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January 21, 2020 By Jeff Roundy Leave a Comment

Word of Wisdom: Recent Studies -Evidences

This video discusses some amazing statistics from a recently completed 25 year study of Latter-day Saints. The non-member authors concluded “these were the lowest death rates and longest life-expectancies ever documented in a well-defined U.S. cohort’ and that the findings ‘suggest a model for substantial disease prevention’. Several other studies are covered as well, along with some fascinating recent research into many of the substances prohibited in the Word of Wisdom (and differences from the temperance movement started in 1826). Also – with the largest legal fines in world history, the documentable proof of ‘conspiring’ men in the last days are vividly show in the video.

Okay. In this Evidences video I want to talk about the Word of Wisdom. I just did a video on the Word of Wisdom. I was talking about various issues. This is the one focused on the evidences of the Word of Wisdom. I do want to point out that many critics will say, “Well, Joseph wasn’t ahead of his time. He was part of the temperance movement that came about in the 1820’s and 1830’s in the United States. And I think that did help Joseph go to his knees in prayer to seek this revelation on what they should do in the midst of all of this and the focus on health and specifically alcoholism. I talked a lot about that in the other video.

But if you look at the temperance movement, where did it go? Where is it today? In the mid-1830s 1 of every 12 people in the United States was part of the temperance movement. Think of that today. I thought, “Well, let’s look at Alcoholic’s Anonymous as maybe something.” And that’s really for recovering alcoholics. There’s 1 in 253 today. Also, the temperance movement did have a huge focus on replacing alcohol with coffee. So we’ll talk about even a study that just was released on throat cancer coming from hot drinks, an interesting study.

Also, I want to talk about pure evidence we have today, just recently, of the evil and designs of conspiring men in the last days that was a reason for the Word of Wisdom to be given. Also, I want to talk about other recent updates on various substances as well. So let’s get started by looking at this study. This was a huge study that was done over 25 years of California Latter-day Saints. This was done at UCLA. These were not members of the Church that conducted this study. Again, 25 years, the largest of its kind. And if you look at the results of this study and the abstract here zooming in, there were 9,815 religiously active California Latter-day Saints that were studied.

If you look at the baseline, what they call the standardized mortality ratio, and then if you look at the line here for all causes of death was .45 for males and .55 for females. I’ll explain what that means exactly on the next slide. But life expectancies for males 84 and for females 86. Now, the conclusion, if you look at the next slide, here’s the summary, really, what this means. Males lived 9.8 years longer than average. Females, 5.6 years longer than average. And then that SMR statistic, what that meant was that males had chance of dying from cancer or disease 55% less than the average, females 45% less than average.

And look at these interesting three insights that they shared, the authors of the study. “Latter-day Saints in California had the lowest total death rates and the longest life expectancies ever documented in a well-defined U.S. cohort. The authors conclude the findings suggest a model for substantial disease prevention in the general population. And in the last, the more strictly and constantly Mormons followed Mormon lifestyle elements, the longer they lived.” That’s their final quote. Here’s the next study to share. This was one that was done from 1971 to 1985 looking at cancer incidences of Latter-day Saints and non Latter-day Saints living in Utah.

If you look here, “For all causes of cancer, the rates in Utah for male members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was about 24% less than the comparable U.S. rate. There is 50% lower rate of cancers associated with cigarette smoking among LDS men. LDS women had an all site cancer rate 24% below the comparable U.S. rate and a 60% lower rate of smoking associated cancers. Over the past 40 years, Utah has had the lowest age-adjusted cancer mortality rates for all causes of cancer of any of the 50 states.”

And then last study here did demographic research published in 2004 on life expectancy. Life expectancy was 77.3 for LDS males, 70.0 for non-LDS males in this study. 82.2 for LDS females and 76.4 for non-Latter Day Saint females. And then tobacco use explains some of the higher life expectancy, but it only counted for 1.5 of the 7.3 years for males and 1.2 of the 5.8 years for females. Now, I want to focus for a minute on tobacco very specifically, because if you think about the evil and designs of conspiring men, there were significant advancements that were made in chemistry and technology and understanding.

The cigarette rolling machine was invented in 1880. You see these things that came about that caused this amazing storm. If you look here on the screen, “Tobacco has now been linked to many types of cancer, including lung, bladder, esophagus, head and neck, throat, cervix, stomach, pancreas, and kidney cancers as well as acute myeloid leukemia. Smoking causes about 90% of male lung cancer deaths, about 80% of female lung cancer deaths, and a total of approximately 440,000 deaths annually in the U.S.”

“Men who smoke are about 23 times more likely to develop lung cancer, and women who smoke about 13 times more likely. In addition, smoking is a major cause of emphysema, coronary heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, infertility, dental diseases and other diseases.” And then if you look at the annual global death toll caused by smoking is 4 million, 4 million a year. By 2030 they’re predicting 10 million, with 70% of those deaths occurring in developing countries. “According to the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, lung cancer is the leading cause of death among both men and women, and about 1 in 4 cancer deaths are from lung cancer.”

“They estimate that in 2017, more people in the US will die of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.” Then you think about, again, these conspiring men, this was a bulls eye. The big five tobacco companies were fined 250 billion, with a B, dollars in the United States from the findings over a 50-year period of what had happened. If you look here on the screen, this was Tobacco Explained. It’s a London-based action on smoking and health. It took all of the statements made from the tobacco industry, internal documents. So if you look on the summary it says, “Thousands of internal tobacco industry documents released through litigation and whistle blowers revealed the most astonishing systematic corporate deceit of all time.”

“What follows is a survey of the documents, 1,200 relevant and revealing quotes grouped under common themes.” And then the seven chapters are: “smoking and health, nicotine and addiction, marketing to children, advertising, cigarette design, second hand smoke, and emerging markets.” You can pause the screen if you want to see some of the detail there. But I want to show this quick clip that has become iconic of these big tobacco CEOs in front of congress outright lying at the time here for the record. So watch this clip for a second.

Speaker 2:
Please consider yourself to be under oath. We just would like to have this for the record.

Speaker 3:
I don’t believe that nicotine from our products are addictive.

Speaker 4:
I believe nicotine is not addictive.

Speaker 5:
I believe that nicotine is not addictive.

Speaker 6:
I believe that nicotine is not addictive.

Speaker 7:
And I, too, believe that nicotine is not addictive.

So the big tobacco found guilty of lying five things here forced here to admit publicly. So this just happened in 2017. “U.S. district court judge, Gladys Kessler, found tobacco companies guilty of breaking of civil racketeering laws, engaging in ongoing fraud, and lying to the public about the dangers of smoking. Judge Kessler ruled that the tobacco industry must publish corrective and educational statements about the dangerous effects of tobacco. Big tobacco has spent nearly 11 years fighting their corrective statements in court. Now they are being forced to come clean with the public after nearly 50 years of lying and deceiving.”

Corrective statements began running November 26th. This was of 2017. And here are the five big tobacco lies they’re being forced to admit publicly. Number one big tobacco lie, saying smoking wasn’t dangerous. Number two, big tobacco knew nicotine was addictive. And look at the little sub-note there. “They withheld their research that proved it was addictive from the public and the government.” Number three, big tobacco lied about light and low-tar cigarettes being healthier. Number four, this one really gets me, big tobacco engineered cigarettes to contain higher amounts of nicotine.

Look at the sub note. “Evidences show that big tobacco designed their cigarettes with engineered filters, special paper, and additives to increase the nicotine content and make cigarettes even more addictive.” And last, fifth, big tobacco continually denied the dangers of second hand smoke. This is a direct bulls eye for the Word of Wisdom that was talking about the future. If you recall, it’s a consequent of the coming of this that existed now, but would also be in the future of conspiring men in the last days. Fascinating.

Okay. Alcohol. Here is an interesting study released in 2005. “It is commonly accepted that alcohol consumption is associated with cancers of the esophagus, liver, and pancreas. The relationship between alcohol and the development of breast cancer has been debated for years. The largest study on this subjects was presented in 2005. The Nurse’s Health Study that studied 121,700 nurses followed over a 20-year period found that even modest alcohol intake was associated with an increased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer.”

And then on the mormonsandscience.org website they shared this from a New Zealand research findings in July 2016. The effect of alcohol in the Journal of Addiction. The authors report that “the epidemiological evidence can support the judgment that alcohol causes cancer of the oral pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum, and breast.” Seven types of cancer. What about the positive benefits of a little bit of wine? Isn’t the resveratrol in wine supposed to make us healthier? Regarding the supposed benefit, the New Zealand researchers also said that “earlier epidemiological studies which reported that drinking can protect us from cardiovascular disease should now be regarded with a high level of skepticism.”

I mentioned the hot drinks study. This just came out here March 2019. Look at this headline in USA Today. “Drink hot tea at your own risk: New study is latest to show link to esophageal cancer.” So throat cancer. “If your daily drink is too hot, however, you may dramatically increase your risk of cancer according to a new study. Research published Wednesday in the International Journal of Cancer tracked the habits of more than 50,000 tea drinkers in a province in Northeastern Iran over a 10-year period.” Look at the findings here on the study.

“Based on the results of our study, drinking hot tea is associated with an increased risk of throat cancer. The study found that those who drank more than basically two cups of tea a day at a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit had a 90% higher risk of esophageal cancer. Beverages at restaurants may be served at higher temperatures as was revealed in the infamous 1994 lawsuit against McDonald’s during which the company admitted to keeping its coffee at temperatures between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Previous studies have examined the link between hot beverages and cancer, including a 2018 China-based study published in Annals of Internal Medicine that found drinking hot tea when combined with heavy alcohol and tobacco use significantly increases the risk of throat cancer.”

“The World Health Organization in 2016 said drinking coffee, tea, and other beverages at temperatures hotter than 149 degrees probably causes cancer.” And then the last two things, just on some nutrition do’s of the Word of Wisdom. There wasn’t a lot of science around nutrition at the time of the Word of Wisdom. And there was a lot of desire to have knowledge and health focus. But even vitamins weren’t discovered until the 20th century. Here’s a great article I’ll link in the program, Cancer, Nutrition, and the Word of Wisdom: One Doctor’s Observation. This was in the July 2008 Ensign, Dr. William Stephenson who also has a degree in nutrition from BYU.

He says, “What does medical science teach us about this kind of diet? Certainly all kinds of diets are being recommended by one seeming authority or another. The diets in fashion change from year to year. Consistently over the years, however, the evidence favors a diet in keeping with the recommendations contained in the Word of Wisdom. The medical community widely accepts that a low-fat diet, consisting mostly of complex carbohydrates found in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, along with limited amounts of nuts and high-protein foods like low-fat meats is associated with lower incidences of diseases and a longer life.”

I love this final quote here from BYU nutrition professor, Lauren Beth Larson Brown in the April 1977 Ensign. She said, “But for most of us our diets are not extreme enough for us to see such dramatic consequences of poor nutrition, because heredity, environment, attitudes, and healthcare also influence our health today. Nevertheless, those who are well-nourished do receive health in their naval and marrow of their bones. They will be alert to finding wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures. They will have the energy and endurance to run and not be weary and to walk and not faint. And the greatest promise, one that we may see fulfilled in ways we cannot yet imagine is, “And I the Lord have given to them a promise that the destroying angel shall pass by them as the children of Israel and not slay them.” Hope you enjoyed the video. Subscribe for more and go check out the other Word of Wisdom video that I did.

Resources:

Papers/Studies:

https://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/…

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3553394?…

https://www.demographic-research.org/…

http://www.scientificintegrityinstitu…

Articles:

https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/2008…

http://www.mormonsandscience.com/reli…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/h…

https://stopswithme.com/big-tobacco-f…

https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1977…

https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/2008…

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/7…

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.

January 21, 2020 By Jeff Roundy 1 Comment

Defending the Book of Mormon Witnesses

This video defends the Book of Mormon witnesses and shows how the Lord set up multiple cross-checks and backup evidences to make it very challenging for critics to dismiss the weight of their evidence.

So on this video we’re going to talk about the Book of Mormon witnesses and what critics say about them. I think this is one of the most powerful parts of the Restoration, but yet critics still try and tackle or criticize their experiences, some statements. So I want to go through and talk about this in the video. Two other videos that I’ve referenced, David Whitmer: An Irrefutable Witness, and then How Could They Have All Lied, which was a much broader thing than just the Book of Mormon witnesses. But we have about 200 statements from the witnesses: 70 from David Whitmer, 50 from Martin Harris, about 30 from Oliver Cowdery, around 42 from the eight witnesses. So that’s close to 200 statements. We have less than 10 statements that are used by critics that are out there, and none of them are firsthand statements. They are always a second-hand type of a statement.

So think about this. This is a ratio of 19 to 1. So how would you if you were a judge and you had 20 people, 19 people saying one thing, 1 saying the other, and the one that’s saying the other is not a direct statement from the witnesses. It’s a second-hand statement, so it’s very, very interesting. But we’re going to tackle why those statements are used by critics and why they don’t amount to a hill of beans, I think. And the evidence is so powerful on the other side that it’s a tough one for critics. So let’s start with just the statements themselves, the witnesses in the Book of Mormon: the testimony of the three, the testimony of the eight. It’s very interesting, the differences between the two. I feel like God really knew what He was doing when He set this up with these two different experiences, and then the informal witnesses as also a backup to two criticisms, and I’m going to talk about that especially in a minute.

But if you look at the testimony of the three witnesses is very focused on the interaction with heaven, with God, with angels. It says here, the grace of God. It says, “… they’ve been translated by the gift and power of God for His voice”, this is the voice of God, “hath declared it unto us and an angel of God came down from heaven, and the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it.” Often we think of with the three, with an angel, but they also hear the voice of the Lord as well in this experience and testify. And then I’ve highlighted their names. The highlight means that they left the Church and I think that God knew the future. He knew these individuals and thought this would be some of the most powerful witnesses in a sense, because they didn’t deny their testimony after they left the Church.

