Keith Erekson Fireside, Jan 12, 2025 Far West Missouri Stake

So, just a little behind-the-scenes, several months ago, Elder Martinez came to preside at our state conference and mentioned that he, uh, oversees, is that correct, the Church History Department. And, uh, referenced a, a good man sitting up here on the stand with us and said, "Brother Erikson loves to come and do firesides and answer tough questions." And President Fowles' ears perked up and said, "We'd like to do that." And so, next time you see President Fowles, you can say, "Thank you, President, for making this experience possible."

Let's talk about the format for this evening. Uh, requests were sent out, so listening questions from you and throughout the stake. And we received a handful of questions that, uh, President Erikson has reviewed. The impression that I get in my brief interactions with Brother Erikson is that nothing surprises him. And so, we look forward to being taught by him through the Spirit this evening. Uh, he will take some time to answer pre-submitted questions. And as he indicated, there is enough within these pre-submitted questions to last all night, but you'd probably like to get home at some point. And so, this fireside will go until 8:00. At some point, we do intend to do open mic, uh, question and answer, uh, towards the end.

Following the fireside, uh, we want to thank the stake Relief Society presidency for preparing some yummy refreshments. And so, those curtains will open in the back, and we will enjoy some refreshments. And Brother Erikson will stick around to continue to answer questions that you may have.

Who is Brother Erikson? Keith Erikson is an author, teacher, and public historian who has published on topics such as politics, hoaxes, Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, and Church history. He grew up in Baltimore, served a mission in Brazil, and earned advanced degrees in history and business. He works for the Church History Department in efforts to encourage outreach and historical engagement.

At this time, we are pleased to turn the time to Brother Keith Erikson of the Church History Department.

Thank you, Brother Erikson. Good evening. It is so nice to see those of you who are here and those of you who are on Zoom. I thank you for, uh, spending time, uh, with us together tonight. I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ, and I don't know anything that He taught more frequently than some version of, "Ask, seek, knock, learn of me, draw near unto me." Jesus is literally begging His disciples to be curious and and seek. And so, that's what brings us together here. Thank you for sending, uh, he understated a handful of questions. It was like a whole stack. We've got a, uh, several reams of paper. They printed them all out, uh, but I've got them on my iPad, so, uh, that's what I'll, uh, use.

So, um, I just wanted to say one more thing by way of introduction. In real life, I'm a dad. I have four daughters. And this is a historical photo. The oldest is married, the the baby is 15, and I have, uh, two at university. So that's what I do, uh, in, in most of my time. I also hasten to say that, uh, I'm an employee of the Church. My name is not Elder. My name is not President. Uh, I have no keys. Well, actually, uh, one of my callings is as the ward organist, so I do have a key to the building, which may be the most important key of the Kingdom because that's the one everybody, uh, wants. So, uh, so you can call me Brother Erikson, or Keith, or Dr. Erikson. I, I, all of those fit.

I've worked for the Church for 10 years. Before I worked for the Church, I was a history professor at the University of Texas. Uh, and so, uh, that's what, uh, what I, uh, what brings me here, I guess.

The Church History Department is one of several departments in the Church's organization. Uh, the Church is kind of like the Federal government in that the department is the biggest container. So, if you think of the Federal government, there's the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security. Those are the big ones. And then inside, there are lots of little functions. It's not like a school where the department is the tiny little thing, the department of history or the department of home economics or whatever. So, the department is the big thing. And the Church has several big departments: the Missionary Department, the Family History Department, and Church History, uh, is one of those departments. And we do four main functions.

One of them is to keep the records of the Church. These are not genealogy records like censuses and things, but they're the records about the Church itself. So, Joseph Smith journals, the minutes of the First Presidency, patriarchal blessings, the records that the Church creates. Uh, the Church also keeps. Ten years ago, when I came to work for the Church, I was responsible for all of the record keeping. We store records in more than two dozen places around the world. Uh, and so that was what I did for day-to-day work.

The second major function that we do in the History Department is manage the art collection. Uh, we have an art museum and an artifacts, uh, in Salt Lake City. There's another one in New Zealand, uh, and so art that shows up in, uh, Church manuals and things like that are, are part of the things that we gather. They're part of the expression of being a Latter-day Saint in that experience.

So, uh, the third thing that we do, and I, I know that many of you are familiar with this one because of where we are, is we manage the historic sites. Uh, and so, places, uh, all over the country and all over the world. Some of them we mark with a plaque or a monument. Uh, some of them, like the Liberty Jail, have, uh, you know, a structure and missionaries who, who serve as, uh, hosts and greet people. People and so, uh, uh, this group has been very busy. About a year ago now, uh, a little less, we acquired the Kirtland Temple and several properties in Nauvoo, and so we've been keeping the historic site team, uh, busy.

The, the fourth function that we have in the Church History Department is a publishing group. Uh, and so we have people who do the research and write to write things like the Saints volumes. Uh, for volume history of the Church, we just released volume four, October, and we're glad that we made it. That was a lot of work. The First Presidency asked us to do that in 2008, just to give you a little sense of how long it takes to research and write, uh, four volumes. Uh, we also published the Joseph Smith Papers and, and the other kinds of things on the web and in the Gospel Library app. So, those are the main functions that we do.

My specific role now, uh, I stopped being in charge of the, the record keeping, and now I'm responsible for work that we call Outreach and Partnership work. So, sometimes you might find me training missionaries. Sometimes I just visit regular old members like this guy. I can't remember his name. Oh, yeah, uh, it's Taylor's boyfriend's coach, I think. Uh, my dad grew up in Kansas City. He's been a Kansas City Chiefs fan for decades, long before they even ever won things. Uh, some of you may remember those, uh, times. And so, I actually, uh, was, uh, speaking with Coach Reid at an event, and I took this picture for and gave it to my dad for his birthday present. He thought that was like the coolest thing, uh, ever. It didn't matter anything else I'd ever done. That was that, that was it. The, the best thing I've ever accomplished.

So, um, all right, well, um, so that's a little bit about, um, me, what I do in that kind of outreach work. I do spend time, uh, answering questions, and I spent a lot of time thinking about what is an answer. And as I've turned to the scriptures, it's, it turns out that when it talks about answers, it talks about things like light and warmth. And light in Alma 32, when you plant the seed and it sprouts, you don't just get a little Mother's Day plant that's going to die. You get light. That's what, uh, He promises. And, and then that light will grow brighter and brighter until it becomes a perfect day.

And so, in practice, I found that there are six parts of an answer. And, uh, if you don't get all of these parts, you walk away feeling like something's missing. You walk away feeling like, uh, you didn't hear it all. And a lot of times, people get upset because they've focused on one part of an answer, and then it still doesn't satisfy them because there's more, uh, to the whole answer. And so, tonight, I hope you'll hear me, uh, and I hope the Spirit will help communicate to you, uh, all of the parts of the answers that you seek.

And so, yes, we'll be talking about, uh, information. Oh, that's an interesting word on the slide. Antagonist. That should say errors. That's an error. Uh, that, that will illustrate. One of the things that happens, uh, today in the information age, you go and find information, and it's filled with errors, uh, created by antagonists sometimes, but other times just by people, uh, who don't know what they're talking about. And so, we need thinking skills. We need to be able to evaluate the information that we encounter. It's not just enough to say, "I have information." I need to know what to do with it. All of that needs to be rooted in our discipleship of Jesus Christ. We started there. Jesus wants you to use your brain, but He also wants the, the rest of you, your heart, might, mind, and strength, all of it. He's not in the "gwiz" business of just throwing out little factoids for you to share at a party. When you learn things through the Lord's way of learning, He expects you to do things like clean the Church or shovel the sidewalk or do your ministering assignments, whatever it is. Uh, He wants you to follow Him and build His kingdom.

Another important part of an answer is that it will come through the, the Spirit of the Lord. That is the channel for an answer. And, uh, we need to be better at knowing how it works. President Nelson has been teaching this over and over. His first address at General Conference was about personal revelation, and he's repeated, uh, they've got an emphasis on "Hear Him." Every Apostle, uh, made a video about how they hear Him. They are trying to tell us to be better at hearing the Spirit.

And finally, there's always a personal part of a question. We don't often reveal it, but there's a reason why some subject floating in the universe really caught my attention or really bothers me as a person. And so, all of these are things to think about, uh, when we, when we talk about an answer.

Now, I, uh, I want to talk about one error in particular, uh, because it's a common one, and we're actually going to see it, uh, as I read through the questions. I hope you will let me point out things. Uh, here's some good information. I'm going to point out some errors. When Jesus encountered errors, He didn't make a big deal about it. He just said, "Ye do err," and then they corrected it and moved on. And that's what we'll do. But if you, if you worry about an error for years and years, you're never going to get anywhere. And so, uh, like a splinter or a sliver, we're just going to pull it out. We'll say, "That's an error," and then we'll move on. And so, uh, but I wanted in to start with one very common one. And, uh, it begins, I, we can start with this story in the New Testament. There were lots of people in the New Testament who wanted to trap Jesus. They wanted to trick Him. And here's a story from Matthew 22. They come to Him and they said, "Tell us, what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?" Isn't this a great trap? You got, you got Jesus totally trapped right here, because if He says yes, you're supposed to pay your taxes, you say, "Well, you're not an inspired religious person. You're just somebody working for the government to make us pay our taxes." If Jesus says no, don't pay your taxes, then you call the police and say, "Hey, arrest this guy. He's saying to break the law." It's the perfect trap. And Jesus perceived their wickedness and said, "Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?" So, do you perceive what Jesus perceived? It's the way the question is asked. "Do I give tribute to Caesar or not?" It's this really rigid either-or. Do I do this or that? That is a wonderful way to trap people. Uh, and it turns out.

So, if we think about things as these opposites, this or that, either this or that, there's a, a term for that. It's a binary. Binary means this or that. And so, uh, it turns out we use these, uh, in American culture. They're part of Western civilization. They go back to the Greeks, the Romans. We see them in the New Testament. Uh, this way of organizing the world into two buckets, and one we put everything that's good and true, and every, and then in the other one, we put everything else that's evil and terrible. And that's how we go around looking at the world. And we encounter something, we say, "Oh, what bucket does it go in?" Okay, it goes in this one. Uh, and then I take care of it. All right.

I'm not going to say that binaries are bad, because that would be a binary. You got that. What I want to say is, binaries can be helpful sometimes, and not times. One of the best things binaries are good for is keeping little humans alive. Every one of you is here because some old person told you, "Do not run in front of a moving car," and you didn't, and you're alive. And that's what they're, they're very good for that. We create powerful computer code with binaries.

Now, here's where they become harmful. They become harmful when they limit our choices. So, let's say I've got a million dollars stacked up behind me, and I say to you, "Do you want $1 or $2?" Do you see how I've just limited your choices? You're going to say, "Well, what about the million behind?" No, no, one or two. That's your choice. And so, it becomes a way to trap you, to limit you, to distract you from a million dollars, by the way, I am, uh, presenting it. And so these binaries will stack on top of each other. Then all the things that are in the same bucket start to go together. But then it gets confusing because what if the opposites are male or female? Which one goes in a good bucket? I can tell you the answer in American culture. My daughters feel it every time they apply for a job, and they get paid less for the exact same job as the man who works next to them.

Binaries also increase contention. A little "us versus them." All the stuff in the good bucket is, is, uh, is us. So, what if the choices are my church or other churches? Then I put, put my church in the good bucket, and every other church in the evil bucket. And that's just a terrible way to be a neighbor. It's a terrible way to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. It's a terrible way to be a missionary. You can't let that be the way you organize the world because it oversimplifies the reality. There are many wonderful disciples of Jesus Christ in all kinds of faiths who study His word and try to be like Him. And so, the binary will distract us, and then it, it will invite other deceptions, and it will harm our growth. So, we want to avoid this.

Now, in a, Jesus taught us how to do it, thankfully. That's what we have. So, in this, uh, the second bullet on the screen here is the story where He, where we started. When they said, "Do you pay your taxes or not?" You remember what He did? He said, "Bring me a coin. Whose face is on it?" "Render the things that belong to God to God, the things unto Caesar that are Caesar's." Here's another time. They brought to Jesus a woman who was taken in the very act of adultery, and they said to Him, "Do we kill her or not?" Now, there's a hidden binary in there. Did you see it? Where's the man? You can't commit adultery by yourself. The man went free in this one because that's their first binary. And then the second trap is they're asking Him. And remember His answer? His answer was, "We're not going to do either one of those. We're not going to kill her, and we're not going to let her go." He said, "Go and sin no more." And so, that time, He gave an answer that was kind of in the middle range. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" was kind of a both answer. That one's a false choice. And we do this all the time. Are you saved by grace or by works? Yes. Should you learn by study or by faith? Yes. Every time, every minute we waste debating those questions, we're just wasting our lives because it's both.

