link, Dr Perego says this is a very …

He has a very strong opinion that this could not be the case, that this is very old DNA, and it’s part of Kennewick Man that was found along the Columbia River, and it’s dated back to 9,000 B.C., the bones, carbon dating, The X2a specifically is not found in the Middle East area there, which is the specific type of DNA in the Great Lakes area. I’ll link to that, and there are some things there, but again, the Church says let’s not. The same arguments could apply to the defenders. All this stuff I’ve talked about in this video.

Same challenges either way. I love what Elder Neal A. Maxwell said in his book Plain and Precious Things, “It is the author’s opinion that all the scriptures, including The Book of Mormon, will remain in the realm of faith. Science will not be able to prove or disprove holy writ. However, enough possible evidence will come forth to prevent scoffers from having a field day, but not enough to remove the requirement of faith. Believers must be patient during such unfolding.” I love that.

It does feel sometimes like there’s a double standard with Christians knocking down The Book of Mormon from a scientific perspective on this stuff, when in the same realm with the Bible. There’s no way to scientifically prove the DNA or archaeological evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as an example, or the Exodus, or the floods, some of these types of things there that leaders don’t need science to prove for their faith.

I wanted to close with a quote from President Hinckley in the February 2004 Ensign, where he said about The Book of Mormon, “The evidence for its truth, for its validity in a world that is prone to demand evidence, lies not in archaeology or anthropology, though these may be helpful to some. It lies not in word research or historical analysis, though these may be confirmatory. The evidence for its truth and validity lies within the covers of the book itself.”

“The test of its truth lies in reading it. It is a book of God. Reasonable people may sincerely questions its origin; but those who have read it prayerfully have come to know by a power beyond their natural senses that it is true, that it contains the word of God, that it outlines saving truths of the everlasting gospel, that it came forth by the gift and power of God, to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ.” I hope you enjoyed the video, and subscribe for more.