Now two of them came back. That’s what the underlying is, Oliver and Martin, but David never did for 50 years. That’s why I did a special video just on him, which is fascinating there. He ended up being the mayor of this town. Very respectable, honorable man. Okay. Testimony of the eight witnesses. Now look at this. This is a very tangible experience, very physical. “He’s shown unto us the plates … we did handle with our hands … saw the engravings thereon …we’ve seen and hefted and know of a surety that the said Smith”, notice this kind of legalese or cold language, t”the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken.” So it’s a kind of legalese, very formal statement and very tangible physical evidence base and again, three people here, Jacob Whitmer, John Whitmer, Hiram Page. You’re going to hear comments from all three of them here in the video.

Powerful. All left the Church at one point. In fact, they stayed out of the Church to death but never denied their testimonies to the end. Very powerful there. Now, so you got these two different, two very contrasting witnesses there. Now, some critics will actually say that the statement of the eight doesn’t list time and place or actually the three either. It is a little unfortunate that we don’t have more detail there because we have it. David Whitmer was very specific on some of the details and then Lucy Mack Smith on the eight. But the point was to really testify of the experience itself there. Also, some critics will even say, well we don’t have an original of this, which we don’t because it was destroyed. As part of the original manuscript was put into the cornerstone of the Nauvoo house.

Joseph put it there to probably preserved for posterity. It was found in 1882 and Emma’s second husband Lewis Bidamon was remodeling the home. That’s when he found it, and only 28% of the original manuscript survived. We have the printer’s manuscript that was in Oliver Cowdery’s handwriting, and that’s where we have the witnesses’ testimony on there. But the three witnesses was at the end of the transcript, their statements that were signed by them and that was destroyed through the water damage, but look at what the witnesses said. So go off of what they said post-statements, and I’m going to go through many of those here. Also, this was interesting. Larry Morris spoke at the FairMormon Conference in 2019. And this actually is going to be a bedrock for future studies, A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon.

This just came out in February 2019. He spoke at the FairMormon Conference and he talked about the powerful nature of the testimony of the eight specifically being such a tangible document. And then he talked about also meeting source criticism or the giving credence to a very authentic statement. Three criteria here: firsthand document, two, produced near the time of the event in question, and three, signed by multiple witnesses. Okay. Now another criticism people bring up is the weight of the plates. Some will say, well, wait a minute. If it was solid gold and the description of the dimensions that were given, that would be about 200 pounds there. So they criticized because witnesses would typically give the range of 40 to 60 pounds. A single number was often used of closer to 60 pounds.

This was a great piece that Roy Doxey did in the December 86 Ensign. He says, “This estimate doesn’t allow for unevenness of leaves wrinkled by hammering and from airspace between each leaf. Joseph only said that the plates had the appearance of gold, not necessarily pure gold completely. Some have speculated the metal is probably Tumbaga”, and that was the name given by Spaniards. They found this alloy gold copper used in ancient Mesoamerica could be casted, hammered, engraved, etc. “… treated with a simple acid like citric acid to dissolve the copper on the surface, leaving a shiny layer of 23-karat gold on top of a harder, more durable copper-gold alloy sheet. This process was widely used by the pre-Colombian cultures of central America to make religious objects. Tumbaga plates of the dimensions Joseph Smith described would weigh between 53 and 86 pounds.”

So perfect for the description of the Book of Mormon weight. So very interesting. And a side note, there was actually a mummy found in 2006 in northern Peru. It was a lady and she was wrapped and it had around her a bunch of thin sheets of this copper-gold alloy they said was similar to this Tumbaga and then was later found in Mesoamerica. But the dating of this mummy was 450 A.D. So right at the end of the Book of Mormon times. It was interesting. National Geographic did a piece on that. Okay. So let’s move on to what some critics will say as well. “Joseph hypnotized the three witnesses, particularly because of their experience with the supernatural vision there, and had some way to hallucinate hypnotize them.” I will actually say hypnotism, as we understand it today, had not really been published or studied the way it is now, but it definitely was around in certain facets for a long time.

And Joseph would have seen this in the revivals and how some of the fiery preachers would make people fall down. So critics will point some of this out. And often it was even labeled as juggling. So here’s Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris. This is a firsthand, so very credible and it’s within six months and it’s two of the three witnesses. So it’s written response to the question about whether juggling or trickery or conjuring could’ve been involved. Quote,”It was a clear, open, beautiful day, far from any inhabitants, in a remote field, at the time we saw the record of which it has been spoken, brought and laid before us by an angel, arrayed in glorious light, who ascended, descended, I suppose, out of the midst of heaven. Now, if this is human juggling, judge ye.” So I thought that was great. Very powerful.

Now here’s the other witness, David Whitmer. So the third witness talking about the same kind of thing as he’s being interviewed by Joseph Smith the third, and there’s a presence there, a Colonel Giles who is trying to address this hallucination aspect or mental disturbances. This is Joseph Smith the third recording this, “Rather suggestively, Colonel Giles asked if it might not have been possible that he, Mr. Whitmer, had been mistaken and had simply been moved upon by some mental disturbance or hallucination, which had deceived them in to thinking he saw the personage, the angel, the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the sword of Laban. How well and distinctly I remember the manner in which Elder Whitmer rose and drew himself up to his full height, a little over six feet and said, in solemn and impressive tones, ‘No, sir! I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak.'”

Also, note the number of different things that he mentions that were in the vision. It wasn’t just the plates. He mentioned there the Urim and Thummin, the sword of Laban. We know from other accounts that there was the breastplate, the Liahona and the brass plates now there. So that would have been one heck of a hallucination. And he would’ve had to do this twice if you recall, because Martin Harris, they weren’t having the experience first. Martin Harris went off on his own to be separate, and he ended up having the same vision as the two had with Joseph and he had it with Joseph. But Joseph would have had to create this exact same experience as they testified together of it. So, quite fascinating. All right.

Now, if you look at this, this was another great letter to share from David Whitmer responding to a question about spiritual versus naturalized. This was a letter written to him by Anthony Metcalf on this topic. And Anthony says that, look at that top paragraph there he says, “Replying to my communication, from which I copy verbatim, as follows.” So this is first person from David Whitmer. He says, and this was in 1887, “In regards to my testimony to the visitation of the angel who declared to us their witness that the Book of Mormon is true, I have this to say: Of course we were in the spirit when we have the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us as it is at any time. Martin Harris, you say, called it being in vision. We read in the scriptures, Cornelius saw, in a vision, an angel of God. Daniel saw an angel in a vision.”

Also in other places it states they saw an angel in the spirit. A bright light enveloped us where we were that filled at noon day and their in a vision or in spirit, we saw and heard just as it is stated in my testimony in the Book of Mormon.” They literally were trying to use biblical language to try and explain what they had experienced, this physical and spiritual vision experience. So I love what Dan Peterson said in the FairMormon Conference in 2006 about who would know more of what is artificial: us today or these people living back then that were in this physical world much more than we are. So this is what he shared. “Attempts are made to discredit the witnesses by portraying them as alienated from empirical reality and as having merely imagined the plates of the Book of Mormon or seen them in a subjective hallucination.”

“I’ve commented elsewhere on how bizarre it is to me that the witnesses, a group of early 19th-century farmers who spent their lives rising at sunrise, pulling up stumps, clearing rocks, plowing fields, sowing seeds, carefully nurturing crops, raising livestock, milking cows, digging wells, building cabins, raising barns, harvesting their own food, bartering in an often cashless economy for what they could not produce themselves, wearing clothes made from plant fibers and skins, anxiously watching the seasons, and walking or riding animals out under the weather until they retired to their beds shortly after sunset in a world lit only by fire are being portrayed as estranged from everyday empirical reality by who? By people whose lives, like mine, consist to a large extent of staring at computer and television screens in artificially air-conditioned, and artificially lit homes and offices, clothed in synthetic fibers, commuting between the two and enclosed in air-conditioned mechanical vehicles while they listen to the radio, chat on their cell phones, and fiddle with their iPods– all of whose inner workings are largely mysterious to them– who buy their prepackaged food (with little or no regard for the time or the season) by means of plastic cards and electronic financial transfers from artificially-illuminated and air-conditioned supermarkets enmeshed in international distribution networks of which they know virtually nothing, the rhythms of whose daily lives are largely unaffected by the rising and setting of the sun.” I had to share that in this specific video. I though that was such a powerful way to say it. Now what about the plates themselves? The physical plates. So powerful, the witnesses of this tangible physical evidence.

So today critics just say, well Joseph must have somehow made these up, these plates. But think about this. This could not have been done in a corner. Joseph didn’t have the resources, the money. It would have had to have been this custom design metal factory in a sense. It wouldn’t have come out. The engravings, the meticulous nature of that. But here’s the one I would love to say though, is the physical nature of some other items that would have had to have been produced that would be extremely challenging: the breastplate and the Urim and Thummin and the spectacles. And the witness of those I want to share as Lucy Mack Smith, his mother. And this gets to the informal witnesses. If you’ll look at this page right here, and this I think is beautiful in the thought of a backup to criticisms of the three and the eight. Lucy’s a backup for the eight. Mary’s a backup for the three.

And I’ll explain why here in a second. So look at these 15. These are 15 informal witnesses that had interactions with the plates of some kind. They hefted them, they felt them through the tablecloth, etc., and gave comments about it. But Lucy specifically saw and felt the breast plate and the spectacles, and then Mary Whitmer is a very special one to back up the criticisms of the three. So if you go to the eight, let me share this from Lucy Mack Smith. She said that she had examined the Urim and Thummin and “found that it consisted of two smooth three-cornered diamonds set in glass, and the glasses were set in silver bows which were connected with each other in much the same way as old fashioned spectacles.” Now, she described the breast plate. “It was wrapped in a thin muslin handkerchief, so thin that I could see the glistening metal, and ascertain its proportions without any difficulty.

It was concave on one side and convex on the other and extended from the neck downwards as far as the center of the stomach of a man of extraordinary size. It had four straps of the same material for the purpose of fastening it to the breast, two of which ran back to go over the shoulders and the other two were designed to fasten to the hips. They were just the width of two of my fingers, for I measured them and they had holes in the ends of them to be convenient and fastening.” So very specific description. So I think it’s an interesting aspect of these first witnesses, the first witness to the birth of Christ to His mother, Mary, was given by the angel. The first witness of the Resurrection was to another Mary, Mary Magdalene.

The first witness of the Book of Mormon plates was to a Mary as well, Mary Whitmer. I think that’s a really fascinating aspect, and think about this. This is tough for critics. Where was Joseph Smith? He was not even around. He didn’t even know this was happening. So if he’s creating this hallucination and figured out some way to do this, he’s not around when this is happening and this angel comes to visit Mary. Now, I’d like to share this version that was actually just published in 2014 in the Interpreter. Royal Skousen received this from Carl Cox. It was part of their family history and it’s a lesser known account. It had a couple of interesting details that I thought it would just be kind of fun to share.

He says, “David Whitmer had invited Joseph and Oliver to live in his father’s home while translating the Book of Mormon. When Oliver’s hand and Joseph’s eyes grew tired, they went to the woods for a rest. There they often skated rocks on a pond. Mary Whitmer with five grown sons and a husband to care for besides visitors, often grew tired. She thought they might just as well carry her a bucket of water or chop a bit of wood as to skate rocks on a pond. She was about to order them out of her home.” Interesting detail we haven’t known before. “One morning just at daybreak, she came out of her cow stable with two full buckets of milk in her hands, when a short, heavy-set, gray haired man carrying a package met her and said, ‘My name is Moroni. You have become pretty tired with all the extra work you have to do. The Lord has given me permission to show you the record’, turning the golden leaves one by one.”

And it’s interesting. Her grandson actually says, John C. Whitmer in his account that we’re more familiar with, he says, “The personage then suddenly vanished with the plates and where he went, she could not tell.” Very interesting. And also it may have been even more critical than we realized for Moroni to come as she was about to order them out of her home. So interesting little detail. Also his look, it’s interesting, it’s not how you picture Moroni probably. May have been to calm her fright, which the other account does say she was quite fearful when she saw this man. But anyway, fascinating aspects. Now let’s talk about some of the statements that critics will bring up. And after all the evidence I just went through, you almost don’t need to even go here. These are all second and third hand, never firsthand comments. But let’s go there, because these are used by critics here.

Now this first one here was during the bitter apostasy, after the Kirtland Safety Society failure. And that’s a great video I would suggest to watch of when a lot of this stuff happened here. But this statement here was from Thomas Bullock recording what Theodore Turley said, that John Whitmer said. So this is third hand, and it was written six years later after this confrontation there. So, Whitmer asked, this is John Whitmer, “‘Do you hint at me?’ Turley replied, ‘if the cap fits you wear it. All I know is that you have published to the world that an angel did present those plates to Joseph Smith.’ Whitmer replied, ‘I now say I handled those plates. There were fine engravings on both sides. I handled them.’ And he described how they were hung, ‘and they were shown to me by a supernatural power. I cannot read it, and I do not know whether it is true or not.'”

Now his saying that it was shown to him by a supernatural power critics hammer on that and say there’s our evidence. The eight witnesses didn’t actually see physical, tangible plates. It was some kind of vision. And now Larry Morris spoke in the FairMormon Conference just in 2019 and he talked about this actually, this specific event. He said, “This is an uncorroborated account and is also third hand, since it is Bullock reporting what Turley said about what John Whitmer said. So we’re not certain that it is what Whitmer said. Nevertheless, if he did say that, the question of what he meant by supernatural power is up for debate. Critics have concluded that this ‘added’ detail of how Whitmer ‘saw’ it indicates that the eight probably did not observe or feel the actual artifact.”

“I believe it’s possible and even probable that when he, Whitmer, said that when the plates had been shown to him by a supernatural power, he was reaffirming his conviction that God had directed the creation and preservation of the plates, as well as the translation of the Book of Mormon.” I’m going to share in a minute how he was a scribe for part of the Book of Mormon. He may have been alluding to that, but Morris goes on to say, “It is interesting that when Turley challenged Whitmer in the midst of these apostates, Whitmer …”, now he was an apostate at the moment, at that time too, “… not only affirmed that he had handled and seen the plates, he confirmed his belief that the Lord played a crucial role in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. We can’t know for certain what Whitmer meant, because he had no chance to ever comment on this, but to me that uncertainty itself shows that concluding that the eight probably did not observe or feel the actual artifact goes beyond the evidence.”

