June 2, 2022 Show with Dr. Latayne C. Scott on “Under the Banner of Heaven: An Ex-Mormon’s Analysis of the T.V. Series Based on the True Story of the Murder of a Mormon Mother & Her Baby Girl”

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

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Carlyle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on the second day of June 2022.

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Many of you may be familiar, as I am, and may also have become addicted to watching a television series called

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Under the Banner of Heaven, an FX series that you can view on Hulu starring actor

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Andrew Garfield. Under the Banner of Heaven, the original limited series inspired by the true crime bestseller by John Krakauer, follows the events that led to the 1984 murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter in a suburb in the

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Salt Lake Valley in Utah. As Detective Jeb Pirie, portrayed by Andrew Garfield, investigates events which transpired within the

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Lafferty family, he uncovers buried truths about the origins of the Latter -day

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Saint religion and the violent consequences of unyielding faith.

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What Pirie, a devout Mormon, unearths leads him to question his own faith, and my guest today to give her analysis of this series as an ex -Mormon who has, by the grace and mercy and love of Jesus Christ, converted to Biblical Christianity, Dr.

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Latane C. Scott, who has been a guest on this program a number of times, and as it appears from feedback

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I get from my listeners, she has become a favorite amongst my listeners.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Triple Zion Radio, Dr. Latane C. Scott.

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Always a privilege, Chris, always a privilege. And let me give you a more formal introduction here,

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Dr. Latane C. Scott is not only a Mormon convert to Christianity, but she earned her Ph .D.

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in Biblical Studies, she's a recipient of Pepperdine University's Distinguished Christian Service Award for Creative Christian Writing, she's the

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Dean of the College of Professional and Creative Writing at Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an award -winning veteran of the

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Christian publishing industry, having written over two dozen books, including her classic,

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The Mormon Mirage. And as I mentioned, we are going to be addressing Under the Banner of Heaven, an ex -Mormon's analysis of the

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TV series based on the true story of the murder of a Mormon mother and her baby girl.

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I do want to say that I'm going to try to be as sensitive as possible, and I'm sure

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Latane is as well, as we explore an examination of this program, because I was contacted by the sister of the woman that was, in reality, in 1984, murdered.

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Brenda Wright Lafferty's sister contacted me, initially very upset that Latane and I were doing this program today.

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She thought that we were going to be acting as experts on her sister.

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Apparently, she does not like the way the portrayal of the sister appears in the

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TV series, and so we assured her that that had nothing to do with our discussion today.

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It was going to be not only on Mormon theology and how it is very different, 180 degrees different from the

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Christian religion, true Christianity, true biblical

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Christianity, but we're also going to be discussing how there is a remarkable resemblance, according to Latane, in the way that the fictitional character in this series,

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Detective Jeb Pirie, is struggling with a crisis of faith, which, according to Latane, resembles a crisis of faith that she also endured when discovering the falsehoods of the

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Mormon religion and prior to becoming a Christian. So, first of all,

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Latane, we've already had you on this program to give a fuller, lengthed, in -depth discussion on your conversion story, and people can look that up on IonTripandZionRadio .com

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in the archives and listen to that, but if you could give us a summary of that again, because I think it will be helpful for people to understand where you're coming from as we discuss this series.

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Chris, I guess the most accurate thing I could say is I was the happiest Mormon ever when

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I was a Mormon. I loved the Mormon Church, and I still love the Mormon people. I went to Brigham Young University on scholarship and wrote for Mormon publications and was just a very faithful Mormon, until I discovered right after my junior year at Brigham Young University the writings that I'd been warned against when

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I was a Mormon not to read, and I was confronted with these writings, and for those who are watching the mini -series

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Under the Banner of Heaven, there is a scene in which this young law enforcement officer,

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Officer Pirate, has gone out to his car, and he's sitting in his car with the dome light on, because his wife is a very faithful Mormon, but yet he is being confronted with some details about Mormon history of which he was not aware, just as I was not aware.

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It was not what I'd been taught as a Mormon. And so he's sitting in his car, and he has this book, and he starts opening this book, and he just starts trembling.

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And I had the same experience, because I also read that same book. I left the

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Mormon Church in 1973, and I think this series takes place in that time period, maybe in the early 80s, but within 5 or 10 years of when

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I actually had this same experience. And what is so remarkable about this,

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Chris, is when I watched this last Thursday night, when I watched this scene, it had such a visceral effect on me.

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That actor did such a good job of, without words mostly, portraying the horror and the distress and the, well, just a number of emotions that he felt, which were exactly what

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I felt. He's a remarkable actor. Oh, he is an astonishingly good actor.

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But what I found out, Chris, is there are several Facebook groups and discussion groups on Facebook of people discussing this show and their reactions to it.

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And would you mind if I read some of the reactions that some ex -Mormons had to watching this scene?

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Oh, sure. Just, you might want to be careful about reading some of what ex -Mormons said to me on the

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Internet, some of which has language you might not want to repeat in public. No, that's okay.

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Well, I've been talked to that way, too, so that's okay. No, these are just, I have three, I selected three comments by ex -Mormons, and I won't read their names because I don't have their permission, but these are actually on the

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Internet. And this one woman, Linda, said, that moment when you discover your external moral compass is gone, and you haven't yet figured out how to find or construct an internal one.

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I mean, the idea of just, you know, your moorings are all gone, and that's exactly the way I felt. Another woman,

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Elizabeth, said, I remember my car moment. I was in my red

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Kia Sedona in our university student housing parking lot with In Sacred Loneliness, which is a book about Mormon history, in about 2009.

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It was about 3 to 4 p .m., overcast and rainy. I cried for over 90 minutes.

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It was the start of eight years of anger and healing. That scene was so accurate and unexpected, it took my breath away.

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Exactly the way I felt. And if you don't mind me reading one more, these are just real people responding.

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A woman named Carrie said, the entire scene showing Pirie's crisis, starting from him furtively getting into the car with the red book to him sobbing,

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I felt it so hard. I remember all that despair. Kind of where I currently am, actually.

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But mostly I want to say, and she's speaking to other ex -Mormons, I see all of you, all you pioneers who have gone through this and moved on.

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During the scene when he began crying after his wife basically abandoned his feelings and him physically, all

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I could do was reach out my hand to him and sob alongside. So, I wasn't the only one.

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I mean, this is not a universal emotion because, Chris, people that go from, let's say, from being a

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Presbyterian to being a Methodist, they don't have their entire worldview shaken.

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They don't have all their emotional underpinnings pulled out from underneath them. There's just really nothing quite like discovering that the

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God that you believed in and accepted and loved doesn't exist.

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And that the history that you've been taught of these noble people that are supposed to be in your church history, finding out that they weren't noble at all, it's absolutely devastating.

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There go all your role models, you know? And you start looking around at the people you know with new eyes.

