The Real Story of Joseph Smith’s Death

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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01:03

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application.

01:09

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:19

All right, well, welcome to another Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport. I have another special guest with us today.

01:26

I wanted to, on this particular day, this is dropping a day earlier than typical, only because on the day that it drops is actually the 176th anniversary of the death of Joseph Smith.

01:42

Wait, should we be celebrating that? Hmm, depends on your perspective. But this is the anniversary of his death, and the point that we want to do throughout this episode is show really what really happened, what led up to the death of the leader of the

02:03

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, also known as Mormons. But what happened that led up to his death?

02:11

What really happened at his death? Was he really a martyr? This is what we hope to accomplish in this episode.

02:17

So when you're to talk about Latter -day Saints, there's only one person to bring in.

02:25

Well, okay, there's some others you could bring in, but there's probably the one most world -renowned expert on Mormonism.

02:32

He's going to hate that I just said that, but it is Bill McKeever from Mormon Research Ministry, and you can check out

02:39

Mormon Research Ministry at mrm .org. But Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson work there and have done probably more work.

02:47

The only person that may even be close would be Sandra Tanner, and I don't know now who we could say has done more research into Mormonism, but Bill, welcome to The Wrap Report.

03:02

Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be with you, and I would probably concede that I wish I knew enough in my fingernail of what all

03:09

Sandra Tanner knows. She's probably the most knowledgeable on all the historical aspects of Mormonism, that's for sure.

03:17

She's an amazing lady. Yeah, I mean, I had researched when

03:23

I was researching Mormonism, Sandra and Gerald Tanner, their stuff was invaluable.

03:29

Oh, yeah. I think all of us have certainly been benefited by the research of Gerald and Sandra, that's for sure.

03:38

And they did so much research, and really they were really the pioneers. I mean, they were doing it before the internet and things like this when you couldn't get access to documents, and they laid down a groundwork really for your ministry, and what you guys do now that we have the internet,

03:56

I think it's having an impact on the Mormon Church. Oh, yeah.

04:01

Oh, yeah. The question you get the most. They've even admitted that, Andrew. They've even admitted that the internet is having a severe impact on the

04:12

Church, because all the information that, of course, we had been reporting on for decades can easily be looked up and checked out.

04:22

And they realized, and this is why I think they came out with the Gospel Topics Essays in 2013, they knew they could not just keep telling members, well, just don't go to that site, even though they kept doing that, but they knew that wasn't working.

04:37

And so the internet has caused them all sorts of headaches. You know, those Gospel Essays are things that cover stuff that you say antis, you know, those anti -Mormons would put out, like Joseph Smith having multiple wives, even young children, even sisters, the fact that African Americans were not allowed to be priests, all kinds of things that they would deny, because they would just change their history and just say, oh, no, that never happened.

05:05

I had some Mormon missionaries who had come to our house, and I had said, the

05:11

Mormon Church will be accepting homosexuality soon. No, it would never. I wish

05:17

I could get a hold of those missionaries now and say, so can you tell me about Brigham Young's, the university's policy of accepting homosexuals now?

05:25

Things like that have certainly, boy, just made a lot of people just wonder what's going on here.

05:32

But you know what? I don't think it should surprise us, because the LDS Church, or the

05:37

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, its official title, they never really go to the

05:43

Bible to begin with to justify a lot of what they teach. So why would we expect them on that issue to go to the

05:50

Bible and use the Bible as a guide as to how to handle that behavior?

05:55

They just don't normally. It all goes by what the leadership tells the membership. They are the ones that are led by God to guide the

06:04

Church as prophets and apostles in these modern days. Yeah, it was fun.

06:10

You and I had gone with your organization to a temple opening, and that was really fun.

06:17

I just, I didn't reveal that I was a Christian yet. I was spotted right away, and so I do know that our tour, we were on a silent tour.

06:27

None of us were allowed to ask questions, and they weren't allowed to answer any of our questions, supposedly to make up for time.

06:34

But meanwhile, the tours in front and behind us were having no problem with that, asking questions and all, but we weren't allowed to ask any questions, and then when

06:42

I got out, they had the two missionaries start talking to me. I just revealed that I was

06:47

Jewish. They asked me what I thought of the temple, and I'm just saying, well, this is very interesting, you know, but it's nothing like the

06:53

Old Testament temple. And I revealed that I'm a Levite, a Korahite, which would be the family responsible for the temple elements.

07:03

So I think they never actually dealt with a Levite standing there, and they didn't know what to do because they kept saying that this is the way the temple is, and I'm going, well, that's not the way it is in the

07:15

Bible. And they had clearly never read the Bible, at least the Old Testament with the temple.

07:21

And I even had one, because we ended up having six missionaries, because the two called two others for backup who called two others for backup.

07:30

And when the last two, this lady, this woman says to me, she says, well, this is the way the temple is in Israel.

07:37

And I said, there is no temple in Israel right now. And she goes, oh, yes, my professor at Brigham Young University told me that there's a temple in Israel, and they have marriages in it.

07:49

And I went, and one of the other girls stopped her and said, he's a Levite, he understands the temple.

07:55

It was like, be quiet. You're embarrassing yourself.

08:01

Yeah, you and I had an experience at Brigham Young's house that you said was the... you've been on several tours.

08:07

Maybe you could tell that story of what happened when you and I went to his house. They didn't like us in that house too much.

08:14

Well, normally the tour guides at the Beehive House, that's the name of Brigham Young's home, it was also the governor's office.

08:20

In fact, that's the first part of the tour is you're in the office area for the governor of the territory of Deseret, as it was known at that time before it became a state in the 1890s.

08:32

And so you go on the tour, and of course, they want to give you the best side of Mormonism.

08:41

And they do talk about Brigham Young. And you got to admit, Brigham Young was... if it wasn't for Brigham Young, I doubt if we'd even be talking about this right now.

08:50

But he was quite a man. And so I oftentimes would like to bring up the subject of polygamy if they don't.

08:59

And I've had tour guides bring it up on their own. It's almost like they want to talk about it and get it over with.

09:05

And then let's get on with the rest of the tour. And it's kind of strange. I remember one time,

09:11

I don't know if this was the tour that I was with you. But I remember the young lady, and they're usually always women who take you around, usually the young missionaries will take you on the tour.

09:23

And so I asked about the polygamy issue. And of course, she gave a very standard answer that I've heard many times.

09:29

Well, they did that in order to take care of the women who had lost husbands during the persecution time.

09:37

And of course, how many men were lost during the persecution time? They don't know.

09:43

In fact, the largest number I've ever heard is probably maybe 50 to 100 men could have been killed during the time the

09:54

Mormons were being harshly persecuted. I even think that's quite a bit. Certainly one is too many.

10:00

I don't think that violence is the cure for false doctrine at all. But they brought that up.

10:07

I said, well, why did he have to marry them in order to take care of them?