“Bullock’s third hand notes lack the historia graphical authority to overrule both the testimonies of the witnesses themselves and the second hand accounts of those that talk directly to them.” Now here the firsthand account from John Whitmer, given in March of 1836. “I desire to testify to all that I have most assuredly seen the plates from whence the Book of Mormon was translated, and that I have handled these plates and know of a surety that Joseph Smith Jr. has translated the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God.” Now listen, this is a first person account after being out of the Church for decades, 1876. Keep this firsthand account in mind by the way, as I share a few more things going forward. He says, “I have never heard that any one of the three or eight witnesses ever denied the testimony that they have born of the book as published in the first edition of the Book of Mormon. There are only two of the witnesses to that book now living, to wit. David Whitmer, one of the three and John Whitmer, one of the eight.”

“Our names have gone forth to all nations, tongues, and people as a divine revelation from God. And it will bring to pass the designs of God according to the declaration therein contained.” I think it’s fascinating too. He’s saying this being out of the Church for decades. So now here’s the one clarification, maybe what he meant by supernatural. Look at this from a letter written by Myron Bond seven months after an interaction with John Whitmer. He said, “Old father Whitmer told me last winter, with tears in his eyes, that he knew as well as he knew he had an existence that Joseph translated the ancient writing which was upon the plates, which he saw and handled, and which, as one of the scribes, he helped to copy, as the words fell from Joseph’s lips by supernatural or almighty power.” So quite interesting.

And lastly, this is an interview. Really, this is the last interview with John Whitmer. I’m not going to read that. You can pause if you want to see the whole thing, but it’s about very physical, tangible experience. I will the last one. He says, “Did you see them covered with a cloth? No. He handed them uncovered into our hands and we turned the leaves sufficiently to satisfy us.” So very good, okay. Now I want to share one that’s just ridiculous that this was even quoted, but it’s even today still quoted by critics here because they’re appealing a plea or argument to authority by this because it was the governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford. And he basically says this story with zero source. It’s just a rumor going around, but he just says this and so it’s still quoted today.

There’s no corroboration that any of this is, especially from the witnesses themselves that this is true, but he says, “He, Joseph Smith, set them to continual prayer….” these are the eight witnesses, “… and other spiritual exercises to acquire this lively faith by means of which the hidden things of God could be spiritually discerned. And, at last, when he could delay them no longer, he assembled them in a room …” now Lucy says it was a grove near their house, “… and produced a box which he had contained a precious treasure. The lid was opened. The witnesses peeped into it, but making no discovery, for the box was empty. They said, ‘Brother Joseph, we do not see the plates.’ The prophet answered them, ‘Oh ye of little faith. How long will God bear with this wicked and perverse generation? Down on your knees, brethren, every one of you, and pray God for the forgiveness of your sins and for a holy and living faith which cometh down from heaven.'”

“The disciples dropped to their knees and began to pray in the fervency of their spirit, supplicating God for more than two hours with fanatical earnestness. At the end of which time, looking again into the box, they were now persuaded that they saw the plates. I leave it to philosophers to determine whether the fumes have an enthusiastic and fanatical imagination are thus capable of blinding the mind and deceiving the senses by so absurd a delusion.” It’s just insane. This will even be quoted today, but okay. Reverend John Clark’s recollection of an unnamed attorney’s alleged recollection of an alleged statement from Martin Harris. So again, it’s kind of crazy stuff that this even gets quoted, but this is talking about the “I have faith” that Martin Harris talked about.

“A gentleman in Palmyra, bred to the law, a professor of religion, and of undoubted veracity told me that on one occasion, he appealed to Harris and asked him directly, ‘Did you see those plates?’ Harris replied, he did. ‘Did you see the plates, and the engraving on them with your bodily eyes? Harris replied, ‘Yes, I saw them with my eyes. They were shown unto me by the power of God and not of man.’ ‘But did you see them with your natural, your bodily eyes, just as you see this pencil case in my hand? Now say no or yes to this.’ Harris replied, ‘Why I did not see them as I do that pencil case, yet I saw them with the eye of faith. I saw them just as distinctly as I see anything around me, though at the time they were covered.'” Which by the way, that’s confusing. The person recording this is third hand, but talking about when he held the plates during the translation process at times, but also the eye of faith.

That was in D&C 17 that they would see it by the eye of faith. And that was again, another way of talking about spiritual vision aspect of this there. Now here’s the one that’s used the most and this is another case where Martin’s two experiences are combined together. This is the one that’s used by critics the most, and it’s a letter from one apostate to another apostate, essentially describing this experience with Martin Harris that led him out of the Church essentially on here. And so he first says, “When I came to hear …”, now this is Stephen Burnett. He says, “When I came to hear Martin Harris state in public that he never saw the plates with his natural eyes only envisioned or imagination, neither Oliver nor David …” Now, let’s stop for a minute. So first of all, Martin never talked like that. He never said “or imagination”. This is Burnett adding this in.

And Martin before and many statements after never talked about anything like this. It was never an imagination, but always in vision or the eye of faith, the spiritual eyes, that kind of thing, but they didn’t imagine this there. Then he goes on to say, this is what critics have also pointed to heavily is “that the eight witnesses never saw them and hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason, but were persuaded to do it, the last pedestal gave way…” to him, Burnett. “In my view, our foundation was sapped and the entire superstructure fell in a heap of ruins. I therefore three weeks since in the stone chapel renounced the Book of Mormon. After we were done speaking …”, this was in the second meeting.

“Martin Harris arose and said he was sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon, for he knew it was true. He said he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box with only a tablecloth or a handkerchief over them, but he never saw them, only as he saw a city through a mountain and said that he never should have told them that the testimony of the eight was false if it had not been picked out of him, but should have let it pass as it was.” So about the tablecloth, this was when Martin was trying to discuss about when he was helping Joseph in the translation process, and so he’s kind of mingling these two experiences together in one kind of statement here, but Martin was sharing that to really point out the physicality of the plates that the eight did have a physical experience with these plates.

Now let me show you how this is explained very well by Richard Lloyd Anderson. As I mentioned I think when I did David Whitmer, this Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses, Richard Lloyd Anderson. He just passed away recently, but this is the seminal work on this. It’s fascinating here. But he spoke at several different conferences. But this was a piece in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies and he explained this, I thought quite well. Here’s what he said: “Martin Harris stood and said that he ‘had hefted the plates repeatedly.’ This clearly countered the dissenters’ visionary theory [of the eight], which shows that the physical reality of the plates was Harris’s theme in the second meeting. He had actually held them with only a tablecloth over them in this context. Harris was not talking of his testimony of seeing the angel and plates, but speaking of other times when he knew the plates were under a tablecloth or a handkerchief, probably the experience that he and Emma shared during the 1828 translation.”

On reflection, Harris said that he ‘never should have told the testimony of the eight witnesses was false, if it had not been picked out of him, but should have let it pass as it was.'” That was the quote says, “The context is Harris straightening out Burnett by adding his own testimony that there were physical plates. If we compensate for Burnett’s loaded language, Harris’s retraction was essentially this: he never would have agreed that the eight witnesses saw the plates through spiritual sight if he had not been confused by leading questions, but would’ve let their written testimony speak for itself.” And who is Martin, by the way, to speak for the eight? Back to Anderson. “The real question is whether Burnett quoted Harris accurately in the first place. The answer is that Burnett continued to believe in a visionary experience for the eight witnesses, even after Harris said he had given the wrong impression on that issue.”

“Since Harris insisted he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box, he disagreed with Burnett’s spiritualizing of the eight witnesses’ experience. Burnett’s report of Harris’s quoting them is not only compound hearsay but hearsay rejected by its author, Martin Harris.” Okay, let’s take a look at this quote here from Harris in 1853. This is after being out of the Church for quite some time. He says, “I was the right-hand man of Joseph Smith and I know that he was a prophet of God. I know the Book of Mormon is true. Then smiting his fists on the table he said, ‘and you know that I know that it is true. I know that the plates have been translated by the gift and power of God, for His voice declared it unto us, therefore I know of a surety that work is true.'”

And then some other subsequent statements from Martin Harris to William Glenn here recorded Harris saying, “Gentleman, do you see that hand? Are you sure you see it? Are your eyes playing a trick or something? No. Well, as sure as you see my hand, so sure did I see the angel and the plates.” Harris told Robert Aveson, “It is not a mere belief, but is a matter of knowledge. I saw the plates and the inscriptions thereon. I saw the angel and he showed them unto me.” Now this last quote is going to be on his death bed. And I love this one part of this that talks about how he could be a rich man. And think about all of the witnesses that left the Church that could have become very wealthy, very rich men if they had denied their testimony, essentially.

So on his death bed responding to George Godfrey’s suggestion, he may have been deceived. He says, “The Book of Mormon is no fake. I know what I know. I have seen what I’ve seen and I have heard what I’ve heard. I have seen the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon is written. An angel appeared to me and others and testified to the truthfulness of the record, and had I been willing to perjured myself and sworn falsely to the testimony I now bear, I could have been a rich man, but I could not have testified other than I have done and am now doing for these things are true.” Now one little sidebar. The Strangites, James Strang was a break-off group during the secession crisis after the martyrdom, and he even got some prominent families to go with him in the Church. And there was a confusing letter about his appointment 10 days before the martyrdom, but it was really just to be a stake president in Wisconsin.

Page two, which we now know is a forgery, not Joseph Smith’s writing, that he was to leave the Church. So, but here’s what critics will point out is that he proves witnesses and records, metal records that were buried. And so for this made Joseph’s ability to produce witnesses neither surprising nor persuasive. Well, there’s some key differences. One is there are no angelic visions, no angels showing anything. Many of the witnesses later reputed their testimonies. One of the most damning ones was one of the witnesses later said that they helped Strang to make the plates and buried them. And then look at the fruits. There actually are 500 members still today of that branch, break off, a small, break-off group.

So anyway. Now finish with the last couple of quotes from some of the others that left the Church. Hiram Page, and if you notice, almost all of the statements I’ve been trying to share are from those that had left the Church. Hiram Page in 1847 after leaving the Church for some time, “As to the Book of Mormon, it would be doing injustice to myself, and to the work of God of the last days, to say that I could know a thing to be true in 1830, and know the same thing to be false in 1847.” And his son quoted him as, “I knew my father to be true and faithful to his testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon until the very last. Whenever he had an opportunity to bear his testimony to this effect, he would always do so, and seemed to rejoice exceedingly in having been privileged to see the plates.”

Then Jacob Whitmer, we have very little there, but we do have this quote from his son, “My father, Jacob Whitmer, was always faithful and true to his testimony to the Book of Mormon, and confirmed it on his death bed.” And then I love this from Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses book. He says here, “After quoting the published statements of the three and eight witnesses in describing the experience of the latter group, Lucy Smith relates, ‘The ensuing evening, we held a meeting in which all the witnesses bore testimony to the facts as stated above'”, of their statements in the Book of Mormon. And I love this. A lot of people aren’t aware of this meeting. He says, “Two years later …”, this would have been 1831, ” … in the period of dynamic preaching of the early leaders, a conference was held near Cleveland, Ohio, remembered by Luke Johnson as follows:”

“‘At this conference, the 11 witnesses to the Book of Mormon with uplifted hands …'” So just picture this.Testifying like under oath, “… up lifted hands bore their solemn testimony to the truth of that book, as did also the prophet Joseph.'” So whenever you hear any criticisms, I want you to just picture it. I love that picture in my mind of all 11 witnesses with their hands raised to the square. Now I want to finish with Richard Lloyd Anderson’s closing comments at the FairMormon Conference when he spoke in 2004. Like I said, he just died in August, 2018 and I’m just going to share the underlying parts here. You can pause and read this whole thing.

These are some sections I just loved out of his comments when he spoke. He says, “There is not one reliable record where they, the witnesses, denied their testimony. All three of the witnesses bore that testimony on their death beds. And so I would say these witnesses are capable, they’re perceptive, they’re intelligent enough to know whether they were the victims of deception. They were motivated to expose that there was a conspiracy. They did not. And I think the whole issue is an issue of speculation versus documentation.” And down at the bottom there, he says, “There is nothing that I have found that would make me feel a bit to the contrary intellectually or spiritually. I have looked for whatever contradictions– I made up my mind early if they were there, I’d find them. I haven’t found them.” Then he says, “I say that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.” And I do as well. I hope you enjoyed the video. Subscribe for more.

Resources:

Books:

Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses by Richard Lloyd Anderson

A Documentary History of The Book of Mormon by Larry Morris

Websites:

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

http://thiscountsashometeaching.blogs…

https://journal.interpreterfoundation…

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s…

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/…

Videos:

Tangible Restoration: Eye Witnesses of The Book of Mormon – Dan Peterson at 2006 Fairmormon Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V38js…

Book of Mormon Witnesses – Richard Lloyd Anderson at 2004 FairMormon Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooocd…

The Eight Witnesses – Larry Morris at 2019 FairMormon Conference (might only be a streaming purchase option for a period of time) https://www.fairmormon.org/conference…

January 21, 2020 By Jeff Roundy Leave a Comment

Tactics Used by Critics

This video reviews a number of the tactics used today by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Being more aware of some of these approaches and fallacies, can help one see beyond the deceptions and more clearly discern the truth.

Okay. So in this video I want to talk about tactics that are used by critics of the Church. There are quite a few. I’m going to go quickly and give lots of examples. But let’s start out with this one.

The Big List Approach or Proof by Verbosity. This provides the illusion of proof by the sheer mass of material flung at the problem. This is a favorite approach on the Internet today. This big long laundry list of here are all the problems with the Church. The tagline is often if only 10% of this is true, then you’ve got a real problem kind of thing. Okay, the next one.

Half Truth. Adding in true facts to a deceit in order to confuse the issue or make it seem more likely to be true. And now if you think who uses this the most is Satan. This is the great tactic here that is often used and is very effective.

