Introducing Tom Phillips

Part 1 of 5 · Ep. 535

Tom Phillips [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, and man, I have a very interesting story today. I have with us Tom Phillips. Tom Phillips is from the United Kingdom. Is that right, Tom?

Tom Phillips [00:00:44] That's correct, John, yes.

John Dehlin [00:00:46] You are a retired management consultant. I used to work at Bain, so I used to be a management consultant too, actually. Sure. Tom was a convert to the church in 1969, which was the year I was born. And he's coming on Mormon Stories for a few reasons. He is a former bishop. Twice he served in two wards for six and a half years as a bishop in England. He has been a stake president for five years over the Birmingham England stake and the Coventry England stake. His son is currently. Is that right? Currently stake president.

Tom Phillips [00:01:23] That's correct, yes, he is.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] In which stake?

Tom Phillips [00:01:26] London, Hyde Park. Stake London.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] Hyde Park. He also served as area executive secretary over the Europe west area under two general authorities, Rolf Kerr and Harold Hillam. But the most intriguing thing and the main reason why we brought Tom Phillips on is because he has actually personally taken part in an ordinance that may not be known to all Mormons called the Second Anointing. But also, Tom has had some very direct exchanges with an apostle, Elder Holland, where he's written questions, Elder Holland and Elder Holland has responded. And these are all very interesting things because there's a lot of people struggling with their faith right now, a lot of people with questions and challenges. And Tom has both served at really high levels of the church and he's had direct conversations with an apostle about his issues and all that's really interesting. So just tell us a bit about your LDS background.

Tom Phillips [00:02:31] Okay. I mentioned 1969. I was converted to the church through missionaries, two missionaries from Utah. Initially, the appointment was set by my wife, who was more interested than I. I agreed just to see the missionaries one time and then just to tell them that we wouldn't be interested in taking it any further. I knew very little about the church, about Mormonism, so my intention was to be polite to them, to see them and then say we weren't interested. I was actually. I felt quite touched that evening when they came for two particular things. I recall one we had a one year old daughter and I had resisted pressure from both of our extended families to have her christened because I had observed a christening service where a minister cast the devil out of the child and absolved the child from sin. And I felt that my daughter had no sin whatsoever. So that was never done. So of course, right at the first discussion, when I mentioned this to the missionaries, they immediately opened the Book of Mormon and talked about infant baptism. So already there were some things here that I already, if you like, believe, believed or had as my values that suddenly this was opening up something. Then the other thing I remember about that was just these two young men with tears in their eyes bearing testimony. And I just figured at that time, well, hang on, I'm going to see them again because I don't know why, but for some reason these two young men from America have given up time at university or whatever to come over here for two years to teach something that obviously they believe is true. So it's worth me finding out one way or the other. So I was willing to experiment upon the Word. That's basically what happened.

Conversion and Early Mormon Family Life

John Dehlin [00:04:23] And again, you were married with one child, is that right?

Tom Phillips [00:04:26] That's right. One child, a one year old daughter, yes.

John Dehlin [00:04:30] And so did you pray and what led to your conversion?

Tom Phillips [00:04:35] I did everything the missionaries asked us to do, including living the Word of Wisdom, praying every day. I took the Book of Mormon. I was commuting on the train each day and I was reading that Book of Mormon both in the morning and the evening. I would start with a silent, you know, obviously on a crowded train. I would pray to pray and then read the book. And then, and I did that for, you know, two or three weeks and I felt that I received, you know, the Moroni's promise as it was outlined.

John Dehlin [00:05:09] So you got a spiritual manifestation?

Tom Phillips [00:05:13] I got what I, yeah, I got a spiritual manifestation. I went home to my wife that night and said, look, I know it's true. Something happened to me on the train. I actually wanted to get up and tell everyone on the train. It's true. It was like my whole insides turned upside down and I had an excitement go through my whole body that I knew this was true. So that's my conversion. I then obviously I chose to be baptized. I wanted to go ahead with it and make whatever commitments there were because I guess before that I'd kind of considered whenever I considered religion. I felt that, you know, if I sat down, for instance, with the Pope, he might persuade me of Catholicism. If I sat down with The Archbishop of Canterbury or someone or he might persuade me of his with his ability to debate. But I guess at the time I just felt, because I was one that would pray that the one person that wouldn't lie to me was God. And I felt that's what the missionaries did. They put me in touch with a way of going about these things and finding out from the actual source whether it's true or not. And I certainly felt that way. And for the next 35 plus years there's no question about the fact that God had answered my prayer and said that it was true.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] Wow. I mean that's a witness that many of us born in the church, pioneer descended Mormons never get to have. So that's a pretty special experience.

Tom Phillips [00:06:38] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] So what was your life like as a Mormon? Just tell us about. I guess you had several children and you became really active. Just talk a bit about what the church meant to you.

Tom Phillips [00:06:52] It was everything. It was basically number one. Well, family and church were everything. Career was almost an afterthought after that it was whatever needs to be done to move forward. Well, church and family should almost be indistinguishable. Whatever I was doing in the church I felt was for the family as well and vice versa. So no, I just put myself, whatever I was asked to do or called to do or whatever, that's what I would do. And I hope that we as a family especially as we grew, we, we all sort of learnt those principles and learned their testimonies and everything else. So we're just 100% committed.

John Dehlin [00:07:32] How many children did you have?

Tom Phillips [00:07:33] We had four children, which again was sometimes in Utah. That doesn't sound a lot but in our case with my wife's particular health situation, that was actually exemplary. She was advised by a doctor when we got married only to have one child. So I appreciated her for her faith to have four times the recommended number.

John Dehlin [00:07:57] And did you enjoy raising your children in the church?

Tom Phillips [00:08:02] Absolutely, absolutely. I mean this, it seemed to add, I mean, you know, I can't deny it, it seemed to add to a quality of life. I mean it became apparent to me later on. I mean I just give you one example when you, for that sort of question. I was sitting down at lunch with a director of a national recruitment organ that we were using in the UK and as we were having lunch together, a business lunch, we started to talk a little bit about our families and mentioned about seemed we both had teenage daughters and I talked about my younger one and the fact that I'd waited up for her to come home from a church dance. And then all she did was tell me for the next hour or two about everyone she met and what boys she danced with and all of that kind of thing. And he just looked at me and he just said, I wish my daughter would talk to me, say anything to me. And I guess that's what brought it home to me. Just how in that sense, I felt blessed, you know, because of the church or whatever was being taught that we would have that sort of closeness that a daughter, you know, a teenage daughter can talk to her father.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] Wow. So you felt like it helped you build a strong relationship with your children and helped you raise them to be healthy, strong.

Tom Phillips [00:09:21] I honestly felt because I actually, I mean, if I hadn't been in the church, I would have gone into politics. But the thing was, whenever I, of course, being in the church, I didn't really feel I personally was clever enough to juggle all the time to do politics as well. But I felt that what the world needs is just the gospel and that will solve all the problems in the world. That's how on board I was.

John Dehlin [00:09:46] What are some of your. Did all your kids serve? Did your kids serve missions and get married in the temple?

Tom Phillips [00:09:53] All married in the temple. Two serve. Yeah, I'll get Fortune two serve missions. Two were married well, two of the girls. One was married at 19, one at 20, so getting married.

John Dehlin [00:10:05] So.

Tom Phillips [00:10:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:10:07] Did they go to BYU?

Tom Phillips [00:10:10] No, no, no, no, no, no, no. English universities. And also I've also had two grandsons. I've got one currently in the mission field. So one grandson's back and he's married from his mission and another grandson is out at the moment in France.

John Dehlin [00:10:27] And what were some of your, like, what are some of your fondest memories or what were some of your favorite things about active, active church life? And you could just say, like, it was the. It was the potluck dinners, it was the, you know, the state conferences or, you know, what were the things that you look back on and just really love, really?

Tom Phillips [00:10:47] It was just the people just. I just love the people. And to see people's lives changed, I mean, I saw people come into the church, you know, converts, that their lives just changed and improved. I saw others that we were reactivated and just others just grow and. And it seemed from my perspective, just everything was wonderful, you know, even comments when we would take non members to a church social, they couldn't believe what fun we could have with no alcohol, for instance, and things like that. And there's just that genuineness. So I think just what I felt was a genuine feeling that my brothers and sisters were literally my brothers and sisters. We had an intimacy that you don't get that easily and, you know, or at the time, didn't think that you got that easily, you know, in other relationships and friendships. So I think the people, in seeing the progress. I'm seeing people progress, seeing children growing up and going on missions, seeing them get married, seeing them have children of their own, all of that kind of thing, challenging people, even from the point of view of disciplinary counselors, to see people repent in their lives and put things in order and come back and all of those things. I enjoyed studying the gospel. I enjoyed teaching. I often, when I had the chance, I would teach gospel doctrine or whatever. And for a long time I was called as a gospel doctrine teacher. So I don't know. There was everything I liked about, I didn't find. I mean, to me, people would moan about Sunday. To me, Sunday was a brilliant day and I never resented any. And I hoped that as a family, as we grew up, certainly when it comes to the Sabbath day, because I know a lot of people had issues about, oh, do we do this, do we do that? We would just seem to be so busy, in a good sense, in the church and in what we did as a family that it didn't even enter our minds whether we should be doing any other of the things that may be not in keeping with the Sabbath. So it was just. It was wonderful. I loved it.

John Dehlin [00:12:40] So you were really living the Mormon dream.

Tom Phillips [00:12:44] Absolutely. Absolutely looking forward to it for eternity.

Serving as Bishop Twice

John Dehlin [00:12:47] Wow. So what was it like being bishop? And what was like being bishop again?

Tom Phillips [00:12:55] Great experience. I mean, terrifying. I mean, particularly with the. Again, I took a special interest in the. Well, in the whole thing. I mean, with a bishop, you're kind of managing the whole ward and you've got all of the adult issues and you've got the children, the youth. Again, it was a people thing and again, a stance made at the beginning because I saw how bishops can easily get overrun by all sorts of administrative things. And I had an executive secretary who would keep my appointments. And I said to them, look, if any adult wants to see me, I mean, you know, make an appointment for. In a week or two's time or whatever. No, sorry, I didn't even say that I stipulated. He. He just made the appointments for. However they felt that that was not a problem. I said, but. However, if every youth, if ever a teenager wants to see me, you grab me there and Then wherever I am.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] Right, right.

Tom Phillips [00:13:48] Because you know that that's not going to last. That person, if they want to see the bishop and you give them a day or two, they're going to change their minds.

John Dehlin [00:13:56] Right, right.

Tom Phillips [00:13:57] So whereas I would usually look and look in people's eyes and preempt things like that. But I'm just saying that kind of thing I think I enjoy doing, especially with the youth, because I think that we had certain relationships because of that. Because I was willing to say, you know what, you're as important, if not more important than the adults. Because the adults, to be honest, I kept trying to say you've got a high priest, group leader or an elders quorum president or relief society president or whatever. Okay, there are certain issues you've got to see the bishop about, but most issues you could be seeing someone else instead of having a whole line of people outside the bishop's office every Sunday. So that was the kind of emphasis I tried and it seemed to work. It didn't mean that I wasn't interested in adults, obviously I was, but it's just easy to get snowed under and swamped by those problems. And you know what, your youth just disappeared.

John Dehlin [00:14:51] Right. So you made the youth a real priority.

Tom Phillips [00:14:54] Tried to try to.

John Dehlin [00:14:55] And what year were you first called as bishop?

Tom Phillips [00:15:00] It was a century. Nineteen. Around about 74. 1974.

