November 9, 2016 Show with Kathleen Melonakos on “Secret Combinations: Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting (1800-1847)”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this ninth day of November 2016.

Well as most of humanity knows by now, Donald Trump has been elected as president of the

United States of America and I just ask of our listeners now to pray fervently that the

Lord brings good, true, solid Christians in mass into Donald Trump's life to continue evangelizing him, that he might be saved, that he might be guided not by his own ego and pride and self -sufficiency but that he may be humbly guided by the truth of God's holy word and his holy spirit and that that true much -needed change may take place in this nation especially in regard to the protection of the life of the unborn.

So I just wanted to say that today because it was a monumental event early this morning here in the

United States which will also have global ramifications obviously and ask of the

Iron Sharpens Iron audience to pray for Mr. Trump but we're not going to be speaking about that today as our topic.

Today we have for the very first time on the program Kathleen Melenakos and she can correct me if I mispronounced her name.

That was correct. Oh great, well Kathleen is the author of a book that we're going to be discussing

Secret Combinations Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting Between 1800 and 1847 and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron, Kathleen Melenakos.

Thank you, I'm so happy to be here and by the way my maiden name is Kimball which is a very you know dyed -in -the -wool back looking

Mormon name. I mean my great -grandfather, great -great -grandfather was one of the very founding members of the

Mormon church. Well I'd like you to talk about that a bit. Tell us about your history with the

Mormon church and how you eventually came out of that yourself.

So my full name is Kathleen Kimball Melenakos. Yeah and that's where my ancestry is.

Six generations back in the Mormon church, one of the founders. And were it was your parents or were your parents

Mormons and were you raised in Mormonism? Yes I was in my father's family.

He was a direct descendant of Heber C. Kimball. His name was Heber C. Kimball IV in fact and his wing of the family continued to practice polygamy after the 1890 manifesto that discontinued it.

But that was a huge influence and a horrendous thing in our family that he had come out of a polygamy group.

So and that's one reason I started writing the book because I wanted to investigate where that all came from and was it from God?

And then my mother's family was in the mainstream Mormon church so there was this tension you know with the polygamy background and the mainstream church and so I wanted to know what was true growing up and so I started looking into it fairly early.

So in other words you had mainstream Mormons and fundamentalist polygamist Mormons in your family up until recent history?

Yes. My father had left the fundamentalist and got a football scholarship to BYU, married my mother, but his family was always trying to draw him back into the group as they call it and it just was a lot of tension and it was all very secretive.

I only found out about it in my early teens when they started trying to marry me off and my grandmother was having me write to this boy in the polygamy group and we heard him on the phone and scared my mother to death, you know, that they were trying to marry us off into the polygamy group.

So yeah, it was pretty horrendous and well, you know, my father died in a plane crash unexpectedly in 1971 when

I was 16 and then my mother questioned her faith because he hadn't kept his covenants and then she had no hope because in Mormonism it all rests on the man, on the priesthood, as to which heaven you go to in the afterlife.

Then her family distanced themselves from her at the time when she least needed that because she's a widow alone trying to raise five children so it was a big experience for us, terrible, and so that was one thing that got me on the road to looking into the history of the church and I wanted to know where this all came from and as I researched about polygamy,

I kept running into references to counterfeiting in the Mormon record itself and other outside sources too, so I wanted to know what the

Mormons themselves said about it and it was in their records including by Joseph Smith himself.

He identified his main counselors as counterfeiters.

I mean, he was the one that published to the world the document that said that his key officers were in a counterfeiting ring and so then it went back and forth but there's all, you know,

I said, what? There must be more to this story and it must be a more and more important part of the story than has been acknowledged.

What is it? And of course they tried to keep it secret so I had to piece together sources in the

Mormon record and outside the Mormon record and see, you know, where's all the evidence.

I collected it all in one place and sure enough it fell into a story. Yeah, this is a thoroughly documented massive book that you've written, 478 pages, and let me just read a couple of the accolades that it has received.

Sandra Tanner, who is the great -great -granddaughter of Brigham Young, says that pioneering

Mormon historian author of Mormonism, Shadow or Reality, and 40 other books.

Sandra Tanner says that she found your work fascinating and it was great research and there are many more who have written accolades for this book.

But tell us about exactly who Kimball was that you are related to.

Okay, well in addition to Sandra, before we get to that there, you know, in addition to Sandra and John Whitmer and Doris Hanson, one of the other main historians that I worked with was

Will Bagley and he's an award -winning author of many books on Mormon history, including he wrote about the

Mountain Men of Massacre and so I worked, well

Michael Marquardt who was also, he's a very high -ranking Mormon historian, so I worked with these other

Mormon historians all along and got their guidance and their endorsements and, you know, corrections.

They made the book better with their editing. So my ancestor, goes back six generations, was

Heber C. Kimball, who knew Joseph Smith from when he was a boy.

They grew up in the same neighborhood. They also, he was in, they were in the same groups growing up.

You know, Joseph Smith was a treasure seer before he ever became the

Mormon prophet and for seven years, at a minimum, he engaged in this activity with dwindling people with a seer stone.

He would look in his stone stone and prosperous farmers would pay him a fee to, quote, see where buried treasure was buried, so supposedly buried on their property, and they could even pay his expenses for months or even years to be looking in the stone, you know, making sacrifices to the ghosts that guarded, and then, but then that treasure was never found.

So Joseph Smith was not the one to originate this kind of method of dwindling people, because there were other ones that I looked up, and that was what was so interesting to me, is that there were other characters in the 19th century that were doing these illegal things under the table and posed as preachers.

So I looked back in the records and, you know, supposedly

Joseph Smith met his first partner, Oliver Cowdery, who helped him write the

Book of Mormon and was a witness to the Book of Mormon, and his other comrades, Heber C.

Kimball, my ancestor, supposedly met them after the church was founded, or at least in 1829 when he started writing the

Book of Mormon. That's what he claimed in his history, but their history went way farther back than that.

You look in the records and Joseph Smith's family had married into the

Kimball family back when they lived in Vermont, which was way earlier than 1829 or 1830 when the

Book of Mormon came out. So it looked to me, and I traced it all and it's in my chapter, it looked like they were already in a counterfeiting group long before they ever started the

Book of Mormon. So you have to know something about counterfeiting, or else none of it makes any sense.

You know, so what? So he dealt in a few counterfeit dollars, or...

No, counterfeiting was an extremely serious offense. It was a capital crime in many jurisdictions, and you could be hung for it, and many were.

You know, governments have to have a sound currency, and they have to have a means of exchange that isn't counterfeited and doesn't get inflated and isn't disturbed.

I mean, you have to have a sound currency or you cannot govern effectively. The economy doesn't work.

No one knows if what they're buying things with is of any value, and it was a big problem in early

America because the government wasn't very stable. They had just had the

American Revolution. A lot of jurisdictions, no one knew who was in charge right after the war, and it was a big frontier so that people could go out to the edges of the frontier and avoid what law enforcement there was.

It was the wild, wild west. So counterfeiting was a real big problem, and there was the evangelical majority, and then there were these fringe groups that would engage in counterfeiting, and they would have a respectable type person, at least that looked like it, at the head, and often it was a preacher, someone that appeared to be a

Christian preacher, but then he would be heading up this oath -bound and black market business of counterfeiting on the side.

And that's in Chapter 2 of my book, all these other radical fringe groups that were connected with counterfeiting and horse stealing.

So, you know, I thought growing up I was so proud that my grandfather had been one of the founders of the

Mormon Church, but looking back into the records, I really question that.

I mean, yes, the Mormons have done amazing accomplishments. They braved the wilds of the frontier.

They endured hardships. They pushed the settlements farther west and pioneered the west, and many of them were sincere believers, and I give them much credit for being brave to go west when other people weren't doing that yet.