Okay, next thing. The Historians Fallacy or Presentism. So the historians fallacy, this fallacy assumes that historical figures understood events and decisions in the same way and with access to the same information that the person analyzing the decision today has. Also presentism. This is judging the past by the standards used today.

I have a Word of Wisdom video I recently just did about the phase in of the Word of Wisdom. Critics use this as a great… They’ll give examples of past members in the 19th century, leaders breaking the Word of Wisdom to shock members that are… And they count on people using presentism to do that. Okay, next one.

Infallible Prophets or Other Faulty Assumptions. Expecting perfection from church leaders, especially general authorities. Now studies have shown that the right side of the brain if it’s expecting perfection, really blows things up more dramatically, if we set up this standard of perfection. Many times you don’t realize, with faulty assumptions we might be bringing to an issue that critics will use to try and tear down faith with.

And to give you the best talk I’ve ever heard on this with President Uchtdorf, October 2013, he said, “And, to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the Church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine. I suppose the Church would be perfect only if it were run by perfect beings. God is perfect and His doctrine is pure. But he works through us, His imperfect children, and imperfect people make mistakes. In the title page of the Book of Mormon we read, ‘And now if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men. Wherefore condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment seat of Christ.'”

Okay, let’s look at the next one. Quote Mining. Data Mining for quotes, especially from the Journal of Discourses. So this great quote, I did one on What is Doctrine? A video of talking about doctrines, opinions, and practices, sorting it all out. But this, I shared this quote from the Church Newsroom website. “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 on the whole Church.”

In fact, the Journal of Discourses a lot of times they were extemporaneous speeches that were given. They were often, the quotes are taken out of context. They were not meant or were not recognizing them as doctrine of the Church per what the video I talked to you about. Okay, let’s look at the next one.

Milk Before Meat. Meat First Can Look Foolish. Many complex issues cannot be understood without first understanding their fundamental building blocks. This is particularly challenging in the Internet age when complicated issues are thrust into the forefront without any foundation being addressed.

The next one. Science Focus or Naturalist Assumptions. This is huge today. In philosophy, naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural as opposed to supernatural or spiritual laws and forces operate in the world. You look at this famous book on this screen, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. These are known as the new atheists. And what this means, why they’re the new atheists is they’re looking for converts. And they’re very proactive in their opinions. They’re getting these books out, and they’re becoming bestsellers. So very popular today.

Okay, let’s talk about for just a second what are fallacies? Well, they’re deceptive, misleading or false beliefs. Opinions based on inaccurate facts are invalid reasoning. And logical fallacy, in particular, are errors in reasoning that invalidates an argument. There’s an example on the screen here. Penguins are black and white. Old TV shows are black and white. Therefore, penguins, are old TV shows.

Okay. So we’re going to go through a bunch of these real quick. Straw Man Fallacy. This fallacy sets up the the opponent’s argument to be weaker than it actually is, and proceeds to demolish the weak version and claim victory. So for example, Latter-day Saints believe that prophets are connected to God. So they understand the physical world better than most. This would be set up as the belief. Well, Brigham Young said that he believed men lived on the moon. So therefore, now we know from science that men don’t live on the moon.

So therefore, we can conclude that Brigham Young was not a prophet on there. So that’s a straw man argument. Latter-day saints don’t believe… they believe that prophets are close to God and connected to God. But they don’t have this phenomenal understanding of the world different than somebody else or scientists, and many believe this, what Brigham believed. Many believed that in the 19th century. So that’s another example of presentism. And then we talked about how not everything a prophet says is doctrine. It can be opinions like that was. All right. Next one.

Ad Hominem. This is Latin for “to the person”. These are personal attacks. Unfairly attacking a person’s character or personality instead of addressing the issue. So for example today, somebody could say, “Well, the Latter-day Saints shouldn’t be invited to this equality debate because they are bigots.” That would be an example of an ad hominem.

Okay. Hasty Generalization. An inference drawn from insufficient evidence. Making rush conclusions without considering all the variables. Leaping to a conclusion. Oh, this happens today big time on the Internet. You think about how we try and digest news today. Quickly, we sift through things. Swipe right, swipe left. That’s our world today. Lots of hasty generalizations.
Red Herrings. Okay. Using an unrelated issue to distract the attention away from the relevant or important question. Here’s an example. In January 2019, Mitt Romney put in a op-ed in the Washington Post on Trump. And how the moral character of the society or the country, the President needs to lead out on that, and he’s not doing a great job on on this. And he gave different reasons why, in his opinion, he wasn’t.

So this, The Babylon Bee, which is a satirical website focused on Christians specifically. They had this headline, Follower of Joseph Smith Urges Nation to Reject Morally-Flawed Leaders. So it was a religiously bigoted piece hiding behind the guise of humor. And it distracts attention away from the issues raised. So great example of a red herring.

Okay. Poisoning the Well. Attempts to discredit a person before their arguments are even heard. So for example, you could say, “Oh, you can’t read anything a scholar says that is from BYU because they’re on the Church’s payroll. So how could that be objective?” That’s an example.

Okay, Double Standard. This arises when two or more people, circumstances, or events are treated differently even though they should be treated the same way. So where are the Book of Mormon plates? Or where are the stone tablets that the 10 Commandments were written on, for example. Or, there’s faith that’s required to believe in the Book of Mormon. There’s also faith required to believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected. But there’s again, a double standard that’s used.

Okay. Next one. Appeal to Authority. Anonymous authority, especially in antidotes. Claiming that something must be true because it is believed by someone who is said to be an authority on the subject. So like archaeologists don’t believe in the Book of Mormon, as an example. Or, Latter-day Saint, a Latter-day Saint stake president once told me dot, dot, dot. This is also, you can see this a lot in footnote usage. Lots of games played with footnotes where it’s second and third-hand things. Maybe absolute phony material, or just material that really doesn’t support the position, but it makes it look like it’s an appeal to authority essentially there. It’s well documented, so to speak.

Okay. The next one. Appeal to Belief. A Bandwagon. Appeal to the Masses. Claiming something must be true simply because most people believe it. So all Christians believe that the Bible Cannon is closed, as an example of that. Appeal to Emotion. Judgmental Language. Seeking to win an argument through the manipulation of emotions, especially in the absence of factual evidence. Judgemental language seeks to influence the audience by using inflammatory or prejudicial language. That’s often the way the appeal to emotion has done. So for example, Latter-day Saints are racist would be an example of that.

Okay. Next one. Appeal to Tradition. Presumes that an older idea is better than a new one. How can you not believe in the Nicene Creed? It’s ancient, since 325 A.D. How could you not believe that? As an example.

Okay. Either or Fallacy, or The False Dilemma. Discussing an issue as if there are only two alternatives. This fallacy ignores any other possible alternatives. For example, we either ban hairspray or the world will end. Or, if the Bible is true, then the Book of Mormon is false, as an example. False dilemma there.

Okay. Next one. Questionable Cause. Correlation Versus Causation Issues. Because two events occur together, one is the cause of the other. See on the screen here? The bigger the fire, the more the fireman. Therefore, firemen cause fires. Because event B followed event A, A must have caused B. Oversimplification of a situation by presuming there is a single cause of a more complex phenomenon.

So for example, a post hoc. This event B followed event A. So A must have caused B. 2 Nephi 1:14, critics will say, “Hey, this looks like Joseph Smith plagiarized Shakespeare’s Hamlet in this.” However, if you look at the words closely and compare them to ancient Near-East texts, they correlate much stronger even with that, which is where they should have come from at that time, that part of the Book of Mormon.

Okay, Begging the Question. False Premise. Making a conclusion based on a premise that lacks support. It begs the question, what’s your support for that premise? So, for example, the Book of Mormon claims to be the story of all ancient inhabitants of America.

DNA studies have now shown that many of these are clearly not of Middle East origins. So therefore, the Book of Mormon is not accurate, and not an accurate history. The conclusion follows logic, but it’s false conclusion based on a faulty premise, which begs the question. It is not what the Book of Mormon claims to be. Watch the video I did on that DNA and the Book of Mormon.

Okay. Non Sequitur. This is Latin for “it does not follow”. A pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure. Up at the top left, you see two wrongs make a right, don’t make a right. Defending something done wrong by citing another incident of wrong doing. Example, America does not need to regulate pollution because China is producing more pollution than we are on there. So that’s a non sequitur.

Okay. Argument From Ignorance. Argument From Silence or Negative Proof. Argues that because something cannot explain, someone cannot explain something, it does not happen or isn’t true, didn’t happen or isn’t true. Or, because the critic cannot imagine how something could be, it therefore cannot be. Any silence is wrongly considered to represent an admission of guilt, or an admission of ignorance, a negative proof. One well-known critic of the Church in their biography of Joseph Smith asserted that Joseph was not visited by God in the First Vision because quote, “The newspapers took no notice of the claim.” So that was the reason.

Okay. Next one. Slippery Slope. It implies that accepting the argument will lead to catastrophic results. Thus, the audience is encouraged to reject the argument for the greater good. If we accept revelation from God, then the next thing we know we’re going to have criminals going all over the place, committing crime saying that it was revelation from God that told them to do this, as an example.

Okay, Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, quite the name. This fallacy takes data from its context, and thereby tries to make it appear more impressive than it truly is. The name comes from an example of a Texas gunslinger who shoots randomly at a barn door, and then afterward paints a target around each bullet hole. The holes are random, but appear to prove that the gunslinger is a great shot.

Good example of this. Some critics will say, Joseph Smith used View of the Hebrews, that book, for the Book of Mormon. And if you look, the supposed parallels are general, and they’re very trivial, and they ignore the massive amounts of unparallels, essentially, is a good example of that fallacy.

Okay. Shifting the Burden of Proof. Making a claim that needs to be backed up with evidence, but then shifting the responsibility for disproof to the other person. Watermelons are blue inside until you cut the skin. Prove that I’m wrong. And so, I love this one. And it’s the Book of Mormon is false until you can prove it’s true. And think about what Moroni 10 does. It does just the opposite. It says each person needs to independently find out for themselves if the Book of Mormon is true, and they can receive that from God through the Holy Spirit.

That’s the end. I hope you enjoyed these and all these different things. And the more you’re aware of this, the better prepared you are for being in the crazy world that we live in today in this material. Thanks.

Resources:

Websites:

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

Videos:

https://youtu.be/XM1t1WiltVQ

https://youtu.be/LKDpoC72D0c

https://youtu.be/LyKoDejrpmc

https://youtu.be/VhbUE1pZjVQ

January 21, 2020 By Jeff Roundy Leave a Comment

Women and the Priesthood

This video discusses the evolution in our understanding of priesthood power and authority to include women’s ability to access it as they serve in their families, the church, and the temple. It also clarifies early church practices of women being “ordained” in Relief Society and women giving “healing blessings of faith,” neither of which resulted, ever, in any woman having conferred on them the Aaronic or Melchizedek Priesthood or ordained to any priesthood office.

The topic of this video is women and the priesthood. It’s a very important topic. It’s been talked about quite a bit recently. I’m going to share a lot of current thoughts on it. I am at a disadvantage because I’m a man talking about this, I think in some ways, but I am married and I have four daughters. I’ve asked them about this topic and gotten a lot of input from them. Hopefully I’ll do justice to it.

There are two very critical talks I’m going to suggest. I’ll put it at the top of the resources list, but the Two Trees by Valerie Hudson Cassler and This is a Woman’s Church by Sharon Eubank, two phenomenal presentations given at two different FairMormon conferences and I’m going to share a few thoughts from those. Also some great books just in 2019, three books: The Priesthood Power of Women: In the Temple, Church, and Family by Barbara Gardner; Robert line, Royal Daughters with Priesthood Power; and then Wendy Ulrich, Live Up to Our Privileges: Women, Power, and Priesthood, and they all take very different interesting things to explore about it.

And then in 2018 the Renlunds, Elder Renlund and Sister Renlund, The Melchizedek Priesthood, and Jonathan Stapely did a great phenomenal book, The Power of Godliness. Fascinating book. And then the classic Sheri Dew, Women and the Priesthood. And this is the one, if you were going to get just one, this is the one that I would get. This is really the foundational one. 2013 I think is when that was published. And then this is one of my favorite classics. This has been out for quite a while, but Women in Eternity, Women of Zion, Alma Sorensen and Valerie Hudson Cassler.

There’s a lot of great books on the topic. But let’s get started.

First of all, Elder Matthew Cowley said that “Men have to have something given to them in mortality to make them saviors of men, but not mothers, not women. You are born with an inherent right, an inherent authority to be the saviors of human souls. By a right divine, you are the saviors and regenerating force in the lives of God’s children here upon the earth.”

And Elder Ballard said, “Men and women, though spiritually equal, are entrusted with different but equally significant roles. Men are given stewardship over the sacred ordinances of the priesthood. To women, God gives stewardship over bestowing and nurturing mortal life, including providing physical bodies for God’s spirit children and guiding those children toward the knowledge of gospel truths. These stewardships, equally sacred and important, do not involve any false ideas about domination or subordination.”

Now, Valerie Hudson Cassler spoke at the FairMormon Conference. She talked on the two trees, and I love this. This was one of the most powerful talks I’ve ever heard in my life. In fact, the FairMormon website tracker says it’s the most watched I think on the website that they’ve had, and it was given back in 2010, but I love it because she is a woman. She’s a convert. She’s a feminist. There’s a lot of the things that you could say, well, it’s very powerful who she is representing the message that she is sharing. Keep that in mind as you hear these words. And I’m going to share a number of slides here. I pulled some nuggets from her presentation that I thought were phenomenal. Like I said, I’ll link to the video as well as the transcript that’s there.

She starts out by talking about, she says, “I didn’t join the Church because I was a feminist, but I stay in the Church because I am a feminist. And what I’d like to do to begin my talk is to review the main points of LDS doctrine that make this a revolutionary religion from a feminine perspective. The restored gospel teaches me that the term God means an exalted woman and exalted man married in the new and everlasting covenant. We get that from D&C 132. We are taught that there is no God without men and women loving each other as equals. Heavenly Father is not an old bachelor. In fact, the one who is an old bachelor is Satan. This is revolutionary.”

