DEBATE: Was Joseph Smith A False Prophet? Andrew Wilson vs Chaplain Lance O'Neil

[Music] Generally, generally, here's what actually happened. Money. I'm really mad. What difference does it make? Right. Stop. Deregulation of the industry is obviously going to cause more of that industry to lubricate the trust connection between people until they have enough. Yeah, we can still look at biological reality in determining who's a female, even if there are. Why don't you deny, denounce feminism the same way you're denouncing capitalism? If you don't something to be objective, it needs to be verifiable, and you can't verify. If I make a claim as a political pundant, it is true that I definitely could be wrong. You're promoting, right? Ideology is the main politics, right? This is my ideology. This is so 2015. Anyone go back and watch the footage? The first GOP debate called Robert Heat.

[Music] Up here. And good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back again, round two this evening for another fun debate. I have with me Andrew from The Crucible and Chaplain Lance O'Neal from Two Pogs Save the World here to debate the concept or the question, was Joseph Smith a false prophet? Andrew, would you like to begin with your opening statement, please?

Yeah, hang on a second. I just want to make sure that I'm all good and live on my end. I've been having some issues with, um, with, uh, my stream. So, one second. Mhm. I just want to make sure we're all good. I need to check mine and make sure my 17 followers are watching. Yours is connected and should be, should be from my end. Yours is operating. Yes, I see yours is live. Just give me one second here, please. Yep. Take your time. Oh, yours is live on that end. All right. Appreciate it. All right. Yeah, I'm all, I'm all set. Ready when you guys are. Opening statement to you, Andrew.

Okay. Today's debate is going to be a little different than most people are used to from me. I'm often considered a fairly brutal debater, um, with my logic and rhetoric. Um, though, first and foremost, I strive to be a better logician every day. I first want to just address the many thousands of Mormons I know who will end up watching this debate. I want you all to know that Jesus Christ loves you and that the church which was established by Christ, the Orthodox Church, wants nothing more than to see you come home. This will be an attack at the very heart of the pillars of your faith, but not done out of malice. Instead, it's going to be done out of love. I will try my best to make the compelling, logical arguments I can to persuade, um, all of you of the false nature of the Mormon church and to destroy those pillars. Not because I want to destroy your way of life or to hurt you, uh, but because it's the only way I know of how to set people on the path to finding the true church of Christ. With that, I want to move into my arguments of the evening. Remember, in logic, one of the three laws is the law of excluded middle. This law states that a proposition must be either true or its negation is true. It can't be in between those two things. In this case, Joseph Smith was either a prophet or he wasn't. There is no in between. He can't be kind of a prophet or kind of not a prophet. He either was or he wasn't. He either is or the negation of that, which is that he was not.

A week ago today, I had a revelation. The angel Macaroni came to me in a dream and told me to rewrite certain passages in the book of Genesis to predict my own coming as a herald and a prophet of a new testimony to God. He did this by pointing this verse from the Mormon Bible, Genesis 50. And that seer will I bless, and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded. For this promise I give unto you. For I will remember you from generation to generation, and his name shall be called Joseph, and it shall be after the name of his father, that he shall be like unto you. For the thing which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand shall bring my people unto salvation. The angel Macaroni asked me to change the name Joseph to Andrew, and also that Andrew won't be named after his father. The new verse goes like this: and that seer will I bless, and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded. For this promise I give unto you, for I will remember from generation to generation, and his name shall be called Andrew, and it shall not be after the name of his father, and he shall be like unto you. For the thing which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand shall bring my people to salvation.

If you don't believe me, ask yourself this question. How do you falsify that? How do you falsify if the angel Macaroni appeared to me and told me this or not? Well, you can't. I'm not giving you an example of something which can be falsified because it's an experience. I have found much of Mormonism operates this way. Things which can't be falsified because they are stories based on feelings. However, we can falsify the main pillar who is the architect of Mormonism itself, Joseph Smith. Smith said many things and prophesied many things which are easily falsifiable and not only that, totally ridiculous. So when listening to this debate, try to keep in mind that Smith himself gives unfalsifiable accounts of angels appearing to him, etc. Uh, but he does give many falsifiable accounts of other things, and those things we can easily falsify. Now, let's go over the evidences and go over my arguments today. To start with, where could Christians from our own scripture find an indication that there is a prophet coming 1,800 years after Christ? We could have expected Christ to come and what he would do upon arrival. Due to many prophecies in the Old Testament, promises to Abraham, singular seed, 127, 13:15, 17:7, 24:7, as mentioned by St. Paul in Galatians 3:16, Isaiah 42:1-9, Daniel 7:9-14, and Psalm 11:0, etc. The prophets were people with an actual function, and not all who prophesy held the title prophet. And Jesus tells us that the prophethood ends with St. John the Baptist, and that's in Matthew 11, uh, 13. So, not only do we not have a reason to expect a new one, but we have a very good reason not to expect one.

Deuteronomy 18:20-22 gives us a way of testing if a prophet is truly of God. Mainly, whether what he prophesies comes to pass or not. It's that simple. Deuteronomy 13:1-5 clarifies that even if what a self-proclaimed prophet says comes to pass, but leads the people to a different deity, he is to be put to death. Anyone can claim to be a prophet, including Andrew, who literally could just write himself into the Bible, just, and you can't falsify it. A and, uh, who can claim that to him it was revealed that verse 33 originally phrased, but his name will be Andrew.

Uh, one massive contention between Christians and Mormons is the allegation that Joseph Smith added a prophecy about himself at the end of Genesis 50. Uh, the Christians point to the fact that we have no copy of the book of Genesis that contains those verses. Mormons claim that they were there but taken out, and Joseph simply was inspired by the Holy Spirit to add them back. However, according to Mormon scripture, 1 Nephi 13:20-27, an angel explains a vision to Nephi of Gentiles carrying around a book which they received from the Jews in purity according to the truth which is in God. Verse 25. However, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which predate the incarnation of Christ, do not contain the verses that exist in the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, uh, leaving Mormons with this choice. One, Smith added the verses to Genesis 50, meaning he corrupted the holy scriptures by adding his own words, making him a fraud and a false prophet. Uh, or two, if the corruption, removal of the verses was done by Jews prior to the incarnation and conversion of the Gentiles, then the Gentiles didn't receive the pure truth and weren't the ones to corrupt the Bible. Meaning, First Nephi 13 is wrong, and consequently, Smith is wrong and a false prophet.

Now, these aren't even these are just the tip of the iceberg, and I'll move into my main two arguments. First, let's start with the book of Abraham. In 1835, here's the timeline. Joseph Smith buys, uh, papyri from a traveling merchant and claims they are writings from Abraham and Jacob, penned by their own hands. Now, you might think that that's crazy, that that is penned by their own hands, except that he writes right at the top of the book of Mor. You could go read it right now. The book of Abraham by my own hand, talking about Abraham. Uh, two, he went on to translate a portion of what he claimed were Abraham's writings, and the translation became part of Mormon scripture, specifically the Pearl of Great Price, being canonized in 1880 after his death. The papyri exchanged hands, and most of them ended up in Chicago and were thought to be destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but that wasn't the case. The surviving ones ended up in the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1946, and they were given to the LDS Church in '67. Interestingly enough, uh, they were all, this was done because it was not falsifiable, right? But now we have a problem. Egyptologists actually were able to now study the papyri. And guess what they discovered? Uh, they were burial texts, standard, run-of-the-mill burial texts, including the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and that they date to 300 BC at the earliest, and have no connection whatsoever to Abraham or Jacob. A very basic error is that Abraham, by the way, was still Abraham while in Egypt, Genesis 12, and will not be renamed Abraham until Genesis 17:5 after he left Egypt. Additionally, his wife is called Sarah in the book, and she had received the same name, Sarah, in Genesis 17:15. So, the timeline's wrong in multiple ways. Anyway, uh, going on from there, Abraham claims, well, I won't even get into those because I don't want to Gish gallop my opponent to death. I just want to kind of get through these. Um, the book says Egypt was named Egyptus, which means forbidden in the language of the Chaldeans. However, Egypt is the Greek name for the land, and it means house of Ta. Well, I can't pronounce the word, but the Chaldeans again wouldn't have been there, or the Chaldeans wouldn't have been there at this time, and in their language, sur. Neither Egypt is called Egypt, nor is the word for forbidden. Abraham would have spoke, uh, Akkadian or possibly Aramaic.

Now, the second prophecy that I want to hit real hard on is this happened December 25th, 1832. As prophecy claims by Joseph Smith, a war would break out between the North and the South, starting in South Carolina. Interestingly enough, that happened, didn't it? And the cause, a chain reaction of other nations joining in, resulting in war being poured upon all nations. Well, that didn't happen. Followed by slavery revolts after many days, also didn't happen. And a slew of natural disasters caused by God, which also didn't happen, culminating in the destruction of all nations, which also didn't happen. Now, here's what actually happened. The tensions between the North and the South were already visible, especially after the tariff of 1828, which caused the heavy agricultural South to fear the counter tariff from Britain, whom they were heavily relying on for trade. On November 21st, 1832, the South Carolina legislature passed the ordinance of nullification. On December 10th, 1832, 15 days before the revelation, President Andrew Jackson issued his proclamation on the nullification, denouncing the nullification. Both of these were nationwide, well-known news. The nullification crisis ended with Congress passing the compromise of tariffs in 1833, March 2nd, and South Carolina rescinding the nullification ordinances on March 15th. Smith not only seems to just be giving his take on contemporary events and making predictions that were shown to be wrong. While the actual American Revolution did start with a shooting in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, in '51, Smith's prediction could be reasonably attributed to his prediction on how the nullification crisis would play out. We have the newspapers of the time. I went and got them. Uh, his prediction of the slave revolts could have been influenced by the Nat Turner rebellion, which took place in August 1831. It was fresh in the nation's memory. And this prophecy appears in the 1851 edition of Pearl of Great Price and was included in 1876 versions of the Doctrines and Covenants, section 87. Uh, both well after Smith's death in 1844. So, the summary here, I know it's a lot, and I'll give my opponent plenty of time to, um, to make his refutations here. Joseph Smith gave two really, really big prophecies that were completely and easily falsifiable. If you look at Deuteronomy, we know exactly how we can spot the falsehood of a prophet. He gives prophecies that don't come true. It's really that simple. And with that, I'll yield the floor over to my opponent. I appreciate you being here, by the way. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. That's okay. Thank you, Andrew. And to you, Lance, go ahead.

So, because I am a newbie on this, so I'm stepping over you. Sorry about that, Sarah. You're fine. But I do want to thank you and Andrew for debating this topic. My position is that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. Uh, since most of you know Andrew, let me give you just a short bio of me. My name is Lance O'Neal. I'm an LDS chaplain in the US Army for the past 10 years. I was born into the church. I did a mission to Taiwan for two years. And my real conversion started when I was about 18 years old. Uh, I had a very spiritual experience that led me on this path. I've been in multiple church leadership positions. I have a Master's of Family and Marriage from Liberty University, which is an evangelical school, and a Master's of Divinity from Ambridge University, which is Church of Christ. I'm not a Bible scholar, though. I'll tell you that right now. I did those degrees so I could become a chaplain and help soldiers. The problem in good company, by the way, because I'm also not a Bible scholar, nor a minister. So anyway, go ahead. You didn't mean to cut into your opening. Oh, no, no, you're fine, Andrew. I, we're just talking, right? So, the prophet Joseph Smith Jr. is the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he's at the core of the LDS religion. And throughout the debate, uh, you're going to hear the name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the official name of the church. You'll hear Mormon and Mormonism, which are colloquial terms originally given to the church by its enemies, but later claimed by the church, as we believe the Book of Mormon, the source of the nickname, to be scripture, and we're not ashamed of the book or the name, but the church has never changed its name. That's always been the official name. You're going to hear two very different versions of Joseph Smith when we get into it tonight. Andrew is going to essentially show you the South Park version, the caricature of the man. He's going to argue using anti-LDS claims and sources that have been around for decades, if not centuries. He's going to make accusations about Joseph Smith that are from secondary or tertiary sources, many of which come from decades after his martyrdom. His also takes things potentially out of context that, uh, don't provide the reason or audience for the writing, sayings, teachings, or actions of Joseph Smith, and ultimately will try to distort who Joseph Smith actually was. I'll attempt to provide a view of Joseph Smith as a prophet. We'll need to establish what a prophet is and what a prophet is not. And I would hope that we can go through that together after these opening arguments. Um, let me give a brief history of Joseph Smith for those of you who don't know. He was born into a farming family in upstate New York, near Palmyra, New York. He was the fifth child of 10 to be born to Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Max Smith. Not all of the kids survived. He likely had no more than a basic education, certainly no more than an elementary school, and his parents also had very basic educations, as far as the biographical records show. It's clear that they were not a well-off family, earning funds from farming, and in fact were nearly destitute after a former partner of Smith Sr. stole the savings of the family and absconded, never to be heard from again.

In 1820, there was a religious revival going on in upstate New York and in America. Joseph Smith and his family were caught up in the spirit of this revival, and several Smith members joined the Presbyterians. Though Joseph Smith Jr. and his dad joined no church at the time, Joseph Smith Jr. was drawn more towards the Methodists, possibly because of a connection to a minister named George Lane, but this is anecdotal. Smith records that he was confused that there were multiple churches all using the Bible but having very different teachings, and he was reading James 1:5, which reads, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him." Joseph Smith pondered this Bible verse and decided to do just what is said, ask God. Joseph Smith went into a grove of trees near his house, knelt down to pray, and stated that he was attacked by a very real but unseen power that bound his body and tongue, keeping him from praying. He felt he was about to be destroyed when he saw a pillar of light directly above his head and two personages with the countenance of the noonday sun. He immediately, he was immediately released and said, quote, "One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said, pointing to the other, this is my beloved son. Hear him." When the 15-year-old Joseph was able to compose himself, he asked which church was true for him to join. He hadn't considered that Jesus's church was not on the earth. Instead, he was told to join none of them because, quote, "They draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They teach for they teach for doctrines and commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof." Unquote. He then records that he was taught many different things, and he would not record all of them because of the sacredness of some of them, but he did record in at least one retelling being taught by angels after, uh, this vision part, or part of the interaction. Remember this, because Andrew is going to probably bring it up later. He records that as soon thereafter these experiences, he went back to the preacher, and it, it might have been that aforementioned Lane, and was told that God did not appear to anyone anymore. The revelation was no longer on the earth, and that the vision must have come from the devil. And I'm sure we'll discuss that more as well. But everything in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints boils down to the reality or fiction of that moment. Andrew is going to argue there are at least four different recordings of that experience, and I'll address those concerns. But ultimately, if Joseph Smith Jr. saw what he says he saw in that grove of trees, then that was the beginning of Joseph Smith the prophet. If he was lying, then not only was he a false prophet, but everything about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is false. From the Book of Mormon to our church history to organization to the church as it stands today. But I want to be very clear that we're debating if Joseph Smith was a prophet, what a prophet is, and what it isn't. The First Vision is on us to believe it or not. We can no more disprove that he saw the First Vision than that Moses saw the vision of the burning bush, because both men were alone, or Abraham's communication with God, or Elijah. They were all alone. They were one-on-one, and we have to take it on faith that these things happened. I expect that Andrew will attempt to muddy the waters with accusations against Smith. He'll likely claim that Joseph Smith was charged with a myriad of crimes and was in court dozens of times, but he'll leave out where there were no convictions and that the majority of the individuals making these allegations had direct animosity towards Smith or the church. He'll potentially bring up things as we see scandalous as today, such as polygamy or the destruction of a printing press. And I'm sure we'll bring up seer stones, and I really hope you do, because it's a good opportunity to provide the reasons behind these things. I'd also like to point out that Andrew's Orthodox and his own church fathers, and I apologize if I butcher the pronunciation on these names, St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, and Gregory the Theologian, uh, Theologian, uh, wrote regarding the question of whether there is salvation outside the church, and their response was essentially, anything that is good is from God, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches the divinity of Jesus Christ, that there is no salvation but through him. The Book of Mormon mentions Jesus Christ by name or pronoun over 3,000 times. And if you go to any LDS church this Sunday, you'll hear the name of Jesus Christ over and over. We believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, but Jesus Christ is the Savior. And Joseph Smith taught about the reality of Jesus Christ, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In short, he was a prophet of Jesus Christ. So, the definition of a prophet that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses is this: A person who has been called and speaks for God. Called is an important part there. As a messenger of God, a prophet receives commandments, prophecies, and revelation from God. His responsibility is to make known God's will and true character to mankind and to show the meaning of his dealings with them. A prophet denounces sin and foretells its consequences. He's a preacher of righteousness. On occasion, prophets may be inspired to foretell the future for the benefit of mankind. His primary responsibility, however, is to bear witness of Christ. The president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's prophet on the earth today. Members of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles are sustained as prophets, seers, and revelators. As Andrew said, why can't he be a prophet? Why can't he just say, "I'm a prophet"? This is what I saw said. To which I would say, Numbers 11:29, when Moses says, "Enviest thou my sake? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them." I'm interested to see how Andrew defines a prophet. Members of the church believe that everyone can receive revelation for themselves, effectively being a prophet, if you want to call it that. But in the context of today's debate, priesthood authority and keys are necessary to be a prophet for the church and the world. And I'm sure we'll get more into that, uh, during the debate, during the debate. And this concludes my opening remarks. And I'm hopeful that Andrew includes a definition of what a prophet is, just so we're on the same page. Thank you, Lance. I appreciate it. And thank you to both gentlemen for their opening statements. As a kind reminder, chat, uh, we will get through the debate, move into closing statements. Then we will read and respond to your kind super chats, and then, of course, per usual, we will open the panel to open panel dumpster fire. So hang on tight, buckle up, and enjoy the rest of the show. Andrew and Lance, the floor is open to you.

Yeah. So, if you don't mind, Lance, we'll start with the Great Inquisition here. Uh, you were actually wrong in your predictive theory. I didn't bring any of those things up. Nor are they particularly pertinent for this debate. Neither is anything St. Basil says or any of the church fathers, uh, on my side, because the debate is about whether or not Joseph Smith is a false prophet, not whether or not Orthodoxy is true or false, or if, uh, any of our, you know, church fathers were wrong about anything. That's outside of the purview. Rather, this is a very narrow logical proposition which is asking if it's true or false that Joseph Smith was a prophet or not a prophet. You asked for a definition of what a prophet is. I think that that's fair. I'm going to give you one in a second, but before I do, I'm not actually satisfied with your answer. How would you falsify the prophecy that I gave you? Falsify it, please.

Okay. Well, again, we're talking about that God is calling the prophet, and well, as well, you have to have the authority to do so. So, just because somebody says, "What gave Joseph Smith that authority?" Would you like the history of it? No. Just a summarized answer. What gave Joseph Smith the authority to add himself to Genesis?

Okay. Well, the authority to call himself a prophet and be a prophet of God was that after he was going through the Book of Mormon researching, they came, he and Oliver Cowdery came across a couple of things, and they were like, "What is this?" They went out and prayed about it. They had a vision of John the Baptist, the angelic John the Baptist who returned, laid his hands upon their head, gave them the Aaronic priesthood. Later on, they were reading about the Melchizedek priesthood. Peter, James, and John appeared, laid their hands upon their heads, and gave them the Melchizedek priesthood.

Got it. Got it. Hang on. Yeah. I had a dream that the angel Macaroni came to me. Okay. It felt divinely inspired, and that I needed to change that. And let me just, I, I want to quote it for you again. It's quite important here. Sure. Um, what the angel Macaroni said to me was, let me, uh, let me get back to it. And the seer will I bless, and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded. For this promise I give unto you, for I will remember you from generation to generation, and his name shall be called Andrew, and it shall not be after the name of his father, and he shall be like unto you. For the thing which the Lord shall bring forth in his hand shall bring people unto salvation. Can you falsify that?

Well, considering the debate is about whether Joseph Smith was a prophet, uh, what does you coming up with a scripture have to do with Joseph Smith's prophetic call? Why couldn't I just give you a prophecy that he wasn't a prophet? Why couldn't I just say, "As a certainly could I could, but could you falsify it?" is my question.

When you're talking about religion, you're also talking about inspiration from God and personal revelation. Correct? Sure. Okay. So, if you're able to make that a, a positive thing and you're able to prove that and have people follow you, go ahead and start the Church of Andrew. I have no problem with you starting any church. But the fact of the matter is for me, I, So, hang on. I just want to make sure we're clear. You couldn't falsify that any more than you could falsify that Moses saw the burning bush. So, then we are clear that this, this prophecy which I gave, which goes through and revises the prophecy of Joseph Smith, you're not willing to claim that that's false? Which, I'm sorry, which part of it? I just read it to you. The part, the part in which Joseph is changed to Andrew, yeah, and not named after his father, whereas Joseph Smith said he will be named after his father. You're not willing to claim that that's false? No. No. What? Well, maybe I'm misunderstanding. I just want to make, I just want to hang on. I just want to make sure that I'm clear on this. You're that I, I, this state, the following, the following, the I just want to make sure this is that we're clear. The following revelation which I gave based on the Book of Mormon, that the angel Macaroni appeared to me and told me to change the name Joseph to Andrew, and that I would not be named after my father, as Joseph was in Genesis 50. You are not willing to say that that's false. Is that correct? I, I'm sorry. I would say that that is false by your. Okay. Can you demonstrate? I didn't admit it was false. I'm asking you to demonstrate it. You said I made it up when, right when you started. What if I, yeah. What? What if, if this is the case, this is just a hypothetical. Was it? How do you falsify? Tell me how you falsify it. But again, Andrew, we're, we're talking. Tell me how you falsify it. Don't change the subject. Tell me how you falsify that claim. Witnesses. Witnesses. Sure. Why? Why are witnesses necessary? Well, why are witnesses not necessary in that case? Well, that's begging the question. You're just begging the question. Anybody could at that point make up whatever they wanted, right? Well, they could make up whatever they want with witnesses, too. So, the qu, but the question is, how do you falsify that claim? Can you falsify that that's not a new revelation to the Mormon church and that I'm not actually the prophet who came? Uh, and it, because I mean, it's written now, so let it be written. I wrote it. So, and the angel came to me and told me, "Can you falsify that?" Because of the circumstances of you claiming that you wrote that, I couldn't falsify that you wrote it. I could, you falsify the claim at all? No. No. So, what? No, you can't. So, the thing is, is that when you say I just, the reason I want to start with this, and why it's super important that we start with this, is because now we have similar ground that we're on. We're both admitting that these particular claims are not falsifiable, right? They're belief-driven, rather. So, don't you, so, so then if that's the case, shouldn't we focus on claims which are falsifiable in order to prove the veracity of Joseph Smith being a prophet of God?

So, I, I think that also goes into what a prophet is and isn't, if I might for a moment. Okay. So, we, we've talked about some of the things that a prophet is. I'll hit him just real quick. Prophet is divinely called by God. Speaks God's word with authority. Prophet guides people to righteousness. Receives revelation and visions. Endures persecution for God's message, and even performs miracles, such as healing sick people. What they're not, and this is part of the important part, too. Prophets are not infallible. They're not always on when they're talking. It's, it, there are prophecies and there are just statements and and teachings. Prophets are not political rulers by default. Prophets are, um, not chosen by themselves. They, they don't put themselves and say, "I am a prophet." They are chosen and selected by God. And prophets are not free from doubt or struggle. So, I, I think it's important to note that when we're talking about what a prophet is and what a prophet isn't. And you're saying, "All right, everything has to be falsifiable and everything has to be by the witness." Let me ask you, how would you say you know the Bible to be true? Then, actually, I, here's my response to you. Could you pull up Deuteronomy 18:20-22 and read for me what it says out loud, please?

I've got it right here. But the prophet, and we're changing though, because I asked you how you know the Bible is true. But, but the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak, or shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou sayest in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the following not, nor come to pass, that is the, the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously. Thus, or I'm sorry, thou shalt not be afraid of it. So, what Deuteronomy is stating here, and I wonder if we can come to agreement on these terms, that if you speak prophecy in the name of the Lord, it better be true. And it not only better be true, but the way that we know that you're speaking on behalf of the Lord is that it, the prophecy comes true. That's what's being stated there. Yes. Yes. However, caveat, when we're talking about prophecy, there's three basic types of prophecy or how to interpret prophecy. Uh, there's the film. Now, I'm, I'm getting this from somebody else, so I, I would give credit where credit was due if I could, but this is how he broke it down. I, I think this is a fair assessment. The film reel model, which is no matter where God looks on it, that is what it is. He can fast forward. He can rewind. That's just the prophecy will happen no matter what. It's a Calvinist point of view of predestination. And so I don't think either of us necessarily believe that. You're not a Calvinist. You're an Orthodox and don't believe that there's no consequences to our own actions and things that will happen with our own. Unless I'm wrong, please correct me. There's the weather forecast model, which God makes a prediction of the future based off present circumstances through prophets. Right? So, here's the circumstances. If everything goes this way, this is what should happen and how we should follow. Yeah. You're talking about a conditional prophecy where it's like, if action A happens, then this is what will happen based on action A. However, if action B happens, this is what will happen based on action B. That's actually the third one that I, I had the plan model. If A then B. Yes. So, yeah. So, you're going to have this doesn't negate anything, though. I could actually agree to the terms of this. Uh, but I, and to be fair, I will give you, uh, the my definition of a prophet as well, but right now, I just want to make sure that we're on clear ground. The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak. We know how to verify if they're real prophets based on Deuteronomy 18:20-22. You just read it. Um, when the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and you would agree with me, Joseph Smith was claiming to speak in the name of the Lord when he gave prophecy. Uh, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word the Lord has not spoken. Can we agree that that's true?