10:12

That doesn't seem necessary. Why not just give the woman a stipend or a check and give her her own apartment or place to live and you can take care of them that way.

10:22

And then she said something about, well, it was because of the laws regarding land and inheritance.

10:31

Well, the problem is, is since 1862 in the Morrill Act, M -O -R -R -I -L -L, it was named after a politician.

10:39

This was considered unlawful cohabitation to begin with. Now, I know Abraham Lincoln wasn't going to enforce the

10:45

Morrill Act during the Civil War as long as the Mormons stayed out of the conflict.

10:50

But later on with the Edmonds Act and then the Edmonds -Tucker Act, they weren't even recognized as marriages, so how would that even help?

11:01

But a lot of these kids, they don't know this. They don't study their history. They're given a script.

11:06

And I always encourage people to be as polite as possible when you're going on these tours because these poor kids, you can imagine some of the questions they probably get from even

11:17

Christians who probably, let's be honest, cannot be the nicest when dealing with this subject.

11:25

Yeah. Well, I think I tried to be nice. Again, when we went, I pretended.

11:31

Well, I am Jewish. It's not that I pretended. I revealed my Judaism. I revealed my background.

11:38

But we got right into the temple when she started talking about the temple. And I discussed what

11:44

I knew of the temple. And when we left, you basically told me that they exit us out door left really quick and that they basically, the tour is much longer.

11:56

We go upstairs and there was none of that. They just have a nice day.

12:02

Here's the exit door. Yeah. I think that they realize that if they have some people on the tour that are asking questions that make them feel uncomfortable, they probably have an exit strategy to take us into the dining area.

12:16

Remember, that's the last spot where we were at. There was a dining room. And right next to it is a library. And there's a door that goes out to Main Street.

12:25

And that's the end of the tour. But you're right. Sometimes I've been on tours where they do take you upstairs and all around.

12:31

They talk about the kids. They talk about what life was like in the beehive house and such. And then

12:36

I've been on some very short tours. And sometimes I wondered why they were so short because there was not a huge crowd waiting behind us to get in.

12:45

Now, during the summer, I can understand that because they're relatively busy during the summer. That's not always been the case.

12:52

But I do like to open up for some questions because they will ask towards the end for sure if there are any questions.

13:00

And I look at that as a great opportunity to ask some things of the missionary personally when it comes to the forgiveness of their own sins and what would

13:09

I have to do if I was to join their church in order to receive the forgiveness of sins.

13:15

And I just let the Mormon missionary answer that. And of course, the answer to that question is going to open up a whole huge discussion on how it's virtually impossible to get the forgiveness of sins by following the rules and outlines of the doctrines of the

13:31

LDS church. Well, you know, as we want to talk about the real story of the death of Joseph Smith, the first question that you get asked a lot, and I think we should just get it out of the way, because many people think that you must be from a

13:48

Mormon background, you hate Mormons, or we should say Latter -day Saints, the proper title.

13:54

And let me just preface, I mean no disrespect if I say Mormon or LDS, it's just shorter.

14:02

There's no disrespect. I know that they want the full title Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, but for the sake of brevity,

14:10

I'm going to call them LDS or Mormon. And so when you come upon them, you have done tons of research.

14:19

People always think there's got to be some acts that you have to grind against them that you would devote your life to this.

14:26

So were you previously a Mormon, and what got you into studying Mormonism? I never was.

14:32

I was never a member. I actually became a Christian after I graduated from high school, and I grew up with a lot of LDS friends, and they were very nice to me.

14:44

They never tried to convert me or anything like that, but I knew who they were, and I knew something of their church.

14:50

Naturally, I didn't know a lot of the details because I wasn't a believer at the time, and I didn't care.

14:56

But after I became a Christian, I had conversations with some new LDS acquaintances that I had come across and started asking them some things because of my new found faith in Christ, and I was just curious.

15:10

And naturally, a lot of these people were friends of mine, and the answers that they gave me caused me some genuine concern.

15:19

And I would ask them, well, what do you do with this passage in the Bible and things like this?

15:25

And it almost didn't matter to them. If they didn't have a good spin on what they thought that Bible verse meant, it was usually an answer of, well, that's why we have

15:34

Latter -day Revelation. We have modern prophets and apostles that are guiding the church today, and we go by their guidance.

15:42

And a lot of those things in the Bible are not absolutely necessary any longer. And besides, they would say things like, well, we believe the

15:49

Bible only as far as it's translated correctly, because that's Article 8 in their

15:55

Articles of Faith. What that really means, to at least the scholars who explain

16:01

Article 8, is it's not so much a translation problem as it's a transmission problem.

16:07

They would like to argue that our Bible, as it was being handwritten, got a lot of mistakes put in there, either intentionally or unintentionally.

16:17

And so the Bible we have today, even if it's a good translation, it would only be to them a good translation of a bad transmission.

16:26

And so with that big, huge question mark on the validity of the biblical text, you can see why a

16:33

Latter -day Saint, once they embrace the authority structure of the church, will go along with just about anything they're being told.

16:43

And that becomes a problem. That's why, in some cases, I like to use a

16:48

Joseph Smith translation when I'm talking to Mormons. I should explain that Joseph Smith, the founder of the

16:55

Mormon movement, claimed that he was told by God to come up with a new translation of the

17:00

Bible. He started it in 1830, claims he finished it in July of 1833.

17:07

But if you go through the Joseph Smith translation, and the reason why I like to use it, not that I think he did a good job on it, that's for sure, but he left a lot of the verses that I will probably be bringing up in a conversation intact.

17:21

The Isaiah passages in Isaiah 43, 44, and 45, regarding there only being one

17:26

God, you also find Ephesians 2 .8 .9 is left intact, Titus 3 .5 is left intact,

17:32

Galatians 1 .8 is left intact. A lot of the verses that I would probably bring up, Joseph Smith did not touch them, or if he touched them, he didn't change the meaning.

17:42

And that becomes very helpful when you're talking to a Latter -day Saint, because it's hard to say that this

17:47

Bible, the Joseph Smith translation, or the inspired version as they call it, can't be translated badly, because it was translated by inspiration from God Himself.

17:59

So that's a good tactic that I've used over the years. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I like the

18:04

Gospel essay on the golden plates, because they have a problem there. They always said it was a translation, now they have to say it's an inspired translation, because when

18:14

Joseph Smith did that, no one knew Reformed hieroglyphics, and now that we have a

18:19

Rosetta Stone, one of those Gospel essays have to admit that, yeah, it's really not a good translation.

18:27

Well, I think you might be referring to the Book of Abraham. Yeah, Book of Abraham, I'm sorry. You're still right when it comes to the

18:34

Book of Mormon, because Joseph Smith, the Church has now admitted officially, it's not that they've never admitted this, and I think that needs to be made clear.

18:43

A lot of the things that we report on, well, where do we get them? We get them from their sources.

