A Mormon Murder Mystery Pt. 2 | Cultish

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01:12

Welcome back to cultish everybody where we enter into the kingdom of the cults. I am joined with Ryan McMartin and in the first episode we ended with Lori Vallow and Alex Cox taking

01:24

JJ entirely up to Yellowstone. There was death, a lot of death talked about.

01:29

We went over their backgrounds as well as what happened with Charles Vallow, which was

01:37

Lori's fourth husband, and his death and the situation that happened there.

01:44

Now we're on to the part where things get worse. Ryan McMartin Yep, extreme, like this is much, much worse. Much, much, much worse.

01:51

Man, you can sit back and think and if you just went to the second episode, I really want you to go back, listen to the first.

01:58

In this one, we're going to get to how everything culminated, but then we're going to talk about more of the theology behind everything with Lori and Chad Daybell, but let's continue from where we left off,

02:09

Ryan. Ryan McMartin Okay, well, the last thing that we talked about was on the 8th of September 2019 when

02:15

Lori, Alex, Tylee, and JJ all went to Yellowstone National Park and this is the last time that we know of when the whole family was together.

02:28

The following day, Tylee goes missing. We know now, with the benefit of hindsight, what happened.

02:37

We know, due to the ensuing investigation, that for a period of a couple of hours that day,

02:46

Alex was at Chad's property and he apparently was digging something.

02:58

Chad texted his wife Tammy and said that he had shot a raccoon in their backyard and buried it in the pet cemetery as a way of saying, essentially, don't mind the undisturbed dirt.

03:10

This is, you know, there's nothing weird that happened. On the 22nd of September, that is the last time that we see

03:19

JJ alive and this is a couple weeks later. He went to his school, again, they're in Rexburg, Idaho.

03:27

And, you know, that's where he was during the day and then that evening he was seen by a couple of friends of Lori's who were in town for the weekend or whatever it was.

03:39

And they said that they saw JJ there. They said later on that they saw

03:47

Alex carrying JJ into the apartment. And this is back in 2019? Yes, this is the 22nd of September, 2019.

03:54

The following day, Lori tells her friends that JJ had to be taken away because he was acting like a zombie.

04:08

And basically, that's the face that most people make when they hear this because that's so, that's such a strange thing for a parent to say.

04:20

She also called JJ's school that day and said that she was going to be homeschooling him from now on.

04:27

And nobody sees JJ again alive after that point. On the 2nd of October, 2019, something else that's kind of odd happens.

04:38

So we mentioned in the previous episode that Lori had a sister named Stacy who died in 1998.

04:45

And Stacy had a daughter, Melanie, who Lori thought of as being some kind of reincarnation of her sister.

04:55

Lori and Melanie were always really close. And I believe today still are.

05:03

And Melanie, of course, was also close with her uncle Alex. Melanie got married at some point,

05:10

I don't know when exactly that happened, to a man named Brandon Boudrill.

05:16

That fell apart for reasons I don't know anything about. Somebody tried to kill

05:23

Brandon. He was driving along and, or he was just, he was standing outside and somebody shot at him and shot like the window of his car.

05:34

Right. Yep. Right. And it turns out after, you know, he filed the police report, it was discovered that the person who fired those shots was driving a car that looked, that was the same make and model and color as Charles Vallow, Charles Vallow's car.

05:53

And this already was kind of suspicious. But just shortly afterward, something else horrible happens.

06:03

Tammy Daybell, who is Chad's wife, she dies under mysterious circumstances in her home.

06:10

And it was, it was said that she had died of natural causes, that she got sick.

06:16

Right. We now know with the benefit of hindsight that that was not the case there, that that case was reopened and it was discovered that she was actually killed via asphyxiation.

06:27

She, in the days before this happened, though, reported an accident, an incident that was similar to what

06:34

Brandon had said. She said that somebody, she thought that she might have been shot at and she saw somebody standing and holding something that looked like a paintball gun.

06:50

Right. And the weird thing is when Brandon gave his report, he said basically the same thing, that he saw the guy and he couldn't make out much detail, but it looked like the guy was holding a paintball gun.

07:02

Man, let me, let me give some context for the day. So October 2nd of 2019, that's when Brandon says that someone shot at him and someone actually did shoot at him.

07:11

October 9th is when Tammy says someone shot at her. Yes. And then the 19th of October of 2019, that's when

07:18

Tammy dies, literally 10 days later. Yeah, it's, it's too much of a coincidence for anyone to really think that these things are not directly related.

07:30

Um, in any case, it's like a snowball dude, it's just rolling downhill and it's getting bigger and now it's just, it's just destroying everything.

07:37

We, we talked about this off camera that like when I first heard the story on a Dateline episode, I'd heard,

07:42

I'd listened to hundreds of episodes of this and the thing that really caught my attention was that every few minutes the, they would say something that was completely new and a random twist that went in a direction that none of these other stories go in.

08:00

And this whole, whole situation is just a sequence of really bizarre, unpredictable things happening and it still gets worse.

08:10

Yeah, and that it does. So Tammy dies in October. All right.

08:15

And Chad, wasting no time, wasting no time at all, marries

08:20

Lori the 5th of November in 2019. It's just a couple of weeks later on a beach in Hawaii, no children to be seen.

08:29

And there were, uh, again, uh, we mentioned in the last episode that these guys were not very subtle about their, uh, their adultery.

08:40

They were like looking, Lori was looking for wedding rings before Tammy died.

08:46

Like, why are you doing that? Unless you're expecting this person to die. Um, there's just, there's a lot of that kind of stuff that, like, could they at least have had the common decency to be a little bit more discreet, but they couldn't.

09:00

Well, they thought they were untouchable, man. Yeah, they, they believed, uh, and we mentioned this again in the last episode that Lori believed that she could not be killed.

09:10

You know, they, she believed that she was a goddess that had been sent down to earth.

09:16

You know, it's insane, but it is what they believed. And we'll be talking a little bit more about, uh, what specifically they believed and how this madness kind of makes sense to people who don't want to believe the truth, if that makes sense.