The problem with that is what I like to call the Star Wars theory. When Anakin came out, they were all saying, "Oh, the prophecy says he will bring balance to the force." And all of the Jedi misread what was said. So, when we're talking about what our interpretation is, are we talking about, "Hey, we know this is the exact wording. We know exactly what was said. This is the exact meaning." Or are we saying, "Well, this is what we think it means." Has that come yet? Yeah, I think that you have, you could make an easier case for this, just like in the Star Wars model that you point out. Remember that the Star Wars model, just like this, you were removed by thousands of years for this prophecy, right? It's much more difficult to verify these things after 1800 years. This was not ancient history, dude. This did not happen very long ago. No. Okay. So, making a verification here in his own words. We had the printing press. We had everything. This guy was able to record what he said and not, he didn't just have to rely on people to pass it down. Very literate men were around him, writing down his every word and discussing exactly what he meant by what he said. In this case, he presumed to speak words in the name of God. And what are we instructed to do via Deuteronomy? Uh, when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, which Joseph Smith said in both these prophecies, and I'm going to cite that these were direct revelations from God and Jesus Christ, uh, and how are we instructed to interpret this to know if the veracity is true? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, then that word, that the Lord is a word that the Lord has not spoken. I think we have to come to an agreement here before we can even move the debate on. I don't know how you can possibly misinterpret that.

Well, again, I'm, I'm saying that when we are interpreting what was said. So, let's, for example, let's go back to your, your first example of the Civil War. And you said, well, that's just Joseph coming up with his own understanding and his own analysis, and therefore, yeah, that's good to go. Well, okay, but what if it wasn't? What if it actually was inspiration? What if it was revelation? What if it was a prophetic statement? Are you saying that there were lots of people who were saying very specifically in, in 1830, that around 1860, that South Carolina? Okay. But he did it as well. So, you can't say that Joseph Smith was, he wasn't, he wasn't saying around 1860. No, I'm just saying that was not part of what Joseph said. What he said was that there would be a war which started in South Carolina, which would encompass all nations. At the time that this was going on, there was all sorts of, uh, British involvement with trade, and that's exactly why he thought all nations would become involved. Now, we can look at this one of two ways. Either it's really super highly convenient that it just so happened that he was part of the political sphere at the time while these events were going on, that this was everything everybody was talking about, including the newspaper articles which I can show you, which predate this by just 10 days, where Jackson is saying that this looks like rebellion to him and he'll quell it and put it down. Joseph Smith talks about this in depth himself. Uh, so he's, he's intricately involved in the nullification, the nullification process which is going on, gives this prophecy based seemingly on the standard events of the time. Is it more rational or reasonable to you that Joseph Smith, based on the things which were going around at the time, which he was politically involved in, happens to make a prophecy about said things which then didn't come true, or do you, is it more reasonable to think, well, this was divinely inspired by God, even though it didn't come true, which thing seems more rational to you?

Well, it's not about rationality per se. Wait, hang on. It's not about rationality. We know when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word the Lord has not spoken. So, Andrew, you said that the prophecy, Joseph Smith's prophecy said the Civil War would involve all nations. Well, not literally. The war was primarily domestic. It was fought northern and southern states. No other country formally declared war, right? But it's possibly symbolic or economically that the war had global economic consequences, especially due to the cotton shortages. Many nations were diplomatically involved and entangled. France was on one side. England was on the other. So, there are some things that go back and forth when we're talking. That is not what the prophecy says. That is false. It says it will, all nations will come under war themselves. All of them themselves will become embroiled in war. That's not symbolic. That is a statement of fact. He's creating and drafting a statement of fact that all nations will be embroiled in this war. That was what the prophecy said. Read it. Actually, pull it up and read it. It's not that long. This, did it say in this war? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. It said in this war. Yes. Read it. Read it out loud. I'm going to look it up here. Let's see. But again, I think all prophecies do have that standard of, I hate to use this because this is going to make noise. Is this bad worse than it was? Okay. No, it's perfectly fine right now. Okay. All right. DNC. Oh, we're talking about DNC. I don't know. Are we, are we going directly out of the DNC, Andrew, or were you coming off a different source? I'm just curious. Um, you can, you can use that. That's fine. Okay. And of course, my DNC is in the other room, not in my Bible. Well, let's go to DNC 87, and we can read it together. Verily, thus sayeth the Lord, concerning the wars, plural, that will shortly come to pass, beginning, and hang on. Did, hang on, let's dissect this. Did those wars shortly come to pass? Defined shortly, because you had World War I, World War II. You did have multiple wars within this. Was I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This was 1832, wasn't it? Uh, yes, 1832. December 1832. World War I happened when that was, that was not shortly. But anyway, keep going from there. Beginning, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls. Uh, and the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place. Again, at the time, beginning at what place? South Carolina. Beginning at South Carolina. So, read that part again. It's very important. And the time will come that the war will be poured out. That war. I'm sorry, not the war again. It says war. Let me restart. And the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place. Mhm. Beginning at South Carolina. Sure. And, and is, has war been poured out beginning at South Carolina? It was in the Civil War, and then since then, we keep reading multiple wars. Yeah. Keep reading. For behold, the southern states shall be divided against the northern states, and the southern states will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain. And as you said, there was already some economic things going on and back and forth, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations in order to defend themselves against other nations, and then war shall be poured out upon all nations, on all nations, all of them. So, he's very specific what he claims is going to happen, and this is exactly what, uh, we find in the history of the time with the various newspapers I was able to to go over, along with Jackson's own predictions that if South Carolina had a rebellion, the southern states would likely rebel with them. This was known at the time, including by Smith, and that the South would petition because of the cotton trade to Europeans, which they actually did do in the Civil War for aid. That, right? This was well known and established fact in the 1830s already due to nullification. So, what's really interesting here though, is that he takes it one step further and says that based on this, that all nations are going to become embroiled in this war which takes place, uh, in starting in South Carolina, that most certainly did not happen at all. And he said shortly, he even made the caveat of shortly. So, this was actually a very specific prophecy that's very easy to point to and say that it was wrong. So, how is it possible that we know politically exactly what was going on at the time? We have the benefit of that because the printing press and all of these documents survived. I know. I went through and read them, and it turns out that exactly what the water cooler gossip of the time was and exactly what everybody was discussing at the time was this. And lo and behold, uh, in late December, Smith comes out with this prophecy, uh, that this is going to happen in South Carolina, which, by the way, didn't, it didn't happen till much later. It is true it happened in South Carolina, but the prediction was that it was going to happen in South Carolina. That was always the prediction, the political prediction. So, which is more likely to you? Did, did war, uh, take over all nations? Obviously, that didn't happen. The fact of the matter is, is this prophecy seems to be based on events of the time which he's just self-interpreting, not revelations from God.

But again, it says wars, not war. It's talking about potentially all the way through until the Second Coming there. The entire. No, it doesn't say that at all. The entire Doctrine and Covenants is about how to prepare ourselves and be ready for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Everything is about it. When you're talking about short-term, long-term, you have lots of things in the Old Testament where it says, "Hey, this will come to pass," and it didn't come to pass for centuries. Daniel's 70-week prophecy in

Daniel 9:24-27 describes 70 weeks of years, interpreted as 490 years, until everlasting righteousness is brought in. Many expected that this would be the messianic rule and peace. What actually happened was Jesus came, and he fulfilled the messianic part, but it certainly wasn't peaceful after that.

So, there are again different things. And there's a semicolon in there that, you know, kind of separates the first verse from the second verse. And it does say "war versus wars." And that goes, to me at least, I can understand you're saying, "Look, literally, this is what it says." And this, to me, goes back again, though, to: Are we talking about literal words? Are prophecies ever symbolic? Are they ever misinterpreted? And the answer is: Okay, he was alive. Do you realize that? Like, this was not open for misinterpretation. He was not dead, and then we found the documents. He was alive when he gave this revelation, and it was not published by the church until much, much later.

Okay. He basically, uh, did not want it published because it was wrong. I mean, it was incorrect. It would have made him look really, really bad. So why would he have just destroyed it then? Yeah. The thing that's so interesting about this. Well, the problem is, is like, wouldn't that be, if it was the case that he told people about this prophecy, let's say, and they knew about it, but then he destroyed the documents, that also would have looked bad. So, the thing is, though, that's interesting is he was alive. He could have clarified any of this. Okay, any of this. And interestingly enough, some of the people around him have tried to clarify this post hoc and give it a justification. But why not just clarify these things then, if that's the case? It never happened. It just never happened. He never preached about, uh, that prophecy or what he said in the Doctrine of Covenants at all. Not that I can find. Not saying that that never happened, but if it did, I definitely can't find the caveats to it. And the thing that's interesting is that this was published and canonized by the Mormon Church much later. I can pull up the date on that as well, but he was alive to give clarification for this. It's very strange to me that he gives all of this presumption prophecy based on cultural events going on at the time, and then they did not come to pass.

Now, if you're fine just saying, "Well, we just interpret it in a different way because we do, even though that's literally not what it says," I would ask you then this, and tie it off with this so we can move to the next section. Sure. Deuteronomy, when it's saying, "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken." How would we verify this in prophecy except by reading what the prophecy says and seeing if it plays out as it says it's going to play out? That's how we would do it. We would have to use rational thinking and logical induction in order to figure this out. It's very clear here that Smith, who wrote this prophecy, that this prophecy did not come true. Okay.

So, Andrew, let's go back to Deuteronomy 18, like you just said. Mhm. "But the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die." What's the timeline on "he shall die"? If, if Joseph Smith wrote this in and made it up and said, "Hey, I'm prophesying this in, uh, 1832." Well, he did die, didn't he? But again, and he was, I'm sorry. Remind me. How did Joseph Smith die again? He was murdered. Yeah, he did die. Yeah, even "he shall die." They gave the false prophecy. You're going to die, right? That's how it works. Okay. I'm saying that like you're talking about right time frames, right, though? Wouldn't you think that if God was saying, "Hey, you made this false prophecy. I'm going to, you're done. I mean, I'm not going to let you continue for another 10 years and keep falsifying in my name." Like, if we're going by that, but I don't know what God. It wasn't canonized in his lifetime, was it? So, yeah. So the thing is, is like he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't giving that prophecy, uh, uh, publicly at the time, but he, what happened is it was definitely canonized as a legitimate prophecy from Smith himself. So the thing that's so interesting about this is like, isn't it funny that this prophecy, which he could have, which now this is something falsifiable, doesn't come true, and Smith's like, "I ain't showing that to nobody," right? Isn't that kind of strange, dude? Like, "Oh, I wrote this prophecy. I said, literally, it's from God, right? Wrote it all down, but it's actually falsifiable, so I better not show that to anybody because it, it actually didn't kind of come true here, right?" Well, okay. So, again, the the Doctrine of Covenants was canon when it was written. It, it just wasn't combined into one book until later on. He did show it to people. He showed prophecies. That's true. He showed it to people. I agree. Right. And so, it wasn't like he was hiding it. But again, I, I think you're right in terms of if he had said, "Hey, you know what? I was, I, I think I misinterpreted that. I think I was wrong." It would have been the easy way to turn around and say, "Hey, you know what? Ah, man, that one, I, I think I really screwed the pooch. I must have misinterpreted that from God." It's the same, same idea of, well, he, he didn't tell anybody, he hid it. It didn't come out in the, he didn't preach about it, which I, I might. Well, let me ask you this. Probably spoke about it, but can you see how it could be that a rational agent, a person who uses logic, logic is a found, you would agree that logic is part of the nature of God, right? That, uh, it's a, a great gift to us, actually, that we are able to utilize logic. Do, do you agree with me that inductively, if I were to go over to a stranger, sit down with them, show them American history from this period through the Civil War, and then hand them Joseph Smith's prophecy, that they would agree that that did not come to pass? Do you think that most rational people would agree that this prophecy did not come to pass? I, I'm not sure because, you know, again, when you're, well, because I, you're asking me to put myself in somebody else's shoes, right? Well, I mean, people ask you to do that all the time. You're an army chaplain. Your whole job is to put yourself in other people's shoes. Well, it's to show empathy. Sure. Of course. And try to help people with their own religion, their own faith. I have never told any person that their religion was wrong because that's not even the Muslims. Nope. I, my job is to support the Muslims. I have, I have been the chaplain that supported one of the, um, Wiccan services that I was responsible for helping them out and getting their, what they need. So, let me ask you, my job isn't to, to say you're wrong. I can't. Like, I can't tell you. Of course, your job. You know your job, right? Uh, and if you, if you don't want to answer what you think most rational people would say, leave that up to the audience. I think that most rational people, of course, are going to look at this and say, "Hey, this never happened. It's false." You compare it to Deuteronomy, and that's it. But the thing that's interesting here that I would ask you, how is Muhammad a legitimate prophet of God? See, I was going to ask you that as a gotcha question as well, because I don't think either of us want to answer that question and get the Muslims on our butts. Uh, no. No. No. That said, here I'll just answer. No. No. I don't believe he was either. I, I honestly. How do you? How would you falsify that Muhammad was a not a prophet of God? Well, you run into the same problem was how do you, uh, prove the positive that the Bible is the word of God? If, if the Bible is true and the Bible is the word of God. That's not what I'm asking you, though. How would you demonstrate that Muhammad was a false prophet? How would you go about doing it? Uh, I don't think that I need to. Yeah, but how would you go about doing it? It's not, not my job. I don't care. Honestly, I, I don't. Well, I don't care is not an. Look, was Muhammad a false prophet? I don't believe Muhammad was a true prophet because true prophets preach about Jesus Christ and the divinity of Jesus Christ. Uh, don't Muslims say that Jesus Christ was divine? No, they say he was a prophet, but he was not divine. And it is, uh, absolutely against their teaching that Allah would ever gain himself to go down and have any, uh, interaction with humans, especially having a child. Now, can you tell me a true prophet? There, you would agree with me that prophets are to pave the way for Jesus Christ, right? Absolutely. Okay. So, we are in agreement on that. But do you think that you could demonstrate logically that Muhammad, if he made prophecies which did not come to pass, wouldn't you point to those as strong and powerful evidence that he was not a, a real prophet? Depends on the level of prophecy and was he being a prophet and was he saying in the name of the Lord and was that prophecy something that, yes, like you said, it's got to come to pass. Was I correct about the interpretation of that prophecy or not? There's a lot of things and it's very difficult because what you're saying right now is you wanted me to prove a negative. So it's, you can't prove negatives. It's not raining in my house right now. Prove it. It's not might not be raining in that room. Are you sure it's not raining in one of the other? So did I prove that it's not raining in my house or, I'm sorry, it's not raining in my room right now? Oh, okay. Well, did I just prove a negative? It's often the case that people who don't have logical training don't understand this. They repeat it often. You can prove negatives. It's a silly thing that people often say that you can't, but you can. And it's, um, just something for future reference for you. When, when somebody says you can't prove a negative, they're wrong. You can prove negatives. I just did. So, pointing this out also, I would like to, uh, move. So, I, I think I think we've established as much as we need to on this one. I guess let's move on to the second, which is the false papyri, uh, which was written by Joseph Smith, which he claimed. If you can pull up the Book of Abraham, the Mormon Book of Abraham for me, I would just like you to start at the very top with the very first thing it says. Sure. I believe that's where he kind of says what it was. Let me see. Uh, the introduction. Oh, not the Doctrine of Covenants. We're going into Great Price. Uh, the introduction. Is that what you're want? The title page read. Yeah. Yeah. Just, uh, write. Oh, Book of Abraham. I'm sorry. Yeah. The Book of Abraham. Yep. Okay. Let me click on that. All right. Trans. But this is, I think, the part you wanted me to read. "A translated from the papyrus by Joseph Smith. A translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the Catacombs of Egypt. The writing of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham. Written by his own hand upon papyrus." Written by whose own hand? Whose own hand was it written by? Abraham. "The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt." Was that papyrus written by Abraham, sir? I don't know. Was it? I, I haven't gone on and I have not gone in and gone down to the Metropolitan Museum of New York and verified if that, if the papyrus was there or not. Well, Egyptologists already did this for you. And what Egyptologists said after they translated it was that it was just very standard runic writing for the Book of the Dead. Very standard. They find them inside of mummies all the time. Very similar, uh, papyrus to this. Now, did, did not Joseph Smith pin that this was written, this papyrus was written by Abraham himself? The saying it is written by Abraham's hand does not mean that it wasn't handed down and written, translated that way. When you're talking about the Gospels, several of the Gospels were written by someone else and then included into the Bible. Do any of those Gospels start with "In my own hand, John"? No. But many, but every single one of the letters of Paul is written by Paul. Do, do you think we have the, which one starts with "In the hand of Paul himself"? X. None of them. Right. What I'm, Andrew, what I'm saying is the papyrus that Joseph Smith is saying he had could have been written, transcribed down to down to down. And all of them would have started with "In my own hand, I am Abraham. I am writing this in my own hand," and it's going down between each person. Is that? So, did Abraham write the Book of the Dead? Is that what you're saying? Because here's the thing that's interesting. I'm willing to even grant it. I'm willing to grant that Abraham originally, originally by his own hand, pinned this document, which then other people in Egypt pinned and ended up putting it in a mummy's tomb. But then that would mean that Abraham wrote the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Does that sound right to you? No, I don't. No, it doesn't sound. Not really. It doesn't sound right. Doesn't sound right. So, the, the, this was the papyrus translated by Joseph Smith. We actually have again, a thing which can be falsified. You have just now read, and I'll read it again, "Translated from the papyrus by Joseph Smith. The Book of Abraham. The translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the Catacombs of Egypt." Now, to explain to the audience, and if you're not familiar with this tale yourself, sir, they bought the, the papyrus, the Mormon Church bought that for $88,000, which, uh, now it, it, this is modified and adjusted for inflation or inflation, right? So it's $88,000 in our dollars. I think at the time it was three or four grand for them, which still an outlandish amount of money. Okay. So they bought this thing. Now, now, now he's got an investment. Now he's invested. Okay, we got an investment. Now I just got to spend $88 grand and do nothing with it. So he, at the time, of course, there was no Rosetta Stone, so we, they weren't able to translate, uh, these Egyptian ruins. And so it was unfalsifiable. Isn't that convenient? So what happens here? Abraham, he, he writes this and says, "The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt." So he says, "These are the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus." Now he says, "Upon papyrus." Now they were translating it from the papyrus. I would infer that he means that papyrus. Uh, but even if he didn't, this would still mean that after these writings were translated, that we either have one of two conclusions: either Joseph Smith was really, really, really, really wrong, or that Abraham wrote the Book of the Dead. Which one do you think is more likely? There's actually a third possibility here. What is the third one? The third possibility is, as you said, there was a fire, and there, when fires happen, things get misplaced, moved around, destroyed. And it's very possible that they grabbed this and said, "Hey, this is actually the papyrus that was owned by the, the Mormons, and this is what it is." So, hey, we better save it. It's very possible. This is a fantastic, uh, what I call a cope argument from Mormons. But here's what's really funny. We have good recordkeeping now in the 1800s. Great. And we were able, you're able to actually see all of the hands as papyrus went through. You're able, it's been well documented there. And by the way, I know for sure that the Mormon Church agrees with me because they claimed that that is the papyrus. They claim that that is the papyrus itself. That was their claim. And again, so, so are you saying, you're saying the Mormon Church is wrong? The Mormon Church has been absolutely wrong when it comes to ancient documents before. They were conned by Mark Hoffman in the early '80s, and it was one of the biggest scandals because the church was going and saying, "Look, we trust that these are the, these are real documents. We believe that that's what it is." And so, hey, yeah, we're going to trust this is a reputable dealer. Mark Hoffman killed two people, including my sixth grade teacher's mother. So, I have a connection to this. I'm, I'm really not happy with Mark Hoffman and what he did. But con men are going to con, and sometimes they fool the right. They fool people. I know. There you go. Like, hang on. Like, wait a second. Wait a second. Con men fool people, do they? In the Mormon Church? Does this happen often? So, con men will, so perhaps a con man could come in who doesn't read Egyptian, and nobody else does, translate the Book of Abraham, right? Adding to the Bible, the Book of Abraham says it's from Abraham's own hand. And then after it's, after it's, uh, all translated, we find out that it, this was just standard, the 300 BC stuff from the Book of the Dead that you find everywhere. So it's like, look, we're, we're, if, if your third option is the Mormon Church just got this wrong, then that means that Joseph Smith got that wrong. No. So again, now you, you called it a cope argument, but I, what I said is there's a third possibility that the documents are not what was originally purchased. That's okay. Give me the evidence for that. I don't need to. I just said it's possible. You don't need to. Well, okay. Yeah. It's also. You would agree, you would agree that it's logically possible that Wolverine could exist as well, right? That's logically possible, right? Sure. Do you believe Wolverine exists? I don't personally believe Wolverine because of a lack of evidence, perhaps. Sure. Well, I think that that's totally fake. I think that's totally fair. So, if it's a, exist though, so if that's the case, he does exist. He does exist in the comic books. Materially, does he materially exist? I do. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you agree that this papyrus materially exists, not just in your mind like a leprechaun. If you wanted to get real philosophical about it and say concepts exist, I'm willing to say sure, unicorns exist, leprechauns exist, dreams exist, they're all concepts, but the thing is, is like materially, if Wolverine doesn't exist, and you don't believe he exists because of a lack of evidence, I would like for you, if this is your actual claim that Joseph Smith was not a total fraud when he decoded these things, to show me the evidence that this papyrus is fake and not the one that he used. I, again, when you're talking about, you said yourself there was a fire, correct? That they had this in a museum. No, it was pre, it was just presumed to be lost. That's it. But we have the chain of custody proving it was not. When you're talking about stuff like this, though, when you're talking about things that are lost, Dead Sea Scrolls, what's there? What's not the Book of Abraham? All these things, right? You're also talking, what you said, chain of, chain of custody. Well, you're telling me that there's no possibility the chain of custody was corrupted, that people didn't get wrong right up front saying, "Hey, this is what we think it was." That's an argument from incredulity or incredulity. It's fallacious on its face. I can grant that all of these things can be logically possible, but you being incredulous about it is not evidence. I'm giving you actual evidence. So, here's the contrast. I'm giving you evidence, really solid evidence that not only is this the papyrus that Joseph Smith claims that this was done by Abraham himself, by Abraham's own hand on this papyrus, that the Mormon Church itself went ahead and canonized this and said that that is indeed the real deal. Okay? They, they touted it for years as being the real deal until it got translated, and then they have been remarkably silent about it, but it's still part of your official canon. The custody, the chain of custody is provable. That's all evidence. You're giving me an argument from incredulity, asking, Andrew, isn't there a possibility X, Y, and Z could have happened? Sure, there's a possibility a ninja assassin got in a time machine, went back in time, right? Assassinated Joseph Smith, then hopped in the time machine again, went back, and then helped him translate these documents just to make a fool out of him. That's possible, right? It's not very. It's not very likely though, right? And you would ask and demand evidence for such a claim, which is fair. So, we have the Star Wars theory now, and now we have the Deadpool theory. Is that fair? Well, I mean, they're both your theories. Just saying. They're both your theories. So, the, the question becomes this, or what is the evidence for this claim? What is it? Okay. Well, but again, Andrew, when we're talking about Joseph Smith, and we're talking about the things that he translated, and we're talking about, uh, translation of the Book of Mormon, and we're talking about having golden plates and the seer stone and translating that, is it possible that having a document, even if, and again, I know you're going to say, "This is what if, what if," and I get that, but when you're talking about translation, and the Book of Abraham has nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scroll. Times. I'm sorry, not the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of the Dead. Is it possible that those were the inspirations simply to bring forth revelation that helps us become closer to God? Because everything in Abraham 1, again, it's, it's going about who Jehovah is. Exactly. I'm willing to grant both of these arguments. Actually, just grant them as both being true. The reason I haven't brought up things like the seer stones and stuff like this, the reason is, is that I'm, I like to at least think that I'm on the pathway of becoming a, a logician one day. And that, uh, one day when I finally do become a logician, I can look back at all of the great mistakes that I made and logical errors and point them out and say, "Wow, you really screwed that up." Uh, but today is not going to be that day. So, when you have these two, when you have these these two positions granted to you, I'm willing to concede that I can't create, um, uh, easy falsifications for these things, but I don't need to. It's not necessary for me to create falsifications for things which aren't really falsifiable when I can point to things which are and then make the contrast to Deuteronomy in order to understand whether or not I'm being, as you would put it, conned. Am I being conned? So, I haven't brought any, any of these external things up, the reading out of the hat, things like that, because they're tangential ultimately to my argument here. When we're talking about this, the Book of Abraham, this is canonized, canonized, uh, as part of the Mormon Bible. This is, uh, uh, something which you have to account for. You have to give an accounting for it. The accounting for it, we have strong evidence this was a fraud. The evidence in fact is overwhelmingly on my side that this is a fraud. All you've offered up as a counter to that, and your first argument was, isn't it possible in the chain of custody something happened, something like this? That's an argument from incredulity, so it can be dismissed. It's not counter evidence. The second, now that you're bringing up, is, but Andrew, couldn't this have just been used as inspiration, perhaps? But you have a problem. And the problem is right away in the Book of Abraham. "The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus." And the thing is, is that this is the papyrus which is being referenced. And this is the writings which he says Abraham wrote while he was in Egypt. And we have the translation, and that is categorically false. It is categorically false. So, how, how does this just the idea for inspiration would still be under false pretext?