And, you know, they had accomplishments and they were sincere believers, but the inner circle of leaders were doing some very questionable activities, illegal activities.

And before we return to that story, I just want to get a little bit more about your background so our listeners know exactly who

I am interviewing. You say you were raised Mormon, and when was it and how was it that the

Lord drew you out of this group and drew you into Bible -believing

Orthodox Christianity? Okay, well, we grew up in our home, as I said, with my two parents kind of having some friction there.

My mother was very much a devout believer growing up, though, and it was always expected

I would go to B .Y. Brigham Young University, and I did. I met my husband there. I always had questions growing up, you know, especially after my father died and my mother questioned her faith, so they always told us that we would receive this emotional feeling.

They call it the burning of the bosom. Right, I heard that. Ask in faith and you will receive the answer that the

Church is true with this burning of the bosom. Well, I asked for it for years, being really sincere, but I guess the

Lord, you know, the answer was no. That's the way

He answered my prayer, I firmly believe, is that He did not give me that burning of the bosom, and He kept me investigating, and so when

I went into the temple to be married at age 20, I was still believing, but I really had questions, and then going in the temple and taking on these commitments, lifelong, not only lifelong commitments as to your marriage partner and your devotion to the

Mormon Church, but it, that's your whole destiny, your eternal destiny is determined by what commitments you make when you're 20 years old.

You know, if you marry the wrong person who isn't going to keep His covenant, then you have no hope either, and I saw what happened to my mother, so I was very wary of getting married, just because it was such the big decision that's going to affect my entire eternal destiny, and so then

I did, then we did get married in the temple, and I had a very disturbing feeling about it. It was not what

I expected. They do not prepare you. You do not know what's going to go on in there, because it's secret, and then you take these oaths that say that if you don't, if you reveal the secrets, it's on pain of your life, and I just did not feel good about that at all, and since they tell you to go by your feelings, well, then what was

I supposed to think? Then I started investigating, and my husband and I together looked into what, you know, some of the unsavory things about Joseph Smith, and the things that didn't match up, and the historicity of the

Book of Mormon. There's no evidence for it. It's not really a history. It's a 19th century fiction is what it is, and so we left the

Mormon Church not knowing what to believe. You know, we knew that wasn't true, but then what was true?

So then I wanted to know who was this Jesus that they were talking about, and I went,

I took a class at, I took two classes at the University in Loyola of Chicago, and then the

University of Toronto where we happen to be living called the Historical Jesus, and they told me a whole nother wrong story about who

Jesus was. They said, we hardly know anything about him. You can't rely on the manuscript.

The resurrection only happens in your heart, and so I said, okay, we'll close that door, and then

I looked into these other things, New Age, and Darwinism, and Marxism, and all the things in the

Academy that they revere, but those didn't seem to hold up either, and I studied philosophy at Stanford and got a master's degree because I wanted to know the meaning of life.

Well, maybe the philosophers can tell me, what is this life all about? This is a, this is, you know, it's not easy to live.

It's not, you have problems, you have suffering, you know, we were moving a lot of places due to my husband's career, and every time

I had to start over again trying to make friends and make a new life, and so I, you know, what am

I going to base my life on? And everything that I investigated would not hold up under investigation, and no one could ever tell me that there wasn't a

God. I always believed in God, and I always believed in treating others as you want to be treated, and the golden rule, and I said, well,

I'll just live that, you know, but it didn't work, and my life kept getting worse, and it was, my marriage was strained, and so then, so in answer to my prayers, after years, the

Lord started putting Christians in my path, and gosh, these

Christians were awfully nice, and they welcomed us, and they were, they were friendly, and they didn't push us, and they had their beliefs, and they were, you know.

So then, in the year 2000, then the Lord gave me the book,

Mere Christianity by C .S. Lewis, and ironically, it was given to me by my

Mormon sister -in -law. So I read C .S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, for the first time, and that is when

I heard the gospel, as it is biblically stated, for the first time, and then some

Christian friends invited us to a Christmas service, and I just heard the singing, and I heard the gospel, and I finally understood, and I just wept, you know, just, wow, now

I know what Jesus, who Jesus really is, and I started to study more of the

Bible, and it turned out not to be true that we don't know much about Him.

We know more about Him than any other ancient figure, and I had already studied Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, all those.

No one questioned that they existed, and that, you know, we know what we know about them, but those academics had really fuzzied up the story of Jesus, and they told a false version, and yes, we know more about Jesus than any of the ancient figures, and the more

I came to know, based on evidence, because I'd been trained in philosophy, the evidence, the

Bible does stand up when you examine it, and maybe you don't like that to be true, but it's the shortest leap of faith, is to believe in a

Creator God, as it is outlined in the

Bible, and I came to love Him. I came to love Him as my God and my

Savior, and know more about Him, and it's awe -inspiring, the actual story of Jesus, a person who lived in history, who actually existed, who did the things, who was seen by witnesses, who was resurrected.

If he, you know, he either was resurrected in history in real time or not, and if he was, which

I believe he was, it changes everything. So then we started becoming more you know,

I turned my life over to Christ. I pray to Him, I love the music to Him, and try to live in line with His gospel.

And how long has it been since you've been a Bible -believing, evangelical Christian? It was around the year 2000 that I went to that Christmas service, and the

Lord opened my eyes, and started going to community

Bible study, and so it's been, what, 16 years. Praise God.

And that made it more important to know what, to me, to know what really happened in the early

Mormon church, too, because up to that time, I had said, well, Mormon church may not be true for me, but it may work for other people, so that's fine.

But no! What, if Christ really did come as the

Redeemer of the world, then it matters. Maybe something does work for you,

I could, you know, but that is not going to give you anything to what really matters, which is eternal life and the truth.

So it's important what you base your life on, and this idea that, you know, whatever works for you is fine, whatever works for me, no.

It matters that the actual truth is available, and so our relatives who still adhere to the teachings of Joseph Smith, you know,

I want to get, I want to reach them, I want to reach my loved ones, I want to reach the people that I love.

So that's why it's more important to know what really happened in the early church. Now what, how did your

Mormon family react to this conversion of yours? Well, they have been, you know, there's my husband's family, who are not long -time ethnic background

Mormons. They were converts, you know. Brian's parents joined in the 1960s, or, you know, they raised him, they were not long -time back, and they lived in Michigan, where there weren't very many

Mormons around, so they were used to having many other people that believed other things.

Well, my background had come through being in the Mormon church and surrounded by other

Mormons all the time, and being more attuned to the teaching that says you should not, to their teaching that says you should not adhere to people that have fallen away from the church, they call them apostates.

So, to their credit, my husband's family have not, have been friendly to us.

They've included us, they've welcomed us, but religion is never discussed, or very lightly, up until recently, whereas my side of the family, my extended relatives have basically written us off, don't talk to us, you know, because you're either in or out of the

Mormon church, in their eyes. And so, the two different reactions.

My husband's family do know about my book. We, you know, they didn't talk about it for a long time.

They knew I was writing something. They didn't know what, but now they know, and so I just hope they have an open mind enough to know what really happened, and to maybe re -examine, you know, what they believe.

Yeah, we'll have to pray that the Lord does exactly what he did to you. As you even described it, he opened your eyes to the truth, and opened your heart, and we have to pray that the

Lord does that with your family as well. We have to go to our first station break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own about Mormonism, and specifically about our guest's book,

Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting from 1800 to 1847.

Our guest is the author of that book, Kathleen Kimball Milonakos, and our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We are going to be right back after these messages. We are going to be right back after these messages.

From World Radio and the fully shareable content of World Digital, simply visit wmg .org

forward slash iron sharpens to get your World Trial and Dr. Sproul's book all free, no obligation, with no credit card required.

