Vivid Imagination

What Vision?

From the age of three until eleven I attended church in a chapel that was a throwback to late pioneer times.  It had a facade of European steeples and windows. Inside the architecture was similar to the Tabernacle.  In some respects the structure resembled the Assembly Hall on Temple Square.  Between the two main doors was placed a stained glass window nearly two stories in height.  It was a rendition of the First Vision with the Father & Son in the air above Joseph Smith.  Inside the chapel it was reminiscent of the Tabernacle’s interior with the pillars and oak benches.

Behind the podium on the wall was a very large painting of Moroni standing in the air above Joseph, who was kneeling before a stone box on a hill side.  This painting was created by Lewis Ramsey who had moved into a home directly opposite the chapel.  The chapel was eventually torn down and replaced with a nursing home.  I don’t know what happened to the stained glass.  The painting was salvaged as discussed at http://home.comcast.net/~laramseyart/Joseph_Smith_Site/Restoration_Paintings.htm.

Sometimes I find it remarkable those early experiences of worship are so vivid.  The sacrament meetings could be very hot in the summer time.  The chapel seating was larger than what we have today, and most of the benches were filled during the evening meeting.  In the morning meetings, and during Primary, I would sometimes get up close to the stained glass and peer at it from various angles.  My imagination would unleash visions of my own, wondering what Joseph was like, what made him so special that two Gods would appear to him, but not to the thousands of other devout people through the ages.  I tried to imagine what it would have been like had I been Joseph, and failed every time to identify with so unusual an experience.

The picture of Moroni was a bit of an enigma to me.  He was dressed in white robes, had white hair and fair skin, having all the Caucasian features.  He was depicted with a benevolent countenance, the moment captured as symbolic of mentor and acolyte in wholesome rapport.  It was daylight, and the background was an impressionistic representation of the Hill Cumorah.  The entire aspect was one of normalcy, as if it was common for angels to appear to certain people in the world and carry on a conversation with them while being levitated.

Not until late in mid-life did I realize that Moroni could not be Caucasian, nor did Cumorah look anything like depicted in the picture, nor did I find out that Joseph did not retrieve the plates in daylight (History of the Prophet Joseph), nor “return” each year in daylight.  If you examine the calendar, you will find that the night he “retrieved” the plates was a new moon (totally dark).  In fact, the date he claims he was directed to return upon was the autumnal equinox, a date more significant to the family’s astrological beliefs than visiting with Moroni. (The calendar calculator shows Sept 22, 1823, and Sept 21, 1827 as new moons.  Over the intervening years the new moon is several days earlier or later, respectively.)  B.H. Roberts apparently did not know his church history as well as it is assumed, for all his coaching of Mr. Ramsey during the painting.  The sacred grove as depicted in the chapel’s stained glass windows was obviously not like the real thing. The propensity to inaccurately represent in picture events in Church history is rampant everywhere in Church publications.  Take the painting of Moroni appearing to Joseph in his room:

Of course the artist can take whatever license they desire.  That isn’t the problem.  The problem is, the room was not big enough for any large man to appear to Joseph standing in the air and still have his head below the roof!  If you’ve been to the house you will remember climbing a steep narrow staircase and having to watch your head as the ceiling is low.  Joseph surely had attained his full stature by 1823 (age 18, Dec 23) so he being taller than I would necessarily have to stoop going to his room.  Likewise, the ridge beam height above the floor is just barely over six feet.  However, the pitch of the roof is typical New England, on the order of at least thirty degrees.  This means that a person of average height MUST stoop to avoid banging into the roof standing anywhere in the room except directly below the ridge beam!  If Moroni did indeed appear in this room, levitated off the floor, at least his shoulders and maybe down to the breastbone would have to protrude above the roof line.  Joseph says nothing of Moroni having his “head in the clouds” during his appearance, only when ascending and descending in a shaft of light.  In fact, Joseph said it was Nephi who appeared to him (Times and Seasons vol 3 p753), not Moroni as rewritten in the History of the Church vol1 p11.  In addition, the dimensions of the room are such that if Joseph slept in a bed long enough to accommodate his stature, there is little room between the end of the bed and the wall, particularly if a dresser were placed there.  As exhibited the last time I was there (1990) the furnishings allowed only four to five adults, fully crowding the room.

  Another example of misrepresentation is translating of the Book of Mormon found in the Church library:

It never happened like this.  Where is the curtain?  Where is the Urim & Thumim I was told so many times as a youth he used to translate?  The journals of various people including Joseph’s family say he never had the plates present when he “translated.”  What he did was look through his “peep stone” placed in his hat, and the hat over his face, dictating what he claimed he saw written in English, as though it was a moving marquee.

Most of the time the plates were “hidden” during the translating process (Millenial Star 4 July 1881).  No one, not even Emma ever got to physically see them, nor physically handle them.  During this time he made various promises to people they would get the opportunity to see them on display, but whenever asked about it, some extenuating reason was supplied for not keeping the promise.

Another example is a picture of Joseph as a teenager sitting in a rocking chair, with the Bible open to James where he obtained the motivation to pray.  The perspective is one of the viewer looking over Joseph’s left shoulder.  Now his mother Lucy said Joseph hardly ever touched the Bible.  It is small wonder, as depositions by people that knew him state while attending school in the area most of the Smith siblings were poor scholars, and Joseph was not apt.  Others state that he never received a decent education until he lived in Kirtland.  Of course this is the time of the School of the Prophets.  It is a novel idea how this illiterate person could “study” Reformed Egyptian characters (as asserted on the Church website) without a “Rosetta Stone”, make sense of them, and simultaneously not be skilled in his own English language.  It strains credulity to think he could recognize English words he was unfamiliar with, either reading or writing.  Having studied Russian, Spanish, and Norwegian I found myself often referring to a dictionary to get the meaning and pronunciation correct. W.R. Hine deposed that Joseph could hardly read or write while in New York.  Apparently he was exceptionally gifted in pronouncing unfamiliar words to his scribes in spite of his inability to read!  Some authors have attempted to show that Joseph was educated enough to read and write because his father was at one time a school teacher, and he received instruction from both him and Oliver Cowdery.  However, the only evidence of Joseph’s abilities are found in documents he penned from 1832 forward.  It wasn’t until the Kirtland era (1831) that Joseph began receiving instruction in languages, and acquired skill in writing.

  The CES never told us the rest of the story when a copy of those Reformed Egyptian characters were taken to professor Charles Anthon.  Charles wrote to Mr. Howe: "This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters... Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, ... decked with various strange marks" .… This is NOT what Martin Harris claimed Professor Anthon said.*  Here is a facsimile of those characters as maintained by the RLDS church:

Do they bear any resemblance to Egyptian?  Let’s take a sampling.  Here are some definitions of certain Egyptian words taken at random from Tempest & Exodus p.161 by Ralph Ellis:

Even the Book of Abraham Facsimiles bear no resemblance to the Anthon submission.  To fill out the background, here is a reproduction of the Tempest Stele, a piece of inscribed stone from a monument to Ahmose I, which relates a terrible storm about the time of the Exodus:

In Tempest & Exodus Ralph Ellis examines the common roots of the Hebrew and Egyptian languages.  While they are written with different characters, the pronunciations and meanings are quite close in numerous instances.  So if the Nephites did write in reformed Egyptian, and knew Hebrew well, their characters and method of writing ought to bear some resemblance to modern knowledge concerning these languages.  Mormon says that although they altered their language, they kept records to preserve it among the people.  Why is there no intelligibility to the characters Charles Anthon was asked to interpret?  And what could Joseph possibly have “studied out in his mind” having no introduction to foreign languages until the Kirtland era (1831, Joshua Seixas 1835-36), and therefore no context within which to study a language?  Further, if he saw the words in English through his stone (as in David Whitmer's account), of what need was there for language study at all?  Philologists have been able to trace present day languages back to their roots more than six thousand years ago.  The Mayan language is now being decoded.  The Disc of Phaestos though still untranslated bears markings similar to other finds of its era.  All written languages contain patterns which are eventually decipherable.

    The CES has taught for years that the 116 pages of the initial translation were lost.  They were never “lost”, except to the knowledge of church authorities after the church moved to Kirtland.  Historical records indicate clearly Lucy Harris took them while Martin was away, burned most of them and gave the the rest to a Dr. Seymour, who then exhibited them to interested parties in the area.  What happened to them the church does not know because the Book of Mormon by then had been published and all contact with Lucy subsided.  And of course the Church at that time would lose contact with Martin's wife because she and Martin had a dispute over Martin's credulity and throwing away their fortune to publish a forgery, in the which Martin beat Lucy and they subsequently divorced.  How could Joseph know about their fate?  Lucy was out of the picture early in the Church's rise.