And she goes on and talks about a bunch of other things that are really revolutionary. It’s fascinating. But I want to focus in on the Garden of Eden and I’m going to go through a number of slides and stay with this because she gets into some very, towards the end, that builds to some very critical points that she makes about this topic that I think helps us to see and understand really the big picture.

Going into this Two People, Two Trees, Two Stewardships. “We cannot fully understand this incredible doctrine of ours unless we go back to the story of the Garden of Eden. Let’s tell it again in the light of the restored gospel without the encrusted traditions of old. We have two trees and we have two people, a man and a woman.” Then as Eve’s created, she does make this comment about a helpmeet. In fact, she quotes Elder Tingey, “You must not misunderstand what the Lord meant when Adam was told he was to have a helpmeet. A helpmeet is a companion suited to or equal to us. We walk side by side with a helpmeet, not one before or behind the other. A helpmeet results in an absolute equal partnership between a husband and a wife. Eve was to be equal to Adam as a husband and wife are to be equal to each other.”

Okay. Now, “Why was Eve created second? Could it be that Eve was created second to demonstrate Adam’s helplessness before the first tree? Could it be that Eve was foreordained to partake first of the fruit of the first tree? We must ask ourselves what partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means in a spiritual sense. It means to enter into mortality with a mortal body, to enter into full agency and have awakened within us the light of Christ that will serve us so well as we pass the veil. Think– two people, two trees– whose stewardship does this sound like? It is through women that souls journey to mortality and gain their agency, and in general, as seen in the nurturing of women, their nurturing love of the children, that the light of Christ is awakened within each soul. I believe that when we think about it–two people, two trees– that what we really are thinking about is two stewardships, and that the fruit of the first tree symbolizes the gift that women give to every soul that choose the plan of Christ. It symbolizes the role and power of women in the great plan of happiness.”

“Elder Oaks in his famous talk on Eve says that the partaking in the fruit was the minimum transgression necessary to put the veil of separation in place that would enable our full inheritance of agency.”

Okay. A woman opened the door. “I think it was just and proper that women open the door to the plan of happiness. We considered what would befall us in the fallen world. Surely the daughters of God were given at least an inkling of what could befall them–rape, forced marriage, sex trafficking, treated as chattel through much of human history. If no women was willing to open the door to mortal life and all that it would mean for women, I don’t think it would’ve been opened and that would only be just.”

“Eve was not the worst among women. Eve was the best among women.” And this is revolutionary doctrine for Latter-day Saints compared to other Christians. “She was the most courageous, the most full of faith. It was also right, then, that the first mortal being that the resurrected Jesus showed himself to was not a man. It was a woman. Jesus’ performance of the Atonement repaid mother Eve’s faith in the plan, her courageous opening of the door represented by the first tree. Who hearkened first to whom? Adam hearkened first to Eve.”

And I will mention this, this is another book that I’ll share, Christ’s Emancipation of Women in the New Testament, which is phenomenal by Lynne Wilson. And if you think about these witnesses too, the first witness of the Christ coming to earth was Mary. The first witness of His messiahship was the woman at the well. These are women. The first witness of the Resurrection was a woman, Mary. The first witness of the Book of Mormon plates was a woman, Mary Whitmer. Really quite fascinating.

And this goes into a lot of the traditions that were cultural to Israelites at the time when Christ was on the earth and how he up-ended many of them that we don’t see in our modern culture today and understand what He was doing and how revolutionary it was.

Back to Valerie’s talk. “Did God curse her? That’s pretty hard to believe if he was so proud of her wisdom and courage. We know that the ground was cursed for the sake of Adam and Eve. Is this a cursing of Adam and Eve? Well, no. In the teachings of the Church, we do not believe that this was a curse meant to punish them. It was a curse meant to start the law of opposites.”

“Eve was told she would labor in childbirth. Was this a cursing of Eve? Absolutely not. To have children is one of the most soul satisfying parts of a woman’s life. Eve, as part of her punishment, was told that Adam would rule over her. Is that what we believe? Actually not. Genesis 3:16 states that Adam is to ‘rule over’ Eve, but ‘over’ in ‘rule over’ uses the Hebrew ‘bet’, which means ‘ruling with’, not ‘ruling over’.” There’s an article in the Ensign from Bruce Hafen in 2007 on that.

“The LDS alone among all Christian religions says that not only did Eve not sin, but she was rewarded for her courage and wisdom, and God was assuring her that just as she fulfilled her role in the great plan of happiness, that Adam would step up to the plate and he would perform his role in the great plan of happiness, and that would entitle him to rule with her. Absolutely revolutionary and astounding doctrine.”

“Now, what is Adam going to do? Adam will give the gift of the fruit of the second tree to the children of God, those who are worthy to receive it, just as Eve and her daughters give the fruit of the first tree in the garden of Eden to all who are worthy to partake of it. And that fruit of the second tree, as we know, are the ordinances of salvation and exaltation. Just as the veil into this life is guarded by the women, the daughters of God, so the veil that brings us home is administered and guarded over by the sons of God and those that have accepted the gift of the second tree from the hands of the sons of God will pass through that veil and back to that celestial place where they can be with their parents once more.”

And then finally, she says, “When the giving and the receiving of the fruit of the first tree is past, what we’re walking towards along this path of the great plan is the second tree. We see what is most prominent in our eyes from our vantage point, the fruit of the second tree and the sons of God who are giving the fruit of the second tree. That is only natural, but if that perspective warps our sense of what and who is important, then we have a problem. It’s important for us to step back and look again at the whole picture. The whole picture that includes women and man, two trees, two stewardships. Without either one the plan would not exist. It is a plan of equal partnership between men and women, a plan of joyous cooperation. That means that priesthood is not some extra given to men and denied women. Priesthood is a man’s apprenticeship to become like Heavenly Father, and I believe that women have their own apprenticeship to become like their Heavenly Mother. The ordinance– and they are ordinances– of body and of agency– pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation, and spiritual ordinances of the first tree are not less powerful or spiritual than the ordinances of the second tree.”

“Women have their own godly power and a truism that holds fairly across the board is that those religions that despise the body tend to be those religions that de-value women. Gender equality is not some politically correct ideal to the Latter-day Saints. It is not some maraschino cherry placed atop a Zion sundae. No, relationships of gender equality are the bricks of Zion, without which you cannot build Zion, because gender equality is how Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father live.”

That was kind of long, but wow. I would strongly suggest, just watch the whole thing. It’s just unbelievable.

President Packer in the October 1983 conference talked about this parable of the safe and the treasure inside. I’ll just let you pause it on the screen if you’d like to read it, but it’s a similar thing to what Valerie’s was just talking about and saying it in kind of a different way, but a really powerful concept there.

Moving on, the priesthood can be hard to understand. Sometimes it’s even the language we use. Here’s some examples. Sheri Dew said “We actually diminish priesthood power when we equate it with holders of the priesthood.” Elder Oaks, “Some of the abbreviated expressions, like ‘the women and the priesthood’ convey an erroneous idea. Men are not ‘the priesthood.'” Elder Ballard, “In our Heavenly Father’s great, priesthood-endowed plan, men have the unique responsibility to administer the priesthood, but they are not the priesthood.”

Speaking of trying to understand the priesthood, Bruce R. McConkie said “This doctrine of the priesthood– unknown in the world and but little known even in the Church– cannot be learned out of the scriptures alone. It is not set forth in the sermons and teachings of the prophets and apostles, except in small measure. The doctrine of the priesthood is known only by personal revelation. It comes, line upon line and precept upon precept, by the power of the Holy Ghost to those who love and serve God with all their heart, might, mind, and strength. Priesthood is power like none other in heaven or on earth.”

And in fact, many of these books I’ve talked about try to talk about too, this larger priesthood like the Renlunds talk about, the earth, the dirt on the earth, essentially the priesthood given to mankind, but the priesthood is more the earth itself. Jonathan Stapely talked about as the cosmological priesthood. Valerie Hudson, she talked about it like the little “P” and then the capital “P” to try and demonstrate this larger, bigger priesthood.

Then we also have if you look on the screen here, a hierarchal and patriarchal priesthood. Barbara Gardner in her book on the priesthood power of women talked about this quite a bit too. “Hierarchal governs priesthood use at church”, Elder Oaks. It’s public, used to administer and officiate the saving ordinances, used during the time of Christ and since the Restoration. Patriarchal is priesthood authority in the family, also used in the temple, mostly private or sacred usage, used since the time of Adam and the Old Testament. During our dispensation it is used alongside the hierarchal priesthood.

She said, “President Oaks affirmed, ‘The most important difference in the functioning of priesthood authority in the family and in the Church results from the fact that the government of the family is patriarchal, whereas the government of the Church is hierarchal. The priesthood itself is not different. What varies is simply how the Lord has set up its system of governance.” And in the home we know it’s very equal. In fact, here’s a quote from President Hunter talking about presiding. “The Lord intended the wife to be a companion, equal and necessary in full partnership. Presiding in righteousness necessitates a shared responsibility between husband and wife.”

Now, patriarchal order, let’s talk about this for a minute. It does have a negative connotation, the wording of that today, with the way that word can be used. And so I love what Valerie said in the Tale of the Two Trees talk. She said, “We need to understand the true definition of what we call the patriarchal order.” I’m just going to throw in a couple of quotes here. “Satan loves to use words that sound the same but have absolutely different meanings. And we know the term ‘patriarchy’, if you look it up in a secular dictionary, is an order in which men rule over women. We know that that’s not the order of Heaven. Obviously we don’t have patriarchy in the Church, but we do have something called the patriarchal order.”

“Why is it called that, and why would we reject definitions that try to make it look like more like the definition of men rule over women? Here I would like to quote President Ezra Taft Benson. ‘The patriarchal order is called such because it came down from father to son. The right to officiate in the ordinances of the giving of the fruit of the second tree in the old days came down from father to son. But this order is otherwise described in modern revelation as an order of family government, where man and woman enter into the covenant with God just as did Adam and Eve to be sealed for eternity, to have posterity, and to do the will and work of God throughout their mortality.’ What we mean by the patriarchal order is the order of family government as found in heaven based on equal partnerships of men and women.”

Some other great recent quotes. Elder Ballard at the 2013 BYU Education Week talked about priesthood power. He said, “When men and women go to the temple, they’re both endowed with the same power, which by definition is priesthood power. The endowment is literally a gift of power. All who enter the house of the Lord officiate in the ordinances of the priesthood. This applies to men and women alike.” I love what Sherri Dew said when she addressed this in her book from a woman’s perspective of what this meant. “Endowed, covenant-keeping women have direct access to priesthood power for their own lives. What does it mean to have access to priesthood power for our own lives? It means that we can receive revelation, be blessed and aided by the ministering of angels, learn to part the veil that separates us from our Heavenly Father, be strengthened to resist temptation, be protected, and be enlightened and made smarter than we are– all without any mortal intermediary.”

“Eliza R. Snow said the Latter-day Saint women ‘have greater and higher privileges than any other females upon the face of the earth.’ This is because the temple gives LDS women spiritual privileges no other woman on earth may claim. Many women who are endowed in the house of the Lord have been given a gift of power, and they have been given a gift of knowledge of how to use and access that power.”

And then on priesthood authority, Elder Oaks’ famous talk, now you probably heard this, some of these quotes here. 2014 General Conference, April. He said, “A person may have authority given to him, or a sister to her, to do certain things in the Church that are binding and absolutely necessary for our salvation, such as the work that our sisters do in the house of the Lord. They have authority given unto them to do some great and wonderful things sacred unto the Lord and binding just as thoroughly as are the blessings that are given by the men who hold the priesthood. We are not accustomed to speaking of women having the authority of the priesthood in their Church callings, but what other authority can it be?”

“When a woman, young or old, is set apart to preach the gospel as a full-time missionary, she is given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function. The same is true when a woman is set apart to function as an officer or teacher in a Church organization under the direction of one who holds the keys of the priesthood. Whoever functions in an office or calling received from one who holds priesthood keys exercises priesthood authority in performing his or her assigned duties.”

And it’s fascinating that the keys of the priesthood too, directing the work. And that’s through the offices. I do love Wendy Ulrich just spoke in the 2019 FairMormon Conference and talking about the keys of the priesthood. She gave this fascinating analogy of a stream and the rocks on the bank were directing the water in the stream, but the water, essentially the keys, would be directing that water, but the water is what gave everything life and enrichment. That really is the priesthood. The rocks on the bank, the keys, they’re not the the priesthood per se. They’re directing the flow and the order there. And I’ll talk about that a little bit more in a minute.

Then she said in the 2016 conference she said, “The specific roles and responsibilities men and women assume differ somewhat, but both men and women can be given priesthood authority. They exercise priesthood power, they perform priesthood ordinances, they are endowed, clothed, or vested with priestly identities, and they enter the Holy Order of the Son of God.”

She talked about that significantly in her book there. Sheri Dew’s Women and the Priesthood, regarding some of the things we don’t understand. First, regarding women in the temple, she says, “Although women are not ordained to the priesthood, they do have authority to officiate priesthood ordinances in the temple. On the other hand, women unlike man, are not required to be ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood in order to enter the house of the Lord, though the ordinances performed there are all priesthood ordinances. Neither are women are required to be ordained to the priesthood to serve as leaders in the Lord’s Church. Why is this the case? We don’t know the answer to these questions, either.”

And in fact, Elder Ballard regarding men in priesthood office, he said this at Education Week in 2013, “Why are men ordained to the priesthood offices and not women? When all is said and done, the Lord has not revealed why He has organized His Church as He has. Do we believe that it is the Lord’s Church? Do we believe that He has organized it according to His purpose and wisdom? Do we believe that His wisdom far exceeds ours? Do we believe that He has organized His Church in a manner that would be the greatest possible blessing to all of His children, both as sons and daughters?”

Elder Oaks in his talk, he made a strong statement about how careful the prophets and apostles are viewing this issue and what they can and can’t change. He says, “Ultimately all keys of the priesthood are held by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose priesthood it is. He is the one who determines what keys are delegated to mortals and how those keys will be used.” And then he says down in the bottom here, “The divine nature of the limitations put upon the exercise of priesthood keys explains an essential contrast between decisions on matters of Church administration and decisions affecting the priesthood. The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, who presided over the Church, are empowered to make many decisions affecting Church policies and procedures, matters such as the location of Church buildings and the ages for missionary service.”