Visit World News Group at wmg .org forward slash iron sharpens today.

I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and I'll see you next time. From compact to giant print

Bibles, find an NASB that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible .com.

Trust, discover, and enjoy the NASB for yourself today. Go to nasbible .com.

That's nasbible .com. Tired of bop store Christianity, of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship? And how about the Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth

Biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island. Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience, featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times.

631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us.

That's wrbc .us. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted.

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered,

Christ -exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.

That's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you've just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Kathleen Kimball Melenakos. She's the author of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting from 1800 to 1847.

I just wanted to read a couple more of the endorsements that the book has received. Will Bagley, award -winning author of Blood of the

Prophets, Brigham Young, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and many other historical works, writes,

Kathleen has explored in -depth one of the most explosive topics for a historian.

She has changed my thinking about early Mormon origins. Sure, it arose in the burnt -over district of upstate

New York, but the religion appears to have been a cover. Also, Dr.

James Beverly, professor of religion at Tyndale Seminary and author of The Illustrated Guide to Religions and many other works on religion and faith, writes,

Kathleen is a descendant of one of the major Mormon pioneers who was the right -hand man to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

Kathleen has done incredible historical work and discovered evidence that Smith engaged in counterfeiting through most of his adult life and while he was a

Mormon leader. Her work has won praise from leading historians of Mormonism.

And also, Kay Birmingham, a civil trial attorney and author of An American Fraud, One Lawyer's Case Against Mormonism, writes,

Kathleen Mellonachos has compiled a convincing compendium of material supporting the existence of early

Mormon origins in secret oath -bound counterfeiting networks in American history.

She has found evidence in the interstitial history of the late 18th and 19th centuries, court news, real estate, vital and other records to support her thesis.

This work is an integration of general historical commentary regarding counterfeiting with primary source documents evidencing the counterfeiting activities of early

Mormon figures in particular. The result is an unforgettable and scholarly work which

I highly recommend to any truth seeker. And there are others as well.

And this is a thoroughly documented massive work. It's about, as I said earlier, 478 pages.

And we do have a listener from Slovenia who has a question for you,

Kathleen. Really? Joe from Slovenia says, When as a

Christian in my young adult years, I faced challenges to my faith at university from professors and fellow students.

I had to begin investigating the facts regarding the claims of Christianity. I had to do research and test the evidence for the inspiration and inerrancy of the scripture.

All of my searching serves to strengthen my faith because all the claims of biblical Christianity are factually and historically true.

Do Mormons commonly have a similar experience where they are forced to investigate the truth claims of Mormonism?

What happens when they investigate? Do they discover all the mounds of evidence that discredit

Joseph Smith and his fabricated writings? What generally happens when they do?

Well, this is an interesting question, because the Mormon leaders today, the prophet and the

Twelve Apostles, as they call them, hold a general conference every year, and they even say in general conference, they discourage

Mormons from investigating their faith. They say, Don't go on any of these websites.

They're equal to pornography. They call them anti -Mormon websites, which all they are, are publishing original documents from the 19th century from Mormon sources themselves, teachings of Joseph Smith, teachings of the then prophet

Brigham Young. They do not want their members, they discourage them from looking into the original documents of their own church.

But they can't stop them from that, even though they discourage it.

So many people do start investigating. They have a question. They have a contradiction. They find something that doesn't add up.

For instance, references to modern things or phrases from Shakespeare, for instance, in the

Book of Mormon. Now, how can it be a document, a history of the Native Americans that supposedly took place in 600

AD, if it has one of the same phrases used in the

Book of Mormon that was used in Shakespeare? You know, things like this. But a lot of times, they don't want to really shake up their faith, so they just kind of put that on a mental shelf.

And this is a widely used metaphor among Mormons and ex -Mormons especially.

You know, they put that question on the shelf for later. Well, I'll just think about that later. I can't figure it out now, but I'll get the answer sometime.

But then they run into something else that doesn't add up, and they put that on the shelf.

And then they find out about Joseph Smith's polygamy or whatever else that the church wasn't telling them.

And, you know, after a while, it's a sudden process for some.

Like, I have a friend that found out about his polygamy, and that was it. You know, the whole thing's wrong.

What they've been telling me is wrong. And she and her husband, just, it was a sudden thing.

They realized it was a fraud, and they left the church. Other people, it takes a long process.

And they go for years sometimes not having things add up and wondering about this, being curious, but not wanting to rock the boat or, you know, not wanting to shake up their marriage, which happens a lot.

One partner starts investigating, but the other doesn't, and they only go by their feelings.

See, they're so conditioned and encouraged to just go by your feelings.

And also, the Mormon church keeps its members very busy. You must do your family and waiving.

You must do your visiting teaching. You must fulfill your job in the church, whatever job they give you.

You must do your scripture reading. You must do your tithing. And, of course, you're trying to make a living doing all these things, you know, while you're being active in the church, teaching the

Cub Scouts or having nine kids. So many faithful Mormon believers don't even have time to do investigation.

But there are many that do. You know, they start feeling overworked, or they start feeling disturbed in the temple like I did, or something disturbs them, and then they get on this path, and here's the

Internet. The Internet has made all these documents available to anybody, which it never was before.

And they start looking into it, and one thing leads to another, to another, and there are large numbers of people that have left or are leaving the

Mormon church because of the information that's available. They find out about the historical

Joseph Smith versus the mythical Joseph Smith. He didn't live that long ago. We still have all the records.

We still have newspaper accounts. There's been, there's a man named Dale Broadhurst who has researched all kinds of newspapers from the 19th century, original documents, all the books that would have been available at that time, and also

Sandra and Gerald Tanner have also published original documents from the 19th century.

And that's why it was, that way it was possible for me to look at these original documents that have been published in all these different sources, and a lot of times,

I didn't even have to go to the archives because it's already on the Internet. So there's,

I looked at hundreds of documents, hundreds of books. I spent years just poring over these things and finding evidence.

Here's something that somebody said here. Here's a document here. Look at this arrest record that, you know,

I could put that in there that he was actually arrested in Vermont. There was, there's a, you know, right in the middle of my book, there's a list of 35 high -ranking inner circle

Mormon leaders that either had arrest records or indictments or testimony or other things that people had said that they were counterfeiting money.

And so I put that all together, but like I said, you know, to answer the question, they are not encouraged to investigate.

And see, I really found that with the Christian church, too. I was so amazed that my pastors and my teachers who are, you know, they're very well trained in ancient

Greek and Hebrew and the original languages of the

Bible. They do nothing but encourage believers to investigate and to ask questions.

And any question that you want, ask me. I'll try to explain it. That is not the case in the

Mormon church. In fact, Sandra Tanner, one of the main historians who endorsed my book, who

I worked with, that's why she left the church, is because when she was a young person, she asked questions of her institute teacher in the, you know, her person that was in authority teaching the

Mormon doctrine, told her that she was not supposed to ask so many questions.

I mean, so then she said, well, why not? And her and her husband started uncovering things.

So they actually tell their believers not to investigate. So if something's true, it will stand up under investigation.

It will be verified by other people. It will have the eyewitnesses. It can ask the people themselves.

You can verify. But not if it isn't true, then you got to cover up. Well, we have another question from Joe, a follow -up question from Joe in Slovenia.

Okay. He says, here in Slovenia, the Mormons have recently built a temple in the capital city.

Occasionally, I see Mormon missionaries on the street. What does your guest suggest regarding how to best approach them?

What are the most common do's and don'ts that I should be aware of? How should

I relate them personally to cultivate a relationship with them, to care for them, and share the gospel with them?

How should I go about presenting the evidence for errors of Mormonism to them?