    Another item I have not heard anyone discuss is How did these so called Reformed Egyptian characters get inscribed onto gold plates in a neat and concise manner?  Start with the idea of using gold for a recording medium.  Ask any jeweler today how difficult it is to inscribe gold.  The average person would respond, How silly! Gold is soft and can be scratched easily! Yes it can, and as a jeweler will tell you, pure gold does not retain inscribing well for that very reason.  It must be hardened with other metals of just the right content to make it durable.  Copper, and sometimes nickel, silver, and zinc are used to enhance the durability of jewelry.  So if you’re a scribe and you want to preserve your inscriptions, you have to come up with the proper alloy of gold that will withstand handling.  You’re not going to get a flexible sheaf of gold to inscribe.  And you’ve got to have the proper tools to roll it out, form it, punch it, and inscribe it.  Mormon and his predecessors did not have vibro-engravers, so the stylus they had to use required a hard metal, harder than gold alloy.  What type of metal would that be?  Let’s summarize it:

•  9kt gold contains 37.5% of pure gold; hardness 70-105
•  14kt gold contains 58.5% pure gold; hardness 125-165
•  18kt gold contains 75% pure gold; hardness 85-125
•  22 kt gold contains 91.66% pure gold; hardness 70
•  24kt gold contains 100% pure gold; hardness 40

An engraving tool to be useful for any length of time would need to be harder than the gold, up to as high as 200.  Carbon steel is 55-120, stainless steel from 140-180, chrome 600-700, and nickel 800.  Stainless steel requires chrome, which in a form useable in steel is carcinogenic.  It is not likely that Native Americans had metallurgy this sophisticated.  No such metal alloys have ever been discovered.  However, nickel being used to create a gold alloy can also be mixed with carbon steel to produce a stylus hard enough for engraving.  But this becomes problematic as sharpening the styles would require something even harder, which would have to be quartz, topaz, corundum or diamond tip.  That ancients had such materials is evident by the stone cuttings in granite in South America.  However, one would wonder how such gems could be solidly attached to a shaft to use as a stylus, and how it could be pulverized for grinding and sharpening a nickel steel alloy.  Further, it has never been determined how the ancients cut granite and diorite, with precision equaling and surpassing our own.  One of the great modern mysteries is the absence of tools needed to produce these artefacts.

    Vibro-engravers use a fine hammering movement to create the engraving.  It is quite unimaginable that a scribe could etch characters onto one of the harder gold alloys of the reproduction of Martin Harris took to Professor Anthon and produce a neat, legible text lasting a millennium.  Just for comparison so you get the idea, quarter hard cartridge brass has a hardness of 49-59.  Quarter red brass is about ten points less.  The next time you have an ammunition cartridge, try inscribing it legibly with one of the alleged Reformed Egyptian characters and see how neat and durable a job you can do!  Just as it is highly unlikely anyone engraved their history on gold alloy, so is it also for brass plates.  To date, no gold or brass artefacts with such inscribing has been found anywhere in the world.  What has been found has been cast embossed figures.

    Now Joseph claims he was attacked the night he brought the plates home from Cumorah (Martin Harris story A New Witness for Christ).*  He had to run from his assailants while clutching the plates and fell at least once.  From the dimensions reported on the size of the plates and volume, they would weigh in anywhere from 90-120 pounds (156lbs by volume), depending on stackup.  Doesn’t sound like an excessive amount, unless you have hauled hay.  I used to stack first crop hay bales weighing in at 90-110 pounds.  I was 16 and in fairly good shape.  But I huffed lugging those things around, and even the seasoned cattle farmers were hard pressed to maneuver those things from truck to hay stack.  For comparison, try picking up a petite 110 pound woman and running with her on a new moon night!  Martin's story is incredulous, for he is totally ignorant of how much volume of gold would weigh for the size of the plates, and never stops to think how difficult it would be to stash that much weight in the top of a hollow tree.  Once upon a time I could carry a 50 pound sack of rock salt under each arm, but not run with them for any distance.  And speaking of distance, how did Mormon manage to transport several hundred pounds (tons if Joseph’s story is to be believed ; JofD 19:38) of metallic records from central America all the way to Cumorah in New York?  No evidence has ever been found of wheeled vehicles in antiquity.  And Mormon would have had considerable difficulty concealing them against the Lamanites.  You just can't transport that much metal without leaving obvious tracks.

The Church has maintained for nearly two centuries that the whole foundation of Mormonism rests upon the validity of the First Vision, and the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.  The curious aspect of this declaration is that the “proof” does not reside in historical, scientific, or empirical evidence whatsoever.  They have insinuated and at times outright stated such evidence cannot be had nor trusted.  But, to gain a witness of its truth by the Spirit IS to be trusted and relied upon without hesitation.  This is a test that is purely metaphysical.  It is dependent upon a person’s spiritual capacity.  It cannot be verified.  It cannot even be reliably reproduced, although some claim that when the supplicant is sufficiently humble and in the right frame of mind, that “knowledge” can be obtained by divine influence.  This perspective was driven home to us as seminary students when recounting the first vision of Martin Harris.  What they never told us in any seminary classes is what Martin declared to his religious associates in Kirtland several years later:  He never actually saw them with his eyes, nor touched them with his hands, as an ordinary person sees and touches a book when reading it.  It was experienced with his “spiritual” eyes.

And yet, Church leadership starting with Joseph, has maintained that faith has its roots in correct knowledge or it cannot produce the desired results (Church Bible dictionary).  This is a circuitous way of saying faith must be rooted in fact and truth to develop properly.  In other words, for faith to develop properly, it must be founded upon verifiable evidence!  How can anyone verify the First Vision?  This is much more difficult than it seems, simply because there are so many conflicting accounts.  The first account was written in 1832.  It is odd that so momentous an experience as this would not be written down until eleven years after the fact.  As was the custom in those days, family events of great significance were inscribed in the family Bible.  But not only is the experience not found there, the First Vision is hardly noticed among the family members who continued to attend various denominations until Joseph formerly established his church.

There have been many apologetic essays written on the discrepancies and inventive explanations produced to resolve them.  What is apparent in all the visionary accounts (two extended accounts, and eight other fragmentary hearsay accounts), is the unwillingness to let the evidence speak for itself.  In the first account, Joseph said he prayed in his 16th year.  The circumstantial evidence of revivalism and family journals support this statement.  Yet modern apologists want to confute this fact so that other statements by Joseph can be reconciled to the orthodox view presently promulgated by the Church.  In Joseph’s revised account, he states he was in his 15th year.  Now, who cares what year it was really?  What is important is consistency in crucial elements, and general facts that tend to corroborate rather than differentiate one another.  Only his 1838 (April 27) account has the Father in it.  Originally, his reason for praying was forgiveness of sins.  Later, it was to determine which of the several denominations was correct.  Wait, is it both or neither?  Did Moroni call him to start a church, or was it Jesus?  Were there two people in the pillar of light, or just one?  Did it happen in 1823 or 1820?  It’s as though after nearly two decades he can’t remember what happened or which facts were important enough to mention.  But the world is expected to accept any rendition of the First Vision as heralding the re-opening of the heavens and the beginning of the “restoration” of the original church!

If a person waits eleven years to write down such an astounding and far-reaching account as this, surely that is excessive time to reflect on the crucial essentials and commit to writing a consistent story.  Each of my spiritual experiences were recorded within a few days of the event.  I have never gone back to rewrite them.  Only in one experience, did I append details that I was aware of, but had failed to remark upon because the most important ones overshadowed them.  Not once have I changed the crucial facts as to what happened and why.  I’ve never had to change the account of who I saw, where we went, and the purpose of the visitation.  I wanted my account to be as accurate and as pristine as possible, so that as my memories faded I would always have the written account to refresh them.  (Unlike the claims of William Hartley at BYU, my diary experiences show the more that is written immediately after the event, the more accurately they are recounted later.  This is precisely why a written account of automobile accidents are taken on the scene.)  Apparently not so with Joseph.  His last dictation of his vision is precipitated by a mass departure from the Church during 1838.  What is consistent about his First Vision accounts, is that he changes critical elements, the same as he did with the Book of Commandments, the significance and order of the High Priesthood, and the appearance of Peter, James, and John.  Again, a person would think that if Priesthood authority was so critical to the restoration of the Lord’s Church, the date would be burned into one’s memory or written down immediately (as the dates of my spiritual experiences have always been), and the fundamental facts would not be tampered with, nor new critical facts later inserted on the heals of leadership credibility issues.  As a friend stated to me: So modest a detail!

In my researching the First Vision one detail no one has ever raised a question upon is, What was so significant about the sins of a middle aged teen that God deemed it necessary to appear with Jesus, to an obscure boy to tell him his sins were forgiven?  The apostle Paul said he saw a light and heard a voice. (Incidentally, The two accounts of Paul's conversion are also inconsistent with each other.)  Now what Paul was doing up till then was really bad stuff, but he excused himself because of the Jewish law.  Thousands upon thousands of people have petitioned God over the millennia for a remission of their sins, without ever receiving such a divine manifestation.  Surely Joseph could explain the first time around why he was chosen?  Remember, the earliest version of the First Vision says nothing about starting a church, just that his sins are forgiven. When my OBE happened, the first thing to be discussed was “Why the visit?” and laying the issue of worthiness to rest.  But apparently nobody was impressed with Joseph’s vision to observe this fact (Why should anyone be impressed with teenage angst cum revival?), for the persecution he lays claim to for the event, is historically shown to be due to his money-digging scams.  His story of persecution from having a vision of Deity is the only historical record of such.  It seems mighty peculiar and suspect that he would re-write persecution into his 1838 vision story at the very time when he IS being maligned by those who once trusted and believed him.  It was not uncommon during the 1823 revival period for “converted” people to profess a vision at the time of their youth, especially for having received a forgiveness of sins.  The story the Church relates of Joseph’s maligning by a preacher, saying that such things don’t happen anymore, is a distortion of what really took place.