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What do they know? Why didn't they tell me? It's quite an experience. Well, as far as one of the main themes of this

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TV series is there is a family that is a prominent

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Mormon family in the area in Utah in which they live where some of the siblings have begun to investigate the origins of their own religion.

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And they realize that there is a stark contrast to the

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Mormonism that they loved and participated in and lived out and were so seemingly blessed to be a member of this religion.

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They began to find out, wait a minute, this is a very different religion, it seems, than that which was founded by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

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And they began to question whether or not current

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Mormons, even back in the 1980s, were apostates and whether or not a return to the old ways, as it were, would be demanded of them.

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And this is actually also remarkably similar to a theme of a novel you wrote about a serial killer, is it not?

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The Latter Day Cipher? You know, I just realized that today, Chris, because I've been trying to process the emotions that this series has brought up.

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And then I thought, this is familiar, because I wrote a novel about a couple in Salt Lake City that are struggling with finding out the same thing that this

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Officer Tyree found out. The same thing I found out, you know, seven years earlier, time sequence.

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And finding out that everything they believed in is untrue and at the same time, a man in, a police chief in Utah, is actually doing the things that early

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Mormons did. You know, the blood atonement that's such a big theme under the banner of heaven.

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That young woman and her child were killed because of the theory in early Mormon doctrine of blood atonement.

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That you could do some sins so bad that the only way that you could be cleansed of those sins was to have somebody actually spill your blood on the ground.

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Well, in my novel, this police chief in my novel is actually not the hero, he's the villain.

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And he goes about trying to restore early Mormonism by carrying out the doctrines and practices of the early

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Mormon Church. So it's really very, very parallel. Thank you for pointing that out. The name of my book was

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Latter Day Cipher, and I really, because it's out of print,

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I have copies, and I would love to autograph a copy to your listeners. Just get in touch with me at latain .com.

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Wow. Now, some of the feedback, the very negative feedback,

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I was getting on the internet, on social media, from former

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Mormons. It's ironic.

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There were two different kinds of former Mormons who were attacking what we were doing today before it even occurred.

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There were those who think that all religion, including

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Christianity, is dangerous, and violent, and moronic, and prehistoric.

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And there were those groups that were attacking me and mocking me. There were also, though,

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Mormons who left the church who still had a desire to defend it. It was kind of an interesting phenomenon to experience.

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But there was defense given, with no evidence, that Mormonism and Christianity are the same with very minor details that may be different, and that the changes in Mormonism from its origins to its present -day state are very explainable, and it is not that big of a deal, basically.

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These are two things that are obviously spoken of by these folks in ignorance, is it not?

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Well, I'd like to address those two issues. The first is the first group, Chris, who were saying that it's just one version of religion versus another version of religion, which they're both false from an atheistic point of view.

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And one person in the comments to you, I think, said something, it's my sky god versus your sky god.

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And that's really the way they see it. The other group of people that believe that this is explainable, or that this is not such a big deal,

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I actually address that in my Latter -Day Savior novel, now that you mention it.

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And it is the idea that if you've got a deity, a god, how can something be true of him in 1970 and then not be true of him 30 years later?

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In other words, how does your doctrine of God change?

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Now, I understand practices change. When I first became a Christian, you didn't wear shorts to church, and now everybody does.

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That's a practice. There's a big difference between a practice in a church and a theory of God that changes.

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Because if God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, which by the way, Mormons don't actually believe, but how do you change, how can you say about a god, well, we don't believe that anymore about God, if you have direct personal revelation from God?

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If the head of the Mormon church is still the prophet, seer, and revelator, how can you amend who

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God is? It just doesn't make sense. Yeah, and there's also, I remember as a very young Christian, I was a cage stage

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Calvinist, and I couldn't wait to get into confrontations with people who disagreed with what

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I believed. And I was sitting at home watching television, and a commercial came on for the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, and at the end it said, if you would like a book of Mormon hand delivered to your home by a

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Mormon elder, call this number. So I picked it up, I called that number, and could not wait to have an encounter with the

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Mormon elder. And two of the Mormons showed up, and we had a discussion.

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I'm not saying that I used tact that a more seasoned

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Christian should have used, although I was never nasty to the individuals.

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But during the conversation, I was bringing up the roots of racism in the

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Mormon church, and how blacks could not enter the priesthood and so on until the 1970s.

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And the Mormon said, well, who are you to talk? You're a

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Baptist, and there are Baptists in the Ku Klux Klan. And I said to him, there is an enormous chasm of difference between what some moron who calls himself a

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Baptist believes and teaches and does, and one of your prophets.

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There's an enormous difference between picking on statements and revealing the errors of people who are just average members of a religion, and a prophet of that religion.

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And I said, you cannot compare the two. Was I not absolutely correct on that issue, that you cannot compare a racist in the

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Baptist church who's just an ordinary member, or even a pastor for that matter, who claims to be just a man called to the ministry, he's not a prophet, and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young clearly taught racist ideas that were part of divine revelation.

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So that's basically what I'm saying, is you can't compare a prophet to an ordinary person in a religion. That points out,

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Chris, an important doctrinal difference between Mormons and Christians that most people don't consider.

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And that is, in the Mormon religion, priesthood leaders, priests, any priesthood, which in the

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Mormon church is all male, any priest represents

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God to man. In other words, God speaks to that person, and that person speaks to the church or the individual.

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In Christianity, we as a priesthood of believers represent our brothers and sisters before God.

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The priest in the Old Testament took the sacrifices of people and represented the congregation to God.

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They weren't the people that were just the funnel through which it happened. So when we talk about priesthood, and we talk about leadership, it's top -down, true human leadership in the

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Mormon church, where in most Christian churches there's not the idea that God is speaking only to a human being on earth.

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Now, Catholicism is an exception in the so -called Christian world, where the priest speaks for God, but that's an exception among people who call themselves

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Christians. Most of them see themselves as intercessory prayers who take our concerns to God, and we represent each other before God, and we have our high priest,

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Jesus Christ, that represents us before God. So there's not the idea of this hierarchy of God speaks to one man who speaks to a few other men, and then it trickles down.

23:31

That's very foreign to most Christians. Now in the series, when

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Mormons approach their bishops and other members of the hierarchy in the

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Mormon religion, when they approach them about things that used to be taught by the

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Mormon prophets that founded the religion and were practiced, and even some which violated were punishable by death, when they approached their leaders, the leaders in the series, their basic response was, we have a president now, we are to listen to him, and we are not to become, and I'm putting my own words in this,

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I don't have a verbatim script here, but basically we're not to bother ourselves with some of these antiquated things because we have a current living prophet in the

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Mormon Church. Am I getting that somewhere right? And was that something that you had ever heard of going on when you were a

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Mormon? Oh, that's the way it was. If you had a question, you went to your priesthood leader, whoever that was, and he could tell you what the will of the

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Lord was, because it was top -down. The authority came from the president of the Mormon Church to the

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Council of the Twelve, to all the other general authorities, down to the local stake leaders, and then to your bishop.