And you were even saying, Kathleen, before the program that you wanted to be clear that you do truly love and care about Mormons, that this is not some hatred or bigotry that you have toward them, even though you do, obviously, being a lover of truth, you have a disdain for the founder of this cult and its teachings that contradict what the

Lord has taught in his word. What advice do you have for this brother in Slovenia who obviously has a heart for the

Mormons and the Mormon missionaries in his area? Well, it's a great question.

And yes, we are admonished to speak the truth in love, and so it's hard to do that because you are going to be causing someone to re -examine what they believe, hopefully, and that's very hard to do, you know, especially in a loving way, because it easily can go into argument or contention, and Mormons do not want to be confrontational, neither do

Christians usually. How do you build a relationship on that? So it's a challenge. But yes, my advice would be to ask them, you know, they are wanting to challenge you in your faith, so invite them to come to your home and be friends, care about them, but the object is to get them to investigate on their own.

And so I would start with asking questions. Ask them where the

Book of Mormon takes place, and they won't even know, because the Church has never made any official declaration.

They will say, well, somewhere in the Americas. Well, if it was history, they ought to be able to tell you where it took place.

And Joseph Smith said it took place in the state of New York, near his home in Palmyra. Well, then why haven't they found any artifacts?

In a battle that took place that he said of two million people, they don't find one single pot shard, or coin, or arrowhead, or, you know, there's no evidence at all that there was any kind of big battle between peoples in that state,

New York. Okay, so then maybe it's in Central America? So that's one question, where the

Book of Mormon took place. But maybe possibly a much better way to approach it is, do you believe in the

God of the King James Bible? Because they say, you know,

Joseph Smith said, we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, as far as it is translated correctly.

And he was referring to the King James Bible, which they still use. Well, the God of the

King James Bible is different in his characteristics and in the facts about him than the

God that Joseph Smith talked about. You know, maybe encourage them to read the

New Testament, and they can use the King James Bible. I think it's easier to understand a more modern translation.

But even, you know, read the New Testament and ask them, who is Jesus according to John?

John, the disciple that Jesus loved, who was closest to him. Read the

Book of John. Who was Jesus according to John, the eyewitness who was with him?

And then, because that's a different Jesus than they're taught by Joseph Smith, that Joseph Smith, Jesus, was a created being who was a natural, physical child of God the

Father and his heavenly mother, wife, who evolved into being a god on his own planet.

And every Mormon male is a potential god in embryo to be equal with both

Jesus and God the Father. So, you know, it's a whole different system. It's a different gospel.

Temples are not part of original Christianity. Jesus came to outdate the temple.

You know, he said the temple's no longer needed. Something greater than the temple is here. You are a temple.

You are my temple where I dwell. If there's two or three of you that gather in my name, there

I am. I will be there. Not, you know, you don't have to reach heaven by getting a celestial marriage in the temple.

But, you know, focus on who Jesus really is according to King James Bible.

And so, is it the same? Are you worshiping the same God of Christianity? And as a matter of fact, the

Mormon leaders have said that they worship a different Jesus than biblical Christians. So, do they want to follow someone who is a flawed human being, who practiced polygamy, who did illegal activities under the table, such as counterfeiting and horse thieving, and always did everything in secret, and who, you know, had so many...

Joseph Smith was going to take over the United States. He was keeping it secret, but he compared himself to Muhammad.

He had a 4 ,000 -man army with which he was going to take over before he was assassinated.

Versus, do you want to believe the words of Jesus Himself, the Son of the

Living God? You know, look in the New Testament. Get them to read the

New Testament and get them to look on the internet for questions about Mormonism. If they look it up themselves, they're going to be much more readily ready to believe it than if you tell them.

So, ask them questions like that. That's what I would admonish. You know, and get to know them, where they're from.

If they're from America, if they're in a different country over in Slovenia, wow, they're far away.

I'm sure they would like to have a friend. Yeah, in fact, I know that it's very easy to have a time of discussion with Mormons, because they're the ones eagerly looking for people that want to invite them into their living room and sit down over some refreshments and have long conversations.

So, unless you're a former Mormon, probably, but they probably...

I might add that my husband completed a Mormon mission. He went to Switzerland. He learned, was

German. He worked with families, and it was things that those families said to him on his mission that stayed with him that got him to start investigating.

And he prayed and asked, he said, is the Mormon Church true, and is

Jesus the Christ? Well, he definitely got what he felt was a real strong answer to, is

Jesus the Christ, but did not get the answer that the Mormon Church was true, just like I did as a young person.

I did never get that burning of the bosom, you know. So, what you say to a

Mormon missionary may stay with him, and it may be years later even or not, but what you say to him may really plant a seed that he may look into.

So, be encouraged, yeah. And by the way, Joe, thank you so much for writing in, and thank you also for providing an

American mailing address for your daughter, so I can mail you a free copy of this book, by the way.

Kathleen has been kind enough to provide us with some copies to our listeners who submit questions today, and since you have provided the address for your

American, for your daughter in America, we're going to mail you out this free copy of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting, 1800 to 1847.

And I'll also send you a list of some excellent resources on Mormonism, a number of these authors whom

I have interviewed in the past on Iron, Sharp, and Zion. You could also do a search in the archive of ironsharpanzionradio .com

and just type in Mormon or LDS or Latter -day Saints, and you'll get a number of previous interviews with different guests on Mormonism, both those who have been

Mormons themselves or have just written about it through thorough investigation, like my friend

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries has become a thoroughly knowledgeable expert on Mormonism, although he was never himself a

Mormon. And we hope that that will be of help to you. In fact,

I'm hoping that my listeners will pray for me, because I have got a couple of young Mormon missionaries that I bumped into just a matter of weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, in front of my own home, who were passing by while I was in a parked car talking to a friend.

And I called them over to the car, because they immediately recognized the white shirts, black ties, and name badges.

So I called them over. I said, you're Mormons, aren't you? And they said, yeah. And they were more than happy to talk with me for a while, and they're looking forward to getting together with me, even though they know

I'm a Christian talk show host and have interviewed former Mormons.

And in fact, I've interviewed Sandra Tanner, who you mentioned a few times, the great -granddaughter of Brigham Young.

And so that should be interesting. Also, I highly recommend a documentary that you could view for free on the internet that was produced by my friend

Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah.

I know him. Oh, you do? Yeah, I've been to his church. Oh, he's a great guy. And he produced a video that you could watch on lds .video,

lds for Latter -day Saints dot video. And it is a remarkable documentary.

And I'm not just saying that because I provided a couple of voiceovers for the documentary, but it's a really good tool.

And we thank you for writing in, Jo. By the way,

I could mention where my book can be obtained, if it's all right. I'm sorry?

Can I mention where my book can be obtained? Oh, absolutely. It's on amazon .com.

Just type in secret combinations evidence, or you can get it through my website, www .mormoncounterfeiting

.com. Or you can get it through Sandra Tanner's bookstore at utlm .org.

And then it's in bookstores in Salt Lake City, but your listeners are all around the world, right?

So you can go to amazon .com, mormoncounterfeiting .com, or utlm .org.

Great. And you can also order it, because they order books from all publishers that are represented on Iron Sharpens Iron.

You can order it through cvbbs .com, who's one of my sponsors, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com. And that's who's actually shipping out your free copy of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting, that will be arriving at your doorstep, compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who mails out all of our winners, free bibles, books, dvds, cds, and other things that they win by submitting questions to our guests.

Great. And Joe from Slovenia also reminded us that the new first lady,

Melania Trump, is from Slovenia. So pray for her, pray for her and the Slovenian people.

Excellent. Well, we have to go to our next break right now. There are a number of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and we'll get to you as soon as we can.