It is quite suspicious that the “restored church” of God arises out of the religious fervor extant in New England, preceded by the same kind of events seventy years earlier.  Especially since nothing was ever said about a restoration until Sidney Rigdon appeared, who had been desirous of finding the restored church, and found haven within the Church of Christ.  Sidney was not the only preacher who had been looking for a restoration.  Alexander Campbell had also, as did many of their predecessors for over a hundred years previous.  A close inspection of the history of the church, as well as New England’s, reveals much of what happened with the founding of the church was consistent with the founding of many other churches. There was an obsession with visions, manifestations of spirits, finding God or Jesus, and remission of sins coupled with dramatic conversion.  The area where Joseph had his first vision wasn’t called the “Burned Over District” for nothing.  A large portion of the population at that time consisted of people seeking a religion they could hang their hat on.  And that is another element of the “restoration” one must take into account.  Why were there so many people looking for religion, some moving from one to the next, all feeling insecure about their souls until they found a doctrine they were content with?  It is clear upon examination of the lives of prominent men in the church, especially Rigdon’s, they were suffering from stunted maturation.  None of them were satisfied with themselves, nor with their lot in life, and behaved as frustrated, unfulfilled juveniles.  It is interesting to note the same zeal and fervor was extant in the church in the late 1880s, as many including Wilford Woodruff were expecting the return of Jesus, the millennium, and the destruction of the wicked.  Again, expected Last Days fulfillment about seventy years after the “restoration.”

The entire business of how the Book of Mormon came into existence, the First Vision, and the Priesthood restoration is fraught with ambiguities, contradictions, distortions, and outright lies.  The history of the church is rife with fraud, scandal, subterfuge, derision, divisiveness and dissension, covetousness and lust for power.  Even murder is quietly conceived and condoned in the name of Israel’s God.  I never met anyone who actually believed the Crusades were an inspiration of God, yet church Authorities expect the world to believe theirs with a history paralleling the Crusades?  Or the Inquisition?

One aspect of the Restoration story has always bothered me.  If restoring the true Gospel of Jesus was mighty important, why has not “His church” grown faster in anticipation of Christ’s return? (And why is Christ’s return no longer dealt with?)  At present the church constitutes approximately 0.18% of the world population.  Even in the beginning, when the growth rate was at its highest, it was only 0.01% of the world population.  The rate of growth change peaked around the mid 1960s, and has dropped to the same level as in the 1930s.  All church growth figures (except BIC members) have been showing a steady decline since 2002.

To summarize:

•  The recorded story of retrieving the plates does not match that which the church proclaims (it took place after midnight)
•  No one ever saw the plates; not even Joseph, based on totality of evidence
•  No one ever saw nor touched the Urim & Thumim, nor the sword of Laban (available accounts are contradictory)
•  The alleged BofM plate volume in gold alloy is virtually impossible to run with, much less at 2AM in the dark.
•  The plates were never used for translating
•  Joseph could hardly read or write until at least 1831, therefore he could not have relied on a photographic memory nor been able to "study in his mind" any dead language
•  The Book of Mormon was "dictated" with a peep stone in a hat, acknowledged recently in General Conference
•  The 116 page manuscript was never "lost"; Dr Seymour, an acquaintance of Lucy Harris frequently exhibited them
•  Joseph's bedroom loft dimensions cannot validate his account of Moroni's visit
•  The church proclaims a truncated story of Professor Anthon, insinuating he initially validated the proffered characters
•  The Tempest Stele characters do not bear any resemblance to a single character presented to Professor Anthon
•  Joseph's First Vision accounts are inconsistent and non-corroborative; the first writing does not match the last, and Brigham's and Pratt's do not match that sanctioned by the church

SethSmee

5-23-14 Addendum
Morgdumb celebrates Joseph Smith as a martyr to the Restoration. It is the substance of their hymn Praise to the Man, and this theme is often denoted at this time of year in conjunction with the celebration of Priesthood Restoration. First let us be clear on the meaning of Martyr. Webster's defines it thus: "a) any of those persons who choose to suffer or die rather than give up their faith or principles b) any person tortured or killed because of his or her beliefs." One does not need to investigate far into the history of the CJCLDS, from the printing press destruction to Joseph's murder, to learn his death was never a martyrdom. Joseph was not murdered because of his beliefs, religious or otherwise. He did not choose to suffer by way of submitting to incarceration, nor did he expect to die without a fight since he premeditatively used a smuggled pistol to aid his escape. Joseph was a fugitive from justice, wanted for murder in Missouri, and bank fraud in Ohio. He was incarcerated for inciting insurrection, destruction of private property, polygamy, violation of State and Federal statutes related to Constitutional law, as well as sought for accountability on violation of Masonic procedures and practices. Integrating the religious, political, and personal events of the last few months of his life into a composite picture, it is clear he was caught in the nexus of his own web of deceit, extortion, and criminality. That he was murdered by a mob was a miscarriage of the law. That he was ultimately encircled by the consequences of his actions was the immutable justice of Nature. What he sowed, he reaped.

* 3-29-15 Addendum
At thedigitalvoice.com we find the proposed Harris document is actually a second, the first being a circular form in imitation of a zodiac. A very worthy read. Also found there is a copy of The Early Days of Mormonism. In it we find a conflicting account by Chase stating that the book was deposited in the tree for ten days. On some suggestion it might have been taken Emma alerts him and he returns to recover the book, subsequently being attacked in daylight. With Joseph, we find inconsistencies in his stories everywhere. But Faith trumps inconsistency!

REFERENCES
Tempest and Exodus Ralph Ellis
Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined Rodger Anderson
The Keystone of Mormonism Arza Evans
Who really Wrote the Book of Mormon? Cowdery, Davis, Vanick
The Pearl of Great Price
Journal of Discourses
History of the Prophet Joseph Lucy Smith
A New Witness for Christ in America Vol2 Francis Kirkham
An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins Grant Palmer
Studies of the Book of Mormon B.H. Roberts
Documentary History of the Church B.H. Roberts
The Papers of Joseph Smith Dean Jessee
New Mormon Studies CDROM; A Comprehensive Resource Library Smith Research Associates
The Book of Mormon Plates Maxwell Institute Sjodahl http://www.farmsresearch.com/display-print.php?table=jbms&id=236

Weights/cubic foot; Relative Hardness
    Gold    1204#   2.5-3
    Brass    534#    5.5
    Copper 542#    3.5-4
    Iron      450#    5
    Steel     490#
    Silver    653#    2.5-3
    Tin        459#    2
    Zinc      440#    4-4.5
    Diamond          10

1832 First Vision Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith: Autobiographical and Historical Writings, 2+ vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1989-), :57.(figs. 52-53).

Joseph Smith History 1:15-20, 1838

The True Believer, p99 Eric Hoffer

Of Bones & Stones, Thrones & Groans

What Stone?

    Since the beginning of the CJCLDS the allegory of King Neb’s dream has been interpreted to mean the CJCLDS today was the Kingdom foretold.  There have been all manner of interpretations concerning this idea.  Joseph Smith’s grandfather (Asael) referred to it, and it appears to have been a prevalent theme among religious folk at that time.  Joseph spoke of himself being a stone rolling down a mountain and being smoothed by coming in contact with “religious bigotry, priest-craft, lawyer-craft, doctor-craft, lying editors, suborned judges and jurors, and the authority of perjured executives, backed by mobs, blasphemers, licentious and corrupt men and women”, and that God would “give me dominion over all and every one of them.”  Perhaps Joseph desired such a dominion, I certainly do not.

Joseph organized the Council of Fifty which started to morph into the political kingdom of God.  It is from this body of men that the Danite organization was composed and grew.

Mr Avard, a prominent leader in the Danite organization, declared to his Captains in the Danite movement that the establishment of this last kingdom was to be carried out by plundering and robbing the Gentiles, and that if necessary, to lie for the sake of each other’s welfare, and any who should oppose them should be dealt with as Moses did the Egyptian task master who buried the Jewish slave in the sand.  This was the manner in which God destined His kingdom to come forth.  He told them they had been organized into the Ancient Order to defend the Saints.

Doesn’t sound like an order I would like to participate in, particularly in view of the many secret murders they committed in Nauvoo and later in the “Great Basin Kingdom.”

Bruce McConkie stated that the CJCLDS was the kingdom of God, that in time it would become the ecclesiastical kingdom, as well as the civil.  But this kingdom would not be created by the arm of flesh and no man’s hands would create it. To top it off, he takes Christendom to task for believing that this Kingdom is “wholly spiritual.”  Yet elsewhere he stated that the Kingdom set up in the last days is a spiritual, ecclesiastical kingdom.  Did Bruce ever truly know which it was, or be consistent?

There are numerous other similar assertions readers can pursue for themselves.  But what exactly did Neb’s dream mean, especially in view of the unreliability of translation errors and changes in the Old Testament?  The establishment of God’s kingdom, which would destroy all other kingdoms according to Daniel I can accept (not morph out of kingdoms on the earth as McConkie once asserted in General Conference).  What is hard to correlate is that the CJCLDS IS that stone, cut from the mountain without hands.  To take this view, one must necessarily interpret the allegory.  To interpret an allegory or prophecy, one must have a key, or an insight which bears out the truth of the elements of which it is composed.  The only other recourse is to examine the historical evidence in the passage of time, in the same manner a prophet was tested in the Old Testament—did it come to pass?  If not, he is a false prophet.