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So if you had a question, it's kind of like in a job, or in the military, where you go up the chain of command, and that's just the way it was.

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And to be honest with you, Chris, I think I was very much like most of those

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Mormons in this series, in that anything that was disturbing to me, so conflicted with the happy life that I had, that I just brushed it aside.

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And you can see in this series the emphasis on, do you really want to give the

25:47

Church a bad name? Do you really want to bring this stuff that's going to make our community look bad?

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There's this idea of community, and there's always been the idea in Mormonism, as this show very aptly portrays, of us against them.

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You know, all these scenes of Brigham Young and of Joseph Smith being martyred, and all these things, it's the idea that there's this select group of people that know the truth, but somebody's always going to be persecuting them.

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So by the time people get to Utah, and there's this culture that has developed of, we have everything we need.

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We're self -sufficient in terms of social interaction. We're self -sufficient in terms of divine guidance.

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And so anything that rocks that boat is necessarily bad, because everything we see around us is good.

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So I definitely felt that way. I mean, there I was at BYU. Just couldn't have been happier.

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And to hear some of these things, it was far beyond offensive to me.

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It made me mad, and I think I indicated that one of the people

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I read said that set her off on eight years of anger. There's an enormous amount of anger, which

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I, at that point, did not feel. I felt betrayed. I didn't feel angry. I mean, who was

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I going to blame? I didn't think most of my Mormon immediate leaders knew any more than I did, because I was a student.

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I'd studied, you know. I'd been to religion classes at Brigham Young University. Who do you blame?

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You don't blame your leaders, because you suspect they don't know any more than you do, and you wonder how high up the chain this ignorance goes, until you finally conclude

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The ones at the top have to know that God isn't really talking to them.

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They have to know that, you know, if somebody's concerning this, it's not the

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God of the universe. And you know when that really hit me,

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Chris? You know when that came home to me? When? When I was at Brigham Young University, I dated a young man named

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Bruce Porter. By the way, I was at Brigham Young University at the same time as Mitt Romney, that kind of dated me.

28:13

But yeah, he's in my yearbook from BYU. But I was dating a young man named

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Bruce Porter, who went on to become a general authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints, just below the Apostles. And here was this fine man. I mean, his character was impeccable.

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As he went up in the structure of the Mormon Church, knowing these things, he had to have known these things.

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How in the world could this man of such impeccable character and kindness have continued in that?

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And I think that's what a lot of ex -Mormons are dealing with. Who do you blame? If you've been suckered by a religion, and that's the way many people feel in the

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Mormon Church, you feel like you've been suckered. Because there we are, you know, that dumb and happy, just doing what we're told.

29:08

And then to find out that there's nothing underneath the mask, you know?

29:14

It's empty. Well, we have to go to our first break right now, if anybody would like to ask a question of Dr.

29:22

Latane C. Scott, a former Mormon who, by the grace and mercy of God, converted to Biblical Christianity.

29:30

If you have a question on anything regarding Mormonism and Latane's own personal testimony, or more primarily, since it's the main theme of our program, an analysis of Under the

29:45

Banner of Heaven, the current TV series on Hulu that is a fictional account inspired by a true murder, a 1984 murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and the lead character portrayed by Andrew Garfield's brilliant actor,

30:09

Detective Jeb Pirie. If you have any questions about what we are discussing about the series as well, send that email to ChrisArnson at gmail .com,

30:18

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

30:28

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

30:34

And by the way, I would love for the sister of Brenda Wright Lafferty, if she is listening,

30:43

I would love for you to submit a question, a comment, any of your thoughts on this.

30:51

I was heartbroken to hear about how the series is having a negative effect upon you and your life.

31:00

So if you care to put your own two cents in, as it were, in our discussion,

31:05

I would love to hear from you as well. And I will keep your name out of the discussion if that is your preference.

31:15

But if anybody wants to send us an email, it's ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

31:21

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. I'm Dr.

31:31

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham.

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Who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word.

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

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For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

38:24

Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

38:31

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe ten minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

38:44

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

38:53

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

39:02

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

39:07

Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.

39:15

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is

39:21

Dr. Latane C. Scott, a Mormon convert to biblical Christianity and author of over 24 books, including

39:29

The Mormon Mirage. We are providing an analysis of the

39:35

TV series based on the true story of the murder of a Mormon mother and her baby girl under the banner of heaven.

39:44

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

39:50

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

39:58

We have a listener who we have not heard from in a long time, and I think

40:04

Latane's presence on the show is what provoked him to contact us again after years of silence.

40:13

We have Shane in Birmingham, Alabama, who says, Howdy, Chris. You know I love

40:18

Latane. Can you ask her to speak to the blood atonement aspect of this discussion?

40:26

Where does the theory of blood atonement come from? When was it abolished in the Mormon church, and is it still popular in fundamentalist sects of Mormonism?

40:39

Okay, I think there were three questions there. The first one was, where did the doctrine of blood atonement originate?

40:48

That originated in the early teachings of the Mormon church that there were certain sins for which the blood of Christ was not sufficient, and they didn't actually say it that way.

40:59

But the idea was that for murder, adultery, and then

41:06

I think the third one was, in some cases, marrying someone of black origin, what we would call an

41:15

African American, that any of those could be the justification for someone to lovingly take your life from you to help you atone for that sin that you had committed.

41:32

It's really important to realize that Mormons at that time, from what

41:38

I know, didn't see it just as a punishment. They saw it as a way of allowing someone to pay for their own sins, because they couldn't be paid for in another way.

41:48

How kind of them. Yeah. The second question, the second part of it was, can you read me the second part of this question please?

42:00

The second part was, when was it abolished in the Mormon church? It just kind of faded away.

42:09

Nobody ever stood up, no prophet ever stood up and said, we now no longer will practice blood atonement.

42:17

The fact that it's still part of Mormon thinking was true up until the time that this show took place under the banner of heaven, because if you'll remember, the scenes in the temple, remember the man in the front is going through these different hand signals.

42:40

And running the finger across the neck like a knife. Exactly. In the original temple ceremony in the past, you would say that you were willing to have your throat cut and your blood spilled on the ground and your entrails torn out of your abdomen and that the birds could eat your innards, basically.

43:06

If you gave up the secrets of the temple, that language went away, but the symbol of it, the splitting of the throat, didn't go away.

43:14

Until I understand today, I'm not really sure that that actual symbol of splitting the throat is enacted anymore.

43:25

Someone who has been in the temple more recently than my experience would want to speak to that.

43:34

But it didn't ever go away, and so these people who believe they're returning to pristine or primeval or original

43:45

Mormonism would naturally believe that because the early leaders of the

43:52

Mormon Church who had direct revelation from God to enact this practice, they believe they're returning to something that was in disobedience or neglect no longer practiced.