09:33

Yeah. So, so JJ, you guys remember, uh, he was not the biological son of Charles Vallow.

09:40

Charles Vallow is now dead. Uh, however, Charles Vallow's sister was

09:46

JJ's grandmother. So he was, JJ was Charles's, uh, grand nephew.

09:53

So the thing is though, is that his grandparents still want to keep in touch with him. Yeah. And they can't get in touch with him.

10:00

Yeah. And this is where, um, a lot of the national attention starts to focus in on this case because K and Larry Woodcock, uh, understandably they love their grandson and they will not let this go.

10:16

They will not let Lori get away with whatever is happening. So they, they start knocking on doors, they start pounding the pavement, trying to find their grandson and they start getting media attention involved.

10:30

They start getting, uh, you know, police agencies involved and suddenly everybody's looking for these kids cause they, they quickly realized that it's not just Tate, uh,

10:39

JJ that's missing. It's Tylee as well. Yep. Um, and then on 11, on the December 11th, 2019,

10:45

Alex Cox dies. This again, looks like natural causes like it did with Joe Ryan.

10:55

And the case was reopened and they, it's still kind of mysterious, but it probably still was natural causes, but he also like was into drugs and stuff like that.

11:08

And so that one's kind of weird, but he did say a number of things prior to his death to his, uh, his wife.

11:16

He had just gotten married like a few weeks before this happened and he was saying things like, you know,

11:21

I'm going to be their next victim. Yeah. And, and it was things like that that kind of made his wife sort of, uh, pay attention to what he was saying and be like, this is weird.

11:34

Like this, this is not a normal situation here. Um, yeah, he's a loose end. Yeah. And that's, it's like at some point you got to think, well, this is the guy that knows everything and we're depending entirely on him being devoted to us.

11:51

But what happens if he changes, uh, what happens if he slips up, if he gets drunk and says something, well, you got to deal with that.

11:59

Yeah. But we don't really know if, uh, if this was a murder or if this was just something that worked out in, uh, in Lori and Chad's favor.

12:09

Yeah. Uh, the following day though, Tammy Daybell's body is exhumed and an autopsy is completed.

12:18

And that's, uh, why we mentioned before that, that she was later found to be, um, asphyxiated rather than to have died of a sickness.

12:27

And now it's like, well, how many people could have done this? How many people could have jumped her to death? There really aren't very many options here.

12:35

Now the police are zeroing in on these people. But remember they've skipped town. They're, uh,

12:41

Hawaii. Yeah. They're in Hawaii right now. Um, on the 3rd of January following month, the carry out a search on Chad Daybell's property for the first time.

12:52

Uh, this is not the one where they find the bodies. They, uh, they don't find that yet.

12:59

Uh, on the 25th of January, that's when Lori and Chad are located by the authorities. They find out that they're in Hawaii because they didn't already know that these guys had gotten married or anything like that.

13:07

Right. Right. Uh, and they, they give Lori Vallow a court order saying you have to physically produce your children or provide proof of where they are by the 30th of January.

13:19

Well, guess what happens on the 30th of January? Nothing. She doesn't show up. And now she's in violation of a court order.

13:28

Now they can pick her up. Yep. Man. On the 21st of February, Lori Vallow was arrested in Hawaii on charges of child abandonment and desertion.

13:37

Now this is one of those things where they arrest her with what charges they can right now, but there's a whole list of things that they're just waiting for the go ahead.

13:47

You know, this is just to get her in chains. Yep. Um, she was charged with resisting officers.

13:53

She is charged with criminal solicitation to commit a crime and contempt of court because of the violating the court order.

14:01

Mm hmm. Um, she's held on a $5 million bond as later extradited back to Idaho.

14:08

After her arrest, Chad Daybell is confronted by an ABC news journalist and asked if the children are safe and he refuses to answer.

14:15

This is what we refer to as a bad sign. Yep. Uh, at any point, I, I come wonder what it must've been like for the loved ones of Tylee and JJ at this point, because nothing that Lori and Chad are doing, uh, nothing is what a normal parent would do if asked to produce their children by the court.

14:39

Something had to have happened, but I, I don't know if anyone could have let their minds go to what the truth ends up being, you know?

14:49

I mean, at what point do you start saying, I think these kids are dead? Yeah. Oh my goodness.

14:57

I could only imagine man, like your, your, your hope is to hold on, but being those loved ones and then seeing, uh, all of a sudden they're looking on TV, they're seeing she's in Hawaii with the man, the children are nowhere to be seen, uh, why aren't the children at the wedding where, yeah.

15:12

Why aren't the children at the wedding? Where are the children? Uh, then we have Colby going like, where's my little brother and where's my little sister?

15:18

Right. Uh, what happened here? They had a whole life ahead of them. It's, it's just sad.

15:25

Yeah. It's a, it's literally a horror story. And it's this slow, slow realization.

15:31

Yeah. You go from thinking maybe this is a custody thing and they're just hiding away somewhere to just what eventually ends up being the case.

15:40

Yeah. And I mean, even, and think about even Chad Daybell's children, their mom's dead. Yeah. And now their dad is in Hawaii with this woman that they probably know nothing about.

15:52

I mean, Chad and Lori know each other really well. I mean, they weren't really hiding it very well, but the children don't really know what's going on and their mother's dead.

16:00

And from what I can tell, they've more or less landed on the idea that like Lori is the one that corrupts

16:06

Chad. Right. I personally think in retrospect that there's a, it's dual it's yeah.

16:14

It's both of them. Both of them are just making the other one crazier. Yeah, absolutely.

16:20

Yeah. Yep. I mean, it's the, the heart, the human heart, they're both filling in that part of the human heart that is just, oh man, living in a, a disillusioned, a false reality and they're playing into that to one another.

16:36

And that's just extremely sad. I mean, there's people that they, they trust with, like they, they are trusting each other with the degree of trust that we should apply to scripture.

16:47

You know, they're saying this other person has the ultimate truth and everything that they say is true.

16:52

And I'm going to be completely devoted to them and things are not going to go well.

16:58

Yeah, man. So let's, let's go back. So what, when, uh, when was it exactly when

17:04

Tylee went missing again? Was that around September? Yeah. 8th of September, 2019. And it's not until June of 2020 where JJ and Tylee's remains are discovered on Chad Daybell's property.

17:16

They are indeed dead. JJ, JJ's body is found in a black plastic bag and wrapped in duct tape near a tree.

17:24

And Tylee's remains are found a short distance away, buried in the pet cemetery. Her body was dismembered and burned in a fire pit.

17:33

Okay. So you guys can look up if you want all of the rest of the information.

17:38

There's a lot of that kind of stuff. That's like, I've heard some of it and you don't need to hear it, but I mean, if you want to, it's out there.

17:48

Yeah. I mean, it's just April, May, June, July. So it was about two months ago when

17:53

Vala was found guilty of first degree murder. That was the May of 2023. They did it. They killed him.

17:58

They killed their own children. And now we're going to get into some of the theology behind this.

18:07

You can look up all of the court stuff. If you're interested in all of that information, we're not going to get into that here. Yeah. We're going to get into some.

18:14

So you understand what happened. And now the part of the thing that makes the story so intriguing to most people, like why is it that, why is it that this is getting so much media attention?

18:29

Obviously you have things like the, you know, children in peril, the period where they were missing and we didn't know that they had died.

18:37

That automatically is going to garner a lot of attention, but there's also this element of what in the world is this?

18:44

Why did these people do that? I mean, I think about my own nieces and nephews.

18:51

I think about your kids, you know, sort of my, my surrogate family at this point. I think what kind of obstacles would an otherwise decent human being have to overcome in order to get to the point where they would be willing to kill their own kids?

19:10

That's the thing that blows people's minds about this. There was a time, Lori was not always a monster.

19:16

There was a time when she was a normal woman, a single parent for a period of time.

19:27

And, and there was nothing like this. So how did we get here?

19:33

And that's what we are going to at least try to explore here. Because I think ultimately what it comes down to is

19:42

Chad wanted Lori. That is your motivation for what happened. And he abused his situation as a religious leader to try and get her to do what was necessary to remove any barriers between her and him.

20:00

Yeah. And I mean, he removed barriers between him and her as well. Yeah. And it starts really with, well,

20:09

I mean, I mean, you, there are a lot of different ways in which this starts. Ultimately, really, it starts with just having an evil, sinful heart.

20:16

Yeah. But when you remove an objective standard by which your doctrines and your actions are to be based, by which those things are to be judged, then you can replace that standard with pretty much anything else that fits you.

20:35

Yeah. Anything else you want. And if you're on, we talked in the last episode about the distinction between fundamentalism and liberalism in religion.

20:45

And if you, if you want to go to some kind of liberalism, okay, now you're the standard.

20:51

All right. But you are presupposing that you are a good standard by which to judge things.

21:00

I know that's not the case with me. You know, I know what's going on in my heart and the things that I know should not be there, but some people, for some reason, they just, they think that they're a good judge of these kinds of things.

21:14

You know, they think that they, as long as they can justify it in their hearts, it's fine.

21:20

What's up everybody. It's the super sleuth here. Letting you know that you can go to shop cultish .com and get all of our exclusive cultish merch.

21:27

There's the bad theology hurts people shirt. Jerry wears it all the time. I wear it all the time. Sometimes we wear it at the same time without even trying to have that happen on the show.

21:36

And we're just like, Whoa, you're wearing the shirt. I'm wearing the shirt. You could wear the shirt to go to shop cultish .com today and get your exclusive cultish merch.

21:44

Talk to you later guys. Yeah. I mean, and if we're thinking about the fundamental, one of the fundamental presuppositions to accepting

21:50

Mormonism in general, it's you pray about it and you feel the burning in the bosom. And if you get that confirmation from the

21:57

Holy ghost, then it's true. Then the book of Mormon is true. And then you can believe everything else after that.

22:03

I mean, the whole religion is, uh, the tangent point is your feelings. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the fundamental reality of the starting point at least for Lori Vallow in terms of their standard.

22:17

Like you said, it's not that scripture and God's word is the standard to check your emotions by, but really, uh, she's taking what she's taught to the logical conclusion.

22:28

Yeah. Or at least a logical conclusion. If you start with the presupposition that you are the arbiter of truth, that your feelings will guide you, then the reality is that's just not true.

22:43

You're not the arbiter of truth and your feelings are deceptive. So they're naturally going to lead you into lies.

22:51

They're going to lead you whatever lies that you're willing to accept. We mentioned in the last episode that the doctrines of Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow were not consistent with Mormonism.

23:06

Like this is not that they're not representative of Mormonism, but rather that Mormonism sort of as a culture and as a set of doctrines forms a framework that kind of makes this happen the way that it did.

23:21

And I don't know how best to describe that. Well, here's an example. I mean, even in under the banner of heaven, uh, with the brothers that went and killed their niece and a sister -in -law, they also were hearing from God and they would have done the same thing because they wanted,

23:41

I mean, the brother that you're talking about hated the sister -in -law or, um, and he wanted to kill her, but because of, uh, their own unique belief system that forced things to happen in a certain way.

23:56

Exactly. So we just have a perfect storm, really. So we're not saying that these people were mainstream

24:02

LDS people. We're saying this is a cult of a cult. And when it's a cult of a cult, things get even weirder.

24:10

Yeah. Things get crazy. And there's terms, right? There's terms of things that they specifically believe.

24:15

Let's first describe, uh, what does she mean when she says that she has this priesthood authority or that, uh, she speaks with Moroni that she speaks with Moroni.

24:26

Okay. So I thought it was interesting when, uh, in that interview, Charles was saying that she had like some kind of priesthood authority because in, in Mormonism, women do not have priesthood authority, but you can have, um, a priest give you a blessing or, or, or something like that.

24:43

And this is honestly, it's something that a lot of women in Mormonism will go to as a way of trying to get around the sexism here.

24:54

They're like, Oh, we experienced benefits of having priesthood holders in our lives.

25:00

And so, you know, it's not, it's not bad. Well, except what the

25:06

Bible tells us, what God says in his word is that there's a priesthood that is now given to all believers, uh, men, women, and children.

25:12

Right. So they've gone backwards and, and people have to kind of justify that in some way or try to reconcile this.

25:21

Um, but yeah, she, she was saying that, and I, I guess it might be helpful to sort of remind, uh, remind our viewers of basically what the restored gospel is so we can show the, where exactly the deviant.

25:38

Yeah, let's do it. So, so the restored gospel, the quick version of this, of the LDS restored, this is, this is, uh, basically what the church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

25:48

Saints teaches. Right. So they're in their view of the universe, they're saying that the, the universe has existed in one way, shape, or form for all of eternity past.

26:01

And we existed along with it, right? We were what they call intelligences. Nobody really knows what that is.

26:08

And there's not a lot of attention that's focused on that. But at some point we are, um, conceived by our heavenly father and heavenly mother.

26:20

And we are born as souls or spirits. At this point, we start to have, you know, volition and, and will and, uh, desires and some sort of intellect.

26:31

And we're able to make decisions, right? We are the same fundamental type of being as God is according to Mormonism.

26:40

And the goal is for us to progress from intelligences to spirit children to, uh, our, our mortal selves on to Godhood ourselves.

26:53

By receipt, by being obedient to gospel ordinances and principles and receiving a body of flesh and bone. So you can procreate in.

26:59

Yeah. So you can follow in, in his footsteps. But the, the thing is, this isn't like, um, you know, different stages of a race.

27:07

You know, you start at the first part and then you go to the end part. This is more of a metamorphosis, a metamorphosis kind of situation.

27:13

It's, you know, going from tadpoles to frogs. God's an embryo. Yeah, exactly. So the idea is before we came here to the earth, there was a conflict in heaven and the conflict surrounded the idea that God wanted to give us a sort of environment in which to have our mortality and grow and sin, but then receive salvation and move on to the next stage.

27:37

And he had a council with the other gods. That's a whole other thing. And during that council, uh, his, uh, two of his sons, um,

27:46

Lucifer and Jehovah both offer plans of redemption. Lucifer's plan is that he would go and be essentially the savior of the world, but he would remove our free will.

27:58

And he would guarantee thereby that every single human being would become, uh, would receive salvation and move on to the next stage.

28:06

Jehovah's plan was that we would give free agency. And in exchange, we wouldn't really like, not all of us would accept the true gospel and move on.

28:18

Elohim, our heavenly father chose Jehovah's plan. Lucifer did not take this one. He decided to reject, uh,

28:26

Elohim, reject Jehovah. And there's a war in heaven wherein about a third of our spirit brothers and sisters side with Lucifer.

28:36

As a result, we are able to go into mortality and receive physical bodies and move on.

28:45

Our brothers and sisters who followed Lucifer are not permitted to do that.

28:50

And they are what we now call demons. Right? They cannot inhabit mortal bodies in mortal probation.

28:57

Yeah. They're damned. Yeah. A damnation in Mormonism means that you stop your progression.

29:03

Yep. So literally a damn. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of how they think of it. So it's not like necessarily going to, um, going to outer darkness or going to hell and being separated from God, because you could, from this point, enter, uh, you could be damned and still end up going to like the first degree of glory or whatever.

29:26

But the key is Mormonism has a similar doctrine of, um, uh, what's it called?

29:34

Exorcism. And demon possession to what we do. Basically that you have to invite the demon in essentially, or be like neck deep in occult pagan practices in order to become possessed.

29:48

And that once you are possessed, it's actually possible to have an exorcism done. Chad and Lori had a different view of this.

29:58

Their view was there was what they called a light meter.

30:04

And the idea was that you would enter into your mortality with a certain amount of light. And Chad, because that veil was open between him and the other world, could see how much light you had.

30:18

If you through various behaviors had a low enough light level, you could get to the point where you actually die and your body is inhabited by a demon.

30:30

At that point, you cannot have an exorcism because there's no you left. So the only way to get rid of the demon is to kill the body.

30:39

That is what Lori is talking about when she talks about zombies. Because effectively the people who are labeled as zombies are already dead.

30:48

This is 100 % out of like, out of Mormon orthodoxy.

30:55

Your Mormon neighbor does not believe this. This is completely foreign to them. And they would say, just as we would, boy, that's weird because it is to them.

31:06

The next thing that happens after we enter into mortality is we go through our normal lives, right?

31:13

And we either receive the restored gospel or we don't. After this, there's a period where we go into either spirit prison or paradise.

31:25

If you're in spirit prison, there's still hope for you because people can be baptized for you. Baptism in Mormonism is salvific.

31:33

There's missionaries who go to the spirit prison and preach the restored gospel so that you can accept it.

31:39

And that's why they do baptisms for the dead and laying of hands in proxy because you can't baptize or lay on hands on a spirit.

31:46

Exactly. And so even then when you get to paradise, you still continue to work because you have to progress to godhood.

31:56

After some unknown period of time, there will be a judgment. And after that judgment, you either go to one of four places.

32:08

There's outer darkness, which is for people who either never received mortality in the first place, demons, or people who reject the gospel once they have already received it, so former

32:22

Mormons. Apostates. Yeah, exactly. And everyone else falls into either the terrestrial kingdom where they can be visited by the

32:30

Holy Spirit or the telestial kingdom where they're out in presumably outer space or something like that.

32:36

I've heard that they're like angels at this point. And you can be visited by Jesus or you go to the celestial kingdom.

32:44

And if you're at the highest level of the celestial kingdom, then you can become a god and propagate the species and repeat this whole process again.

32:53

The key is, like I said, it's metamorphosis, not just moving to different parts of a linear path.

33:02

The reason that's important is because in Mormonism, once you leave this world, you do not come back.

33:09

Your mortality is over. It's done. You go to the next stage of your development.

33:15

It's like we can't go back to being four years old anymore because that stage is over.

33:22

We're done with that. We have changed. Yeah, so the people, just to clarify, who are waiting in spirit prison or paradise are essentially waiting for the second coming of Christ eschatologically to be placed into the three different levels of heaven.

33:36

And I know there's talk within three more levels inside the celestial kingdom in general. There's even disagreements on whether you can progress even to the celestial level if you've been damned prior.

33:46

I mean, Spencer W. Kimball definitely does not teach that you can progress to godhood if you didn't obey the covenants while you were on earth.

33:53

But with regards to the conversation with Laurie and Chad, we can understand that there's a prime prepped area for weirdness, guys.

34:06

We're getting into some deep Mormon theology, what the restored gospel is.

34:12

So in terms of Mormonism, this gospel was lost after the apostles. Yes, this is what the

34:19

Apostle Paul believed. This is what John believed. This is what every prophet beforehand believed.

34:25

It's actually something that comes up a lot in their view of redemptive history is that God will reveal the total gospel to Adam and Noah.

34:35

There's no... Amos 3 .7. Right. Yeah, he won't do anything unless he reveals it to his prophets.

34:42

And he's like, the idea is he reveals the entire gospel to each one of them, but then they only reveal part of it to the rest of the world.

34:52

So yeah, like the whole view is known by the apostles and all that kind of stuff.

34:59

And then it's lost. It's lost, restored by Joseph Smith, who then speaks with, supposedly with the first vision,

35:06

God the Father and Jesus Christ, whatever. There's many different accounts of it. Did it even take place?

35:11

We don't really, even though I would, I'm suspect to say it didn't even happen. He wrote it about it 11 or 12 years later.

35:17

But with Chad and Laurie here, we must understand that there's a fundamental belief that God can literally and audibly speak to you through prophets today.

35:29

Yes. Okay. And then we have Chad, who has two near -death experiences. And I've talked with a man and I talk to him almost every

35:34

Thursday now in Provo. Yeah, I've talked to him too. Yeah, who has also had near -death experiences. And he essentially kind of believes that God speaks to him as well.

35:42

And it's loopy. Yeah, it gets to be a little weird. And there's a reason for why that kind of develops the way that it does, right?

35:51

So in, how far back to go? In Mormonism, it is almost by definition dispensational.

36:01

So in normal mainstream Christianity, dispensationalism is still, I mean, I would disagree with it, but it's within sort of the realm of orthodoxy.

36:09

You know, I'm not going to anathematize John MacArthur for being a dispensationalist. Love John MacArthur. He's just wrong about this part.

36:16

In normal traditional Christian dispensationalism, it works by, the idea is that God, you can divide all of human history into these seven distinct historical periods that are based on what

36:33

God gives humanity in order to help them live holy lives, right?

36:39

And there's a predictable kind of cycle that plays out. You know, he gives a command, humanity disobeys that command, and as a result are judged, but in like a merciful way.

36:49

So he's still giving people stuff, right? There's a, it starts with the age of innocence, right? From creation of man to the fall, right?

36:57

And then it's the age of conscience from the fall to Noah. Then the age of civil government from Noah to Abraham.

37:06

Then the age of the patriarchy from Abraham to Moses. The age of law from Moses to Christ.

37:14

The current age, which is the church age or the age of grace. And then finally, there will be a thousand year reign of Christ, which they always take to be a literal thousand year period, right?

37:23

So you notice that that's all like, it's Christ focused still, you know, it's what God gives to humanity, not what we are doing.

37:32

Mormonism has a similar model. The idea is that God is, you can divide history into seven distinct periods of time based on God revealing the gospel to specific prophets.

37:49

And so the focus is actually on the prophets themselves. Like there's the age of Adam, the age of Enoch, the age of Noah.

37:59

Then Abraham, Moses, Christ, and then finally

38:04

Joseph. Man, doesn't that sound so weird? Yeah, it's like similar, but it's important.

38:10

When you throw the name Joseph in there, that's when it gets weird. It reminds me of talking to someone who is getting involved in the

38:16

World Mission Society Church of God and not really realizing that they're in a cult until they're getting baptized. And right when they're about to go underwater, they say, we baptize you in the name of Aung Hung.

38:24

The person comes up out of the water and they go, what did I get myself into? Yeah, what did I do? Everything's starting to sound normal.

38:30

Enoch, that's a little weird. But then when it gets to the dispensation of Joseph, the prophet of the latter day saints, guys, it's in the name.

38:38

That's the reason for why they call that. That's the funny thing about Mormon cults is that they will almost uniformly declare themselves to be the new dispensation.

38:51

In their framework for how these things play out, God gives a revelation and initially there's some acceptance, but eventually there's an apostasy.

39:00

It's not the judgment. It's the apostasy that ends that period. Now there needs to be a restoration.

39:06

Let's think about Laurie and Chad then. In terms of him being this prophet with this light meter, how does that play out into his theory of the end times?

39:14

Does he think he has this mission now before the second coming of Christ to rid the world of these zombies?

39:22

Yeah, they talked a lot about that's the main mission now. So when we mentioned how there isn't any reincarnation in Mormonism because it's a metamorphosis, well, what

39:35

Chad and Laurie believed is that actually there is reincarnation and that Laurie and Chad had lived many lives before this.

39:44

I forget the exact number. They had always been married in these previous lives. I think that was something that Chad kind of slid in there to try and kind of nudge her in his direction.

39:55

But they had lived these previous lives and Laurie and Chad had both become gods and still came back.

40:03

And now their mission, the reason for why these gods had to come back was to defeat the demons. And the demons supposedly are those, again, who their light meter had gotten so low that demons could possess the body.

40:17

And now that person is dead. And so if they hadn't been caught, they would still be killing people.

40:24

Wow. It's a, yeah, it's literally a theology built upon salvation of killing people. Yeah. Salvation by murder.

40:30

Salvation by murder. It's like a weird form of blood atonement. Yeah, it's like a more twisted demonic version, at least with blood atonement.

40:40

You'll understand what the wrong theology is from the outset. The theology is that Christ's blood is not sufficient to cover certain sins.

40:49

And so other people's blood has to be spilled. And let me clarify too. I said a weird form of blood atonement. Blood atonement's already weird because again, guys, we're talking about a cult of a cult.

40:56

So blood atonement was the excuse used by the brothers in under banner of heaven for killing their sister -in -law and their niece because their blood needed to be spilled.

41:07

Okay. Even though the niece logically should not have had anything to do with this. Yeah. I mean, they're pretty much innocent according to LDS doctrine, but that, so I just wanted to clarify when

41:18

I say a weird form of blood atonement, blood atonement's already weird. So that just tells you how much weirder this version is.

41:24

Imagine throwing reincarnation into that and zombies into that and demons.

41:31

Oh man. By a man just with his own light meter in his head. Yeah. He says, he says, oh, you know, so -and -so they're getting a little bit darker.

41:40

I don't like what they did. Yeah. They're, they're starting to do some stuff and there were other people that were, their light meter were, it was decreasing.

41:49

Yep. You know, there were people that had been a part of this group. It wasn't just a, this family, but there were other people that were a part of this group who were getting kind of sidelined and marginalized because supposedly their light meter was getting a little too low.

42:04

Anyone who disagrees with them. Really? I wonder who's not completely 100 % on board. What's up everybody. If you are blessed by this content and you want to support the gospel's proclamation to the

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42:55

I wonder how many people Chad and Lori thought were no longer people, but their demon inhabited bodies on the earth.

43:05

I mean, we see a very similar conversation happening today. I know it's more of a joke, but there's that whole

43:10

NPC culture. You know what I mean? Where you can watch videos online where it's like, look at this NPC. It's like,

43:16

I'm the only real one in existence and everyone else around me is on the main character. I'm the main character.

43:21

Everyone else is a non -playable character and look what's going on with the glitches in this simulated reality. I actually kind of want people to understand that if you hold to those types of views, like how similar you actually are to Chad and Lori.

43:32

Not that creative. It's not that creative. And that can lead you down a path that's very dangerous.

43:37

If you don't start thinking that other people around you are made in the image of God, that they actually are real, then you're going to want to manipulate and do what you want to people in order to get an outcome that you desire.

43:48

And that's what Lori and Chad did. And they developed a theology to literally brainwash themselves into thinking that what they were doing was

43:58

God glorifying. Oh yeah, and Lori in particular believed that her status as a

44:05

God meant that she could do anything she wanted and it was, you know, she's already good to go and so there are no repercussions for anything she does in this life.

44:15

But yeah, this is part and parcel of something we've seen a million times before. This is what happens when you take any group of people, whether they are people that you just label individually or a whole subset of humanity, when you label them as being something other than 100 % persons made in the image of God, you inevitably will begin to think that you can do whatever you want to this group.

44:44

Wow. We saw that with the Nazis. We see that now with various forms of abortion and of racism and of anything like this.

44:55

You say, well, yes, the fetus is a human, but it's not really a person and so we can do whatever we want, including and up to tearing it apart and sucking the pieces out through a tube.

45:10

That's on Planned Parenthood's website, by the way. Oh my goodness. This isn't something that should really shock us at this point because we see it all the time.

45:21

Yeah. I mean, that leaves me pretty speechless. I mean, not just Mormonism has primed and prepped these people for the reality that we're living, just our society in general.

45:31

That's kind of a heavy thing to think about. I've said it in other episodes that the atheist agnostics or people in our society can wag their fingers at Jim Jones and say, look at what he did was horrible, but they don't realize that the same beliefs that they have about worshiping what they would mock

45:47

God and say a sky daddy or a sky God stepping on the Bible, saying that that's the letter from the word of God that has destroyed people and created racism.

45:56

This is stuff that Jim Jones taught. Yeah. And people are espousing these things today, thinking that they're so wise and smart.

46:02

Meanwhile, they're murdering their children in the womb. I mean, society in general has prepped a people to dehumanize others and kill them in a sense.

46:13

I mean, our hearts are very twisted. Jeremiah 17, 9. And if you believe in something to where it's your heart that tells you whether or not what you're doing is true, how can you distinguish between the serial killer and the whims of your heart?

46:27

When you get down to it, the only way to avoid either participating in or at least holding a view that supports the kind of stuff that Chad and Lori did to innocent people, the only way to avoid that is to have some kind of system of belief that gives every single human being on the face of the planet intrinsic value, regardless of what stage of development they're in, regardless of what they look like, regardless of where they came from, or even what they've done or what they believe.

47:06

You have to have a system of belief that would actually allow for this to happen. Otherwise, if you're a naturalist, which most atheists would be, if you're a naturalist, there is no reason to believe that any human being is more valuable than a rock or a tree or some mud somewhere.

47:28

There's no objective reason for that. You've cut yourself off at the knees here.

47:34

You have nothing to stand on. Christianity, the Bible, declares that every sinner, every white person, every black person, every male, every female, everybody across the board is of intrinsic value.

47:55

I've never seen that happen in these cults. The cults always depend on an us versus them kind of thing.

48:04

Those people over there, they're not as valuable as we are. It's true. Paul declares that the gospel is not from man, it is from God.

48:11

He condemns the ordinances of men in Colossians in multiple areas, stating that it's men who make stipulations for things that appears to be wise and religious, but in the end it is of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

48:25

We're all created in the image of God on an equal playing field as being condemned before God, condemned before God, but then it's

48:33

God himself who is the just and the justifier by sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our behalf so we can have a unity and bond through the

48:41

Holy Spirit, not by ordinances of men separating and creating different classes and systems of value of worth for humans.

48:51

The Bible absolutely condemns that from Genesis to Revelation. Beginning to end.

48:57

It's right there, even right there, in the beginning when God created. That means he sets the standards, he makes the rules, and we're supposed to be obedient to the rules that are outside of ourselves instead of the ordinances of men.

49:11

In fact, most scholars would agree that that first creation account is meant to be a polemic against the other creation accounts that were in existence at the time.

49:22

Part of that is there were other Canaanite religions that would say things like, the king is made in the image of the gods or God, whatever.

49:34

What God says is not only is all of mankind created in the image of God, but he specifies women, male and female, he made them.

49:45

There's really no way of reading that passage without saying, okay, men and women are both made in the image of God.

49:51

And that was revolutionary. That was mind -blowing at the time, and it should still be to us today because there are a lot of people out there who think that women are second -class citizens, a lot of people who think that men are second -class citizens.

50:05

Or should be. Or should be, yeah. But God says, no, it's both of them. Similarly, when we get to the

50:12

New Testament, we see reiterated the idea that we should love our enemies. Why? Because our enemies are made in the image of God.

50:19

One of the things that makes the love of Christ so unique amongst all other loves is the fact that he has love both for the victim and for the perpetrator.

50:27

It's hard for us to admit this, but you know what? God loves Lori Vallow. God loves

50:33

Chad Daybell. And we are to love them too. But what does that look like in this context?

50:38

It involves judgment. It involves justice. It involves truth and recognizing what is really going on here.

50:45

It involves the gospel as well. This is God who is the one who justifies. And I mean, man, yeah, you said it so well.

50:53

We're just, we're on, we're all made in the image of God. We're all fallen, right?

51:00

Let's think about Chad and Lori in terms of the light meter. If, you know, God has a light meter.

51:06

I hate even saying light meter. I start thinking e -meter in Scientology. If there, what does the

51:11

Psalm say? You know, if God should mark iniquities, who would say it? I'm starting to talk like that kid from the internet that like, have you ever had a dream kid, but you know, but you know what this is.

51:21

No, no, yeah. So God, God, let's say God has that light meter. Okay. All of us are dead in our trespasses and sins.

51:28

We're all on equal playing fields. Lori, Chad, you too. You know what I mean? But that's the beautiful thing about the gospel is that it doesn't take you to go slaughter that person, right?

51:38

Whatever form of reincarnation, whatever weird theology of believing, that's not, that's not what God did. That's not what God offered. He says he offers his only son so that you can be made alive again.

51:48

And Jesus even uses the terms born again, right? Not by, not by flesh or the will of man, but by God.

51:58

Yeah. That's Jesus in the book of John absolutely condemns everything that Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell taught easily.

52:07

You don't do it. God does it. It's not by the will of man. It's not by slaughtering individuals. He says, but no,

52:13

I'm Jesus. I'm God. And I am the sacrifice. Yeah. You don't need to try to kill your brother.

52:19

It's not going to save you. Psalm 49, a man can't ransom another man's soul from the pit by giving him his life because the cost of a soul is pricely and this person will still see the pit.

52:29

God doesn't want it. He wanted the sacrifice of his son and that's what already occurred in history. So, I mean, you got to read your

52:37

Bible in order to not be deceived by these types of things. And the thing is, is Lori wasn't reading her

52:43

Bible. And if she was, she was interpreting it through Chad Daybell and vice versa.

52:49

Yeah. And there are people I've seen online who have said, well, this is what religion does. And I'm like, you need to read your

52:54

Bible because the Bible condemns all of this. All of this.

53:02

It's just every single aspect of it. You know, the lies. If they really believed that what they were doing was good, why did they need to lie?

53:11

You know, did Jesus go around lying? Did he tell his disciples, hey, go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

53:19

Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, and also lie a whole lot? No, not in my Bible. If people actually did what

53:28

Jesus said, this kind of stuff would not be happening. You know,

53:34

I've always wondered, like, has anybody really gone up to those people who decry all religion, has anyone gone up to any of those people and said, do you believe, in all honesty, that the world would be a better place if everybody act like Jesus?

53:53

Because I think if they're being honest, they would have to say yes. You know, the character of Jesus is beyond, even if you don't know that he's sinless, the character of Jesus is just so far beyond anyone else.

54:06

If we modeled our lives around him and did what he actually said, everything would be better.

54:13

And I think even the most hardened atheist would have to admit that. Yeah, what you're saying, you're not denying that Jesus was sinless.

54:18

You're saying, even if you didn't know, you know, even if you weren't

54:23

Orthodox at that point, I think the truth is still just so obvious that Jesus is the paragon of virtue.

54:30

He is the one by which we should be modeling our lives. If we modeled our lives around Joseph Smith, a lot more of this stuff would be happening, honestly.

54:39

Wow, yeah, you're right. I mean, think about that, man. Our society today rejects

54:44

God, embraces their feelings, and in order to feel comfort and peace, they sacrifice the children in the womb.

54:50

That's just reality. That's reality. That is reality. And Laurie and Chad Daybell reject the biblical

54:57

Christ. They reject what the Bible says. And in order to bring peace in their life, they sacrificed their children.

55:04

That's the reality. Yeah, because they started to think of their children as being something other than human.

55:11

Man. One other thing. Okay. Okay, I didn't really notice this at first until I started studying this, and somebody pointed this out, right?

55:21

Think back to the early days of Mormonism, and we've talked about a lot of this stuff already.

55:29

You guys will find out about it later. Um, in the early days of Mormonism, there was a heavy emphasis on the magic worldview.

55:36

And that hasn't completely gone away, but there's more of it in the first few years. A lot more, you know,

55:43

Joseph translating by looking at a cedar stone that gave him the ability to see what the words were in English.

55:49

You know, there's a lot of that kind of stuff. The problem is, when you have that kind of stuff going on in your church, and you're trying to be in control of the situation, that can be a bad thing, because if somebody else can get revelations, well, maybe those revelations will contradict your revelations.

56:10

Right. And suddenly there's church splits, and there's chaos. Joseph didn't want that. So the question is, what do you do with that?

56:19

And so for a while, he kind of distanced himself gradually from magic stuff.

56:25

Although obviously, you know, he had a talisman on him when he died, so it wasn't a complete thing.

56:30

But he would do things like, say, he took the cedar stone that he used to translate, and he just handed it off to somebody and said,

56:39

I don't need this anymore. I can do this directly. And he would do this kind of stuff because he wanted to be in authority over the supernaturalism that did exist in the church.

56:52

So for example, when he first met Brigham Young, they had this long conversation all afternoon, and then they went to a prayer meeting, and Brigham Young started speaking in tongues.

57:02

Joseph responded to this by declaring to everybody in attendance that Brigham was speaking the

57:09

Adamic language, the language that Adam and Eve were speaking. And in so doing, he is both legitimizing the speaking in tongues that Brigham Young was doing.

57:20

Giving authority over it. And also presiding over it and having authority and control over it. So he's interpreting in a sense.

57:26

Right. And there has been, over the next 50 years or so after the start of the church, there was an effort to provide structure and more authority and more bureaucracy.

57:40

Give people something to do and also give them titles and authorities and that kind of stuff.

57:47

And so all of that put together creates a religion that now has what you might call a prophetic hierarchy.

57:54

Right? So the prophet, who for some reason is always referred to as the president these days, like if you had a prophet, wouldn't you call him that?

58:02

I don't know. He can prophesy and give new revelation over the entire church and indeed over the whole world, presumably.

58:12

The apostles, they would have the authority to give revelation and prophesy over the entire church except for the prophet.

58:24

Same with the authorities, the general authorities, the quorums of the 70.

58:30

They could prophesy over everybody under them, but not the apostles and the prophets. And this goes all the way down to the family unit, right?

58:36

So if your family was Mormon, you would have priesthood authority over your wife and your children, right?

58:44

So what happens if somebody who doesn't really have a significant title, like somebody who's not in the first presidency, believes or wants to claim that he's received a revelation that applies to the whole church?

59:04

You can't just show up and fast in testimony meeting Sunday and say, oh,

59:10

God has shown me how the end times is going to work for everyone and you need to do this, that, and the other thing. You're going to, it's going to be like those old cartoons where they get the cane and just kind of nudge you off the screen there.

59:23

And that people have tried that and that's what happens. You can't, if you want to have new revelation that applies to the whole church rather than just the people who are underneath you in the authority structure, you have to go outside of that authority structure.

59:37

Or you got to get to the top of the pyramid. Or you get to the top of the pyramid, but like there's a whole like monarchy kind of situation.

59:44

There's families and if you're not a part of this family, you're not getting, you know, if you're just some random schmuck going on your mission, yeah, don't count on being the next prophet.

59:57

Yeah. Thing is though, like if you, if you're a bishop and you have some vision that you think is from God, that is for the future of your specific congregation, you know, some theme that you want to focus on, you can totally do that.

01:00:11

Or if you as a father have a something that you think God has put on your heart to tell your son, you can do that.

01:00:18

What you wouldn't be able to do is to say, well, I've got this vision that is for the whole church and for the whole world and be able to do that.

01:00:28

So you have to go outside of that authority structure and you have to say, you have to find some environment where people are going to listen to you.

01:00:37

We've seen this because sometimes people who have these kinds of experiences will just go to the streets or they'll, they'll find evangelists who are just hanging out on the street corner, passing out tracks and say,

01:00:48

Hey, I've had this vision that'll happen. What Chad did is an interesting one.

01:00:55

He was publishing these books and so he found this amongst the people who were reading his books and listening to his podcast.

01:01:04

Normally though, the thing that happens most often in these Mormon cults is that it'll just be a single family unit or a couple of families.

01:01:14

I mean, there's exceptions like the FLDS or the Kingstons or the Barbarians, although that started out as a single family, but usually

01:01:22

Mormon cults are really small. You know, it's like a dozen people on like, people have been, people have commented on this online and they've said, you know, this is such a small group.

01:01:33

And I'm like, well, if we were talking about like Jonestown or some other non -Mormon cultic group, sure.

01:01:40

You know, probably because that's, that's normally, you know, people just go out and preach and gather in whoever they can. But in this case, really, if you think you've got a revelation, the only people who are going to pay any attention to you are your own family members because they are the only people in the context of a

01:01:56

Mormon hierarchy who are supposed to listen to you. Right. We're supposed to receive what you've said.

01:02:03

Anybody above you is just going to look at you sideways again, because this is outside of Mormonism.

01:02:09

Man, look what they did to their families, man. The mercy of the wicked is cruel. It is. Wow. That's an interesting concept to think about in terms of how the hierarchy unit developed.

01:02:22

I mean, even within Mormonism in the early days, it was, was it Joseph Knight or Newell Knight? One of them was prophesying at like the first general conferences.

01:02:32

And it's interesting how Joseph and Brigham had to rein in the early

01:02:39

Mormon charismania because it was there. I mean, they were doing things.

01:02:44

They were trying to perform miracles. There's supposed to be healings. I mean, the early LDS organization was full of these things.

01:02:50

Yeah, because it was the second great awakening and that's just what you did. Yeah, right. So you talked about Mormonism in the magic worldview.

01:02:57

If anyone wants to read more about it, you can look up Joseph Quinn's book, Mormonism in the

01:03:02

Magic Worldview. It's actually excommunicated because of the book. Still, he declared himself LDS because in the history, he shows the actual...

01:03:09

He's like, this is in our history. It's not coming from anti -Mormon sources. It's inarguable and it's accurate.

01:03:16

I definitely suggest that book to anyone who's interested. But what we can see with Laurie and Chad Daybell is that not only was there

01:03:25

LDS influence, but there was societal influence. I mean, the world at large tells you to follow your heart.

01:03:31

Oh, yeah. And these are the fruits of a worldview. I mean, there's a way that seems right into a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death, either yourself or killing others.

01:03:42

And Jesus is the only one who sacrificed himself. So we don't have to look to those means to try to satisfy

01:03:49

God by any requirement or ordinance of man because the gospel is from God, right?

01:03:54

It's a gift. Man, this has been a wild ride, Ryan. Thank you so much for being here.

01:04:01

If you guys like this episode, let us know. Leave a comment. This is, again, a sad story.

01:04:07

It does not have a good ending. We pray and we know that justice will be done.

01:04:14

God always makes right. And we can rest in that. So thank you guys for joining with us as we entered into the