Sometimes the answer is both. And one of the earliest times in the history of the Church when people turned away from Jesus was in the early 1830s when He revealed to Joseph Smith that after you die, it's not just heaven and hell, it's both of those and kingdoms of glory. People turned and said, "No, I believe I can't do it. That's too much. That's too crazy." When Heber C. Kimball went on a mission to England, Joseph Smith pulled him aside and said, "Hey, Heber, don't lead with that vision. Lead with the first principles of the gospel and then build up to that one." Because He knew that that just, that blindness that people had just shattered them. And, uh, one of the things the scriptures talk about is people's minds becoming blinded. And this is one of the ways that happens, that this cultural tool, a binary, becomes a blinder that blocks me from seeing all of the things that God has to reveal. Uh, and so these are different strategies. Sometimes we'll find a middle point of both, of both.

A few years ago, Elder D. Todd Christofferson, it's like 20 years ago, you got to be old to remember this, gave a talk at General Conference where he said, "Every decision we face is not a life or death, salvation or damnation. We need to learn how to think about good, better, and best." And that's the name of the talk. You can search for it. Elder Oaks, "Good, Better, Best." And He's, He's talking to a bunch of binary-minded Latter-day Saints in American and world culture and saying, "That's not the way that Jesus thinks." Okay.

So, in American culture, this elevates one more level. Basically, every question we take up in America, we frame around a culture war script. Doesn't matter what it is. Could be the environment, uh, could be, "Should I mow my lawn?" It could, I don't know. But you're going to fight about it. In American culture, that's the way we do it. And so, there are two sides. There are only two sides. And if you're a cable news host, you say, "We're going to hear from both sides," and then you'll pretend you're not a charlatan because you're just, you're hiding all of the other stuff. But we imagine that we're evenly divided. My side is right, yours is wrong. You're basically not even humans, and only one team can win. It's a, and it's a zero-sum game. If I give anything to you, you, uh, it's over.

So, uh, this spurs emotional and reactionary responses. It mobilizes people. Yeah, they want your money, your vote. Politicians do this. Advertisers do this, right? "Only buy this brand of cell phone," and all the other stuff that goes with it. "Do not buy something else." This hardens into an identity, and, uh, and it frames everything as contentious. If only Jesus had a messenger on the Earth who could help us with this. Oh, wait a minute. That's President Nelson, who's teaching us to be peacemakers and not to get sucked into the extreme polarization and the contention. He's taught us that our identity is not based on politics or where you live or what your job is, but we're children of God, children of the covenant, disciples of Jesus Christ.

So, uh, one spin-off of our culture war script, uh, one of the little tools in this debate here, uh, is a conspiracy theory. And, uh, there are conspiracies in history. I taught history, I'm a history professor. There are lots of them. A conspiracy, and it's defined by law in different jurisdictions, a conspiracy is when more than one people or groups do two things: one, they intend to act together, and then they do that action, and it causes harm. That's the third part. Now, here, one of the most famous conspiracies, uh, was the conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln. The plan was to murder three government officials that night. Do you remember who the other two that were murdered? Yeah, they weren't murdered because one of them chickened out and didn't even go, and then the other one showed up and chickened out and just shot his gun in the air and pretended like he shot it. And so, only John Wilkes Booth went through with it and shot Abraham Lincoln. So, this shows us one of the important things about conspiracies: there's always a centrifugal force pulling them apart. People agree to work for together, they think it's okay, but the forces of human nature are always pulling them apart.

A conspiracy theory, by contrast, is the idea that the whole world is organized against you, that everything is being controlled by, I don't know, the Illuminati or the Danites or the Correlation Department, make up whatever your conspiracy theory is. And they're just nonsense. They're not that level of a theory is not built on evidence. Here's what it appeals to: it appeals to fear. Somebody bad is trying to get you. And it appeals to pride. I'm going to tell you a secret thing that somebody else doesn't know. That's what's leading you on: fear and pride, not evidence. All right.

So, one of you, I'll, I'll go the first question on the list. I've kind of, they came in in some, I guess, temporal order as fast as people typed them, and I rearranged them to hopefully, uh, take us through, uh, in a process. But here's one, and I'll just read it: "What's the most surprising thing you've learned in studying Church history?" I told you I moved from Texas to Salt Lake City 10 years ago. I was just a little guy. I grew up in Maryland, so I moved to the headquarters. And the, honestly, the most surprising thing I have encountered is the fact that so many Latter-day Saints can't tell politics and the culture war apart from their religion. It's all blurred and blended. So, let me tell you a story that illustrates this. I love stories. I was in, got called, I'm in the ward council. I've been in the ward, I don't know, just a couple of months. And it's back in the olden days when they have High Priest group leaders. You remember those old guys? And so, we go to the meeting, and the bishop says, "Hey, High Priest group leader, you have the spiritual thought for for ward council." You could see in his eyes that he had no idea that he had the spiritual thought. He was totally unprepared. All right. So, we have the prayer, and then he starts, he, he starts in. He says, "Well, it wasn't totally prepared, but, uh, I can't remember which General Authority said it, but..." and he starts in on a quote. And I'm listening to this, and I think, "There is no way that a General Authority said that." It just doesn't even match our doctrine, our scriptures, nothing. And so, I had my iPad, and so I stopped listening to him and I started searching, and it took me two seconds. The exact thing he was saying appeared was the feature story on a cable news program on Friday night, Saturday, the day before our ward council. That story was reposted on several blogs that were affiliated with that cable news program, and by Sunday morning, it was a General Authority. And he couldn't remember who said it. Now, I won't tell you, uh, what program he was watching. All I'll say is that from Friday to Saturday, false doctrine crept into our ward as slightly as a fox.

So, one of the things that happens as these ideas creep in without us knowing about them is, uh, another question that you didn't ask, but I'm going to offer this one because it's a very common one that I get. People will say, "Oh, you work for Church History. We've heard of you guys. You hide stuff. You hide the Church's history. It's your job to make sure people don't know it." I say, "Yeah, you're right. That is totally, uh, what I do." This is another little conspiracy theory angle, right? And so, uh, people are always encountering things from Church history they didn't know, and then they get upset. They're like, "Why? Why didn't I know that?" And, uh, sometimes people have taught that thing before, and then once you teach, you, you get kind of invested in it. Maybe you got on a fight with someone about it on your mission with your mission companion, and for years you've known you were right and your companion was an idiot. Uh, and so when we encounter things that we didn't know, in the kind of conspiracy culture war model, the mindset is to think, "Well, the only way I could know that is if someone was hiding it from me, because clearly I know everything, isn't I?" I mean, you can hear the, the hubris in there, right?

Uh, here's another example from the Messenger. God called on the Earth today. Few years ago, at General Conference, President Nelson got up and he said, "I have been studying the Gathering of Israel for 40 years," and he had all the footnotes. You, you go back. He's been talking about the Gathering and Abrahamic Covenant since the 1980s. And then he said, "Imagine my surprise when I was studying with some Jewish scholars and I learned another meaning for the word Israel: 'Let God prevail.'" You remember this talk? And he talked about it. But you notice how he said it? He didn't say, "I can't believe the Jews have been hiding this from me all this time." He stood up in front of the entire world and he said, "I'm 90-something," because a few years ago, back when he was a baby, in the 90s, he said, "I'm 90-something years old. I am the President of the Church, and I didn't know something." That's the model. If I don't know something, if only there was a word for "I don't know a thing," and then "now I know it." Oh, someone was hiding? No, no. Learn. That's the word. That's the word He learned, and He told us. He modeled that. Uh, we can learn.

So, I have read through all of the questions. I've prayed about them, pondered about them. Some of you, uh, really want to be heard. I hope you will feel heard tonight. Some of you feel embattled. There are people around you, uh, saying things that sound crazy or you don't understand or are challenging. Uh, and, uh, and so, however you have come here tonight, I hope that the Spirit of the Lord will be with you and and bring you the answers and the support that you need. I hope that you, that it will enliven your understanding. Uh, I hope we can learn together. That's one of the things that happens.

So, we've been friends now for like half an hour, so I think I can trust you. I want to show you where we hide stuff. We have come up with a place where we know if we put things about our history, members of the Church will never find it. And so, it's called The Gospel Library app. So, I mean, every time I open the app, it's all like all these notifications of new content. I'm like, "I don't care. I just need the hymn. I'm just looking for the hymn. I don't want all of those." But if you go in there, on the main part, you click Church History, you go in, right at the top of the Saints volumes, then you scroll down a little, you'll see the things that are there. And so, tonight, we'll talk a lot about two things that I want to call out right now.

One of them, you'll see the little painting of John the Baptist ordaining Joseph and Oliver. That's Church History Topics. If you select that one, there's like 280 essays in there that we have written with the Saints volumes on basically every topic, and it's alphabetical, A to Z. Uh, and so lots of stuff there. Right next to it, you'll see one called Gospel Topics Essays. Uh, and so the, the Church History Topics, I'm not the guy who names these. They're kind of names are kind of confusing. I go by the pictures. So, the John the Baptist one, they're shorter. They're like four or five paragraphs on on hundreds of topics. The little Nauvoo Temple at Sunset one, they're longer, and there are less of them. There's only 13, but they're like 10,000 words long, and they have like a hundred footnotes, and they have everything, uh, that we know about a thing.

So, right as I was setting up my computer, I got a question about the Mountain Meadows Massacre because one of the streaming platforms, uh, just released a show this week. So, the answer about the show is easy. The producers themselves call it fiction, and that's what it is. And it's, uh, it's pretty bad fiction. But you can watch it. You can download them all. The streamers are going to keep streaming stuff because Mormon stuff sells, if, if you haven't noticed. Uh, and so there's always going to be something there. But the question behind it is, well, this was about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. So, if you go in the John the Baptist one, there is a little brief summary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Yes, uh, about 20 Latter-day Saints in 1857 murdered 120 people from Arkansas. Uh, it was done in cold blood. There is no justification. They will stand before God to be held accountable for the sin of murder. There's nothing we can say, uh, about that. Now, some of the rumors around it were that Brigham Young authorized it or ordered it. That's false. Here's the way it played out: the people were in Cedar City. They got together and had a stake council. I've been to a couple of stake council meetings. Sometimes they're boring. This one was kind of interesting. They were trying to decide what to do about the people, and they talked through in the council meeting. The council says, "Don't do anything. Let them pass." Well, people leave that council and say, "We don't like the answer of the council. We're going to go do something." And so, yes, they're Latter-day Saints. Here's a spoiler alert: there's like millions of Latter-day Saints on the earth tonight, and some of them commit crimes. There are prisons in Utah filled with them. When I lived in Texas, uh, we had the state prison in our ward boundaries, and Latter-day Saints get shipped there. There is nothing in our teachings that say you become a Church member, you don't commit crimes. Uh, so, yes, uh, it's a terrible thing that happened, but no, uh, it's not representative of the Church or organized by the Church or perpetrated by the Church.

Now, to show these work together, so the one of the Church History Topics is short. It'll show you, it'll give you the, the facts and information about Mountain Meadows. And in the Gospel Topics Essays, there's a longer one called "Peace and Violence Among the Latter-day Saints." So, it answers the bigger questions. Uh, yes, there are times when Latter-day Saints commit crimes and violence, but what's the big story? Are, are we a people of peace? Uh, and so that's kind of how, uh, they will go together.

Okay, well, uh, here, let's, uh, let's get into some questions. I think it would be really good to put certain Doctrine and Covenants sections with certain points in the Saints series that it correlates to. Make both Saints and the D&C more powerful. Great idea. Now, I, I don't know who asked these, so I'll just have to, I'll give two answers. One is, there's a TV show out there produced by people called Saints, or Stories of Saints, or something. If that's the thing you're talking about, I can't help you because that's outside people, and they do their own thing. But if you're talking about the four volumes of history that we wrote called Saints, I'm going to tell you another hiding place.