44:09

And the last question by Shane is, I'm trying to find it,

44:16

I just had it in front of me, and while I'm looking for it, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

44:22

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

44:30

Oh, is it still popular in fundamentalist sects of Mormonism? Well, I guess that would mean that there would be a lot of murders going around in our current day among the fundamentalist sects, but do you know about that?

44:45

I don't. Fundamentalist sects of Mormonism are very much like different denominations in Christianity.

44:53

They bear resemblance to one another, but the practices within them are quite different, and so I guess it would depend on the individual sect.

45:02

Also bear in mind that some of these polygamist groups, although they may have settled in Utah or Arizona or in some cases

45:10

Colorado, many of them settled in Mexico, and I went to college at Brigham Young University with some of my classmates who were products of polygamist marriages in Mexico.

45:23

Wow. So there are some of those groups. They believed that this was an eternal doctrine.

45:29

Polygamy was an eternal doctrine, and that's a big issue in this show too. Remember the one man is trying to get his original wife with the two stepdaughters to accept another wife?

45:40

Yes. And then he believes that he can actually sleep with the two daughters to initiate them.

45:47

Well, the reason that I don't know if that's actually factual, if that happened with that family or not, but I do know that Joseph Smith himself married some siblings.

45:59

He married women much younger than him. I'm sure that was true with Brigham Young. So these people, they don't see themselves so much rebelling against the modern

46:10

Mormon church as they do embracing the original Mormon church.

46:18

And thank you, by the way, Shane. And by the way, let's tell Shane about the e -book that you are offering to listeners who submit questions.

46:30

Oh, I have a really helpful resource, and I really hope your readers will take advantage of this,

46:36

Chris. I have from my book, Why We Left a Cult, in which

46:41

I interviewed six people who had left pseudo -Christian cults. I have a list of those things that make a group that uses

46:50

Christian terms like Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or any number of other pseudo -Christian cults.

46:58

What is it that makes them a cult? And I have a list of, I think, about 35 different characteristics.

47:05

And this e -book is free. You just write me at latayne, at latayne .com.

47:10

That's L -A -T -A -Y -N -E, at latayne .com.

47:17

Just say, I'd like my free e -book. I'll give you instructions on how to download it. And this,

47:23

I think, is a very helpful resource because one of the questions I think would occur to anybody when they're watching this show is, well, these people are in a cult.

47:34

Well, what do you mean by cult? Do you mean people that dress differently than you? What do you mean? Do you mean people that worship differently than you do?

47:42

I mean, what makes a group a cult? And I hope by this list, not to be dogmatic with the list, but just to give people some things to think about when they're looking at a group and see how many of these characteristics separate them from traditional

47:58

Christianity. The big deal is their view of God. I mean, if you're going to define your religion, you have to start with who your

48:07

God is. And in pseudo -Christian cults, their God either has a different history than the

48:14

God of the Bible. I mean, it may intersect with biblical history, that he has another history or he has another future, or you have a future as a

48:25

God, which Mormons still believe, even mainstream Mormons believe, that they're going to become gods and goddesses after death, like God the

48:31

Father. Yes, and it is interesting that during the series, when the polygamist marriage of the fundamentalist

48:47

Mormon comes up and one of the modern -day

48:53

Mormons is fluffing it off, saying that's something from the past and that is prohibited now, the person who was discovering about the

49:05

Mormon past says, well, what about in heaven, though? I mean, that when they achieve

49:11

Godhead, if they're faithful Mormons, they will be involved in polygamous marriages. Absolutely, absolutely.

49:19

In fact, the Mormon Church had to put a stop to people doing proxy weddings to Joseph Smith.

49:25

You know, spinsters here on earth, and I say spinsters respectfully, unmarried women would think, oh, well,

49:32

I can't be married here on earth, but Joseph Smith in eternity can have as many wives as he wants.

49:38

And so there was this desire to be married to him in eternity. And so, yes, that's absolutely still a doctrine.

49:47

You see, the difference between a man and a woman in terms of eternal marriage is that a man here on earth, a

49:54

Mormon man, can be married to his first wife for time in all eternity. She can pass away, can marry a second or third or fourth wife, and as long as they're married in the temple for time in all eternity, all of them will be his wives in eternity.

50:09

A woman, on the other hand, marries a man once for time in eternity, and then any marriage that she has after that is only for time.

50:22

Interesting. And so don't forget, Shane, send your e -mail, if you'd like that e -book, to latayne at latayne dot com.

50:32

That's L -A -T -A -Y -N -E at L -A -T -A -Y -N -E dot com.

50:39

We have a first -time listener, Kent, and he is from, and I'm sure

50:46

I'm going to butcher this, Pyeongtaek, South Korea. He says,

50:51

The Mormons we know are moral, honest, hardworking. What is so dangerous about their beliefs?

51:01

I think that's a big point that's made by this series. Because when you look at these families here, they really are, most of them, just trying to be good citizens, to raise their families, to provide wholesome activities, you know, to be hospitable, to do all the things that we think are examples of good

51:24

Christian character. So why would I say that it's dangerous?

51:30

Well, Jesus said that life eternal is to know the

51:35

Father in Heaven and to know Jesus. And if you don't know who the

51:41

Father in Heaven is, and if you don't know exactly who Jesus is, if the Jesus, the person labeled

51:48

Jesus in Mormon theology doesn't have the same history and characteristics as the Jesus of the

51:53

Bible, you're talking about a different Jesus. If the God, the Father of Mormonism has a different history and characteristics, like, for instance, having a physical body, a flesh and bone body, then if you know someone who doesn't exist, you're not knowing the true

52:09

God. Danger isn't just here on this earth. Danger is where we're going to spend eternity.

52:15

I mean, this is just a whisper. You know, I'm 70 years old now, and as my friend says,

52:21

I'm nearer the end than the beginning. And so I'm very aware of eternity. Maybe younger people aren't as much. But there's danger here on earth.

52:30

You know, Jesus said that don't fear those who can take your life here on earth. Fear Him who can take you into eternity, into hell.

52:40

That's dangerous. And we have to go to our midway break right now. Please be patient with us, folks, because the midway break is longer than the other breaks.

52:50

Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, is required to have a longer break in our show in the middle because they are required by the

52:58

FCC to localize this program and all of their programs to Lake City, Florida, geographically.

53:05

So while they do that, we air our globally heard commercials. Please use this time wisely.

53:11

Try to respond to as many of our advertisers as you can, either by buying their products, using their services, supporting their parachurch organizations or visiting their churches.

53:22

But when you can't do any of those things, please contact them and thank them for sponsoring

53:28

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio if indeed you love the show. And also send us a question for Dr. Latane C.

53:34

Scott to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back.

53:40

Please be patient. Don't go away. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

53:56

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Attention all men in ministry leadership. You're all invited to my friend Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m.

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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania featuring me,

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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania for Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon.