“But even though these presiding authorities hold and exercise all of the keys delegated to men in this dispensation, they are not free to alter the divinely decreed pattern that only men will hold offices in the priesthood.”

Okay, so now, can things change? Well, many things have been changing. We look at what’s cultural, what’s doctrinal. I love what the Relief Society President at the time, Linda Burton, said at the May, 2013 BYU Women’s Conference. She said, “What a healthy discussion to have about the priesthood. What is cultural and what is doctrine? It is enlivening and wonderful. It helps us define what is authority, what are the keys? But let’s go to the right sources for answers. Why would we believe the internet and not the prophets? We can figure out how to ask the questions in a way that facilitates cooperation and brings honest concerns to the table.”

“If you aren’t in a leadership position, bring questions to your leaders in an honest and humble way. See what we can figure out together. Offer solutions. What would you do if you were the leader? But be patient and humble.” And then I did think this was fascinating in Robert Line’s book that was just published about … one little section that caught my eye that I thought was really interesting, he quotes a verse here in the Doctrine and Covenants, possible if any changes were to take place with this interesting scripture here. He says, “Are there any future ways in which women in the Church will receive the priesthood, ways that are not yet revealed, but one day might be? If such a thing were to happen, it would not come because of social pressure or efforts to coerce those with priesthood keys. It would come as it always does, because of revelation from heaven given to those with priesthood keys. How might this happen?”

“We can only guess in ignorance and speculate with the uncertainty of limited perspective. Wisdom and prudence tells us to wait and be patient, to live faithfully and trust in the Lord’s timing and purposes. Perhaps our time and efforts would be best spent implementing what God has already revealed. However, a verse regarding these matters is found in the Doctrine and Covenants.” This is D&C 107 verse 10. “It says, ‘High priests after the order of the Melchizedek priesthood have a right to officiate in their own standing, under the direction of the presidency, in administering spiritual things, and also in the office of an elder, priest, teacher, deacon and member.’ The wording here is interesting. Could there perhaps be another priesthood office, ordained or not, even that of ‘member’? Or does this mean that all members will someday be able to access all the blessings of the priesthood?”

“Might there be further divine clarification on what this term ‘member’ means in the context of the aforementioned priesthood offices? Might we learn in the future the connection that women could have with such a potential priesthood office?”

Okay, Sheri Dew. She, in her book, she’s asked by a reporter about being an oppressed Latter-day Saint woman. She said to the reporter, “I told him that for years I had searched the world over to find any organization, the largest governments and religions, multinational businesses, worldwide charities, major universities, where as many women had as much bona fide responsibility and authority as they do in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that I hadn’t been able to find one. ‘Does this sound to you like a church that holds women back?’ I asked. ‘I had no idea’, he admitted.” Then she goes on to say a few other things.

She said, “Latter-day women …” this is in her book, they ” … have unusual influence and privileges in the Church, many of which require ordination in other churches. We pray, preach, and expound scriptures from the pulpit in sacrament meeting, lead, direct and teach in organizations for all women, young women and children in the church, teach gospel doctrine in Sunday School to people of both genders and all ages, teach seminary and institute classes to teenagers and young adults of both genders, officiate in priesthood ordinances for women in the temple, participate with male leaders and significant Church councils on both the local and general levels, from the age of 19 are eligible to preach the gospel on proselyting missions throughout the world.” She says, “Women hold all the administrative and teaching offices in the Relief Society, which is now one of the oldest, largest, and most influential women’s organizations in the world, numbering more than six and a half million members and 185 nations.”

Some powerful thoughts. Okay, so Sharon Eubank, in her talk, This is a Woman’s Church at the FairMormon Conference, and she got actually a standing ovation there. I think it’s the only time I can remember this happening. It went on for several minutes. It was a powerful moment. This was the 2014 conference, but she shared this story, and just briefly I’ll share.

“Lillian DeLong, a friend of mine, served on a Relief Society board several years ago and was assigned to go to a very rural part of Ghana to do Relief Society training. After it was over, a woman came up to her in her beautiful Ghanian church dress and she shook her hand and she kept saying, ‘This is a woman’s church’. She’s just crying and tears are streaming down her face. She just kept saying, ‘This is a woman’s church.’ And finally Lillian said, ‘What do you mean this is a woman’s church?'”

“And she said, ‘We have just been in the marvelous Relief Society that teaches us not only spiritual things, but temporal things about how to make our lives and our children or families better, and at the same time your husband is in the priesthood room, and he is teaching our husbands that the culture of the church does not allow for them to beat their wives and their children.’ She said, ‘In this church, my husband and I get to go to the temple and we are going to seal our children to us. I have seven of my loving kids that are dead, and I want my children with me, and this is a woman’s church because it protects me and gives me all of those things.'” That’s powerful.

And then she said, okay, let’s talk about the practice and that’s the second half of her talk. It was very interesting. She says, “There are lots of people who would not agree that this is a church for women and I think that the reason they feel this way is because of a disconnect that comes between our doctrine and sometimes the way that we practice our doctrine, and there have been a lot of discussions and a lot of disagreement and people have had painful experiences. There is just stuff that is plain wrong, and there are consequences too. It would be absurd for me to stand up here and say that our political and our traditional and our cultural practices always live up to our doctrine. I’m not even sure that we fully grasp our doctrine. And to be honest, in my opinion, we can improve in many, many ways. We should and I think we will.” I had chills when she was called three years later into the General Relief Society presidency where she’s serving as the first counselor now.

And look at, it’s been such a tremendous change. So many things, the last number of years on this. If you think about the young women doing the old home teaching that the young men were doing now, they’re all doing ministering together, same ages. Think about General Conference that they used to have the women’s session the week before, right? Now it’s part of General Conference and it’s once a year. It’s just like the priesthood is now once a year, priesthood session. It’s really interesting. But she talked a lot about our language too and just how we have a struggle in using language and defining different roles from a language perspective.

And then last I just shared also remember it’s a lay church that we have, and the power of the priesthood is very different than the power of the world and what it’s for and the service. It’s a game changing distinction as Sister Ulrich says. Sherri Dew talked about experience with priesthood leaders. She said, “On a personal note, I’ve had splendid experiences with priesthood bearers and priesthood leaders. I’ve also occasionally had bewildering experiences with priesthood leaders, but does a difficult experience with a priesthood leader mean the priesthood authority isn’t real or that there’s something inherently wrong with the way the Lord has organized His Church? Of course not. We are mortals serving in a lay Church, and even the finest leaders have days when they don’t handle authority particularly well. Human weakness is a reality in a lay ministry.”

Okay, so a couple of key last things here. The Church did a Gospel Topics Essay called Joseph Smith’s Teaching about Priesthood, Temple, and Women. I highly recommend it, I’ll link to it. They do talk about two really kind of key elements here in Joseph’s teaching that may be unfamiliar to members of the Church.

The first is his use of language associated with the priesthood. He spoke about ordaining women and said the Relief Society officers would preside over the society. He also declared, “I now turn the key to you in the name of God.” Now if you look here on the screen, “These statements indicate that Joseph Smith delegated priesthood authority to women in the Relief Society. Joseph’s language can be more fully understood in historical context. During the 19th century, Latter-day Saints used the term ‘keys’ to refer at various times to authority, knowledge or temple ordinances. Likewise Mormons sometimes used the term ‘ordained’ in a broad sense, often interchangeably with ‘set apart’ and not always referring to priesthood office. On these points, Joseph’s actions illuminate the meaning of his words. Neither Joseph Smith nor any person acting on his behalf nor any of his successors conferred the Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood on women or ordained women to priesthood office. In later years, words like ‘ordination’ and ‘keys’ were more precisely defined, as when President John Taylor, who acted by assignment from Joseph Smith to ordain and set apart Emma Smith and our counselors, explained in 1880 that the ordination then given did not mean the conferring of the priesthood upon those sisters.”

“Women did receive authority to preside in the women’s organization and to appoint officers as needed to conduct the organization in the pattern of the priesthood, including being led by a president with counselors. By the time of President Taylor’s statement, women-led organizations were also in place for young women and children, and these organizations also had presidencies who acted with delegated priesthood authority.”

And the other thing in the Gospel Topics Essay, a second aspect of his teachings, that might be unfamiliar today. It says, “Endorsement of women’s participation in giving blessings of healing.” If you look on the screen here, “Respecting the female laying on hands, the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes record, Joseph said that ‘it is no sin for anybody to do it that has faith’ and admonished, ‘If the sister should have faith to heal the sick, let all hold their tongues and let everything roll on.'”

“Some women had performed such blessings since the early days of the Church. At that time, the Latter-day Saints understood the gift of healing primarily in terms of the New Testament’s teaching that it was one of the gifts of the spirit available to believers through faith. Joseph Smith taught that the gift of healing was a sign that would follow all that believe, whether male or female. During the 19th century, women frequently blessed the sick by the prayer of faith, and many women received priesthood blessings promising that they would have this gift of healing. ‘I have seen many demonstrations of the power and blessing of God through the administration of the sisters’, testified Elizabeth Whitney, who was, by her own account, blessed by Joseph Smith to exercise this gift. In reference to these healing blessings, Relief Society President, Eliza R. Snow, explained in 1883, ‘Women can administer in the name of Jesus, but not by virtue of the priesthood.'”

“Women’s participation in healing blessings gradually declined in the early 20th century as Church leaders taught that it was preferable to follow the New Testament directive to call for the elders. By 1926, President Grant affirmed that the First Presidency did not encourage calling in the sister to administer to the sick as the scriptures tell us to call on the elders who hold the priesthood of God and have the power and authority to administer to the sick in the name of Jesus Christ.” And then, “Currently, the Church Handbook says only Melchizedek priesthood holders may administer to the sick or afflicted.”

Elder Oaks, he did comment on this in General Conference in 1992. He said, “Remember that in those earliest days in Church history, more revelation was to come. Thus, when he spoke to the sisters about the appropriateness of their laying on hands to bless one another, the prophet cautioned that ‘the time had not been before that these things could be done in their proper order– that the Church is not now organized in its proper order and cannot be until the temple is completed.’ During the century that followed, as temples became accessible to most members, proper order required that these and other sacred practices be confined within those temples.”

I do like this section of Sheri Dew’s book. She talks about this and she herself ponders and she says, “I don’t know why the prophet Joseph appears to have sanctioned females blessing the sick, though I’ve pondered different possibilities. Were the statements recorded accurately? Was the prophet’s reference to administer to the sick referring to prayers of faith and comfort rather than a priesthood ordinance? Had issues regarding women and priesthood not yet been fully revealed? Was he anticipating women officiating priesthood ordinances in the temple?” Which we just heard from Elder Oaks. “Were there reasons the Lord allowed women to give blessings of healing as distinct from performing actual ordinances? During those turbulent days in Nauvoo when illness threatened the saints constantly, priesthood bearers were frequently away from home, and women often found themselves caring for their families alone. I don’t know if any of these explanations are correct, though all would seem to be possibilities.”

I love this story of Joseph and Hyrum being healed from cholera in Zion’s Camp. They had been blessing those that had cholera attached to them and they tried to administer to each other and ineffectual. They prayed, they couldn’t get healed and then look on the screen here. The last part is this. “Finally Hyrum exclaimed, ‘I have had an open vision in which I saw a mother on her knees under an apple tree praying for us, and she’s even now asking God in tears to spare our lives. The Spirit testifies to me that her prayers and ours shall be heard.’ And from that moment, they were healed and went on their way rejoicing.”

Okay. Now the oath and covenant of the priesthood. Interesting that Sister Linda Burton challenged the sisters to memorize this. And the visiting teaching message in April, 2017 it says, “The more we as sisters understand that the oath and covenant of the priesthood applies to us personally, the more we will embrace the blessings and promises of the priesthood.”

“The blessings and promises of the oath and covenant of the priesthood pertain to both men and women.” Sister Sheri Dew said, “The fullness of the priesthood contained in the highest ordinances of the house of the Lord can be received only by a man and woman together.” Sister Linda Burton has issued this call when she was the president of the Relief Society, “I invite you to memorize the oath and covenant of the priesthood, which can be found in Doctrine and Covenants 84:33-44. By doing so, I promise you that the Holy Ghost will expand your understanding of the priesthood and inspire and uplift you in wonderful ways.”

Sheri Dew said on pondering about the oath and covenant of the priesthood, it uses the word ‘receive’ no fewer than ten times. She said it stokes your curiosity and she was pondering about possibly other aspects of receiving these promises and she said, “Might it be tied to believing that the priesthood is the power of God, accepting the manner in which the Lord has organized His kingdom, sustaining those who hold priesthood keys, and honoring the priesthood power as the power of God?”

Very interesting and Barbara Gardner talked about her experience in the temple after memorizing the oath and covenant of the priesthood, and she was doing initiatory ordinances and look at the bold line there. It says, “I felt as if my eyes were open. For the first time, after having done initiatory work for over 20 years, I realized, in part, what the oath and covenant of the priesthood had to do with me, and it had changed my life.” Very interesting after hearing it for 20 years, it changed after she had memorized it and thought about it.

And I have to conclude with this most powerful statement from Glen L. Pace to the sisters of the Church, BYU Devotional 2010, he said, “When you stand in front of your Heavenly Parents in those royal courts on high, and you look into Her eyes, and behold Her countenance, any question you ever had about the role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into the rich celestial air, because at that moment, you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny.” And I just did the video on Heavenly Mother, released it at the same time as this and suggest it.

I hope you enjoyed the video. Subscribe for more. Thanks.