18:50

So it's not like the Church has completely hidden this from existence, you might say, because we found it.

18:58

And I'll give you an example. Back in 1993, Russell M. Nelson, the 17th president of the

19:04

LDS Church, gave a talk in General Conference where he mentions, for instance, the seer stone and the hat, how

19:11

Joseph Smith used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon from the Reformed Egyptian characters and such.

19:18

Even though he wasn't looking at the characters, the rock somehow had a magical power that he could look at this rock in a hat, and it would tell him what was on the gold plates written in Reformed Egyptian.

19:32

Now, when I would bring that up to a lot of Latter -day Saints, they thought I was crazy, and that was a terrible lie to make their leader look bad, even though their own scholars were very well aware of this.

19:44

Of course, Russell M. Nelson was very well aware of it when he talked about it in 1993. But that kind of a translation process was not spoken enough times for it to become part of the

19:59

Mormon narrative. It's certainly not like the First Vision account, where Joseph Smith claimed that he was visited by God the

20:05

Father and Jesus Christ, who told him that all the churches were wrong, the creeds were an abomination, and their professors were all corrupt.

20:12

All Mormons seem to know that story because it's told over and over and over again, but not the story of the seer stone and the hat.

20:21

That was mentioned very rarely, and most Mormons probably didn't even know where to look to find that story written in their own sources.

20:30

But it's easily found on mrm .org for Mormon research ministry. And we actually, on mrm .org,

20:38

point people to their official website so that people can see it on their website.

20:44

That's what's so great, Andrew, about these Gospel Topics essays. Once they started coming out, and they came out incrementally over about a three -year period, and then they came out with some even shorter ones, historical

20:55

Gospel Topics essays. And what's great about them is you can send the

21:01

Mormon to their own official website where they can read the same things that I might be saying or you might be saying, and it's really hard for them to assume

21:12

I took it out of context, or I embellished the account to make it sound bad.

21:18

It's right there in their own material, and I have referred people back to their own website numerous times.

21:25

Say, go read it for yourself. Come back and let's talk about it. Yeah, and those essays have been great.

21:33

I had the one, there was the missionaries that were coming to visit, and as soon as I gave them their own documents, they were like, they didn't want to come back.

21:42

So Joseph Smith, the accounting that led up to his death and how he actually died, the

21:53

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints has a account for this, and the question

22:00

I'd like to do is ask, is it accurate? And so could you give us the history of first the

22:09

Church's account of what happened, and then let's go through the real account, what happened, and see if they both line up.

22:19

Okay, let me first qualify this. What I'm going to be looking at are sources that the

22:27

LDS Church has published, so that would be their account. Now, there are some details in this account that have been,

22:37

I guess you could say, whitewashed over time, but they're really under their minor accounts and not really all that important.

22:44

I think that as Christians, we can talk to a Latter -day Saint about the events leading up to Joseph Smith's demise just by referring to their own resources, whether it's the documentary history of the

22:58

Church, which is what they call the Blue History, because they were bound in a blue hardcover, and there were seven volumes, and very well -respected history that their historians often went to to recount

23:13

Mormon history. But then the Church in 2018 came out with a new history book called

23:20

Saints, the Standard of Truth, and this is the first of four volumes that are going to be released over time.

23:28

The second volume has already been released, and I've got to be quite honest with you,

23:35

Andrew, I have been amazed at the transparency, or honesty, if you will, of this new history book.

23:45

It brings things out that I think would probably embarrass a lot of faithful Latter -day

23:51

Saints. And I've said this, when Eric and I did a series on this book, the first volume,

23:57

I often made the comment that if I was not a member of the Church, and I was given this by a

24:03

Mormon neighbor to read about the history of the Mormon movement, I would not join the

24:08

Church after reading it. Because Joseph Smith doesn't look all that great in this history.

24:16

He looks like a man who was a bad judge of character, had a bad behavior, made dumb decisions, hardly what we would consider to be a prophet of God, because he's claiming revelations, and then a lot of these things don't happen the way the revelation said it was supposed to happen.

24:35

I'll give you an example. It talks about Zion's camp, or the camp of Israel, where Mormons were kicked out of Independence, Missouri.

24:44

Joseph Smith claimed he had a revelation from God to raise a small army and go get that land back for the

24:51

Saints. Well, he raises the small army, but he never gets the land back for the Saints. It doesn't happen.

24:57

They're actually stopped from doing that. Well, if I was an outsider reading an account like that,

25:05

I would wonder, well, what kind of a prophet is this who claims to have revelations, but yet they don't seem to come forth?

25:11

And certainly, Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18, that would be a pretty telltale test of a true or false prophet.

25:21

One is what he says going to happen really happened. And in many cases, it doesn't happen, which would show you that Joseph Smith was a fraud.

25:32

But when it comes to the death of Joseph Smith, really, it all boils down to some of the behavior that Joseph Smith was exhibiting in Nauvoo, Illinois, which is a town that you might say the

25:46

Mormons really built up. It wasn't that it was never there before. It just had a different name when they moved in.

25:51

It was known as Commerce, Illinois. And then as the Mormons started migrating into this town, it started growing like crazy, and some have said it even rivaled

26:02

Chicago at the time. And so, Joseph Smith, of course, is at this time, in the 1840s, he's starting to marry a lot of women, polygamously.

26:16

But at the same time, this is not something that's being proclaimed publicly.

26:22

Only a few select men that were very close to Joseph Smith knew about this.

26:28

Many of them practiced it themselves, secretly. But there were some men who became privy to this that found it abhorrent.

26:39

And they decided to get together, at least seven of them. In fact, I have their names here.

26:44

They were William Law, who was a member of the first presidency since 1841. Wilson Law, his brother, who was a brigadier general in the

26:53

Nauvoo Legion, which was like a militia that Joseph Smith had. There was another guy by the name of Austin Cowles, who was a member of the

27:02

Nauvoo High Council. There was James Blakeslee, who was a 70. Now, this is still a pretty prominent position in the

27:10

LDS Church. And then there were some prominent businessmen also involved, Robert Foster, Chauncey Higbee, and Charles Ivins.

27:17

These guys got together to publish a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor.

27:24

It was meant to expose Joseph Smith's abuse of power and the fact that he was practicing polygamy secretly.

27:34

And because of this newspaper, it only came out with one edition. It was supposed to be a weekly edition.

27:39

It came out one time in early June. And when Joseph Smith found out about it, as you can imagine, he was pretty upset at what these men had said about him.

27:50

Now, he naturally accused them of lying and making up things or embellishing things, which that's very typical of when a person is caught.

27:59

That's usually the first response, you know, is to say that it's all made up and it's just meant to slander.

28:06

Well, that's exactly how Joseph Smith took it. Now, you have to understand Joseph Smith was the mayor of Nauvoo at this time.

28:14

So he has some pretty significant power in this area of the state.