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As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

57:52

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John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

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01:00:26

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet God has raised

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Here's what

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Gary DeMar, President of American Vision, had to say about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio recently.

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Good to be back. Chris, I always enjoy our time. I have to tell you, you're one of the better interviewers out there and I've been doing this for more than 30 years.

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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We're in good shape. I'm glad you said it on the air so I don't have to brag about myself.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before I return to my discussion with Latane C.

01:08:39

Scott, we have some important announcements to make.

01:08:48

First of all, we are in urgent need of your finances. If you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:09:00

click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

01:09:07

And if you prefer snail mail, you can write out a physical check and mail it to the physical address that will appear on your screen as well when you click

01:09:18

Support at ironsharpensironradio .com. Please remember, I never want anybody in my audience giving their own church, their own biblically faithful church, where you are a member.

01:09:28

I don't want you giving them less money than you're accustomed to giving them in order to give me and Iron Trip and Zion Radio a financial gift.

01:09:36

Please don't do that. Please also, if you're really struggling to survive, please don't plunge your family into further financial jeopardy by giving a gift to Iron Trip and Zion Radio at this point in time.

01:09:50

Please make sure you're more financially stable and on your feet before you give us a financial gift if you are in those dire circumstances.

01:09:58

But if you love the show and you don't want the show to disappear and you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and family, you have extra money in the bank collecting interest, and you have money that you use for recreational and frivolous purposes, well, please use some of that money to help bless

01:10:19

Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We could certainly use it. And go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:10:26

ironsharpensironradio .com, click Support, and then click Click to Donate Now. In fact, I want to take this opportunity to thank

01:10:33

Dr. Latane C. Scott because she happens to be one of the most generous financial supporters in the

01:10:39

Iron Trip and Zion audience, and I will forever be in your debt, sister, for your generosity to us.

01:10:46

It's an honor. I believe in your ministry, Chris. Well, I appreciate that very much.

01:10:52

And also, one last thing, if you are not a member of a biblically solid church, no matter where on the planet

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Earth you live, I have extensive lists spanning the globe featuring churches that are

01:11:06

Christ -honoring and theologically sound, and I have helped many people in our audience find churches that they didn't even know existed, sometimes within minutes from their own home.

01:11:14

So if you're in that category, or someone that you love is in that category, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:11:21

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. It's also the email address where you can send a question to our guest,

01:11:29

Dr. Latane C. Scott, a former Mormon who is a convert to biblical Christianity, and she is also the author of a classic work on Mormonism, The Mormon Mirage, as well as other books related to that subject.

01:11:48

And we're discussing the TV series, fascinating TV series.

01:11:53

I've been riveted to it under the banner of heaven, which is on Hulu, and it is about the murder of a

01:12:03

Mormon woman and her daughter, Brenda Lafferty, who was the actual woman who was murdered in the 1980s along with her daughter, and she is portrayed by actress

01:12:17

Daisy Edgar Jones, a key figure in the

01:12:23

TV series. Detective Jeb Pirie is portrayed by Andrew Garfield, and by the way,

01:12:32

Andrew Garfield is a remarkable actor, and you might want to look up his movie,

01:12:42

Hacksaw Ridge, which is a true account of a

01:12:48

World War II hero, and he happened to have been a

01:12:54

Seventh -day Adventist, and Andrew Garfield played that role masterfully as well, and that was a true story, whereas I believe much more of what is occurring under the banner of heaven is a fictional story based on or inspired by true events.

01:13:17

But, Latane, have you ever seen Hacksaw Ridge? I did not realize that was

01:13:22

Andrew Garfield in that movie. Yes, he's the one that... Desmond Doss. Yeah, that he ends up rescuing so many men off that, wounded men off the top of that ridge, right?

01:13:34

Yes, Desmond Doss was a true -to -life figure who was a Seventh -day Adventist, and he took a vow of nonviolence, but he insisted on enlisting in the

01:13:47

Army so that he could be a medic and that he could save and help people. Apparently, he was tormented not only verbally and emotionally, but physically by many of his fellow soldiers, especially in boot camp, but he wound up saving many of their lives in the long run.

01:14:03

But very fascinating movie. But if you have a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:14:11

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. And I believe

01:14:17

I forgot to tell our South Korean listener, or our listener in South Korea, Kent, that if you want

01:14:26

What is a Cult, or What's a Cult by Dr. Latane C. Scott, the e -book, just send her an e -mail to latane at latane .com.

01:14:35

That's L -A -T -A -Y -N -E, latane at latane .com. We have an anonymous listener who says,

01:14:47

I had an encounter with a Christian pastor who is a convert from Mormonism as well, but it shocked me when he said he thinks that Christians overreact to the differences between Mormons and Christians.

01:15:03

It really brought me down into a place where I had little trust for this man's discernment or integrity.

01:15:12

Could that possibly be true, or is he really exaggerating the similarities to the point of even being deceptive?

01:15:24

Well, I don't know either the pastor or this person, but I can say something in general, and that is that the

01:15:32

Mormonism of past years, up until about maybe 2015, was a different Mormonism than is being practiced and being publicized today.

01:15:46

One of my first questions would be, when did he leave the Mormon Church? The Mormon Church is making a very definite effort to appear more

01:15:58

Christian, and they've done that for years. They were the S against them up through maybe the first 30 years of the last century, but then they've made an effort to be more the

01:16:11

American religion, I guess would be a good way to put it. And in the last 15 years or so, many of the doctrines that have made

01:16:19

Mormons so distinctive and would have separated a

01:16:25

Christian believer in what the Bible says, for instance, about God, from the

01:16:31

Mormon believer, these things have just kind of been melted away so that they no longer make a really big deal about God's past as a human being on another planet.

01:16:44

They still do make a big deal about Mormons becoming God, but interestingly enough,

01:16:51

I think as a reflection of our culture, and Mormonism reflects our culture, by the way, there's much more talk in Mormon circles about the

01:17:02

Mother in Heaven. You know, just as God the Father is Heavenly Father, there's

01:17:07

Heavenly Mother, and Mormons have begun writing books about her, picture books.

01:17:13

The one picture book that came out recently by a Mormon author shows depictions of women from different cultures, different nationalities, different ethnicities, being pictured as the

01:17:27

Mother in Heaven. So, you know, Mormonism is becoming more politically correct.

01:17:34

Well, that's the death knell to any religion. When you become more politically correct, you lose your distinctiveness, and I don't want to warn the

01:17:44

Mormon Church, but it's fine with me if they become less effective, because I don't want my brothers and sisters being taken in by some of their other doctrines.

01:17:54

It's the same warning for any church in the year 2022.

01:18:01

If you become like the world, you are no longer the salt and light the world needs. Yes, and although, you know, there are many, if not most,

01:18:11

Mormons that share the biblical morality of Christians, and they may seek to treat their neighbor as themselves, and they may be very kind and wonderful and generous and benevolent people, it's really a polar opposite religion.