Resources:

Videos:

Valerie Hudson Cassler:The Two Trees (from 2010 Fairmormon Conference https://www.fairmormon.org/conference…

Sharon Eubank – This is a Women’s Church – 2014 Fairmormon Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgTg4…

Elder Ballards talk on women at 2013 BYU Education Week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv0fS… :

Elder Oaks talk on the Keys and Authority of the Priesthood at April 2014 General Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esvHK…

Current Discourse on Woman and the Priesthood by Ballard, Dew & Oaks – Discussion with Valerie Hudson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JRsH…

Sheri Dew talk on Latter-day Saint Women – Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EZYl…

Jonathan Stapley – The Power of Godliness book intro presentation at Benchmark Books https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfEH1…

Wendy Ulrich – 2016 Fairmormon Conference – What I hope we will teach our daughters (and sons) about the priesthood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOgtn…

Wendy Ulrich – 5 Min Fireside: Living Up To Your Privileges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qgmh…

Books:

Woman and the Priesthood by Sheri Dew

The Melchizedek Priesthood by Elder Dale Renlund & Ruth Lybberty Renlund

Live Up To Your Privileges: Women, Power and Priesthood by Wendy Ulrich

Royal Daughters with Priesthood Power by C. Robert Line

The Priesthood Power of Women: In the Temple, Church and Family by Barbara Morgan Gardner

The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy & Cosmology by Jonathan Stapley

Women in Eternity, Women in Zion by Valerie Hudson Cassler & Alma Don Sorenson

Christ’s Emancipation of Women by Lynne Hilton Wilson

Talks/Essays:

Church Gospel Topics Essay – Joseph Smith’s Teachings on Priesthood, Temple & Women: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s…

Priesthood Power – Available to All – President Linda Burton from BYU 2013 Women’s Conference: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s…

Podcast:

Jonathan Staples interview on LDS Perspectives Podcast: https://ldsperspectives.com/2019/07/1…

Articles:

Connecting Daughters of God with His Priesthood Power – Barbara Gardner – March 2019 Ensign: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s…

Zion in Her Beauty Rises in Square Two Online Journal – Valerie Hudson Cassler http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleCassle…

January 21, 2020 By Jeff Roundy Leave a Comment

Volunteerism: Independent Study – Evidences

This video discusses, among other things, a recent study (the largest of its kind) by the University of Pennsylvania regarding giving and serving behaviors of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Comparisons are made to other active volunteers and the conclusions drawn by the researchers are another compelling evidence of the restoration.

On this Evidences video, I want to talk about volunteering, volunteerism. And if you think about when Christ was on the earth, he talked about service, service, service constantly. The two great commandments, if you remember, love God and love your neighbor. How are we to love our neighbor? He gave the Good Samaritan as the symbol and example of that.

How do we love God? Well in Matthew 25, Christ talks about at the judgment bar, essentially having those inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. And then he says, “For I was hungered and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger and ye took me in, naked and ye clothed me. I was sick and ye visited me. I was in prison and ye came unto me.” And the person says, “When did we do any of that to you?” And he says, “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” So service and volunteerism would be a key thing to look at as one of the evidences of the Restoration.

So first of all, a study done in 2010. The Corporation for National and Community Service if you look on the screen here. They did a study of volunteering by state, and they did this by population so a per capita study.

Number one in the nation was Utah. Sixty percent of Utah are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The average was 89.2 volunteer hours per person. Number two was Alaska at only 55 hours. Relative to Utah, quite a drop down. A very significant difference there. Now we want to get a study though that is much more focused on just members of the Church, not as a state of Utah, but a focus study on Latter-Day Saints particularly and focus on a goal of …

There was a very large study that was done by the University of Pennsylvania. I’ll link this in the video, but it was called Called to Serve: The Prosocial Behavior of Active Latter-day Saints. And this was a very significant study, the largest of its kind that’s been done. And the scope and nature of this was on giving and volunteering of members of the Church. It was different from other studies in the size, 2,664 people. They were permitted to collect data during the church services so they were ensured to get mostly active members, and it had a very narrow focus, focused on, again, just volunteering and giving and really wanted to focus in on giving above even tithing and what kind of volunteering was being done in all different types of categories.

Also the method. They did 30 qualitative interviews, one to three hours, to help develop a questionnaire that was then used for these nearly 2,700 people. They went across four different time zones to try and get a representative sample. They did other statistical controlling that I’ll get into in just a minute, and then they did a baseline. There was a study done, you’ll see it in the show notes, of active volunteers in the United States on average had served for four hours a month. The average American, it was two hours if you’re an active volunteer, including even religious service, four hours.

So let’s take a look at the first slide here on this study. Now this is actually an infographic that was done here, and this was done by the Church actually. If you look here, the total number of hours are broken out into four categories. So for average active Latter-day Saints, 242 hours in religious volunteering for the Church, 96.2 hours volunteering for congregational social care efforts sponsored by the Church, 55.7 hours, volunteering for community social care efforts sponsored by the Church, and 34 hours volunteering for non-church affiliated charitable causes. So the total, about 428 hours a year.

Now remember the active volunteer in the US, the baseline there was 48 volunteer hours per year. So just putting it side by side. I did this slide just so you can see visually, it’s basically a nine-fold increase in the volunteerism amongst Active Latter-day Saints versus active volunteers in the United States. I thought that was extremely compelling data there.

Then if you were to look at … They had a statistic here combining all four categories of volunteering, shows that the average respondent gave 428 hours annually. “The Independent Sector 2011 study assessed the value an hour of volunteer labor to be $21.36. Based on this hourly rate, an active Latter-day Saint provides, through volunteering and annual social contribution valued at $9,140.”

Now they also wanted to look at charitable donations, and they did notice that they had some parts on tithing, but that wasn’t their big focus, but they did point out that 88% fully tithed, which the statistics showed, and there’s a link again in the program and I did a whole video on tithing, but this kind of validated some of the data from the tithing video, but only 4% of Americans tithe fully today. 88% in the study tithed fully. So it was fascinating.

But they went on to say, “Well how much do you give outside of tithing?” So these were charitable donations. So if you look on the slide here, $650 went to welfare donations, to the church for welfare distribution of various kinds, fast offerings or humanitarian as an example. And then non church-related charitable donations, $1,171 a year average donations there.

So the conclusion, a couple of points I wanted to pull out from the conclusion of their report. In the summary section it says, “This is the first study that focuses on giving and volunteering practices of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that has been carried out within LDS wards by a non-church-affiliated university. This unique combination allowed a researcher from the University of Pennsylvania who was not Mormon to reach 2,664 church-going Latter-day Saints. The LDS church permitted the study to be carried out, but all funding came from the University of Pennsylvania. We analyzed levels of giving and volunteering by statistically controlling for four variables: region of the country, level of education, income, and gender.”

“Active members of the LDS church volunteer and donate significantly more than the average American and are even more generous in time and money than the upper quintile or top 20% of religious people in America. Overall, we found that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the most prosocial members of American society. Regardless of where they live, they are very generous with their time and money. Through a theology of obedience and sacrifice and a strong commitment to tithing and service, Latter-day Saints are model citizens.” Love that.

All right now, excited about a couple of other things. JustServe, a phenomenal new website and app that’s a few years old, that is just doing a phenomenal job. The Church created this and now it’s being used all over. It was the United States and Canada. Now it’s expanding worldwide and it’s bringing together people that want to volunteer and nonprofit organizations that need help. It’s a place where they can both meet for free essentially to merge together. Just a fantastic, fantastic operation. If you could only volunteer on Thursday nights for one hour, you can put that in and find a radius within 10 miles of where you live and find a service opportunity. It’s fantastic.

Now look at this quote from President Ballard. “We believe that there is a power behind JustServe,” said President M. Russell Ballard, acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “The power comes as a result of doing what Jesus Christ would do if He was here. We have felt the inspiration of Heavenly Father during the development of JustServe, and we are thrilled with the opportunity of doing this noble work alongside our dear friends in the community who represent all people and organizations who share the desire to serve and bless the lives of those in need.”

So JustServe was started in San Jose in 2011, and then expanded as a pilot effort in Denver, Colorado, and Dallas, Texas in 2013. By 2015, it had been approved for all the Church’s administrative areas in the United States and Canada, except Utah. And in late 2016 it was approved for three areas in Utah. As of March, 2018, JustServe has 355,000 registered volunteers, 11,455 current projects, and more than 54,000 projects completed, and now the Church has began to train JustServe specialists in the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. And people using this are not of our faith as well. It’s just combining people, it’s just a way to bring people together to serve.

Now you may have heard of the Helping Hands or the Yellow Angels, many have referred them as, in helping humanitarian efforts when there’s a crisis out there and the deployment of this. I’m going to show you a quick little video clip on this. First of all.

Speaker 2:
Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and fires are all examples of challenges that are very difficult for people to deal with alone. When a disaster happens, Church leaders who live near the disaster area call Church headquarters to let them know what help they need. Workers load trucks with whatever supplies they need, tools, water, clothes, food and more.

Speaker 2:
Members of the Church from near the disaster area come together to volunteer with time and muscle power to clean up messes, feed the hungry, and help where needed.

Speaker 2:
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints join forces with other groups to help people no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they believe in.

So exciting to see all of those service efforts where it’s really needed. I’m going to actually show you a two video screens of the Church Newsroom website of all just headlines regarding Helping Hand projects of different stories on here.

So if you look on this first page here, a handful of different things. Amazing, this line. “Mormon volunteers gave more than 140,000 hours of service to Hurricane Sandy victims.” “Mormons donating 400,000 trees to help Haiti.” Just some examples.

And now here’s another screen. You can see on there. It’s just exciting to see all the different work that’s going on in the Helping Hands program as well.

Hope you enjoyed that Evidences video. Subscribe for more.

Resources:

Studies:

Summary of the University of Pennsylvania Study http://planphilly.com/uploads/media_i…

Articles:

https://www.lds.org/church/news/justs…

https://www.mormonnewsroompg.org/arti…

Videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ9TI…

Websites:

https://www.justserve.org

January 21, 2020 By Jeff Roundy 1 Comment

Heavenly Mother – Evidences

This video reviews discoveries of artifacts that lead most Biblical archeologists today to conclude that ancient Israelites believed that ‘God had a wife’. This adds credence to the distinctive doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that we are all children of a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. How this doctrine began and continues to be taught in the Church is discussed as well as what it means and does not mean for us today.

Okay. The topic of this Evidences video is on Heavenly Mother, and as I get into the second half of the video in particular, you’ll see why this is an evidence of the Restoration. This is a little tip, Did God Have a Wife? Books like this coming out very plentifully today, and I’ll talk about why here in a minute from archaeology.

The Church put out a Gospel Topics Essay on Heavenly Mother, and this is how they started it: “The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints. While there is no record of a formal revelation to Joseph Smith on this doctrine, some early Latter-day Saint women recalled that he personally taught them about a Mother in heaven. The earliest published references to the doctrine appeared shortly after Joseph Smith’s death in 1844, in documents written by his close associates.”

In fact, the one you can go back to late recollection, but it occurred in 1839 when Zina Young lost her mother to cholera. And she wrote this about the experience. Zina says, “Will I know my mother,” and this is to Joseph Smith, “Will I know my mother as my mother when I get to the other side?” And Joseph said, “You certainly will. More than that, you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in heaven.” Then we have the famous song that was written, it was a poem, became a song,O My Father by Eliza R. Snow. “Truth eternal tells me I’ve a mother there.” One of the stanzas in that. That was in October of 1845. W. W. Phelps did a lot of writing on Heavenly Mother. In 1844, 1845 it began, at least 10 works including poem, articles, commentaries, and literary works there.

If you look at that very last bullet points it says, “In May and June 1845 Phelps published a brief sketch for a story he had been working on entitled The Paracletes, which he claimed was inspired by Joseph Smith. In this story, he envisions prophets foreordained to come to earth and notes that the veil keeps us from knowing the details of these spirits’ pre-existence. However, he knows one detail as a matter of fact, that their premortal life included dwelling with a mother in heaven.” Okay, so I have some very official statements. The First Presidency statement in 1909, “All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.” And then of course the proclamation on the family issued in 1995 by the First Presidency and the Twelve, “Each person is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.”

And then a few more quotes from prophets and apostles, Elder Erastus Snow. “Do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of man and women? Most certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself, I must believe that Deity consists of man and women. There can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all eternities that exist, nor ever will be, a God in any other way.” President Rudger Clawson, “It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father to adore our Eternal Mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mothers in our affections. We honor woman when we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal prototype. “

This is my favorite, President Harold B. Lee: “We forget that we have a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother who are even more concerned, probably, than our earthly father and mother, and that the influences from beyond are constantly working to try to help us when we do all that we can.” Then Barbara Gardner in her book, The Priesthood Power of Women, that just came out in 2019, she’s a religious professor at BYU, and she does an informal survey with her students in her required religion class called The Eternal Family. So, she says here in her book, “I ask all my BYU students enrolled in The Eternal Family, the required cornerstone class at church schools: ‘Of all the doctrines and teachings that stood out to you in the class, what was most impactful?’ Without fail, every semester, the majority of the female students respond that it is the truth and knowledge and open conversation regarding the reality of a Heavenly Mother.”

“One of the quotes we use in class comes from John A. Widtsoe, who confirmed, ‘This glorious vision of life hereafter is given radiant warmth by the thought that we shall find a mother who possesses the attributes of Godhood.'” Back to the Gospel Topics Essay from the Church, “As with many other truths of the gospel, our present knowledge about a Mother in Heaven is limited. Nevertheless, we have been given sufficient knowledge to appreciate the sacredness of this doctrine and to comprehend the divine pattern established for us as children of heavenly parents. Latter-day Saints believe that this pattern is reflected in Paul’s statement that ‘neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.’ Men and women cannot be exalted without each other. Just as we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. As Elder Oaks of the Twelve said, ‘Our theology begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.'”

Okay, so there was an interesting study BYU studies did, they call it A Mother There. And this is the conclusion that they did after doing a study, a tremendous study of the past, and this is in BYU Studies Journal, and I’ll link to it at the end. They said, “In this paper we have briefly shown that, historically, there have been substantial discussion and elaboration on the roles and divinity of our Heavenly Mother. It refutes the suspicion that General Authorities have advocated a position of total sacred silence about Her. As Latter-day Saints, we should be deeply reverent when speaking about any sacred subject. The Church leaders may well caution an individual to be respectful and to avoid teaching or unorthodox views about Heavenly Mother. At the same time, we have found no public record of a General Authority advising us to be silent about our Heavenly Mother; indeed, as we have amply demonstrated, many General Authorities have openly taught about her.”