28:20

So he has a city council meeting, and I'm reading from Volume 6 of the

28:27

History of the Church. This is the blue bound volume, the documentary History of the Church. And this is what it says.

28:33

There was a decree made to the marshal and how they were supposed to handle this newspaper that had published these things about Joseph Smith that he was not very pleased about.

28:45

This is what it says. The following order was immediately issued by the mayor.

28:51

Well, the mayor is Joseph Smith. And it says, to the marshal of said city, greeting, you are here commanded to destroy the printing press from whence issues the

29:03

Nauvoo expositor and pie the type. Now, pie the type is a phrase we don't normally use nowadays.

29:11

But what that meant was to scatter the type. So take all those individual letters and everything else and scatter them out in the dirt so they can't be used any longer.

29:22

So you were to destroy the printing press, pie the type of said printing establishment in the street and burn all the expositors and libelous handbills found in said establishment.

29:36

And if resistance be offered to your execution of this order by the owners or others, demolish the house.

29:46

And if anyone threatens you or the mayor or the officers of the city, arrest those who threaten you and fail not to execute this order without delay and make due return hereon.

30:00

And it's signed by the order of the city council, Joseph Smith, mayor.

30:05

Now, the next entry, Andrew, is this. It says, marshals return.

30:11

And in quotation marks, it says, the within named press and type is destroyed and pied according to order on this 10th day of June 1844 at about 8 o 'clock p .m.

30:29

Signed by J .P. Green, headquarters of the Nauvoo Legion. That's what gets everything rolling is this newspaper based on Joseph Smith's behavior and exposing

30:40

Joseph Smith's behavior. So the question is, were the Mormons acting legally to destroy this printing press?

30:49

Some have said that if the printing was declared a nuisance, then yes, you could have done that.

30:55

But even Dallin H. Oaks, who is the second in command in the

31:00

LDS church right now as we speak, he was a lawyer. He was a judge.

31:07

And he said, well, they could have declared it to be a nuisance to go so far as to destroy the printing press.

31:16

Even Dallin Oaks said that was out of line. He probably could have got away with destroying the printed paper, the paper itself.

31:26

But the printing press threatened to destroy the building. No, that was out of line. They were not allowed to do that even by the law at that time.

31:37

So it seems almost as if what he's trying to do is damage control. He realizes he's been doing something.

31:44

He's been trying to keep silent. And now it's going to get exposed, but he has the authority to do something about it.

31:52

And so he tries to cover it up, get rid of the evidence. Correct.

31:57

And of course, the problem in a town like this, where you have a lot of non -Mormons living there, a lot of people don't realize that.

32:05

Nauvoo wasn't all Latter -day Saints. There were a lot of non -Mormons that were living in that area at the time.

32:11

And you can imagine how quickly the word is going to get around. See, Joseph Smith was a very colorful, very controversial figure.

32:19

And living in that area of the state, you couldn't help but know who this guy is.

32:24

And naturally, there were a lot of rumors circulating around about him, especially his plural wives, and that kind of behavior.

32:35

And you can understand how a lot of people would not find favor with that. These guys that put together the

32:41

Nauvoo Expositor, they certainly didn't like the way he was behaving. And this was, in their estimation, the best way to, well, expose

32:51

Joseph Smith so that people could know the other side about this guy. And we should say for the record that the things that they were exposing and putting in this are things that now the

33:04

LDS Church has put out and confirmed were actually true. Yeah, you have to understand that the paper itself just wasn't about Joseph Smith.

33:14

There were some other things in there that would have been of interest probably to some of the locals. But definitely, it was meant to expose his abuse of power, expose him as practicing polygamy.

33:27

And those things were true. I mean, he was doing that to a certain extent as far as abusing power, but definitely when it came to having more than one wife, even though Joseph Smith was publicly lying about it, clear up to the end, really.

33:43

But the paper was correct in a lot of its accusations. I mean, why wouldn't it be?

33:49

These men were close to Joseph Smith. These men at one time had respect for Joseph Smith. And so why wouldn't it be truthful?

33:58

So this is what really was leading up to his arrest. Now, you know, for people who may not study

34:05

Mormonism so much, there is this picture that the Mormon Church paints where he was,

34:11

Joseph Smith was this wonderful man. Yeah, he might have been a con artist in his early days, but God got a hold of him, and he even could have been the next president.

34:23

And I heard one Mormon that actually argued the reason he was killed was to prevent him from getting to the

34:30

White House. Well, some may have had that as a reason,

34:37

I don't know. But I don't think the chances of Joseph Smith becoming president were anything but slim to none.

34:46

He was just too strange in his beliefs, and his character scared a lot of people.

34:51

So I don't think he would have become president at all. But he was definitely running for president at the time of his death, and I'm sure he would have easily gotten the vote of his followers.

35:01

Now, would those followers be enough to secure the White House? I doubt it. But it just shows the ambition that this man had, and it scared a lot of people.

35:12

You say that, but we got Donald Trump in the White House now, so people could have described him that way.

35:18

Well, a grassroots movement, you might say. So you never know. You never know.

35:24

You never know. You know, let's get into what happened, the arrest, him in the jailhouse.

35:33

And with that, it's going to take, and I want to do this after this break, but the thing that really helped me is when you took me to tour through the museum where they show you what that jailhouse was like, it gave a very different understanding of what it was like.

35:51

And that helped me understand a little bit better what happened with his death and then how it really happened.

35:57

So let's cover that after this break. While you may have seen missionaries for the

36:02

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints in their white shirts and black badges, you may not be familiar with the teachings of this

36:08

American -born organization. Did you know that while Mormons claim to be Christians, many of their doctrines cannot be supported by the

36:15

New Testament? If you're curious as to what the Mormon people are taught to believe and how those beliefs differ from Christianity, you're invited to listen to a unique radio program called

36:25

Viewpoint on Mormonism. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry, a

36:32

Christian ministry based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mormonism Research Ministry has been challenging the claims of the

36:38

Mormon church since 1979 and have been effectively educating Christian believers about the teachings that separate

36:44

Mormonism from the Christian faith. We hope you will tune into Viewpoint on Mormonism as host

36:50

Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson examine Mormonism from a Christian perspective. Looking for strategies that will help you engage in meaningful conversations with members of the new book produced by Harvest House Publishers and edited by Mormonism Research Ministries Eric Johnson and Sean McDowell.

37:11

Sharing the good news with Mormons includes 24 helpful essays from two dozen Christian apologists, scholars, and pastors.

37:19

Pick up your copy at the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore or order directly from mrm .org.

37:25

And that book is also available at strivingforeturning .org as I am one of the authors who was invited into that project, which

37:33

I was very glad to be. But Bill, let's discuss this.

37:39

The account of his death, he's described as a martyr. Does martyrdom fit the account of his death?

37:49

Walk us through, describe what the jailhouse was, because it wasn't like what we think of, a room where he's got bars and there's a window that he can look out with bars in it.