Let me ask you this, Cander. Um, how much of the papyrus do we have that was not destroyed? Most of it. We'll say most of it. What was the original record? The witnesses that saw this papyrus? What do you know how they described it? Uh, actually, I do. I have it, uh, written down here. Uh, but I believe that they described it as being exactly what it was. Uh, and the, the Mormon Church itself said that that was the case when they canonized it. Well, what I mean by that is, when you're talking about, let's say, a few pages, right? So, enough that you can, you can read some of it. The witnesses said that that scroll was over 40 ft long, and what we have now is fits on a card table. So again, papyrus, you could go historically and you could say papyrus was actually used over and over and over. Which witnesses made this claim? Uh, okay. Well, that goes back to the same thing of what, what witnesses said that, uh, that was the same scroll. I will find it, though. But anyway, while I look it up, I don't think that's really interesting. Well, the thing is, I know what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the most interesting, right? Because No, no, no. What I mean is, if me, I don't think it's interesting me looking it up is all that interesting. Uh, going, uh, hey, let me, let me go through here and find the sourcing. Uh, it's, I know it's in the Church History volumes, which they are massively huge. Um, yes, they are. That's not, that's not a joke. I, I understand that. [Music] So, I think, uh, you're looking for, uh, Oliver, Oliver Cowdery, maybe one of them. Yeah, he's one of them. Uh, the problem is, is these witnesses give conflicting testimony, don't they? They give conflicting testimony as to what the papyrus actually was. Some describe it as two rolls, some don't. Some describe it as just fragments, which makes sense because that's what they look like, uh, to the museum, was just fragments. But even if that was the case, let's just grant it. Let's just grant that it was the case. And just so you know, you, you said Oliver Cowdery, one. William W. Phelps was another one. Eyewitnesses estimated in a letter, letter from W.W. Phelps, "The scrolls are described as extensive, possibly leading later commentators to estimate them between 20 and 40 feet. Likely multiple scrolls combined." So again, one versus two, you're, depending on who, depending on who you talk to. So we have eyewitness testimony which is conflicted, right? But the Mormon Church itself, who says that this is legitimate and the real deal, and we have, and we have a chain of custody, and the all we got was, "Hey, guess what, guys, um, this is from the Book of the Dead," and we can make comparisons to many, many other scrolls like this from the Book of the Dead. And all you can give me is conflicting testimony from the witnesses, which is not good. And I can give you the chain of custody, the falseness itself of the translations, not to mention that this is the second, uh, instance where I can give you a major prophecy which led to an entire inspiration for the Book of Abraham, which is categorically false. It can't be true. So the chain, I'm, I'm not confused. I, I'm interested in the, the chain of custody because we all know that when you have a chain of custody, military, police, they mess this up all the time. I was a former MP. We talked about that before. Um, but is there any way to prove, same thing that you're saying, who are these witnesses? Is there any way to prove the chain of custody is accurate? Yes. Well, I mean, yeah, that's what you, you have a chain of custody for. Scholars have indeed gone back, and in my opening, if you'll remember, I gave you the timeline for the papyrus. If you'd like to, I can do so again. Yeah. Well, I'd like you to, I'd like you to provide the chain of custody. What, what's the sourcing you have on that? Yeah. So, hang on a second. Let me go back, uh, to my summarization here. Okay. So, 1835, uh, Joseph Smith buys the papyri from a traveling merchant, right? Can we agree that that's true? I, I believe that's the story. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, and claims that they were writings from Abraham and Jacob, penned by their own hands from the time they were in Egypt. Right. Okay. Uh, he went on to translate the portion which he claimed for Abraham's writings. The translation became part of the Mormon scriptures, uh, specifically the Pearl of Great Price, being canonized in 1880. Do you agree with that? Yeah, sure. Okay. After his death, the papyri exchanged hands, and most of them ended up in Chicago. They ended up in Chicago, uh, and are destroyed. Are, are we, do we have how they got to Chicago? Who took them to Chicago? Yeah, I, I can pull that up. Yes. But it was verified. This is the church's account, by the way. This is the church's account of these things. Uh, so they ended up in Chicago. They were destroying the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, was the presumption. Uh, but they actually survived and ended up in the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1946, and they were given to the LDS Church in '67. So, the, uh, Metropolitan Museum in New York actually, uh, gives us some insight here. So does the Mormon Church for who they were given to, and the fact that they were given to the LDS Church back in '67. We do have a pretty clear chain of custody here. This is the church's own account of this. And, and again, the church has been misled and has been wrong. And there's, I'm not saying that everything is perfectly mis. Who were they misled by in this case, though? It could it be by the, by the, whether it's the Joseph Smith, the salesman, the guy who sold it to Joseph Smith, and Joseph Smith goes, "Okay, man, this is the inspired word of Abraham, written by his own hand." How do you blame the salesman for that? No, no. Well, so what I'm saying is, you've got Joseph Smith who is going through, and this guy comes to him and says, "Hey, $88,000, right?" And Joseph Smith's going, "We, we don't have a lot of money here, but this seems like it's, it's worth it." And as you said, something comes out of it, the translation, and the entire part of the trans, all of the Book of Abraham is about, again, is about testifying of Jesus Christ. It's about a positive thing. Is about whether the sourcing comes from the papyrus or the sourcing comes from the inspiration of Joseph Smith translating what he had. It's still a good thing that comes out of it. Can I ask you a question? Did Jim Jones make testimonies in the name of Jesus Christ? I couldn't care less what Jim Jones. Did Jim Jones make testimony in the name of Jesus Christ? I don't know. I don't follow Jim Jones. Yeah. The answer is yes. Would you believe that Jim Jones at least made testimony in the name of Jesus Christ? He probably did. So did the dude who just sang, the dude who just shot the two. Exactly. So you're saying, so you're making the kind of bold claim here that because he adds the word Jesus Christ, and that somehow makes it true, is absurd. Many false prophets were warned about, and I gave you all the various passages of how many false prophets were predicted by, by almost all the apostles, in fact, who had writings which survived. All of them spoke about this phenomenon. You saying that because he references Jesus Christ, and that's a good thing, is a non-argument. And here's why it's a non-argument: because obviously Jim Jones can reference it. By the way, did you, there was another cult, Charles Manson, didn't they reference Jesus Christ? Sure, there's many, many cults which reference Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the light. Because of that, because you and I know that this is in fact, the enemy will often use the prongs of humanity in order to be what is considered the wolf in sheep's clothing and come in the name of Christ in order to mislead. That's what all the apostles claimed was going to happen. And so you saying that he added some Jesusy stuff does not make this true. And saying, "Well, it's a good thing because he's trying to expand the testimony of Christ." That's exactly what we were warned about here. So I need to know, how is it that the Mormon Church says that this is true? Well, first, I said, you know, again, when you're talking about the papyrus itself, I, I do think there's some questions about if that's the actual papyrus because I have said the church has been misled on ancient documents before, like by Mark Hoffman. Okay. Um, Joseph S. Smith said it among others that he recalls going to the Nauvoo House, seeing the scrolls unrolled and from one of the house to the other. So, it is possible. I'm not sitting here and saying, "Yep, those are the exact scrolls that what was given to Joseph Smith and then it went from Joseph Smith to the museum to this to this." I'm saying, "Yeah, it sounds like there's a pretty good possibility that there's a difference between the scrolls that Joseph Smith had versus the scrolls we have now simply because again, there was a major fire and you're talking about 200 years. Things get misplaced. There's stuff all over the place right now. We have no idea what is real, what is not, what's been accurately documented in any library realistically." However, however, yes, we do. That is most certainly a false, uh, statement by you. Yes, we most certainly have libraries which have well-documented histories of their books and we know exactly what comes in and what comes out. That's an absurd statement on its face. That's just absurd to say out loud. I'm not saying everything, Andrew. I'm saying libraries have been misled and they've misplaced things as well. This is just again an argument from incredulity from incredulity. And you saying like I'm just incredulous because, uh, by the way, do you honestly think that the Metropolitan Museum of New York in 1946, that they just had really bad record keeping? I don't think so. You know, I'm saying before. No, I'm saying before it even got to the Metropolitan, it could have been in the wrong custody. There was a. You said there was a major fire, right? So, if there's this major fire, there's no. What's the evidence that these things went through this fire? Just because there was a presumption that they. What I said said to you is that there was a presumption they were lost in the fire, not that they ever actually went through one. How did they pro? How did they prove after the fire that those were the same papyrus or those same? You should ask your church because they claim they are. Well, you should ask your church. Your church is the one who ratified this and it hasn't part of their canon. Don't you think they did their due diligence, dude? Again, though, when you're talking about the and saying this is the papyrus and it's 40 ft long versus what we have today. Is it? I understand everything on religion is about possibility. Everything, all of it. We believe in the Bible because we kneel down and we pray and say, "All right, heavenly Father, okay, God, tell me that this is real. Show me in my heart that this is real." And your church, I'm guessing your church fathers, you believe that they're inspired as prophets as well, at least to some degree, right? Sure. I don't. Well, they canonized it. They canonized it, dude. And said it was the real deal. The, the message. Yeah. The words. No. No. The papyrus itself, the papyrus itself they said is real. They made the claim that this is the real deal. Your church fathers, and if most fragments were destroyed in those that fire, you're still in a situation where you say, "Yes, these are accurate." That was not the claim of your church. Your church did not claim that, "Oh, most of this was destroyed in some fire." That is not what they claimed. They claimed that this was the legitimate papyrus which was translated by Joseph Smith. Those were their early claims. Did they say, "These are the full records, the full papyrus that Joseph Smith translated. This, this is everything that Joseph Smith had. We've got the whole thing." Or did they say, "Hey, yeah, this part." That's, that would be irrelevant. They still canonized that as being as being the papyrus in which Joseph Smith made these translations. And it was completely a fabrication and an obvious fabrication. By the way, let's just can we just point out to the absurdity that a traveling salesman just so happens to have the scroll of Abraham written by Abraham's own hand and then hands it to Joseph Smith for a few thousand bucks? Like, that doesn't immediately raise massive alarm bells in your brain? Well, considering the Bible has a talking donkey, I don't think it's the craziest claim. What? Okay, wait a second. Let's, let's back up. Even if everything in the Bible was false, which wouldn't help your case at all, right? You trying to create a falsification. I'm not, falsification here has no bearing or merit on the fact that, uh, immediately we start with having to suspend this disbelief of the chances that a traveling salesman just so happens to come by, the Mormons give them something which is, uh, written in Egyptian, sells it to them, and it just so happens to be penned by Abraham himself. Now, mind you, we've had crusades up to this point. We've been all over the Middle East. We've been, people have been scouring up every bit of biblical documentation they could for, you know, roughly 1,800 years before this happens. And just so happens that this guy picks up a scroll and he's just rolling by and he's like, "Oh, hey guy, self-declared prophet of God. Take this." And then the he goes through and he reads it and translates it and says it's from Abraham's own hand. You don't think that that is a bit of a stretch immediately? We, at the time, there were a lot of discoveries going on in Egypt, right? All the tombs, people were doing a lot of archaeological digs. The Dead Sea Scrolls didn't come along. If you'd said in 1830, "Hey, I've got these clay pots that are full of these papyri." People would have gone, "Wow, that's crazy. Let's, yeah." Okay. Dead Sea Scrolls, which verified all of the text up to that point. Sure. Joseph Smith didn't, he didn't verify the text. He made new text. What is, what I'm saying is that the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, if, if it had been, "Hey, I found this. I gave this and passed on." It would have been seen as, "Okay, yeah, hey, this dude has these scrolls. He found them in a cave." It wouldn't have been that outrageous in the 18, early 1800s. That was going on in the 1800s. They were finding, people were going in and stealing from tombs and things were getting passed on. But I, I had a. That actually would make my case, right? Yes, you're right. They found that people in the 1800s, and by the way, even earlier than that, because there was gold and treasure inside of many of these tombs that tomb thieves would go in and they would steal, and then they would sell these various things. It's no shock to me that at the same exact time that these massive tomb thefts were going on and being sold all over the world to collectors, private collectors, various things like this, that a traveling merchant in the United States would happen to get his hands on a piece of an Egyptian Book of the Dead. What I mean, it's almost like you're making my, my point for me here, man. But I'm really not because now you said the LDS Church, and I had a note passed to me. The LDS Church historically claimed that the, the papyri were destroyed in the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871. And this was the official, as you said, assumption for many decades. However, that changed in 1967 when some of the fact fragments of the papyri were rediscovered, leading to a nuanced position. Today we only have part of the original collection, and some or most may still have been destroyed. Yeah. Why don't you pull up though, whoever that notegiver is, and have him tell you about how the LDS Church was touting this as a great victory for them, the fact that they had recovered the lost papyri, and that they, they really made a big to-do out of it until it got translated because at the time there was no way to translate it until we found a way to translate it, and then it became completely falsified, and they changed their tune on this. So, either, either you're going to have to concede at least one of a few points here. Either A, is it logical and reasonable to assume that while tomb thefts were going on in Egypt, and it happens, a fragment of the Book of the Dead ends up in a merchant's hand, who then sells it to Joseph Smith, who then declares that it's the book, the hand of Abraham himself. Okay. And the church claims that these are lost in a fire. Turns out that they weren't. Then they go ahead and say this is actually, uh, part of the papyrus, at the very least, part of it. Um, that either they were wrong, or Smith was wrong. Somebody's wrong here, man. Somebody coming through the chain here got it wrong, real bad. Right. They didn't, they didn't get stuff right here as we're going through it. So, okay. Again, I, I, I go back to when you have the Book of Mormon and you have the plates, right? And Joseph Smith translates these, and you, they take him to an Egyptologist in New York, and he says, "Yeah, this is a good translation." Then he turns around and says, "Oh, no, no, forget that. You're, you're with them Mormons." No. Takes back the certificate of authenticity and blows it up. Right. So if you're talking about this 40, this, this long papyrus for, and Joseph Smith says, "Okay, here's what this says," and he's inspired to translate it, and the inspiration is from the scrolls, then I don't see a problem with it. If the, if what you're reading is in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ, and you can say, "Well, then you'll be fooled by anything." Got it. But when you're saying the inspiration of the translation and the miraculousness of the translation is what was miraculous about the translation, that it was translated from the scroll and it was inspired and then written into. Yeah, it was translated from the scroll that we, we have now actually translated, and it was wrong. How is that a miracle? That's the opposite of a miracle. Is, is I'd be curious to go back and see the scroll we have today. What parts of it are still in place and which parts are not, because neither of us know that. We, we have a, I have a picture of it. I think I can share. It's very public information. 40, is it 40, 40 ft long? Yeah, but not all the witnesses said it was 40 ft long, did they? It's very conflicted what these witnesses claim. And again, the chain of custody is on my side, not on yours. And on top of all of that, even if it was the case, there's no reason for us to assume that Abraham was like, "Oh, I'm going to pen this entire thing on this 40 ft scroll." And, uh, also, uh, there's going to be the Book of the Dead in there for no particularly good reason that anybody can ascertain, which makes no sense. From 300 BC, the time frame doesn't even make sense. None of the time frame would even make sense. From the time of Abraham to the to the Egyptians stuffing mummies within the tomb of the, like, none of that would make sense. So the, the ultimately what you would have to demonstrate here is A, that this traveling merchant gave him the actual Book of Abraham, penned by Abraham's own hand. Give me a timeline how that would make sense to include the Book of the Dead, and how your, how

Your church got this so demonstrably wrong when they touted this thing as being the actual written word of Abraham himself. Well, like I just said though, if you're talking about the inspiration for the book of Abraham came from the scroll, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was doesn't say inspiration. It says, and I'm going to remind you of this. Let's go back to that. Yes, it does say translation from ancient some from some ancient records some that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt, the writing of Abraham while he was in Egypt called the book of Abraham. And he goes in written by Written by Why did you leave that out? Oh, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. Yeah, you didn't mean to, but you did. Written by you said it like six times, so I Yeah. Written by his own hand. Don't Let's not forget that part. Okay. Right. I didn't I did not mean to leave that out. That was not an intentional obation. Okay. I'm just I'm not Okay, I'm Look, I'm not going to try to be I'm not going to try to be super accusatory here. But that's pretty important, right? That's a pretty important part, right? So, it's because the claim here is that Abraham wrote it, dude. He wrote it with his own hand. Do you believe that? Like, do you do you actually believe that Abraham wrote that with his own hand? Yeah, why not? He was a papyrus. Why not? I've heard that it was handed down. Can you tell me the timeline here for the book of the dead and Abraham and how it could be possible that Abraham wrote that portion of the book of the of the dead in his own hand? Can you explain that to me?

You know, that papyrus was reused over and over in Egypt because it was one of the most uh readily used things. That's why it's so miraculous that we have Well, then it wasn't written by Abraham's own hand, was it? It was written by somebody else's hand. No, what I'm what I'm saying is, Andrew, you have a big long papyrus, right? And what they would do is they would take parts of it and they would bleach it out and then they would write over more parts of it. So, is it possible that somebody and I understand you're going to say, "Yes, of course, anything's possible." Got it. But argument from incredul again. I'm I'm conceding, but as I said, a lot of this a lot of it everything in Christianity is based on faith and based on saying, "Okay, what what are we going off of? We're going off other people's testimonies. We're going off of other people's writings. And then after you, and I I don't say this lightly in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we don't say, you know what, just trust us that that's what it says. We absolutely say, "Go study it. Go ponder it in your mind and then pray about it and then find what you feel about it through the Holy Spirit, through the Holy Ghost." And I think that's fairly similar to where you would come from faith. Is is that an accurate statement for somebody who's Orthodox that say I think that it's fine for you to uh make the claim that many people come to Christ through faith first. I did not I came I came to the church. I'd like to hear the story by the way. I don't know. Can you tell me your religious background? I meant to ask that earlier. I was raised non-denominational. I converted with my wife to orthodoxy. I think I want to say about I became an an inquirer three three and a half years ago and then a formal catechuman. We spent two years in catechesis before I was officially accepted into Christ Church. Uh it was a long catechism because I had to unlearn a lot of the things that I had learned. And here's what I learned more than the most important thing is that it is true that if you knock the door will be open to you. And when I went and looked for answers, it wasn't very hard to find them. And the truth is is that I often kick myself because I wonder how I could have gone for that many years not giving a [ __ ] about the thing I cared about the most. So the thing is is like uh that'll always be a great mystery to me. And I it's easy for me to want to pin that on the enemy, right? But the truth is is that it was just me being [ __ ] lazy and intellectually dishonest for years. That's the actual truth. Fair enough. But the thing is is that I did knock and the door was open and but I came to orthodoxy first. I had to be logically convinced. And I think that uh one of the big problems that's happened inside of Christianity is that God is logical and there is a philosophy to Christian ethics which makes sense and that you can actually come to Christianity through logic and reason and evidence and also many people do and then find faith later. And you know I think that's okay too. I don't think there's a wrong way to come to the Orthodox church. I don't think it's wrong for you to come there logically first and then you find your bearings of faith uh at a later date or the other way. You come by faith and then later you find ways to logically reconcile your faith or that it makes sense within the faith domain. But here I need to be very adamant that I have now pointed out to you and I I need you to be very intellectually honest with me here. I've pointed out to you some serious issues that uh have to do with prophecy from the pillar of the the Mormon church, which is Joseph Smith. You would have to agree with me that Joseph Smith is the main pillar of the church. Period. There's no other. If that is the case, then we have a way to test prophets. They can't be wrong. They're not allowed to be wrong. If they're wrong, they're not prophets. Deuteronomy is very very clear about this. This guy gave multiple prophecies which I have now shown were false. They were false. The the major one that we can just easily point to was his prophecy in 1832 when he was pointing out that there was going to be this embroilment of all nations in war in a short amount of time. And then we find out what was going on at the time and it's like okay isn't it really uh uh strange that he creates prophecies based on things which are going on around him right then and there rather than having the perception of future prophecies. In fact, can you even name for me a prophecy that Joseph Smith gave that I can verify actually came true? Sure. Okay. By the way, it it's prophets absolutely used what was going on on around them to describe what was going on and make their point to make descriptions. That's true, right? But the pro Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. That's okay. That's okay. No problem. And cut me off at any of these. That's fine. Uh I I happen to have a list here. And now I'm going to tell you the sourcing um the fulfillment details. How many do you want? Do you want one, two, five, 15? Well, do you think all of his prophecies were true? Well, that's where we go back to the film reel versus the forecast versus the if then, right? Because So you But you do believe all of them were true, right? I believe that they had the possibility for truth because of again, well, were they true or not? Well, but Andrew, again, when people say the revelation is somebody was going to go on a mission and he died, he didn't go on a mission, therefore it's a false prophecy. That's not a false prophecy. It was a mission call. It was a revelation that he was being called on a mission. I went I was called on a mission. If they had said, "Hey, Lance, you're going on a mission." That's unfalsifi. Wait, that's unfalsifiable. And by the way, couldn't I easily give an uncharitable version of Deuteronomy? So, if you were called for a mission as a prophet and you died, that means you're false, right? Because Deuteronomy said that, right? All prophets shall die. Yeah. So, just Okay. But anyway, I I'm not going to give the uncharitable view. I'll give you the most charitable view. I'm even willing to make the concession on all three of those fronts. But the thing is is we have hypersp specific these are hypersp specific prophecies which are put down. So Andrew, let me ask you this. Jesus records a vision he had. Are visions prophecies? Does that count? Uh would a vision be a prophet? When it comes when it comes to Jesus Christ, I don't think he's gonna Well, let me give you my definition of a prophet. You you did ask and I actually don't think I ever did. So, let me make sure. It's kind of like pornography. I think we all know, but I'd like to hear it. Yeah. Yeah. So, that that way there's no like um Yeah. Yeah. Uh because you were you were pretty good faith on the interrogation. So, um now remember that prophecy is the definition here has a historic context. So, it's not an easy summary, but I'll I'll go ahead and give you the summary. A prophet is a calling in the Old Covenant, a station one would fill. It isn't synonymous with predicting the future necessarily. They are separate sorry is not synonymous. Correct. Necessarily necessarily it's a station right but those those who do though those who do predict the future as prophets we got Deuteronomy. Uh they are separate but not mutually exclusive to positions for priests. For example, the prophet Samuel was both. uh they are a link between the spiritual and material having been sanctified what we would call theosis to the point where the spiritual realities of the world aren't obscure to them like in Kings uh uh or 2 Kings um 6:15-17 when the prophet Elisha or Alicia uh prays to the students eyes to be opened and he is granted the ability to see angelic host surrounding the prophet as a messenger of God they're very closely linked with angels angel meaning messenger. Uh, and this is especially apparent in the iconography of St. John the Baptist, forerunner. He's often depicted as having wings, at least in our faith. So, for the Orthodox, a prophet is a prototype of what would constitute a saint after Christ. Um, Harrows Hades, and the righteous there join the angelic ranks. One of the major Old Testament prophets is St. Elijah, who would do battle with the priest and prophets of Baal, live in the wilderness, celibate, subsisting on insects, wild honey, wearing a simple tunic, toughs of camel hair. So, it's not it's not a simple definition, right? But I'm going to give you the most comprehensive one I can. In Malachi 3:1 and uh 4 Malachi 4 5-6, it is said that Elijah shall come and prepare a way for the Lord. So, you and I, I think, are in agreement that a prophet is there to prepare the way for the Lord. That's what a prophet is. They're there to prepare. Like if we were to give it uh a not precise accurate summary, but we were just going to like kind of shorthand it. Their job is to prepare the way for the Lord. And it's it's an actual position rather than just something we call people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that that goes in line with us. We say that there's only one prophet at any given time in in this dispensation because otherwise you would have potential people saying, "No, no, I'm the prophet. I'm the prophet." Um, do you think that it it's fair to bring up something like 1 Corinthians 13 8-10 that said, "Charity never faileth, but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail. Where there be whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." So, we don't always have What do you think that means? Well, I think that that what Paul is saying is look, we have the best knowledge that we have when it's given to us that God provides the apostles and and provides the insight into his works, but we're not perfect. We don't know all of it. We only provide what we can as prophets, as apostles. Would you disagree with that take? Uh, yeah, I'm not sure that I would agree that that's exactly what's being stated there. Uh Paul also gives us warnings. All the apostles give us warnings about false prophets. But if there's a false prophet, you realize that the apostles gave us ways to test them, right? And so did Deuteronomy. We have always had a way to test for false prophets. So sir, how would we know if a if a prophet's false? What stops you from declaring yourself a prophet? Right? And and we talked about that from Deuteronomy if it didn't happen, right? It's a false prophet. But it doesn't happen, right? It's a false prophecy. So Paul himself said, "We prophesy in part." So even the true apostles didn't have perfect foresight. They the prophecies can fail if certain things don't happen. Again, the weather forecast or the if then. And God rebuked the misinterpretation of of prophets. I concede all of those. I think that when you're talking about Joseph Smith, if something that he said this is going to happen and it doesn't happen, I'm not a Calvinist. I'm not the wolves in sheep's clothing that that are described by Paul. Who are they? What are they? Those who those who actually teach against Jesus Christ but claim it's the same thing. What was the first thing I said about Joseph Smith? He said, "Don't join any church because they all have a they draw close to God with their lips but their hearts are far from God." Let let me say something, Andrew, real quick before we go back and forth because I I want to be very clear about what my position is and what I think about, okay? I look at Christianity and I say, "Look, even if I I gota yell at my wife to bring me some more coffee. I don't mean it." Go ahead. I I think you're just mocking me by smoking and drinking coffee during this because, you know, it's against the word of wisdom. So, really, Kudos on the troll. I will say no, he actually consistently smokes and drinks and alcohol use. I know he does. No, no, I know he does. I' I've seen whatever and I' I've seen his I've seen a few of his. I watched last night. I'm I'm just messing with him. Um and that completely lost my train of thought which I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that. Go. So what you were saying is I want to be very clear about my position Christianity. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Um even if I say which I believe the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be the true restorative G church of Jesus Christ on the face of the earth, it's because of the keys and the priesthood that go along with it. That does not mean, at least to me, and I think it's a a bad statement for anybody who's LDS, to say that makes every other church wrong. And what I mean by that is when you're looking at Christianity, you look at the Bible and you say, "We have this Bible, we have this book, it's inherent, but people are errant and and our teachings, we our misinterpretations. We don't always understand what's going on." But as a society, and maybe because we're getting close to the two-hour mark, this is this might be a a good kind of wrap-up for me. But as a society, I think we are better served when we say, what are the things that join us together? What are the things that in Christianity we can take and say these are the positives that that we are peacemakers, that we pray to God, that we try to be closer to God, that we treat our neighbors with love and respect, and that we try to do those positive things. If you're Muslim, hey, we want you to come and understand the divinity of Jesus Christ. Not that he was just a prophet, but that he was great. Hey, you're a Satanist. Yeah, I believe in Satan. I absolutely believe Lucifer was a real being, a real person, a real spirit that was cast out. You've got some truth. But hey, let me tell you about the other side of it. Let me tell you about Jesus Christ. And so those 10%, yes, we're always going to look at those 10% and say, "These are the things that we don't agree on. Otherwise, why would we have Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, uh, you know, LDS, all of them. And so, when I hear somebody say, "Well, you're wrong." I say, "Okay, hey, man, I I appreciate that that's your viewpoint. I I appreciate that's your worldview, but my experience, and I appreciate that you shared your experience. Um, let me real quick just tell you why I'm LDS. I was raised in the church. Didn't want to go to church. Didn't like going to church. My parents did the whole as long as you're living in this house, you'll go to church. I think we've all kind of had if you're raised in a in any type of of uh believing household, whatever it is, you're basically told that's the rules. I was in California with a we were with family friends. They said, "Hey, Lance, when do you turn 19?" And the the real question was, "Are you going on a mission?" And I was like, "Well, you know, I turned 19 in January. There's a lot of stuff that can happen." But I had no intention on going on a mission at all. About a month later, I'm back in Utah and I'm at home and I was just like, you know, I've been raised in this church. I I need to [ __ ] or get off the pot. And so I went in my room. I locked the door and I knelt down. I said, "All right, heavenly father." At the time, uh the the church president was uh President Benson said, "President Benson says, "Every worthy member needs to go on a mission." All right. So, Heavenly Father, am I supposed to go on a mission? I could not have been struck by lightning and had it had any more effect than what I felt. And people will say, "Well, that's just what you really wanted." No, it absolutely was freaking not. I didn't. I didn't get up and go, "Oh, I had such a spiritual, oh, that was so God loves me and he knows me who I am." I got up and well crap, now I got to go on a mission. This sucks. But I had to because I prayed about it and I had an answer to a prayer that I could not deny. How do you know the entirety of the culmination of those experiences didn't lead you to finally having a debate with an orthodox where he points out the massive flaws inside of that ideology so you come to the true church. That's that is a great argument and I will pray about it. And I'll tell you what, Andrew, if I pray about it and that's what it is because again I don't need an LDS endorsement but it's not going to happen. I've had too many experiences in my life that say I'm in the right place. I'll pray. I will tell you right now, I'll pray about. Don't we all have those experiences though where we always think that we're in the right place or the wrong place and then we look back. I mean, think about your wisdom of age. Sure. How many times when you were young did you think that you were doing the right thing or you were on the right path and you were so wrong? Um, you know what's ironic about that is most of the time when I I felt I was on the right path but I was wrong. Um, it it ended up being the right path be because I thought it was wrong. I thought it was the wrong thing and then later on it was like oh you know what this is actually I very clear experience with that. I I felt like I was inspired to become a chaplain to help soldiers. Sure. I was military police then I was MI. So I was But when you say to give you a quick rebuttal, when you say things like this, like uh the the endorsement comes from the fact that, you know, we believe in Christ and we're moving that message of Christ to Muslims and this and that. Would you agree with me that the best way and this is the apostles all basically had some universal agreement to this um everything that I could find from Thessalonians uh and Paul to as I uh gave kind of scripture after scripture of them stating this. If you were going to pervert the church or in some way make it perverse, wouldn't you give a message that was from Jesus Christ, uh, but it actually was not and perhaps, I don't know, you would have all sorts of conflicting theology with Christ's church, wouldn't you do that? Wouldn't that be the best way to lead people away from Christ? Actually, I I don't in this situation. No, because you're talking about a church and and the scripture says, you know, a house divided will fall upon itself, right? So, you're talking about everything in in the LDS church. Everything is about the divinity of Jesus Christ is about the atonement of Jesus Christ is about faith in him. And that is the only way that we can return to our heavenly father and return to eternal glory. Everything is through Jesus Christ. So, if Joseph Smith was let's say This theology has led to disaster after disaster for the LDS church. That's I mean like what disaster what happened to Joseph Smith again? He was murdered. Yeah, he was murdered. Yeah, they So the thing is is like many many of uh the every apostle was murdered. Many of the experiences which happened here with the LDS church specifically uh they they've been divided multiple times. They've gone and created brand new sex in other places. Hold on. Hold on. That that's like saying that Methodists and Baptists are the same as Catholics because they're Protestants. They you can offshoot, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has always been consistent. You're talking about the RLDS, the FLDS, and you're always going to have offshoots. You can't control that. I'll let Look, I'll let this one lie for now for a future debate with another Mormon, but I don't I don't that's not really the history. But the thing is is like fine, I'll let it lie for right now. But what I will say is this. I want to ask you a specific question before we wrap up. Is the truth the truth a way in which we can verify God's word? The truth. One more time. I want to make sure I'm understanding the question because I don't want to agree to something that I like earlier when I messed it up. Yeah. Do you believe that truth is the cornerstone of Christianity? Truth with a capital T is the cornerstone of Christianity. Absolutely. that Christianity is true. Well, let me rephrase. The cornerstone of Christianity is the atonement of Jesus Christ. Yeah. But that can't be false. Because if that's false, then all Christianity is false. Then all Christianity is false, right? So the cornerstone really is truth itself, right? Truth itself and the atonement of Jesus Christ and him dying for the sins of us all. Uh that has to be true. So the thing is is that if truth is the thing in which is the priority of Christians, truth in theology, truth in in what is um what what our theology is, what our church is, truth in what Christianity itself is, then isn't it very compelling if you find out that much of what you have learned theologically is untrue? Wouldn't that be the most compelling argument that you should abandon said theology? Not asking you specifically if your theology is incorrect. I'm only asking this question if it comes to light that the cornerstones of your theology are untrue. Would you agree with me that that theology should be abandoned? I would say the problem is that as humans we are limited in our understanding of truth and you can always have different viewpoints based on worldview. We're limited but that doesn't mean we can't know it. Right. Well, again, I think when you're talking about people, there are probably plenty of LDS who have have converted to um Orthodox, and there's probably Orthodox who have converted to LDS. I'm not there many of those. I'm sure there's at least a few though, right? Maybe you would think there's there's probably, you know, Jews that have become Christians, Christians that have become Jews. We I would just say that it's probably lopsided one way or the over the other is what I would say. But that aside, I'm not even going to make that argument. I just want to know, do you believe though that if it is the case that people begin to explore their theology and it turns out to be false that they should abandon that theology because it does not have truth on its side? That's all I'm asking. Well, again, not even saying your theology is false. No, I get it. Just asking the hypothetical. My my point would be it also depends on what their personal experiences with personal revelation comes into is that Jim Jim Jones personal revelation by by their fruits you shall know them, right? Yeah. The thing is Yeah. The thing is is like he killed himself and everybody was stupid enough to follow him. Yeah. But that's the whole point, right? It's like people based on their own divine revelation without having any sort of church authority or rigorism behind it end up falling into heresy and that's how you end up with Jonestown and these massacres and these cults and things like that. That's not disputed by anybody at least of all probably you. So I have no by the way I have no idea. I saw that earlier the Urentha book. I have no never even heard of that. The Oh Uranchia. Yeah. But but the thing is you don't even want to know about the ranchia cult. But the thing is is like look or is that a I really I really got to ask again. This feels like it should be such an easy answer, right? If your theology if the theology you're investigating turns out to be untrue, shouldn't Christians abandon that theology, shouldn't they abandon it? It should certainly shake their faith and and ask them why they're still following that faith. So you don't you don't think that you would abandon false theology? Like if false theology uh somehow made you more fulfilled and gave you a better community and things like that, but it was false, would you still follow it? Well, even your own church father said those things that are good came from God if it d if it if it was a false theology that drew you closer to God. Is that a bad thing? Which God are you being drawn close to? Yeah, that's a good question. What if it's a Christian God? Because you don't even believe Well, that's the thing, right? It is like we have to tell me if I'm wrong. Yeah, go ahead. You don't believe that we as LDS believe in the same Jesus Christ of the Bible. You think we we have a different Jesus. Is that correct? I'm not. Yeah. So these these sorts of like uh when we get into christologology and things like that, those those are less important for the purposes of this debate, which is asking a very specific proposition. I don't want to derail it. I really want to stay on the focus here. Yeah. I I don't I still really am having trouble with this answer. For me, unequivocally, I would just say yes. Right? And I would say this for anybody. I would even say this for Muslims. I'd say if you the cornerstone of your faith turns out to be untrue, if the theology turns out to be untrue, of course you should abandon it, right? Of course you should. That would be wouldn't it be sheer lunacy not to? Unless you think that you can pin lies and based on those lies, those lies are actually good because they can draw some people to Christ. Don't you think that that's backwards? Well, I think that's a house I think that would be the house divided. I I think that if you have somebody who's truly teaching about Jesus Christ and the fruits of Jesus Christ, Jim Jones wasn't teaching about the the fruits of Jesus Christ. I mean, if he was, then I mean, he sure thought he was based on his own personal revelation. So that's the thing, right? It's like based on his own personal revelation, he sure thought so. And so the thing is is like when you tell people, you know, you you should go with your It's almost like saying go with your gut. Go, you know, go with your gut instinct. Go with your heart. Go with uh whe whether or not the cornerstone of it is true, though. Shouldn't that be the most important part? But for me, and again, I have to only defer back to me. I can only go off of my worldview and my personal experiences with God. So if I have somebody else saying, "Hey, look," and I get it, Andrew. We've talked about it, but that's unfalsifiable. You realize that for you, how am I supposed to say, and and again, I like I said, I can only speak for myself. I kneel down and I have this experience again that was short of lightning saying, "Yes, you need to do this." makes me absolutely aware that God knows who I am and has a plan for me. I'm supposed to sit and go, gosh, you know, Andrew made some really good points. I should just ignore what I what God actually wanted me to do. And for all you know, this is what God wanted you to do was to come on here so that Andrew made really good points so that you would convert to orthodoxy. Like for all you know that that's true. But instead of but instead of the so I would expect the reflection to be look if I investigate this and it turns out that these cornerstones are false I will abandon this because it's madness. But that's actually not what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing from you is the opposite. You're saying even if it is the case that the theology is unound, how could it really be unound if we have like good communities and stuff, bro? It's like that that Well, yeah, it is kind of what you're saying though. Summarize. I said no. So I said for me in my experience with God I'm saying I have to follow the path that God has put me on and I have already said hey I'll go pray about this and if I'm so inclined I mean I' I've prayed enough times I don't really but God does say hey bother the crap out of me ask me keep asking keep asking you you need to keep asking keep asking bother me that's what he says so I'll bother him again but I I don't really have a lot of problems with with where I'm at in my life. And again, Andrew, I am in a very unique Neither do Satanists. There's Satanists who make the same claim, right? You know, funny, that's what I was just about to say because I'm in a very unique position, right? I'm in a position as a chaplain that I am here there to support anybody in their faith journey. Now, do I want to sit here and and have everybody in the chat go, "Gosh, you know, Chaplain O'Neal sure is he he sure is spiritual and he sure, you know, I I should probably call the missionaries and I should probably, you know, go to church this Sunday and see what he's talking about." Sure, of course. I want anybody to do that. And I invite any anybody who wants to learn more about the church. Go read Don't even listen to what I'm saying. Go read the Book of Mormon. See what you think about it. It's the only scripture you're going to find that has a promise at the end. Moroni 10 3-5 basically says after you've read this book, go to your father in prayer, your heavenly father in prayer, and ask him if this is true and if it testifies to you. And and this is a unique church that is not an offshoot of any other church. It was a restored gospel that came because a 15-year-old Joseph Smith had tons of influences around from Protestants, including the writing. The writing itself, making it sound all King Jamesy was really annoying, right? It made it a really annoying read. I'm just pointing it out. Like the fact that he just tried to make it sound King Jamesy made it a really annoying read. That's one. But the second thing is for you to say that there was no external influences. Joseph Smith's absurd. Of course there was. There was tons and tons. That's not what I was saying. What what I was saying was he was there and as a 15-year-old kid he's hearing all he the the stories are that he would go and he was very popular in terms of going to the different uh different denominations and they were all going on throughout that and he was like I just want to find out what's true. Here's this. To me, it rings true that a 15-year-old kid that goes out and has this vision that you or I, we go out into a grove of tree and and we have a vision. We have an angel or we have God the Father or Jesus Christ in front of us. We're probably going, "Dude, what's the meaning of life? What am I supposed to be doing here?" And his was what church is true? That's why I came out here. That's a 15-year-old kid doing it. It rings true to me. if it doesn't ring true to you and Abraham Lincoln was a failed firewood salesman and became one of the most powerful men in the entire world like look the fact of the matter is is that you pointing out that like Joseph Smith was that this this could only be kind of miraculous that this happened because uh you know it rings true he's only 15 etc etc it's like and then I can give you all sorts of examples of people who were complete failures like Ulyses Srant drumed out of the army right comes back becomes the most powerful commander in American history. Same thing. Abraham Lincoln educated and went to West Point. Even though he was last in his class and was a drunk, he was still a graduate of West Point. Yeah. And was but he was drumed out of the army. Nobody thought that that guy was going to come back and win the Civil War. That's for damn sure. And Abraham Lincoln, nobody expected that he he was they called him a monkey because of of the shape of his head and how he looked. They didn't think that he was going to go anywhere. There's all kinds of extraordinary tales when it comes to people getting into positions of power where you think that they never would have ever been in positions of power. That is not powerful evidence for the claims which are made here by the Mormon church which are fantastical. And the ones which are falsifiable are easily falsified. And this is my problem with this entire thing. And I guess that that's correct that we should get into closing statements because man, I I don't think that you made a very compelling case here at all that Smith was a was not a false prophet. Not even a little bit. We did get a little sidetracked. I was going to give you some of some of the prophecies and and we can go any of them. But but again, you're going to say, "Yeah, well, who cares?" Like the prophecy the church would grow to fill North and South America, you know, and millions of members today. And that was DNC 62 and also DNC 8414. So do Jehovah's Witnesses. They have the same thing. Was there would that Brigham Young would preside over the church and he did preside over he became the second president history of the church. The stars would fall from the heavens within 40 days and there was a meteor shower on the 39th day. Uh DNC 2914. I've actually read Interestingly enough I I I wanted to ask you about this before we close up. I'm sorry to extend this but um probably not answer for Sarah. Yeah. And I think that it's I think it's fair for you to bring up the positive positions of Smith and I'll let you do it in your closing or whatever as we get to the closing. But the thing is is the new when you I debate a often with witches, numerologists, things like this all over the internet. Okay. Wasn't your wife not a Spurs? Was your wife ever a Wiccan or something? I read something like that. I thought that sounded weird cuz I've seen a couple things on your wife. Okay. I just I wasn't sure about that. So good to hear directly. That was not in this version. That was Let me ask the source. That's all [ __ ] Yeah. So anyway, I've never even heard that. That one's new to me. But Oh, yeah. I was like, that doesn't stop. But the thing is is like look, I I debate with numerologists things like this. Interestingly enough, if you make a lot of predictions, some of them come true, right? Interpretation. Yeah. So the question becomes this, right? How many predictions can you make uh which come true? Some of the numerologists that I've debated, some of them are high as 70%. And here's what they do. They take events which are going on around them and they make normal predictive models. Same thing that I do as a political commentator. I just don't say that it's prophetic but rather my opinion. I'll take a look at the political landscape based on the things going on in the political landscape. I make predictions. Now, I would say that my track record on those predictions is pretty good. Uh I've been wrong, but I've been more right than I've been wrong. But these are just predictions based on my own kind of u model that I came up with just based on my observations of the political landscape. Does that make me a prophet? Of course not. Does it make a numerologist a prophet when a numerologist says I looked at all the numbers or a water witcher who looks at the water or the people who divine by watching ants move? A real thing. Not kidding. Um really the Yes, it's a real thing. They they look at the movement of ants and then they make predictions. You can get a lot of predictions right just based on observation. We're pattern recognition machines. Since that's the case, if you make the prediction, for instance, if you had to work tomorrow, you probably don't cuz it's Sunday, but let's say it was Monday, you had to go to work. You make the prediction, I'm going to get up tomorrow and I'm going to go to work tomorrow. Tomorrow's Saturday. I don't want you messing up. Oh, sorry. Saturday. My bad. It's Friday night. I got it all messed up. But anyway, if it were the case that you had to go to work tomorrow, if it was Monday, right? and you made the prediction on a Sunday, hey, I'm going to get up and go to work tomorrow. You would be correct about that prediction, right? You would be. Why? Because all of the things which you observe uh tell you that the chances that you're going to get to work tomorrow pretty high. So, you can observe those things, make that prediction, that prediction comes true. We wouldn't consider that magic or prophecy, but rather we would just consider that us recognizing various patterns which are going on around us in order to make these various predictions. This same exact thing I can apply to Joseph Smith that I do a numerologist or any other of these people who do water witching or divination. How many of these uh prophecies would fall under the well hey I made predictions based on what was going on in the time like he did during the civil war thing uh versus he was actually having revelation. That's my problem with that. Yeah. So, I was listening to, you know, because of course I try to do a little bit of um research as well and there's a BYU professor named Truman G. Madson. And in his BYU lectures number three, he talks about there have been 1500 uh verifiable predictions, prophecies by Joseph Smith, people who wrote in their in their journals, in their diaries this and that. So, yeah. I I mean, what are you going to do? Are you gonna say he just guessed 1500, right? But maybe he By the way, I I'm looking at the prophecy right now that you mentioned. Um uh which one? Meteors aren't stars. That's That was an incorrect that meteors are not stars. Yeah, there's no symbology in religion at all. Well, it's really interesting that you can always just take the idea that this this guy lived in basically modern day. This was not some ancient this was not some ancient guy. He he only lived he you know this guy only lived in what like your great great-grandfather's time. Like this was not this was not a thing where this guy's some ancient dude when they wrote things down in the 1800s. I don't know if you know this or not but they were pretty accurate with the things that they wrote down. And the thing is is like isn't it interesting that you could be like well there's a meteor shower and that's like stars falling. Well no it's not like stars falling is it? It actually isn't like that at all, isn't it? It's actually the opposite of that, isn't it? We We do call them shooting stars, gentlemen. Would we like to Did they call Well, wait a second. I'm sorry. I don't know. I know what they called them in 1830. Yeah. Because of shorthand of a shooting star. And actually, that would make my point again. Let's assume for a second Joseph Smith did call those shooting stars and all of them called them shooting stars. That would be really easy for them to cope then when stars didn't fall and meteors instead, which by the way, they knew what a meteor was in 18. They knew that they weren't stars. They knew exactly what they were. They were wellstudied. Uh cosmologically, they were wellstudied. And it's like, look, that wasn't stars falling. Like all of these that I think that you would say were accurate predictions is the same as a numerologist who claims, "No, I was I was super accurate. I told you in the next 10 years bad thing happened and bad thing happened." And it's like, come on, man. We have to use rationale, reason, and logic also with these things in order to make these verifications. Well, I mean, there's there's a lot of healings by Joseph Smith. There's different things, but hey, let's let's go and see what one of the biggest churches that did faith healings. Yeah. And people swore by these faith healings, swore by them. They went in with a radio and found in the back that what they were doing was they were vetting the conditions of people as they were coming in. And then they would tell the guy on stage what the conditions were and he'd be like, "You can walk now and stand them up." Never showed all the footage of them falling on their faces, of course, and things like this. But people swore by it. We have a term for this called the placebo effect. It's why I can when you have a headache, I can give you something and call it aspirin. Your headache subsides an hour later. You think, "Wow, that aspirin really worked." So, I think it's a little bit different. something like William Huntington in his own journal wrote about how he had died and he saw himself above looking down and seeing his own his own body. Joseph Smith comes in prays restores him to life he would lived for decades later. So there yes faith healing got it. I I think it's you know they made fun of it in Fletch 2 wonderfully but there's a point where sometimes you are based in faith and sometimes you are saying look okay this is what my understanding of the information is. I'm going to pray about it and go from there. And that's yeah well when your family members get sick do you take them to a faith healer in the LDS church or do you take them to the hospital? Uh we give we absolutely give blessings and there there are multitude of They're at the hospital though, right? And before No. And before or even before it even happens. Sure. You give it. But if your wife comes to you, she's like, "Ah, you know, my chest is really hurting." You rush her to the ER, don't you? Hasn't happened, but sure. But when my son was when my son was having a seizure and we jumped in the car. You don't think I was giving him a blessing on the way? On your way where? Of course. On your way where? To the hospital. So the thing I'm one of those people that

says I'm one of those people that says when when people say it's all about faith, I go, look, God wants us to be able to use what's available. And if, if it gets, if it gets into a doctor, but of course, well, what I'm saying to you is like, look, I believe that there can be people who heal through faith. We have, we have, uh, church fathers who have definitely, uh, done these kind of miraculous feats. That's true. I'm not even disputing that. What I am disputing though is since your church is founded, that you could give me a single provable example of anybody in your church doing it, and I would love to actually see it and go through it, because honestly, uh, all the evidence that I always find is anecdotal, and everything is stacked against you on these things.

What would be different anecdotal about the church fathers that you just said that have modern technology would be the distinction? No, no, you said distinction of modern technology. But no, you said church fathers have done it, and you have proof that they've done it historically. What would be the difference between somebody's? It would be the, yeah, it would be the evidences, uh, for the, um, for, for the size of whatever the miraculous healing was versus the evidences. The nice thing about the LDS church is that it's so easily falsifiable because it was formed in the 1800s, where we have great records of these things, right? And so it's easy enough for us to go through and falsify many of these events as being absurd, never having happened, or, uh, as them, uh, essentially lying to us about them.

So, witnesses, you can trust your witnesses, but not my, my witnesses. That's kind of how I got. No, I don't think so. I don't think it's quite as easy as, oh, my witness is trustworthy, your witness is not trustworthy, but rather it would be, you have witnesses who are giving an accreditation towards something that we can scientifically prove is not the case. And that's a distinction. Even the Catholic Church is very good about doing this. They often will rely on science to falsify things before they ever call it a miracle. Be why? Because if you can falsify it, we don't want to attribute that to God, which is not from God. Right. Do you wouldn't you agree that that's true? Like, you wouldn't want to attribute things to God or Satan, which are not, uh, attributed to God or Satan, would you? Of, of course not. But everything, everything is attributed to God. Everything. I mean, he created all of us. Everything ultimately goes back to him and his giving us free will and giving us our spirits and all of that. But you're going to, you attribute murder to God through indirectly through free will? Sure. Well, then that's, that's the attribution of the gift that you're abusing God gave you, but you wouldn't attribute that action to God. I wouldn't blame it on him. But, but there are lots of people who say, "Well, then why did you allow, why did God allow my sister to be killed?" Yeah, I understand that. And there's an entire logical line of reasoning how you can falsify that through free will. But the thing is, is like, I would not want, for instance, for my church to come out and claim that a thing was miraculous that could be scientifically proven easily, that was not miraculous. You would agree that you wouldn't want that for your church either, right? No, that's, yeah, exactly. That's my point. That's all I'm saying here.

So, with that, I'm, I'm happy to get into closing. I, I actually really enjoyed the debate. You're, you seem like a really nice guy. I, I hope that you enjoyed it as well. Sure. I didn't even know there were going to be closing. So, I'm going to be totally flying off the seat of my paper. I always do them off the cuff, too. Maybe. Okay. Usually, closing statements would be, uh, because you're going to kind of do a summation of of what all happened and what entailed and and your, your final thoughts basically. Um, even if you want to say my final thoughts are my final thoughts. So, to you, Lance, I leave the floor. How much time do you want to give me? Doesn't matter. I mean, obviously no more than the 10 minutes, but most people, 10. I don't think I want to fill 10 minutes. Yeah. Most people keep it short and sweet. Okay.

So this entire debate has come down to Joseph Smith being a prophet or not a prophet. U obviously I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet and and Andrew doesn't. That's fine. And I actually appreciate that Andrew didn't, uh, go some of those things that we could have gone into the seer stones and and such. I was absolutely expecting that. Um, and so for me, I look at it like this. Through anybody's individual experiences is going to shape our worldview. It's going to shape how we deal with the world. It's going to how we interpret the facts of the world. And I, I understand Andrew saying that the papyrus we have it. I, I don't necessarily agree with the chain of custody or the length of the papyrus and and some of those things and and so be it. Um, but ultimately what it comes down to for me is the Book of Abraham again leads us to Jesus Christ. And a, a house divided cannot stand against itself. Everything in the Mormon church is about Jesus Christ. I said that in the opening, I'll say it now. And when you have a church, and and Andrew calls us a cult. And by the traditional language of, uh, I didn't say that. I was referencing how how these organizations become cults. I specifically avoided calling, well, at least I tried to tried to avoid it. I wasn't here to insult the the Mormons today. I was here to offer reputations. Well, and I, I the funny thing is, kind of knowing understanding the history of the word cult. I don't even really take it as an insult because all cult means is that you as a church or an organization, you don't follow the traditional Christian teachings. And we don't follow a lot of traditional Christian teachings. We think there's been modern day revelation. The most basic of which is that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three individual beings that are part of the Godhead. Um, we believe that that God the Father has a body and that Jesus Christ has a body and that the Holy Ghost doesn't, but they work in in one. And I understand it's very different than the the people who follow the Trinity from from the Nicene Creed and and some of those things. And that's okay. Uh, because ultimately, at least for me, I, I'm not going to go in, I can't disprove the Nicene Creed any more than somebody else can prove that the Godhead is three in one, one and three. That's never made sense to me. Nobody has ever logically explained the Trinity to me in a way that makes any sense considering the baptism of Jesus Christ. But, you know what? If somebody believes that, I say, "Hey, that's that's on you. That's you figure that out." Maybe I'll end kind of with this. I, I was thinking about this for way too long over the last few weeks and and how I was going to kind of argue this and and think about it. For those of you who aren't aware of what Pascal's Wager is, Pascal's Wager, he came up with this thing that that basically says there is, there's two possibilities. That there's God and he exists or there's not. And that you either believe him and you don't. And ultimately, what he said was, it's in everybody's best interest to believe in God for your own self, uh, self-worth, because if there is a God and you believe in him, here's, here's the blessings of it. If there's not a God, it doesn't matter ultimately. And if there, etc. And I was kind of thinking about that in terms of the LDS church. Either Joseph Smith was a prophet and by extension the church is true, or it's not. And and either you believe it or you don't. And if the church isn't true and you don't believe it, no harm done, whatever. If the church is not true and you believe it, well, for me, that means I followed Christ's teachings. Things, I lived a good life. I, I went out and did, uh, good to my fellow being. I kind of missed the party. I wasn't able to go out and drink and smoke and go do some of the things that kind of come along with with not having those guidelines of the LDS church. And that's okay. Um, if the church is, is true and you don't follow it, well, there's, you know, again, I would say there's some missed blessings there and there's some missed opportunities. And if the church is true and you follow it, there's definitely some blessings that go along with it. I think that there are a lot of things that Joseph Smith restored. Uh, he restored baptisms for the dead, which is a wonderful concept because in the traditional Christian church, if you don't believe in Jesus and you don't accept Jesus and you haven't been baptized, you're going to hell. And I've never understood how a loving God would say this farmer John in the 13th century BC in China, who was a good man, who lived a righteous life, who did everything that he could to help other people, gave of his his, you know, his crops and did everything right. He was a really good person, but he's going to hell because he never even heard the name Jesus Christ. And so there was a restoration of things like baptism for the dead. And there are things that are out there. I get it. If you look at it at face value, but when you add in some of the spirituality and some of the understandings and the personal revelation, it goes back, everything to me goes back to that. Yes, Andrew is coming from a, a logical position. He's saying this, if A then B, then C, then D. And that's absolutely great. I don't think, I don't think anybody should join the church and just say, "Yep, I believe what Chaplain O'Neal said." That's ridiculous. Or what anybody else said. I think what you should do is you read the Book of Mormon. You pray and and the Bible, too. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as well. It's in one of our articles of faith. We believe in God the Father and in his son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. Pray about it and go from there. I don't believe Mormon more. I see in the in the some of the comments he's realizing that Mormonism is a lie. No, I really don't. I, I believe in my heart and in my soul that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true restored church of Jesus Christ on this earth. I have been baptized in this church. I've gone through the temple. I have made covenants and promises to my Heavenly Father and I'm going to do my best to live up to those covenants, those covenants. Um, I'm going to make mistakes. I, I'm wrong. I'm fallible. I mess up every day. Are you kidding? I could be a better husband, better father, a better teacher, a better pastor, a better missionary. I could do all those things, but I'm just here to do my best. And I, I if anybody has any questions that they want answered, I would say I would invite them to visit any LDS church anytime you feel comfortable, if you want to go to lds.org and do any research there. All of our information is on there. We don't hide anything. I think the church has become much better about transparency than it has been in the past and you know, our information is there. So if you want to go and find out more, do so. If you're comfortable with where you are, great. I, I hope you found some faith and if you're looking for faith, find something that works. The chaplain in me says find what works best for you because I'd rather have you, you go to any church and finding a s a system of belief that brings you closer to Jesus Christ than not. So that's my ending. Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate it. Thank you, Lance. I appreciate that. Andrew, to you.

Well, I think, uh, uh, Lance fundamentally misunderstands Pascal's Wager a bit. You see, what's interesting is is that he says, "Well, you should take the wager because you're missing out on some blessings." But if it was the case that the other church, which says that you would be condemned to hell, is actually the correct one, then you would make the wager in favor of that church, not in the church, which says that you're not going to go to hell, uh, for your lack of belief in that church. That wouldn't be much of a wager, would it? The wager would only really work if you said, "Hey, there's going to be a dire consequence by not doing that, plus life improvement." Uh, and so I think he fundamentally misunderstands that the attribution of Pascal's Wager would work against him, not for him. That's the first thing. The second thing is is that the reason I went with the line of inquiry that I did, even though, uh, my opponent miscalculated what it would be that we, you know, that I would be going after here, um, and thought I would be going into golden plates and various things like this, because those are commonalities which occur very often that, you know, the, the Mormon cartoon things like this, which dive into kind of nuance historical things, and they always become very granular, and those debates don't get at the heart of what it is that I was trying to get at, which is, is this guy a prophet or isn't he? And if you look at Deuteronomy, as we painstakingly did, we know what a prophet has to do. If he makes predictions in the name of God, he's got to be right. And his prophet, which is the foundational pillar of his entire church, objectively wasn't on major, major predictions which he made, and he was easily fooled by a by a salesman, or he himself fooled all of his congregation, and we can verify that with evidence. What you saw here tonight was a contrast in worldviews. I don't believe in any way, shape, or form that Lance is wrong, that Christians should have strong faith in their duties as Christians and strong faith in, uh, Christianity itself and in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. But you are given reason and logic and these great gifts from God specifically so that you can verify what is true and what is not true. These are great gifts, and we're the only creature on this planet who has these gifts. Animals don't give a [ __ ] about what's true. Only human beings do. We have an, there's an a-tilos here that guides us towards the truth. When you gravitate towards men, you follow, you don't gravitate towards liars. You gravitate towards who? Truth tellers. Why? Because you're hardwired to do that. That's in your very theology. A, one of the greatest gifts of God was that he gave you a recognition for what is true and what is not. My opponent never gave a great demonstration, well, any demonstration that I could see or a single point that verified the, uh, tenacity or veracity of Joseph Smith's prophecies. In fact, many of the ones he brought up, I was able to refute instantly. And on top of that, uh, I gave really good broad evidence for many of the falsehoods. Now, remember, we're looking at pillars. The pillars of the Orthodox Church, Jesus Christ and the apostolic succession of our church from the original apostles into modernity. We're able to track that. That is the, the, uh, major cornerstone distinction here. This guy's church, Lance's church, is without Joseph Smith, does not exist. That is the pillar of that church. And if that is falsifiable, that is the end of that church. And that's what, when I tried to pin Lance on whether or not people should look into their theology to determine if it's false, he was actually very evasive about that. Multiple times very evasive about that. Why? Because they only want you to really look at the surface level. They don't want you to really invest yourself like I had to do in orthodoxy in figuring out what was true and what wasn't true. And that is a necessary conditional of Christians that I wish we would get back to, because absent truth, that's how we've fallen into such chaos and disarray. So I would look at the contrast in worldview. I'm asking you to seek what is true. I'm asking you to go through the evidence and use your faculties of reason gifted to you by God himself so that you can determine what is true from what is false. I have a 2,000-year, uh, history of apostolic succession. The Orthodox Church has not ever been, uh, non-transparent. They are the most transparent church I could ever think of. They're ready and available for you to go and discuss with the priests any of your various concerns. And we have all of the backing, uh, of of our faith from from again, multiple thousands of years for you to make these great determinations. And here's the one thing I'll tell you. In contrast, my priest would never tell you to follow unsound theology. My priest would never tell you to follow lies. My priest would always tell you that the cornerstone has got to be truth. Always for Christians. We've always got to have that as the cornerstone of what it is. Now, I'm not talking about white lies and trolling and stuff like that. I'm talking about theological truth. That has to be there first. And that was never demonstrated, whereas I gave a body of evidence to demonstrate against it. With that, I'm done with my closing and I appreciate everybody's time.

Absolutely. Thank you to both of you. This was probably the most respectful debate I've ever hosted and very kind of both of you, uh, to come and join and have this discussion. Um, while we read through the super chats, uh, I'm going to be a little selective in them only for time purposes, but I did drop the open panel dumpster fire link into the chat. Now it is there if anybody wants to hop backstage. And my first big shout out would be to old Sergele, who sends in the, I got to get rolling here tonight. Sarah, I appreciate your guys' time and I hope you have a wonderful evening. Andrew, it was good to, uh, meet you and have this conversation. And I really appreciate your time and and going back and forth. I think it's, I don't think this is what most people probably expected from this tonight. Well, there's other Mormons and they're probably not all as nice as you, but don't worry. We all try to be Canadian. I'm ready. I'm ready for them, too. So, but I do appreciate, uh, your time this evening and I appreciate you stepping into the role, especially as a chaplain with your many years of experience so that we could have at least a productive debate with somebody who's knowledgeable on the topic. Yeah. Anyway, you have have a great one. I'm going to go back to my stream and griff now because, uh, these guys owe me thousands for a TikTok invasion. So, anyway, tell your wife I'm glad she wasn't a witch. Yeah. Well, I mean, me too. I don't, I don't. That's, that's, I've never heard that one. That one's new to me. Yeah, it was weird when I saw it because like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah. No, no, no. No, no witches here. All right. Have a good day, ma'am. Bye, Andrew. And Lance, you are not obligated by any means to stick around or stay any longer. You're more than welcome to. I'm not going to force you or anything like that. Doors are always open both in and out. Wait, you're not going to force me? Who is John G? John Galt. You don't get that reference. Oh, come on, Sarah. Well, you've never read Atlas Shrugged. I know what John G. He's a YouTuber, but no. Okay, so the book, the book, the Iron Rand book, Atlas Shrugged. The kind of the main person is is John Galt. His whole thing is that you can't force somebody to think for somebody else. So, it's like if you can't force me to stay on, all I got to do is click a button. I'm out. So, right. Sorry, I, I thought that was an, maybe not everybody's read Atlas Shrugged or as many people as I thought they had. No, no, definitely not. Uh, and I'll just let the, the chat, the chat will just say I'm a dumb blonde or something and and unlearn. But you haven't read. There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is you just haven't learned something yet. Stupidity is you can't learn it. So, I have no doubts on that. You just, you just haven't read the book. It's fine. I, I think it's a great book. That's fair. That's fair. Uh, big shout out to Old Serge Finkele. He came in earlier on the Cash App with the $499.99. And his comment to that says, "I lost a penny." Shout out to you, Old Sergele. Always the right time, the right day, the right need that needs to be fulfilled, and you just did it. Thank you so kindly. Um, I'm gonna just go through a few of these. Um, uh, I'll do just, pardon me. I'll just do, um, 10 and up and then a little selective. Um, just because I don't want to insult you the entire night. Um, is that what they all are with comments? Yeah. Um, uh, Chaplain's an idiot, been called worse. Rachel, I was thinking the same thing. Did he think I was a witch because of my book title? Because it's the occult of feminism, I think, or the, it starts with maybe somebody else. Rachel, I'm sorry. I, I haven't read your book. Um, but if you drop it in the link, I'll, if it's on Libby app, I will definitely read it. Oh, she says, "Maybe he's confusing me with Jay Dyer's wife, who dabbled in witchcraft for a time before she became Christian." You know what? That's probably what it is because I was prepping for Jay. You had me ready to go against Jay for a while. So, I'll bet that that's what it is. That may be it. Very, very possible. Um, one lost sheep comes in with a big 10 says, "But even if we, we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed." Uh, thanks a whole lot for hosting this debate, Sarah. And and usually the rules of the game are you are welcome to respond to any of these that pop up. You don't have to. Um, if you don't say anything, I'll just keep moving on. If you do want something to say, a little, you know, brief whatever back to something, you're more than welcome to. Otherwise, we just, we'll, we'll move on from them. Okay. Uh, Steelborn with the Big 10 says, "Andrew, this guy should go tell the trees all the mean things you said." I, I don't know what that reference is to. Um, whatever. Uh, Millennial Mike with the Big 10 says, "Catching up on two times speed while in the hospital with my wife having our second Mormon baby. Huge Andrew fan and fan of The Crucible. Great debate. Sarah subscribed to The Raging Tomato and Not One Step Back." And congratulations to you, Mike. Mike has been a panelist here and has debated before, so it's very exciting to see him. I didn't know he was a Mormon, though. Well, Mike's doing his part then. He's up to two. You need to get at least to four before you really qualify as true LDS. I've got four myself. Really? Yes. No, that's, that's a joke. The only people that are having babies anymore are Mormons and Catholics. So, but I do have four. Fair enough. Well, I am Catholic and I, I did my part and only had two and and that's about. At least you're, hey, at least you're meeting the the minimum population to replace yourself, right? That's how I said I did my duty to society. I am done. Uh, Chef Dylan with the big 10 says, "Andrew with the big W's." Uh, Red Fox came in with a big hundred and says, "For a paper for the war college on epistemic crisis in military leadership, granting the argument, is the is this systemic of moral cowardice of the chaplain core? Why isn't a chaplain competent to give moral advice in planning or punitive proceedings? Respect to the chaplain." Oh, Red Fox, if I could only tell you some stories about the degradation of the army corps, the chaplain corps. I will say this, chaplains love each other. We want the best for each other. The corps, and if this gets back to the Chief of Chaplain, so be it. I don't feel like the corps gave a crap about me for the last 5 years. I think they have done nothing to stand up to the moral relevancy that should be shown. I think we have degraded ourselves and once somebody makes lieutenant colonel and especially full bird colonel, they care only about their career and they do not care about any soldiers under them, and certainly no chaplains under them. I've had too many incredibly bad chaplains around me. I was stabbed in the back by another chaplain, tried to end my career, and it is, it's been a delayed effect, but it has had a serious effect on my career, which is one of the reasons I am getting out. The chaplain corps, uh, has not lived up to its promise as being the moral heart of the army, and instead, we have been placed on a path of basically, well, we're here so soldiers can whine to you, which is not our job. Our job is supposed to be the moral background, the moral backbone of the army, and as a chaplain corps as a whole, we do a very bad job of it. There are individual chaplains who do an excellent job, but man, I could, I'm going to tell some stories once I retire. So, if you want to start following Tup Save the World on Sundays, you'll hear some stories sooner than later because if my retirement goes through, and even that's delayed because of that chaplain stabbing me in the back, uh, then, then I invite you to do so. But, uh, yeah, I could not agree more that the moral, the moral, uh, cowardice has, has absolutely permeated the Chaplain Corps. That's crazy. I had no idea that that was, uh, like, nobody wants to say it, really. Yeah. Because if you say it, well, what are you supposed to say? Hey, sir, why aren't we being more moral? Why aren't we pushing for our soldiers to be moral? Why aren't we pushing for our commanders to be moral? You're told, you know what, chaplain, stay in your lane. They're not, you know what, they don't need to. You're there basically so soldiers have somebody to talk to if they don't talk to anybody else. And that's assuming they don't go to behavioral health instead. So, I, I just don't think that the chaplains are doing their jobs as, as a whole. Again, there are individual chaplains who are wonderful, and I'm sure there are people who say, "Oh, my chaplain's great." Yeah. But for every one of you that says, "My chaplain's great," I could probably give five or six soldiers say, "My chaplain just, I, I don't even like, I won't, I won't even talk to that person." Wow. Yeah. That's kind of heartbreaking because those are supposed to be the like, the ones that support our members when they need them the most. I think, well, they'll, what they'll do, it's not that they won't support the soldier, it's that they will support the soldier, um, without being bold, right? So, for me, I got in trouble more than once because a soldier would come and tell me things, and then, uh, I would say, "Look, I can't, I can't just go off to your company commander and say this is a problem because it's just you and it's how you see." But if, look, if there's other soldiers that come in and they tell me the same thing. So, basically, what I was telling him, if your buddies are having the same problem, come to me, and then I can go. And I did. I went to company commander, say, "Hey, you know what? This is what's, what I'm being told. Here's a trend." And then I got pulled into a higher level and told, "Why are you butt-in-ing yourself into these soldiers' problems? Why are you going to the commanders and telling them these things?" I, like, part of my job is advising the command team of what's going on. Right. Well, Chaplain, that's not really the right way to do it. What? Look, I'm not, I'm not telling anybody names. I was very, very careful about hiding names. I, I got accused of something a couple years ago which was unfounded. Um, and I never said the soldier's name. I kept it a secret, uh, to everybody to this day. Even when I was asking the chaplain corps questions about how I can defend myself, I blacked out his name. Um, he had accused me of basically using some blue language against an underage teenage girl, which I never did, never would. I have three daughters. It was just on its face ridiculous. But they have to do the investigation. And the irony of the whole thing, the accusation of he, he said I use this blue language was he had come to me because he was distraught that he and his girlfriend had broken up and he didn't know what to tell his wife. Yeah. The chaplain used naughty words. Dude, you cheated on your wife. Awkward. Yeah. But I couldn't say anything. And to this day, like right now, people go, well, you're telling right now, none of you know who that is. None of you know any, anything about it. I'm not using names, so there's no personal identifiable information. But yeah, it's, it's really, I'm really disappointed in, in what the Chaplain Corps, and that's one of the reasons I retire. I, I could have stayed in, um, but 25 years and after 10 years and seeing even over the last 10 years what has happened to the Chaplain Corps. Um, I, I would pray and say, "All right, Heavenly Father, tell me if it's time to get out." And then when this happened, I kind of jokingly, half jokingly said, "All right, well, thank you for, thank you for confirming it's time to get out." It didn't need to be that blatant. Right. The prayer was answered. Fair enough. Uh, Noah sent a bunch of funny little jokes. I'm going to read the one that I thought was the funniest. I've heard that one. Um, yeah. How do you get a Mormon to stop drinking all of your alcohol? Invite two of them. The original, the original joke was, "How do you stop a Mormon from drinking all your beer while you're fishing and ask to invite two of them?" Ah, that's fair. That's fair. Uh, Kelly sent the big 20. I'm interested in hearing the debater's opinions on when the Holy Spirit first visited mankind and what continent. Well, as far as LDS theology, you would have the Holy Ghost right from the start, as soon as Adam was, uh, kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Mormon theology is that the Garden of Eden was actually in Missouri. And a lot of people go, "Oh, why would it be in Missouri?" Well, look, if you're going to say there was a flood of 40 days and it overcame the earth, why couldn't it be anywhere? So, I would say North America and right from the time that, uh, basically they were kicked out of the garden. I don't know what Andrew would say. Uh, Imperial comes in with a big 10. A Mormon position. Schrodinger's cat is dead in this box. Box is opened and no cat. Mormon. The cat could have potentially been disintegrated. So, that doesn't prove our position. #thecrucible. Um, Andrew called that something. He called that something specific. Uh, the, the fallacy. Yeah, there is a, Oh, it, well, also that, yeah. Uh, Chef Dylan asked, "How, how do you, uh, make them agree?" You get yourself, uh, uh, YouTube Premium. Were there ads? Do they see ads? I don't see ads. See ads. We don't see ads. Uh, all I, all I know is I'm looking forward to my big payday after this of zero cents. That's, that's what I'm really looking forward to. Jordan says with the big 10, Lance, if we, if it were the case that a person in their experience had what they saw as positive outcomes from their theology and then discovered that their theology comes from Satan, should they leave it? I would say that Satan is absolutely right there with lots of truth. That's what he's supposed to do. He wants you to follow false theology. And if you're able to discern what is true from Satan, you would put that into your back pocket and say, "Yeah, that's absolutely true." Satan knew that Jesus Christ was Jesus Christ. That's why he took him out and and tried to, during his 40-day fast, at the end of that fast, when he thought Jesus would be at his weakest point. So, if you're able to find truth from Satan, you don't disregard it, but I wouldn't say you would leave your Christian faith because of Satan. But, but absolutely, there is truth to be found almost everywhere. Even, even science has some truth in it. Crazily enough. Chairman of the board says, "I lost my golden tablets. Does that make me a prophet?" H. It depends on who has them now, wouldn't it? And Jim Bob, of course, with the Big 10. Lance, does God the Father have a father? If so, does that father have a father? Now, that is a really interesting question. And I will say to this, go read some Hugh Nibley. Hugh Nibley was a Mormon apologist, maybe the smartest dude that's ever been LDS, and he goes into some things on that. Personally, I'm going to say this. Whatever God's, uh, lineage is, I don't think we could comprehend it regardless. Even if it, even if the prophets, uh, had written and and we found a, a like, who do we want to say, an actual something in in the desert, the Dead Sea Scrolls part two, and this is written by the hand of Jesus Christ and it said, this is, this is who my father is and this is who my grandfather is and etc. We'd go, wait, what? And not really be able to comprehend it. So, does God have a father? Well, when I die, I'm waiting to find out. I think it's going to be very interesting to see what the actual makeup of the true universe is because anybody right now, we're silly. We think we understand the universe. It's 13 billion light years across, allegedly. I, that's not a number we can comprehend because like, how stupid is this fact? You take out a deck of cards, a brand new deck of cards, and you shuffle it seven times. It has never, ever been done before in that exact way. And there are more possibilities of of shuffling the deck that way than there are atoms in the earth. So, there, we don't understand numbers. We don't get numbers. So when you say something like God the Father had a father, I don't know. It's going to be interesting to find out. And I don't think our human brains could handle it. Fair enough. Uh, Marilyn with the big 10 just to say queen. Yes. I will take my crown. How do you know she's talking about you? Well, you know what? If you want to be the queen, [ __ ] I don't know. I tell you, I am a, I am a big Freddy Mercury fan. Love Freddy Mercury. Absolutely. They love the lifestyle, but he was awesome. Best, best rock and roll singer ever. That's fair. And Culver Cast with the Big 10. They don't give a, I think this is referring to the chaplain. Uh, they don't give a crap about you, brother. 100%. I'm almost positive I met you now. Major Dickerson is my father. I am almost positive he introduced us. If not, we ran into each other somewhere else, maybe. I don't know. I don't. Major Dickerson does not ring a bell. Um, I'll tell you if it's in the last 10 years. I was in El Paso and then I was in San Antonio. Uh, my first unit in El Paso was 427 Field Artillery. And then in San Antonio, I was with the 717th MI, and now out here at Fort Eisenhower/Gordon, I've been with the 369th, um, signal. So any of those, but could have just run into on post somewhere, too. Fair enough. All right. Well, there's a few backstage. Doesn't look like a big party tonight, but that's okay if it kind of. He's the draw. Uh, not normally, they come in to attack whoever it is that Andrew is to be. Oh, great. So, he can like leave and then they like do what I would call, I would call like cleanup crew. Uh, for instance. Okay. Well, we'll go into, uh, open panel dumpster fire. And even if we end up shutting down early, I'm kind of okay with that because I've had a long week. Yeah. Uh, so everyone sit down, buckle up, and, uh, let's do it. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Pardon me. All right, we'll make this, uh, quick and to the point, I think. And then, uh, somebody was back there and then they dropped off. Maybe they had camera issues and then, um, I will get through the rest of the super chats here, uh, kind of intermittently throughout, uh, this portion of the show to anybody that sent below 10 or the extras that were kind of lingering around. I will go through them. I do promise that. Uh, I just wanted to get through, uh, get to the open panel. Corinth, I know you want to drop it like it's hot. I do. So, no, me being the silly fellow I am, have been going through a lot of 18th century Supreme Court cases recently. And one that sticks out in my mind is I think it's Reynolds v. The United States, where a lot of the cases based on early Mormon teachings about how polygamy is necessary for salvation. Even Joseph Smith makes claims like this. Why do you think that something so necessary for salvation has just been like stopped being practiced within the church? I'm not sure that it's necessary. I, I don't know what the exact teaching was, but I do think it's potentially been paused. And the reason I say it's been paused is polygamy kind of could be practiced still if you're in the church and you attempt to have a polygamous, polygamous marriage. Like if I were to go out and try to get married to somebody else, I would be instantly excommunicated. However, if my wife were to die and I were to get remarried and be sealed to another woman, then technically that would be polygamy. So, um, I'm not sure if it, what all the context was, but as far as the church goes, that's the stance. Now, this just doesn't really seem to make sense to me, right? Like, we see a lot of the early church teachers, especially Joseph Smith, even states this. Um, I believe it was Brigham Young. Uh, Reynolds himself was one of the general authorities for the first council. We see all these people saying this is something that our church teaches we have to do, and they're not having sequential, uh, polygamy. They're having sister wives. They're having them at the same time. I don't see how these people at the church that are talking with the prophet that are like the apost, 12 apostles, I think it's the quorum. I'm not, uh, my terminology is probably not perfect, but we see a bunch of those people saying all these things. This is something that we have to do as Mormons. I don't see why we're looking at it now other than, well, they're just the practice isn't being held. The churches. Do you, do you know if they were, they were talking the church as a whole or as you said, the quorum of the 12 or the apostles, or was there a, like, who were they talking about as far as the requirement? Because my understanding was it was not a requirement for the rank and file, uh, but it was for, it was pushed, um, a lot of the leadership. In fact, there's a story about about Brigham Young with us. Brigham Young was actually very, very much against polygamy. Um, he had been thinking about it. It had stressed him out because he loved his wife so much that he was like, "How am I supposed to do this?" And he went to his sick bed. There's a story that he was basically in bed for two weeks because he was just so stressed about this. And his wife ultimately came to him and said, "Look, do you believe that Joseph is a prophet?" And he said, "Yes, I absolutely do." And then she, so she said, "Well, then this is something you have to do." So, what that means for the church at large, I'm not really sure. Um, I don't pretend to speak for the church, but I do think that throughout history, the, the Christian church, uh, has has had instances where they have had to also worry about what was going on to make the church survive, whether it was in Constantinople or Rome or with the different emperors. Uh, that's not to say that the LDS church necessarily was saying, "Hey, this is the only reason that that we are going to no longer have, uh, polygamy." I know even after that, even after the declaration, there were some higher church leaders that continued polygamy, but right now, um, it's not, that is not a teaching. I think that circumstances and time does come into play and again, does it mean that polygamy is, is necessarily part of our eternal salvation? Maybe. I guess we'll find out. I hope that's enough of an answer. I'm not trying to to blow you off. But can I, can I ask a follow-up on that? Kind of a really quick follow-up here, Duck, because the, the disanalogy between Case and like Constantinople, the other Christian churches always held the view of, if this is something that goes against teachings, we just can't follow the law of the land. We only follow the law of the land if this is something that's compatible with teaching. So in cases like, if in early Rome, if you had to reject Christ or you'd be put to death, that's how serious this crime was. Well, we have a series of martyrs that were given sainthood because they refused to. But in this case, we see people from the church in St. George reporting that they were taught as the layman that the, there's no exaltation without polygamy, that you have to be doing this. If it's, this is how this was taught in the early days when it was directly led by Joseph Smith, who was the prophet in the view. I don't, I just can't wrap my head around how we can say the Mormon church of today is at all something that's that should be followed. Okay. I mean, you look at Israel, the ancient church of Israel went through different things depending on where they were and what they were being told. The prophets were saying, "Hey, you need to do this, you need to do that based on on their belief, based on their faith." It's the AB. So, I don't know. And again, I'm not sitting here and saying the church changed because of this, but I am saying there's the forecasted prophecy. And if you're saying, well, the forecast was that you needed this at this time, you want to hear a little gospel according to Lance? I think the reason polygamy was there was because the Lord knew that the Mormons were going to get kicked out and murdered on their way out of Missouri, kicked out and then murdered on the way out of Nauvoo, and they were going to have a 2,000-mile trek that was going to kill a lot of the dudes, and the, and a lot of the women and the kids were going to need sugar daddies, if you want to call it that, somebody that took care of them. Brigham Young had, it's estimated, I believe, 40 wives, but there are only about nine that said they had consummated the wedding with them. Well, what about the other 31? Brigham Young was taking care of them and and it was a financial thing, and it was, hey, we need, we need to do this. So, I don't know. Polygamy was, let me ask you this then. Polygamy was in the Old Church in the Old Testament. Solomon, among others, practiced polygamy. Why wasn't it continued in the New Testament, or was that wasn't something that was demanded of people? This wasn't something that they said we have to do for salvation. This was something that was permissible. Which again, is why if it's compatible with the laws of the land, they might be allowed to still practice it. But in a case where that's not compatible with the law of the land, there is no obligation to engage in this. But okay, through the teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, it does seem like this wouldn't be something applicable here. Okay, I don't know what to tell you. I, I mean, I'm, I'm limited.

With my understanding of church doctrine being taught in St. George in the early 20th century, um, I can only tell you what my understanding is and and my best interpretation of that. I don't, I'm not trying to officiate. I just, I I think it would be overreaching for me to speak for the church and and the doctrines that were being taught back back then.

Um, can you, as a Mormon, do you see anything with that of like, maybe there is something that's a little bit [ __ ] with our church today? Maybe we are starting to go astray and maybe we do need to re-look at like what we're doing, or do you just say, hands up, I guess that's the way it is?

Well, okay. So after that, Duck, you can go. No, that's fine. There, there's a big difference between what my personal thoughts are and what the doctrine or the teachings are. For example, our church came out and said about five years ago, uh, President Nelson, who is a world, was a world-renowned heart surgeon, he came out and said, "Hey, you need to follow what the government is saying. Get the COVID shot, wear masks. We're, we're going to follow what the government all said." I had a serious problem with that. But that's following what the recommendations of the government. That's not a prophetic thing. I think it would have been just as bad if, if the church had come out and said, "Hey, as LDS, we want to be antagonistic towards towards the government," and and for no reason, when ultimately this, maybe isn't, I don't know what they were saying, but I didn't like it. I didn't like wearing a mask. I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world. Did I put a mask on every time I went into Walmart? Why? Because it's a private company. So if the church came out, had come out and said, "You will get a shot," I would have had a real problem with that. But the church doesn't ever come out and say, "You have to do this." Everything in church doctrine is, here's what the doctrine is. You will get blessings if you follow the doctrine, but ultimately, it is up to you to follow that doctrine.

Duck. Yeah. I mean, I think Eric's question was really interesting. I'm kind of a, I'm sort of a nerdy philosophy guy. Um, so I just wanted to get your take on this. Um, I am an atheist, so just to be forthcoming. Sure. But I, you know, I think it's, I'd like to get your take on if epistemology isn't like too big of a word, but like, it seems like if I'm asking, uh, about Mormon polygamy and therefore my conclusion is the Book of Mormon is false. Um, you know, it, it seems like, uh, from an epistemic standpoint, the, the criticism of Christianity as endorsing slavery or, uh, genocide and things like this, uh, things that we, we have some documented evidence happened at that time. Uh, it seems like we have almost like this weird recency bias where we say, well, LDS must be more untrue because of polygamy. Um, versus, you know, we don't say, well, the Christians didn't have anything to say about keeping women as household slaves, basically, um, you know, in the entire like 19th and 20th centuries. Something good to know. Um, so I'm, I'm just curious to hear your take, like, you know, if you were to respond to an atheist who just says, well, all of this is nonsense, or a Christian who says, well, you're, you're worse, you know, tisk tisk, shame on you for, for this specifically, but not the other stuff. Um, do you have a response or thought about that?

Sure. Um, can I attack, can I attack atheism first, though?

Yeah. I don't, I don't care.

Yeah. No, I, I think I have a good argument against atheism, but so I, I would say this. Um, again, you're searching for your own truth. If, no, if somebody's atheist, uh, as long as they're not, to me, militant atheist, which, which is there is no God. If, if it's more, you're an agnostic, like, I just don't believe.

Sarah, one second. Sorry, Sarah. Don't listen to Chairman. He's trying to get me to come back to Grid's panel because someone brought me up. Oh, don't. This is a, this is a grift. You're, you're muted, Sarah.

Sorry. Thank you. Uh, I'm, I was going to let you finish your, your, uh, your dialogue there. Five minutes, Chairman. Five minutes. Sorry. Sorry. I'm so sorry, Lance.

No, no, no, that's fine. Weird verse stuff. So, so I think that, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the Bible. You know, the slavery is, is not a great thing. But I also think it, you know, I'm trying to become a history teacher when I'm done and and go into the next career. And so I look at a lot of the stuff of history and you say, well, you know, was history, was slavery wrong during the time of the Old Testament? Well, no, it wasn't morally wrong at all because that was just normal. Like every culture had slavery. And and really, I, it blows me away when I hear, uh, people who are freaking out about the US and saying, well, they're, they were slaves until 1860. It's like, do you guys realize like that was the outlier? Was that Great Britain and, and the US were trying to fix, stop slavery? Everybody else wanted slavery.

So, can I respond just to that?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, just to respond to that, you know, as an atheist, my point is that, well, if I can have a justified belief in, in, in typical, like Sam Harris or Matt Dillahunty fashion, I have a justified belief about slavery being wrong that appears to correspond to the world. Um, and I can do that in 2024, 2025, and I could do that in 2000. I could do that in 1965. I could, I could do that in 1700. Right? There, there were abolitionists. There's been abolitionists and anti-slavery people for a long time. Um, you know, to me, I don't think that this is an atheist searching for truth. I don't know if those were supposed to go together. Um, but like, you know, when I say that, like, look, the, the moral machinery and what we think of as well-being in the world. Um, you know, as we get closer to sort of understanding those things, um, as an atheist, I, I don't think it's, um, a knock that I'm, I'm either searching for truth because I could, I can always say that slavery is wrong. Um, and the fact that people culturally endorsed slavery doesn't mean all people were doing that. And the fact that, uh, it appears that religion has been used as a, a justification. It's been a justification. Like that's, you know, without saying that this is like some big universal truth. That's, it's also a truth that I can't totally get away from. That makes sense.

Well, I, I think if somebody's using, I, I've never understood the argument that because there were slaves in the Bible that we should say, "Well, then it's morally acceptable." I, I personally think that goes against everything that Christ taught, that you are supposed to love one another. You're supposed to elevate each other. And again, when the writings like when I think it was Paul that wrote, you know, the slave, you're supposed to follow what your master says. That was a product of the time. And when people now take that and justify and say, "Well, we're going to do something wrong because it was wrong in the Old Testament or, or, you know, acceptable in the Old Testament." And that might go right back to the polygamy argument. I don't know. But I think that when somebody is, is atheist and they're searching for truth, I hope they find truth, whatever that truth, capital T is, because I think the capital T is very different from the little T. And and I'll just say this, I think little T truth, that's human truth. Capital T truth ultimately is God's truth. And and if you don't believe that, hey, that's on you, man. That's that's your own personal belief. That's not how that's not how a brain works. L. Give me a second. Let me finish this up. Let's, let us land our plane. Thank you. Um, that's, that's in for a philosopher or someone who subscribes to rationalism, like there's a lot of different ways to say it. And I know I look like the, I look sound like the crazy guy up here, but saying that there's a little truth and a big truth doesn't really mean anything, right? Like it, it doesn't, it doesn't, you know, like if, and, and this is the example, like if, if someone has a, a car that they tell you, you get in this one person car and it goes 400 miles an hour on land. Um, let's say you're a thrill seeker, but you don't want to die. Uh, do you get in the car? There's, there's not like a little T and a big T truth, right? There's only truth about that car not breaking down. Um, which should correspond to the laws of physics. That's not a little and a big T truth. And so if you're talking about like cosmology and physics or something as to why, as to why that, you know, things like this happen from time to time. I want to help. Yeah, I got to go soon. Anyways, yeah, I'm going to give you 30 seconds to, I don't understand what's going on. Is he getting, I don't get it. Yeah, he is. They paid to boot him. I, I told, give him a few minutes to finish his dialogue with you because Duck, Duck never gets on panel because they boot him before he even arrives. So, I'm trying to give Duck just a few minutes to finish the dialogue. So, Duck, 30 more seconds. Hey, Duck, take down, take down Tup Save the World. We'll have you on one of our shows so we can actually have a conversation about it. How about that? I don't mind. I don't make any money off of it and nobody will kick you because we don't make shite. Yeah, that's fair. There you go, Duck. Would you rather, would you rather do that? And then, uh, I will, um, Duck, reach out to me on Discord. I'll tell you how to reach out to Lance. Okay. Have a good, have a good night, everyone. Bye. Bye, Duck. I'm so sorry. He always, he always gets booted. I would like, Duck is more hated than me. Can I pick up Duck's point? Uh, uh, yeah, if you want. And just for, before I do that, um, Culper Cass is backstage, but Culper, you gotta, uh, cam up real quick backstage for me. It's, it's part of a rule here. Um, if you could do that, you, there's a little camera button. You might be new to, uh, joining on these, but you have to click, click the little camera button, say a little quick hello, and then, then we'll get you up here. And, and while we're doing that, real quick, I, I'm getting to the bladder stage that I'm gonna be needing sooner than later. But no, I want, I want to hear the next one. I want to hear the next one. Is there anybody else that's LDS that they can, they can go after and ask questions? I'm not, but I have, I have associated with some LDS people. I'm a member of Christ Restored Church. Awesome. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. Squatch, what's your question? Or who, who was gonna follow up? Okay. I am assuming, and, and, and I hate assuming anything, but I'm assuming that, uh, I've understood what Duck was trying to say, but I, but I disagree with his premise of truth. Like you said, big T, little T. I don't think that's right at all. I think it's big F, little F, faith. Faith to you is truth. So what you interpret, let me, let me back up. I'm sorry. I'm, I've been drinking. I'm trying to get this wrapped up right. Let me put it in a rice wrapper and go forward. Uh, okay. For every time you stutter, you need another shot. Oh boy. We can do that for about three more shots. I'm almost out. Um, big F, little F, big T, little T. There is the truth and then there is personal truth. And I don't agree with that. There's just truth. It either is true or is not true. And while you can have it how you wish, big faith, faith and little faith is really what we're talking about. Because until an individual has encountered something they cannot explain and applied faith to that inexplicable, you can't explain what big F faith means to someone who has little F faith.

That's an interesting way of putting it. I, I can appreciate that. I, I'll push back a little bit on the truth and the big T and little T truth simply because, you know, people's worldview, uh, does lead to some, some changes in truth. But I, I think that's a really interesting point, the big faith, little faith, because ultimately, as far as religion goes, uh, for the most part, I do think if you, unless you have that change of heart, that doesn't come from internal. Like I said, during, during the debate, I was, my real path to conversion started with doing something I didn't want to do. I didn't want to go on a mission. Holy crap. I mean, seriously, I got up and went, "This, this literally sucks because now I know that I'm supposed to do this." So, that was a big F. That was a big F U right there. Big faith because I had to do it. I, if, if I had not done that, um, I don't see how I could have looked myself, even at 19 years old, looking myself in the mirror and saying I have any value in the world that, that I can be true to myself because I'm denying something that was such an, um, outward thing. And, and again, anybody who says, well, that's really just what your heart wanted. No, it effing wasn't. That was about as far from what I wanted as it could possibly have been.

Can I ask, can I ask you a question?

Sure.

Do you have big F faith that it is what you needed?

Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yes. Oh yeah. Looking back, um, and, and I'll say this is true of pretty much anybody that goes on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You're not there to convert anybody. You're there to convert yourself and learn about yourself. And if you come home and you're like, "Gosh, I only had six baptisms and my buddy had 17 or whatever." You know how many baptisms Jesus had? Zero. Anybody want to say he had a bad mission?

Um, I'm not arguing Jesus. I'm, I'm here to discuss lees with you. I've had this discussion with a few different people on mission. I lived in an apartment complex that had a couple of, uh, folks on mission and I sort of existed through several cycles of them. These were some of the nicest people I ever met. When I moved in, my apartment had nothing in it. And they showed up and volunteered to put all of the appliances in place and were like, "Okay, there you go. I really like your books, but I'm not going to interrupt you or do anything." And I was like, "Cool. Come by. We'll talk." And we did. Uh, Stuart was absolutely amazing. Uh, Ezekiel was unbelievable. Um, I can't remember, maybe, Umbah, perhaps. Uh, I, I can't remember the other one's name. He wasn't there but a few, but a few days before I moved out and they were all excellent people. Excellent. I mean, when you compare them to the average person, you come with people with integrity and, and, and moxie when it comes down to it. They were willing to have the conversation. They were willing to sit down with a hardcore like Southern Baptist, uh, Christian who narrowly missed being a minister, you know, and have the conversations and stuff. And that bears more respect than all of the points and premises and beliefs and all of that. Just the ability to have the talk. And I, I think that really is something that we try to hold ourselves to. Um, we really do take to heart, "By their fruits, ye shall know them." And so, um, you know, if I, if I make a mistake and, and say something wrong, I try to apologize for it. You've noticed I've tried not to swear. I'm not, I tried not to be big on swearing as an example for my, for my kids. Um, and, but at the same time, you know, I, I've had service opportunities to go move somebody and I'm like, yeah, I don't want to, so I'm not going to say anything. I probably should have gone and helped, but I'm selfish and I'm a failure in life in a lot of ways. But I'm glad that you had good experiences. And again, it's those elders, I tell you right now, every one of those elders, if they just heard what you said, they, they would say, I guarantee you, to a person, they'd say, "Every minute we spent with him was worth it. He didn't convert. He didn't get baptized. That's okay. We gave him a good impression of who we were, and that's the best we can do."

Well, sir, it's kind of hard to rebaptize the Southern Baptist.

Well, I tell you what, I'll give you a lot of credit. I'm in the South. I've been in the South for the last 10, 15 years, and I have heard more "you're going to hells" than than I care to admit. That's a thing I do not approve of. I've never approved of it. The idea that there is only one and you can only do it this way. It's very much like a YouTube channel when it comes down to it. I don't like that you're going to watch other people. You're supposed to watch me and nobody else. That's kind of how it feels. And and again, that goes to me where, as as a chaplain, my job is to help people find what works for them. I've had friends of mine that I've invited to church. They said, "No thanks." I said, "Great, cool. What are we doing on Friday?" My best friend, my best friend is Catholic. I mean, my other best friend is, he goes to church, but I think it's non-denominational. Um, I've invited them both, and if they invited me when I was in town, I'd probably go with them just to go with them to support them.

So, if I can piggyback off that because this is kind of why I came up to talk talk to you about this, Lance. And by the way, I thought you were really great. Seemed seemed like a pretty down-to-earth debater or discusser, whatever you want to call it. But before, before you get into it, Joseph, if you don't mind, I'm going to let Lance take a short break while I read some super chats.

Great. Yes. That way, that way we can, uh, I, I know it's, it's, I pee like 10 times in one stream. Uh, Chad with the big 10 or big five says, "A smoky man, bad." Yes, we all are fully aware of that argument that most people make. And I'm actually grateful this, this debate went very well. Nobody was mudslinging. They were very respectful to the idea that this is a religion that we're poking into. And, um, you know, it, we, there was no like, insults to it to be attempted. Uh, Culper Cass, it looks like your, your Wi-Fi or whatever sucks. And that means, uh, you're going to be up here and you're going to keep, you're going to start talking at some point and it's not going to come through because you're going to keep, uh, getting kicked off from your Wi-Fi. So, maybe just, uh, give it a break tonight. Maybe if you want to reach out to Lance directly, um, and chat with him there, maybe that'll help. But I, I don't, that's like the third time you've jumped on and then it's, this doesn't work for you. Come back another night, Culper. Uh, Amazing Disgrace with the big five. Hustler alert. Yes, we are here to grift. Uh, grift the grift and the more grifter the better. Uh, because, you know, when we stream, it's for free. We don't get paid for this unless you kindly donate. So, thank you for pointing out the hustler alert. Uh, Amazing Disgrace with the big five. Christianity spread through the Middle East before Islam ever existed without armies and without force. Thank you so kindly. And actually, I wanted to ask this question too. Uh, uh, Lance, the, can we talk about the magic underwear? What is magic underwear?

Okay. So, first, I got to tell a story about this. Uh, my good friend Todd Ersen, who, uh, is on the, the Steve D show. He's a producer and does some stuff there. Uh, we, we knew each other in, in Utah. He was a baseball, uh, coach and I was an umpire and we got together and became pretty good friends. So I invited him to a game or at BYU and we're down there and full LDS crowd plays going. It stops. There's quiet. You know, nothing's really going on. He turns music in, in a full voice says, "So what's up with the magic underwear?" Just like, "Dude, how long have you been holding on to that one?" Just, just, "Oh, I thought it was funny." I know people around me were mortified. I thought it was funny. That was my sense of humor because I was like, "Dude, that was perfect." So, okay. So, the magic underwear, we don't call it magic underwear. Uh, they are garments and they are, they are part of when we go through the temple. Uh, we, we make certain covenants, certain promises with God and, and the, the garment is part of that. Uh, I don't want to go too deep into it because we, it's not that we think things are secret, more sacred. And so going into it, but there's some symbology involved and, and the part I will say is that they're symbolic of, um, in part of what Adam and Eve were given garments when they were, uh, expelled from the Garden of Eden. So that was a reminder to that we are always fallen and that we need to remember where we come from and that we need to, you know, have that relationship with God. So, it's, it's a reminder. It, it's some people, you know, there, there are stories, anecdotal stories of it protecting people. And I, I think that, uh, you know, sometimes it may be true. I, I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm not about to stand in front of a bullet and go, "Oh, my, my garments are going to protect me." My God never told me to put on underwear, but my mom always told me to wear clean underwear. So, there may be something to it just in case you're in that accident. You don't want to be embarrassed by when the, when the paramedics go, um, "Holy underwear," right? Your dad just said, "Let wear what you got because it's holy."

That's fair. I think if it's, if it's something like, like there's a powerful meaning to it, you know, or behind it and it's a kind of a sacred thing. I, I respect that. That's fair enough. Um, and I'll read just a couple more and then I'll hand it back to you, Joseph. Um, speaking of Joseph, sends in the big five to say, "Love me. Love me." Oh, I heard it at the Cardigans, too. Don't you love me? And I have too many stories. Okay, so I'm going to tell that one, too. I was trying to get a job in radio and one of the things, if you go to like the local public broadcasting, you know, the, they will hire you, quote unquote, intern you. And one of my jobs was to listen to all those CDs and write down which ones had swear words. So, I heard that album by the Cardigans before almost anybody else. And the first thing I did was give it to a buddy of mine and say, "You're gonna dig this." And he loved it. And that was one of the first, I heard the Cardigans be the Cardigans before they hit. And that was just an incredible song. I caught Sublime before they hit. That was another album I listened to, too. Two years before Sublime went big, a buddy of mine went to Anaheim and brought back a garage tape, a garage band tape. He gets in my truck. My truck has a broken tape player and he sees the tape player, pulls it out, pops it in, it plays that tape, and never ejects it. Wherever it is today, that tape is still in that deck. The first time I ever heard Blink 182 was live in concert when they were one of four groups with the Aquabats, LBC Allstars after Sublime lead singer died and then it was Blink and then Primus. Dude, the next morning I had tickets to that show because my chick, the chick I was supposed to go with ended up in jail and the other chick I was going to take like got real messed up and I was just like, "Screw it," and I stayed home. I had the sold ticket basically. Oh, after Blink played, that next morning I went and bought Dude Ranch. Noah with the big 20 says, "What do you get when you cross Jehovah's Witness and a Mormon? No idea, but one can't get him off their porch." That's good. And then Noah says, "One more for the, the shits and giggles tonight. Uh, why won't Mormons legalize weed? Because they're worried it might be a gateway drug to coffee." Oh, don't be surprised if in the next, don't be surprised if in the next 10 years, maybe even five or less, that legal marijuana is, is, uh, in Utah. Don't be surprised. I thought it already was. I know Colorado is. I think Utah was, they've been debating it. I haven't lived in, yeah, Utah. I think Utah is, it just medically? Okay. And that, but that's a big step for Utah. So, but I could, I could see it being even decriminalized here in the next 5 to 10 years. And speaking of coffee, I'm going to go fill my cup, but Joseph, I'm going to turn it back over to you. Good sir. It's 12:45. How are you going to sleep?

Oh, she's not going to. That's the point. The panel's not like wild crazy, so I don't think it's gonna go, uh, for too long, right? Um, usually, Lance, usually this will go till 3:00 AM. Um, oh, that's, that's late. But, but I don't foresee that this evening, but I can still have coffee and go lay my head down perfectly fine and collapse into my pillow. Yes, it's trick of the trick. It is. It is the middle of the eighth inning for the Dodger game. So, I'm normally up for at least another inning and a half. That's, that's kind of where my timeline goes for.

Fair enough. All right, Joseph, go ahead.

Yeah. Yeah, but Lance, I was going to ask you, um, respectfully, out of most of the things you've said, something that I take greatest issue with is you made a salvific claim, and maybe you can expound upon it if, if I have it wrong, but you said that, um, it was a prerequisite that you need to accept Jesus Christ to be saved. Is that correct?

Well, I think that is, that's the basis of all Christianity is that you have to accept Jesus Christ as the, as your personal savior and, and be baptized. And I don't think that's, um, I, I don't think that's anything new.