In the first place, is the CJCLDS in this dispensation truly the same CJCLDS as in the Meridian of time?  There are many who will assert it is, and base it on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  The cited passage in Ephesians is vague, and only indicates that these appointees existed.  There is no New Testament declaration concerning the structure of the CJCLDS.  Nor is there anywhere given a detailed description of how members joined, worshipped, served, or were called.  They did not have a missionary or welfare program that we know of.  It has always been the duty of the Twelve to preach the Gospel in all the world, and others whom they might call, such as the Seventy.  In fact, religious scholars have known for many years that the book of Ephesians is a fraud.  It was not written by Paul, and it is unknown who penned it.  It is well known to Biblical scholars and history students alike, that the New Testament writings are dubious copies and abridgements of eye-witness accounts.  The earliest writings in existence that bear any reasonable mark of authenticity can at best only be traced to the second century C.E..  The originals were poor copies by unlearned people who had little or no writing skill.  Add to this difficulty the strong evidence that Paul was the instigator of Christianity, and not those in Jerusalem who followed Peter, and such an assertion by any modern Christian sect is based on quicksand-like syllogisms.

We know that Joseph changed the CJCLDS’s structure over the years until his death.  The CJCLDS’s structure today is not how Joseph had it organized when he was killed.  The current structure is the brainchild of Brigham Young, who dismissed the authority of the stake of Zion, even though the Twelve only had jurisdiction over the branches of the CJCLDS outside of the center stake of Zion.  In fact, Joseph had established an “anointed quorum”, with members comprised of men and their wives who held the fulness of the Priesthood which Joseph had dispensed to only them.  It remains exceptionally doubtful that the CJCLDS Brigham created after Joseph’s death had any Priesthood authority since many of the members of this quorum, especially the women, had no voice or control in the CJCLDS’s restructuring.  Since it has been firmly asserted for more than one hundred years back, that the CJCLDS can be restructured (including appointing the Prophet) only by the voice of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, the same principle applied to the quorum of anointed, who held a Fulness of the Priesthood (and not part, as did many Apostles) must also apply.  If this be so, the CJCLDS since the death of Joseph has had no bonafide Priesthood authority even if Joseph Smith ever had such.

Apostles in the early CJCLDS were supposed to be special eye witnesses to the Savior’s ministry and resurrection.  There is no mention of an office in the priesthood He conferred as “Apostle” in the New Testament.  Biblical scholars know there were female members who were apostles of the Lord, and they were revered and listened to with equal weight among other apostles.  We know of no Deacons nor Elders, and there certainly never were any “Assistants to the Twelve”, nor Regional Representatives.  It is clearly evident to the serious student that the Christian church in the Meridian of time in its structure, as well as its form of worship, bears little resemblance to the CJCLDS of this era.  Most importantly, there is no record of members in the early Church losing their membership for speaking their minds, searching out the true history of their predecessors, and possibly embarrassing Church officers in the process.  This practice did not manifest itself until the dark age of the Catholic Church.

The question then remains, how has the CJCLDS grown since the Restoration declared by Joseph Smith?  Up until his murder, the growth rate was phenomenal.  From its formal organization of six, to the final days of Nauvoo, the rate was unheard of in most Churches—hundreds of percent, although other Churches had “conversions” numbering greater.  The westward migration took its toll—many were left behind because they had not the means to make the trek.  Others remained being weary of the constant loss of home and property, having no desire to tame a desert wilderness in abject poverty in the remote regions of the growing Nation.  For a few years the growth of the CJCLDS was stagnate as the membership was widely dispersed, not only to acquire territory, but to avoid the civil litigation by the Federal government over multiple wives.

Plotting the membership (data from CJCLDS publications) and world population growth we find an interesting graph:

Note the membership growth has taken an exponential curve, while the world population growth has remained fairly constant.  However, this growth rate is not directly due to the acquisition of new members, and in fact new membership growth has fallen off before the increase and fall-off of total missionaries in the field.  When we compare the CJCLDS membership against the world population we derive this graph:

Here we see that compared to total world population, the CJCLDS remains an extremely small portion, and the rate of growth is constant and fairly linear.  From this graph we can establish that if the trend continued, it would take 78,000 years to arrive at 100% world membership, holding world growth at zero.  So far it doesn’t sound like the stone cut without hands destined to fill the earth at the Savior’s reign.

The mission of the CJCLDS as proclaimed today is to dispense the saving ordinances.  To do that in full (baptism through sealing to parents) in current temples requires about 3½ to 4 hours of a patron’s time.  To determine how much time it will take to perform this work for the dead, we can estimate a rough figure from estimates of total world population since recorded history, about 100 billion people.  It turns out that this would require >73 million man-years, for one person spending fifteen hour days in one temple (no weekends or holidays off).  Since the rumors of running the temples all night have remained that, we can estimate if all current temples (124) were running 15 hour days, 6 day weeks for 52 weeks/year, with an average of 60 patrons per session, it still would take more than 11,488 years.  It is easy to see getting all the ordinance work for the dead completed before the end of the Millenium is problematic.  During the 1980s, the CJCLDS was averaging roughly 4½ million vicarious endowments per year.  At this defunct rate it would take >22,222 years to complete just the endowment (no baptism, initiatory, or sealing) for all dead persons estimated to have lived.  All this is assuming we can obtain on demand the necessary relational information for every person who has ever lived on the earth.  We still know nothing of the early aborigines on the American continent, especially those who’s remnants are found in the dust dating to 7,000 BCE.  The same is true of every continent of the planet.  If the total population figures are low, we REALLY have a conundrum.  Let us see how the CJCLDS has been doing in the category of higher ordinances.

If we look at the live endowment rate, and separate the missionary endowments from the rest, we get this graph:

We find here that missionary endowments and other endowments are at about the same rate, with a general increase during the period of the Seventies and Eighties.  But if we look at related figures, the number of members per Melchizedek Priesthood holder, and the Endowed versus members we get a different picture:

The ratio of Melchizedek Priesthood holders to the Church remained fairly constant during those two decades, but the number of endowed members versus the Church has been gradually dropping.  More curiously, the number of converts to the total membership is falling at the same rate as the number of converts per missionary.  Earlier we saw that the number of full time missionaries has been dropping rapidly in this millenium.  In some ways missionary effectivity has dropped to levels of thirty-five years ago.  And it is also evident the increase in emphasis on missionary work over the last twenty-five years has not yielded an increase in conversions, either in total, or per missionary.  Rather it appears that the missionary-mill is producing the opposite effect, retarding the conversion rate in spite of the opening of new missions around the world.  Again, this does not sound like the stone that fills the earth, and certainly not in the near future.

    It is interesting to note that Brigham Young was anxious to finish building the Salt Lake temple so that the CJCLDS could return to their disinherited lands in the Midwest.  He felt the millenium prophesied of old was about to commence, especially with the advent of the Civil War.  He was convinced the war would continue until the entire nation had wasted away.  Wilford Woodruff was convinced that the millenium of Christ was to come forth in 1889.  Numerous pulpit declarations were made in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries concerning individuals present remaining alive to witness the Savior’s return.  In the late 1980s there were prognosticators of every sort along the Wasatch Front trying to predict the advent of Adam-Ondi-Ahman and the Second Coming.  Yet after 176 years since the formal organization of the CJCLDS, we are still awaiting the appearance of the Lord, the personal establishment of His government and kingdom, and find that the performance of the CJCLDS as a definition of the stone Daniel spoke of is dismal at best.

    As a Christian church, it remains a minority.  Today there are 25% more members world-wide in the Jehovah’s Witnesses than the CJCLDS.  In the early 1980s, there were nearly four times as many Catholics in India as total LDS members.  Christianity comprises one third of the world population, and dominates any other single category of religion.  Here, the percentages for the CJCLDS are way below the Oriental and African groups by category. Even the Jews outnumber the Mormons:

In a recent Dialogue article, Jiro Numano characterized the history of the CJCLDS in Japan.  The Japanese have always resisted outside cultural influences, and largely have shown only passing interest in the CJCLDS as a curiosity.  Jiro states that the Japanese rate of growth in this millenium has dropped to 1%.  The loss of interest was spurred by the advent of the Internet, and its availability of early period CJCLDS history now being suppressed by LDS Authorities.  As the CJCLDS data shows, the fall-off of conversion began about four years prior to the departure of many prominent members in Japan as reported by Jiro.  An extremely perceptive statement in his conclusion is worth noting.  He said: “A system of thought from the outside that will not engage a society’s most rigorous minds will always remain peripheral.  In Japan, those at the first stage of naivete stayed in the CJCLDS, while many of the rest, including members with complex views, left or drifted into inactivity.  Those who leave tend to be inquisitive and intelligent; thus, the CJCLDS in Japan is losing significant human resources.”  This is a classic Japanese polite way of saying the CJCLDS is being reduced to persons who have no inclination to go beyond baptism and are generally dull or superficial intellectually.  His observation is poignant, as the state of the CJCLDS in Japan is somewhat a barometer of how the CJCLDS is outside the United States.  In 2000, U.S. News reported the CJCLDS as one of the richest and fastest growing religious movements in the world.  Reported experts estimated world-wide membership at 280 million by 2080.  But other sources reveal just the opposite has been happening.  In view of the declining growth rates since the U.S. News editorial, that 280 million must be scaled way down.  President Hinckley was quoted to say: "We have a demanding religion, and that's one of the things that attracts people to this Church."  But as Jiro has pointed out, when that obedience demands a conformity and silence of the inquisitive, the member departs.