37:59

It's very different. Could you describe that jailhouse and how the arrest came about and what happened there?

38:08

Well, okay, let's talk about how the arrest came about, because there's a lot of things that took place before Joseph Smith leaves

38:15

Nauvoo and heads towards Carthage, which was the county seat about 20 miles away.

38:23

And what happens is the governor, Thomas Ford, actually tells

38:28

Joseph Smith after the destruction of the paper that he needs to turn himself in. And Ford promised him an armed escort, which never materialized.

38:39

I often wonder about that. Why would Ford promise that and then not allow him to have this escort?

38:45

Well, he didn't really need an armed escort to get to Nauvoo anyway. But still, it seems like there were some promises that were being made by the governor that never came about, which makes you wonder, were they kind of hoping something tragic might happen to this guy?

39:01

I don't know. I don't know. But the fact is, is after Joseph Smith was going to be turned in, he flees.

39:10

He doesn't go to Carthage right away. He actually crosses the Mississippi River. And the new book

39:17

Saints talks about this in the chapter titled A Lamb to the Slaughter. And it says that after he had fled, that later that morning,

39:27

Emma sent Hiram Kimball and her nephew, Lorenzo Lawson, to Iowa, because that's across the river from Nauvoo, to convince

39:39

Joseph to come home and turn himself in. Now, Emma is his first wife.

39:45

Okay, Emma Hale was her name when they got married. They told Joseph that the governor intended to occupy

39:52

Nauvoo with troops until he and his brother Hiram gave themselves up. Porter, this is speaking of Orrin Porter Rockwell, who was

40:00

Joseph Smith's bodyguard. He was later Brigham Young's bodyguard. And depending on what side you're on, you could also consider

40:08

Orrin Porter Rockwell to be Brigham Young's assassin as well. But Porter returned soon after with Reynolds Cahoon and a letter from Emma, again begging him to return to the city.

40:21

Hiram Kimball, Lorenzo, and Reynolds all called Joseph a coward for leaving Nauvoo and exposing the

40:27

Saints to danger. And this is supposed to be a statement from Smith. I will die before I will be called a coward.

40:34

If my life is of no value to my friends, it is of none to myself. So as a result of this,

40:40

Joseph Smith turns himself in, and according to this history, which is pretty much what other history books have said as well, on page 543, it says that Joseph mounted his horse and set off with Hiram and the other men for Carthage.

40:56

I am going like a lamb to the slaughter, he told them, but I am calm as the summer's morning.

41:02

I have a conscience void of offense toward God and towards all men.

41:08

And that is a famous line that Mormons tell over and over to try to give you this picture, that he was going to turn himself in and to be this eventual martyr at Carthage.

41:24

But when he gets to Carthage, he goes to check himself in a hotel, and the local constable, a guy by the name of Bedisworth, meets him and arrests him and puts him in the

41:36

Carthage jail. And originally, the charge was supposed to be riot for destroying the printing press.

41:43

Well, eventually, the charge becomes treason. Now, this is a capital offense.

41:49

This isn't anything small like riot, you might think. This is now a capital offense.

41:55

It makes me wonder if Joseph Smith is now getting a little bit nervous. And so, he goes to turn himself in, and in court,

42:04

I'm reading from the history, it says, that day in court, Joseph and Hiram were released to await trial on the riot charges, but before the brothers could leave town, two of William Law's associates brought complaints against them for declaring martial law in Nauvoo.

42:21

They were charged with treason against the government and people of Illinois, a capital offense that prevented the men from being released on bail.

42:30

So, Joseph and Hiram were confined in the county jail, locked together in a cell for the night.

42:38

And this jail, the Carthage jail, is a stone building. It's two stories.

42:44

You walk in in the bottom. The bottom part was the quarters where the jailer lived with his family.

42:51

And upstairs, there was a barred cell, as well as a debtor's cell, they called it.

42:59

And you would go up the stairs, and there was a landing there. You would turn to the right, and if you went straight, you would go towards the debtor's cell.

43:07

That's where they put Joseph Smith, in the debtor's cell. And the door itself didn't even lock.

43:13

It was warped. The lock did not work. And so, you would think that they didn't really think he would be a flight risk, except for the fact that they did have armed guards at the jail to make sure that Joseph Smith wouldn't escape.

43:26

So, even though he could probably walk out of the room and go on the landing, he couldn't get away from the jail and flee.

43:34

But what happens on June 27, 1844, the jail is,

43:43

I guess you could say, attacked by a mob. And this mob is coming for Joseph Smith.

43:48

Now, did they want to kill Joseph Smith? That's a matter of controversy. Some think that maybe they were there merely to capture

43:54

Joseph Smith and turn him in, because he was wanted in another area of the country. And maybe they could get a reward out of that.

44:03

But we'll never really know, because we just won't know. I mean, that stuff is,

44:08

I guess, not really available to us to know all the facts there. But the mob attacks the jail, and they go up on the landing.

44:18

And Joseph Smith is being visited at that time by a man named Willard Richards and John Taylor.

44:24

John Taylor would later become the third president of the church. And Willard Richards was a Mormon apostle.

44:30

They were visiting at the time. And earlier in the day, Joseph Smith was visited by a guy by the name of Cyrus Wheelock.

44:38

Cyrus Wheelock left Joseph Smith a smuggled pistol. He got it past the guards, and he gave the gun.

44:46

He actually says, does anybody want this? And Smith supposedly says, here, give it to me. He wanted it.

44:51

And he put it in his pantaloons pocket. That's the way it's worded in the history of the church.

44:58

When this mob attacks, Joseph Smith not only has a gun, but another man visited him during the day by the name of Fulmer, who also offered a pistol to the prisoners.

45:09

And Joseph Smith took that and gave it to his brother Hiram. And as the mob came up the landing, onto the landing, the men in the cell are holding themselves against the door, because there is no lock on the door, and through it, and I'm giving the story as it is in Mormon history.

45:29

A bullet goes through the door and hits Hiram in the face, in the bridge of the nose.

45:35

He allegedly falls back saying something like, I am a dead man. Now, that is certainly controversial, because a person shot in the head in that area, specifically, is probably not going to be forming words, okay, or sentences.

45:53

So this could be romanticized for all we know. But Hiram falls back, and Joseph Smith allegedly says something to the effect, oh, my poor dear brother

46:02

Hiram, and he goes to his aid, he's laying there. And as Joseph Smith gets up from his probably dead brother at this time, he pulls the gun out, he opens the door slightly, sticks his arm out and fires the gun three times, or excuse me, six times he pulls the trigger, but it fires only three times.

46:24

It's an Ethan Allen pepper box, not a very reliable gun at all. And only three of the barrels discharge.

46:32

As we understand it, John Taylor, who was there, said that the barrels that did discharge hit their marks.

46:40

He was under the impression that two of those that were shot by Smith died. That's controversial.

46:47

Some say that's not true. That didn't happen. Although John Taylor never changed his mind or changed his account of what happened that day.

46:57

But what eventually happens is Joseph Smith, after firing the gun, they tried closing the door, he goes to the window of the jail cell, and he begins to give the

47:08

Masonic signal of distress, saying the words, oh, Lord, my God.

47:14

He's shot again at the window, and he falls out, never completing what many believe to be the

47:22

Masonic signal of distress, which is, oh, Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow's son?

47:27

All he gets out are the words, oh, Lord, my God, and he falls out the window. They prop his body up, they shoot him again, and that becomes the end of Joseph Smith and Hiram Smith.

47:40

That's how he died. And yet, if you were to take the tour, and I've taken it many, many times, they never volunteer the information on the smuggled pistol.

47:50

I always have to bring it up during the Q &A period. Well, in the history of the church, one of the things

47:59

I always would bring up with people is the fact that they describe his death as a martyr's death.

48:07

However, as you just gave the accounting, assuming a shot is fired in, he's not just taking it lying down, he's not just trusting

48:20

God. He's actually an aggressor. You know, I think the way that it words in the history of the

48:26

Church of America correctly is he had his trusty six -shooter, I think is how it was said. But he's firing.

48:32

He's trying to kill people. Oh, that's a good point, Andrew, because even though, let's say nobody died, okay, because I heard a

48:41

Mormon make this argument, but nobody died. That's a controversy. I go, okay, let's say nobody died.

48:48

Are you telling me that when he fires into the crowd that that's not what he's hoping for? I mean, you don't fire a gun into a crowd unless you're hoping to hit somebody, and you're probably going to kill him, especially with a caliber the size of that Ethan Allen pepper box that he had.

49:04

Now, that gun is on display in the church museum across from Temple Square to this very day.

49:11

Now, before they modernized the visitor center, they had a different gun on display that they said was the gun

49:19

Joseph Smith used. Well, when I saw the new gun after the renovation,

49:25

I went up and asked somebody at the museum, why is there a different gun on display?

49:33

Well, they didn't know that there was a different gun, but I did because I had pictures of the old one as well as the new one, and they are not the same.

49:39

It's an Ethan Allen pepper box, but the barrel on the original gun was significantly longer than the barrel on this gun that is now on display, and I had someone from the church eventually contact me on that, and they admitted that I was right, that that is a different gun, but that the one on display now is the one that Joseph Smith did use, even though for years the sign on the other gun said it was the one that was used.

50:07

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Joseph Smith was trying to cause bodily harm to his attackers.

50:14

Now, if a Mormon wants to say he was a martyr, using a very general definition of what a martyr is, and that is someone who dies for a cause,

50:27

I guess a Mormon probably could get away with that, because Smith, they would argue, the only reason he died was because of the cause of Mormonism and what he stood for.

50:38

I would rebut that by saying, well, it was really more than that. It was his bad behavior and boneheaded decisions that kind of led to his death, but if they want to say he's simply a person who died for the cause,

50:54

I guess you would almost have to allow them that kind of a definition, but here's where I say there's a problem.

51:04

Joseph Smith said he was going as a lamb led to the slaughter. Does that language sound familiar?

51:11

A lamb? There are Mormon historians that have used that language to compare

51:17

Joseph Smith to the death of Christ himself. Now there, I definitely have to draw a line, because certainly

51:25

Jesus did not go with any act of violence or even a struggle towards the cross, that he complied in every way possible, and so to use language like that and perhaps draw a connection to Jesus himself,

51:40

I find personally to be very offensive. But they do have a very high view of him, because when you end up looking at the way they,

51:50

I mean, there's accounts that seem to indicate that almost as if you're going to stand for judgment before the

51:57

Trinity and Joseph Smith. Well, they probably wouldn't say Trinity, but they do say that Joseph Smith is supposed to be one of the judges for all mankind, and if Joseph Smith allows you to go into the celestial kingdom, you're going to be doing good.

52:11

So there are statements from Mormon leaders who have said that Joseph Smith is going to have some say as to where mankind is going to end up in the next life.

52:21

So when they picture and they describe this event that happened 176 years ago, they revere what happened to Joseph Smith.

52:32

He was a martyr for the cause. He's someone who was faithful to the end, and yet we see that the actions that led up to this were not exactly godly.

52:45

They were cover -up. That's more selfish, not—I mean, that's the exact opposite of what we'd call godly.

52:54

That's not putting God first and trusting in God. It was damage control to protect his own image.

53:01

I agree totally. I think you're absolutely correct on that, Andrew, and I think if a

53:06

Latter -day Saint was to carefully look at why these men felt it necessary to expose

53:13

Joseph Smith, and they look at some of the charges that they were raising against Joseph Smith's behavior and claims—his lies, for instance—I would think that an honest

53:27

Latter -day Saint would have to at least admit they had a case in why they were concerned with Joseph Smith's behavior, because this is not what we would expect to be the behavior of a godly man—a prophet, if you will—who is getting information from God on how to guide

53:52

Christ's only true Church. I think most Latter -day Saints, if they were honest enough to read what happened in the final days of Joseph Smith's life, would probably see, and maybe even agree, that the men who put the expositor together had a point.

54:10

Yeah, and this is the part that when you come upon a Latter -day Saint, this is the account that they don't know.

54:20

This is the part that is—you know, they know the, I guess the way you worded it, the romanticized version of this, and yet there's a lot there to cause people to say, you know what, there's some reason to question that.

54:38

Now, living in 21st century America, looking back and saying, well, you know, that kind of frontier justice makes me uncomfortable as well, and I would agree.

54:48

I've often said publicly that the mob, whatever their intentions were, certainly should not have gone to the degree of killing

54:57

Joseph Smith. If they were there merely to arrest him, to try to get some kind of bounty on him in another county somewhere, all right, that happened all the time.

55:07

But here's where I have often had this question, Andrew. We only know that Joseph Smith fired defensively, because that's what the

55:16

Mormon church tells us. Did he really fire defensively, or could it have been that Joseph Smith may have been the first to fire?

55:27

See, I don't know this, and the record that Mormons have to read, coming from their own sources, mainly makes it look like Joseph Smith was responding to gunfire.

55:38

How do we know? I don't. And there's all sorts of questions in my mind regarding how this whole thing came down, because you probably are very well aware that in times like this, things happen very quickly, and sometimes when they're recounted afterwards, the timeline isn't always as precise as it probably could be or should be.

56:03

So what really happened on that day, at that time period, when the gunfire goes back and forth?

56:10

I have a lot of questions about that. Well, and we really don't know, because I think that most of our accounts that we have of what happened come from the

56:20

Mormon church. Correct. And the people who were there from the Mormon church.

56:26

I don't know of any, and I could be wrong, but I don't know of any documentation that gives the account of the mob that were coming, or of any investigation.

56:36

Now this seems strange to us in our day and age, because you had someone who was killed in a jail cell, there'd be an investigation.

56:43

But again, in a frontier, they might not do anything like that. And so when we look at this, it's not necessarily going to be what we would expect today.

56:54

And we really don't have that record being done where people start to investigate and ask questions and things like this.

57:02

And therefore, most of the documentation comes from a biased source. I would say you're absolutely correct.

57:10

Of course, the history of the church certainly shows its bias when it talks about the persecutions.

57:16

And I think I should mention, Andrew, the persecutions against the LDS people, many of them were very real, and they were wrong.

57:26

But it's not like the Mormons just took it on the chin. Many times the

57:31

Mormons did retaliate, especially when they were in Missouri, they call it the Missouri War.

57:37

And there was so much conflict that Missouri gave a county to the

57:42

LDS people to live, kind of like what we'd call a reservation, which I'm not in agreement of that,

57:48

I think as an American, you should be able to have the freedom to live wherever you want. But they gave them a county and said,

57:54

Hey, you guys go live over there. And then we'll get along. Okay. Well, the problem, of course, you have so many

58:00

Mormons coming into the area, they start to go over the borders of that county. And of course, some Mormons didn't want to, you know, stay in that confined area.

58:07

And so conflict breaks out. And so it's not like the

58:12

Mormons didn't cause some of their own problems. Joseph Smith certainly didn't help the situation when

58:20

Sidney Rigdon, who was his right hand man at the time, gives his July 4th oration, and talks about exterminating the

58:29

Missourians. I mean, he used the word exterminate. Now, Mormons like to use that word, because that was a word that that Boggs used, the

58:38

Governor Boggs used the word exterminate. No, he used the word extermination later on.

58:44

But it was Sidney Rigdon, who called it a war of extermination in his July 4th oration.

58:49

Now, what did Joseph Smith do to kind of smooth all that over? He has the

58:55

July 4th oration printed as a pamphlet, and it's distributed publicly.

59:03

Now, if you're a local living in Missouri at that time, what would you think about that?

59:08

You would look at that as a threat. So that didn't help. Joseph Smith did not help in a lot of the tension that was going on between his people and the locals at that time.

59:20

He was not a help at all. And this is one of the things that I see, as you look even at the account that the

59:27

LDS Church gives of Joseph Smith, they say he was godly, they say he's a martyr, and yet you see a lot of ungodly behavior.

59:37

If there was no issue with polygamy at the time, if it was, as the

59:43

Latter -day Saints try to argue, that this was a care for the widows, care for women who didn't have enough husbands, if that's the case, why did it need to be covered up?

59:55

Which is really the central part of what brought about his death. I mean, had that event never happened, he may have never been—he would never be arrested, he would never have been killed at that time in that way, at least.

01:00:08

Maybe something different, but the reality is, is that that event was not a godly act.

01:00:16

Correct. And that is problematic, because he isn't behaving in a way that most people would think would be the way a man of God should act.

01:00:27

And the point about covering up the polygamy aspects, consider the fact that polygamy wasn't announced publicly until 1852.

01:00:40

Smith has been already dead for several years. The Mormons had finally moved out to Utah, and now it's going to be announced in a special conference in August of 1852, and at that point, it becomes public knowledge.

01:00:57

So, you can think of how many years went by with people not being told that this was actually going on from their own lips.

01:01:05

And if it wasn't illegal, what was the shame? What was the problem? Yeah, it basically—it was illegal since 1862 when

01:01:14

Lincoln signed that moral act, but as I said, it wasn't being enforced at the time. But later on, other laws would come up, and they would start to enforce them, making it necessary for the

01:01:27

LDS Church to come up with the Manifesto of 1890, which was a document by Wilford Woodruff, who was the president at that time, that told the federal government that they were no longer practicing polygamy, and they would not be marrying any more people into plural marriage relationships.

01:01:46

Now, it wasn't true. They were still doing it secretly again, but that's what they told the federal government.

01:01:53

That's why it was necessary in 1904 for another case to come up, which the

01:02:01

Mormons responded with the second Manifesto, what I often call the

01:02:06

Now We Really Mean It Manifesto. And after 1904, with the

01:02:11

Reed Smoot hearing, and it was a Utah running for public office, and the controversy placing him in that office because of the polygamy in Utah, they had to finally say, okay, this has got to stop, and the

01:02:27

Church came out with the Manifesto of 1904, and that's when they really got serious. If you were found practicing polygamy, you would be excommunicated from the

01:02:34

Church. Now, what did that do? That ended up causing a lot of those who were excommunicated from the

01:02:41

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints to form splinter groups of Latter -day

01:02:47

Saints that we now call fundamentalist Mormons. Now, I know President Gordon B. Hinckley didn't like that term, but basically that's how they came to be known, as fundamentalist

01:02:57

Mormons. They belong to groups who do believe and some practice plural marriage to this day.

01:03:04

We see them all over the place in Utah. Yeah, we would see them when you and I would go to the

01:03:10

Manti Miracle Pageant and do evangelism, and they would be looking to evangelize the Mormons too to get them back into what they thought was the

01:03:19

Mormon view. So let's wrap up. Could you explain for folks who, you know, resources that you have at Mormon Research Ministry, you've kind of referred to, and we played a commercial for Viewpoint on Mormonism, that's a podcast.

01:03:37

Anyone who wants to get more, I listen to Viewpoint on Mormonism Monday through Friday. It's short, it's about 14 minutes in length.

01:03:47

The amount of material they pack into 14 minutes is incredible. I don't know of a single episode

01:03:54

I've ever listened to that hasn't taught me something, even if it's something, okay, I knew something, it reminds me of something.

01:04:01

But the series that you did, Bill, with this new history book that came out just blew my mind with the changes that occurred, and whether someone has...

01:04:12

The openness, and they're admitting a lot of things that earlier history books were reluctant to tell you.

01:04:20

There's certainly, I should say, there's certainly a lot that they still did not say in the new history book, but there was a lot they did say that I was even surprised.

01:04:30

Yeah, I mean, I just, I can't recommend enough Viewpoint on Mormonism. Even folks, if you say, well, hey,

01:04:37

I don't have any Mormon friends, I don't know anything. Just the way that you're going to hear them lay things out is actually a good example, because one of the things

01:04:47

I really appreciate about Bill and Eric is the fact that when they discuss something,

01:04:54

Mormonism primarily, but when they discuss it, they really try to be fair with the details.

01:04:59

I hope you heard that throughout this episode, that it isn't trying to attack, and definitely not attack the people, but the teachings, and they try to give a fair evidence of things, and they're getting their from official

01:05:13

Mormon documents most of the time. And so, it's a very interesting podcast. I recommend you, for 14 minutes of your day, you're going to learn something, but I'm going to link some other articles in as well,

01:05:26

Bill. You have some articles on your website on the final moments at Carthage Jail and the death of Joseph Smith, the untold story of the death of Joseph Smith, and when we look at what you have available, let folks know what kind of things you have available, and I'll also mention, or ask you to mention, how people can get in touch with you to be able to have you and or Eric come to their church and educate churches on what is known as the

01:05:57

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. Yeah, we've spoken at a number of churches all over the country, even the world, and on this subject, and they can easily get a hold of us.

01:06:09

One of the easiest email addresses is contact at mrm .org, but our website has a lot of articles.

01:06:18

Many of them have were originally published in our newsletter called Mormonism Researched.

01:06:24

It comes out every other month, and there's a place on our website that you can sign up for that, as well as you can hear all the radio programs by simply going to mrm .org

01:06:36

podcast. That'll take you to a page where you'll see an archive of all our past radio shows, as well, but we have a number of articles dealing with the history and the doctrine of the

01:06:49

LDS movement, just tons of stuff. This thing is, it's a monster. It's huge, and well, you figure we've been doing this for over 40 years,

01:06:58

Andrew, so we've got a lot of material there to disseminate. And you know, that's the thing that I always appreciate is you guys have not just said, okay, hey, we did this research from years ago, let's just stop.

01:07:10

You are constantly researching, constantly looking for new material, and that's why

01:07:17

I've really turned to what you guys are doing to learn more what's happening in Mormonism, because it has morphed from years ago.

01:07:26

It's changed radically to a point where when I have the Mormon missionaries, who are usually late teenagers, you know, they do not know anything of what

01:07:38

Mormonism was when I studied it 20 years ago, because the church just denies that stuff now.

01:07:44

Yeah, or it just hasn't been emphasized, and I'm always cautious to just try to err on the side of caution by saying, well, the missionaries probably have never heard this because it hasn't been emphasized to them.

01:08:00

I know some Christians have talked to me, and they'll say, well, the missionaries lied to me, and I go, well, be careful about that.

01:08:06

It could be they just didn't know, or they were passing on misinformation, not realizing it was misinformation.

01:08:13

So I'm always trying to err on the side of caution. I don't see the Mormon people as enemies.

01:08:18

I have come across Mormons. Sometimes they're self -proclaimed apologists who've lied to me, and I've caught them lying, but most of the time

01:08:27

I find that's not the case, that many Mormons, I think, are very sincere about what they believe, and they've heard some things that they think is true, but unfortunately haven't heard the other side to show that maybe what they thought is true is not quite the way it is.

01:08:43

Well, a lot of them don't study, and one of the things I know you know very well, but when pressured, they always fall back to a testimony, a feeling they had, a burning in the bosom, something that they can relate to.

01:08:56

I had one gentleman who I used to go to college with, and I used to evangelize him when

01:09:01

I was in college. He later got in touch with me. He's a Mormon, and he basically, when

01:09:07

I pressured him on some things, he said, well, I know the Mormon church is true because I should have been, he said,

01:09:15

I was a paramedic. I was on a trampoline. I fell. I should have died, but I had my protective undergarments on, and therefore

01:09:24

I know the Mormon church is true because those garments protected me, and I'm alive today.

01:09:31

I've heard stories like that. My response question is, really, how many Latter -day

01:09:36

Saints die in car accidents every year wearing their garments? Unfortunately, I've heard you say that, and I didn't have that at the time.

01:09:45

So Bill, thank you for coming on. Thank you for the ministry of Mormon Research Ministry.

01:09:52

I know that I have an appreciation for men like you, Eric, men like Justin Peters who spend their time studying these people that drive me nuts to study, and you do it like I studied

01:10:07

Mormonism but only for a few years, and it would get me to pull my hair out.

01:10:14

It's frustrating to see people so deceived, and then those that are teaching people the deception.

01:10:20

It's a very difficult work for many of us, and for someone like yourself who sticks at this long term, it just becomes an invaluable resource for the

01:10:31

Church to understand the attacks we get from Latter -day Saints, and I know they believe they're the ones being attacked, but I believe

01:10:41

Christianity came out first, and they're the ones that said that Christianity fell away.

01:10:49

I kind of think that they're the ones doing the attacking, even though that now they say they are Christian, so that aside.

01:10:55

But I really appreciate all the work that you do, and any last words that you have for the audience?

01:11:01

No, I just would ask them to pray for us and other Christians that are here in the state of Utah.

01:11:08

Naturally, we are the minority group out here, and I think sometimes that's kind of good, but there are a lot of Christians who have moved purposely to Utah to be missionaries to the

01:11:21

Mormon people, even if they don't have a, you know, a 501c3 corporation behind them, they do see this as a mission field, and there is certainly a growing number of good

01:11:33

Bible -believing churches out here, and just pray for us out here, because this is definitely a mission field.

01:11:40

And let me end with this, is I want to encourage you guys, go to email contact at mrm .org,

01:11:47

have Bill and Eric out to your church so they can educate folks, because you're going to have some

01:11:53

Mormons wherever you're living. You may not have as many as there are in Utah, but let me let you know the impact that Mormon Research has had.

01:12:02

The Mormon church used to have these pageants every year, and Bill McKeever with some others decided they'd start to use these pageants to evangelize.

01:12:11

And if you look at where they have those pageants, those areas have the lowest areas of Mormons in the state of Utah.

01:12:21

They've now shut down those pageants, and a lot of us believe that it's the work of Bill McKeever, Eric Johnson, and many others who have been faithfully evangelizing there for years.

01:12:32

So when he asks for prayer, pray for them. The Mormons seclude themselves a lot of times, as most cults do from anyone on the outside, unless they're evangelizing them.

01:12:43

So there, especially in Utah, where you have a majority of people that are going to be

01:12:49

Latter -day Saint, it's going to be even harder for them to come out of that.

01:12:55

And that's why I encourage you to support them if you can. There is a way on the website to support them.

01:13:02

Support them. Get their newsletter. See what's happening. Find out when they're going to be in your area, and go to one of their talks.

01:13:10

I've been privileged to be able to hear both of them, both Bill and Eric, speak.

01:13:16

I've been privileged to be invited on a cruise that they did when they did an Apologetics cruise, and I was one of the speakers.

01:13:24

And that's where I really got to know them very well and see the heart of these men. Those of you who are in my audience, you know that I may know lots of people, but there's few people that I will really try to build relations with, because I do that with people

01:13:41

I find as genuine. You're not going to get more genuine than Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson.

01:13:46

Great guys. I highly, highly recommend the work they're doing. So go to mrm .org.

01:13:52

Check out what they have. I really hope that this has been educational for you, especially if you didn't have an understanding of Mormonism.

01:13:58

It may pique your interest. I often say Mormonism, the Book of Mormon, is great science fiction, because I put it more in that category.

01:14:08

But it is something that is very intriguing religion when you study it out, and they have a ton of material at mrm .org,

01:14:17

so check them out. Bill, thanks for coming on, and until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and that's a wrap.

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This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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