And if you'd like to join them with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with more information on early

Mormon counterfeiting with our guest Kathleen Malinakos. I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV and occasional guest on Chris's show

Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com. Thanks, Todd.

I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.

As a membership organization, we help Christians be wise with money and live generously every day.

And for the fourth year in a row, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the

Ethisphere Institute, a leading international think tank dedicated to the creation, advancement and sharing of best practices in business ethics.

Contact me, Mike Gallagher, financial consultant at 717 -254 -6433.

Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the

Thriving Difference. Lending faith, finances and generosity.

That's the Thriving Story. Just survive. We were made to thrive.

Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes Solid Rock Remodeling to our family of sponsors. Serving South Central Pennsylvania, Solid Rock Remodeling is focused on discovering, understanding and exceeding your expectations.

They deliver personalized project solutions with exceptional results. Solid Rock Remodeling offers a full range of home renovations, including kitchen and bath remodeling, decks, porches, windows and doors, roof and siding and more.

For a clear, detailed professional estimate, call this trustworthy team of problem solvers who provide superior results that stand to the test of time.

Call Solid Rock Remodeling at 717 -697 -1981.

717 -697 -1981 or visit SolidRockRemodeling .com.

That's SolidRockRemodeling .com. Solid Rock Remodeling, bringing new life to your home.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

TV program entitled, Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org.

That's providencebaptistchurchma .org. Or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about one hour to go is

Kathleen Kimball Milanakos, who is the author of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting from 1800 to 1847, as she herself is a former

Mormon who came to discover the true Jesus Christ and true gospel of the holy scriptures by his grace and mercy.

And we are discussing this fascinating book today. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we'll get to those of you who are patiently waiting to have your questions asked as soon as possible.

But before I return to the interview, I just want to remind you that this Friday and Saturday, November 11th and 12th,

God willing, I will be at the Doctrines of Grace Conference in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, sponsored by the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The guest speakers include Dr. Joel Beeky, who's been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron many times,

Anthony Carter, who I have interviewed, and Tony Merida, who I have not yet interviewed on this program and hope to soon.

Richard Taylor and Timothy Whitmer are a couple of other speakers at this conference.

That's this Friday and Saturday, November 11th and 12th, which will be held at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church on Old Bethlehem Pike North in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

For more details on registering for this conference, go to alliancenet .org.

That's alliancenet .org. And click on Events at the top of the page.

The very first event you will see is the Doctrines of Grace Conference. And if you register, please tell them that you heard about the conference from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And we thank Bob Brady and everybody at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for all they do to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I thank you for your friendship with Iron Sharpens Iron as well. We do have

RJ from White Plains, New York, with a question for you, Kathleen. Okay.

He says that, I have heard that Joseph Smith, before his religious experience and founding of the

Mormon Church, was also a trader and dealer of mummies.

Is that true? Yes, he was.

Not specifically a dealer, but he was offered these mummies in the mid -1830s by this man named

Michael Chandler, who had brought them over from Egypt and was touring them in the

United States. And they included some papyri. So what Joseph Smith did was buy them for,

I think, he said $2 ,000, which was a lot of money back then. He bought the mummies with the papyri.

And then he claimed that the papyri was the book of Abraham.

And it was written by the biblical Abraham. And he had this whole story that Abraham had supposedly said.

And at that time, there was nobody that could translate Egyptian, because they had not discovered the

Rosetta Stone. So he could say that this was a translation.

He could say it was anything and say it was a translation. Well, he did say it was a translation.

He did not say it was a inspiration, you know. But then it turns out that the

Rosetta Stone was discovered, that they could translate Egyptian, and then they discovered that it was a funeral papyri for the god

Osiris. It has nothing to do with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, any of the biblical figures at all.

So that is, you know, Charles Larson is the book, the author of the book

By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus, A New Look at the Joseph Smith Translation.

It's a 30 -year bestseller. He explains in there all about the story about the

Egyptian mummies and the papyri and how Egyptologists have confirmed that it has nothing to do with Abraham.

So Joseph Smith, you know, he came up with that. He decided to call it the, you know, the

Book of Abraham, and they even would charge people to see these mummies in the temple for 25 cents a view.

So he was quite a showman, Joseph Smith. You know, he would come up with a new thing, a new idea, a way to get people to pay him, so, and to believe in his his translating ability, which now the

Mormon Church tries to say, well, he never really meant that it was a translation. It was an inspired version of you know, it was an inspired writing.

Well, why did he call it a translation then? But that's one of the biggest reasons why a lot of people get really disillusioned with the

Mormon Church. They say, come on. They look at the, it's called the

Pearl of Great Price, and it's one of their scriptures. You know, supposed to be

Book of Abraham. So that's what that was all about. But he, Charles Larson endorsed my book, too.

He said it was great. He was really fascinated by finding out that was another thing that Joseph Smith counterfeited, you know, the

Egyptian papyri. he counterfeited the Bible to write the

Book of Mormon. He wrote it in biblical style and tried to, you know, pass it off as real history like the

Bible is, and then he made up this Book of Abraham, Pearl of Great Price.

He counterfeited that. Besides counterfeiting money, he counterfeited the scriptures.

Yeah, but I encourage anybody to investigate it on your own. Don't just take my word for it.

You know, there's other books about it. There's, you know, look for yourself. Look at the Egyptian papyri and see if it has anything to do with Abraham.

So well, thank you, R .J. and White Plains, and give us your full mailing address, if you will, because you have also won a copy, a free copy of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting from 1800 to 1847, compliments of our guest,

Kathleen Kimball Melenakos, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping that out to you free of charge to us.

And to you. And our email address, if anybody else would like to join us, is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we do have, first we had

R .J., now we have C .J. C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, why is it that if Joseph Smith has inspired or retranslated the

Bible, which the Mormons call the Joseph Smith Version, why is it that they don't use that regularly and prefer the

King James if he is their prophet? Well, that's a really good question, too.

And the story of the inspired version of the Bible as translated or corrected by Joseph Smith goes back to when he and Sidney Rigdon first started the church, they started getting revelations, as they called them, that the

Bible wasn't perfectly correct. No, it was not the inspired word.

It needed to be corrected. It had been somehow perverted over the years or corrupted, which is the same thing

Muhammad said, by the way. The Bible can't be trusted. It's been mistranslated.

It's been corrupted over the years. I have a better version of it. So he and Sidney Rigdon set out to change certain verses in the

Bible, and he put in his own name. He prophesied himself in his inspired version.

He changed different verses that he didn't like. But he left a lot of it the same.

So when he died, then when he, you know, he said that in his own history that he had finished his translated, his inspired version.

He had finished it. It's right in the history. But then when he was, you know, violently killed, his wife,

Emma, his legal wife, he had 42 other illegal wives, polygamist wives, but his legal wife,

Emma, took the copyright of the inspired version, and they and her other followers started another branch of the

Mormon church called the Reorganized Church. They didn't like the polygamy that Joseph Smith had started.

Brigham Young was continuing. So they went to the Midwest, stayed in the Midwest, and kept the copyright to the inspired version.

Well, the church out in Utah, the Brigham Young end of the church didn't have the copyright, and they still don't.

So they can't really use that. Oh, this is, I've never heard this story before. Yeah, not only that, but if you look at the inspired, what he called the inspired version, it is,

I mean, there's, you can't, you really can't believe it. I mean, some of his so -called corrections that he made contradict with other verses in the

Bible, and it's just not very well done. I mean, anybody, any scholar looking at it, say it says that he did the same thing with this inspired version that he did with the

Pearl of Great Price. He just came up with stuff and put it in there. He didn't translate anything. He didn't say what the original

Greek or Hebrew said. He made up things and put them in there. So the

Mormon church is kind of very ambivalent about the inspired version. On the one hand, they say, yes, we quote it in our other scriptures and cross -references.