The idea, they call it kind of a folk legend of Heavenly Father trying to protect Her, and that’s why we don’t know anything and there’s no discussion of Her. It was started by, I think, by a seminary teacher and somebody put it in a book, and it just took on a little bit of a life of its own. But not nothing from any Church leaders ever taught that. They go on to say, “While some had claimed that Heavenly Mother’s role has been marginalized or trivialized, we feel that the historical data provides a highly elevated view of Heavenly Mother. The Heavenly Mother portrayed in the teachings we have examined is a procreator and parent, a divine person, a co-creator, a co-framer of the plan of salvation, and is involved in this life and the next. Certainly consideration of these points reinforces several unquestionably important LDS doctrines: divine embodiment, eternal families, divine relationality, the deification of women, the eternal nature and value of gender, and the sacred lineage of Gods and humans. Far from degrading either the Heavenly Feminine or the earthly feminine, we feel that these teachings exalt both.”

Now, a cautionary note from President Hinckley about praying to Heavenly Mother. He did say, “Search as I have, I find nowhere in the standard works an account where Jesus prayed other than to His Father in Heaven or where He instructed the people to pray other than to His Father in Heaven. I have looked in vain for any instance where any President of the Church from Joseph Smith to Ezra Taft Benson, has offered a prayer to our Mother in Heaven. The fact that we do not pray to our Mother in Heaven in no way belittles or denigrates her.” And then Elder Glen L. Pace to the sisters of the Church. I just shared this in the video released on women and the priesthood. He said in the BYU Devotional in 2010 to the sisters, “When you stand in front of your heavenly parents in these royal courts on high and you look into Her eyes and behold Her countenance, any question you ever had about the role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into their rich celestial air, because at that moment you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny.”

Okay, now, Kevin Barney, the Later-day Saint gospel scholar has done some great work on this. He published an essay called Do We Have a Mother in Heaven, and it’s on a FairMormon website. I’ll link to it. And he’s got some excellent things I’ll get into in a second, but he starts out by talking about in the Bible, “The Bible does not say, directly, that we have a Mother in Heaven. That she exists is in large major an inference. Because of this dearth of scriptural information, while we Latter-day Saints acknowledged her existence, we have little doctrine or worship surrounding her. One of the scripture supporting this inference is Genesis 1:26-27: ‘And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the animals. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.’ The parallelism of verse 27 strongly implies that the image of God is both male and female. The Hebrew word ‘selem’, rendered ‘image’ here was used for statues and paintings as resembling their models. And the word ‘demuth’, rendered ‘likeness’, here was used to refer to a resemblance, similitude or pattern as a son is in likeness of his father.” So daughter and mother essentially.

Now, he goes on, and the next couple of slides are really important to understand how archaeology is now catching up the last 50, 60 years. Just a tremendous amount of discovery, especially the last few decades. And that’s why the title, Did God Have a Wife?, biblical archaeologists are finding so many things. And so, to understand, and this is giving a lot of heartburn to our fellow Christian friends who, one God and not this concept of more than one God in any way, shape, or form ever there. And certainly God could not have been married or have a wife in that sense.

So, what we found, as Kevin Barney describes here, he says, “As a result of document discoveries made in the 20th century, we now have a much clearer understanding of the beliefs of the Hebrews concerning God during the age of the patriarchs (and the relation of those beliefs to their Canaanite precedents). The monotheism,” or the one God, “we associate with Israel did not arise in full flower from the beginning; rather it was probably not until the Exile,” to the Babylonians, that was 587 B.C., “that the Jews understood there to be only one God. At the first, the Hebrews worshiped a small pantheon consisting of the high God El, his wife Asherah, their sons Yahweh and Baal, and the other (unnamed) sons of the Gods. The original understanding of God developed over time until it reached the point of belief in Yahweh alone characterized by later Israelite theology. Baal was a very similar God to Yahweh and so was excluded from the Pantheon very early to make way for Yahweh’s claims. El was more complementary to Yahweh and his characteristics, so he was merged into Yahweh (resulting in the compound name Yahweh Elohim translated ‘the Lord God’ in the King James). The other sons of the Gods became the angels; still divine beings, but a lower class of being than the dominant Yahweh.”

So, “The understanding of Asherah changed over time in response to these developments. She was originally the wife of El and the mother and procreatress of the Gods. When El was merged into Yahweh (around the 10th century B.C.), Asherah came to be viewed as the consort,” which means wife, “not of El, but of Yahweh. For instance, an inscription,” this is phenomenal. They found this inscription dated roughly the 9th to 8th century B.C. stating, “I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah.” And actually, this is a clay vessel, and on the backside of it was actually the the tree of life. So, very powerful stuff. That’s why these kinds of things are being discussed. “Eventually the functions,” as he goes on to say, “of Asherah were also absorbed into Yahweh; then in an effort to put a stop to any independent worship of her, reformers linked her politically to (the now thoroughly discredited) Baal, despite the fact that such a linkage does not seem to have had any historical basis. This reform movement against the worship of Asherah took place from the 8th to the 6th century B.C., and by the time of the conclusion of the Exile, the worship of Asherah as such had been stamped out. The word ‘Asherah’ appears about 40 times in the Old Testament, usually mistranslated in the KJV as ‘groves.’ (following the mistranslations of the Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint).”

“It is sometimes difficult to tell whether the Hebrew reference to Asherah means the Goddess directly or her cult object. Although scholars are not completely certain what this object was, most believe it had been a wooden pole, (perhaps stylized), representing a sacred tree (the Tree of Life). Since it was made of wood, no actual examples of such an object have survived. The pole may have originally been a legitimate symbol associated with the temple, but it appears that as was the case with the serpent pole made by Moses, over time the people came to worship the object idolatrously. This garbling of her divine association and corruption of her worship resulted in the necessity of the reformers suppressing that worship. We should understand, however, that the negative references to Asherah in the Old Testament all stem from this period of reform; there appears to have been an earlier worship of Asherah not marred by adultery that was widely practiced and normative among the Hebrews.”

In fact, they found thousands of, according to Dever here, 3000 figurines of Asherah, and there was always her body would have a tree trunk there to represent the tree of life, essentially. So, where do things go from there? Lady Wisdom. “So as we have seen by the conclusion of the Exile the reformers managed to do away with Asherah worship as such. But worship of the Goddess did not disappear altogether; she was merely transformed into other guises. Perhaps the most successful of these transformations as far as the Biblical text is concerned was the personified Lady Wisdom we find in Proverbs 1-9. Many scholars see here a reworking of the Asherah of old. Consider in Proverbs 8:22-31. Her wisdom is not part of the created, rather she preexists and assists Yahweh in the creation. ‘I was set up from everlasting from the beginning. When he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him as one brought up with him.'” I love Proverbs 3:19, “The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth.” Interesting. Okay.

In The Further Transformation of Asherah, “Asherah worship was transformed in numerous other ways as well and thereby kept alive, although under different names and guises. In some circles, she came to be associated with various other goddesses, such as Anat-Astarte. She was also seen as the feminine figure of the two cherubims atop the Ark of the Covenant in the temple. Otherwise, she was transformed in one of two broad ways. First, there was a tendency to associate her with some important human mother figure. Therefore, some sought Eve and, later, Mary, as divine representatives of the Hebrew Goddess. The other way in which she was transformed was to see her as a spiritualized agent or characteristic of Yahweh.” Also known as the Holy spirit. So, those are some of the other theories and things that have come out. Margaret Barker, a Methodist scholar, talks a lot about that.

Okay. Biblical archaeologists and anthropologists, a few quotes here from some of them. William Dever, “recent archaeological discoveries provide both texts and pictorial representations that for the first time clearly identify Asherah as the consort of Yahweh, at least in some circles in ancient Israel.” And another one here, Raphael Patai, “the worship of Asherah as the consort of Yahweh,” meaning his wife, “was an integral element of religious life in ancient Israel prior to the reforms introduced by King Josiah and 621 B.C.” And lastly, David Noel Freed, “Our investigation suggests that the worship of a goddess, consort of Yahweh, was deeply rooted in both Israel and Judah in pre-exilic times.” I love Fiona Givens. She just recently made this comment at a conference in 2019. She said, “so there are a number of sites that have been unearthed that are adding archaeological evidence to this. I am very optimistic because we are the only tradition that have advanced that there is a separate female deity, who is equal in every respect to God. So we were actually further along theologically.” Love that.

Now, Kevin Barney did this really fascinating piece, and the title is a little strong, but, How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven Without Getting Ex-communicated. And he goes on to just talk about, how President Hinckley said we don’t pray to Heavenly Mother, but are there ways that we can honor her and adore her? So, he goes through and gives nine different ways, and I just want to share the last two he shares. So, wisdom, he says, “Since Asherah was recharacterized as personified wisdom, we should repass it as referring to wisdom with an eye attuned to possible nuance illusions to her. And particularly we should read with care the whole of the wisdom literature.” So, Proverbs, Psalms, Job. “In the Jewish tradition, study is perceived as a kind of worship. I have suggested some topics to look for in a fresh and close reading of scripture.” And I’m going to link this. This is if you want a one big one. This is in The Square Two Online Journal, Hidden in Plain View: Mother in Heaven in Scripture. So, Val Larson did a phenomenal, just fascinating. If you look for her, she can be a lot of places in scripture.

So, he goes through that, and then Kevin Barney also says, Appendix B. He lists a bibliography of non-LDS literature on Asherah as an Israelite goddess. And if you go to that, there’s over two dozen books, like the one that I keep holding up here.

And then the last thing I wanted to share was this on number nine, that he shared, and I thought that this is really interesting, of a way to honor… “I see the crowning way to worship our Mother in Heaven as engaging in temple service, whether it’s workers or as patrons. The connection between our Mother and the temple was and is profound. Consider for instance, the following points: ‘Asherah’ means ‘sanctuary,’ ‘holy place,’ and is thus essentially, a synonym for temple. During times favorable to Asherah worship in ancient Israel, there was a statue or other image of Her prominently displayed in the temple. (This image was removed during times unfavorable to Her worship.) The menorah was a stylized almond tree and probably a symbol of the Goddess. It burned olive oil, which was also Her symbol. The two cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies were identified as Asherah and Yahweh. Our modern temple rituals revolve around a creation drama, in which Asherah participated as a master craftsmen. The Garden of Eden narrative prominently features two sacred trees (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life), both of which represent her. One of the most prominent ways that ancient Israelite women worshiped Asherah was by weaving textiles that were then used in the temple. It is not entirely clear what these weavings were – perhaps wall hangings or veils.”

Now, if you’ve looked at this, the statue there, that’s actually… the Church published these pictures of some of the inside of the Salt Lake temple. This is in the celestial room, and it’s called The Women at the Veil. It’s a six foot statue, but it’s created from a little model, the 18 inch, Brigham Young’s son, Don Carlos Young, he purchased this in New York and was used to model this. And some have speculated this is Heavenly Mother. I’d like to think that it is, and we can say that it’s a female character there watching over. And it’s fascinating. He says it was called Angel of Peace. We don’t know who made it, that was the name they gave it, and he said it represented heavenly beings, in general. There’s a paper on this, I’ll link to it. It’s a good read. I think it was BYU Studies. But just know that it was placed at the veil, so that paper talks about the symbolism and revelations about this, that it could be those that have overcome through the blood of the Lamb and that symbolism there. But I love the fact that it’s a female character there on big display in the celestial room.

Okay. And then lastly, I just… This is amazing. I didn’t have time to really go through this in the video or to develop it enough, but Nephi and His Asherah. Dan Peterson did this phenomenal… And you can watch it or read it. But he ties the Tree of Life vision and then how he has that interaction with the angel. Do you understand what’s happening? And then he’s shown the Virgin and this how he would have understood this at his time with this Heavenly Mother imagery that he would have been familiar with. We don’t see any of this as we read it, but he goes through and develops it in this phenomenal way. And then he talks about the wisdom literature and how that is not the kind of words that you see in most of the books of the Hebrew Bible, they talk about the typical themes, but this is much more about motherly, caring, and parental guidance and direction. And this is what you see in 1 Nephi in particular, and 2 Nephi. It’s just a phenomenal thing.

And then, even wisdom, it’s referred to as a female, it carries through even into Mosiah. Mosiah 8:20, “They will not seek wisdom that she should rule over them.” So, really fascinating stuff, and I love the way he concludes this paper. He actually says, at the end, “The inclusion of 1 Nephi to authentically pre-exilic,” meaning pre-Babylonian captivity, “religious symbols, Asherah and wisdom, that could scarcely have been derived by the New York farm boy Joseph Smith from the Bible, strongly suggests that the Book of Mormon is indeed an ancient historical record in the Semitic tradition.” So, fascinating. I hope you enjoyed the video. Subscribe for more.

Resources:

Articles/Essays:

Church Website – Gospel Topics Essay: Mother in Heaven https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s…

BYU Studies – Research Article on Teaching about Mother in Heaven in Church History: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/v…

Nephi & His Asherah – Dan Peterson: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1a57…or to watch it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzftT…

Kevin Barney Essays: https://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content…https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-co…

BYU Studies Piece on Statue in Celestial Room of Salt Lake Temple: https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/eye-fait…

Val Larsen article in Square Two on Heavenly Mother in Scripture – Hidden in Plain View: http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleLarsen…

Podast:

LDS Perspectives Podcast on Heavenly Mother with Rachel Steenblik & Caitlin Connolly https://ldsperspectives.com/2017/05/1…

Videos:

Margret Barker at 2015 Fairmormon Conference – The Mother in Heaven & Her Children https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilF9N…

Fiona Givens at 2019 Mormon Studies Conference – Feminism & Heavenly Mother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Zpv…

Academy for Temple Studies – “The Lady of the Temple” Conference – Introduction Video – from this intro – connect to the other presentations from this conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxYT1…

New website setup in 2022 with tremendous resources: https://www.MotherinHeaven.com

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