Eric Hoffer, a visionary of mass movements in our own time points out that people who gravitate to such “demanding” societies and “Causes” are people who feel displaced in society, and have an inherent need to establish meaning and direction to their lives.  It doesn’t have anything to do with doctrines or Truth, it has to do with feelings of inadequacy and lack of definition to their lives.  Those who are possessed of healthy self-confidence seldom attach themselves to groups or causes to identify themselves.  It is this kind of individual that is gravitating to the CJCLDS, and those of intelligence who discover dissimulation and obfuscation of pertinent facts concerning their beliefs look elsewhere for fulfillment, often leaving with disgust and mistrust.

If activity figures of the CJCLDS (currently being suppressed) can be taken as barometric, the actual membership of the CJCLDS is only half what is proclaimed.  This rumored statement tends to follow the same pattern I found as a full-time missionary in Norway.  Nearly half of the people brought into the CJCLDS there went right back out again within a few years, often within months.  Of the remaining, the attendance at sacrament meeting hovered around 30%, and went down from there for other meetings.  Home teaching was virtually non-existent, and in fact this is so for the CJCLDS everywhere outside the United States.  Jeff Burton stated he came across figures he believes are fairly accurate: 30% either leave or are excommunicated, 35% become inactive, and the balance split with 16-17% remaining active with Temple recommends.  It is widely believed, particularly among the excommunicated, that the single largest group of the CJCLDS are the excommunicated, consisting of millions.  This is a startling community of non-communal people!

The number of Melchizedek Priesthood holders outside the continental US versus the membership within is considerably lower.  What Jiro reports in his essay concerning the resistance to Western culture in Japan seems to be true in most countries of the world; people generally are not willing to accept the influence of western culture, particularly in the guise of religion.  The failure of the Indian placement program had at its roots some of the same issues.  With the preaching of the new doctrines to the Native Americans came the demand to adopt western social values and ideals, especially regarding the family and what is considered chaste behavior.  President Kimball, who had close ties to the Native American tribes, wrote about some of that westernization.  Hugh Nibley also wrote about the resistance of Native Americans to adopt white-man’s ways in the guise of religion.  Their general attitude in time became they would wait until the white man figured out how to be a genuinely charitable people before joining.

As an indirect reflection of this condition, we find that the figure of >75% of all temple work being done in the United States in 1985 has likely remained the same rate twenty years later, in spite of the brief, rapid growth of temples.  Not only has temple building tapered off in recent years, but the widening gap of membership versus endowed members likely has continued since 1985, thereby yielding only marginal improvement, traceable to countries such as Brazil and South Africa.  The vast majority of deceased names are produced as yet by CJCLDS extraction.  While the building of a temple was widely rejoiced in the Scandinavian countries, it took another 19 years for one to appear in Denmark, and just last year one in Finland.  And the wonderful introduction of President Hunter’s “all worthy members holding recommends” was truncated on his death as the administration went back to opposing the endowment of young members, especially the females.  It seems the young can only receive the blessings if they are part of an organization which closely controls their daily life by strict rules, i.e., serve a mission.

In 1994, President Hinckley observed in a CES fireside at BYU (satellite broadcast), that the biggest problem facing the CJCLDS authorities was growth (Also Stack World View 1994).  Curiously, this statement was made when the ratio of converts to members had slumped from a peak four years earlier, and marks the present decline in the growth of the CJCLDS.  The loss of a few members who were “so-called intellectuals” as Boyd Packer condescendingly labels them is of no consequence to them.  It is inconceivable that the President would make such a public statement when the D&C is clear about the worth of souls, and even he has on numerous occasions pontificated this paradigm relative to missionary work.  He avoided in that statement the damaging effect excommunication has had among relatives and friends.  It has an even greater ripple effect than conversion.  To read of the effects of forced departure over nit-picking historical facts, or public embarrassment of the CJCLDS traced to local leadership problems, is most heart-rending.  Families are torn apart and once believing members suddenly become cynical about religion in the main. (Greater than 78% of the children of the “September Six” are no longer in the CJCLDS.  Families of other excommunicated/departed have comparable rates of loss.)  This phenomenon is world-wide; the same effects are had whether in Japan, Germany (consolidation of wards and missions from membership loss), or the United States.

    When one looks closely at claims made in the press and public statements, it is clear that the CJCLDS is not growing at a rate that will fill the earth at any point in relevant time.  What we find instead is a clear effort to propagandize in like manner as was done during the 1990s to upgrade the image of the CJCLDS.  It has become a church for everybody by proclamation, but in practice a church that is losing its best and most intelligent people; a church for those who want to be lead and governed; a church not just of western thinking, but one exhibiting the most damaging qualities of cult control.  It is becoming a church that can no longer motivate its people, but only make greater demands of them.  And this, interestingly enough, Eric Hoffer states is the final stage of all institutions intent on changing people’s lives, whether in government, business, sports, or religion.  Where the “leaders” (a highly miss-used term) can no longer inspire, they threaten, demand, or intimidate, shame, and punish.  It is the state of stagnation.

One really has to study well, analyze and ponder long about the meaning of Neb’s dream and Daniel’s interpretation.  It seems that if his prophecy is true, then it will take place outside the machinations of man’s effort to bring it about.  Perhaps this is part of what the Lord referred to when he declared: “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

SethSmee

Addendum 2-2-2015

Recently I came across a membership compilation on the Web for US churches.(http://www.statisticbrain.com/religion-in-the-united-states/) There I found the number of 5.691 million members for 2005. I then searched for the LDS church's total membership for 2005 which led to the Church's own conference report of 12.56 million. Aside from its continued dismal performance (their claimed annual domestic increase is still under 2½% and falling while world membership remains barely above 1% annually for the last decade) the most laughable portion was the assertion the church has grown every decade. The Church may show positive percentiles, but the graph shows something very important:

The trend has largely been negative since 1880. The slope of the graph is downgoing, except for the rapid rise during the war years--1938-1964. Since 1990 the slope has tilted downward at nearly -45º, while between 1880-1938 it was a mild -20º, roughly. Extrapolating this slope (fraudulently including departed members--see Effective Message Building by David Tweede at http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/conference2014.html) we can infer if the trend continues the Church will become stagnant around 2040. In actuality by some estimates by those with inside information the departure rate has reduced the actual membership to nearly a third of their published data. My guess is their growth rate will crossover--become negative, by decade's end (2020). What is also instructive is the growth rate outside of the continental US. If the data could be extracted I'd guesstimate it went negative some time ago. The slope during the decade 1964-1974 shows a steeper decline, and if the activity rate I observed in Norway during my mission (1970-71) has any correlation to membership (we were losing them faster than we could bring them in. Norwegians often didn't bother to "write" themselves out.), membership growth rate outside the US has been negative for several decades. The disillusionment period of the BabyBoomers over the VietNam war and Washington's corruption had a subconscious effect on all of us. Generation X and the Millenials are walking away, and it is no coincidence that the most recent decline also appears with the onset of the Internet. In the "Last Days" the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Fraud.

SethSmee

REFERENCES
Daniel 2:14-45

Luke 13:26-30
Matthew 7:15-23


Deuteronomy 18:19-22

What Priesthood?

                                                     What Priesthood?

“Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world: that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.”

    To examine the CJCLDS claim of direct Priesthood authority back to Jesus one necessarily needs to ascertain its ancient origin.  When did it first appear in the pages of man’s history?  Where did it come from?  How did it get passed from one generation to the next?  It is not until these questions are supplied a reasonable answer, that the claim of Priesthood restoration in 1830 can have any substantive context.  For, if the Priesthood order as presently constituted in the CJCLDS has no continuity down through the annals of time, if it has no relevance to previous orders, if it’s eternal importance in the salvation of all mankind is not substantiated by ancient evidence of its intimate activity with man in all ages, then the claim of authenticity is necessarily vacuous and opportunistic.

    My earliest memories of church sermons contain numerous discourses on Priesthood authority.  The assertion was made frequently throughout the fifties and sixties that if the church did not have the original Priesthood of God, then the church was no more than any other Christian church.  It then was the creation of men, and had no more efficacy and claim to be God’s power than any other religion’s—all others by definition being false.  This tenant was drilled into the church missionaries, and became one of the tools I used to try and persuade the church investigator that only the CJCLDS had the true Priesthood of God.

    A perusal of ex-member literature, as well as the church’s own conference addresses will reveal this matter is more pivotal than any other upon their claims.  It doesn’t matter if Joseph actually had a Vision of any kind.  It also does not matter if the Book of Mormon is an authentic history of the Aborigines on the Western Hemisphere.  Without a direct link to Priesthood down through the ages all the way back to Adam, the CJCLDS is not only an impostor, but no such thing was ever truly had among men.  The entire matter of religion then becomes the probable First Scam, and accounts for why many ex-members become atheistic, or agnostic (albeit they hardly leave the cult mentality of Mormonism behind with their departure).  It is vital to remember that this is not my view, but that of the church’s own representatives who made this declaration.  The reader is urged to investigate this material to see just how far they went in setting themselves up.