01:18:28

I don't even think you could get more opposite to Christianity than Mormonism, because it even has the idolatrous polytheism that makes

01:18:41

Hindus blush because there are an infinite number of gods rather than a finite number.

01:18:48

And of course, it may be more accurately described as henotheism, because they do believe that they here on earth only worship one god, but there are countless trillions of other gods that will be in existence.

01:19:05

That's true. Well, you wanted to say something? No, I just wanted to agree with you.

01:19:14

I probably wouldn't assess Mormonism as the polar opposite.

01:19:19

I guess the polar opposite to me would be either no faith at all or Satanism, which is quite a thing now.

01:19:27

Worshiping Satanist because he can distribute power is really a very big reality,

01:19:34

I think, in our culture. But it is true that if you're going to get a polar opposite in terms of your view of God, a father or the biblical

01:19:44

God, and that's, Chris, I want to go back to why this e -book that I'm giving away free to people is so important.

01:19:52

It's because it shows the distinctiveness, the distinctives between any cultic view of God, any cultic view of Jesus Christ, any cultic view of the

01:20:03

Holy Spirit, any cultic view of salvation, any cultic view of the authority of Scripture.

01:20:10

All of these things can be looked at separately so that you can examine whether or not a group is actually a cult because they don't worship the true and living

01:20:21

God, or whether they just have cultic characteristics. And so I really urge your listeners, this is a free book, it's a nice -looking book, called

01:20:33

What's a Cult? And you can sit down with it and say, hmm, this group that I'm in,

01:20:39

I'm in a Christian group that has cultic characteristics. How do I handle that? Very important.

01:20:45

We have to be discerners, Chris, and I know that's one of your ministries in this broadcast is to help people to be discerning in what they see around them.

01:20:55

So, you know, again, this is a free e -book. It doesn't cost you a penny. It's something you can sit down with your wife, your husband, your children, and talk about.

01:21:04

You can take it in your Sunday school class and say, let's just look at this. And it will be very helpful to people.

01:21:10

And one of the things that I've been hearing back, the back feed, or the feedback,

01:21:18

I should say, from the former

01:21:23

Mormons who are very hateful towards Christianity, I mean, really nasty, or at least towards Christians that claim

01:21:36

Mormonism is a cult. And as I said, there is a mixture of those former Mormons that are responding to me.

01:21:44

There are those that despise any form of religion, including Mormonism, but there are those that have left

01:21:50

Mormonism but still have some kind of a soft spot for it. I guess perhaps they don't want to vilify a religion that their family is still participating in and that they once devoted their lives to.

01:22:03

Maybe there are reasons, and perhaps you could go into that in a moment. But there seems to be a roadblock in the minds of people where they don't see any real significant difference between Mormonism and Christianity is because of words that are used that are similar in both groups.

01:22:25

What are you kidding me? They worship Jesus Christ, too. And they believe in atonement, and they believe in grace, and they believe in mercy, and they believe in the resurrection.

01:22:39

And you could go on and on. But isn't this very often a case where you have two religions who have very often the same vocabulary but different dictionaries?

01:22:52

I want to address that on two levels, Chris. One is the level of emotional involvement.

01:22:59

When my parents went through a divorce, I had this terrible vision that I was going to be put up on a witness stand and have to choose between my dad and choose between my mom.

01:23:10

And I think a lot of people... Of course, that never happened, of course. But I think a lot of people, when they leave the

01:23:16

Mormon church, they see the good in the Mormon church, and they see the good in the people, and they don't want to...

01:23:25

They don't want them to have the same gut -wrenching experience of having everything you believe pulled out from underneath you and being, as that one ex -Mormon said, not having a compass anymore.

01:23:40

Nobody wants to wish that on someone else, and yet it's necessary. So people kind of learn that.

01:23:47

I think many of them... I was. I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. I could hardly believe it myself.

01:23:53

You know? I was willing to stake my life. I was willing to write a book on it. My book, The Mormon Mirage, has actually been in print for 43 years, believe it or not.

01:24:03

Wow. 43 years. 43 years. I don't know of any other book off the top of my head that's about a religion that's stayed in print for 43 years.

01:24:14

But it has because my story was authentic. God blessed me with being able to write it when

01:24:20

I was young and still close to it, while my heart was still tender, and that I could look at the doctrines.

01:24:25

But a lot of it, in that first edition of the book, was just, here's the story, folks, but boy,

01:24:31

I don't, you know, take it or leave it, but this is what I found out. When I revised the book,

01:24:37

The Mormon Mirage, I put a section, and I completely updated everything.

01:24:42

You know, the Mormon doctrine has changed so much. Mormon practices have changed so much that when

01:24:48

I updated it, I actually put a section in the back that talked about some of the emotional costs of leaving

01:24:54

Mormonism, how my Christian family, when I became, you know, I was baptized a

01:25:00

Christian after 46 Mormon baptisms, 45 of them for the dead.

01:25:07

I was baptized a 46th time and became part of a Christian body that I am still a part of now, 50 years later.

01:25:16

I haven't jumped from church to church but I've been with the same church, you know, and these people are so kind and so nice to me,

01:25:23

Chris, and they tried so hard, but they had no idea how to minister to somebody hurting like that that has lost their

01:25:31

God. I mean, you may have been betrayed by a lover, but what does it feel like to be betrayed by a

01:25:36

God? It gets really hard to start trusting any other God from that point on, and so I guess

01:25:45

I have the hindsight to be able to look at that and to really feel a lot of sympathy,

01:25:53

Chris, for these people that are angry because they, like me, may have invested tons of money, all their best efforts of time, all their best mental efforts and spiritual efforts towards something that ultimately was based on lies and falsehoods and good wishes without a foundation.

01:26:18

It's just, you know, I guess I can't be, even if these people talk ugly to you,

01:26:25

Chris, which I don't like. I don't want people talking ugly to my friends. Boy, just the amount of hurt and betrayal they feel is what's coming out.

01:26:33

That's what I think. We were talking about blood atonement earlier.

01:26:39

Is that not why, the perpetuation of this teaching, is that not why, up until very recently in history,

01:26:49

Utah was the only remaining state that permitted the death penalty by firing squad?

01:26:57

And Gary Gilmore, people may remember him, who murdered folks in a gas station, those that were operating a gas station.

01:27:09

I can't remember how many people he murdered. But he was executed and became a

01:27:15

Mormon, at least according to what his profession was, in prison, and he requested the death penalty.

01:27:21

Wasn't that all connected to the blood atonement? I believe so. That's been my research, that that was allowed.

01:27:29

Again, you know, not every motive of the Mormon Church is nefarious.

01:27:34

You know, if you believe that someone who's committed a murder can only be forgiven if their blood is shed, and if you are a

01:27:40

Mormon, you want somebody to shed your blood, so why would you, you know, like Gary Gilmore, as you say, why would you not want somebody to do that for you so that you could be freed of that pain of sin?

01:27:54

And we have a listener who's telling me that Gary Gilmore murdered two people in Utah, and that was in the 1970s.

01:28:06

Okay. It's about the time I left the Mormon Church, yeah. And am

01:28:12

I misremembering that Utah no longer permits the firing squad, or is that still an option for people?

01:28:21

I don't know. I actually don't know. That's something about Utah that I haven't kept up with.

01:28:27

Maybe another one of your listeners might know that. I'm not sure. Okay. Let's see here.

01:28:36

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, in spite of the fact that it appears this

01:28:47

TV series is largely based on fiction, do you still recommend it?

01:28:55

Oh, I absolutely do, and I tell you for one reason. If you're going to ask someone to leave a religion that they love, and that they're going to have to completely change their worldview.

01:29:06

We're not talking about changing from Baptist to Presbyterian. We're not talking about moving from one synod to another.

01:29:15

We're talking about having everything you believe theologically ripped out from underneath you.

01:29:22

If you're going to ask someone to do that, watch what this costs the individual so that you'll know how to minister to them.

01:29:30

Chris, I'm actually working on a book. I wrote a book called

01:29:35

After Mormonism What?, which was a way for Christians to help a

01:29:42

Mormon examine their own worldview, like what's the most real thing in existence, what's the meaning of human history, the elements of what we call a worldview, so that they could deal with those things one at a time.

01:29:55

That book has gone out of print, and with Dr. Len Wilder, that you know very well, and with Dr.

01:30:01

Ross Anderson, who is a pastor in Utah, we have almost finished this book that allows a

01:30:08

Christian to be able to minister to an ex -Mormon who is in that terrible state that I was in, and that so many of these people are describing, of just, what do you believe now?

01:30:22

What is there? And we don't want people to become the bitter atheists who hate all religion.

01:30:28

We don't want that. And the sense of betrayal, they have to find out who they can actually put their trust in, which is a big deal.

01:30:39

So they need a foundation, they need to know why to respect the Word, that the

01:30:44

Bible really does have the answers for our lives. Everything we need for life and godliness really is there.

01:30:51

And so this step -by -step book, I hope to have that together soon, and I mean, within a few weeks,

01:31:00

I hope we can make that, provide that for people, because the reason I want people to watch this series is when you watch that faithful Mormon young man,

01:31:11

Pirie, Officer Pirie, sit in his car and completely fall apart, you know what you're asking of a faithful Mormon.

01:31:18

And if you're going to ask that of them, you're faced with the same dilemma I had when

01:31:23

I first left Mormonism. If you don't have something better to offer to them, if you don't have, if you're not willing to be the emotional support and the community support that they had in Mormonism, I wonder if you're not going to hurt them more by turning them into the atheists who's bitter against all of religion.

01:31:42

So, yes, I definitely recommend it. Oh, by the way, I think we need to correct, or at least clarify, something that Arnie in Perry County said.

01:31:52

He was saying that the TV series is fiction. There are very, very, very true elements of it, especially the elements that involve

01:32:04

Mormon theology, both past and present. In fact, it was you that told me that the very scene that you were discussing when

01:32:14

Detective Pirie is secretly in his car, parked in his garage, looking through a book that he actually stole from the evidence files in the jail.

01:32:28

He was told to look at the book with the red cover that a man who was imprisoned at the time as a suspect of the murders he was told by that man,

01:32:47

Detective Pirie, to look at the red book, and he went into the evidence locker, got that book out, and was reading it in his car and began falling apart.

01:32:57

Now, you told me that that was a book by Sandra Tanner and her husband, her late husband.

01:33:03

Let me back up and clarify something a little more fully. The television series,

01:33:09

Under the Banner of Heaven, is based on a book by John Krakauer. John Krakauer wrote

01:33:14

Into Thin Air, and he wrote this book, and he uses a technique that another one of your listeners just texted me about called narrative nonfiction.

01:33:24

In other words, and I think he won a Pulitzer Prize for it, that his technique is to take an actual factual thing that he's researched and then add narrative elements to it, not changing the facts of the situation, but somewhat making them more novelistic.

01:33:44

So, I don't know. It's been years since I read Under the Banner of Heaven, and I can't compare it in my mind right now to the series.

01:33:55

But that book that this man is holding is actually the book

01:34:00

I read that I fell apart over. Wow. And when I'm looking through all these different comments from ex -Mormons on these

01:34:11

Facebook chat threads, they're saying the same thing happened to me when I read that book, because you can explain away a little bit of disparity between Old Mormonism and New Mormonism, but when you've got a book that weighs five pounds full of nothing but photographs or reproductions of early

01:34:29

Mormon documents that taught that stuff, it's not Latane Scott saying they used to teach this.

01:34:35

That book has the actual documents in it, and you look at them, and, I mean, your blood drains out of your body.

01:34:42

That's the way I felt. I thought I was going to faint. And that book was, as I said, written by Gerald and Sandra Tanner, correct?

01:34:49

Right. It's called Mormonism, Shadow, or Reality, which has just sold out, somebody told me on Amazon.

01:34:57

You can't even get a copy. If you go to Sandra Tanner, who is Gerald's widow and who is very valiantly carrying on the ministry that started with that book, they have electronic copies of it available, and to be honest with you,

01:35:15

I think it would actually maybe even be better to have it on your computer so you could enlarge it, rather than carrying around this massive book that is also the images from early

01:35:27

Mormon documents. Yes, and they are Gerald and Sandra Tanner. Gerald is now in heaven, but Sandra is a former

01:35:39

Mormon, as was her late husband. And, in fact, I know that Sandra is in the progeny of Brigham Young.

01:35:47

I can't remember how many greats in the granddaughter it is, but it's something like great -great -great -granddaughter, correct?

01:35:58

That's right. She is one of his direct descendants. That's right. And that's a very wonderful ministry.

01:36:07

In fact, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who has done a lot of research and writing about Mormonism and evangelism to Mormons, he told me that Sandra was a consultant on the series.

01:36:23

Yes, I had also read that. I've not corresponded with Sandra lately.

01:36:28

She's pretty busy with this. This has brought enormous attention to the work that she's done.

01:36:37

I'll tell you how far back, Chris, my experience with that goes. When I was at BYU, I lived in a basement apartment with three other ladies, okay?

01:36:47

And so, you know, we live off campus, and somebody would leave, someone would go around the neighborhood there in Provo, Utah, which is south of Salt Lake City, and would leave flyers out about the

01:36:58

Tanner's work. And my roommates, who were lifelong Mormons, would always grab them and destroy them and tell me about this bad couple up in Salt Lake City who only wanted to make the church look bad.

01:37:12

I actually was, I mean, arm's length or touching distance to some of their documents that they were distributing at that time, and that would have been in the early 70s, from 1970 to 73.

01:37:28

But I never read them, because I was told, even if you get hold of one of those, just throw it away. And I would have.

01:37:34

If I had seen that and it said something about Mormonism, shadow, or reality, or did you know this?

01:37:41

I would have just thrown it away. I would never have read it. It wasn't until somebody just kind of put my nose to the grindstone, the person who turned out to be my future husband, and said,

01:37:50

I have these books, read them. And I was so sure, Chris, that I could disprove everything in these anti -Mormon books.

01:37:57

I mean, I was a BYU student, you know? I was on scholarship. I could answer all those questions,

01:38:03

I thought, no problem. By the way, I want to give Sandra Tanner's website a plug.

01:38:11

Utah Lighthouse Ministry in Salt Lake City, Utah, can be found at utlm .org.

01:38:19

UT, the abbreviation for Utah. L -M for Lighthouse Ministry, dot org.

01:38:26

U -T -L -M dot org. We have to go to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, you should do it immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:38:35

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That's PTLBibleRebinding .com Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402 That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit

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LindbrookBaptist .org That's LindbrookBaptist .org Welcome back.

01:51:27

This is the final segment of our interview today with Dr. Liptain C. Scott as we examine

01:51:32

Under the Banner of Heaven the series on Hulu that is a fictional account inspired by a true story that involves the 1984 murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter in a suburb of the

01:51:52

Salt Lake Valley in Utah. And one of the things that has been fictionalized about it is one of the lead characters,

01:52:02

Detective Jed Pirie, I understand is a fictional character that is used as kind of a glue to bring all of this together, right?

01:52:11

I actually don't remember that. I don't know. Someone else was more involved with the casting of that.

01:52:19

I do know that the intent of the show was to show two parallel stories which were the story of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the early days of the

01:52:29

Mormon Church and that's why there are so many flashbacks along with the fact that there was this murder that occurred in the 1980s.

01:52:40

I think they had to fictionalize several of the characters that surrounded that just because they're not available to or weren't available to John Krakauer at the time.

01:52:54

And of course, once again, we extend our sympathies to the sister of Brenda Wright Lafferty who has become distressed over the publicity over this and we are opening up the invitation again if you'd like to join us before we go off the air with any comments of your own.

01:53:13

Latane, if you could basically summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we leave.

01:53:19

The thing I want people to know is that it's not our good works that get us to heaven and heaven really is our goal.

01:53:28

And if we think that just how we act here on earth and whether or not we're good people and we're in a community, those things are very important to support the fabric of our society and our culture and to be reifications or objectifications of the characteristics or the character that's within us.

01:53:54

But in the end, all our righteousness is as filthy rats.

01:54:00

We don't impress God ever with our good deeds. We only impress Him with our faith.

01:54:06

I was really taken when I started reading the Bible in Greek to discover that the word for amazed or dumbfounded actually that was used of Jesus was when

01:54:21

He was confronted with faith or lack of faith. Nobody's great deeds astounded

01:54:27

Him, astonished Him. But people's faith, the way that they trusted

01:54:33

Him, that's what astonished Him. So if we want, as it says in the book of Romans, if we want to impress

01:54:40

God, it's through faith. And that builds up that bank of righteousness before God.

01:54:47

So if any of us are relying on just how we act in this world to get us to heaven, that's a fruitless mission.

01:54:56

It won't obtain, as they say in the military. It won't get you there.

01:55:02

Amen. And you can't trust in a God that you don't understand who

01:55:09

He is. Life eternal is knowing Him and Jesus Christ who He sent. So our devotion should be to the person of Jesus Christ, not a church, to the person of Jesus Christ into whose hands all authority on heaven and earth has been given and to emulate

01:55:29

His qualities. But most of all, open our hearts and trust Him. And that's the issue for ex -Mormons.

01:55:37

If you've opened your heart and trusted and been betrayed, it's very, very difficult.

01:55:42

That's where the church, the hands and feet and loving arms of Jesus Christ here on earth, have to reach out and help.

01:55:51

And sometimes just give a hug and just say, I'll be there with you, even if you don't know how to address

01:55:56

Mormon doctrine. Amen. And also on the flip side of that, anyone who is listening who is a professing

01:56:06

Christian and your life is not marked by any good deeds or obedience, you are deceiving yourself, because works will never merit favor with God, but they are a fruit, they're an evidence.

01:56:21

Just like a baby that cries after it's born, there's evidence that it's breathing.

01:56:28

And if you aren't living a repentant life, you've got to really fall to your knees and cry out, to the

01:56:35

Lord for salvation, as if you were never saved before, because the likelihood is that you haven't been until then.

01:56:44

But I also want to remind anybody that sent in questions to write to latayne at latayne at latayne .com,

01:56:54

latayne at latayne .com, and that's L -A -T -A -Y -N -E, latayne at latayne .com,

01:57:01

if you want to get the offer that she has been mentioning, What's a Cult?

01:57:06

That's an e -book. And so if you have written in a question, we ask you to do that.

01:57:15

We hope to have Latayne back on. In fact, I'm also extending an invitation.

01:57:22

I've already extended an invitation to Sandra Tanner to see if she has the free time in her schedule to address this subject and have

01:57:30

Latayne and myself co -host an interview with her as our guest.

01:57:35

We don't know for certain if that will materialize. Sandra has been a guest on this program in the past, and I hope that she does return.

01:57:45

And I would strongly urge everybody listening to watch this series, and I think that it is really an eye -opener and maybe even an eye -opener for many

01:57:58

Mormons watching this program. And as we were saying, that although there may be some fictional characters and fictionalized scenes and so forth, the

01:58:13

Mormon doctrine addressed in the series is absolutely authentic, not meaning that it's true teaching, but it's an authentic representation of what

01:58:24

Mormonism has believed both in its inception historically and the modern version of it that has changed radically from that.

01:58:33

You would concur with that, correct, from everything that you've seen and heard in the series? Mm -hmm, yeah.

01:58:39

Again, I can't compare this series to the original book because it's been too long since I read it.

01:58:46

My emphasis is on the emotional impact that Mormonism has on people and how to address it.

01:58:57

And of course, beyond a resemblance to the original book, what I mean is when you're hearing

01:59:03

Mormon doctrine, both original Mormon doctrine and current -day

01:59:08

Mormon doctrine being discussed, you don't see any fabrications there. No, no, not in the doctrine, because remember,

01:59:17

Mormon doctrine changes. Right. It's not the same, and what they're depicting was the

01:59:24

Mormonism of the time I was a Mormon, and so, yes, I believe that was accurate. Well, it's been a joy having you on the program again,

01:59:31

Latane, and I look forward to your return to the program. If anybody wants to find out more about Dr.

01:59:36

Latane C. Scott, go to latane .com, latane .com. That's L -A -T -A -Y -N -E dot com.

01:59:43

Thank you so much. Thank you, all of you who have listened, especially those 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