We do use it. But then on the other hand, they don't want to use it as their main version, because it contradicts, itself.

So, you know, that's the story of it. Yeah. And the reorganized

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints changed their name just about, I don't know, five years ago or so, right?

They're the Community of Christ now, right? Right. Community of Christ. And they have made a lot of admissions that, you know, the

Book of Mormon isn't what it has claimed to be in the Book of Abraham.

They've kind of a little bit distanced themselves from all those problems in the early church and even

Joseph Smith. And they just want to focus on being a church of peace, you know, kind of a modern church of peace and not really go, you know.

They have a lot of more liberal positions, like women can hold the priesthood.

I think, I'm pretty sure, and they're friendly to the gay agenda and things like that.

Yeah. And even going back before our modern era, if I'm not mistaken, they did not teach that faithful Mormons could become gods.

Am I right on that? They were not polytheistic in their understanding of God? You know,

I am not sure about that. I know they don't, they didn't build temples like the

Mormon church. What the temples are all about in the mainstream Mormon church is becoming a god.

You must be temple worthy. You must be paying 10 % of your income in tithing to get in the temple.

You must do what they call the ordinances, all the ordinances that you need to complete to be in the highest kingdom of heaven, which is where you become a god.

You do that through temple work and living all the other laws that they require that you live.

So you must be married in the temple, have a celestial marriage, and you must qualify to get into the temple to become a god.

And that's what the temples are all about. But they don't say that. They never say that right up front when they're just talking to a new investigator.

In fact, they, I've had missionaries come right out and deny that they believe that you can become a god.

I said, come on, don't tell me. I've been through the temple. I know all about it.

Don't, don't deny it. Really? Because I know for a fact that that's what you teach. That's interesting because I wouldn't think that they would lie about something like that.

That's pertinent and central to their faith. I know that when

I had an encounter with two Mormon missionaries in my home in the late 1980s, it was interesting.

There was a young Mormon missionary and an older man with him. And I thought the older man was going to be the brains of the two that he brought along to back him up.

But it was exactly the opposite. The young Mormon knew a lot more about the

Mormon religion than the older man. And every time

I would bring something up like that, like the ability to become a god and a god of your own planet, the older man kept repeating in a robotic -like way, you must have heard something that is not true about the

Mormon church from someone who does not like us, perhaps a ex -Mormon or someone who has an agenda against us.

But that is not what we believe. It was like a rehearsed. And the younger Mormon kept saying, very embarrassed, no, that's what we believe.

But the one thing that he got very angry about that's when he packed up his stuff and was storming out of my living room was when

I brought up the fact that Brigham Young clearly taught that Christ in Mormonism, according to Brigham Young, that Christ was conceived as a result of a sexual union between Mary and God who tabernacled in flesh.

And that's when he was denying that the Mormons teach that. And I later gave him the documentation of it over the phone.

And I don't know if he ever bothered to investigate that or not. Well, that is absolutely the case.

It's right in the Journal of Discourses, which is the speeches given by Brigham Young in general conference, which it says right on the jacket leaf of it that this is to be considered scripture.

Right. Well, what I have understood from Mormon or Christian apologists who deal with Mormonism is that that is not something that is widely taught today as it was before.

It's not. So that's why this young Mormon missionary probably just never heard that in reality.

He probably was not lying to me because he affirmed everything else. But we had we had

Mormon missionaries, the visiting teachers from our local ward, come to our house recently because they need to get, they need to check off that they're doing their home teaching, they call it.

So we have them come over and we're happy to talk to them about their doctrine.

And the newly converted person, you know, he was just joined the church maybe two or three years ago.

He said that he didn't even think that the Mormon church teaches that it's the only true church, which, of course, that it

I mean, throughout its beginning, it is the only true church and all the other

Christian churches are an abomination. That's right. Yeah, this is a new PR approach because because about six months ago, a couple of different Mormon missionaries, other than the ones that I just recently bumped into,

I was walking down the street here in my hometown of Carlisle, Pennsylvania again, and I saw from a distance three young men with white shirts, black ties and name badges.

And I called out to them, Are you Mormons? And they said, Yes. I said, Hold up. And I had a conversation with them.

And they got the one of the young Mormon missionaries told me something that I had never heard from them before.

He said, You've probably heard that the Mormons believe that we're the only true church, but that's not true.

We're Christians just like you. We just have some differences. And we believe that we have the fullness of truth, but we don't think that we're the only true

Christians. He was denying something that had been the core of their religion since the 1800s.

And I told him that I said, Do you realize that what you're saying is a very new and novel approach from your own religion that ever since its inception, the main claim was that all the churches were false and that Joseph Smith was told by the angel.

By the angel, yeah. Yeah, that's why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints even began to begin with is because every other religion, including all other

Christian denominations, were false. So, and they did not want to get into any conversation about doctrine or history.

They really just wanted to have a really wonderful, nice conversation about how swell it is to be a

Mormon without much depth to it. But by the way, CJ, CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, give us your full mailing address.

And you also have won a free copy of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting from 1800 to 1847, compliments of our guest

Kathleen Kimball Milonakis, the author of this book. And it'll be shipped out to you by CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. And we're going to go to our final break right now. So if anybody else would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round Bible conference and retreat center nestled on the

Jersey Shore. Harvey Cedars offers a wide range of accommodations to suit groups up to 400.

For generations, Christians have enjoyed gathering and growing at Harvey Cedars. Each year, thousands of high school and college students come and learn more about God's Word.

An additional 9 ,000 come annually to Harvey Cedars as families, couples, singles, men, women, pastors, seniors, and missionaries.

90 miles from New York City, 70 miles from Philly, and 95 miles from Wilmington, and easily accessible, scores of notable

Christian groups frequently plan conferences at Harvey Cedars, like the Navigators, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade, and the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Find Harvey Cedars on Facebook or at hcbible .org,

hcbible .org. Call 609 -494 -5689, 609 -494 -5689.

Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225

Earl Avenue in Lindbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a

Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Lindbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. Chris Arnzen here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia.

And here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why. Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I hope you join me at the G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Weiss and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Voti Baucom, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes in the next half hour to come, our guest has been and will be today

Kathleen Kimball Milonakis, the author of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting from 1800 to 1847.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

And I hate to use the phrase speak of the devil because this is a good friend of mine, but Pastor Jason Wallace has just joined us with a question.

Pastor Jason Wallace, who we mentioned earlier, pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, near Salt Lake City.

He says, tell Kathleen she's always welcome to visit with us. Oh, great.

And he asks, ask Kathleen if she covers the new Israelites in her book.

I actually do. Yes. Oh, it's really nice to hear from Pastor Jason. Yeah, I have been to his church and I've listened to some of his debates online.

Those are really interesting. I do cover the new Israelites. I put the title of the book from, you know,

Early Mormon Counterfeiting 1800 to 1847, because the first reporting of the new

Israelite group was by a man named

Barnes Frisbee. But he told about this group that happened in from the year 1800 to 1802.

And many of the neighbors observed in that part of Vermont, Midtown, that,

Middletown, that the father of Joseph Smith, Senior, or, you know, his father,

Joseph Smith, Senior, and his wife, Lucy, had participated in this group, as did

William Cowdery, Jr., the father of Oliver Cowdery, the first scribe and witness to the

Book of Mormon, and leader in the church. So the fathers of the two founders of the

Mormon church, Smith and Cowdery, had been in this group, which many of the neighbors observed to be a counterfeiting group.

There were eyewitnesses that saw that William Cowdery had harbored this man who was a fugitive from justice for counterfeiting,

Justice Winchell, in his home, which meant that he would have been an accessory to that kind of crime, and he would have been a member of an oath -bound group, because counterfeiters only associated with other counterfeiters when they were doing their activities.