    Margaret Barker, biblical researcher and Methodist preacher, has ably demonstrated the original claims of authentic priesthood derive from the Melchizedek, but that ascertaining those links, and even the origin of Melchizedek’s priesthood is virtually impossible.  The CJCLDS assertion that Moses received his priesthood from Jethro of Midian is completely untenable.  No records have ever been found to support this claim.

    The crux of the assertion of continuous Authority maintained by the CJCLDS centers in the events recorded in Kirtland, Ohio, April 3, 1836.  Joseph and Oliver maintain that Jesus, Moses, Elias (Noah), and Elijah appeared and committed the Priesthood keys of all previous dispensations.  It sounds fine superficially, but like every other aspect of Mormon doctrine, begins to unravel as the full scope of history is revealed.  In the first place, no one knows how many dispensations there have been, nor who held the keys of them, and why.  It is maintained by church officials that Abraham had a dispensation, though he is not accorded any Priesthood keys of a dispensation in the 1836 event.  As stated in the Pearl of Great Price, the nations of the earth would be blessed by the presence of his posterity because they are supposed to have a right to this Priesthood. The text asserts it was given him by Jehovah, or the God of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ.  The CJCLDS teaches the Priesthood is supposed to be conferred by the physical laying on of hands.  But the story of Abraham’s account given by Joseph Smith merely has God/Jesus announcing the fact to Abraham.  Some apologists claim Abraham received his priesthood power from Melchizedek, to whom he paid tithes.  But there are no ancient records substantiating this claim either.  The laying on of hands to receive the Priesthood is a critical, fundamental doctrine of Mormon dogma.  There is no evidence outside the Pearl of Great Price that Abraham ever had a priesthood.  It is merely presumed like the Protestants presume God assured the New Testament is His Word without error (even though religious scholars have identified tens of thousands of errors).  If Abraham had a genuine dispensation with Priesthood authority, why did he not also appear at Kirtland  (D&C sec 110)?

    The problem gets worse when one examines the claim of Elijah appearing.  Not only is there no Biblical justification for the prophet Elijah ever having any sealing keys, the idea is a foreign concept in Judaism.  There is no such thing as sealing parents and children together in the history of the Jews in any age.  (The sealing of parents and children was an innovation of president Wilford Woodruf.)  Elijah (or Abraham, or Adam) is not even present on the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus is purported to have received His Priesthood authority from past dispensation prophets.  Not only does the Mormon doctrine of Jesus receiving Priesthood keys from Noah and Moses seem absurd, since by their definition Jesus was Jehovah, and therefore already had those keys being the Originator, but the fact that Abraham, Elijah, and Adam are not present on the Mount of Transfiguration riddles the Kirtland account with conundrums.  From the time I first heard of Adam-Ondi-Ahman, and Jesus receiving the dispensation keys all the way back to Adam from each of the prophets having keys, I thought it was bizarre because it didn’t make sense.  If Jesus retained power in Himself from Adam forward to initiate and terminate a dispensation of the Gospel, what need has He to receive them back from mortals?  Did He somehow lose His Priesthood power over the ages by bestowing it upon men who then must not die until these keys are returned to the next designee?

    The CJCLDS has yearly celebrated a Priesthood Commemoration.  Every year as a teenager I had drummed into me how important the restoration of the Priesthood was.  We were told names and dates for the Aaronic Priesthood, and names, but no sure date for the Melchizedek Priesthood.  I was among the many who often wondered why a fixed date for the Melchizedek Priesthood was not known. Melchizedek Priesthood is the authority to establish God’s church, as we were indoctrinated.  Without it Joseph Smith could not have organized the church in 1830 (Joseph not only did not have it in 1830, no mention of priesthood authority existed until the Kirtland debacle.).  So one inevitably arrives at this juncture: if God’s power to organize and run a church, along with the avowed saving ordinances was so vital (enough that all of mankind’s eternal happiness and disposition worlds without end hinged on this event), why was it not known exactly when and where it happened?  Why had God not seen to it that this Event was proclaimed independently of Mormon proselytizing in every tongue and creed and culture round the world?  Why would He depend on those miserable few destitute true believers sent to the Christian nations of their ancestors to spread the word?  Why did not God prepare the peoples of other climes so that when His messengers did arrive they expected it and were ready to receive it?  Instead the account is shrouded in mystery, speculation, and presumption.  This does not sound like the God of the last dispensation of times who has His act together.

    It just did not seem rational to me that God would fail to make such a vital and pivotal dispensation of His power known in an incontrovertible and indisputable manner for even the greatest skeptic to examine.  Instead we have all manner of polemics in print as to when it happened, and probable scenarios of what happened, none of which has enough evidence to disprove any of the others.  What we find is the church authorities have to cover their foopahs, for in asserting that a man must have the Priesthood (and therefore Joseph Smith also) to establish His church, they had to ensure that Joseph did indeed have the same at the founding of the CJCLDS.  One might believe it is reasonable that Joseph was given this priesthood in order to organize the church, until one looks at the actual historical evidence.

    The church was established legally on April 6, 1830.  One would think that irregardless of setting up its internal hierarchy, the authority from God to even legally create it must be in place.  Obtaining it after the fact is the first clue that something is not right.  Indeed, the church authorities have taught since the Nauvoo period that the Melchizedek Priesthood was restored about June 6, 1830. Yet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey are said to have received this power two months after the fact!  How can they have power to organize the church in April, when they didn’t get it until June, according to church dogma?  Now historians have searched and re-searched records around the country seeking clues to clarify this event.  The closest explanation fitting court records, eye-witness sightings, and journal entries by Joseph, brings one to the date of the first week of July, 1831.  If the county court record and Joseph’s journal entries are correct, the day quite probably was the sixth.  This information was obtained by the extensive research of Michael Quinn, published in his Origins of Power.  Quinn later published an apologetic piece trying to tone down the controversy, and made a partial backtrack from his book.  My position is simply this: All claims of authenticity of the church rest on having the ancient Melchizedek Priesthood, according to them.  If this is true, why is it such a controversy?  THE most important event since the Crucifixion is surrounded in controversy, innuendo, and obfuscation?  I do not believe in a God who would leave His offspring in such an insecure position if their salvation depended on it.  Mormonism teaches that God is our literal Father.  No loving parent is going to leave their children bickering over who has the right to boss the siblings in His absence.  The right to speak for God and boss the human race around is all the claim to an ancient priesthood order is.  The CJCLDS proclaims God’s house is a house of order.  Surely this matter would have been manifest to the world in a more rigorous setting than an ambiguous, nondescript tale of ancient apostles appearing on a river bank, declared to the church membership and world with all its inconsistencies, six years after the fact?

    It is reported by early church officials in recorded testimony (much maligned and obscured by church officials) that there was never any mention of Priesthood authority in the church prior to the Kirtland era. In 1836 the church in Kirtland was rocked by the mass exiting of membership and several high officials.  The present Church Education System covers this period lightly, and leaves the student with the impression that the exodus of these high officials was due to their wickedness.  But if one searches the documents a different story comes out.  Martin Harris confesses to many of these high officials that he and the other witnesses to the Book of Mormon DID NOT physically handle the golden plates, the same as you and I would handle a stack of dishes being put upon a table.  The whole thing happened “in vision."  This revelation by Harris began a mass departure from the church that culminated with the Kirtland bank failure and Joseph’s sudden overnight exodus from Kirtland.  What the Church Education System deliberately conceals is Joseph left town to avoid litigation on fraud charges, becoming a fugitive from justice.  Being a wanted man for bank fraud in Ohio was why he never returned and eventually settled in Illinois.

    It was also during the Kirtland era that Joseph and Oliver published their “vision of Moses, Elijah, Elias, Noah, and Jesus, all committing their keys of His kingdom to man in the last dispensation of time.  For many years I strove to learn how many others present at the dedication were privy to this vision.  Indeed I had the impression for years that everyone present saw it.  In fact, only Joseph and Oliver and no one else witnessed it.  The assembly hall was divided by curtains, and during this purported event Joseph and Oliver were alone.  Documents have come forth showing that the partaking of the sacrament during the temple dedication was more than a symbolic drink of wine.  It is known that a great deal of wine was had all through the day and well into the night.  If these prophets DID appear as claimed, like the Melchizedek priesthood restoration by Peter, James, and John, it is THE most significant event since the Crucifixion. But just like the dubiousness of the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood at a time and place that no one can confirm, the reception of sealing keys pertaining to the Melchizedek Priesthood is of similar suspicion.  Only two people saw and heard in a building packed to the doors? Where are the independent "witnesses in whose mouths all things shall be established?"  Sober people of sound mind with unrestrained alcoholic drinking all day and into the night? That's like Spencer Kimball ordering a couple of cases of Paso Robles into the temple upon convening the Twelve only, in 1978 over the Blacks and the Priesthood question.  More than fifteen hours or so later Spencer and his first counselor alone declare a new revelation on the matter claiming to have been visited by heavenly messengers, including Jesus.   Where is the wine?  (Incidentally, the Twelve attempted to give the Blacks the Priesthood in December of 1969 but Nathan Tanner then absent, upon his return vehemently opposed it and forced the retraction in the press, blaming it on an unauthorized "leak!")  The only written account of the actual event was recorded by Bruce McConkie in an obscure Deseret Book publication!