So, on the screen here, right at the top, you see one called Historical Resources. That is, uh, the whole title is called "Historical Resources for Follow Me." It's brand new this year. And as you go through the Come Follow Me readings, so this week you are reading Section One of the Doctrine and Covenants, the historical resources are organized in the same way, parallel to all of the Come Follow Me lessons. And so, you click on the one for Doctrine or Covenants One, and right in there, it tells, it takes you exactly to the points in Saints where we talk about Section One of the Doctrine and Covenants. It'll also take you exactly to the point in the Joseph Smith Papers where the original text of that revelation is, and it'll take you to other essays about William McLellin and other characters, uh, involved. So, Historical Resources. Another thing we're hiding right there.

Okay. Another question: "What's the Church's position on the Shroud of Turin?" Thank you. We have no position. We're too busy building the kingdom. We don't have a position on everything. Uh, the Church doesn't have a position. If some little people have a relic and they think it's magical, great. We're preparing the world for Jesus to return, not for some bed clothes. So, that's, uh, there's that.

All right, let's have fun with this one. I want to share this one in love, but we're going to play with this one a little today. "We occasionally hear some older members saying the Church is going soft. That back in their day, the doctrine was stronger, clearer, expectations were higher. Is there evidence of past generations feeling the same way? What are some other periods in Church history when middle-aged and older members may have felt the true Church had left them behind and was accommodating the world or failing to stay true to its Divine charge?"

All right, I got, I've got two parts of this answer. One part is just me as a historian. You, you could have heard this in my classroom in Texas. The other part is about, uh, the history of God's people over the last 200 years. So, the first part is, it was way back in the 1900s when marketing people invented the idea of carving out generations to sell different stuff to them. And the biggest time that they did this was in the 1960s, and the people who did it first and best were car manufacturers. I started my career in auto manufacturing in Baltimore and Brazil, uh, but in the 1960s, the advertising pitch was, "You do not want to ride an ugly old car like your dad." And so, they started making cars with fins and radios. Your dad's car didn't have a radio in it, but your car can. And so, that was the first in American culture, kind of widespread effort to pit, uh, one generation against another. So, that happens in American culture. We've talked about why culture is a bad guide. So, let's come back to the history of the people of God. Uh, that doesn't really help us to pit one generation against another. The scriptures talk about the rising generations. And a lot of Americans, because of our culture, we just assume this is a marketing term. But I don't know that it has to be, right? Because if you're not one of the rising generations, maybe you're one of the following generations. I don't know that's not a great option. Uh, maybe, maybe it's the people who are preparing to rise up to meet the Savior. Uh, I like that one.

But if you look at the history, it actually goes the opposite way that this question frames it. We have the, the children of Israel, freed from slavery in Egypt, and the older generation's not good enough. They sin, they fail, they can't go to the promised land. They all die, and the next generation go. Even Moses is not worthy enough to go into the promised land of that generation. In early Latter-day Saint history, uh, the Word of Wisdom is given. When Brigham Young is President, the Church, uh, they try really hard, but people don't follow it. And because, frankly, all the people are addicted to it. They were addicted to it long before the 1830s. And so, during Brigham Young's presidency, they basically say, "Well, let's stop really teaching it to the old people, and we'll teach to the rising generations. They're not addicted yet. Let's teach them to do this." And so, the first people for whom, uh, living the Word of Wisdom was a requirement for a temple recommend were full-time missionaries, young people, 19, 18, 20-year-olds, as they go out in the field. Uh, and so that happened in 1918, and then it was in the 1920s when it became a requirement for every Church member. Few years ago, they raised the bar on missionaries. So, anyway, that narrative doesn't work. If anything, it's the other way around. And the direction is, uh, we're not in a Church that's trying to stay true to what we did in 1830. That's a fundamentalist strain that runs through our culture. This isn't the Church of 1830. This is the Church of the Living Christ. He's alive. He is guiding President Nelson right now. That's so, so that kind of framework that says, "Oh, in the good old days, it was true, and now we're soft," is the, is the backwards framework. It's an ongoing restoration. That's the exciting part.

Okay, now, now it's going to get real. I'm going to read this whole thing. "Is there a place in the Church for members who are faithful to their covenants but are now discovering through extensive research of the scriptures, the Joseph Smith Papers, prayer, that polygamy is not ever commanded by God, that Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma fought polygamy, and Brigham Young and others like Heber Kimball, Willard Richards altered the narrative after Joseph was murdered to fit with what they were doing? Or do these individuals need to be flushed out, punished, and excommunicated for their beliefs?"

Okay, that's how it was typed up, right? For us. Did you hear that? Did you hear the really strong either-or? Talking about somebody else's sex life. Where have we seen this before? Now, I want to answer this question the same way the Savior did when He was faced with this identical scenario. The question puts two extremes: one is, "I know the truth. Brigham and Heber and Willard made this up. They changed it. It's full of lies. They put it on Joseph and Hyrum." Or, "Do I get excommunicated?" You hear, you hear that's the way they're framing it. The answer is neither of those extremes. The answer, neither of those extremes aligns with historical sources or scripture, and so they're just wrong. Now, are you going to be kicked out of the Church? No. That, I told you, I'm just a guy. Talk to your stake president if you, if that's what you're worried about. But what I want to do is talk about the details about plural marriage. There are dozens of questions in this pile about plural marriage. That was one that kind of framed it. But, uh, so we're going to avoid the extremes. We're going to find that middle ground. Being misled to think the things that you wrote about Joseph, uh, that's not a sin. But you have been misled. And so, humility is really hard. I know we've talked about that. It's so much easier to say, "I discovered this thing on a website," and I, that's a, that's appealing to your pride. It's appealing to your fear. It's really hard in American culture. And so, I plead with you. I plead with the Spirit of the Lord that it will help you, uh, to think through this.

Okay, so here's the first, uh, there's a dozen, uh, well, there's four all the same ones, but so I'll just read one. Basically, the same idea. "With all the recent controversy on social media regarding plural marriage, what evidence is there that Joseph Smith practiced it, especially since he publicly denied he did?"

Okay, this is a good question because it was asking about evidence. What evidence is there for plural marriage? And it talks about a denial. So, the information that I'll share is cited. If you go to the Gospel Topics Essays, the little Nauvoo Temple one, there's one in there called "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo." That's when Joseph is living in Kirtland and Nauvoo. And so, you can find the sources there.

So, uh, let's talk a little bit about evidence in history because it works differently than other disciplines. So, if we, if we were to get into a debate tonight about, uh, how many stomachs does the cow have, we'll argue about it, and we'll form sides, uh, by around the different numbers, and then how we'll solve it is we'll just cut one open and count, and then we'll have a barbecue to celebrate that we learned stuff. So, to learn about history does not work that way. If someone says to you, "Abraham Lincoln was a racist," you can't cut him open. Mainly because he's surrounded by 15 feet of concrete, but even if you did, what, what's the racist part? How do you do that? So, we have to think about evidence in a different way in history. Evidence is always limited. The past is gone. Those people are dead. We, I would love to ask them all kinds of things. All we have are little pieces that are left over. So, historical evidence, one error that people make is they find one little piece and they say, "See, here was the whole past." And humility tells us, I've got one piece. And so, historians, we like to find lots of pieces. That's what gives us confidence, and we put the pieces together.

So, the evidence for Joseph Smith practicing plural marriage in Nauvoo, uh, that we have three sources direct from Joseph Smith. One, there's an entry in his journal that records a marriage. I should also say this, maybe before we say we get that specific, when we talk about historical evidence, there's some kind of rules of thumb that we use. One of them is, we like it if it comes, we like it more if it comes from people closer to the action rather than farther away. Somebody said, "I was there, I did it." That's better than somebody saying, "I heard them all say something." So, we like it, the, the people, uh, closer. We also like it better if it's closer in time. So, if you go home and write in your journal tonight, we like that better than if you wrote it 50 years from now saying, "I remember this meeting." Uh, and so, so, so I'm going to start with evidence that is close to the person, Joseph himself, and close to the time, from the 1840s. So, we have three sources directly from Joseph. One is his journal where he records a marriage. Two of them are revelations that get written down. And so, one of them we have in the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 132. Another one was an instruction to, uh, one of the men about how to perform a sealing. That one's in the Joseph Smith Papers.

So, now, if we, Joseph, when he dies, there are a little more than a hundred people participating in plural marriage. So, we don't just have to look at Joseph. We can look at all of those people. Uh, there are 100 people in Nauvoo. Not all of them kept records. Not everybody does, but several of them did. Heber C. Kimball is one whose journal says the most about it right from that time in Nauvoo. That's digitized. You can read it online in the Church History catalog. It's just catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org. That's all of our historical, uh, holdings are there. Another journal in Nauvoo, written right then in the 1840s, with a lot of information, was by a, a convert to the Church from England who moved to Nauvoo and became one of Joseph Smith's scribes. His name is, um, William Clayton. And there's a, I don't have it here. It's later on the list. Somebody asked when his journal will be published. Uh, we are publishing it the same way that we did the Joseph Smith Papers, with all of the annotations and that information. We just signed the contract with the Yale University Press and we've handed off the materials. So, we're in, that might be late 2025, maybe early 2026, but that's where we are in the publishing process. So, that's another journal. Uh, and so we also have, uh, some newspaper references and some other references. So, when you look at the historical record of people in Nauvoo who were

Practicing plural marriage and wrote about it in the 1840s while they were practicing it. We have that information. We have a lot more sources that come later. The Latter-day Saints move to the West, they announce plural marriage publicly, and then they start talking about it a whole lot more. They publish things in newspapers, they write reminiscences, poetry, journals, pamphlets, uh, for 40 years. And so, uh, so we have a mountain of evidence about plural marriage. And we also have evidence, uh, right from Nauvoo. So I hope you can, you can feel confident, and you can search those in the Gospel Topic Essays. There's evidence from Nauvoo. Yes, Joseph practiced plural marriage. Now, do you have to like that he did? No, that's not required. But you can't just say, "No, there's no evidence." That doesn't exist. Um, so, um, okay.

Now, another part of this question was, since he publicly denied that he did this, is one of the things we talk about, uh, in the essay. But let's talk about it in detail right here. So there are about a half a dozen sources that are published in Nauvoo. Uh, and some, one is by Joseph, well, one is Joseph in his sermon, that's actually minutes in his journal. But he and Hyrum published one in a newspaper. Hyrum publishes another one, uh, the year before. There's a group of women and a group of men. So we've got about half a dozen of these, uh, denials. Now, here's what you need to do as, uh, as a good historian, as a good disciple of Jesus Christ. Let me, I'll start with the bad way to do it. The bad way to do it is to just take a couple of words that you want to make your point, pluck them out, and then throw them at people and say, "See, here's this." Let me show you how to do it. Uh, we already talked about the vision of the kingdoms of glory, right? Uh, one of the things it says there that the Celestial Kingdom is for, and here's the whole phrase, "just men who are made perfect, uh, in, in the, in the blood of the Savior." Now, I could just take those words, "just men," and say, "The Celestial Kingdom is for just men." Do you see how I did that? One of my favorite little memes says, "I can do all things," with the verse taken out of context. And so, um, so when we look at these denials, what we need to do is read the whole thing in context. So let me show you what to read for. Every one of them refers to a specific other false teaching about sex. So here's a little backstory, quick as possible. There's a guy in Nauvoo, he's in the First Presidency, he commits sins, uh, he seduces women, rapes them. His name is John C. Bennett. He's excommunicated, then he gets angry, and he starts going out publishing and saying the Mormons have invented a thing called spiritual wifery. And John C. Bennett gives all, he gives all the details. It's an expose. And so he says, "This is how spiritual wifery works. Anybody who wants can have sex. If you get pregnant, there's no problem, you just have an abortion, and, uh, you get free food if you do it." That's spiritual wifery that John C. Bennett is talking about. So now, when you go and read the denials, read them, uh, and George A. Smith was later an Apostle, a young man in Nauvoo, uh, he said, "Anybody who reads these can see that they were carefully worded denials." So what does he mean by carefully worded? What they say is, "We do not teach John C. Bennett's spiritual wifery. He made that up, and we don't do that." And John C. Bennett did make that up, and they don't do that. Plural marriage was not, anybody who wants to do whatever they want. Plural marriage was a, a priesthood ordinance, uh, and it had responsibilities and obligations, uh, and so it was a different thing. So you see what they're saying. So the, the person who says, "Lookie, lookie, I found this word, 'deny,' and Joseph is the author," your answer is, "Thanks for taking 'deny' out of context. Please, you need to read the full text of the statement, and then you need to understand what's going on." Another one, there's a guy in Wisconsin who says that, uh, whatever priesthood you get, you can get as many wives as you want, uh, and so Joseph and Hyrum published the denial saying, "We are not preaching what this guy in Wisconsin is preaching." And so, um, so there we go with some evidence.