It was a highly secret thing that had to be covered up, because you could get arrested or even hung.

So you didn't just harbor a counterfeiter in your home unless you were in on the whole enterprise, usually.

I mean, it really looked suspicious. So the woodscrape group was also called the

New Israelites, but they had these rodsmen that, they were called rodsmen, they acted as if they were getting revelations from the other supernatural world to divining rods.

You know, they had these magic divining rods, and you had to pay money to get the revelations from the divining rods from the rodsmen.

And Justice Winchell, the same man that was wanted for counterfeiting in a couple of states, or at least in a few counties in Vermont, was one of the rodsmen.

So what they would do is pretend to get these revelations from divining rods, get fees from people for it, while they were doing their counterfeiting, and it was a cover -up.

So yeah, I do cover that in my whole, in my first part of my book.

That's why it starts in the year 1800, because it went back that far with the parents of the founders of the

Mormon Church. They were already doing counterfeiting and other very suspicious activities.

So this is a group, the New Israelites, that was a different cult, a separate cult from what would later become known as the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints? Right, it was way before the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon was 1830, but many people, when the

Book of Mormon came out and saw who it was founded by, and you know, they remembered, they said, oh, you know, this new

Mormon group, it was very similar to what happened earlier in Vermont in 1800.

They called themselves the New Israelites. They said they were getting prophecies from God, you know, they said they were getting these revelations, that people had to pay money to get these revelations, and all these features.

Oh, of course, you know, when you're getting these magic revelations that say that there's buried treasure in your yard, or that you're going to have some amazing mass of riches that are going to show up, well, they don't, and then you've got to come up with some reason why it didn't.

So they would come up with these prophecies that God was going to rain down thunder from the sky, and you better be ready, and the

New Israelites are the only ones that are going to be saved from it. The poor people of Middletown, the non -participants in the woodscrape group, saw these other people as being very disruptive, as illegal, you know.

They had to, the leaders of the town had to put the town under martial law to keep the woodscrape group people from creating some chaos to fulfill their own prophecy, and the other townspeople that were not participating finally kicked the people out of town, because they were causing too much trouble, they were defrauding the people, they were covering up, counterfeiting, and so they got warned out of town.

But then they had used some of the same language, you know, they were descended from the

Israelites, they were getting prophecies from God, and from divine revelations.

So apparently that is where Joseph Smith's father got the idea, you know, to have the revelations and carry on and start a new sect to cover up what they were really doing.

Oh, so I didn't even realize that Joseph Smith's father was also involved in aberrant religion. Well yeah, aberrant religion and counterfeiting, see that, it was a cover -up.

And Joseph Smith's father got arrested twice in Vermont for counterfeiting.

There it is, right in the Supreme Court records, he was arrested as a passer. But he got off, because he informed on his buddies, so then he didn't have to go to jail, but the other person that had passed him the counterfeit money.

See, there were all these different levels within a counterfeiting group. There was the CEO head, then there were the manufacturers, then there were the distributors, then there were the receivers of the stolen goods and of the counterfeit money, and then there were the passers.

But if anybody that was dealing at all in any counterfeits, you didn't just have to be manufacturing counterfeit money.

If you were dealing at all in counterfeit money, it was a felony. Even if you just passed one bill to one person with the intent to defraud, you had to know that you were passing it, then you would go to jail.

You could easily, unless you informed on your other buddies to get off, so you wouldn't have a penalty.

Because that's the only way anyone ever got caught, usually, is if one of their compatriots testified against the other passers and distributors.

Kind of like the mafia. You were oath -bound not to rat on your buddies, because then the whole group might go to jail, or at least whoever was caught.

But he was arrested. You know, Joseph Smith Sr., the evidence is pretty strong.

It's good. It's strong. But there he is. He was arrested twice.

Well, Pastor Jason, thank you so much for joining us on the air with a question. And you are getting our final copy, our final free copy, of Secret Combinations, Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting from 1800 to 1847 by our guest

Kathleen Kimball Milonakos. Obviously a Greek name, right? Yeah, my husband is of Greek descent.

His grandparents came over in the 1920s, so he's third generation. But yeah,

I'm looking forward to visiting with you, Jason, when the next time we're in Salt Lake. And Jason, if you could give me your best mailing address to have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship this book out to you, I will look forward to getting that address from you, and I will have cvbbs .com

mail the book to you as soon as possible. So let's summarize what we've been going through.

And first of all, I don't know if you've ever given me an explanation of the first part of the title,

Secret Combinations. What is that coming from? Well, that is a phrase directly from the

Book of Mormon. So in the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, or the author of it, condemned secret combinations as from the devil and as satanic, but then it turns out that the

Mormon leaders were a secret combination of their own. And they, from the very beginning, they had secret meetings where they swore to each other loyalty not to tell their secrets, and, you know, the early

Mormons were characterized by secret oaths with each other. And it's right in the

Mormon records. Sidney Rigdon said they had secret meetings from the beginning. And then some of the members in the

Nauvoo era, some of the men, were members of four or five secret groups.

You know, the Masons, Nauvoo Masons, the Endowment Group, the

Council of Fifty, the Secret Police, and the

Danites. So some of them overlapped. But the whole

Mormon story is very connected with the story of the Freemasons in early America.

Yes, I believe that when Joseph Smith was barricaded in the building with the vigilantes outside wanting to imprison him or execute him, he was giving some kind of a

Morse code or something like that. It was a Masonic cry of distress.

Masonic, I meant, right. I'm sorry. Right. Well, and it's all in my book about what

Masonry was in early America, how influential it was, because it was very influential.

It had a lot of political power beyond its numbers. And then there was the anti -Masonic movement in 1826, and through 1827, the

Book of Mormon arose out of that anti -Masonic movement. The country was becoming more deistic after the

Revolutionary War, and then the Second Awakening happened with Charles Finney, and thousands of people joined churches.

So then there was this culture war, but the Mormons came out of the consequences of the

Second Awakening and the anti -Masonic movement.

And so if you want to read more about it, it's all in there. I found it really fascinating. But Joseph Smith fashioned his church more as a

Masonic group, more as a fraternity with a Christian stamp on it than an actual

Christian church. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing in the Bible that says that we are to have secret ceremonies and all these types of mysterious, cryptic...

Rituals and handshakes. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's ridiculous. I mean, the only thing that Christians are supposed to keep private are the private lives of members of the church, that, you know, you're not going to be spreading the secrets of members of the church around.

Right, right. And Jesus said, I taught openly in the synagogue. I did nothing in secret. I've been open and honest my whole ministry.

I've been careful with what people have told me. Of course, you do that, you use discretion, but yeah, all the secret...

In the Book of Mormon, it denounces the secret combinations, and everyone at that time would have known that that referred to the

Freemasons. And that was, there's a whole paper on that. Dan Vogel recognized that.

Other historians have written that, yes, it referred to the Freemasons. Yet, what did he do?

He founded a secret combination of his own. Now, going back to the counterfeiting aspect, so this was practiced, according to the evidence you have seen, even after the founding of the

Mormon church. This was not like something that, like, you know, there are a great multitude of Christians who have all kinds of sordid, ugly pasts before they became born -again believers.

I mean, you have everything you can think of, from adulterers to drug addicts and drunkards to serial killers on death row who have converted, but this is different.

You're saying that this was something that was being carried on by alleged prophets and so on.

Right, he declared himself, well, okay, they were in this lifestyle in Vermont.

His father got arrested twice. They had to leave Vermont under some fire.

They were warned out of the town of Norwich. And so they came to where other people from the

Woodscrape group had settled in Palmyra, New York, and they hooked up with Justice Winchell again, the same counterfeiter that they had been hobnobbing with in Vermont.