To summarize the highlights of the CJCLDS’s beginning:

• Joseph and Oliver in concert with Sidney Rigdon concocted the Book of Mormon to make some money and obtain a little notoriety (Mormon= more mon-ey?).
• A church is organized before its founders received heavenly power to do so.
• Assertion of Priesthood authority in 1836 never before mentioned in the church.
• A re-write of the First Vision subsequent to mass exodus of members and key officials.
• Appearance of Jesus and ancient prophets returning sealing keys observed only by the religion’s founders in a building packed with predominantly drunken people.

    One needs only investigate the origins of Priesthood in the annals of history to discover it began before the Flood. Post-Flood, Moses was the second groomed pharaoh in Egyptian history to conduct a religious war making a bid for the throne (the first was Abraham), and with each captivity and dispersal of Israel there was an attendant feud between the priests who were left behind and those who returned from captivity trying to re-establish the old order.  The actual history of Israel is rife with priestly feuds, claims and counter-claims of genuine Priesthood, and through it all a continual degeneration of the old temple rituals, a change in the doctrines, and change in the historical records to purge out any reference to the ancient teachings and rituals that cast aspersion on the new Priesthood regime.  These purges are how the story of Adam and Eve and the Creation came into existence.  Prior to the Deuteronomists’ purge of the ancient Royal Cult, there was no Adam and Eve doctrine (an Egyptian myth surrounding Akhenaten and Nefertiti), and the Creation story was considerably different.

    Margaret Barker, a religious researcher and Methodist minister (who LDS historians tout produced evidence supporting LDS claims) has sought to uncover as much evidence as possible characterizing the ancient Royal Cult.  Her publications repeatedly paint a far different picture of early religious beliefs and practices than what CJCLDS authorities have maintained since 1830.  She explains the nature of the concept of Restoration, and her analysis shows the idea of a restoration of the “true Gospel” and Priesthood authority were never a part of early religion.  The ancients had a different concept of restoration.  The kind of restoration the CJCLDS heralds to the world, is one manufactured by true believing Christians on the American continent during the founding of this nation.  It is an interpretation of earlier writings without basis, from a dead era by believers who sought desperately but in vain, to preserve the oldest religious notions of man in Egypt.  Other works now coming forth show with increasing certitude that Paul the Apostle was the founder of modern Christianity and its church structure, not Peter, James, and John, as maintained in the CJCLDS temple presentation, and that Peter and his followers never belonged to a “church” as such.  This concept is orthogonal to the picture coming forth of Jesus’ ministry and the selection of His followers.  Paul institutionalized what Peter was trying to carry on—a kingdom of God on the earth within the hearts of men, as Jesus himself declared.  The New Testament like the Old, is an amalgam of selected writings specifically organized to present to the world a favored history and dogma.  It is no coincidence it favors the writings of Paul, and speciously rewritten stories of the ministry of Jesus.

    My take on the abundant evidence undeniably shows that, like most of what Joseph Smith did, his alleged priesthood keys and authority was an innovation on an old theme to exalt himself over man.  From stone peeper to book author, church founder, prophet, chief high priest, mayor, general, candidate to the U.S. Presidency, being crowned King of Israel over the whole earth (not by any Jew), establishing an anointed quorum (which group was said to have a fullness of the Priesthood), this was all meant to establish himself in the eyes of his followers and the world that he was next to God and Christ. He was the man appointed to bring back all the ancient ways of divine royalty.  The whole construction of priesthood authority as maintained by the CJCLDS breaks down quickly when one takes the time to evaluate the material and let it speak for itself.  Indeed, as Margaret’s research suggests, the “Restoration of all things spoken of by all the prophets since the world began” is nothing more than the God of heaven shutting evil back into its own place and re-establishing peace and harmony among man.  It was a spiritual mission and Margaret’s research confirms Jesus’ words before Pilate.

Priesthood authority only has to do with the notion of divine right to rule over men. It was a construction of the Egyptian pharaohs in the social vacuum left by large meteor impacts triggering the Deluge and world cataclysmic events ca 13,000 years BPE, as the world sought to recover from the devastation wreaked upon man’s burgeoning civilization.   The entire purpose of Priesthood authority lays in the lust to obtain control of the masses, to establish at the head of its hierarchy one person retaining the power over life and death, both spiritual and temporal.  Ultimately, this is all Priesthood power has ever been about.

SethSmee

REFERENCES
The Older Testament Margaret Barker, 2005
The Great Angel Margaret Barker, 1991
Temple Theology Margaret Barker, 2004
The Lost Prophet: The Book of Enoch and Its influence on Christianity Margaret Barker, 2005
Egypt in Eden Ralph Ellis, 2004
Tempest and Exodus Ralph Ellis, 2000
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophies Firestone/West/Warwick-Smith, 2006
The Seven Daugthers of Eve Bryan Sykes, 2001
Sydney Rigdon 1793-1876 F. Mark McKiernan, 1971
The Mystery of Godliness David John Buerger, 1994
Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Re-examined Rodger I. Anderson, 1990
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Bart D. Erhman, 2007
The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power D. Michael Quinn, 1994
Studies of the Book of Mormon B.H.Roberts/Madsen/McMurrin, 1992

In the Beginning

What is it you want?
Do you know?
Can you articulate it?
Who do you serve?

One thing I do want, is sensibility out of the 4,743,981,650,342 answers to the simple utterance Why?
From my earliest years until late adulthood I have been unraveling all the questions imposed on me by the voices of Authority.  I wasn’t given much opportunity, much less instruction, on how to compose my own questions.  Those who have obtained the status of Authority it seems, want to impose their own questions and answers before one obtains the gift of Sight.  And the absolute WORST word to use around them was Why?

It began sometime around the age of four.  I was taught to pray to God, a being who lived in heaven (wherever that was), and he, being my Father, would answer all my desires, for he knew everything, was more powerful than anything, and could keep an eye on everybody at once.  (They never did get around to what heavenly mother was doing…. Busy according to Morg-think I suppose, generating replicants, close kingdom cousins to miscreants and malcontents.)  At four this is total magic—and terror.  My first question was, Why must I talk to a being who knows everything?  Surely he knew my question before it was asked!  If he was truly my father, then Why had I never met him?  Why must I ask him for things I wanted, since most of the time I could go and get what I wanted all by myself?  It was only if my power to acquire failed, did I need somebody to do it for me.  Since the mother and father I did know did not always give me what I wanted, Why would this being I had never seen nor heard, and more wise than my mother and father give me anything I wanted just for the asking?  Children at age four may believe in magic, but Why would people with Authority think they’re stupid?

For that matter, Why did such a Being need anyone to worship him?  This I thought was not only silly, but contradictory.  Anyone who had all the answers, power to do anything, and could be watching everybody no matter where they were surely did not need all these people to come worship him so he could be happy?  Boy! I said to myself, this guy really has a problem!  Only much later did I learn this craving for worship was a fundamental trait of the megalomaniac.  Discovering this only compounded the difficulty in making sense of the dogma imposed by Authority.  Magic as a child I understood.  Megalomania I recognized immediately as a major human defect, even though I couldn’t articulate the concept.  If this was what God truly was, he had at least as big a defect as some people in Authority I crossed wires with.  These people were always cranky.  I promptly lost interest in praying to him, nor did I think he was such a great guy to be asking things from, especially if it went against what my mother and father said was “right.”  He had not employed any magic on me, so I wasn’t about to cowtow to anything I was told Authority claimed he wanted me to do.  I’d been read the story of Brer Rabbit.  I knew what a tar-baby was, and God seemed to me to be the biggest tar-baby of all!  When the day came the tar-baby spoke, that was when I would listen up.

This formed the thinking of a child from four to about seven.  Apparently this is extraordinary, as to date, I have never heard any of my peers, or elders, profess to have had such thoughts at this early age.  In fact, many of them, especially my siblings and relatives in their senior years, are still going around believing this dogma in spite of what their eyes, ears, and faculties tell them.  Enter Brer Bear….

Come eight years of age the scene began to change.  Suddenly, I was expected to be all-knowing.  See, there was this rule of Authority that said children when they arrived at their eighth birthday were suddenly accountable for their actions.  (How absurd.  Accountability is a journey in self-knowing and personal honor.)  Wow!  I looked forward to this great magical transformation after cake and ice cream!  Now at that time these Authority folks all seemed to have a little bit different version of what accountability meant.  At that time I naturally thought accountability was being able to re-tell exactly what happened when they were looking for a scapegoat over something which violated their sense of fair play.  As I had quickly learned around Authority figures, the better I was at re-telling, while leaving out certain incriminating facts, the less likely I was to be made a scapegoat for their own failure of oversight.  This was our religion, and shortly after I arrived at the Age of No Excuse my mother gathered her children then living at home and proceeded to tell us about how God intended us all to be saved….

How many different versions are there of In the Beginning…?  There are more versions of it within Mormon dogma than one can possibly harmonize, much less integrate.  Upon this specious conflicting mass of myth, Mormonism predicates their Plan of Salvation.  You may observe various parodies of Mormonism’s Creation Story on the web.  The range is from hilarious to totally bizarre.  But through it all, one must ask Why would God be able to “save” all of mankind who are under the Age of No Excuse, but cannot do a thing for those who have never heard of the “Plan”?  Oh yes, sooner or later, those who have not, are entitled to hear this preaching.  But for a religion that claims men are saved by their works, and thereby become worthy of His Grace, it seems highly unlikely that the ignorant can accept this form of Gospel as if they had lived it while in the body and receive of the same salvation as those who were required to attend to every outward duty prescribed by Mormon policy, practice, and dogma until they expired in the flesh.  Do those “lost souls” who had never heard Mormon dogma and accepted of its vicarious “saving” rituals while in mortality get to bypass the extortion of tithing which the Hierarchy uses to finance their expansionist programs?  Absolutely.  The ignorant dead have it made.  All they have to do is accept the vicarious programs of penance by someone still living, and off they go to live with God in Eternal bliss.  BUT, among those who knew the dogma here, and abandoned it, they have no chance to redeem themselves once they’re dead.  They have no chance to say to God, Oops, I didn’t realize what I was doing in the flesh, please can I make amends?  This is Mormon reconciliation with God!  There are variations on this theme.  But they’re all of the same color of “justice.”

By the time of puberty I began looking for some meaning to life.  Especially with the demise of my mother, and abandonment of my father.  What I could not articulate until well into grandparenthood, is that religion is not synonymous with spirituality.  I was told by presumed “experts who talked with God,” that the Book of Mormon was the best tome to read to attain at-one-ment with Jesus.  I proceeded to tear to pieces, to dissect, analyze, reconstruct and incorporate everything inscribed in the religious tomes.  When pulpit speeches became vapid, I spent hours searching every “good book” in and out of the pews.  The spirituality, the at-one-ment I was seeking never materialized, not in the books, not in the worship services, and not in the charitable activities.  When I dropped the books and sought spiritual communion, I found transcendence and eventually the at-one-ment I was seeking.  It came in the still of night like Jacob of old.  Not once, but twice, so far.

Of all the people I observed who seemed to have attained transcendence and communion with God, virtually all of them were men, and they had not achieved it through religious piety nor conformity.  (By their Nature, women are not normally constituted to seek this state.  It is a form of surrender that spooks the hell out of them.)  Fifty years to discover that religion is not about spirituality!  Mormonism is not designed to promote spirituality.  It is designed to promote Authority through spiritual impotence.  All religions do this, but Mormonism has the disease in spades and clubs.  The so-called “experts” within Mormonism’s hierarchy don’t commune with God.  They speak as though they were God.  They assert all manner of rules, policies, practices, and rites as if it came from God’s own mouth.  But if you ask any of them about the nature of their communion with God, all they can profess is some lame, vague “testimony” about His words in the “tomes.”  They profess an unutterable feeling, or worse, an irrational, indefensible conviction as the basis for their ability to speak for God.  What they say sounds just like what the Levite priests proclaimed in Deuteronomy.  What they do reflects what the Sanhedrin priests did which Jesus condemned.  None of them since the beginning of Mormonism’s organization have ever professed the transcendent experience, claimed by ancient prophets.  Take the Enochic, or the Jacobian accounts of heavenly vision as the pattern of prophetic impetus, and align it with that of Mormon authority personalities, and they are as dry as the dead men’s bones Jesus denounced.

What IS spirituality?  One can start with what it is not, and that is anything connected with religion.  Did Jesus or Mohammed join a religion?  Jesus didn’t preach joining a religion to find spiritual communion.  And if you think he started a religion because he started a “church”, you don’t know your own language, nor the history of Christian religion, nor the manner of teaching Jesus employed.  To begin with, Jesus was not a Christian!  And if you think Jesus is the symbolic embodiment of Christianity, compare the Christianity of Jesus admonishing Peter to put up his sword with Christianity from that moment forward.

In the first place the language Jesus spoke was Aramaic.  Most of the religious world spins on the Greek translated form of Matthew 16:18.  Mistake number one in interpreting this passage is the assumption that the book of Matthew contains Jesus’ actual words! (Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted)  Number two is accepting the Greek versions of “rock” for the singular version in Aramaic—which is a pun, consistent with allegory.  And three, to assume there is no difference between the word “church” and religion.  On this singular passage in all the New Testament Christianity bases the credibility and validity of authority of their religious dogmas.

Puns are metaphors.  Part of what makes them so humorous is contemplating the literal existence of something abstract and its consequent absurdity.  Did Jesus literally mean Peter was a rock?  Did he literally mean the “rock” of his “church” was Peter the “rock”?  To literalize this is not only absurd, but is inconsistent with the manner in which Jesus taught his followers—his congregation—his “church.”  Jesus taught by allegory, which in Hebrew has many English forms, but all viewed as deriving from the same root.  In the English translation the allegory is referred to as a parable.  It is a synthetic story with a moral value.  Clearly this passage in Matthew is an allegory.  I find it most remarkable that few, if any, religious intellectuals have observed this glaring, obvious utility.  Jesus was comparing Peter’s exclamation of conviction to that which others would exhibit among his congregation of followers—his “church.”  Church derives from the Greek word kyriake, meaning supply or house.  But the word apparently used in the Greek to compliment the Aramaic meaning was ekklesia.  Its meaning derives from the Greek usage of summoning an army.  What army?  The “army” of his followers—those who subscribed to his teachings—that the “Kingdom of Heaven” was not only at hand, but within each one of them.  His “army”, his “church” was not of this world—meaning that it was not constituted after the manner of men when they organize themselves together.  This is the only interpretation that is consistent with the ancient Essene texts which describe the life and philosophy of Jesus.  The reason the Sanhedrin rejected him as the Messiah is he did not have any interest in the literal liberation of the Jews.  He wanted to liberate them from their spiritual servitude.  So they murdered him for the insurrection his teachings caused.

Jesus in speaking by allegory (metaphor) is showing how his followers will come together and “organize” themselves—through the same conviction which Peter declared.  Jesus did not organize a religion (or church as we have altered the meaning) with Peter at its head.  If Peter was at the head of the church (an earthly construct inconsistent with Jesus’ teachings—my kingdom is not of this world), where does that put Jesus?

The spiritual teachings by Jesus in Matthew (6-16) have nothing to do with religion.  It is about a society of people who each have discovered the treasure contained in his declarations of true values.  They are about liberation of the heart, to surrender it to God, and become at-one with him.  This is the meaning of spirituality, and it has nothing to do with the vapid discourses in church, nor the insipid rituals which represent the form of spirituality, but have no substance.  (Women love ritual as it permits self-justification while avoiding the moment of reckoning.  Ritual is the appearance of spirituality without its substance and its required self-sacrifice.  The purpose of the female veil isn’t to conceal a woman’s emotions.  It is there to intercept the all-seeing eye of God.  They don’t want to be found out—that they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are.  Reconciliation with God is how one discovers who one is and the beginning of real spirituality.)

As Catholic friar Richard Rohr said: Religion is the safest place to avoid God.  God teaches self-surrender.  Religion teaches self-control. The sum purpose of religion is control—to define limits beyond which man cannot tread.  That is exactly what the Prince of Darkness seeks.  Adam is said to have refused it.  Jesus defied it.  Man upholds it.

The entire concept of the Mormon Plan of Salvation is the impressment of God’s children into hierarchies.  At the top closest to God, are those who conformed to everything Mormon authorities told their acolytes to do, no matter what cost in spirituality or temporal welfare.  From there on down are various divisions splitting people off from each other in terms of how valiant they were in following Mormon authority in the name of God.  Once their kingdom assignment is consummated, that is their fate, worlds without end.  They cannot ever rise any higher.  (Even their most accomplished apologists cannot plainly distinguish between “progression” within a kingdom and advancement to another.)  The carrot and stick of fear is used to goad everyone into the top echelon, full well knowing few can possibly attain that kind of “perfection.”  They proclaim their church as family oriented, but you must be willing to destroy your earthly family and its solidarity if it ever interferes with the church’s objectives.  Personally, I’ve failed over the course of a half century of study to ascertain where any of that practice and dogma coheres with Jesus Talk.   The inconsistency became glaringly acute when I had my first transcendent experience. Once I had been reconciled with myself and Jesus, reviewing my objectives in coming here, I found myself increasingly at odds with Mormonism. But it didn’t stop there.  I found that the entire culture of Christianity had fully missed the mark on what Jesus’ mission was about and the purpose of his doctrines.

By the time I had come to my crossroads with Mormonism, I found I had come full circle with the little child at age four, who continually asked Why?  I had come home, and in so doing discovered who I was, what I wanted, and who I served.  Future posts will present some of the anomalies, the irrationalities of the religion I was told was the only true one.  I now know why I did not observe any association of Jesus with religion during that ascension.  He never started one.  Atonement is about being reconciled with yourself, with him posing as the “mirror” of self-evaluation.  Only he can help you see when you are “good enough.”

SethSmee

REFERENCES

"Although it is true that petros and petra can mean “stone” and “rock” respectively in earlier Greek, the distinction is largely confined to poetry. Moreover the underlying Aramaic is in this case unquestionable; and most probably kepha was used in both clauses (“you are kepha” and “on this kepha”), since the word was used both for a name and for a “rock”. The Peshitta (written in Syriac, a language cognate with Aramaic) makes no distinction between the words in the two clauses. The Greek makes the distinction between petros and petra simply because it is trying to preserve the pun, and in Greek the feminine petra could not very well serve as a masculine name."

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Volume 8 (Matthew, Mark, Luke) (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), page 368 JPK pages 17-18

Jesus Interrupted Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus Bart Ehrman