All right, so now let's go to the next question here. What was the purpose of polygamy? I was raised to believe it was to procreate and help the imbalance of women to men. Okay, let's stop there. That's wrong. We have census data. We know how many men and women there were. There were actually slightly more men in Latter-day Saint, uh, communities. So I think people tell that one because it feels like a friendly way to talk about me, but it's just wrong. So don't say that one. There's not an imbalance. Uh, okay, keeping going. So, uh, now the church says, "Many of the marriages were only spiritual and not physical." Who got it wrong? Got that great binary in there, right? You, we're sharpening our elbows. So let's just go to the, the, the real question. What is the purpose of polygamy? I like to think about this question in, uh, kind of like a bullseye or a target. There's right at the center, and then there's a, a little ring around it. Right at the center is scripture. So let's ask the question that way. What scripture gives a purpose, states a purpose for plural marriage? If you go through all the scriptures, there is only one. Okay, the Old Testament tells stories. These people took a different wife and, and had children and whatever. Tells the stories. There's not a single verse in the Old Testament that gives a reason, a statement. The one is in the Book of Mormon. It's in Jacob chapter 2. This is another wonderful verse to take things out of context. So we need to, we need to read the whole thing. And, and, uh, in the 21st century, we hate reading the whole thing. We want to scroll fast, click like, move on. So we got to pause, stop scrolling, and pay attention here. In, uh, Jacob chapter 2, this, he's giving a sermon, and it's kind of long, and he's a little nervous. Nephi has just died. He's the new leader. It's his first big address, and he has to address some major sins. Uh, the people were committing whoredoms, and they were trying to justify it by saying, "Oh yeah, all those people in Old Testament times had wives and concubines, so we can too." So over several verses in Jacob chapter 2, from like verse 22 to like 35, you got to read all of those. But Jacob starts in, and he says, uh, "Those are whoredoms. That is wrong. Uh, I, the Lord, delight in the chastity of women." The law of chastity is right in there. Then it says, uh, "Marriage is to be between a man and a woman, and, uh, man should have one wife, uh, no concubines." Jacob says. Then it gets to a phrase that I'm, that, uh, is touched on here, says, "Nevertheless, and Jacob is presenting this in the first person, word of the Lord, if I will raise up seed unto myself, I will command my people, otherwise." Okay, so we've got this kind of a couple of ideas connected into, into there. When we were writing the Saints history, volume one, we're just people, historian people. We tried to synthesize that whole long passage into this sentence: "Monogamy is the rule, plurality is the exception." And that's the way we wrote it. We gave it to the First Presidency in the Quorum of the Twelve. They said, "Yes, that's the way to say it," and that's the way Jacob says it. A man and a wife, uh, they should be married. That's the rule. Live the law of chastity. Nevertheless, there was an exception in Jacob chapter 2. Okay, now, if you actually try and read all of Section 132, it's structured the same way. You can't just dive in and find little quotes from Section 132 that you like or hate, because they're all there. But, um, you have to read the, the whole thing. So, and but Section 132 follows that same arc. It begins with Joseph asking a question, "What the heck's going on with wives and concubines?" Whatever. Joseph asked the question. The answer is what matters. And so the answer is, the first like 18 verses is the Lord talking about, he doesn't use this word because it's a modern word, but I'll use our modern word because you're all modern people, you're not 1840s people. Civil marriage. That's the word. You, and it has, it says, you know, what if contracts, bonds, blah, vigle, all these legal terms, that's what they're saying. They're talking about a civil marriage. Whatever you do to organize yourself that ends when you die. That's the first 18 verses. Then it gets to verse, the next, uh, like 19 and into the 20s. It says, makes a contrast. There's a different marriage, an eternal marriage. And it gives a whole, all in that whole passage, uh, do people have to be righteous? It has to be sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise. It has to be undertaken with proper authority. Uh, then eternal marriage, and we're not talking about plural marriage yet. We haven't seen that word. Eternal marriage between a man and woman is the contrast to civil marriage. So the first 25 verses of Section 132 are saying, whatever you do with civil authority ends. Whatever you do with my authority survives. That's the first thing that Section 132 does. That's one of the teachings that we as Latter-day Saints share most frequently. It's one of the things that brings us comfort and peace and solace, that our family will, will be perpetuated beyond the grave. Beautiful teachings in the first 25 verses. Then you get into the 30s. It says, "Okay, so there's this guy Abraham." And then it talks, in the 30s verses, it talks about plural marriage, and it talks about Abraham, uh, and then here's what it says. It says, "It was counted unto Abraham for righteousness." Okay, that is not a ringing endorsement. If I try and go to heaven and, and tell the Lord, "I took care of my wife and children," I don't want him to say, "Yeah, we'll count that." So we've got the same arc. The eternal marriage is the ideal. It's the, it's the standard. It's the pattern. And that one counted, that one worked. It was an exception. So, so Jacob has the same framework. Section 132 has the frame, same framework. And that's the way we tried to write it. Monogamy is the rule, plurality is the exception. So, um, back to this. Right at the center of the bullseye, we have only one scripture that gives a reason, uh, to raise up seed. And now, now this question used the word "procreate," which I will say, because I got the microphone, is a little different than "raise up seed." We talked about raising a rising generation a little bit earlier. Uh, it isn't just a baby factory that God is after with plural. It's raising a people, uh, and so that's what they, uh, do. Okay, so that's the bullseye. No, oh, let's, let's, uh, name another one that's not there that doesn't have a scripture. We say this all the time in Latter-day Saint culture, and there's no scripture for it. It's actually contrary to scripture. So let's talk about it. The, the, the idea is, well, why did we do it? It was part of the restoration of all things. Have you heard that? Have you said that? Uh, it's okay if you said it, you're wrong. But, but we're humble together tonight. So here's, here's why. Was everything from the Old Testament restored? Do we not eat pigs? Do we not eat shellfish? Do we stone people who break the Sabbath? Boy, I hope not, especially if the Chiefs were in the Super Bowl on a certain Sunday. So we have hardened this idea that the restoration of all things meant every single thing had to come back, and it didn't. It's been selective. So that's not enough. That's context. It's in the air. There's a restoration, things are coming back. But having a restoration, that's the, that's the faulty leap that says plural marriage had to come back because it happened back then. It came back because, as the Lord says through Jacob, and Jacob chapter 2, "Nevertheless, if I will raise up seed unto myself, I will command my people, otherwise." And so he commanded otherwise for about 40 years. Uh, and so if you look at the history of the world, I don't even have all the data. So let's just look at the Latter-day Saints. If you count all the dead ones since 1830, they're about 26 million Latter-day Saints. They're not all on the earth now, obviously, but we, we're going to talk about all of them, 26 million of them. How many practiced plural marriage? A couple thousand in those first years. So do you see the same pattern here? Monogamy is the rule. 25.9, uh, whatever, I can't do math on the fly, you know, a lot of million Latter-day Saints didn't. And then, yeah, there's an exception for a time, uh, where it happened. Okay, so now we get into some specifics. What was the purpose? Oh, no, wait. I gotta, I, I got ahead of myself. We're just kicking out one idea that's not in the bullseye. So we've only got one there. We've got Jacob chapter 2. So let me go to the next layer. Uh, the next layer is there were a couple thousand people who practiced plural marriage, and they had to make sense of it. They had to wrap their heads around it. They had to be willing to do it, and then they had to figure out what that meant, uh, over the course of their life as they did that. They turned to God, they prayed, they fasted, they wrestled, they, they sought for inspiration and guidance and help. Uh, it's hard. Plural marriage was hard. Uh, there are very, very few people who are like, "Oh, yay, plural marriage." Uh, it was hard. Living in a, a marriage is hard, and it was difficult. And so they went to God for help, and many of those wrote stories about what happened. And three themes emerge. So this isn't the bullseye, this isn't scripture, but these are devoted Saints trying to do God's will, and, uh, one theme emerges is obedience. They would say, "Well, I felt like it was what I was supposed to do, and so I would obey." Second theme was sacrifice. They would say things like, "Well, God always asks his people to do difficult things, to sacrifice, to do things they don't want to do." They frequently, they would refer to Job and Abraham, but not the Abraham and Hagar story, the Abraham, uh, sacrificing Isaac story. And Latter-day Saints would say, "That's what I felt like when I was approached with plural marriage. I felt like I was being asked to sacrifice the most difficult thing that I could imagine." A third theme that emerges is the theme of personal witness. They walk away saying, "I got an answer from God, and yeah, it was hard, but I knew that it was what I was supposed to do." Uh, and so, uh, those are some themes around the edge that we could put, uh, with that bullseye in the center.

Okay, uh, what was the purpose? We'll stay a purpose here of Joseph Smith marrying women who were already married? Where is this taught in scripture? That had to be restored. All right, so we are kind of ignore the second half of the question because that's a false one. There isn't, uh, everything has to be restored. So, but let's go to this one. Uh, so let's start with data. Yes, Joseph Smith was sealed to 12 women who were previously married, and at the time of their sealing, Joseph continued to be married to other men. Uh, and so, um, none of these left us an explanation of why. So this is one of those places where we say, "That was one of the pieces of the past I wish survived." We've got evidence, uh, from these women, uh, but not evidence of why. So a couple of patterns emerge. So we're going to talk about specific people and general patterns, and I don't have a link between them. But here, here are some patterns. One pattern that we find in early plural marriage is families wanting to be connected to each other. Now, this is different than the way Latter-day Saints think about sealing today for one very good reason. We changed how we do sealing in April 1894. Did you know that? We hid it in the Church History Topics. There's one called Sealing. Wilford Woodruff is president of the church. He gets up in General Conference and says, "All right, we've been doing sealing not the way the Lord wants it. Here's how we're going to do it." We're going to seal a person to their parents, their grandparents, their children, and we're going to create a chain of the human family back to Adam and Eve. And you're sitting there saying, "Wait, that's what, that's what sealing is?" But so what were they doing before 1894? Well, it turns out they were doing a lot of things and different things. And so part of what happened in 1894 was saying, "This is how, how the Lord wants sealing to work." So Wilford Woodruff doesn't use these words, but I'm going to use again 21st century words because I think they help us. If, if we talk about Wilford Woodruff's great chain of the human family, let's call that vertical. Me to my parents, to my grandparents, and my children. I've got a vertical chain. He didn't call that, but I am. So then what's happening before 1894? I'm going to call horizontal because it's going to help us think about it. They, they, if we go back and say, "Joseph and the people in Nauvoo, you weren't thinking about sealing the same way I do." That's correct. They weren't. So how are they thinking about it? One of the ways is they're thinking about it horizontally. They're thinking about how do I be connected to the people that I know? Now, this isn't, uh, plural marriage, but it's another temple ordinance, baptism for the dead. When that began in Nauvoo, in the Mississippi River, in 1841, you couldn't be baptized for somebody you didn't know. You had to give up proof, uh, this person was dead, and then you also had to say to the, to the witness, "I knew this person in life, and they were a good person, and they just died right before the restoration came, and if they were still alive, I'm convinced they would have accepted it." And so the first temple work was for, they would, if they time-traveled now and found some of you in the genealogy library tracking people down from 800 years ago, they'd be like, "What on earth are you thinking? You're supposed to do people that you know." And that's the way they're thinking about temple ordinances and these connections. So that helps us with one idea, uh, that comes out of plural marriage that seems weird. People who are sealed to Joseph when he dies, they get sealed again to other people. Brigham, Heber Kimball, um, now, in a vertical model, that makes no sense because you're saying, "Well, hey, you got a vertical chain all the way back to Adam. You don't need another one." In a horizontal model, we can see that it makes a certain kind of sense. Oh, no, my link, Joseph is gone. I need a link to another, uh, person. And so people do repeat ceilings in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s. There's a whole bunch of people, uh, in the 18, uh, 60s and 70s who Joseph has been dead for 20 years, and they come in and they say, "Well, I knew Joseph back in Nauvoo. I want to be sealed to him." There's like 200 people that get sealed to Joseph after he's dead, 20 years after he's dead. They're just doing it different. And that's part of a Wilford Woodruff saying, "All of these different things aren't the thing. Here's the way where it will be organized." So back to the question about women who are married to other men, uh, the evidence we have from them is there were no sexual relations. They, they are married to a man, they come and get sealed to Joseph, they go back home to their home and they live with their husband, they raise their children. There's no marital interaction with Joseph again. But if we look down the list of women who are sealed and are married to someone else, we see several prominent families. We see the Whitney family, New, New Whitney, we, and so, so that's one pattern. We see patterns going on. We don't have, uh, the Whitneys saying, "This is why we did it," but we've got kind of the pattern. Here's another pattern. This is one that we tell in Saints, volume 1. There's a young woman, her name is Mary Elizabeth Rollins. She has a wonderful story right here in Independence. We meet her, well, most people meet her in Independence, so we'll start there. Uh, the printing press is destroyed, and a couple of teenage girls grab the pages, take them out into the field. Mary Elizabeth Rollins is one of those teenage girls. She had been baptized a couple years earlier when she was 12. She read The Book of Mormon straight through in one sitting, has a powerful testimony, one of the earliest converts. And then again, the story here, but she grows up and she moves to Nauvoo, and in Nauvoo she marries a man named Adam Lightner. And Adam is a great guy. Uh, he owns a store, people go there, he gets voted onto the city council, people work with him, they love him, she loves him. They're happily married. There's only one problem. Adam is not a member of the church. It's not a problem for being on the city council. Joseph is, is the mayor. Adam's on the city council. They work together, they're friends, he's a good person, but he just hasn't joined the church. And so when temple ordinances are revealed, and when people can be connected to each other, and they're excited, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner is one of the people who gets sealed to Joseph. She's already married to Adam. Uh, and it's so, and this one looks like, again, we don't have Mary saying, "This is why we did it," but it looks like that's the way for Mary to be connected in the way they're working with ceilings. If Adam's not a member, then Mary gets connected, uh, another way. Uh, and that's the way that it happened. So, uh, so that's what we know. We don't have, uh, none of the 12, uh, women do we have a specific one positively saying, "This is why we did it," but we have those patterns.