And that's when Joseph Smith got into his seer stone seeing and, you know, getting paid to see buried treasure in the ground that doesn't ever materialize.

It isn't really there. He did that until he got in trouble with the law in 1826 when he had to go somewhere else again because he was in trouble with the law.

Well, that's when, shortly after that, is when he came up with the Book of Mormon, and they worked on that for a couple of years, writing it.

But, you know, he comes out as a prophet of the biblical

God, as he claimed in 1830, and now he has this sign of authority, the

Book of Mormon. Well, did he, you know, he said that an angel came to him.

He said that God and the Father and His Son came. Of course, that story did not come out until 1842, that it was

God the Father with Jesus the Son. He never said at that time that he had seen God the

Father and the Son in 1830. He just acted like more of a typical

Christian preacher. Well, as... So then, they had to leave

New York. They were probably doing counterfeiting along in New York, as I exposed, but you can evaluate the evidence yourself.

But then in the mid -1830s, when he was in Kirtland, there's a lot of evidence that he and his inner circle key officers were involved with counterfeiting money in Ohio.

And they were named... Some of his main officers were named by the sheriff of the town, by the inner circle leaders themselves.

It's right in the Mormon record. They talk about each other being in counterfeiting. So this is...

He continued it, and then it continued more in Missouri, and there's really a lot of evidence of the counterfeiting going on in Nauvoo.

And that was when 12 of the high -ranking leaders of the Mormon Church were federally indicted for counterfeiting.

And the Polk administration, James K. Polk, was going to send soldiers in to arrest the leaders for counterfeiting because they kept avoiding the arrest with their 4 ,000 -man army, with all their followers, and that's why they had to leave to go to Utah.

So, if he did ever have any kind of repentant experience where he turned his life to the

Lord and really was a sincere Christian believer in God, and especially if he claims to be a prophet, he kept doing all his illegal activities for years after he claimed to be a prophet.

So that does not square with someone who turns his life around and becomes repentant.

Now, was this something that was known by the average follower, the average

Mormon disciple, or was this something that was secretive amongst the leadership? Definitely, it was secretive among the leadership.

There were many sincere followers that believed him. He had very much charisma.

You know, he just was an unbelievable kind of charismatic leader who would spellbind the crowd with his speeches, and he just had this magnetism, and you know, they believed he was able to speak in this beautiful biblical language.

And if you weren't really schooled in the Bible, you would not know the difference. And so, there were the sincere believers on the outside, and then there were the secret oath -bound accomplices on the inside who were the leaders.

Now, do you know whether or not these Mormon leaders were committing these crimes, thinking with sincerity that God was blessing them?

Like, for instance, there are cults and false religions, like even Muslims, who are taught that it is very appropriate to lie to the enemies of Allah, or the enemies of whatever cult that anybody happens to be in.

They will be taught that things like that are not sinful or wicked because they're being done to advance the cause of any particular false religion or cult that they may be in.

Is this something that was similar here, or were these men just men who knew what they were doing was through and through a wicked deed, and therefore, they just had no approval from even their religious ideology for what they were doing?

Well, it's hard to know exactly what people had as their motivation, but in Islam, I think the name for it is

Taqrit, is putting the cause of Islam first. Yeah, I've heard

Taqiyah. But yeah, it's justifying telling falsehoods in order to protect your organization.

Well, they definitely did that in Mormonism. They called it lying for the

Lord, for that matter, and Joseph Smith did it with polygamy on a large scale.

He kept his marriages secret, but he denied it publicly.

Over and over, he did that. He kept it secret his whole life, and he denied it to the world while he was doing it.

So I think people that live such a deceitful life often become seared in their conscience.

They don't even realize what reality really is after a while. And there was one of the key people who went to the authorities in Nauvoo to report to the official governor of the state and the other authorities there that Joseph Smith was counterfeiting.

He said that Joseph Smith would just stay with a straight faith, that he believed that God had called him to hire him to be the assassin for the governor of the state of Missouri.

So he said that after he'd done it so long, that he no longer had any compunctions about it.

So who knows? When you're in a really sinful lifestyle, you just become blind to your own...

Yes, the conscience is seared, and God turns people over to their wicked delusions.

Exactly, and you don't even know what's right or wrong anymore. You just believe your own delusions, and you can't even discern that you're telling a lie hardly.

So it's hard to know exactly how much they were blinded by their own belief that he was a prophet, that he was doing good, that he was furthering the cause of what he said was

God. So... We do have another listener in Indianapolis, Indiana, Aaron, and you touched on this in regard to your family, but I don't think that you touched on this in regard to the

Mormon Church. She says, did Kathleen and her husband encounter repercussions from the

Mormon Church when they left, or repercussion for exposing their

Mormon secrets in her book? Well, when we left the church a long time ago, back in the 80s, we didn't really experience any bad repercussions.

Like, they did not call us into be excommunicated. We experienced being more or less shunned.

I mean, our extended family no longer contacted us. They didn't invite us to things, except very minimally, here and there, maybe.

But we had moved away from most of my relatives to pursue a job, so we didn't know if it was just the distance that they were not including us.

But you just stop having a lot in common after a while, too.

So I can't say that they were, you know, bad to us.

I mean, they didn't include us, but that was partly the distance. And I wanted to keep kind of a low profile while I was doing all this research, and I did.

And now my book's out there, and I haven't gotten any, you know,

I haven't seen any attacks or people disagree with me, of course, but then there's such a large number of people that are also ex -Mormons and...or

have become Christians, that they, you know, I'm just one of them. I'm adding to what is already really well known about Joseph Smith.

He already has so much exposed about him with his polygamy and with his Book of Abraham, and that he was just not the person that he claimed to be on a number of counts.

So I'm just adding to what's already out there, but it's there's so much, you know, that people have to deal with if they look into it.

So I may still get more repercussions, I don't know. Well, we pray that any kind of repercussion that you may receive only leads people to the true

Christ and Gospel of the Scriptures. And we do have

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, I heard earlier in the program that your family had connections with the fundamentalist polygamists within Mormonism.

I was wondering if you ever heard of Irene Spencer and also

Brian Mackert, who were also members of the polygamist fundamentalist

Mormons and became born -again Christians. And I have actually interviewed both of them.

I've interviewed Irene Spencer at least twice, and I interviewed Brian Mackert, who

I think is her nephew or some other relation to Irene. But if you could, do you know these folks?

I don't know Irene Spencer, but I do know of Brian Mackert, and I've seen him on Doris Hanson's show,

Polygamy, What Love Is This? And it is one of the big reasons that I went through all the trouble of writing this book, because my heart goes out to the people in the polygamy groups, especially, you know, having gone through that with my family, with the abuse that goes on there and the whole evil system.

If you want to know an evil system, I mean, if you think slavery is a bad system, polygamy is in that same category, because children born into it have no freedom.

They are abused. They don't know what's outside that mindset.

They don't get an education. They're traded around like property.

You do not have freedom of choice, and you don't have education at all in those groups.

And I feel so sorry for them that they believe that that's from God. Well, I want to make sure before we run out of time,

Kathleen, that you give one more time the website where people can order this book.

www .amazon .com, the secret combinations evidence, www .mormoncounterfeiting

.com, or Utah Lighthouse Ministry, utlm .org.

There's also benchmark books in Salt Lake City. And your own website is mormoncounterfeiting .com?

Yep. One word. mormoncounterfeiting .com?

Yep. And you could also go to cvbbs .com and ask them to order it as well, since they sponsor our program.

I feel obliged to mention them. cvbbs .com, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for BibleBookService .com.

Thank you so much for being our guest today, Kathleen. I look forward to having you back. Oh, thank you. I thank everybody who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater