October 4, 2019 Show with Paul Trask & Barb Luff on “Faith Gone Astray: Unveiling the Kirtland Cult Murders”

The Iron Sharpens Iron Introduction and the Day’s Theme

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet 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 Friday on this fourth day of October 2019.

And this is going to be, no doubt, a fascinating program that we have today. It involves a returning guest and also a first-time guest. Today we have on the program for a second interview Paul Trask, who is a former reorganized Latter-day Saint who converted by God's grace and mercy to Biblical Christianity and founded Refiners Fire Ministries.

We also have joining Paul a first-time guest, Barb Luff, who is the mother of prison inmate Ron Luff, serving a life sentence for participating in the Kirtland cult murders at the Allen Correctional Institute in Lima, Ohio.

And it is my honor and privilege to welcome you both to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Paul Trask and Barb Luff.

Hi, Brian. Thank you for having me.

Welcome, Barb, for the first time. It's a pleasure and honor to have you on the show today. I'm sure it will. And, Paul, if you could start the program by giving a summary of who the Reorganized Latter-day Saints are.

And I know that they are under a new name these days, the Community of Christ. But if you could tell us something about the Reorganized Latter-day Saint cult.

The Reorganized Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ

Yes, I'd be happy to. ...church in Utah. They changed their name in 2001 to Community of Christ. ...to them as RLDF or Community of Christ. The distinction is that they had the son of Joseph Smith, Jr. to be their prophet in 1844.

And, actually, the splintering began right then by different groups going in different directions. At that point in time was James J. Strang, who led a group on an island in Michigan called King James.

...was killed. His group was so large that it actually rivaled Brigham Young's group when people were doing in Utah most notoriously of polygamy. So when Brigham Young, 16 years later, was born in 1860.

Those were the two names. Others began in 1860.

And we do not marry for eternity or for the dead either.

Now, do you... Did the group... Or should I say, does the group disagree with the main Latter-day Saint group on becoming gods of your own planet if you are a faithful person to the Bible and to the Book of Mormon, etc.?

Yeah, that doctrine of eternal progression and godhood is uniquely Utah Mormon. And the RLJ ceremonies, in terms of the Utah Mormon church, they have nothing to do with it. And they violently...

Now, although they violently... I'm assuming you mean passionately, not physically violently. Although they reject those classic teachings, false teachings of the main cult, what still exists within the reorganized church of Latter-day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ, that would still place it under the category of a cult?

As Legitimates and the Book of Mormon is their record. And they still believe in Joseph Smith Mine. So they have a number of the earmarked original church, even though they have not gone to the extreme end of Mormonism as the Utah church has.

And from what I recall interviewing you and some... I believe it was Peter Elliott, another former RLDS member. Is that his name? I can't remember. Off the top of my head.

Yeah, Peter Elliott?

Yes.

Peter Elliott, an Australian?

Yes, yes. Having interviewed him and you, I also recall that the RLDS would not be in alignment with classic, Reformational, historic Christianity, which of course, we who are historic Protestants would believe it to be Biblical Christianity, that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

Yeah, no. The intermediary works may be theoretical. Prefected as intermediaries between people and God. The relationship with God could only be mediated through this very workspace, and amenable with genuine Biblical Christianity.

I forget to mention one thing, that the distinctly organized church actually holds the inspired version of the Bible to Mormonism, together worked and revised the King James Bible in some fairly significant ways, and then they published it, which obviously classified them as a cult, and distinguishes them from the Mormon church.

The work that Joseph and Sidney did on the inspired version they don't claim it as scripture, as the actually bi-inspired version from there will be a church of God.

Wow, it is quite ironic that they would not view that as the supreme, if not exclusive, version to use, and I can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with the copyright that you just mentioned being owned by another organization.

Well no, that's a cult thing, it went to Utah, Emma Smith ultimately joined the reorganized church version of the Bible, and so once her son became the prophet of the R .L .D .S. Smith inspired version, and it was published, that version, in 1860.

They can't just put it all together, because it was the work of Joseph Smith, and yet they don't want to embrace it too closely, because it's an embarrassment that the R .L .D .S. church has sole claim to fame.

One other thing before we move on to Barb's story, Barb Luff, who if you just tuned us in, is one of our guests today. Barb is the mother of Ron Luff, who is serving a life sentence in the Allen Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio.

He is serving that life sentence for murder because he was an accomplice in what have become known as the Kirtland cult murders, and we're going to be getting into detail about that just momentarily, but before we go to Barb, one of the things that I recall from our discussions on R .L .D .S. history is that Emma Smith and Joseph Smith III both claimed that Joseph never had multiple wives.

Is that true?

Joseph Smith III, Polygamy, and Mormon Afterlife Teachings

Yeah, that's absolutely true. Joseph Smith III became the prophet in 1860. One of his primary missions, because rumors of his many polygamous wives and tarnishing of Joseph Smith's reputation, he actually made it one of his primary missions in life to clear his father's name of those charges.

He did have multiple wives.

Yes, he had multiple wives, and so did most Mormon men. In fact, wasn't that somehow very connected to your reward in the afterlife in the former teachings of the primary LDS cult?

Right.

But wasn't it some kind of a benefit on earth to have multiple wives for a man as far as what kind of reward he would have in heaven or in the afterlife?

You know, in their section 132, the Mormons believe that you, in the following life, take one of your wives into that next life. It's really the Adam God, and as God is, man shall become. So they actually teach that Adam world, that God, you know, that we are on the same conveyor belt, and just like God, we are eternally progressing as well.

It's just that he's a little bit further on down the conveyor belt from like he was, and then we can take one of our wives who is one of his wives, and, you know, Eve and Adam came here to this earth to start the population here on planet Earth.

It's true for good Mormon elders. Okay, well, now I'd like Barb.

To give a bit of her own story. Obviously, from what we have already said, and perhaps we didn't even say this yet, Ron Luff, the son of our guest Barb Luff, was in a cult that was a breakaway, an offshoot of the reorganized Latter-day Saints.

So, Barb, I'd like you to tell our listeners what kind of a religious atmosphere were you yourself raised in, if any, and were you yourself involved in either the RLDS or the offshoot to which your son belonged?

Barb Luff’s Early Religious Background and Conversion to Jesus

I had an unusual situation in my case. My mother didn't have a circle where we lived that I could walk to. I was around eight years old when I went to a Bible school. You know, if you want to accept Jesus.

And I felt very, very strongly about this. I remember it very well, even to this day, very strongly that I wanted to accept Jesus in my heart. I wanted to be baptized. And my mother had some Utah Mormon friends that told her, well, you need to have them be baptized in the Mormon church because it's the only true church.

So, not knowing what she was actually doing, my mother had me and my sister and brother and herself, and we were all baptized into the Utah Mormon church. God is good, and we didn't have a car, so there was no church in our little town in Washington state that we lived in.

So I continued to go to the Baptist church off and on mostly, and once in a while people would come pick us up. We went to the Utah church, the Mormon church, but I really didn't learn very much about it.

But when they came and asked me to be baptized for my dead relatives, that was very frightening to me. I think the Holy Spirit taught me. Anyway, he told me, he said, no, he said that Utah church is wrong, and he convinced me that the RODS church was right.

So we were actually married, and the RO, I didn't know anybody except in his family. I came home with him to meet his family after we were married, so I didn't know anybody in Missouri in his family's thinking who knew what he was talking about.

Now, my husband is fifth generation RODS. He had a great-grandfather that was an apostle in that church. So he and his whole family, along with it, that taught me about Jesus, taught me about salvation, and I think it kind of kept me on the edge because my husband and I would have disagreements about our...

And our kids can tell you that they grew up with our debating these things. Anyway, when we found out about what went on, we began to investigate, and as Paul can tell you, there's so much history there.

In the 1830s, in fact, if you were to go to the Internet, you could find out many things about what took place in Missouri in the 1830s. And as we read more and more and heard more and more, we finally decided we had to come out of that religion.

And one of the things that was strong with my husband was that he was an elder. When we came out of that, we began reading the Bible. We decided we'd read the Bible through and through together, and the one thing that stood out was that it is finished.

We do not have to report anybody else directly to him, and that was very meaningful in my life.

Amen. Now let me ask you a question about your own spiritual journey, if you will. When you were a Baptist, going to the RLDS church and being married in the RLDS church...

Well, I was...

Right, well, I mean, as far as you had some connection with the Baptist church.

Right, right.

Were you under, or at least in hindsight, when you look back at it now, do you believe that you were a saved but naive person, a truly born-again Christian, but naive about this strange new group that you were learning about, the RLDS, which you, as you said, were married in that church, etc.

And your husband had a long history in that church. Were you just kind of like a naive person who was puzzled but going along, or do you think that perhaps at that time, you were not born again, but just had enough knowledge from affiliation and visiting Baptist churches that there was something not quite right with the RLDS?

Well, I believe in Jesus, that He is the Son of God. I don't believe you have to be a Christian.

Right.

It's a prominent thing with me. I believe that I was a born-again Christian, and I have since believed there are some people that are in the RLDS Christian. I think the ones that are the strongest in this priesthood thing, I did believe from the very beginning that the Holy Spirit did direct me, and I think He protected me from a lot of those doctrines.

Yeah.

I have a friend who is now in heaven, William Norman Grigg, who is very well known, especially to political libertarians. He was a strong libertarian politically, and I interviewed Norman on a number of occasions, a brilliant man, and he was a high priest in the LDS cult, and he became a born-again believer while out on the mission field, I think in Mexico, or South America, I can't remember right now, but he became a born-again believer, and much to his later regret, he remained functionally in the LDS for almost two decades, I think, and then finally, he and his wife officially left and requested to have their names removed from the rolls and stuff, but he remained because he was just fearful of losing his marriage, losing his family, etc., and he recognized that was wrong for him to stay that long, but he nonetheless was convinced that he was a born-again believer all those years, even though he was functioning in the LDS.

Yeah, and they said that he lost his soul because he was denying his priesthood and all that, but it didn't shake his faith at all. We began to go to church at a Baptist church in Independence. We lived there at that time, but first to the Baptist church.

We were stuck together. It was amazing because we didn't argue religion after that, and that church, we got into it. Now, my husband was re-baptized. He felt like he needed to be re-baptized, and the Baptist church does not accept the baptism of the Mormon, and so he kept telling me that he wanted to be re-baptized, and we talked to the pastor about it, and I thought maybe I didn't need to because I knew I was a born-again Christian anyway, but the morning he decided to go forward and ask the pastor to baptize him, I went with him, and we re-churched.

Yes, I think that was a wise decision. Not that, as you said, we do not believe that baptism is required for salvation, but it is required for obedience, and a baptism in a church that denies the triune God, that denies the Trinity, and denies the essentials of the faith, that baptism is not a true baptism, in my opinion, and in the opinion of most people that I highly respect, who are theologians and so on.

Amen. Well, we are going to our first break, and when we come back from our first break, I want you to get more into your son, Ron, and the spiral that he, unfortunately, went on in his downward journey into the dark and sinister beliefs and practices of a cult that, as we were saying, was an offshoot, an end offshoot, or a breakaway group from the RLDS.

We'll get more into that when we return from our first break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, please send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-S-E-N at gmail dot com, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. Perhaps we even have some folks in the RLDS listening today, or in the LDS, or any other group that is not considered by evangelicals to be a genuine biblical church, and you don't want to call attention to yourself.

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We are now back with our guests today Paul Trask and also Barb Luff. Barb Luff is the mother of Ron Luff who is currently serving a life sentence at the Allen Correctional Institute in Lima, Ohio for being an accomplice in the murders that took place in Kirtland, Ohio and they have become known as they have become known as the Kirtland Cult Murders.

And.

We are going to be hearing more about how our guest Barb Luff's son wound up in this cult and what has happened to him since. And by the way, I've got some phenomenal news for our listeners this Monday, God willing.

Ron Luff the son that we are speaking about. The son of Barb Luff he is going to be our guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio being interviewed directly from prison at the Allen Correctional Institute in Lima, Ohio.

So we're looking forward to that discussion with Ron this Monday. We hope that you tune in but if anybody has any questions our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. Before we go to any listener questions.

Barb please tell us something about your son Ron's childhood. It's obvious that you and your husband made a break from the RLDS. Did Ron at least at some point follow suit with you and also leave that cult and tell us how he later became a member of the cult that was responsible for the murders we've been mentioning.

Ron Luff’s Childhood, Navy Service, and Recruitment by Jeffrey Lundgren

He did it and if you told him not to he didn't. That was much to my sadness as he got older when I see what happened I think it's one of the reasons he got more tightly involved in Mormonism than I did.

But every teacher he ever had had nothing but good to say about him. He was a very good student and he only went through high school. But when he got out of high school he joined the Navy and he went into the Navy and he was in the Navy for six years and he became an engineer on a on a Navy.

He never had in any way against him. He was just interested in witnessing for the RLDS church and they had a program of witnessing weekends where they would take kids and they would church in that town people in the and he enjoyed doing that.

He was very very dedicated to the church. How dedicated he was. But then when he got married he married a girl that was extremely dedicated also. She was very very strong in the RLDS and had faith and vision pertaining to different things and the temple there because it was a place that the church made a big deal about and they wanted to go up there.

When they went up there they met Lundgren who was a guide at the temple there in Kirtland at the time and he was so knowledgeable about so many things that Ron was very taken with him and really did what God wanted him to.

And what was Lundgren's whole name. His full name.

His name was he convinced him that he was a prophet. He convinced both of them that it was very very important. Well Ron when he got out of the Navy he had a really wonderful career very good job a very good life.

They decided man they thought was a prophet and that's one of the things that I think has hurt me so bad about about that because I kept my beliefs and let him into the RLDS.

So this was before you and your husband left the RLDS.

Oh yeah we didn't leave the RLDS church until the murders took place.

I see.

Yeah anyway we we didn't hear a whole lot even for Christmas. There was a big difference in our son he was so different even like when he would hug me. It was something that just was. He tried to convince us that Lundgren was a prophet and we weren't buying it and we were.

He pretty soon lost interest in us even being there I think. And we left we saw we tried to keep in touch and all the very next day. Now when you say that you.

Noticed differences. Was it he was colder perhaps his hugs as you said were mentioning his hugs. Was perhaps less enthusiastic.

I just felt like he was empty there was just not the same person it just seemed like he was a different person to me. I didn't know anything about cults at that time.

Now was.

Lundgren at this time still a part of the main RLDS cult or had he started to break away at this point yet.

Membership out of the RLDS church and he tried to draw other people in. He went to independence many times to try to draw other people into the group and got some of them to come into it. I don't remember I think there were around 20 people I don't remember how many were in the group altogether.

Now was the local RLDS congregation or plural congregations who obviously there had to.

Be.

Congregations or at least one near this historic landmark of theirs the temple. So how were they reactioning to this claim of Lundgren to be a prophet.

Ok so.

When how long was it before you had heard that these horrific nightmarish murders took place and tell us as much of the details about that as you can. I know that when I interview Ron on Monday those are questions that are off limits.

I'm not to be discussing the details about the murders with your son just basic theological and doctrinal and sociological mental emotional kind of issues that involve not only his becoming a member of the cult but also his salvation testimony having become a true born again believer in prison and not only that but earning his doctorate.

We're looking forward to discussing a lot of those things with him but the actual murders are off limits next week when we interview him.

Well I only took my time there when they began to be realizing that things were not right in that group something was wrong when they the murders were committed. There wasn't one person in that group that wanted that to happen.

Lundgren himself personally my feeling is that he wanted to feel power that he thought he would receive if he killed somebody. I think the man was.

Now it was an entire family that was murdered correct?

An entire family. I know that when each one of the families joined that group they gave all their money to Lundgren and then he passed out money son got a job at the he gave his entire salary to Lundgren back enough to pay and that sort of thing.

So each of the families had their own and Lundgren and his were teaching and they're getting together and all.

The Kirtland Cult Murders and the Control Jeffrey Lundgren Exercised

Ok we have to go to our midway break right now. This is the longer than normal break that we have during the show because Grace Life Radio who airs this program twice a day in a pre-recorded format they require of us to have a larger break in the middle of the show so they can air their own public service announcements to localize Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City Florida a requirement of the FCC.

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