Okay, here's one. Will you expound on what historians and Elder Cook said at Nauvoo regarding the status of marriage in exaltation? This is really specific one. If you don't remember that event, it was back when volume one of Saints was released. We did an event at the Nauvoo Temple, Q&A like this. People submitted questions. Elder Quentin L. Cook responded. Uh, and so one of the questions that was asked is a question that haunts people. So the church stops practicing plural marriage in 1890. In 1904, we begin excommunicating people who practice it, and they're serious about it. There are three members of the Quorum of the Twelve who get excommunicated after 1904 because they refused to, uh, stop. So this is difficult, difficult for people. And so, but, but one of the things that haunts people today, I grew up with four sisters, I have four daughters, um, is this thing in the back of the, my head like, "Well, well, am I going to have to do that?" Because there was an exception and a couple of thousand people did it, am I going to have to do it? Uh, and so that was the question that came through. Uh, and now the answer depends on what you hope for. If you're one of those who was like, "Because there are these today, maybe you've met some who really want to do plural marriage and wanted to come back," this answer is not going to help you. Um, but here's the answer. Elder Cook said, he actually took the question to the Quorum of the Twelve, and they talked it over, and you can see this, uh, online. But this is the way Elder Cook, uh, talked about it. He said, "We, I talked with my brethren, and we agreed that plural marriage had served its purpose." That was his language. So when we attach that to that big framework that, that monogamy is the rule, plurality is the exception, and, uh, this was in 2018, the Quorum of the Twelve saying, through Elder Cook, "It served its purpose." We don't know, uh, any purpose for it, uh, now, uh, in the 21st century. Uh, and so, um, they did it in the past, we don't do it now. Now, since 1890, church leaders have taught that plural marriage is absolutely not required for salvation or exaltation or Celestial Kingdom or highest degree of celestial, however you want to frame it. They have repeated it over and over and over. Wilford Woodruff taught it in 1890, Joseph F. Smith in 1904, Heber J. Grant in the 1920s, and they repeated it in the 1930s. We have church leaders saying that that this is not required over and over and over again, and yet it still haunts people in the back of your, our minds. And so Alma had a sinful wish, so I have a sinful wish. His sinful wish was that he could speak with the voice of an angel and convince everybody of one fact. Here's my sinful wish: I wish I could let every woman in the church today know that you will not be required to practice plural marriage. That should be gone. Church leaders have repeated this so many times, but we cling to it in our culture and our folktales. And so please, if you're carrying that burden, please, please let it go. It is, um, it is not, uh, what is being taught.

So, um, here's why this is important, and I'm going to say this to the men in the room because we're, we kind of don't always get it sometimes. Actually, I'll tell you another story. Can I tell a story? So, uh, people had questions. Long story. They go to people named Elder. They send them to me, okay? So, husband and wife, we're supposed to meet. All they know is they have questions that they're worried about, and they come marching in the room. The husband first, the wife behind, because they're Mormons. They sit down in the chair. The husband talks first, because they're Mormons. And the husband says, "My wife has problems with plural marriage. That's why we're here." And then he sits back. His body language in the chair is just like, "I can't even believe I wasted my time. We just, my wife has a problem." And so I immediately ignored him. And so I said to her, "Well, tell me." And she said, "Well, I, I don't, I don't even know how to say it." All I said, "That's fine. Just start talking." And so she did. And she started to tell several stories about a time she had read a scripture or an idea she'd had or something a bishop told her or a family member. And she told me several stories. And then, you know, a person kind of tells all their things, and you get to kind of that pause like, "Okay, that's my thing." So we have a little silence for a little moment. And I said, "Okay, it sounds to me like you are wondering if God has any value, sees any value in you as an individual." And she said, "Yes, that's it. That's it." And the husband, he like woke up because we were animated. He's like, "What? That's it?" And I said to him, "You need to be a better listener. Stop talking." And that was it. And so here's kind of the way the, the, the, the false logic goes. Well, I hear these old folktales about plural marriage that a man is righteous and he gets a bunch of wives. Well, am I just a gift? Am I just a prize? Am I not a person? Do I not even have any value? What kind of God would see his daughters that way? How can I have faith in a God like that? How can I pray to a God like that? And I can tell you that's not who God is. That's wrong. God loves you. You're an individual person. He will not give you away as a prize. He will not require you, uh, to do a thing. And that is really, really clear.

All right, well, how's everybody doing? How's the energy in the room? I made it through all of the plural marriage ones. So we got, we're at kind of a crossroads. There's a whole bunch more that I thought we should do, but you can tell me. There's a whole group that this is what I named them in my notes: Authority succession and prophets. How do you know which church has authority and can you trust the living prophets? Then there's another whole section of, I called just about Joseph Smith, translator, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon. Then there's one I just called more church history. It's like, just stuff, Joseph, Emma, Word of Wisdom. Then there's a whole section on Missouri history, and then there's some last days. Uh, and then there's a whole bunch that I just called, uh, "We better end with those 'cause they're important." So, what do you want to do? Should we like pull the audience? I could dive into one of these sections. I, probably the prophets and succession and authority is a really important one. I'm seeing heads nodding, uh, and thumbs up. So maybe I'll do that. That one is way shorter than polygamy. Polygamy always takes a long time. It is not made for Twitter and 140 characters. Okay, well, let's do, let's do those, and then, uh, as we announced, we'll do a little, just kind of open mic, and maybe you'll say, "Hey, I had the Missouri question." That, and if not, whatever the refreshments are, the Relief Society did it, so it's going to be good. I'm going to hang around. I'm, I'm here. I just have a hotel nearby. I'm here until, uh, we get tired of talking. So, all right, let's do this authority one, then we'll open up and have, uh, the refreshments at the end. Okay, so I'm going to read several of these, so you can, we're going to, here, I think I'm going to do it. I'm going to put all of them on the table, and then we'll kind of talk about the whole table full of things rather than, uh, one at a time. So there's one about Sidney Rigdon. Sidney Rigdon was a member of the First Presidency. So how come he wasn't the rightful successor? And then there's, uh, another thing here about, uh, some people who left the church recently, be in your stake, because of that. I'm sorry to hear that. Next one, uh, there's one about, um, uh, oh, we already talked about conspiracy theories generally, so let's just do this one fast. Who really killed Joseph Smith? There's a pointless video online which has no evidence. It's total conspiracy. It's fear. It's pride. They don't have good evidence. So, but we'll skip that. That's enough. We can say more about it if you want. Okay, now here's where it gets, so there's the idea. So we got the Sidney Rigdon idea. We got other people maybe had the authority. Then it gets attached to, we're putting all these out on the table. I have heard supposedly strong members of the church say that all the presidents of the church after Joseph Smith were not actually prophets. They were only stewards. No new revelations have actually come. Okay, that's a good one. Uh, uh, then we're going to say, um, uh, oh, I heard that a judge declared that, uh, a different church was actually the, the church. Here's, here's another one. The, the original manuscript of the name of the church, which now Section 115, doesn't have a hyphen. And so by putting a hyphen in the name, they invalidated the church and lost their authority. Let's just do that one easily. The hyphen goes in in the Utah territorial legislature. They're following British spelling conventions, and so they put in a hyphen. All right, um, now, uh, yeah, okay, so let's do those. So let's talk about the succession, uh, in the Church History Topics, the John the Baptist one, 280 or so, there's one in there called Succession in the Presidency, down in the letter S's. You can get the details there. Here's the way to think about it. When Joseph died, he didn't leave a public, uh, announcement about what should happen. Uh, and so people generally didn't know. Uh, and in time, kind of five different ideas emerged. And so one of them, we, we've got on the table here, is Sidney Rigdon. He was in Pennsylvania because Joseph's murdered in June. In January, Joseph starts running for president. Sidney Rigdon is his vice president. They have a rule back then that the president and vice president can't live in the same state. So they send Sidney to Pennsylvania. And so they're running for president and vice president. So Sidney's gone as of January. Uh, so he comes back and says, "Hey, I was in the First Presidency. I should be the guardian." And what's interesting, this idea here, uh, is Sidney's idea. Somebody said, "Oh, there's no real prophet. They're just kind of guarding the church." That was actually Sidney's idea. Sidney said, "Joseph's made everything. It's all done, and I'll just guard it. I'll keep it tidy." The Quorum of the Twelve, most of them are not in Nauvoo. Their job, if you read scriptures, is to go out and preach the gospel to the nations. They still do that. Uh, and so, uh, they're all out different places when Joseph's murdered. Uh, and so Brigham Young, when he hears about Joseph, he has a, he goes through a couple of interesting range of reactions. The first one is he just feels totally depressed and discouraged. He loved Joseph. Joseph was a mentor. Joseph had trusted him. Joseph had taught him. And, and he feels kind of despair, you know, what, what will happen, uh, without Joseph? After that grieving, and grieving is okay, that's what we do as humans, as he processes the grieving, this spirit comes into his mind, and he realizes, "No, wait a minute. We, we do have all the stuff that we need." And so he sends out to the other 12. He says, "Gather back to Nauvoo." They do. Uh, and, and slowly it all, it kind of dawns on them, and this is what they point to. From about January to early April of 1844, Joseph Smith calls the 12 in for meetings almost every day, and other people, there's a Council of Fifty, there's just other people. Joseph, like from January to April, is just in this mode of passing things on to people. And there are lots of things to pass on. The Quorum of the Twelve had been, uh, ordained in 1835, nine years earlier. Since then, they'd finished the Kirtland Temple, Jesus, Elijah, they had all had appeared there. Uh, the temple ordinances had been revealed. Lots of things had happened since 1835. And so Joseph was catching them all up. The 12 mostly had been in England. They went in 1837. They were gone for many of those years, uh, when baptism for the dead is introduced. The 12 learn about it in letters from their family, like, "Hey, Joseph introduced this." And they write back, "What? We never heard of this." And so Joseph has them all in Nauvoo, January, April, and he's, and he is teaching them all of these things. And that's where the 12 realize, "Wait a minute, that's where Joseph gave us all of the things that we need to do." Now, Sidney Rigdon is in Pennsylvania. He's not there in those settings. And so that becomes one of the important points there.

Okay, a third strategy, a third idea, uh, emerges, uh, and it starts by Joseph's younger brother, William. And this one is kind of a two plus two equals me equation. Okay, so William does two things. He says, "Okay, there was this office called Church Patriarch, and my dad, Joseph Smith Sr., had it, and then when he died, my brother Hyrum got it because it's supposed to stay in the family, and now I'm the oldest Smith member, so it's supposed to be me. I'm supposed to be the patriarch." And then William says, "Hey, we had a General Conference a few years ago in Nauvoo in which we sustained people, and the text of that, uh, the sustainings was given by revelation, and it is in the Doctrine and Covenants today, Section 124. You can read it. But at that conference, they sustained Joseph as president, Hyrum as patriarch, then the First Presidency, then the 12." And so William says, "If Hyrum hadn't died, then we would be saying Hyrum would be the guy. But Hyrum's not here, so I should be the guy." So you see how William is putting it together? And so William is actually the first one to articulate this family inherited, uh, one, uh, and so some of the Smith family believed that for a little while, but then William lets it go because a different idea strikes him as more interesting, uh, and that is this guy named James Strang shows up, and he says, "I've only been baptized for like four months, but an angel appeared to me and gave me a translating work, and I'm going to have some witnesses, and I'm going to do all of this, uh, again." And for a whole generation of Latter-day Saints who joined a church based on that story, they heard it again in James Strang, and they said, "Oh yeah, that's a good story. I liked it the first time. The, the sequel must be great too." Uh, and so a large number of people, including William Smith, Lucy Mack for a while, Emma, they think, "Yeah, that makes sense. Joseph was just a nobody called out of nowhere. That's how God works. Works. He calls people out of nowhere." James Strang also had a letter. He said, "Right before he died, Joseph wrote me this letter that said I would be the next one." The letter was a forgery. It's in the, uh, Yale University Library today, and, uh, it's a forgery. So, um, so that is when people say, "A lot of this question is about, well, where was the moment? Where was the, whatever?" That was the moment. The moment was those four months when the Quorum of the Twelve, the people who were ordained, uh, to the highest office in the priesthood, when they learned everything that Joseph had to pass on at that moment. That's, uh, when they were ready to, uh, take charge of the church. Does that mean they knew everything they needed to do? No, they didn't. Brigham gets revelations for 30 more years. Revelations come all the time. This one question that says, "There aren't any new revelations," begs a, actually, let's save that one right, right at the end. Let's do that one.

Okay, um, did we do enough? There are a couple more in here like, um, "Can prophets lead people astray?" Should we do that one? Or, um, "Brigham had some character flaws, so I don't think he could be a prophet." Should I, should I do that one? Or should we keep going? Or should we open it up? Do, okay, well, let's, um, okay, we're, we're going to at the very end of the open Q&A, one, make sure I talk about no new revelations, uh, and then there's another one I need to talk about right at the end. So let's do these two, and then we'll open it. Okay, here it is. Many people say they don't believe Brigham Young was the prophet because of journal entries of their ancestors who are contemporaries where they described him as too flawed to have been chosen by the Lord Jesus to lead this church. One of my own sisters believes Wilford Woodruff was abusive to his wife and couldn't be a prophet. Okay, here's an error that we make in modern church history, and it's easier to see it if we see how it, the right way to work, and then we can see our error. So let's start in the New Testament. The New Testament is filled with stories of Jesus's disciples and the ones who would be his apostles who aren't good enough. They doubt. They try and cast out a spirit, and it doesn't work. Uh, there's one time when, uh, Jesus calls Peter Satan. He doesn't just say, "Hey, Peter, you kind of look like Satan, you know, like the way your hair." Jesus calls him Satan. He says, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Okay, now we read all of these stories in the New Testament, and they don't bother us. Why? Because in the New Testament, Jesus is the main character. He's right there in the center of the story. And so if you can't cast out the demon, you go to Jesus, say, "Hey, hey, fix it. We, we couldn't do this. We're not good enough." You doubt, your faith wavers, you sink in the water. Jesus is always there to rescue it. So the New Testament works just fine. It's filled with normal people with normal problems who aren't good enough, and Jesus teaches them and strengthens them and works with them, and through his grace, uh, the work happens. Okay, that's how we tell it in the New Testament. But in modern church history, we tend not to see Jesus at the center of the story. Sometimes we'll tell the story like, "Oh yeah, there was the First Vision, and then here's all the names and dates and facts," and we stop talking about Jesus. Uh, here's one of the worst ways that we do it. The Sunday school teacher says, "All right, everybody, please open to Section One of the Doctrine and Covenants. Will you read verse four?" Did you see what we did there? How about if I say it this way: "In 1831, Jesus told his modern disciples some really important things that we need to know for our time, and it's recorded in Section One, the Doctrine and Covenants. Open it up. Let's read Jesus's words for us." Do you see that Jesus is the main character? But we hide him often by the ways we ignore him. But now, here's the problem. If, if Jesus isn't in the middle of the story, then when things go wrong, I don't cast out the demon. Brigham says something I don't like. Somebody has faith. Somebody's, uh, somebody gets divorced. By the way, in plural marriage, divorce was super common. All the church leaders, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Joseph Smith, they have wives who divorce them. Divorce. It was open. You go to the church leader and say, "It's not working," and the women, they would say, "Great, you're done." So you're going to find that you find all those things. But if, but if Jesus isn't in the center of the story, then we're like, "Oh no, oh no." And so here's what Latter-day Saints do. Here's the error. We got to the error. Can you see it? Can you feel it? I'm, we're talking about how to think here. We take Joseph or Brigham or Russell Nelson and we push them into the center and we say, "He has to be perfect. He's the one. He's not that." Ask every single one of them. If you find President Nelson on the street, ask him if he's perfect. He'll say no. Like, but we do that. We push them into this. And then we demand. And then when they don't live up to it, we say, "See, the whole thing is wrong." What's wrong is the story I'm telling. What's wrong is I've left Jesus out of the center of the story. If I put him back, then I see interesting things like, did you ever notice the Doctrine and Covenants is filled with times where Jesus calls Joseph to repentance? Jesus knew Joseph was a sinner. Joseph knew Joseph was a sinner. Everybody who read the Doctrine and Covenants knows Joseph was a sinner. It's the people who don't read it who say, "I can't accept Joseph Smith because he was a sinner." That's not a secret. We've been hiding that in the Doctrine and Covenants since 1835. Brigham Young was a sinner. Russell Nelson was a sinner. He didn't go on a mission. He wasn't even active when he grew up, did you know that? He tells stories in conference about times where he wasn't good enough. It's not a secret. So we make these stories like, "Well, Brigham did this, so therefore the church." That's just you looking for an excuse because that is not the way the Church of Jesus Christ worked in New Testament times, and it is not the way that his church works today. Well, I got animated on that one. That was fun. I don't know why some things are a little more fun than others. Well, uh, all right, we got the one hanging around there, and I got to find another one. Making sure when I get here, okay, um, so there's,

Two. I know there's two. I got, I'm stuck behind that pit forever. I got to walk around. I don't, you, that's not is. I got a green light and a blue three. Going to make me go back up here? Well, I'm, I'll sprint a little while while he's fumbling. Um, who wants to ask a question while we work on, uh, right here? Revelation. I don't know that I can find any revelation regarding blacks in the priesthood. And yet another hundred years of procedure takes place, which was thear to those members. So, ration that, I don't know. All right. Oh, that's okay. That is really. I feel like I won't say what I feel like, like, sorry. All right, I'm sorry. Um, okay. So, this is a great, this is a two-part question that we'll do in two parts. And I'll re, I'll restate it. Uh, so the first part of the question, well, I'm going to unpack it in two parts. Uh, on the surface, the question is about the priesthood restriction and how it began. And then related to it was, you know, I, I can't find a revelation. So, how, um, how do I make sense of that? So, um, boy, uh, priesthood restriction, let's go really narrow there. Uh, in the Gospel Topic Essays, there's a whole bunch more. But I'm going to, I'm going to zoom in. Uh, one error we make about priesthood restriction. We say, ah, well, we don't really know much. We, we do know things. And so, it's in that essay. Uh, and so, here's some of the things that we know. We know Brigham Young makes the announcement. He's at the Utah Territory Territorial Legislature in 1852. They're debating about roads and education and slavery. Uh, he says a couple of things, uh, in his announcement. Uh, one of the things he says is that he's speaking as a prophet. And one of the things he does is he makes a prophecy. He says, there will come a time, there is a restriction, and there'll come a time when they'll have the priesthood. Okay? So, um, but so those are some things we know. So don't say we don't know things, 'cause they're there. Now, there is, because the past is gone, there are always little pieces we don't have. And here's the one you were asking about, a piece that we don't have. Here's how I'm going to describe this piece of the past. Five years earlier, in 1847, they had a different council meeting over different stuff. But in the meeting, they're talking about black men and priesthood. And, and Brigham says, wait a minute, one of the best elders we have, uh, is a black man. And, uh, his name is Walker Lewis. And so, they're talking about a, a black elder. So, we got this five-year window. In 1847, Brigham knows black men are ordained. And he thinks Walker Lewis is one of the best elders we have. And in 1852, he announces the restrictions. So, what happens in between? It's a gap. Uh, so for like a hundred years, historians have looked for sources for what happens there. And so far, we haven't found one. I'll give you a little summary of what is there, and it will help us teach a thing. So, um, so when you're looking for sources in history, you know, they're not just like laying on the ground like an Easter egg hunt. You got to be creative. You got to imagine, well, what might have happened? And then what kind of sources would have been generated? And where would those sources end up? So, historians do this kind of creative thinking. And so, one of the things we said, well, maybe the revelation worked like many of the ones in the, uh, Doctrine of Covenants. You know the story, somebody has a question, they go to Joseph, he asks, he dictates a thing, and they say, here's the text. So, we said, okay, let's look. And we have not found a text that says this was dictated in response to that question. We also haven't found, um, sometimes with Joseph Smith, there were people in the room, and they would write in their journals or letters, they'd be like, wow, I was in the room and this happened, and Joseph had it. I couldn't see it, but Joseph had it. And, and, and so they're still telling us, uh, about it. So, so we haven't found a source, uh, that tells that, uh, that story.

So, then we said, okay, and this will get at that other question that we passed on a little bit earlier, that's not the only way revelation comes. And this is a really important thing because a lot of times when people want to kind of argue this with you, they'll say, show me the text. But that's not the only way revelation comes. And here's an, and here's one of the unfortunate accidents for the way that Doctrine of Covenants was published. And then what us normal people think about it, that ends up being wrong, because we end up having wrong thoughts. So, the Doctrine of Covenants is published in 1835. Uh, and, uh, it's filled with revelations. If you, you're in there, 1829, 30, 31, 32, and then we get less of those stories of, hey, what should I do? Oh, here's a text. They, it feels like it kind of trickles away and then it's published in 1835. Well, here's the part that we've, we need to pay attention to. Joseph introduces a structure for revelation. The First Presidency is organized in 1832. The High Council is organized in 1834. The Council of the Twelve and Council of the Seventy organized in 1835. So, in the Doctrine of Covenants, if you look close, in the really boring revelations like 102 and other ones, there are instructions for how councils are supposed to work. But we don't really see it in the stories. Uh, and so this is the, this is the way the church is governed today in councils. Council of First Presidency, Council of Twelve. When they introduce themselves, listen, they'll say, we, we met as the Council of the Twelve Apostles. They, they have a bunch of other councils. Trust me, at headquarters, I go to a million meetings. But, and there are a bunch of councils. That's, and so this, uh, method. So, historians have said, okay, well, that's a method for revelation. Let's look and see if there was a council. One of the coun, one of the instructions for councils is, if you meet together and come to unanimity, that's how you know you got the will of the Lord, the mind of the Lord, that you've, you've become united. And so, so we're looking, did between 1847 and 1852, is there a record of a council meeting and working through these things and coming to un, uh, we haven't found a record of that meeting. So, that's another place, place where we don't have a record.

Okay, so we have a gap. And there are other ways we've imagined it. But I think I've illustrated it. We, we invent scenarios and we try and look for sources, and we, and we can't find a source for 1847 to '52. So, what we have is the gap. Now, here's what humans hate. We hate gaps. Like our minds just aren't built for gaps. If there's a gap, we want to stick something in it. Like we stick Joseph or Brigham in the center of the church when it should be Jesus, 'cause we ignored him. We want to push some, we want to fill in the gap. And frankly, some of the biggest problems we've had on this topic were people filling in the gap. And they're named, they were named Elder. People saying, well, they can't have the priesthood. I don't know why. Some people can't because they're not worthy. Maybe they weren't worthy in the premortal life. That's a gap-filling exercise. B.H. Roberts is one of the first to do it in the 1890s, but lots of people say that, uh, Elder Bruce R. McConkie, Joseph, lots of people named Elder do that. Uh, they're filling in a gap. That was one of the ways that people filled in the gap. So, uh, in the Gospel Topic Essay, one of the things we say down there is that we disavow all the theories people have made to fill in the gaps, that black people are inferior, uh, that they were did something wrong in premortal life. There's a whole list at the bottom and say, we don't fill in the gaps. But people will put this essay down and they'll say to me, well, Keith, I don't, the, I don't like this essay. I don't think it answered it. I said, you're right, it didn't. And what you don't like is that the essay is saying, here's the gap, and we don't have anything to put in it. We can say it's not all that stuff, and we can say, um, lots of things about Brigham and the announcement, but we, in 2025, we don't have a thing to put into the gap. And so today, here's, here are the most common ways that people fill in the gap. And if you listen close, they're going to make the same error, and they're going to come to different conclusions. Okay, listen really close. One of them will say, well, I see in the announcement text here that Brigham mentioned the curse of Cain, which he did, which is just an old Protestant idea floating around. Brigham mentions it, and so, well, I see him mentioning that, so it must have been just a cultural mistake. Another person comes along, they say, well, boy, he says a lot of things in that sermon, but he, he says he's a prophet and he's, uh, speaking as a prophet, so it must have been a revelation. Did you hear what both of them did? They did the same thing. The, "must have been" part. That's the problem. What we need to get better at doing is saying, I don't know. But we hate that. Our brains hate it. Our culture hates it. It's the restored gospel, the fullness of the truth. Every week we march up here and say, we know stuff. You, there's a binary there. Did you hear it? What I know, what I don't know. Knowing is good. I know everything. My true church knows everything. Bad people don't know stuff. That's blinding us. If you take off that blinder and read this actual text of the scriptures, you might notice stories like, hey, Adam, why are you making that sacrifice? I don't know. God told me to. You might notice a story like Nephi being visited by the angel in First Nephi, section 1, uh, I'm sorry, 11 to 14. Angel, Spirit of the Lord, a bunch of people in the, in the M, they ask Nephi a question, uh, and he says, I don't know the meaning of all things, but I know God loves his children. And, uh, that's a good answer. The angel keeps teaching him. Alma, a little bit later, will say it this way. He'll say, I know that God has all power. Nevertheless, I don't know that. That's where he's talking to his son about resurrection. Remember, Alma confesses a whole bunch of things that he doesn't know about resurrection. And so, it's okay not to know stuff. And so, here's my advice as just a guy. When we tell that, we can say what we know. We can say that we don't know things. And then don't fill in the gap. Uh, that's what I think. Uh, and then the other lesson is, there are other ways to, um, see revelation.

All right. Another one. He was nodding, sort of smiling. Another question. We got a couple minutes. I got another one I can go to. Let's do yours. Go ahead. I'll hear it. I'm going to go downstairs just for the. Go for it. Okay. So, the question is, why don't we use Joseph's inspired revisions of the Bible? Why do we still have the King James Version? So, the short answer is, Joseph didn't revise the whole Bible. Uh, he didn't have time. And so, uh, you'll see that in the, uh, Doctrine of Covenants this year as we read through. Joseph starts in Genesis and he goes really slow through most of Genesis. And then the Lord says, uh, hurry up a little. So he goes a little faster. And then the Lord says, go to, start the New Testament. And he goes there. And then he'll kind of, uh, but he mostly just does the Gospels. Then, then he kind of jumps around. And so, we don't have the full, uh, thing. It was, it was an incomplete, uh, work when Joseph died. When they get to Nauvoo, they published some of the bigger sections in the newspaper. They published a big passage from Genesis, which we know as Moses in the Pearl of Great Price. And they published a big passage from, uh, Matthew, which we know as Joseph Smith—Matthew. Uh, and so those were the ones that got published in pieces in the newspaper. But the, the translation wasn't done, and the, the publishing wasn't done. So, the shortest answer is, we don't have enough to, to do the, to replace the whole Bible. Now, one more thing to add. Uh, if the whole Bible is this big, and the Joseph Smith Translation is this big, what's in our footnotes is this. It's not all there. Uh, and so, um, there are other ways you can see it. It's on the Joseph Smith Papers website. Uh, honestly, people ask me all the time, is there a good publication? Because I want to. And there isn't. Uh, and we can get into what they do. But I'll give you an example. Some of them only publish, uh, all of the changes Joseph made, but they don't publish the whole Bible, 'cause there's a big Bible. And so, but then I don't like that 'cause I want to see, here's the change. I want to see it in context of the whole thing. But they just published the changes. So, I find those annoying. Uh, then there are other ones that publish the whole Bible with all the changes in, and they don't tell you what the changes were. And that annoys me because I like, I want to know what the changes were. So, there's not a good edition of the Joseph Smith, uh, Bible out there. So, so that's probably the short version. Just, um, uh, yeah. And then we got a lot of British, British people in Mormonism who love King James. That's another whole another thing. But, right here, and I'll, what Lev will do to these two? Oh, yeah. Church. Oh, yes. Uh, yes. The church. The question is, did the church buy this? Yes, last March, uh, in the transaction with the Kirtland Temple, uh, all of the manuscripts, uh, and the Bible used in the translation were part of the acquisition. So, uh, we own those now. We had already, as part of the Joseph Smith Papers, visited the archive here in Independence, and, and they let us do digital capture of all the pages. So, they're already up on the Joseph Smith Papers website. They've been there for a while. But yes, now we do have the, the originals. Okay, great question. All right. Can I go a few minutes past 8:00? Okay. I want to respect your time and, uh, everything. And, and I want to get to the refreshments. I don't know if they'll spoil. So, but we'll do, let's do this one. So, we've already got a whole bunch of thinking skills and tools in place here. Uh, and let me kind of restate it in, in ways. Well, so the, the question, the big question is about the Book of Abraham. And then subparts are about, well, uh, what, what about the things Egyptologists have said? And how do we know? Did he write it? Or where it came from? And so, I'll do kind of the, a whole bundle. In the Gospel Topic Essays, the big purple one, uh, with the Nauvoo Temple, there's one on the Book of Abraham. But again, the people who name stuff, I swear, I'm not on the naming committee, and I'm glad, but I, that, that's why I can complain. Um, this one is way down in the T's. The title is called Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham. So, I would look for it in the B's, like Book of Abraham, but you got to go down under Translation. Book of Mormon is in the B's, Book of Mormon Translation. Why don't you just do Book of Abraham Translation? So, anyway, I'm not on that committee. So, you got to go down there. So, details are down there. But here's the summary version. Uh, after Napoleon conquered everybody, Europeans start yanking stuff out of Egypt. You can still see, see it in museums all over Europe today. Uh, and so, all kinds of things are being taken out. And so, some mummies get excavated, and they go to Europe, they go to England, they go to New York City. And in 1835, they end up, uh, in Kirtland. And all of the sources that we have from Kirtland talk about the mummies. That's the buzz. There are mummies from Egypt, and people are looking at them, and they're excited. And then people put all their money together, and they buy them. It was like an early restoration group GoFundMe or something. They, uh, but people pull their money, and they buy them. And then they start to look, now they own them, they start looking at them closely, and they realize there are scrolls with the mummies. And, uh, nobody ever tells us how many scrolls. That would have been nice. They count how many mummies there are, but they just say, oh, yeah, there are a bunch of scrolls. Uh, and then they're looking at the scrolls, and we have one source that says Joseph's looking at them. And among the scrolls are the writings of Abraham. And Joseph. Now, we never hear another peep about Joseph. There's nothing, no other evidence that that Joseph Smith started translating something from Joseph of Egypt. But he does work on the Abraham part. He does a little bit in 1835. Then they do all kinds of things like come to Missouri and go to Liberty Jail and move to Nauvoo. And then he publishes them, uh, in the newspapers. It's the same time Joseph's the editor of the newspaper. He publishes the, the Bible revision. He publishes the Abraham translation. He publishes his own history. Uh, and so they get published. So, Joseph works on a little more, uh, in Nauvoo.

Okay, so, um, now let's watch the drama unfold. The people in, uh, the 1840s were bad historians. If they worked for me, I would fire them. And here's why. After that Joseph published the things, they're like, well, I guess we don't need these anymore. And so, they sold them. They sold the mummies, they sold the scrolls. Couple of different purchases. Then somebody kind of, uh, ends up buying them all. They end up in a museum in Chicago. So, we can kind of track the sales of the stuff. The Saints go West. They're like, yeah, we don't need those. So, they end up in Chicago. And in 1871, all of Chicago burns. It's gone. Uh, which is one of the reasons why Chicago is such a cool city, because they built it all with skyscrapers and elevators and steel, 'cause they didn't have to worry about all those little old wood buildings getting in the way. No, I'm teasing. Uh, but anyway, it, and so after 1871, everybody just thinks, well, they're gone. We'll never see them again. Uh, and so, basically, people made peace with that. And then in 1867, almost a hundred years later, my mom taught me to be polite. Oh, yeah, 1967. Thank you. My mom taught me to be polite. So, I won't ask if anyone in the room was alive in 1967. But maybe somebody, you know, was. This was not very long ago. 1967, there's a researcher from the University of Utah who is not a Latter-day Saint. And, uh, he's studying old papyrus. And so, he goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. And they have a big collection of just random old papyrus that they don't know where it came from. Remember, everybody was in, everything out of Egypt. And so, the Met has this big collection. So, this guy from the University of Utah, not a church member, is going through. And then he realizes that 10 of the little pieces of papyrus are from the Joseph Smith era. And you know how he did it? For another reason why I would fire people. Somebody in Kirtland took the papyrus, put glue on the back of it, and stuck it on other paper, sturdier paper. Well, that paper was recycled paper. And so, the researcher from the University of Utah finds 10 fragments that are glued to paper. He flips them over, and on the back of one, there's a map of Northeastern Ohio with Kirtland. On the back of another one, there is a sketch of the Kirtland Temple with the three pulpits. And it's, this is the Kirtland Temple. And it's like, you don't have to be a genius, but he was the first person to say, whoa, all of the ones glued to this paper are Joseph Smith. And so, that's when we discovered that there were these fragments left. They were conveyed to the church. We published them in the pictures of them, uh, in the Improvement Era magazine. I also won't ask who's old enough to remember that magazine, but it was before the Ensign, which was before the Liahona. Uh, and so they're published, uh, in there. So, since 1867, church, uh, officials, we've asked Egyptologists to look at them. They all have come back and said, yeah, the things on these, uh, don't match anything in the Book of Abraham.

Okay, now here's where you, this is the way you can, uh, take something out of context and play a gotcha game on Twitter. I shouldn't teach this. This is like dark arts. I shouldn't teach you this. Here's how you do it. You say it like this: Egyptologists looked at all of the papyrus that Joseph translated, and they, and it doesn't match. So, he's a fraud. Did you hear how I did that? What did, what did Egyptologists look at? 10 pieces. Not the whole thing. 10 pieces. And how many is the whole thing? Well, we don't know. Remember, nobody told us. Nobody counted how many scrolls there were. One of them, they said, was really long. It spread all the way across the floor. That would be big if this were the room, but the room was 12 feet wide, so it was not. But that's still pretty big. So, um, so we have multiple scrolls. Okay, so now here's the next way you can play gotcha on the internet with this one. You can say, the Egyptologists looked at those, and they said they're all funerary texts. That's the word. You'll see it over and over. Funerary texts, Book of Breathings, Book of Whatever, funerary texts. Well, yeah, they were buried with mummies. We've been telling that story since 1835. That is not the shocker story. Of course, they're funerary texts. They're things that people buried with them because they thought they were important. So, that is not the dagger that says, oh no, they're funerary texts. Thank you for telling me what we've known since 1835. Um, so, so one way people think about this is they'll say, you know what, this doesn't bother me. I got 10 pieces, a whole bunch of scrolls. Of the one source we have, didn't say all of the scrolls were from Abraham. You remember, I, I gave you the quote. It was, among them are the writings of Abraham and Joseph. So, the one source we have says there's a whole bunch of stuff, and Abraham and Joseph are in there somewhere. So, for many people, they say that, okay, great, that's fine. Okay. Now, there's one piece that doesn't, that, that doesn't work for. And this is the piece. One of those 10 pieces is, is the little diagram that's reproduced in the Book of Abraham. And it's the one where there's a person laying on a table and being sacrificed. And so, if you've ever been bored as a teenager in Sunday school and flipped to the only pictures in scripture, you went to that one. And you saw there's a little description about what's going on in the photograph about, you know, the gods and people and whatever. Okay. So, we have that. That image is one of the papyrus fragments. And Egyptologists look at that and they say, yeah, that doesn't say the thing that, that it says right underneath there.

Okay, so, um, now we take a step back. We don't have any idea what's going on in Joseph's mind as he translates things. He doesn't tell us every time. Joseph is asked, how did you translate the Book of Mormon? He says, I did it by the gift and power of God. Uh, we, we don't even have an account from Joseph about the Book of Abraham. All the accounts are more practical. It's like, I spent the day working on the Abraham manuscripts. So, like, really high level, his journal is filled with those. Spent the day working on Abraham. Uh, what was he work, how did it work? Like, we don't know anything, uh, about that. So, again, this is people in the, in the gap saying, oh no, we don't know how it worked. Sometimes people look for patterns. And here's an interesting pattern. We'll go back to the Joseph Smith Bible translation. Uh, when Joseph sat, sat down to translate the Bible, he opens up to Genesis 1:1, and the first thing that happens is he has a vision. All kinds of stuff about Moses and God and all the worlds that were created. And Moses asks why. And, uh, Jehovah says, well, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality, eternal life, all of that stuff that we have in Moses chapter 1 today is a vision that Joseph had before he even looked at the words in the beginning. That's why in the Book of Moses, in the beginning, comes in Moses chapter 2, and Moses chapter 2 lines up with Genesis chapter 1, because that whole vision, uh, is received just by opening the Bible and, and starting to do the work. And so, people use a word called catalyst. Clearly, none of those words in that vision are in Genesis chapter one. But doing the work of translation was a catalyst for Joseph to receive more revelation. This actually happens all the time. Uh, about, uh, eight or nine revelations in the Doctrine of Covenants come while Joseph is translating the Bible. And they are, and you'll see it in the heading, he was translating the Bible, they ask about this, and this revelation comes. So, we know that's, uh, so, so some people will say, well, Joseph could have sat down, looked at the thing, and it could have been a catalyst to learn more. I don't know. You make peace with it however you want. It's not a temple recommend question of which one it had. It was. So, if you ask me which one it was, I say, I don't know. I think missing manuscript is helpful. Catalyst is interesting. But I remember filling gaps. I don't know what Joseph was doing. I'm not going to tell you that I know what Joseph was doing, uh, when he does it, 'cause he didn't, uh, tell us that. So, there's a quick version of it. Did we get all the issues? All right. He's given me the nod. Okay. Well, thank you for your patience for going a little long. I wanted to end with this one, um, uh, reaction, uh, and then it will set into just a, maybe my, well, it's a question. I'll read the question. Uh, some women in this area believe women will be ordained to the priesthood. One woman, uh, said she has been ordained to the masonic priesthood by John the Revelator. Please explain in greater detail about ordination for men. If women can be ordained in the future, also the term familial priesthood is used to imply that women once sealed share the priesthood and may give blessings like men do.

Okay, so, um, there's a whole bunch of errors in there, and, and we'll just kind of unpack them one by one because they're all really, uh, important. And, um, the first error is an error we invent in our handbook today. If you open the Church Handbook, it says, here are all the priesthood words, and this is exactly what they mean. Keys means this, ordains means this, confer means that, office means that, do, do, and so, you can find those all in the handbook. The only problem is, they didn't have the 2025 handbook in the 1830s. And so, the revelations use all of those priesthood words in all kinds of different ways. If you would like to acquire OCD, try to read the scripture, the Doctrine of Covenants, and come up with a coherent meaning for all of those words out of the text. It's, it's just not there. They're using the words looser. We later may, with our army of handbooks, said this word means this and only this. Uh, okay. So, um, so now we have this question that's beginning that says ordained means this, uh, and so John the Revelator came and ordained me. Uh, uh, no, that's not how it works. Uh, first of all, it was Peter, James, and John. So, that's a problem. Uh, they're the ones that are responsible for this. Uh, and second of all, uh, that's not how it works. Now, after, after Joseph and Oliver were, were ordained, there has never been another angelic visitor ordaining, conferring. I see we're using the different words, uh, giving them the big, the big categories of priesthood. Kirtland Temple, they're going to come and bring keys, which they explain are kind of the, the authority to do specific things. Section 110 records the words of Elijah and others explaining, this is what you can do now. But those, uh, that big, uh, conferral is there. Okay. Now, there's this, uh, familial priesthood term, and it's doing like a, like, this is like a funky view of sealing, right? So, he's an elder, I'm sealed to him, therefore I'm an elder. That, that's the logic that's working. And that logic is not at play, uh, anywhere in, uh, scripture, anywhere in modern history. That is, uh, it just doesn't match. It doesn't match, uh, any logic. So, I want to, now we've pointed out some of the errors. Let me step back, and I want to end, um, with, with this witness. Witness. So, today, one of the ways that we talk about priesthood is that it is the, the power of God. That's big. God is bigger than anyone here can comprehend. One problem we humans make is we think we understand God, and we put a little box and said, God is supposed to do this, and then God doesn't do that, and we're like, what? I don't believe in God. The problem is my box. Our God tells us things like, hey, Isaiah, your thoughts are not my thoughts. My ways are higher than your ways. God, God tells us, you don't understand stuff. When Jesus washes Peter's feet, he says to him, you, you don't understand what I'm doing. And then Peter shows that he doesn't, because he complains and doesn't want to do it. And, uh, so, power of God is a really big thing. So, the first error, don't put it in a little box and say, there's this is where the power of God works. I want to give you a couple of categories to think about. The biggest category is, some of God's power is manifest all over the earth. It gets called the light of Christ in scripture sometimes. It, uh, sometimes Jesus will say, yeah, the sun shineth on the wicked and the righteous. There are, there are manifestations of God's power that go everywhere. Your friend, uh, down the street who goes to other churches can totally encounter God and feel peace and feel comfort because God's power, uh, is going everywhere. Now, there are other gifts where God will give a kind of more concentrated version of his power. Uh, and most of these, there is no gender requirement. That first one, there is no gender requirement. The next one, right after people are baptized, we give them the gift of the Holy Ghost. And I totally think we mis, we underestimate this. This is a member of the Godhead who can help you all the time. I think we can do more to understand what that is. But me, women, young children, people can have this gift of power from God to guide you and help you and protect you. That is, uh, amazing. There is, uh, another gift that comes in the temple. We use the word endowment, which means gift. Uh, I, I give a gift. Early revelations called the endowment of power. President Nelson has been helping us in recent years to emphasize every person, male and female, who receives the endowment, receive that power. There is no gender limitation on, on the power of God. That's the very word, the power of God. You have God's power, uh, on you. And, uh, that seems to be ways that your children and your generation and your posterity too can be blessed with this. This is, God is not like hoarding his power. This is a really expansive, uh, gift of power. Uh, okay. Here's another one. Every time a person, uh, is called to do a work, they take them into a private room and they give them a specific blessing for that work. Uh, that's an amazing gift for you, for your calling, for that work. Uh, my wife was just called last Sunday, uh, as the secretary in the Young Women. And they wouldn't set her apart because they had to do all the little, uh, ordinations. So, like, oh, come back this week. And then it was too crowded this week. And I was just talking to her on the car on the way here, and she's like, I really want to get set apart. I need some help for this calling. Uh, and so that's beautiful. Uh, my oldest daughter, she came to me with one of these errors. She was called on a mission to England. And right before she left, she said, Dad, I just don't know if I can be a good enough missionary. The elders have the priesthood, and I don't. I said, whoa, that is, that is not true. You and every elder in your mission have the exact same gift to preach the gospel in the England Manchester Mission. Both of you went to your bishop and were worthy. You went to your Stake President. You were called by an apostle. And then both of you went to your Stake President and you were set apart as a missionary in that mission. You have the exact same thing. Now, when it times comes time to get in the font, that's different. But finding people, preaching, ing, helping them, uh, being a minister of Christ, being his example, being worthy to carry his name on, there is absolutely no gender restriction there. The restriction is, you are set apart as a missionary. And I'm not, I'm just an old man at home. That you have a, a gift of power, uh, that I don't have. Now, the last kind of category here is the one that we, we typically think about. There are in our current jargon, uh, offices in the priesthood. You can draw them on the board. Uh, men get ordained to those offices. The offices get tied to specific ordinances, uh, and actions, uh, that get performed. Uh, and also, um, uh, administrative bishop and, uh, Stake President, those kind of things. Uh, okay. So, here's an error to avoid. So, yeah, let's start there. Yes, those offices are assigned to men. Do I know why? I don't know. Is there a record in church history why there's not one specifically? Why they just start doing it, and that's what they do. Um, but here's the error to avoid. Some people will say, well, that means only men can do those kind of things. Well, my wife was also telling me in the car that she's going to go do initiatories on Tuesday at the temple. Who's going to administer that priesthood ordinance to her? What office do those women hold? Doesn't seem to matter very much, right? There, the temple is a house of priesthood. It's the house of the power of God. It's the house of the Lord. And so, we, and the endowment, when the endowment was, the endowment, initiatories were stuck together. They were the same ordinance all the way until 1972. Then they split them apart. So, all the way back to Nauvoo, women have administered the endowment. Uh, the very first women to receive the endowment, well, first one to learn about it was Emma. Joseph told her, but then she administered it to women who belonged to the Relief Society. There was not a, well, this isn't for women, and, and women can't do it. Women have been administering priesthood ordinances since the start of that. So, I think in conclusion, that's what I'll say. God is so much bigger than we imagine. Don't try and fit him into a little either or. Don't try and fit him into a box. Don't try and do this kind of reasoning to this or to that. Instead, embrace the gifts that he has given you, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the gift of the endowment, uh, the gift of his light and life, uh, the health that we have on this planet. God is literally pouring forth blessings, and that is one of the promises of the last days of the restoration. Isn't just a restoration of rules and stuff. It's the time when old men will dream dreams, and young men will see receive visions, and the spirit of the Lord will be poured out upon every person. Uh, that's the promise. Are we living up to it? And so, may God bless you as you study and search and draw close to him. And I leave you my testimony that Jesus lives. This is his church. He is at the center of the story. He is leading President Nelson and the Twelve to do his work. One of the questions was about, can the, uh, prophet lead the church astray? We'll go right back to the source. It's an official declaration one. It's from, people always take this one out of context because Wilfred Woodruff doesn't say he'll never lead you astray from any kind of harm that could come by crossing the street or anything. He says, he'll never lead you astray from the oracles of God and your duty. Oracles was an old word that refers to God and his messages and his messengers. That's what prophets do. They point us to Jesus. If you have a problem with things, uh, take it right to, take it right to heaven. That's, that's who leads this work. And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Brother Erikson, thank you. Brothers and sisters, SS, we've been well-fed. I don't know about you, but you know that feeling at the end of the Thanksgiving meal? Word just hurts to lean back. This has been a beautiful experience. Who are our Sunday school teachers in the congregation? Raise your hand if you're a Sunday school teacher. Brother Erikson, thank you for being that student that Sunday school teachers dream of having. Brother Erikson, what do you think? Uh, this has been a beautiful experience to learn and for teaching us, teaching us how to identify the errors in questions that conspiracies are driven by fear and by pride, that it's okay to have gaps, in the importance of keeping Christ at the center. One thing that I was reminded of tonight that he said there at the end is, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that we too can seek learning by study and also by faith. And that one of the best kept secrets in the church is right here within our fingertips in the, um, what is it called? The Church History in Gospel Library. Uh, I think you made a few students of us tonight, uh, Brother Erikson. We so appreciate you coming. And brothers and sisters, thank you for your questions. As we study the Doctrine and Covenants this year, it was a question that ushered in the restoration. It's okay to ask questions, and the Lord has given us the path for answers. We will conclude our Fireside this evening by singing, singing hymn number 85, How Firm a Foundation, after which Brother Shad Cross will offer a closing prayer. Enjoy the refreshments and enjoy asking any additional questions to Brother Erikson afterwards. Thank you. [Music]