I know, but that de facto puts people, um, it determines people to, you know, be damned, doesn't it?

Okay. So, well, now let's get into a little bit. That's why I asked if there. Yes. Okay. So, we, the, the LDS theology is very, very different than traditional, uh, Christian theology, and this is one of our biggest differences, right? And, and I'll tell you this, and it is supported by the writings of Paul. He talks about the, the celestial and the terrestrial world. And this is one of the reasons we believe the restored gospel is necessary because we believe when you die, the traditional Christian is heaven and hell, right? Because Christ says to the, to the one, uh, person who is being crucified with him, "This day you'll be with me in paradise." Right? So we believe paradise and perdition, right? The heaven and hell of traditional. But we believe that at that point, everybody who has not had the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ will have that opportunity. Everybody who's never been baptized that that's in any level of perdition will have the opportunity to hear the gospel and accept it or not. Now, if they accept it, that's where we believe temple work comes in. You can get baptized for the dead. You can have by proxy, somebody who is, I've been baptized for, I couldn't tell you how many people now, whether they accept that in the spirit world is up to them. And even after that, we believe that there will be a final judgment by Jesus Christ himself, and you will be assigned to one of three glories that ultimately is where you are most comfortable. Now, going past that, in terms of what those glories are like, I, you know, how that's going to work, I don't know. I have some real questions about it. I think it's going to be really interesting to find out. But the, uh, lesser world is compared to the glory of the sun. That, that's where God the Father resides, Jesus Christ. And then there's the, uh, terrestrial world, which is the next one. And it is compared to the glory of the moon. And then the, uh, wait a minute, celestial, terrestrial, telestial, telestial is the bottom of them. That's where, kind of the worst, the least go. But one of our prophets had a vision of these worlds. And he says, the lowest place in the telestial world, any of us would kill ourselves right now just to get there. And that is the lowest place of the low, outside of what we would call outer darkness, where Satan and those, those followers of him who never, uh, never accepted Jesus Christ or were antichrist, legitimate antichrist, and not antichrist like Hitler's an antichrist. No, Hitler doesn't ever, Hitler never had a full-on understanding of Jesus Christ. But him being at the bottom of the telestial world. Yeah. Cool. So when you talk about somebody who's going to hell, I, I'll say this. Somebody who's an atheist, somebody who is whatever. I said damnation, not hell. Right. Okay. Damnation. We don't believe in damnation. We don't believe anybody is damned. I don't believe in hell.

What do you mean by, by damnation? What's your understanding of?

Well, like he inferred it as hell. I infer it as being divorced of God. I think that's kind of, uh, what he's saying when it's like, if you don't accept Jesus Christ, then you're going to, I view it as being divorced of God, not, you know, going to a fiery pit.

In duality, I think we're a lot closer in definition than than you would think because damnation is, is a word we use for stopping of your progress, right? And so your progress towards living with God the Father and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost eternally is the ultimate goal. Right. So damnation is a, a separation of you meeting that goal. Right. So we actually agree absolutely in that way. Um, the, the issue, not even the issue, but the clarification is that the, the areas in our damnation are actually not demarcated, but they are identified as celestial, terrestrial, and, and terrestrial in the, in the way that Lance just explained it. So I, I think we actually have a lot more parity in there in the way you define it than the way that it could have been intended.

If I may flesh it out just a little bit more. I, I want to add a layer on this. The reason I bring that up is because my main discrepancy here is, is that, is it's almost to say that like, if a person talks to God, but then they're introduced to the concept of Jesus, true or not, I'm not taking a stance there. But then if they, if they don't infer God as Jesus Christ, then they're now have, then we'll call it a divorce or schism, right? Mhm. So why is it a necessary dictate that you need to accept Jesus Christ if somebody, you know, has the inherent, like, it's just inherent that we talk to God? People do it all the time. You know, it's, it's a cliche when you know you're about to hit, hit a deer or something, you say, "Oh, God." Or, you know, people, or you, you think you're sick and you get better and then you say, "Thank God." You actually talk to him. You know, like, that, that's something natural that happens. So, if I'm introduced to Jesus Christ and I don't, and I, and I maybe don't, I have a hard time with the dogma, but yet I still believe in God and I talk to him just the same. Now, you're saying salvifically, you know, I'm out. I'm on the outside.

No, let's clarify some terms. That's not what we're saying.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

No, I appreciate, I appreciate it. You, you can call me James. Jimbo, Jim is a nickname. You're good. You're good. So, you, there's a lot of issues when we talk to, when Christians, um, or modern Christians, as, as they're called, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints talk, we use a lot of similar words, but in a lot of different ways. So, when you say salvific claim, will you, will you just explain that or expound on that? That way we can agree on terms and then we can answer what you're actually asking.

Yeah, it would be living with God or living, um, in, in accordance with the nature of what you think that God would want you to do or not think. It wouldn't be a think thing. It would be subjective, but I think you get the gist of it.

No, I do. And actually, and, and that's where I thought you were going with it. And so, we use a term called exaltation, right? So, we, we believe that we're all saved from, from death because Christ resurrected, right? So, what we believe as what you just termed salvation, we, we call exaltation. And exaltation is where we get to live with God eternally. We are co-heirs with Christ, as, as the apostles talk about, and as Jesus promises us. We become one with God and all that stuff, right? When it comes to being separated from God, that's what we call hell. So, in that way, you're, you're damned, right? So, our salvation, or your salvation that you're talking about, is our exaltation. And so, the invitation is, believe in Christ. And, and you're right, like, at the judgment day, we're going to all see Christ and we're going to like, "Oh man, this guy's real." So, at that point, do I get to just be saved? No, that's not what we're saying. Because your, your deeds and your, your heart will be judged, right? So, if your heart's in the right space, God is great and grace is, you know, infinite. And so, you'll go where he knows you need to go and you've been worthy and judged to go. But sure, if, if you're, if you're sitting there like, "Oh, hey, that's God." Just like the demons, you know, like they're like, "Oh, that's Jesus, thou son of David." Right? They don't get to go to heaven because of that, right? So, there's a, there's still a judgment and there's still a separation if you haven't lived according to that knowledge, right? So, it, the invitation is, "Come follow me," right? If you don't come follow me, then let, let me add one more thing to what James is saying. Um, we believe that when you die, you still have who you are as your core. It's not like you, you die and then suddenly you're a different person. So, if you were in this life, kind of a piece of crap and you treated people badly and you abused your wife and you were really just not a good person and you die and you're in perdition and you know you have the missionaries come to you and say, "Hey, we want to teach you the gospel of Christ." You're not going to look around and go, "Well, this place sucks. I want, oh, whatever you tell me, I'm buying it." It's still who you are. It doesn't mean that true repentance is impossible, but at the same time, you're still going to be who you are. And so, yeah, of my main point was is that, um, if you, your claim was, in my opinion, correct me if I'm wrong here, but your, your claim was is that if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are divorced from God. And that's why I, you know, yeah, I don't think I said I don't think I said divorced from God, but, but again, to claim.

Okay. Well, then let me clarify. For somebody to return to God and be in the eternal, in, in his kingdom, they need to accept Jesus Christ. Again, that's okay. Hey, look, that's, that's our teaching. If, if you don't agree with that and you're like, "Hey, I'm good with where I'm at and I don't really believe in Jesus." Then, then fine. I don't think you and I having this conversation right now means like, you dying, "Oh, nope, Chaplain O'Neal and, and Joseph had that conversation online. So that was your one chance." I don't think that's how it is. No, maybe it was. I'm just kidding. I do want to know, how did you feel about like the, uh, Wiccan service as a chaplain who's a Mormon?

Um, I thought it was. Joseph, before you, mine's real simple. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

No, no worries. I just, I, I wanted to make sure that Joseph's question was, was satisfactorily answered.

Yeah, you did. Fine. You guys can move on. I, I really want to know that. And I'm the guy, I think I met you, I think I may have met you in San Antonio, but what unit were you with?

Uh, I wasn't with a unit. My father was in San Antonio. He was an engineer, but maybe the PX.

Oh, that probably. I was cop earlier. Who? My dad. Yeah. Yeah. Major Dickerson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Was he on, was he on Fort Sam?

Yeah, he was on Sam Houston for a very short time. Okay. Yeah. I, my unit wasn't on Fort Sam. We were with the one of the secret squirrel agencies out there. But, but it's very possible. I, we ran into each other cuz I'm one of those annoying guys that the older I get, the more I'm like my dad and he was an insurance agent. So he would talk to everybody and I embarrass my kids now when we go around and I'll talk to anybody. So it's very, very positive. Earlier, I met you in the PX. Maybe not. Possible. No, I, I went to, I went to the PX there. It's possible.

Is anybody else, uh, backstage?

No, no, you're good. We, we're still at eight, so we, we're not even at max capacity. Speedy Lee with the big five says, "Are any Mormons on the panel familiar with Carrie Ross Osborne and Lisa Lee Oren? If so, any thoughts?"

I'm not. I don't know who either of those people are.

I'm not either. D, I did have a serious question though, like as far as.

Well, let me hold on before we, before we switch gears. Let me read a few more super chats because I did promise I would read the rest of.

You got to make that money, Sarah. Yes, sir. If not, if not, I could be in bed doing nothing. Uh, I only say that out of jealousy. Spyro at the big five says, "Difference between LDS and Jehovah's Witnesses. One knocks on doors, the other makes scriptures out of doors, and it calls it prophetic, prophetic, uh, papyrus." Papy. Yeah. Okay. I mean, good attempt. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Red Fox with the big five. What do you get when you cross some LSD with someone who's LDS? A high pri. Okay, that's cute. My, my older brother, uh, my older brother left, uh, the church when he was fairly young and he went, he went off and we used to joke that he went on an LSD mission instead of an LDS mission. Absolutely.

Sarah, can I ask him a question?

Hold on. We're going to get through the super chats, then I'm going to turn it back over to Culper Cass because he was, he had some talk. Um, and then Jason says with the big five, "Is Lance familiar with the idea amongst some Mormons that the Urantia Book is the third tablet of Mormonism? Thoughts?"

If so, no, we, we, that one popped up earlier and I was confused by that one. I've, I've never heard the third tablet of Mormonism. We do believe that there's still lost scripture. Uh, but I, I've never heard, I never even heard that.

He's [ __ ] with you. He's [ __ ] with you.

Oh, okay. That's fair. Uh, trolls. Trolls got a troll. But how much money did it just cost him to troll? Uh, that cost, uh, wait, where was I get the troll though? I think that was either five or a 10. Um, Forte with the big five says, "I agree, Andrew. Profits don't actually exist."

Um, I don't think that was Andrew's point, but okay.

Right. Uh, Dun64 with the big five says, "Consider St. Charbel, then consider Joseph Smith and see who is more real."

I don't know who that saint is.

Well, not only that, but I'll guess they're both real. Um, piano. Uh, Dean with the big five. If I sold my golden plates, would that make me a profit?

Oh, I think you should have been charged more for that pun. You would definitely get profit, but you would not be a prophet. These are different, sir. And I like this one. Uh, just a quick thank you to Lance for not going to the usual smoky man, bad spine. You made the debate enjoyable. Hope you find orthodoxy.

I thought, and I think it came in, I think it did come in very clear and respectable between the both of you and nobody. Yeah. Uh, and if you wait, nobody what spurred? What does that mean? Like freaked out. I, I am, I'm seriously, you guys, when, when I talk about this stuff being, I mean, I'm 52 years old. You guys like, you start saying I'm F to do something. I'm like, I only know that because I've been in the schools. Otherwise, these words mean nothing to me. Uh, so spurgey means like you start yelling, you start getting like hostile and emotionally triggered. Um, yeah, he was great. If you did catch the debate that was on earlier, um, that was that was Spy. Okay, it was rough. Of spurging include a high-pitched voice, screeching, reeing, basically complaining in general without actually saying the words when you hear the complaint, but they're saying something else.

You don't have to target me like that. Can be targeted. That's good. I don't even know you, sir. Is actually on his best behavior tonight. I'm, I'm impressed with you, Corinth. I'm very impressed with you. I look at this, I look at this whole thing as again, I, I'm kind of the guest. And if I were to come in and, and start being kind of a jerk, like Sarah's not. By the way, you guys, if you haven't had interaction with Sarah, phenomenal. Like right up front, she's like, "Hey, this is who I am. I didn't know Sarah three weeks ago, and now I feel like Sarah's awesome. Like, I, I know you guys see this, but like, legitimately behind the scenes, I would ask her stuff and say, "Hey, I'm not really sure." And she responded quickly and she's like, "Hey, if you need help with this, with that, I don't think."

Who's Sarah? Who's Sarah?

Shut up, Solie.

So anyway, I question Sarah. Sarah, can I ask?

No, you're not next in line. Go ahead, Larry. He's here. He has nice things to say about me and you're going to interrupt him like that. I think that was the point. Go ahead. It's all good. Spicoli's been, I've known Spicoli for probably over three years now. Uh, I knew him before I even started my channel and started paneling anywhere else and so on and so forth. And I'm actually, Spicoli usually only gets about a two-minute round up here before I boot him just because of how he interacts. He sounds cool. H. Uh, anyways, Culper Cass, you had a follow-up question for Lance. Go ahead.

No, my only point was, I, I feel like I met you in a PX, but the only point I had was the Wiccan, like, you, hel, you had a Wiccan service, correct?

Yeah. So, that was in Kuwait. So, the Wiccans were kind of having, uh, having a struggle as far as getting any support. And I was literally just walking by and I see kind of some flashing over, over one of the, um, blast walls. I poked my head over. I'm like, "What are you guys doing?" And like, "Oh, well, uh, you know, we're, we're doing, we're, we're doing a church thing." It's like, "Really?" So I walked over. I'm like, "Hey." And I introduced myself. They're like, "You're, wait, what? You're a chaplain?" I was like, "Yeah." They're like, "Dude, we need some help because we're not getting any sports."

Cool. Hey, man. I'll.

help you however I can. And so to me, it's it's about taking care of soldiers. That is that's why I agree. I agree. I agree. So I was, yeah. And that's fine. I mean, I was military police and then am I so I I and I've always joked that I was I was tasked to guard the bad guys and then I was supposed to think like the bad guys and now I get to help my own guys. So that's I'm not a Mormon, but I'm a Christian, but I've I've experienced it. You have to do what you got to do. Sure. I understand. Yeah. I mean, I don't agree with it. I wish you didn't have to, but there's a limit. They treat y'all like crap. Like, you have to take part in a service that you don't agree with. Oh, I didn't participate. I supported. I I wasn't paying tables for them. You helped you helped facilitate it. Yeah. But as far as that goes, um, I don't think it would be fair for me to say I'm. And don't get me wrong, there are some chaplains who do this. I'm only going to do my service. Yeah. No, I get I get what you're saying. I've I've supported the Jewish. I've been the liaison when I first was a chaplain, I was the Jewish liaison. So I was there. But do you think it's wrong to disagree with doing it? Um, I don't think you'll go far as a chaplain if you disagree to doing it because that's part of your job is to support all soldiers. It's happened like people don't think that they should be have they should have to do that, right? Well, there's. See, to me, I think that you have a duty to support your soldiers whether it's whether you agree with them or not. Take part in a service that you know you can't take part in. Define taking part though. Like again, when I went to the. That's kind of what I'm saying though. Like, did you like have to take part in or did you just support it? No, I was there. I mean, I I was there to support like, hey, you need candles. Okay, I'll get you candles. Did you take part in it? No. No, of course not. And and and is it wrong if you say I don't want to take part in this, but I will support it? No, that's not wrong at all. That's what you should do. Exactly. That's my point. That's my point. Okay. Okay. I agree with your point then. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yay. We agree. No, that's cool. Yeah. All right, Spici, go ahead. Oh, let's welcome aboard. Thank you, sir. Lance, I have a question. I don't believe Joseph. I mean, obviously, I let people believe what they want to believe. It's a free country. And I would rather have people believe in religion than not be religious. But I personally don't believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. I don't believe Jesus was the Messiah. I do believe Moses was a prophet. You know that he was. Now, my question is this. I look at a lot of these religions like LDS, Mormon, whatever, or even Christianity, and it seems like they had a hook to get you in there. Like Christianity was Jesus died for your sins. So join us. With Mormonism, I always thought it was kind of like, don't take this the wrong way. It's not personal, but I'm I always thought it was a cute way of getting people into religion so they could have multiple wives and sex with multiple women. What do you think of that angle? Because why would they have multiple women? What What I'm I'm understand Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you Jewish like me, you had multiple wives in the back day, but ever since Christianity, men didn't have multiple women. So why are you going back for the multiple women? Does it try to replicate Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Or what's with the multiple women thing? I'm just curious.

Well, like I said, I I think that there was some some need for it because of what was going to be coming for the church. If you go and look at the history of the church, uh, it went from upstate New York to Kirtland, Ohio to Independence, Missouri. In Independence, Missouri, I don't know if if most people know this, there was literally an order by Governor Bogs, who was the governor of Missouri, that said, "If the Mormons are not out of our state, it will be legal to kill any member of that church after this date." That in the United States, that was a that was something a governor signed off on. So during that time, there were a lot of mobs. There were a lot of killings. They went up to Nauvoo. They found a good place in Nauvoo that was all swampy. It was so great that they were left alone until they dug it all up, made it into a really nice town. And then it became the second most populated city in Chicago. And suddenly they went, "Uhoh, we don't want these guys here because, you know, they're starting to have some political clout." And suddenly the tables turned and now they're out and they went to Utah and tried to live in Utah in peace and the government followed them to Utah.

Now, is that why there was polygamy? To be able to have the taking care of the families and the kids? I don't. Are you, excuse me? Are you saying polygamy was to create the Mormon church quicker? Because if I've got multiple wives and I'm having sex with multiple women, I could have multiple kids. I can grow the church quicker. Was that part of it? No. No. I I. It may have been. I'm not saying it wasn't because I don't know. But what I. Were they just horny? Or were they just horny? Keep it clean before I boo you. Keep it clean. Was Abraham that way or or it was the same thing, right? I think Jacob were horny Jews. Yes. That wasn't that wasn't Pardon me for just a moment. Pardon me. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. If you don't keep it clean, I will boot you. Take a note and read the room and where we're at right now. Obviously, we're we're not in DGEN uh locations right this minute. We're not there. We're not going there. So, chillax. Uh, okay. So, Spoli, what I want you good, bro. You what I want to do is I I do want to give you one thing though. You said Christians and you know, everybody kind of has their hook and and why they bring them in. I'll tell you what the LDS hook is. The LDS hook is this. We believe that families can be together through eternity. That when you get married, you can marry your wife for time and all eternity. And you can have your family members, your kids, your ancestors above you. That you will be with them through eternity. Because the most important thing in this world and the next is the relationship you have with your family. So if you're interested in actually finding out about why we think things are important with an eternal family, you got to believe in that. Most guys don't want a wife for 30, 40 years or a lifetime, let alone eternity. Man, come on. Get realistic. I wouldn't want a wife for eternity. Would you? No. No. But not even that. You have You have to believe in that. You have to believe in I don't believe in having a wife for eternity. A lifetime's enough. Most people can't get to a lifetime. Hold on. Five years without a wife. So, let me let me tell you a story. Spicy, let me tell you a story. There there was this very old uh uh uh guy who was out in England and and every Sunday he would go out and he'd go fishing, right? And one day he sees this funeral procession go by and they go up the shore and they they do the service at the little church and afterwards, you know, at the the priest comes out and he calls the fisherman and he said, "I saw that you stood up in your boat as the funeral procession went by." And I just thought that was so touching and I just want to come out and say thank you. And the the guy said, "Well, that's the least I could do. I was married to her for 50 years."

Lance, I have two more quick things before I go. Has anyone ever told you you look like James Cameron, the film director? You look like James Cameron. No, I have not gotten James Cameron. Without Without the beard, I used to get Steve Martin. No, but don't you with the beard? You look like James. You know who James Cameron is? Everybody does obviously, unfortunately, Avatars. Yeah, exactly. Lance, where before I leave, where the gold plates at? It's gold plates that he found. Where are they? Were they? He's real Irish, bro. They were They were taken back by Moroni. Moroni. I'm sorry. I heard Andrew there. Macaroni. Uh, they were returned to Moroni uh for safekeeping and they will eventually be restored and brought back. Wait, wait, hold on. Where's Moroni? Is that is Moroni on another planet or something? He's He's a Well, I mean, he's a resurrected being. So, I mean, where are any resurrected beings? Somewhere in heaven, I don't say collab and all that stuff. No, but are you guys familiar? Oh, right. Wait, hold on. Scientology also has cosmic characters and stuff. Are you like Scientology? We're not Zenu. Yeah, we don't believe in Zenu and that they brought the spirits uh from there and dropped them into the volcano. But you believe in [ __ ] How is [ __ ] different? How is [ __ ] different than some dude in Scientology? Do you not believe in any of the arch archangels? What about the angels? There's there's archangels in in the Bible and and we talk about angelic visitors, but is Moroni mentioned in the Old Testament or the Bible? No. No, he's not. He's in the Book of Mormon. So So is he some new angel that was just created by Joseph Smith? Well, if you want to go that you really want to find out who he is, go read the Book of Mormon. I'll tell you that and it'll explain who he is. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, thanks for having me on, Sarah. Lance, thank God. Thank you for. You can come back, Lance. I appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Oh, I love how he tells you you can come back to my show. Come back. That's just how he rolls. You're always welcome, Lance. Uh, nil nil Canil nil dragon with the big five. LDS says they can become a god. God has always been or he wouldn't be God. How can changing dependent beings become an independent, unchanged beings? Uh, it's it's a bit that that's a bit of a misnomer. We believe that we can become like our heavenly father. Now, what that means uh that that's a little bit up in the air, but as far as anybody who is a loving, caring father, you want your children to grow up and be happy and healthy and be with you and and surpass you. Why wouldn't a loving heavenly father want us to be like him and and become him and receive his glory to whatever degree that means? We were after all made in God's image. There you go. We're also made in God's image. Male and female. That's fair. Uh, sacrament show says with the big five. Great job. Andrew was direct and convincing as usual. I thought I thought he did a pretty good job of of controlling the debate. I I feel like I I didn't uh grab my side nearly as much as I should have. Well, and your defense experience and he's quite good at it. So, yeah, he he's pivoting from an a an orthodox a like secular point of view. You're pivoting from a central LS point of view. You don't have as much free range to r to to like wander linguistically as he does. Well, that's al but again, I mean, I give Andrew a lot of credit because he's been doing this for a while and and that's fine. I I mean, I didn't want to come in and one of the first things and Sarah can tell you this. I tried to reach out and say, "Hey, can we come up with a definition of what a prophet is beforehand?" And and we didn't. And that's and that's fine. Um, but ultimately, I I think that some of the things that we we talked about like again, I I wasn't able to go on the affirmative of why I believe Joseph Smith is a prophet and and Andrew, you know, look, he if I give him a list of 15, 16 things or healings or whatever, he's going to go, yeah, yeah, I but, you know, I'll dismiss those. It's like, okay, fine. But why why wouldn't we dismiss the miracles that happened in the Old Testament? Well, because they're what I believe. I get it. We all have our own point of view. You haven't convinced a single Orthodox, but Okay. I understand the Mormon perspective. Do you think anybody Do you think anybody that's LDS that listens to this is going to be converted to Orthodox? Absolutely not. YouTube doesn't a lot of debates. You're going for the people in between. There aren't a lot of people on the LDS and Orthodox is like the two choices there for. I was going to say it would be the people that are looking and asking the questions and want to know what they should be doing. Agnostics who are looking at multiple sides, they they watch this and they're like, "Let me let me ask you guys something." What I want Yeah. I I want an opinion on this then. Um, who is more effective between Andrew and I in inviting people to investigate their beliefs? I haven't heard a single LDS argument that is more effective on this channel at all. No, that's not what he asked. He asked who was more effective in inviting um followup and and researching and looking into. So you were the only one who did do that, but Andrew was also much more effective at doing the inverse. Okay, going back to showing an issue with the other person's belief or making the other person but but going to his question undermined more so I I would say Andrew's role that he plays uh very well is to shut down everybody else's arguments and therefore his is the only one standing that that has logical background behind it. Right. He also has an excellent sharp voice. Going to his Yeah, I got to start smoking so I can get a cool voice too. Is that all it is? The cool activating Andrew. I would say there there are some people out there that take the more welcoming approach. You know, come have a sit and talk to me. We'll talk through, you know, any questions you have or discussion so on and so forth. There's nothing wrong with that stance. I think it's a very welcoming and uh humbling stance to take, right? Oh god, please be careful with your [ __ ] You're you're making noise, dude. I'm so sorry I did that. Um, and then uh best case is to mute when you're not talking. Uh, especially if you're on a phone. Um, so there's other people, oh my god, there's other people, there's other people, however, who are a more proactive stance that go out and and create the results that they want to see. That would be what I would say Andrew's position uh in all of his debates usually is is I'm going to come destroy your worldview and therefore when people watch this they may not necessarily take your side in that moment but at least it has them wondering why the logic isn't sound. You know, there's there's a tidbit more to the way Andrew functions, and it's something I don't even think he's aware that he does. He does exactly what you said, but he also at the same time while he's doing that takes pot shots at the foundational points of whatever it is that you're that you're standing on. If you've got a square, he's looking for the very critical foundational points beneath the argument you've already made to take out the basis of the argument before he actually has to take on the actual discussion. And and to be able to think that way and I think unusually myself, but that method of thought is something I have not been able to cater to. I can't make it happen in my head. And I see it happening and other people are like, "That's genius. Why can't I do that?" So basically what he's what he's saying is that Andrew or not Andrew, most people like to argue on the surface level. Why is this bad? Because of this. Why why do we do this? Because of that. Andrew likes to deep dive to the very very bottom of that argument and say anything else you say forward from here is going to be crap because I'm going to throw you completely off of that foundation. So anything that comes from that foundation doesn't hold anything. It's not, you know, a candle in the wind. Well, and even that though is a fallacy, you know, a a logical fallacy because just because one thing is wrong doesn't necessarily mean everything else is wrong. But it is derived from it. It is. Sure. I mean, it's not wrong, it's just like poorly reasoned at that point. And he's your position's just not uh on good foundation. And that's the argument he's trying to make there. He's not making the argument, well, you're false. Well, the entire problem with any time like, okay, the the last one, whether you argue, you know, what was it? The the God is evil or God is good or God exists or whatever. Whenever you're talking about religion though, you're always going to have a level of faith. You have to because otherwise you're an atheist or you're a a scientist and believe that science is the religion and there's nothing beyond it. You never met anyone who runs TAG, have you? Anyone who what? You've never met someone who runs the transcendental argument, have you? They don't have faith. Every other view is just impossible. That and and you know, again, if if that's what they want to go through, so be it. I personally um I don't think it's possible to prove that that Joseph Smith is a prophet any more than you can prove Jesus Christ is the savior for anybody else. Those are things you have to come to an understanding for yourself. But I also don't say, "Hey, just trust me. You guys should be listening to me. What did I just say to to you know the last guy?" I said, "Go read the Book of Mormon. You want to find out? Go read it." That's always been the argument of the LDS community is you shouldn't be taking this stuff because anybody else said it. You should. That's an interesting read. Yeah, there is the issue when you focused a lot on just like trying to draw people in when Andrew is trying to kick at well, your position seems very unlikely. You have to suspend disbelief in terms of like, I forget the argument. It was the scroll, the power things like that. He's undermining that part. And if you're not reaching back over and undermining his at that moment as well, he's just getting the upper hand there. You're not playing. And he's really good at making whatever he concedes as minimally like it looks minimal as possible, even a few times. And that's where with the papyrus, I tried to say, "Look, how do we know that the here's the chain of custody?" And he said, "We do." Well, how? Because we do. Well, and I tried to, you know, because I don't want to come back and be like, dude, why do you keep cir? That's not kind of how I am. I'm like, but you know, this is what the w your witnesses are unreliable. Why are my witnesses unreliable, but yours aren't? No, you got really close with that one, especially there's a there's a phrase that we use where people who argue against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and our beliefs, especially Christians, they argue like atheists because when atheists tell us that Christ isn't real because the resurrection, blah blah blah, or Christ couldn't have made water into wine, whatever, their faith becomes limited, the Christian argument becomes limited, and faith becomes limited and and logical and based in evidence and and physical touch and all these other things. Um, the moment you introduce uh Joseph Smith and the golden plates and and the angel Moroni, even Sprickoli was his name, like Moses was a prophet, but Jesus wasn't. It it becomes an argument of of an atheist because it's limited to what. Yeah. And and that wasn't addressed and and I think that that's where it could have it could have been um advantageous for you, but I know that's not your debate style and um that's not necessarily what your strategy. Hey Cor, did you get your point across? You were asking for. No, I I haven't had a chance to yet. Give it a shot, bro. Okay. I want one funny argument against Lance right now because he brought up a funny argument. Now, you brought up Pascal's wager, so I'm going to run Pascal's mugging on you. Okay. Okay. Pascal's mugging. Okay. Have you ever heard of it? No. Okay. So, I'm an interdimensional space-time traveler. I have. Have you seen Naruto? I know. I know. I thought it was Naruto, but Naruto, I have access to Itachi's char. I can put you in the infinite som. I knew the title. That was it. I'm gonna put Sarah in a torture machine for one divided by whatever percentage you think that I could be a time traveler that has this possibility now times 1,000 years. So you're expecting on your belief it would always average out to expecting a thousand years of torture for Sarah. And I'm going to do that to her if you don't drop an F-bomb for us right now. It doubles always the lesser of two evils. Me saying [ __ ] to save Sarah from being from being tortured. All the sins in the world. That's all I wanted to get. Okay, buddy. Uh, and Jimboicious who is on panel says with the big five, I didn't want to be offensive, but also macaroni. I was laughing pretty hard. No, I I wasn't offended by it. I just thought it was funny that he was of the position. Oh, I don't want to be mean, but you know, macaroni. All right, question. Let me get through. Yeah, just a few more. Uh, Evan Lord says, "A question from Mr. O'Neal. Have you heard of the Zoros Zoroastrians?" Thank you. Holy texts that were recorded in gold the in gold plates. Some were rediscovered in Persepolis in Iran. Uh, yeah, there's actually lots of recorded history throughout the world of things kind of repeating itself. You also have lots of stories from pagan stories of virgin births. You have things of resurrected beings. Um, so when you're talking about, you know, the truth as as we were saying, squatch to like help Mormonism though. Well, whether it helps or not, there's things that that happen through history that repeat themselves. And so, yeah, it look at what just happened in like Peru. They found some metal ball that had some weird things on it. And they were going, "Where's this metal working come from?" Did I see that and go, "Oh my gosh, my faith in my faith in the in in Joseph Smith and the golden plates just went up because they have this metal that shouldn't have be." No, it doesn't. None of that really matters all that much. But you were making an argument. Which which argument was I making just now? Like literally just now when I mentioned it. No, no, no. That's not what I was saying about Zoroastrianism though. I was saying that throughout the history of the world there have been there's been crossover. So people do things. And if if the Zoroastrians were writing on tablets, that doesn't mean to me that Joseph that makes the golden plates any more valuable or any less valuable. It means the Zoroastrians also used a writing form that was helped. I well, I don't think it matters here. I think the point here is is it possible that the Zestrian golden tablets and the Joseph golden tablets might have a throughput of relationship? Not so much that they were just similar things. I don't think so. I wouldn't think if that's if that's the implication. I I don't know. I doubt it. Um, I I would say no simply because uh there wouldn't have been any real interaction between Lehi and his family with Zoroastrians before they left uh Jerusalem before the and then headed to my question. Um, yeah, all right. The Latter-day Saints concept and and and the the idea that after the the resurrection, Jesus went on to lay further ministries. Does does this discount him possibly have laid other ministries in other nations? No. He said of I have other sheep sheep of other folds. So if he So if he went and he was in the Americas and then he went personally personal belief, I think he went wherever the 12 lost tribes were too or the 10 lost tribes. I don't know where the 10 tribes are though. But I mean we have more from them. Nasqua hat. There is a weird tinfoil hat theory out there. That Christ was Confucius and Buddha and Christ. Yeah. And went on to be other people, Heramazda, various other variations. The whole concept there is that there was a singular holy being that represented the trinity and that different peoples interpreted him differently, but the message remains the same throughout. Generally, it's the general premises of morality, right? I mean, that pretty much anyone can agree with, you know, don't hurt your neighbor, don't murder, don't cheat, don't steal. The the basic stuff, you know, sorry about the last question. Let me ask you something that goes along with that. U because I personally believe and a lot of LDS believe that the framers of the constitution were inspired by God to make this country and and write the constitution the way it was. Does that mean that that Thomas Jefferson was the same as the Buddha or is it that the good ideas that come from God come from God and there similarity? They were deists, which is slightly different from your classical Christian. They're they're not. Yeah, it's okay. I'm not I'm not saying they were saying this is the religion we wanted. They very specifically wrote it. So there was not a national religion. And in fact, when people talk about separation of church and state, they get it fast backwards because it was to protect the church from the state, not the other way around like today. I don't I don't Yeah, I don't completely disagree with that. Sorry. But it goes historically. That's what it was. This the state needs protection from the church because when you have such a it did this. Nope. At that point in time, you had the church of you had the Protestants. Over here, there was a whole bunch of them, but none of them had any major power. U except what happened in the 13 had a had a state religion. There you go. They all had their own. Yeah. But they all had their own religion. So you had Massachusetts was the Puritans. Rhode Island had their own switch off. Uh, the Quakers were in Pennsylvania. Maryland is named after Mary for the Catholic Church, the Mary the Queen of Spain or whatever it was. All of these are Christian. Okay. Everything you've named so far is typically, you know, Christian, whether Orthodox or Protestant or Lutheran or whatever. Not a lot of Muslims were in America at that time. They were called Muslims back then. If not had a major Christian movement that took place, it could feasibly threaten the government without the separation of church and state because the majority of the law-making bodies were Christian at that point in time. The fact that they were different sects kind of goes by the by the fact that the founders were theists, deists, they they believed in a god but not necessarily in any of the particular faiths in particular. This this is important when it comes to the founding fathers because a lot of Benjamin Franklin's writings and stuff was the debating of what the future of this experiment would look like. And if you included religion in that mix, it would dilute the effect of the government in general because it has to be able to account for all of the various beliefs in God. Thomas Jefferson was very No, no, no, no, no. Thomas Jefferson was very he didn't understand if he was a Christian or not. He's very right. They they had multiple meetings where they didn't understand what they were talking about. What I mean is didn't understand their faith at all. But there's a lot of what ifs meaning if one church if one church had come up and been able to consolidate power. It wasn't the consideration. It wasn't one church. It was the concept of Christianity in general. If if ever a discrepancy came up where all the Christians, regardless of sect, decided, hey, they're they're going against this, we need to do something. They wanted protections in place to prevent the church, any of them, anyone or groups or any of that. Are you saying church is an official body or members of those churches? They they were they were members of many different churches and sects like they were all but the separation of church and state was Jefferson writing a a letter to the friends of the Baptist. Yeah. No, I understand what he was he was actually writing to the Muslims. No, it was he was writing to the Muslims right quick. I'll be right back. I'll bet you I'll bet you I'll bet you five cents on that one. Nope. It was to it was to one of the Christian churches. Dude, I'm No. No. No, no, I don't treat history. But he was writing to the churches in regard to the Muslims. Oh, about separation of the church and state. Yes. Yes, he was writing in regard to the Muslims to the churches. I I'd have to I'd have to look that up. I know he was writing to them as a protection. He was writing to the churches, but it was in regard to the Muslims in the time. Okay. I I'd have to I'd have to do some research on that. So, that's fine. That's fine. Uh Speedy Lee with the big five asks, "Another question for any Mormons on panel. Do you see any influence on your religion from masonry?" Uh, so that's an that's a really interesting one. Um, Joseph Smith after he had uh established church and everything, he got invited in to be a Mason and he went in and basically got promoted to like 37th level Mason, which was higher than anybody else in the in the lodge because he knew more about masonry than they did. And he that was the first time in the temple. Part of that is because when you're talking about any religion that has some truth, it can be corrupted. And so Joseph Smith looked at that and said, "Yeah, the Masons have a lot of this. It's been corrupted, but they have some of the stuff that that is right in line with what it's if it hadn't been corrupted, they they'd have a lot more truth than they did." So, I don't know how you would say influence one way or the other. Um, I think Joseph Smith and the early church founders would say that the the Masons had some of the truth that had been lost and and that's why there were some similarities. Fair enough. Um, and then Evan also followed up to say, "My autism makes me see patterns between uh, sorestranistrianism." Zoroastrianism. I try so hard. The Z one, the Z word. Uh, and LDS where they are none. If I was a truth skitso, I would claim Orura Maz Mazda faked being God. I think he faked being a Honda. Aurora Mazda. Aurora Mazda. You guys are going to let that perfectly good car joke go right through. And not even a not even a cursory giggle. But disappointed. Do you know the joke behind Honda? The Chaplain joke. Okay. All right. I'll let it go. And then uh Kurt Taylor says with the Big 10, "I think it's more important to be an example than to invite." And I think both Lance and Andrew did an excellent job of being great examples tonight. I appreciate that. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, that was the last one for me. So yeah, I I I thought uh Andrew's opening the first like couple sentences where he was hopeful that we found truth in orthodoxy. I I genuinely took that as sincere. We we get that a lot from Christians where they're like, I hope you find the truth, but it's super condescending and rude. And he actually came off very sincere. So I took that for what it was. I found Lyn right as well, the same way. Nice. Good. Well, I try to be condescending. So, if I didn't come off that way, then that's fault. Uh, Qard's doing this to me just to make me say the word again. I saw that. Just to make me say it again. Let's see if I can do it. Qard with a big five. If you threw a follower of Zorastrianism. That was very close. Very close. That was good. That was good. out a window. Would it be superfluous case of defenestration? That was good. No, Zoroastronism. Very good. I I've always heard it superfluous. So, I could be wrong though. Super. Super. H. Caribbean. Caribbean. Bunch of weirdos. Anyway, let's get I'm in Georgia. It's fine. Oh, where in Georgia are? I'm I'm in Augusta. Oh, I'm Sandersville. Just a little bit east of military. I'm Baton Rouge, you weirdos. Come on. Baton Rugie. [Laughter] I'm I'm the only true Mormon here in Utah, aren't I? No. I grew up I grew up in Salt Lake. I'm from Salt Lake originally. Okay. I drive all over. I'm a hot shot driver. So So Jimbo, you said you're in Utah. What part? Sure am. Oh, I I don't docs. There's obsc going on here. Come on. Can you say what? Wait, wait, wait. I went to Skyline. How about that? What school did you go to? Good night. I didn't I did not grow up here, but good night. Saying all sorts of stuff. Obviously, I can break my I'm a nice person. If somebody wants to dox me, I I mean, they're going to I don't have a family, homie. I'm still positive I you a PX and think you're not a true YouTuber until you've been doxed that I'm not okay with whether you do it yourself by accident or someone else does it for you. It is an inevitable byproduct of being what we refer to as a personality. And there's a lot of dude said he was MI but some obssec issues. Well, yeah, but I'm not telling you how many command, you know, how many troops we're sending into Iran next week. Good night. Why not? Yeah, dude. I know I met you, dude. I know I met you, bro. I knew it. And PX San Antonio, I'm I'm giving you guys 15 more minutes and then we're going to bed. Oh, we don't need 15. Let's pull the You're tired. I I'm tired. Let's Let's go like five at most. Who stole my lighter? Well, did anyone else have any other questions for Lance comments? Got one and and I'll I'll bow out completely after that question never got answered, but I'll wait. Go ahead. No, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Okay. So, you you mentioned uh basically the general concept of Christian heaven and then predition which are layers of of I guess holiness between earth and heavens so to speak. But even the lowest level of predition is far greater than earth is. That was the celestial, terrestrial, and telestial worlds. Not not paradise and predition. I'm speaking from a completely, you know, Southern Baptist reason here like um, yeah. Okay. So, everyone gets an opportunity to hear all the gospels when they reach whatever level of uh what you call tur tr before that. what when they're in paradise or predition, that's when they're going to have the chance to hear the full the full gospel. And then what depending on what they accept and where they're comfortable, that's where they'll go. One of the three and that is for every soul ever born since and before. That's pre-ter, right? Excellent. Thank you. No, that was easy. I like I was comparing this to some to to other conversations I've had very similar to this with okay, you know, so sure my questions were similar. I mean, I was still questioning about the Wiccan like how you felt about it. But Oh well, but okay, so as a chaplain, it doesn't really matter what I feel about it. Um, okay, yeah. And so I think with that, well, I will say this though, even Wiccan has some some truth in it. Like there are some things that I'm sure have some some real. One of one of the things people misunderstand about Wiccan is that it's mostly nature. Like the whole thing is. No, I I've been there for many of these ceremonies in within the military. Yeah. Yeah. So like I look at that and go, look, if the if what you're teaching is we're supposed to be good stewards of the planet, I can dig that. I'm down with that. But I guess my question like as a Christian, like sorry, do you feel it's okay like to officiate any of it? Well, you're separating me as a chaplain versus a Christian. I wouldn't do it on my own time, but I'm getting paid by the army. Yeah. No, I I don't disagree, but I He's also not officiating. He he's not allowed to officiate outside of uh what we call non-denominational or evangelical and services. So you can't officiate at all. So he might be there. He might. You're just giving counsel to people. You're just giving counsel. I'm I'm giving support. Yeah. So like I would never go in and run a Catholic mass and I wouldn't want a Catholic priest ever running an LDS church. But But has that happened? Because I think it has. No. No, you're very restricted. Which part? Not not in a mass in the way you're saying it. Like we're not authorized to to do. I guarantee you right now any LDS chaplain who tried to run a Catholic mass would lose their endorsement and any Catholic that on post that let that happen would be in serious trouble. Like command teams would lose garrison chaplain command teams would be losing their positions. Is this army exclusive or military service? This is military. Yeah, this is. Would it matter in foxholes? Like in foxholes? I I've seen weird stuff in a military and I'm in the military. Sasquatch makes a good question though. So if if I'm doing a field service and because I'm not LDS service, what I'm doing is a Christian service, then I'm doing a Christian service and I'm inviting everybody in and I'm trying to be respectful of other people. So I'm probably not going to be. Because I'm Christian. That that's the thing. If if people say, "Well, you're LDS, you're not Christian." I disagree with you. So can I do a non-denominational Christian service? Absolutely. But I can't do a denomination. You're on You're on the field like it's it's happening. Yeah. Yeah. I've I've done plenty of fields. Sure. Sure. Hey, I need to talk to you. Not forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, right? We don't use We don't use. I see what both of you were saying. I see what both of you are saying. Okay, I get it. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. Sorry. I'm I'm not trying to speak for for Lance over there. I I'm also in the core and so that's why I'm. No, I was in the Navy and the Sorry, the chaplain corps. I was in a house. James, you were in the chaplain core. I am currently a candidate. Oh, good for you. National Guard? Yep. National Guard right now? Yep. Oh, awesome. Good for you. I'd give you an endorsement, but wouldn't uh it wouldn't give any support because I'm just I already got the one I needed, but I appreciate it, man. No, that's cool, dude. That's cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Uh, Chaplains saved me personally. Good. So, yeah. Captain Core is wrecking me since they're super bored. Let's uh Well, I'm trying to see how long Grid was going to go. I want to rage you guys over there. And they've got maybe they might be going for another 20 minutes, but I'm sure he will push his raid on even further. So, we'll just play. What does raid mean? I seriously do not know any of this stuff. That means I'm setting my channel up to where when I close mine out, it will automatically send my people straight to another uh channel's live stream. You need a Sasquatch, sir. Loser. Uh, we have we have about almost 600 people watching and I got to send them somewhere. Uh, 500. There's 600 people watching this. If I don't have people follow me on Twitter at Chaplain O'Neal, then you all fail and this is worthless because I've made zero money off this. YouTube. No. And again, Tup Tup save the world on Sunday nights. Hey, I hope whoever's watching this come check us. We do politics. We we are arrogant enough to realize that we are just two random dudes, but we we tried to uh I'm following you because you're a chaplain in the army that's pissed off. 100%. I mightard has a good point here. Actually, we were probably I think uh between everything we were probably closer to 6,000 watching all actually Andrew's Rumble would have probably gone so there's probably another 2,000 over there. So yeah, you probably had like seven seven or more thousand people watching. I was even closer to eight, but I'm just guessing. Yeah, actually I didn't even include I didn't even include the Twitter either. Uh, so there's I know that one was running, the Instagram was running like all the I mean right now we're at 558 live viewers just here. Um, also almost two in the morning. So, yeah, Andrew shut down his uh stream uh a little while back and so some of the Crucible crew came back over here to continue watching. So, whoever x anonymous, I wouldn't follow you, you heretic. You've lost your mind to think I would. Okay, dude. Don't. That's fine. That's a hilarious comment, though. Hate harder. Hate harder, bro. That's all I can tell you. Just going to complain about it on the internet. You made me laugh. I appre I appreciate it. You made me laugh. So that's that's good. Let's do um closing statements from everyone. Uh, Jim Balicious, would you like to give uh brief final thoughts? Sure. Yeah. Uh, I I think the definition of uh of a prophet that Andrew gave was pretty good with the preparing the way for Christ. And we we definitely believe that's true and we agree. And that's why we look at the fruits. And if you ever do look at the Book of Mormon, you take some minutes outside of [ __ ] sorry, Mormon, excuse me, Moroni 10 3-5 and reading that, read Moroni 7 because it talks about following Christ and and that's how you know if something's good or not. And so preparing the way for Christ is exactly what Joseph Smith did. He wants all of us to follow Christ because that's how we're redeemed. Um, so yeah, give it give it a shot and uh be sincere because if you're not, you're not gonna you're going to find what you're you're looking for. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Culpercast to you. I'm sorry for the camera and audio incidents. Lance, Jude, I I don't know if I met you or not. However, thank you for being a chaplain and talking through all the nonsense with people. No hard feelings. I'm not a Mormon, but you're a pretty cool dude. Other than that, I got nothing to say. Perfect. Thank you. A Sasquatch. I'm Caucasian Sasquatch on YouTube. I interview individuals on YouTube about YouTube, about their channel. I don't go anywhere outside of it. You can bring your own links if you want to. We generally sit around and have some pretty good time afterwards. Whether I decide to shoot shots or not is totally debatable. Uh, yeah, I do shows for other creators. I'm working with Captain Kajin tomorrow. Uh, Ajot when she's available on Tuesdays, Samuel the Infamous on Saturdays, uh, later today. As a matter of fact, almost all of these take place around 8:00 p.m. Eastern. And you can catch me on my channel and everyone else's cuz I am everywhere. He really is. He really is. And he has the keys to most streamers uh Streamyards, too. Uh, and Lance to you. Well, I think somebody's poking in to get the dog, so I don't need to worry about the dog going going to the bathroom. Hey, I I just appreciate you guys all. Uh, I know that, you know, LDS is is something that is not right for everybody and that's that's fine. Uh, I'm I would never judge anybody and but I would say this. If you're looking for something in your life and you need something to stabilize, I hope you find it. I hope you find that you're able to uh stabilize and and find some people that are able to build you up and lift you up. And if you ever I I don't mean this out of just saying it. I have had random people that I've reached out to. I have a very close friend who's going through some real medical stuff. I met him on Twitter and he became a really good friend because I just was a voice, an ear that that listened to him. So if you ever want to have me on and talk to me or you want to reach out to me, you certainly can. Um, and I hope that uh Sarah invites me back for something other than a religious discussion. So, it's a little more fiery because I want to break out the Irish accent again. But, uh, if if if anybody, hey, you want you want to discuss something with me, I'm more than happy to do so online or offline. Uh, but Sarah, I really do appreciate and and thank you for um letting me come on because uh for me, this was getting called up to the big leagues. I look at somebody like Andrew and go, that dude's a heavy hitter. And even even if I lost and even if I got smoked. Hey, you know what? Rookies get smoked sometimes. And and I hope that ultimately I just kind of held my own and people appreciate that I I came in and at least tried. I I hope I won for trying. You did good. And I'm coming. Participation, Jessie. Oh, the downfall of Western society. The We should have We should have that as a prompt. Our participation trophies, the downfall of American society. I will be the affirmative on that one. I will I will not even moderate that and I will take the affirmative stance with you and fight that fight to the death. Oh, let's find some young to do that. Oh, they don't even know what that is. They don't even know what they they just automatically know this. What do you mean participation? I got this for playing good. I wrote my name at the top of the paper and still passed. That's what they're getting. All right, all of you Maiders out there in Mater Nation, thank you so kindly for uh joining us this evening. I know this was a long awaited debate and uh I believe there's some more that are still on the list. The question is just trying to get the freaking scheduling down. That's always the issue. It's always in the way. Uh, I I can tell you right now it is never my fault. That's why hurting cats. It is hurting cats. I push and I push for calendars and they don't always come to me. So, it's usually me sitting there waiting like this, twiddling my thumb saying, "Can I have the calendar, please? Thank you." So, um, but thank you so much for all of your patience, especially to you, Lance, and all of the other fellow debaters on the the LDS side of things. I know a lot of them are just waiting as well. Um, please feel free to like, subscribe, share, no matter which side you're watching from or or what you believe in, so on and so forth. We're all still here to support each other. And or Sunday night, we have a mod Monday on a Sunday evening. I'm taking Monday off. We're going to do Mod Monday Sunday night. It worked out for everybody's calendars. And so that's what we're going to do. And that is is uh the existence of God knowable. Uh, also, we will have the open panel dumpster fire post that event. So you guys know the drill. Outside of that, go say hi to Grid. I'm raiding over to an unreasonable man. Uh, send tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. Let them know you're freaking coming. Outside of that, guys, I love you. [ __ ] off. [Music] [Music] Captain's log, June 2nd, 2836. After 27 years of war between the Djenk Cougars and the Saintthood Slayers, a new hope arises. As the battlefield lay weaponized, locked and loaded for destruction. Negotiations for a peace treaty are in transition. The moderator has arrived at station 42. Can this war be ended? Will the cummers and slayers find a middle ground? Abort mission. I repeat, abort mission. Negotiation failure. Abort mission. Heat [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] up here. [Music] Control Yash heavy booty 6 plus low orbit over grid 152. No joy Yash. Then go to your window and look up their biggest tracking asteroid. Copy Yashen. Still blind. Got some kind of systemwide crash in the defense. They're on track right goddamn now cuz we got Boku inbound and they're not carrying FL. We've won Yashin. We don't have FL. Heat. [Music] Heat.