John Dehlin [00:15:11] And was that the. Was that the five year term or

Tom Phillips [00:15:13] was that the year that was the first one. Because in the. I say that because by the end of 75, we'd actually moved out to Australia for a couple years. Because I again, I went there basically and I talked over with my stake president and my temple president at the time because I was a serving bishop. And I realized that ideally I would do five years there. But I said, look, I've got this strong feeling. My parents live in Australia and they are not members of the church. And I've got this strong feeling I need to go. Not for a holiday, I need to go there and live. I need to go with my father and my son on a camp and things like that. I need to spend time in getting them into because I've had them taught the gospel before they left England. I've had missionaries around. I sat in on their discussions, but father had rejected it. So I was going on a mission with my family, I think we had three children at the time, to Australia to get them. So with that understanding, the state president, in fact the temple president fully endorsed me and the stake president. So that's why it was a short lived sort of term. Now, if you like, if I want to, you know, then go. So why is it that I'm getting prompted to do this? I was out in Australia. Three months later, my father dropped out of a heart attack. So, you know, had I not acted and left it until another year or two when I went out on a holiday, I wouldn't have had that opportunity. So. Right. So I'm glad that I did.

John Dehlin [00:16:43] Okay. So you. Wow. So you served for a year and a half as bishop. You went to Australia sort of almost led by the Spirit. And your father passed away while you were there.

Tom Phillips [00:16:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] When was the next time you were called as Bishop?

Tom Phillips [00:16:57] Approximately 1978. I came back in 77 to the UK. 78 year elder Haight, during a state reorganization, called me as Bishop. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:09] So you met David B. Haight.

Tom Phillips [00:17:11] David B. Haight, yeah. Very impressed with him, actually quite busy. I just remember him being his jacket off and just with his, as you call him, suspenders, we call them braces. And very businesslike and. But still, I'm not saying that in any bad way. It was just quite interesting to see the different styles of the Brethren. And no, he was great. No doubt about it. I really liked him.

Becoming Stake President

John Dehlin [00:17:35] Okay, so let's get to the stake president part and then we'll talk about your experiences with the Brethren a little bit. So you serve for five years.

Tom Phillips [00:17:46] So let me just mention on that growing up thing with the children, I mean, I did all the thing about going to Hill Cumorah, the sacred grove. We had a family home evening in the Sacred Grove. We really felt that was the place that the first vision occurred. I took my son onto the banks of the Susquehanna river just before he was 12, before he would be ordained to the priesthood, all that kind of thing. So I guess I'm just saying. Yes, I was fully on board, no question about it, and fully believing anyway. You say get back.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Yeah. No, that's good. So, yeah, you were living the Mormon dream and loving it.

Tom Phillips [00:18:16] Love it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:17] And you were. Sounds like your family was really benefiting. Did work. Like, were you successful at work? I mean, you said work wasn't your first priority, but did your career go okay? I mean, you're retired now, so it sounds like it went okay.

Tom Phillips [00:18:30] Yeah. Okay. It's not what it would have been, but it was the choice I made and I've got no regrets on that. That's no problem.

John Dehlin [00:18:38] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:18:38] It's not a problem for me.

John Dehlin [00:18:40] So you served as five years as bishop a second time and Then how long before you were made stake president, What years would you have served?

Tom Phillips [00:18:57] I'm just trying to think. 80. 88.

John Dehlin [00:19:00] 88. Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:19:01] So I was stake president. Yeah. So I'd called him Bishop as 78. So 10 years later. So I saw it five years and then about five years. I mean, obviously I had time on high councils. Oh, it also had time as a council in the state presidency as well.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] And what was it like being stake president?

Tom Phillips [00:19:23] Brilliant. Well, I say brilliant. I mean, look, as I used to say, because some people used to look at these things as a hierarchy. I have never ever in my life sought for office in the church. In fact, if anything, I would hide away. I know that in fact, I've missed certain. In fact, I probably would have been stake president in another place earlier on in my life. But I was actually in Florida when they were doing the stake reorganization. Because I know the guy that was called, said to me when I got back, he said, if you'd been here, you'd have been the state president, not me. So now I'm not saying that would have been the case, but I'm saying I'm the kind of person that doesn't seek for office. And I was quite happy to sit in the background or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:20:03] But having been called, I'll put my all into it. And again with stake president. No, just wonderful. You know, I could cry over the personal experiences I had with people. Again, to me it was a people type thing. Especially when the Coventry state was organized. The people there that had been come from different states. Couldn't quite get over the fact that when we had a stake priesthood executive committee or stake meetings, they all wanted to deal with calendar issues and all sorts of program issues. And they couldn't believe it when all I was talking about were people and names of certain people. And they knew any high Council that was assigned to a unit, they knew they were on dodgy ground if they didn't know more than me about the people in that ward. Because initially it seemed, because I used to visit round, that I may know more than them about it. So it kind of. So again, the emphasis was people. And when I say that, that's not out of me. That's what the lessons I felt I was getting from the Brethren. It was all about people rather than programs. The programs were there to help the people, not the other way around. I saw so many other people, you know, other leaders fall into the trap of we've got to have this program, we've got to do this. We've got to do that. No, what we've got to do is bless the lives of our people. Now what programs will we use and how will we use them to bring that about? That was the emphasis.

John Dehlin [00:21:21] Right. Okay. Which general authorities did you meet as either bishop or stake president.

Meetings with Senior Church Leaders

Tom Phillips [00:21:35] Throughout? I've met an awful lot of them in my time which are some ones

John Dehlin [00:21:41] that we would know.

Tom Phillips [00:21:43] Okay, let me some of the ones. Okay, let's go back a bit time. Ezra Taft Benson as president of the Church. I was actually in his office with my family back in about 1987. So that was just before becoming stake President. Now I know you wanted you saying about sharing some stories there. I mean President Benson at the time, I mean I. We were just in awe when we were just told to come to his office at 6:30 in the morning. I mean we didn't mind getting up at 5:30 and putting on a Sunday best and everything. But it was such a privilege for us as a family to be in his office. And it was just before it was 6:30 because I think at 7am he had a first presidency meeting. Now I just mentioned him because what imp. At the time and this. Okay. Later on I may think differently about it but at the time I was impressed by what I thought was his humility. He was very gracious to us, no question about that. As almost all general authorities are. I can't speak highly enough of them in terms of them making you feel good, you know, I'm not going to be one of these that will throw mud or sticks at the general authorities and saying that this, that or the other. I have known none but gracious and kind people.

John Dehlin [00:22:57] That's been my experience as well.

Tom Phillips [00:22:59] Okay. Now again I felt this way with President Benson, but then there's also an anxiousness in him. Now I put it down at the time I thought, you know, this is wonderful. This is someone that was Secretary of Agriculture and he seems nervous going into a first presidency meeting. So I translated that in my mind that this is the man that really, you know, this is the God's spokesperson on earth and he's going into an important meeting of that, you know, and he takes it very seriously. So that's the way I felt. And that was a very uplifting experience for us as a family. Now later on and certainly hearing some more stories from Steve Benson and others, maybe my interpretation was not correct, I don't know. But you know, maybe there's something else going on in his mind at that time that I was not, I certainly was not Aware of.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] But he. But you felt he treated you with. With dignity and respect?

Tom Phillips [00:23:52] Absolutely, Absolutely. He. And also his counselor at the time, I think it was Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S. Monson, President Hinckley as well. Thomas S. President Monson was somewhat dismissive. I must say that that was the second time I'd met him. And I just felt he was different. He was quite dismissive and just more interested in getting on with the business in hand than the necessary.

John Dehlin [00:24:16] Not as personal.

Tom Phillips [00:24:18] President Hinckley was a very personable person. I mean, I met him on numerous occasions. He was. And I always thought he genuinely loved the people. There's no question about that. In his heart, he loved to be with the people. And that's why he traveled so much, I think. No question about it. I didn't get that feeling with present Monson, unfortunately. But anyway, each one's different. That's all I'm saying. Each one's got a different personality and a different thing to.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Right, right. Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:24:44] So that sort of thing. Again, another very kindly general thought. Just to put another thing to rest, I spent. I did some traveling with a Robert S. Sackley. At one time, he's an Australian that was called as a general authority. Now, I just want to say that because he was a very. Again, a kindly person, but he was a little bit out of the ordinary. From a normal general point, he didn't seem maybe as polished and everything as the normal one. He was more of a. I'd hate to say this with Dr. Simon Southern, who is a very polished Australian, but Elder Sackley was a little bit rougher as a diamond, but such a genuine and lovely person to meet. And I just want to say this one thing about. I could say a lot of things about him, but one particular thing, because a lot of people make an issue about general authorities and the money they're raking in and everything else. Elder Sackley told me, and I believe him, that he received a living allowance from the church. Not that he wanted it, but he received it and he had no option. But he took that. But he then immediately donated it back to the church. I believe he did that because he said, look, I've been blessed in my life. I've had a good career, I've got a good pension. I don't need any more money to live on. So I just want. Maybe people ought to be aware of that. That not everyone. Okay. I've met others that I think would take a different attitude and others that have certainly benefited financially from the church. But I'm just saying there are others that are just genuinely there because they believe the church is true or believed it's true. That's all.

John Dehlin [00:26:17] Yeah.

Tom Phillips [00:26:17] So, Sam, Elder Hillam and Elder Holland, there's a whole list of. I could talk about all sorts of people. Elder Eyring also, but I think mainly Elder Hellam and Elder Holland. If you want, I can take a few minutes on those. Or not.

John Dehlin [00:26:34] Yeah. Talk about. Why don't you talk about Elder Holland and just what type of person you found him to be and in what capacity did you work with him? And maybe a story or two that you think would help us get an understanding for. For what he's like or stories that you think would be interesting for people to hear.

Working with Jeffrey R. Holland

Tom Phillips [00:26:51] Okay. Elder Holland, I mean, I worked with him as obviously he was a. He was the area president. I was at the time when I was a stake president, you know, in his area. So obviously I would have some contact in that regard. But also with members of the same ward. He'd even suggested at one time we played tennis together. No, I never took him up on that. A. He was probably a far better tennis player than I would ever be.

John Dehlin [00:27:19] Believe it or not, I've actually played tennis with him when I was at byu. When I was at byu, I got to play tennis with him once and he had just ruptured his Achilles heel and healed from it. But he was a good tennis player. He was a good tennis player.

Tom Phillips [00:27:33] Yeah. This I would expect because, I mean, okay, us Brits don't take things maybe seriously. I knew anyone that said he plays tennis. He's probably been coached by Agassi or someone or other. So I didn't do it, but for two reasons. A, I mean, good. Anyway. But also I knew how busy he was. And also any time that he had, I would. I think it's better that he was spending with Pat or, you know, his family. So I know some other.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] How many years was he in your ward?

Tom Phillips [00:28:04] I don't know. Three or four years, I think.

John Dehlin [00:28:06] And so did you know his son Matt and Mary, his daughter, and Duff, his youngest son.

Tom Phillips [00:28:12] Really? Duff. They're only there with Duff. And Duff, as I mentioned, he was very. He was quite a close friend of my. My son's, Alan.

John Dehlin [00:28:21] Oh.

Tom Phillips [00:28:22] And in fact, I mentioned that to Elder Holland because one of the things I've treasured is a letter that Elder Holland wrote to myself and my wife about praising our son and the great influence because they were worried when. When obviously when Duff went to. To the UK and leaving all his friends behind in Utah and everything, just what kind of an experience it would be for him. And he really praised my son, you know, a giant as far as he was concerned. He couldn't wish for a better, you know, role model for his son. So. So I did know Duff, Matt I met briefly as he. Because he had already left home at that stage, I believe. I'm not quite sure, you know, what age.

John Dehlin [00:28:58] So this was. This was after Elder Holland had served as president of byu.

Tom Phillips [00:29:03] Oh, yeah, yeah. This is when he was. He was called as a general authority. He. He replaced. I believe it was Elder Goseland. Yeah, Elder Goseland was the area president. He replaced him.

John Dehlin [00:29:13] So again, he wasn't an apostle yet, is that right?

Tom Phillips [00:29:15] He was not an apostle. No. He was in the 70 then.

John Dehlin [00:29:18] Got it.

Tom Phillips [00:29:18] He was an apostle at that stage. So, yeah, that came a bit later. And obviously when we knew that, we were excited when he was called as an apostle. But at that time, he was a 70.

John Dehlin [00:29:30] So how many stakes would he have been over as an area leader, area president

Tom Phillips [00:29:37] by the time? The trouble was the area kept changing.

John Dehlin [00:29:42] Right. But 10, 100, like just a rough.

Tom Phillips [00:29:48] It would have been 70 or 80. And certainly when I was in the Europe west area, we were talking, I think about 110, 120.

John Dehlin [00:29:56] Okay, so you would have been one of over 100 stake presidents that he would have interacted with.

Tom Phillips [00:30:01] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not. Yeah. I'm not saying it was. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:04] But you weren't his word. What, What. Any stories or descriptions of. Because I found him to be very thoughtful, very intelligent, very warm, very fun,

Tom Phillips [00:30:15] extremely intelligent, extremely warm. He came on assignment to a state conference with me, and at that time, I'd actually just been diagnosed with a tumor which they were about to operate on because the surgeon thought it was cancer. And I was feeling pretty weak at the time anyway, and he came for my stake conference, and he was just so kind to me in relieving me of certain meetings and doing things, and even offered me a blessing, which actually I declined from him. Not because I didn't want him. I would love to have had a blessing from him, but I thought, no, the correct way of doing this is to go through my. Let my home teacher do it. So I sort of followed the correct channels rather than taking a privileged position and having him do it. So he was extremely, extremely kind to me. And also another time, you know, that was on a personal basis. Then another time we had an issue in our state where one particular ward we tried for 20 years to get land for a building which it just never happened. And then suddenly things had happened and I'd located something and we negotiated things anyway that started to go pear shaped. It went south because suddenly the whole deal was off. It was put off by the committees in Salt Lake. They weren't going ahead with it. I went round on a Sunday evening to meet with the people that we were buying the land off and they were devastated because they were actually very, very anti the church at that time because they felt that the church had actually lied to them because this deal had been going on for two years now and they, on the basis of that had bought other property. Anyway, I found out all the facts. I went and saw Elder Holland on the, I think it was the Monday morning, it was either Monday or the Tuesday morning, had a meeting with him, let out all the facts about it and it did seem that he'd been given false information from people, you know, from other people. He left that meeting to travel about two or three hours south and then he phoned me early evening to just say, Tom, you've got your land. And I couldn't believe it because these things normally go through committees. But he made a call at that time directly to President Hinckley and used one of his silver bullets because he recognized things had been done that weren't quite right. So I've got to commend him for that as well. However he did that, I have no idea because these things, as you're probably aware, they go through all sorts of committee stages and everything and it takes weeks if not months to get approval on things. But he got it that day.

John Dehlin [00:32:56] Wow, that's, that's really cool.

Tom Phillips [00:32:58] So I was, I've always been tremendously impressed with him. He's been a hero of mine all, all the time, as I'm not alone in that. He's, you know, with others as well, him and his, his lovely wife Pat as well. I, I, you know, I speak highly of them.

John Dehlin [00:33:10] Yeah.

Tom Phillips [00:33:11] Which, you know, later on. That's why I was devastated with the kind of response I got from him recently. So anyway, that's another side we'll get to.

John Dehlin [00:33:20] We'll get to that for sure. So any other stories or experiences in the church that were important to you that you would want to tell prior to your experience getting the second anointing?

Presiding Over Excommunications

Tom Phillips [00:33:41] Not really, no. I've had all different experiences. I had dealings when I was stake president about actually excommunicating apostates that went on the sort of Adam God theory and polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:33:55] How was that? How did you handle that?

Tom Phillips [00:33:57] Well, this was quite contrast with me. It actually had one of my bishops and there was a subtlety to it all because obviously a hook was being laid out there. Anyway, by various questioning, I found out that he and his wife and an older squorm president and his wife were into this. I actually spent six months with him trying to look at all this. You know, first of all, I wanted to understand what it was, what their issues were and try to give them all the answers that I could. So I. I spent about that. But when we were getting once, I then found out that he was actually preparing single sisters in his ward to be his wives.

John Dehlin [00:34:35] Whoa. Now this is a former bishop, you say?

Tom Phillips [00:34:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] Wow.

Tom Phillips [00:34:39] And he'd been. He'd been doing this while he was serving as a bishop?

John Dehlin [00:34:41] Oh, no.

Tom Phillips [00:34:42] He'd actually been preparing certain sisters that were returned missionaries and keeping it all secret. We also found out later on that because in his ward there were certain. He lived in an inner city ward that had a fair amount of his congregation were black.

John Dehlin [00:35:04] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:35:05] And the boys, the deacons and the teachers were black. We found out later that this stake president and his wife and friends were going to their home and administering their own sacrament because they wouldn't take it from a black person. Oh, there were issues like that. So I uncovered all that and we ended up. I mean, I tried my best, but we ended up obviously excommunicating them. And I remember going into my office after that and banging my head against the wall and crying, my counselors want. Because I said, do you know what I said to them? I said, give me a good clean adultery any day. Because, you know, if someone commits adultery, I got a good chance they're coming back. But this, what I'd been through with these people, these are never going to come back. This had a feel about it that I just didn't like at all.

John Dehlin [00:35:53] How many people were excommunicated?

Tom Phillips [00:35:55] Funnily enough, there were a total then of six for the two couples. And then there was the two sisters that were involved. But they both came back. We actually got them back. They were. When I say excommunicate or disfellowship, the four that were excommunicated, that's it. As far as I know, they've never come back. They embraced fully. The. I don't know whether it was Owen Allred or whoever it was. The Allred type group.

John Dehlin [00:36:24] Yeah, they became fundamentalists. They become.

Tom Phillips [00:36:26] They were fundamentalists and they. And Some of them went to. They even had this way that apparently they had a loophole. They could go to France and. And marry there. And there were all sorts of things that they had. Anyway, they were excommunicated, but they were still coming out. And then I had to go a stage further and actually take legal opinion. I actually had them banned from attending anywhere in US because what they were doing, they would come into the wards and sit next to people in Sunday school. Their group actually had in advance what the Sunday school lessons were, and they would know when, what sort of comment to make at a particular time. Because of course, being fundamentalists, they can't very well go door knocking to get converts. They've got to get them off the mainstream church, and that's what they were doing. So once I found that out, we just had them banned. And that's again, I had to alert President Holland to that because although I could do it in my own stake, I had no jurisdiction over others. So it was up to him as to what he did as far as the country was concerned. Because I found once I banned them from mine, they were going to other. They would go to Oxford University student places like that and try and get people. So.

John Dehlin [00:37:31] And you were. And you were sad excommunicating them.

Tom Phillips [00:37:35] Oh, well, they were. I mean, one of these was a bishop. And you know what, he was one of the best bishops you could imagine. I remember someone once saying, calling his name and said, you know, find out what he's on. And we all ought to take it because he was so energetic, he was so dynamic. He was. It was great.

John Dehlin [00:37:53] He's a true believer.

Tom Phillips [00:37:55] He was a true believer as well. And of course he was a true believer in the sense that he believes, you know, back to Brigham Young and that Wilford Rudruff went astray. You know, he's a firm believer in John Taylor and before. So that's the way that happened.

Encountering Troubling Church History

John Dehlin [00:38:11] What was it like for you to investigate these issues? Were they issues you had already known? Were they troubling to you? And how did you deal with. Did you have any cognitive dissonance about learning these things and trying to make them make sense of them? Because a lot of people ask, like, whether the general authorities know the difficult issues, and it seems like you would have been confronted with them. And how did you maintain your belief and commitment to the Church being exposed to these issues?

Tom Phillips [00:38:38] Yeah, I've often asked myself that, because prior to that, I mean, even when I was early in the church, I was asked to do a Lecture at a philosophy class. And I didn't realize they came out with a Spalding manuscript. I'd never heard of that. First I'd heard of it. So there's issues like that, which. Then I just went back to the church, said, what's this about? And then I get an answer which to me sounds credible. It was the same with the Kinderhook. Anything now on this polygamy thing.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] So the church would give you. Give you responses.

Tom Phillips [00:39:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:07] Where, How, How. How would a stake president ask a question to the church?

Tom Phillips [00:39:13] If I was stake president, I. I can ask. Well, I can ask any of one. Someone like President Holland, if necessary, or. There was the PR department of the church. They. They usually had things already prepared to answer these questions. Certainly on the Kinderhook place, they just gave me a printout of what they. They dish out as their standard answer at that time. I don't know what happens. Now. It was the same with the. See, the Spalding manuscript was very easy. Oh, no, we've. Everyone's looked at the Spalding manuscript and it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:39:44] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:39:45] And I accepted that. And. And in a sense, it's true, but it's not the Spalding manuscript. You know, there's two Spalding manuscripts.

John Dehlin [00:39:52] Maybe.

Tom Phillips [00:39:52] I mean, maybe maybe or whatever. So that's another sort of. So all I'm saying is there were these issues that I. Yes. So I can answer. You know, you're a firm believer. You know it's true. So anything that comes at you, providing you're given some kind of an answer that's, you know, reasonably credible, you accept it and move on. Now, the same with all these issues about polygamy. Now, I'd actually done a. You know, I'd done an institute class on polygamy, which really went down well. But again, I took all of the church historical information and showed how it was all divinely inspired and everything and all that sort of thing. Now, when these people started to talk about the Adam God theory and these things, I looked at it. I studied Brigham Young. I could see the quote in the Journal of Discourses, by the way, even early in my days, I'd read all the Journal discourses, so I know all of that stuff as well. But it didn't phase. Actually, it strengthened my testimony. You know, it strengthened it. People say, oh, don't look at that. Because it did the opposite for me. I was fascinated by it all. So, okay, I came to. And the final answer I gave them in my office before we Held the court. I called them into my office and I said, look, actually, I asked one of them to offer the prayer, and they offered a prayer. And then I just said to them afterwards. Now, when you addressed dear Heavenly Father, to whom were you referring? Were you referring to Adam? And they said, no, Heavenly Father Elohim. So I said, then, okay, let me ask that question another way. The person you just addressed as Heavenly Father, was he, in your opinion, on this earth as Adam? They said, yes. Okay, so that's how I. You see the clever way they avoided things. That's how they could just be normal members without you knowing. So when I got to that, and I said, look, because they're saying, look, the only answer I can give you, if you're saying that Brigham Young taught the Adam God theory, President Spencer W. Kimball says that is false doctrine. I'm going with President Kimball on this one. So first of all, I'll give you one of two answers. Either Brigham Young did not teach that, or he didn't mean it, or he's been misinterpreted or whatever you want to say. Because, you know, I could quote other things from Brigham Young where he says the opposite, right? So either. And that's what I would like to believe, that he didn't teach it. However, I said, if he did teach that, then I'm sorry, we've got an issue here of a prophet of God that taught a false doctrine. Handle that. You know, that's it. That's what's happened. He's taught a false doctrine. If that is true, and that was the final answer I gave them, and then that wasn't satisfactory to them. And then we went before a court, and because they couldn't sustain President Kimball and then the current teachings of the Church and were actually actively going about preparing plural wives and things like that, they're excommunicated. No question.

John Dehlin [00:42:50] Let me just ask you. From the Church's perspective, why would they care whether someone believed that they were praying to a Heavenly Father that once was Adam or not? Or was that not really the issue? The issue was the polygamy.

Tom Phillips [00:43:06] Well, it's all part of the one and the same. They almost go hand in hand. And with that comes what they call the second endowment. These three things are bound together in that fundamentalism. Now, okay, now, someone. Someone thought that these people were excommunicated because of their beliefs, that that was not true. You know, people can believe what. You know that, John. People can believe what they like in the church.

John Dehlin [00:43:30] Well, I don't know that Actually.

Tom Phillips [00:43:31] Okay. You don't. Okay, well, that was told to me by a general authority. Elder Lund said, tom, you can believe what you like. We'll only excommunicate you if you publish that or speak about it.

John Dehlin [00:43:41] Oh, so it's being public about what you believe.

Tom Phillips [00:43:44] Yeah, you can. You can believe what you like, but once you go public on it and start to influence others, now, in this case, they were influencing other people in my. Do you know what? My counselor had a dream one night, if you can, he came back, he said, and the interpretation of his dream was, we're going to lose half the stakes over. Over this one issue. So when we ended up losing four people, I was extremely relieved. Extreme.

John Dehlin [00:44:12] Yeah.

Tom Phillips [00:44:17] So. Sorry. Anyway, I'm not sure why, how we got.

John Dehlin [00:44:19] No, no, it's good. So. So you didn't. You only lost four. Yeah, it was. It was. It was a. So you were saying it's a full package. It wasn't just their beliefs, but the fact that they were practicing polygamy and

Tom Phillips [00:44:32] being vocal, holding their own sacrament meetings and just trying to use our temples for their benefit, not for anything else, because they didn't actually believe. Okay. Their belief was that the. And in fact, even the clever temple recommend interview, when you say, do you sustain, for instance, at that time, or if you said, do you sustain President Monson as the president of the church, they could answer yes to that because

John Dehlin [00:44:57] he is a president.

Tom Phillips [00:44:59] He's the president of the Church. He's not the president of the priesthood, though. Right, right. And we don't ask that question. Well, I mean. Okay. Later on, there's a similar question about recognizing no other or. Etc. Etc. But they could very cleverly get through a temple recommend interview, even on that basis. So.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] Right, right. Interesting. And tell me again what you felt and why you were sad. Why weren't you happy to get rid of these people, these apostates?

Tom Phillips [00:45:29] I wasn't happy to get rid of them because I actually. I mean, especially the bishop. I loved him to bits. I didn't. It was just that, I suppose on all. I mean, all the other disciplinary councils I've sat in, there all seem to be a door open, you know, I mean, excommunication is quite a serious matter. You know, that's usually after you've taken all of the other steps to try and avoid it. So when you got to that and. Okay, there's some cases, I mean, like, there's others where it's mandatory, you know, I had. Okay. In another case, you know, someone that had served in High office that, you know, commits adultery. Okay. There's no, you know, that has to be the way that goes. But you know what? Take an instance like that. I can think of a man right now that was excommunicated, but, you know, for the next five, 10 years, he's at every meeting, doing everything possible. And, you know, he has to work his way back into the church, and he's never going to do whatever it was he did again. That's why I said, give me a good clean adultery, because there's something people can do if that, you know, to turn that around. But this. It just gave me a feeling that night, and that's why I cried about it was. Now, this is a much more final thing. These people have gone way beyond that, and there's no coming back. And as far as I know, they never have come back. Hello.

John Dehlin [00:46:52] Sorry. Sorry. And that. And that made you sad. That made you sad?

Tom Phillips [00:46:56] Yes. Yeah. As I say, because I'd always thought there was, you know, there was the possible. And I'm just not saying it was impossible for them. Obviously, they could have been enlightened or whatever you wanted. You know, something might have got to them. But it was just the feeling I had that night. That's. That's why I just expressed it. It was that personal concern for it. It was one of the worst things that I'd had, and I've dealt with other things, but that was one of the. To me, in a sense, was one of the worst things. And I suppose because I'd involved myself in researching some of those things, I was even glad to put that aside and not read the kind of information they'd given me and get back to the ensign and everything else, and just felt good about that because it was troubling.

John Dehlin [00:47:36] So what did you think about the second anointing when you were reading about it as it related to blood atonement and. And Adam God theory and all that stuff?

Tom Phillips [00:47:45] Well, I didn't read much about it at the time. They mentioned the second endowment to me almost. You know, I guess I was more familiar with the term calling an election made sure. And obviously I'd read Elder McConkie and others on that. Well, Joseph Smith himself. And as far as I understood that it was the personal appearance of the Savior to you that would bring forth the day of Judgment, and, you know, you were freed of your sin. You know, judgment was just brought forward to this life, and you saw the Savior and he would teach you then whatever else you needed to be taught at that time. So that was my understanding of it. I hadn't gone back into historic. I didn't even know about the actual ordinance. I'd never looked back into those things. I didn't know anything about it.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] Okay, so your understanding was the calling and election made sure was a visit with the Savior himself?

Tom Phillips [00:48:37] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:38] Does that mean that the second anointing is different from the calling election made sure, or is it the same thing?

Tom Phillips [00:48:45] It's purported to be the same thing.

John Dehlin [00:48:47] Okay, okay. So

Tom Phillips [00:48:51] it was told to me is making sure. Yeah, it was. The second anointing is referred to as a special blessing and also as making sure you're calling an election. All of those terms rolled up into the one thing.

Receiving the Second Anointing

John Dehlin [00:49:03] Okay, well, then let's maybe. Maybe let's just go ahead and dive right in. So you. I assume you weren't stake president when you received your second anointing?

Tom Phillips [00:49:13] Right, I was executive secretary then.

John Dehlin [00:49:15] Okay, so you had stopped being stake president. And then how many years until you were called in as exec. As.

Tom Phillips [00:49:24] Oh, it was quite a few years. I'm trying to think 94, 95.

John Dehlin [00:49:29] So you're just in regular.

Tom Phillips [00:49:30] About six years.

John Dehlin [00:49:31] So those six years, were you just having regular callings again? Were you like primary teacher calling?

Tom Phillips [00:49:36] In fact, I even said when I was released, I just, you know what, I'd love to be gospel doctrine teacher, or actually, I'd love to just sit in the back of the congregation with my family. I mean, at that time, I'd had a, you know, especially one of my children had never known me. You know, he was, say, 20 years old, had never even known me not be on the stand or something like that. You know, I'd gone through all of that.

John Dehlin [00:49:56] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:49:57] So I was quite happy to be. And also in that time, from a business point of view, I'd also moved to. I'd spent some time in Ireland and Canada where, again, we were kind of used on a missionary type basis, but not in a. You know, I was more there to try and help and support some leadership. And also. And a lot of the time I just worked, you know, happy to be a stake missionary, something like that. I was more happy in just sitting down with missionaries and teaching converts. So I had that sort of experience. And then when I was back in my ward, I was teaching the gospel doctrine class or whatever. I had a very brief period as a ward mission leader in between some things. So that. That kind of thing. Yeah. Was I on the high calendar?

John Dehlin [00:50:41] And so you were just. You were just, you know, why did your Stake presidency term only last five years. I thought that was a 10 year calling. Did you terminate that or did you have to move or.

Tom Phillips [00:50:52] No, I've always been willing to do whatever the brethren do and that. I won't actually say the reason, but let's just say it was a decision by the quorum of the 12.

John Dehlin [00:51:01] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:51:02] All right. I was happy with whatever. I mean, I, I put forward, I said, look, I'm happy to continue or I'm happy to be released, whichever way. You just make the decision and I'll do whatever you say. I've never, never in my life have I asked to be released from a calling. And never in my life have I asked for a calling.

John Dehlin [00:51:21] So there was some, there was some personal stuff that they found out about.

Tom Phillips [00:51:25] Not they found out about. No, the things that I volunteered and let them make the decision. Okay. Their decision, which on reflection was probably the wrong one. Probably it shouldn't have happened because actually I think the, the stake did suffer in consequence. But anyway, that's a per. That doesn't matter. I support. I, I said whatever you decide here and that, that's, that's what was done.

John Dehlin [00:51:46] Okay. And that's something you don't want to talk about the details,

Tom Phillips [00:51:51] not because it's any reflection on me. I'm just not gonna, you know, I guess I don't think for a public podcast that's an issue. That's that, you know, well, people are

John Dehlin [00:52:03] going to be thinking, well, he must have committed adultery or he must have embezzled money or.

Tom Phillips [00:52:09] Okay, I could say absolutely, there was no question of any sin on my part or anything like that. And let's put it, it was more business related than anything.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:52:18] And it did actually allow me to have some time beneficially to get on with some business.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] Sure.

Tom Phillips [00:52:26] I've always put my career second to the church and this was just maybe an appropriate time for me to spend a little bit more time. And that's really what the brethren saw as well, if I just had a little bit of time like that, because that's. Then they actually then wanted me as on full time, you know, as mission president and anything else. Full time and get all the business matters out of the way. So that was the idea. So it was. There was no sin involved whatsoever.

John Dehlin [00:52:49] It was purely, it wasn't like business in terms of like embezzlement or some type of financial fraud or anything.

Tom Phillips [00:52:55] No, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] O. Okay, Okay. I just didn't want people to assume the wrong things. I'm not trying to get you to talk about things you're not.

Tom Phillips [00:53:03] I realize some people might think that, but no, it enabled me to move on on some other issues. Okay. I was very supportive of the. In fact, I was pleased that they called the man and stake present that, you know, I advocated anyway. So I was very pleased with everything that went on after that. So don't worry.

John Dehlin [00:53:22] Okay. So for six or seven years you just were in different wards, you served in low level callings and you were pretty happy, right?

Tom Phillips [00:53:30] Very happy here.

John Dehlin [00:53:32] So what changed? You say you got called into the. To be secretary of the area presidency?

Tom Phillips [00:53:39] That's right. Yep. And that was a fantastically exciting opportunity as well. I loved working with Elder Hillam. I spent more time with Elder Hillam than Elder Kerr, a man that I thought was very misunderstood. He said what was in our area anyway. He was. He's absolutely brilliant, absolutely committed to the church.

John Dehlin [00:54:01] Was he not well liked?

Tom Phillips [00:54:04] No, he was not that popular. Elder Kerr had been more popular than him and other, you know, when they've got, you know, these people had an experience of Elder Holland, Elder Goseland. Right. You know, quite carriage, as you say about Elder Holland, you know, very charismatic. Elder Hillam was not that charismatic in his public Persona. If you got to know him as an individual, he was fantastic.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:54:28] But he didn't. In fact, you know, I would have to try and explain to people just where he was coming from because I thought he was quite. People thought he maybe a little bit. I mean, even in his family, just as a sort of funny aside, he was a stickler for wearing his, you know, suit, white shirt and tie all the time. I never saw him without it, even on his so called P days. Yet his counsel, you know, someone like Elder Wayne Peterson, he was casually dressed on his day off and be frightened that Elder Hiller might catch him, you know, on the photograph or something. Casually dressed, he was just that kind of stiff person. And in fact, the funny thing was his. His wife Carol once said, oh yes, she said, our children think that if he loosens his tie, his head will fall off. That was really the image he gave. Now he wasn't, because we had some great fun together. He was very humorous and a very personable and nice person. But other people didn't see that side of him. They saw him as a serious person that went around the missions telling the missionaries to triple their baptisms and all the rest of it.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] Right, right. So he was kind of an administrator.

Tom Phillips [00:55:34] Yeah, he thought a lot about this. I mean, he could bear good testimony and he would Tell the stories. He used Moses and his de. Delegation principals and all the rest of it. He was a good teacher, but it had to be in that kind of. You had to be there and understand him before you got it. Someone like an Elder Holland, you know, can get up anywhere and immediately start to draw his audience in. Wasn't that type. And each. Yeah, they're all different. They're all different.

John Dehlin [00:56:04] Got it. Okay, so you're just serving in this, calling as secretary, and then what happens?

Tom Phillips [00:56:13] Okay, I'm there, and then he calls me into my office. Into his office. One day, Elder Hillam did, and he said, first of all, he went through the temple questions with me to make sure that I'm worth. You know, I mean, you know, that's already been happening, but he's just updating my current worthiness, obviously. To which I answered. And then he said that he'd been instructed by President Hinckley to invite me to have my second anointing, or special blessing. And he said to me, do you know what that is? And I said, no. I mean, I was just dumbfounded. I just said no. He said, well, we'd like to. He mentioned the date and the time and that it would be myself and my wife and not to mention it to anyone. I said, what do I say if I'm going away? What do I say to my children? He says, just make up any reason you like, but just don't tell them what's happening or where you're going. And, you know, just say you and your wife are going away for the weekend or something like that. That took me a little bit. I mean, okay. Cog dissonance or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:57:20] Okay, wait. Let's start with how cool it felt. Like I'm thinking, that would be cool. That would be. I would feel, oh, my gosh, I'm about to be guaranteed a spot in the celestial kingdom. Is that what it means?

Tom Phillips [00:57:35] Right. But I'm just giving you my immediate response. I then left his office. I went back in half an hour later and said, hey, have I heard you correctly? Because it dawned on me what you've just said. Oh, okay, okay. All I'm saying is I didn't quite get that at first. I thought, what's this, a special blessing? And then I go out and I start thinking about. He's talking about calling election major, all this kind of thing. I panicked. I went back in and said, hey, have I heard you correctly? And we went through it. Yeah, this is what it is.

John Dehlin [00:58:04] What did he tell you it is?

Tom Phillips [00:58:07] He said, It's a special blessing that will be life changing. He says very few people have had it. Again, he stressed the secrecy of it and those reasons for the secrecy. They don't want the general membership to know about it that it was to be. But it would be very special. It would be life changing for me. He couldn't tell me anything about what would be happening there.

John Dehlin [00:58:29] So he didn't say to you this would guarantee you entry into the celestial kingdom? He didn't actually say that?

Tom Phillips [00:58:41] No, probably not.

John Dehlin [00:58:42] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:58:43] Again, I'm trying to think back a number of years, I don't think. No. What he then said to me was go away. And he recommended various writings by Bruce Armor Conkie. Now I know maybe Elder McConkie isn't that favored at the moment in the, in the church, but as far as the second anointing or the calling election made sure, apparently he was the authority on it in what he had written. So I was asked to go away and read about that like in, in

John Dehlin [00:59:11] Mormon doctrine, in the book Mormon Doctrine,

Tom Phillips [00:59:13] Mormon Doctrine and others. I think he wrote some on the New Testament as well, didn't he had. He had about three or four volumes on the New Testament where because I think Peter mentions calling an election. Made sure. So he elaborates on that. It was quite extensive. I did quite a bit of reading from different sources, all by Bruce R. McConkie though. And in that it was very clear cut what it was. It's making sure you're calling election. I went back to older Hill and said yes, I've read that. I understand that that's what it's about now, me being me. Figured I'm not ready for this, you know, I haven't yet proven I'm not. You know, this isn't. I can't believe it's happening to me. So I'm going through all sorts of things of what. Not that I had anything major to repent of or anything but you know, you just don't feel that you're, you're at that level. You're, you're that you know that any of us are that worthy. So. Come, come ye saints, no toil nor labor fear. But with Jo.

Inside the Second Anointing Ceremony

Part 2 of 5 · Ep. 536

Tom Phillips [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org okay, I'm going to go ahead and read from Mormon Doctrine what it says about calling an election sure. Is that all right?

Tom Phillips [00:00:36] Sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] It says, those members of the church who devote themselves wholly to righteousness, living by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God, make their calling and election sure. That is, they receive the more sure word of prophecy, which means that the Lord seals their exaltation upon them with while they are yet in this life. Peter summarized the course of righteousness which the Saints must pursue to make their calling and election sure. And then, referring to his experience on the mount of Transfiguration with James and John, said that those three had received this more sure word of prophecy. And then it refers to two Peter chapter one. And it goes on to say, Joseph Smith taught, after a person has faith in Christ, repents of his sins, and is baptized for the remission of his sins, and receives the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, which is the first comforter, then let him continue to humble himself before God, hungering and thirsting after righteousness and living by every word of God. And the Lord will soon say unto him, son, thou shalt be exalted. When the Lord has thoroughly provided him and finds that the man has thoroughly proved him, and finds that the man is determined to serve him at all hazards, then the man will find his calling and election made sure. Then it will be his privilege to receive the other comforter. To receive the other comforter is to have Christ appear to him and to see the visions of eternity. Okay, so that's actually saying that there is some type of visitation with Christ potentially, right?

Tom Phillips [00:02:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] Okay. All right. So that's the kind of stuff that you read as you prepared to go to the temple, is that right?

Tom Phillips [00:02:35] That's correct, yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:38] What were your reactions? What'd you think? Like you said, you started to feel that you weren't worthy.

Tom Phillips [00:02:44] Well, yeah. I hope that's a natural reaction.

John Dehlin [00:02:48] Yeah, yeah.

Tom Phillips [00:02:49] Which one of it? I mean, you know, you answer temple recommend questions. I didn't mean to say you're perfect. You're trying everything your best, but do I get angry thoughts? Do I do this? Do it? There are things. So, yes, I spent A lot of time prior to that, and a lot of time on my knees and considering all sorts of things, because as far as I was concerned, I'm going to meet the Savior. And he knows, you know, this isn't meeting a stake president or a bishop. Bishop. This is meeting the Savior.

John Dehlin [00:03:17] So you thought you might meet the Savior at the temple?

Tom Phillips [00:03:21] I didn't think. I. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] What were you gonna say?

Tom Phillips [00:03:27] Read out what. What's happening. I didn't think I'd need to say too much. I mean, if he's gonna. I think he's gonna have more to say to me than I'm gonna say to him.

John Dehlin [00:03:35] So you were getting ready to meet the Savior?

Tom Phillips [00:03:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:38] Wow. Okay. And. And was your wife invited?

Tom Phillips [00:03:42] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:44] So it was something to be done together.

Tom Phillips [00:03:46] Together. That's right.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] But she wasn't in the original meeting where the invitation was extended.

Tom Phillips [00:03:51] No, no, she wasn't. It was. It was me then that invited her.

John Dehlin [00:03:54] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:03:55] And I then booked. I mean, what we did. It was. It was on. Again, it was on a Sunday, which is an unusual thing, so I actually booked. I. Funny thing was, I phoned the Preston Temple to arrange a room for us on Saturday night. I decided I wasn't going to drive up there. Elder Ballard and Elder Hillam were going by one of the Huntsman's jets. They. They were traveling in that way. And I was to drive up to the Preston Temple with my wife on. On the. Well, and I decided we. We just stay there at the. You know, what better thing than to stay at the temple overnight and. And walk in the grounds hand in hand and just prepare? So I phoned up the temple just to book a room. And as soon as I gave my name, they said, oh, yes, yes, you're here for the. A special occasion. And they booked me in. And when we got there, I didn't realize they gave us the honeymoon suite. They just treated so well. We had a honeymoon suite at the Preston Temple. I didn't even know they had such

John Dehlin [00:04:49] things in the temple itself.

Tom Phillips [00:04:52] On the. Yeah, well, yeah, there's accommodation at. Actually at the temple. And this was the honeymoon suite that was reserved for us. And I thought it was just absolutely fantastic. We had a. You know, we walked around hand in hand, the temple grounds that night and retired to our, you know, honeymoon suite, ready to get up the next morning for this very special occasion.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Wow. And again, what did you say to your wife? What did you guys talk about?

Tom Phillips [00:05:22] Well, she wouldn't. I tried to get her to read the Same things as I did. But she again. And sometimes sisters, like, they just seem to have a more simple faith and, you know, whatever. It's. It didn't. I don't know. I guess I was making a bigger issue of it. And possibly she was. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:05:41] She was just. She was just relaxed about it.

Tom Phillips [00:05:44] Seemed more relaxed than I. Certainly internally, there didn't seem to be too much of a problem. It was just something we can do together. Okay. She recognized it was going to the temple. It was a very special thing to do. But, you know, I don't know that she understood. Hang on. We could be meeting the Savior here, right? Or. And I didn't know at that stage whether we met him then or it came afterwards or whatever, but all I knew was this is a serious business. This is earth shattering, really. And I can't talk about. I mean, we went there early. Well, we went to the temple, as I said, on the Saturday, and we actually bumped into some ward members that were there for a wedding, and they actually asked us, well, what are you doing here on a Saturday night? And again, we had to just kind of duck the issue and not tell them why we were there.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:06:33] So in some ways, even after the. The. When I say lie, it was easy enough for me because. Because people knew my position in the church. It would have been hard if I didn't have this. I could easily say, well, look, I. Even if they found out I was at the temple on the. On the Sunday that, you know, I was asked just to go there to meet with Elder Ballard and. And Elder Hillam, and that would have been appropriate for my calling anyway, so it wasn't a big, you know, it could easily get passed over. It wasn't a big deal.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] Got it. Okay, so tell us what the day all that went into the actual experience.

Tom Phillips [00:07:14] Well, obviously we went, obviously with our recommend and our temple robes. I think I can say temple robes without saying anything else about them. And, yeah, we went into the temple. I think I had been told that we wouldn't be on our own, that there would be some other couples there as well. So we weren't the only couple. I think there were four or five couples, including us.

John Dehlin [00:07:39] Okay, and were these people you would have known? Were these people that you would have clubbed?

Tom Phillips [00:07:43] Yes, I did. When I saw that. I mean, none of us knew before that day that each of us had been invited. But when I saw. Obviously when we saw one another, I think of the five couples, I knew four. So it was that kind of Situation. One of them, which I did know is actually a returning mission president who'd been serving in our area, and he's actually American. He was on his way back to America. But again, just because some people speculate. Oh, who gets these? Is it mission president? No, in this case. And I got the impression he was getting in not because he was mission present, but because there was another reason. So it's hard to say who category gets these and who doesn't. Obviously, all of the 70. Well, at least the first and second quorums do. Anyway. I won't go further. Anyway, so we met other people there. So, you know, I knew all, but I think it was one couple I didn't know.

John Dehlin [00:08:37] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:08:37] And we're greeted there by Elder Ballard and also a counselor in this. In the temple president, because the actual temple president, he was away because his wife was sick in hospital. Otherwise, it would have been the temple president. Normally it would be the temple president, the apostle, and another general authority. In this case, Elder Peterson, was also there. He actually asked if he could be there just because of the personal relationship with me that we had. Normally it would just be one other. You know, you'd have the apostle and one general authority as a witness. In this case, there were two general authorities as well as the apostle.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] So there's two general authorities in a puzzle.

Tom Phillips [00:09:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:19] Wow. And it was Elder Ballard.

Tom Phillips [00:09:21] Elder Ballard. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:23] Huh. Okay. And so what. What do you do? You go in. You dress in your temple clothes?

Tom Phillips [00:09:30] Yes, we gathered again. I'm going back a few years now, but we gathered in the. In the chapel area then. Yes, we obviously put on our temple robes. We went into a special room preserved in the. In the temple. Well, it was a room that was sort of set apart for this, where we had. Or we started with our Washington annoy. You know, we had. You know, Elder Ballard would wash our feet and.

John Dehlin [00:09:59] Hang on.

Tom Phillips [00:10:00] What?

John Dehlin [00:10:01] Okay, wait. So.

Tom Phillips [00:10:02] Okay, so you're Elder Ballard again. I'm not. I'm being a bit careful now as to what I actually say.

John Dehlin [00:10:08] Sure.

Tom Phillips [00:10:08] I mean, it's in the write up. I know. To be honest, it's also. When I say my write up, it's actually on the Internet in almost verbatim from the early days of the church, the 1840s or whatever. I think you can read on there the exact way in which the thing. The only thing that was different in those days, they would have the thing in the temple, and then there'd be a second part to it, which was done in the couple's home. In our case, the second part wasn't done in our home. It was done in another room in the temple. It was done in a ceiling room in the temple.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] And are you comfortable talking about what things actually happen?

Tom Phillips [00:10:48] Yeah. I'd have to jog my memory as to what happened, but.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] Yeah.

Tom Phillips [00:10:57] So.

John Dehlin [00:10:58] So Elder Ballard is there with you with a couple other general authorities. What. What happened from there.

Tom Phillips [00:11:06] Okay. Elder Ballard explained what would be happening. We were to have our feet washed and be anointed by him. He said he was acting under the direction of the Prophet President Gordon B. Hinckley. After that, we would be allocated a sealing room for each couple to be alone and perform the second part of the ordinance. We would then all meet again with Elder Ballard in the celestial room of the temple.

John Dehlin [00:11:31] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:11:31] So that's what he had said to us. So he then, you know, I was beckoned to sit on a particular chair, and Elder Ballard knelt down and washed my feet, then dried them.

John Dehlin [00:11:42] Now, what's that like?

Tom Phillips [00:11:44] Oh, can you imagine? I've got an apostle down there on his knees. I mean, all it's going through me is the New Testament scripture, when the Savior did that with his apostles.

John Dehlin [00:11:55] Right. What was it? How would you describe it? The feeling or the experience thing?

Tom Phillips [00:12:01] I think Elder Helen was right. It's life changing, the whole thing. You can't believe you're out of this world. You're in heaven.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] Were you crying?

Tom Phillips [00:12:09] Oh, you don't stop. I don't think everyone's tearful. When you say crying tearful all the time. It's just so touching. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:18] And so there's this. There's this apostle of God, this beautiful, thoughtful man, washing your feet.

Tom Phillips [00:12:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] Wow. And then he did it to your wife as well?

Tom Phillips [00:12:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] And did he say a prayer beforehand? Did he explain what it meant? Did he explain what it meant?

Tom Phillips [00:12:40] Yeah. And after, in the celestial room, he explained more as well.

John Dehlin [00:12:43] Okay. Okay, so I'm getting ahead of myself. So he washes your feet and your wife's feet.

Tom Phillips [00:12:47] Certainly. We started the whole thing with prayer as well. I mean, obviously, I admit that omitted it, but, you know, obviously anything in the church is. Started with prayer anyway. Okay. And then after that, there was the anointing, so the oil on the top of my head. So I was ordained. I mean, okay, there's other ordinances where one is ordained to become such and such. In this case, the wording was different. I was actually ordained a king and a priest unto the most high God. Sorry if I.

John Dehlin [00:13:19] No, no, no. So you were literally ordained a King.

Tom Phillips [00:13:22] Ordained a king. Yeah. It wasn't to become. It was ordained a king, obviously to rule and reign in the house of Israel forever. Then blessings on my head, brow, eyes, etc. Were anointed with oil and specific blessings were given relating to knowing, understanding and speaking the truth. And the ordinance gave me the fullness of the priesthood. And a blessing was given which included things like the sealing, power to bind and loose, curse and bless, the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the holy Spirit of promise bestowed. This was an interesting one. Blessed to live as long as life is desirable. I mean, that's a powerful. You know, suddenly you think, hang on, I mentioned to you before with Elder Holland, years before, when I had that sort of scare about cancer, which turned out to be benign. So it wasn't. But, you know, at that time, my wife and I thought, well, I had six months to live, so to be blessed to live as long as life is desirable and then blessed to attain unto the godhood and power to be a member of a godhood was bestowed upon me. I was sealed up to eternal life and power to have the heavens open. So the ceiling, as far as I understood at the time, that's it. It's done. The only other thing, and that was the other thing that you can read in McConk is what happens then if you do commit some kind of sin and what happens. But the idea is that that was it. Your judgment's made and you're sealed. So we were charged not to reveal to other individuals that we'd received this ordinance. And again, my wife was anointed and ordained a queen and a priestess.

John Dehlin [00:15:06] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:15:07] Just as I was a king and a priest.

John Dehlin [00:15:09] Got it. And again, how did she like it?

Tom Phillips [00:15:13] Oh, gain tears. And then the second part of it, we go into a sealing room. Each couple was assigned a different sealing room. So you go in on your own. We were told that we were to go in there and the wife was to wash the husband's feet, and then she was to put her hands on his head and give her him a blessing, whatever she felt inspired to say.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] So she put her hands on your head and gave you a blessing.

Tom Phillips [00:15:40] Oh. Now, if you want to talk about crying, that's when it really happened.

John Dehlin [00:15:45] Wow. Do you remember what she said?

Tom Phillips [00:15:48] Not really. Not at this stage, No. I didn't write it down, but it was powerful. I mean, it was obviously the love that was conveyed and everything else that came through. No, I don't remember the specifics now of what was said, but all I know is we Wept after that and just held one another and, you know, probably spent longer in the room than maybe we should have done, but that was. It was a bowl of water and towel. And my wife, just as Mary did to Jesus, this is what it was. It just comes and dries them. It was very moving, very personal. You know, as a couple, we experienced tremendous joy.

John Dehlin [00:16:25] So you got your feet washed twice?

Tom Phillips [00:16:28] Twice, yeah, once Apostle and then by my wife.

John Dehlin [00:16:32] But you didn't wash her feet?

Tom Phillips [00:16:34] No, no, no. She did it to me.

John Dehlin [00:16:36] And you didn't. You didn't give her a blessing?

Tom Phillips [00:16:38] I didn't give her a blessing either, no.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] Wow, that's kind of cool.

Tom Phillips [00:16:42] This is it. This is. This is woman in the priesthood. This is what it's about. It. It's there. Oh, you know, woman does have priesthood in the temple, right? You may not have. They may not have it outside, but in the temple there are this. The woman has the, you know, joins in the priesthood. So she gave me a blessing. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:01] Beautiful. So then. So then you guys go back and Elder Ballard talks to you. What does he say?

Tom Phillips [00:17:07] Well, this is it. He comes in. He asks us into the celestial room and summarized what had happened that day and asked if there were any questions because they could only be answered at that time. You know, we can't walk out of there and suddenly ask a question. Now, my question I had on my mind and I didn't even. I just said. Wanted to say to him, well, okay, so when do we meet the Savior? You know, up till that point, I hadn't seen him. So I said, when's this going to be? But I didn't even do the feeling in the room. I just couldn't even. I couldn't get that out of my mouth. No one asked one solitary question. Maybe they were all asked, think wanting to do the same thing, I don't know. But I didn't ask. No one asked a question. So then he volunteered some things and said, look, don't even ask me about what happens if you now sin, because we don't even want to go there. Right. But I'd already read extensively with McConkie there, which basically said that after you've had this ordinance, that obviously if you were to commit sin, then that's not going to deny you the celestial kingdom. You may have to be handed over to the buffetings of Satan for a period, but you're going to atone yourself for that and you're still going to get there. The only exception, obviously, was the unpardonable sin. So Providing you didn't do that. You've got your home.

John Dehlin [00:18:34] And the unpardonable sin being denying the Holy Ghost. Yeah, being a son of perdition.

Tom Phillips [00:18:40] That's right. You deny the Holy Ghost and supposedly then you become a son of perdition and you're cast into outer darkness with Satan and his followers and you never do inherit a kingdom of glory, even the Celestial. I guess that's what's. Since then I've expressed. Well, hang on, you know, updating this in my situation now, does that mean I'm actually worse off than Adolf Hitler who killed 6 million Jews and any other number of people? But anyway, that's a side question. Seems a bit. Anyway, that's. If I am a son of perdition, of course I may not be.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] Okay. And so. And so you. And so you. So this happens. Anything else happen in the temple that was worth noting?

Tom Phillips [00:19:27] No, I think that was. I mean, we left the Celestial. I mean, I can't even express now how wonderful. I mean, I think you've already felt a glimpse of it just from going through your own thoughts, John, as might be. I mean, you just walk, you go out, you're not even walking on the ground. We went home. I'm just delayed. I mean, I thought I was committed to the church before then. Now suddenly, what do you want me to do? What mountain do you want me to move? What do you want me to do? I'll do anything. That's the. This is the thing that it gives you the feeling that you come away with. I actually. Because the day before there'd been an area training meeting. That's why Elder Ballard was there, where we had all of the stake presidents and mission presidents in for training. And I went home and that night, you know what, I just sat down and I hadn't taken any notes of any of those training meetings, but I just wrote. I just hammered out a paper on what Elder Ballard had taught and I took that into the area of presidency, and they were just bowled up. Now, I'm not taking credit for this myself in terms of what that was, just the way I was feeling on overdrive, and if you like feeling inspired at the time. But I put together a paper which we put out to all of the stake presidents, really summarizing the whole message and what they were to do and to get them to come back with their specific goals based on those things that had been outlined. And therefore we would then hold them accountable during the next six months or 12 months or whatever. So it was just such an uplifting Experience, you know, you just wanted to do whatever you could to move the work forward.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:21:09] And I know when that paper was read by the area presidency, every one of them was just bowled over by it. But again, I'm not taking credit credit as that was just Tom Phillips doing that. It was Tom Phillips on steroids at that time. Just because of the impact of such an ordinance that would have one. And again, okay, John, I know you're doing sort of clinical psychology and you maybe understand more about what I'm. Apart from the spiritual aspect, anything else that might have motivated me at that time. So I think I just, I performed better than I had before, I think.

John Dehlin [00:21:45] Sure, yeah. I don't like to psychoanalyze people that way. I just. If someone has a beautiful experience, I want to say God bless you, you know, that's how I feel about it.

Tom Phillips [00:21:54] Okay,

John Dehlin [00:21:56] okay. So how in the world do you go from that experience to losing your faith?

Tom Phillips [00:22:06] You certainly don't go there immediately. Remember with me it was about another year and a half went by when I was again at that point of. And I think, I don't know whether it's just whether we said in this interview or before we actually started recording that I was really just preparing for full time mission. As far as I was concerned. I was going to be a full time missionary now for the rest of my life in the church. That's all I wanted to do with myself and my wife.

John Dehlin [00:22:33] You were preparing to be. Were you done with work? Were you retired by this point?

Tom Phillips [00:22:36] That's what I was planning to do, yes. I was just coming to the tail end of that and saying right now this is what we're going to do from now on. And that's what the brethren had understood. I'd get to that point where I'd finished with everything I'd put in my mission papers. They were saying they wanted then as the mission papers went in, just recommend me as a mission present. But whatever way it went, it didn't really matter as long as I was able to go out and teach the gospel. So I just took that opportunity. As I said in past, I had experiences with spoiling manuscript and things like that. The. The question of using adieu in the Book of Mormon or the usual things about Jesus being born at Jerusalem and all of those myriad things that people put up which weren't anything as far as I was concerned. But what I was concerned about was obviously people who would be genuinely, because of their scientific understanding would be skeptical about the message or the scriptures and Therefore miss out on the church because of their knowledge. That's what was concerning me. So I thought that, hang on, I need at least to be in tune and anyone that I supervise needs to know how to speak to people or present more or answer the questions someone had said to me years ago about the flood and things like that. And I'd even been at a museum with my wife where we saw dinosaurs and she'd asked me that question. Well, I gave the standard kind of church answers which satisfied her and satisfied me at the time. But now I kind of look for thought. Well, no, hang on. If I'm actually saying this to someone that knows their subject, they're either going to call me an idiot or they're going to be very kind and polite and just sort of. But, you know, there's no way they're going to get converted because it's going to be a roadblock. So I've actually got to find out what is wrong with the scientific methodology, or not necessarily wrong, but at least some kind of possibility that it may not be quite right at the moment and it could be discovered later on that something else happens.

Doubts Deepen Over Scripture and History

John Dehlin [00:24:39] Okay, so was there, Was there like someone that you knew that had fallen away? Was there?

Tom Phillips [00:24:46] I didn't know anyone that had fallen away for those reasons.

John Dehlin [00:24:49] And so what again, what brought it up? What made you care enough to want to look into it?

Tom Phillips [00:24:54] Me, just again, studying the Book of Mormon. So again, it's very clear in the Book of Mormon to me at least, and I think too, from all I've read from the prophets in the past, that there was no death on this earth prior to the fall of Adam, so that I believe 100% to be true.

John Dehlin [00:25:10] So you're just doing your personal scripture study?

Tom Phillips [00:25:13] So that's what it says. I've believed it all my life, no question about it. But, aha. If I was saying that to a scientist or not even to a scientist, but to most children at school these days, they say, no, the dinosaurs were here 65 million years ago. There was this, there was that. You know, this place is 4 billion years old. How do I answer that? Okay, the 4 billion year old Earth, we can easily, you know, Joseph Smith even talked about things like that. But certainly mankind or the hominids that we are now apparently date back no more than 6,000 years. When you take the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants into account. So that I believe 100% at the time, we're going back now to whatever it was, 2003, I believe this completely to be true. Now I need to show to a. So if a scientist says to me, you know what, this cave drawings in France that we've dated is 30,000 years old that were obviously drawn by hominids, you know, homo sapiens sapiens. And you know, there's these things and there's those things and I go and I look in museums and they're right, there are these things. So how do I explain that? So it must be that the carbon dating they do is not correct. And I'm again as a non scientist thinking of industrial revolution and pumping carbon into the atmosphere and all sorts of things that could interfere with these things. So I started to try and find out more about that subject and then I just.

John Dehlin [00:26:39] You started to have scientific questions, huh?

Tom Phillips [00:26:41] Yeah, I just looked at, I said, okay, what's the problem with radiocarbon dating? And I studied that and I couldn't find, okay, it may be out plus or minus 5% or whatever. You know, something, if they say something's 40,000 years old, maybe it's still 35,000 or 45,000 years, whatever the thing is. But my problem was, if anything was more than 6,000 years old, that was human related, I've got a problem here because that means why is God in the Book of Mormon saying there was no death? When we dig up things and find that there's things that have died, clearly there isn't any death.

John Dehlin [00:27:20] Yeah. So there's the claim that there's no death before Adam and Eve.

Tom Phillips [00:27:24] And Adam and Eve are the start. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:26] And also I believe the Doctrine and Covenant says that the earth is 6,000 years old.

Tom Phillips [00:27:31] Exactly. Section 77, it says, it talks about the temporal, the temporal existence. So, you know, getting into all sorts of other creation periods, that's a different matter. But what we know of our temporal period, it's 6,000 years old. We're now in the seventh with the seventh seal is supposedly opened. Right, right. 6,000 years ago was the fall of Adam. Now I'm not even getting into how old was Adam and Eve? Were they billions of years old? You know, how long were they in the garden? I'm not even going there.

John Dehlin [00:27:59] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:27:59] I'm just saying, looking at the scripture, there was, there was two people 6,000 years ago that are the progenitors of the human race. You know, the prophets have said we are all related to Adam and Eve and prior to them there was no death. Animals lived together, you know, in harmony and all the rest of it.

John Dehlin [00:28:21] And the Bible gives lineage, as I understand it, from Adam and Eve down

Tom Phillips [00:28:26] to Abraham, which again, says 6,000 years.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] Yeah. So, I mean, there's no real way to wiggle out of that. And so if we have writings on walls from 20,000 years ago, how do we reconcile that with people being born 14,000 years before Adam and Eve left the garden?

Tom Phillips [00:28:46] Or skeletons that are one and a half million years old and, you know, things like that, let alone getting into dinosaurs that are 65 or 100 million years old. But so those things. Because they obviously died, whatever that was there. The whole definition of fossils is, you know, these things died. So the Book of Mormon says there was no death. So that was the big issue that I had. Well, how do I reconcile these? How can they both can't be true. So maybe I've misunderstood the Book of Mormon or I've misunderstood the science, but I was really going to the science. I also then wrote to a particular university with about three or four questions. And I just said, is there any chance, first of all, that there was no death on the earth before 6000? Is there any chance that we were related? That everyone living today is related to two people that, you know, were living 6,000 years ago? Is there any possibility that there was a global flood about four and a half thousand years? Those sort of questions I put to them. Oh, and also I think I threw in about the Israelite being the. Or the American Indian coming from Jerusalem, 600 BC or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:29:58] So you wrote to a museum?

Tom Phillips [00:30:00] No, I wrote to a university, Information, Science, Information department with those four specific questions.

John Dehlin [00:30:07] Was it a letter? Like a written letter?

Tom Phillips [00:30:10] No, actually, it was an email.

John Dehlin [00:30:11] It was an email. Do you still have the response they gave you?

Tom Phillips [00:30:15] I'm not sure because I've changed computers since I even changed. I don't know. I'd have to look at that.

John Dehlin [00:30:20] That's okay. Okay, but do you remember which university it was?

Tom Phillips [00:30:23] The Smithsonian.

John Dehlin [00:30:25] The United States Smithsonian?

Tom Phillips [00:30:27] Yeah, United States Smithsonian. That had a sort of a public information department.

John Dehlin [00:30:31] Okay, okay. So you wrote the Smithsonian. All right, all right.

Tom Phillips [00:30:36] What's wrong with that? Is it.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] No, it's. It's the Smithsonian's kind of famous within Mormonism.

Tom Phillips [00:30:42] Because I know. Because of their statement. I know their anthropology department, but this wasn't their anthropology department. This was. And there's no mention of Mormonism here either. This could have been a Christian that was writing to them.

John Dehlin [00:30:52] No, no, no. I just. I'm not laughing at you. I just think it's really cool that here you are, this sincere man believing in the church but wanting to gather the scientific data. And you just think, well, I better write the Smithsonian, you know.

Tom Phillips [00:31:06] Well, it's what came up on my search, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:31:09] Sure, sure.

Tom Phillips [00:31:10] It wasn't that I went out. I mean, I, ideally I would have written to Oxford University, being in, in the UK or of course, of course, something like that. But whenever I put the search in, they came up and made it easy for me. And there was a department rather than going to different professors or what, you know, and how would I get an answer Anyway? So they first of all wrote back saying, no, no chance of any. So, but I, I didn't.

John Dehlin [00:31:31] They said, no chance of any of that.

Tom Phillips [00:31:33] Of any of that. But I then didn't even accept that. I wrote back to him, I said, look, I don't want to know that this is any of these four are actually true. As for you, I just want to know even if there's a 1% chance because I actually stayed in. And you know what I had in mind, Elder Holland, when I said this? I said, because I know a lot of very bright, intelligent people that believe this in far brighter than I will ever be.

John Dehlin [00:31:59] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:32:00] So I wrote back a second time and said, is there any chance, even if there's an infinite. Even if you're saying to me, look, we're 99% sure that this is, you

John Dehlin [00:32:08] know, that's like the movie Give me. It's like the movie Dumb and Dumber. You mean I have a 1% chance.

Tom Phillips [00:32:15] I've never seen that. Yeah. So I was, I was actually asking for that. If they gave me a 1%, you know what I would probably say, okay, that's enough. I need right now.

John Dehlin [00:32:23] Right?

Tom Phillips [00:32:24] No, they wrote back 100%.

John Dehlin [00:32:26] Oh, they said 100%. Wow.

Tom Phillips [00:32:29] There is no 1%. This is fact. Wow. These things cannot. And when you think about it, you can do, I mean, DNA in the mitochondrial DNA. They have done studies that they. Our most common female ancestor lived 170,000 years ago. Right. Not 6,000 years ago. And, you know, they can demonstrate that when I say 170, between 150 and 200, you know, we're not going to argue too much about the, the precise date, but it certainly was longer ago than 6,000 years ago. So those. I got those sort of responses. Then when I get into the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] Wait, how did you feel getting that answer back from the Smithsonian? I'm just, I'm imagining you opening up your email inbox. You open up that email. How did that feel?

Tom Phillips [00:33:21] Gutted, in a way, because I'm still, you know, I believe this church to be true and now his factual evidence that, that this aspect anyway is not true. And to be honest, I take the Elder Holland position, you know, that the strength of this church is based on the Book of Mormon. If that's not true, this church isn't true. Even if the Book of Mormon were true, it doesn't necessarily now follow that the church is true, because it could be the community of Christ or the FLDS or anyone else that takes the Book of Mormon. But certainly if the Book of Mormon is not the word of God, if it has falsities in it, and here I'm now seeing falsities about the death before 6,000 years, the flood, the Tower of Babel, let's get into the Lamanites and turning skin black and all of these kinds of things, and then turning white when you become righteous. And all of these issues, you know, these are testable. You can test these in a scientific way, whether they're true or not, and they all come up as false. There's no semblance of truth in these matters. So it's starting to crumble. I'm saying, hang on. The Book of Mormon may not be true. It may not be the word of God, but I'm still resting because I've got all these other things and including the second anointing in my mind. And you know what? I've got the fear of death in me, because if I become a son of perdition, I'm done, right? I'm done.

John Dehlin [00:34:39] Yeah.

Tom Phillips [00:34:40] You know what? I had nightmares over that. Nightmares. That's how much. And with your psychology, you may understand that better than I do, but that was deeply embedded in my brain, soul, whatever you want to call it.

John Dehlin [00:34:53] Sure.

Tom Phillips [00:34:53] That scared me to death. So I've got to be sure. Now this. So this didn't happen overnight. I'm spending months on this in the meantime.

John Dehlin [00:35:02] Sorry, and you said Book of Abraham,

Tom Phillips [00:35:04] Book of Abraham, because again, I went to a museum. I saw a hypercophallus, I saw exactly the facsimiles that we've got in the Book of Abraham. And I go to a curator or I go to an Egyptologist, what does this mean? And they can give me an exact translation. None of it matches what Joseph Smith said it translates as. And it's all just magical funerary text to get these people through the underworld and, you know, even the Coptic vases and everything that Joseph Smith said is there for the heart and the lungs and whatever else that they take out of the body, not what he Said they were right. So this whole thing is unraveling. I'm in a museum, and this museum curators know more about Egyptology than the prophet Joseph Smith ever knew.

John Dehlin [00:35:49] Right?

Tom Phillips [00:35:49] And he's supposed to have had this revelation. He's supposed to be able to do this by the power of God. And this is supposed to be the writing of Abraham. It's all unraveled. It's not. Now, the relevance that then has to the Book of Mormon is if. If he lied about the Book of Abraham and translating that, is that not an indication he may also have lied about the Book of Mormon? So that's hence the, you know, the relevance there. It shows a modus operandi for Joseph Smith in this case.

John Dehlin [00:36:19] Now, just to be fair, apologists would speak up there, and even Elder Holland would speak up there and say, it doesn't necessarily have to be that he lied. It could be that he had the scrolls and he thought he was translating, but in reality, he was channeling from God, holy Scripture, and he didn't even understand the full inspiration behind the process. So he wasn't lying. You know, that would be. Oh, I think the church's position today

Tom Phillips [00:36:50] on the church's position today is exactly that. And let me also tell you, I've gone through all of this doubt. Do you know what convinced me? Two BYU professors and two general authorities convinced me 100% the church was not true.

John Dehlin [00:37:02] Oh, whoa, how?

Tom Phillips [00:37:04] How? First of all, Professor Stephen Jones, I think he's a physicist or a cosmologist at byu, he wrote a paper about evolution and about death before Adam. He actually says in that paper, and I haven't got it to hand, so I can't quote verbatim, but the general message is to his students, don't even argue evolution. It happened. This Earth is billions of years old. No question about it. There has been life and death on this planet for billions of years. Now, how do I then, Professor Jones, reconcile that with the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin [00:37:37] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:37:37] Well, the way I reconcile that, as I recall of his argument, nothing up until the fall of Adam had a spirit in it. It was purely a physical body, a physical being. Therefore, he's giving a different meaning to the word death, death, being. And he'll quote scriptures to say death is the separation of the spirit from the body. Now, he then has another problem. Okay, what actually animated those people all those things before the fall of Adam? Animals. And his answer to that question is they were directly acted upon, obviously by the spirit of God, because they didn't have spirits of their Own. So there's this kind of universal spirit that was floating around animating them. Well, I'm sorry, Professor Jones, but the way that argument falls down is the next question. If the spirit of God is animating those animals, how come they're all eating? They're all killing and eating one another. That doesn't sound too godlike to me. So I rather thought that this was a professor that knows that there's death before 6,000 years ago, but somehow he's got to reconcile it in his own mind for his own personal satisfaction, his own personal religion or whatever reason to the scripture. And it's not a very good answer.

John Dehlin [00:38:54] Unless, of course, God's okay with animals eating each other. That's just the way God wants animals to behave.

Tom Phillips [00:39:00] No, they, they do awful things to one another. And people, you know what we've got? We've got skulls with axes in them. That was humans that put axes through the skulls of other humans. That all happened prior to 6,000 years ago, and they were being animated by the spirit of God. I'm sorry, it begs some questions there, that.

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Right. It's probably. It's problematic about our understanding of a loving, compassionate God right now. Same question, which of course isn't scriptural, because the scriptures allow God to do all sorts of, you know, to be behind all sorts of difficult things.

Tom Phillips [00:39:35] Right, exactly. From the scriptures. He could be quite a monster at times.

John Dehlin [00:39:39] So, I mean, that would be consistent

Tom Phillips [00:39:40] with, you know, okay, I don't accept that. I accept that as someone trying to reconcile something in their brain.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] So for you, that's not the type of God you want to worship.

Tom Phillips [00:39:52] That is, what is. That is not an answer. They're trying to get out as a get out clause that will satisfy some people. Now, same question to Elder Hillam, who was a dentist and an orthodontist. He said, tom, of course there's been life and death on this planet, he said, for millions or billions of years. He said, I've held skulls when I did my dentistry that are tens of thousands of years old. He said, also, we wouldn't have oil and gas on this planet unless there had been death. So he's. Again, he's saying the same as Professor Jones. Don't even ask you the point. However, the way he reconciles it is he doesn't mention about the spirit. He just says, Adam was the first man made in the image of God. All the hominids prior to him weren't in the image of God. So then when I said, well, what happened to them? Because now, apparently all the human race is related to Adam. Where did all those hominids go in 6,000 years? He just said, I don't know. So again, that just showed me. He just used a simple thing to reconcile his mind because he wants to believe it's true. And this is the problem when you get into apologetics. Well, you know, there's some, I think quite dishonest apologetics that goes around. Let's take the Book of Abraham and Michael Rhodes. Yes, he does exactly what you say. He agrees that that translation of the papyri is not what Joseph Smith said it was. However, it may be a catalyst. Why the heck then did the church go into debt to buy that papyri for two and a half thousand dollars, which I assume was a fairly significant sum of money in those days. And why does it say at the beginning? I don't know if they've changed it, but when I read the Scriptures, it said right at the beginning the heading of the Book of Abraham, that this is a translation by the prophet Joseph Smith of the papyri that he acquired from Michael Chandler. This church states that. I don't say he used it as a catalyst. You see, and this is my issue with the so called apologetics in the church. I'll mention, you know, Brother Millet, Brother Peterson, them all, they will just sidestep the issue and go on to something that in itself is dishonest or even change the doctrine. We go back to the Lamanites, it becomes a limited geography theory. They're somewhere in Guatemala or whatever. No, I've been to Hill Cumorah. We have a Hill Cumorah pageant every year. Joseph Smith, right up to President Hinckley, said all of the American Indians in North America. President Kimball went. Kimball went even further about the Polynesians. It's been clear cut all my life. I taught my children a song called Book of Mormon stories about the Lamanites inheriting the land and all the rest of it.

John Dehlin [00:42:41] Right now you're sounding upset right now. Are you upset?

Tom Phillips [00:42:45] Sorry, sorry.

John Dehlin [00:42:46] No, no, no, I like it. I'm not saying I like it, but I want to help our listeners understand what you're feeling. That's all. What are you feeling?

Tom Phillips [00:42:55] What I'm feeling right now is because I actually went to the apologetics because I was looking for answers. I looked at a Stephen Jones or a Michael Rhodes or a Hugh Nibley or anyone. I looked at past ensigns to give me answers. And what I saw was, besides, you know, the usual things, they don't Even I think Brother Millet made a statement one time. He said, don't answer the question they ask. Answer the question that they should have asked. And that, to me, sums up apologetics. Unfortunately, no. Answer the question. Bring it up to date. I gave specific questions to Elder Holland, who Proportions.

John Dehlin [00:43:39] Okay, wait, wait. Let's not jump to Elder Holland quite yet.

Tom Phillips [00:43:42] Is that okay?

John Dehlin [00:43:43] Let me ask you a question. So, okay, we're back at the point where you're, like, prepping to become a mission president, right? Assuming that you think that call is imminent and you start stumbling upon these problems. Right. Well, there has to be a point. You know, so many people choose to just compartmentalize and turn it off. They're just like, nope, the church is true. Nope, I've had that spiritual witness. Nope, I know it's true. The Spirit has borne witness. I've had all these good experiences. What kept you from just turning it off? Like, what was behind that? Because so many people don't go there. They don't feel like it's safe. They feel like it's dangerous. They feel like it's scary or it's Satan, evil. Right.

Tom Phillips [00:44:36] Well, I'll use a word, but some people might find that offensive. But before I say it, I will say I was only a member of the church because I believed 100% it to be true. The one and only true church on the face of the earth. That's the only reason I didn't join it as a good club or something that would benefit my family or get me on in my career or anything like that. I joined it for only one reason. It was true. Now, if I then find out it's not true, I'm sorry, I'm out. I'm not going to just continue in something that purports. I don't mind if it then admits it's not true or something like that, but if it purports to be something which it isn't, I'm sorry, I don't go there. I can't sleep at night. If I'm going to do that, and I'll just use the word integrity, or if you like, my own personal integrity would not allow me to compartmentalize. And therefore, what am I going to do? Teach my children and grandchildren something that's supposedly true, which I know isn't true? I'm not going to do it. I'm sorry, I'll give up everything. I'll risk everything. Now, Elder Hillam even warned me on that. He said, tom, it's not worth losing your Family over. I see what he was saying now. He was actually suggesting I just lie and play the role. Just play the role and everyone will be happy. Okay, maybe it's a failing in me. Again, I have to ask a psychologist that I cannot live with myself if that's what I do. I'd rather live with myself happily than subscribe to something that is patently untrue. And now I find out, and I'm sorry if you felt I was getting upset, but.

John Dehlin [00:46:16] No, no, wait.

Tom Phillips [00:46:18] What I was feeling was because at the time, I felt that I had so much esteem for the Brethren. It's just not true. I've loved and adored them all my life, so I assume they just didn't know these things. So all I had to do, like even recently write a letter to Elder Holland and I'd be treated kindly and respectfully and the issues would be addressed instead of no shoot the messenger.

John Dehlin [00:46:42] Right? Okay. So for you, it was about truth and integrity.

Tom Phillips [00:46:46] Truth and integrity, yeah. Which I thought that's what the Church was about. Every time you were interviewed for a temple recommend, that's what you're asked. Are you totally honest in your dealings with other people and things like that? Well, what I found out. You know what. When I found out that the Book of Abraham. We'd had the papyri since 1967, and I joined the church in 1969, how come no one ever told me that? Even when I asked Elder Hillem about it, he said, I didn't know we had the papyri. Now, I don't know whether that's a true statement or not from him. I find that surprising because he was once the general Sunday school president of the church. But anyway, he said he wasn't even aware that we had the papyri. He couldn't even answer that question for me. We've had it there. And we've known right from Hugh Nibley's days that it ain't what Joseph Smith said it was. We've known that. But we prevaricate and we put. Or when I say we. I read articles in the Inside by Michael Rhodes and Hugh Nibley and all the others that somehow sidestepped the issue and made it all sound all right and it was acceptable to me. But that is, you know, I don't like those kind of apologetics. To me, it's what I asked Elder Holland in the letter, if I've stated anything which is untrue, please correct me on it. You know, show me where I'm wrong, that I accept. But don't just come up with some spurious argument that's got nothing to do with it and bamboozle me.

John Dehlin [00:48:14] No, no, it's good. We're going to get there. So you're sitting there and you've decided you're scared to learn these things, but it's your love of truth and your commitment to the truth and integrity that you probably was reinforced through your Mormon experience that led you to keep learning, right?

Tom Phillips [00:48:35] Yeah, Yeah. I want to know the truth. This is the truth. If it's the church, it's true. I want to know that. If the church is not true, I want to know that. Either way, I want to.

John Dehlin [00:48:43] Okay? And that feels very courageous to me. But there's a next step. It's one thing to decide internally that this isn't necessarily what it claims to be and that maybe you're not able to internally believe it, but there's a whole other step. And for you, it was a lot of steps because you weren't just the average ward member, right? You had been a bishop, you had been a stake president, you had had your calling, election made, sure. And you had this incredible family, this incredible family experience, this church that you love, this experience that you loved, and then all this wife and these children that all believed it, and it was going to become incredibly disruptive to them and very risky for you because you could lose your wife, you could lose your children, you could lose the love and respect of so many people. How do you make the decision to risk all that and actually speak publicly versus just let this die with you as a secret that you go to your grave knowing, but just deciding to let others have their beliefs?

Tom Phillips [00:50:02] Okay, first of all, I didn't think that I would lose friends and family over it. I honestly thought once sharing things, truth with people, that they would discuss that and either convince me that I'd gone down the wrong track and correct me, which case, we're back to normal. That's no problem for me. In fact, that's what I wanted. I would love for someone to show me that I was wrong. Love that. That's my number one wish. However, if I'm wrong, even now.

Confronting the Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith

John Dehlin [00:50:29] Even now.

Tom Phillips [00:50:30] Oh, even now. Yeah, even now. If that were possible, yes.

John Dehlin [00:50:33] Why?

Tom Phillips [00:50:33] But certainly then why? Because I'd spent my whole life doing that. Why would I not? Why would I want to say, hang on, what's my life been about? Why would I want to do that? As you say, no, no, no, no, no. I would rather it was true. Because you know what? It was comfortable. You Know everything was going fine with it. True. I didn't want it to be not true.

John Dehlin [00:50:54] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:50:54] And I certainly didn't know I would have this kind of opposition in coming out into. Just wanted to discuss the truth and the refusal to discuss the truth. I didn't expect that for one minute.

John Dehlin [00:51:05] So your commitment to truth made you feel like there was nothing to fear that either.

Tom Phillips [00:51:11] I thought other people would also share that truth. I didn't see why. You know, why. Okay. I don't subscribe to the view that there are all sorts of different truths and different realities. I guess I know to a sick extent there is. And there's different perceptions. I can get that. But there are also certain things I keep using the experience of the light switch. You know, I can switch on a light here and the light bulb goes on and it does it every time. If it doesn't, there's something wrong with the bulb or the wiring or the power or there's something wrong that we can fix and then it will go on again. It happens every time. So that to me is true. You know, if someone wants to try and come up with, well, it's only in my imagination this is true, or I'm dreaming this life and one day I'll wake up. I'm not even going down those sort of philosophical realms right now. That, to me is true. Putting on a light switch. Now, some of these things like cave drawings or skulls, you know, skeletons that one and a half million years old, these are light switch type items. They're not something someone's dreamt up or fabricated that happened.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:52:18] So I can't dismiss that. Now, I'm not giving. I don't want to give myself too much credit now because I've often thought now if I knew the way things would turn out, would I have kept quiet and just persevered? As you say, go to your grave happy. Everything else again. I can't do that. Because you know what I would say? I wish if my grandfather knew something and didn't say it and went to his grave without saying, and I spent my whole life on something which I eventually found out was not true, I wouldn't be too happy with that grandfather. I owe it even to my children and grandchildren or whoever comes after them to speak out and say, hey, have a look at this. And all I'm asking you to do, I'm not even asking you to not be Mormons or not or disbelieve or anything. I'm just saying, hey, these are. And there's a whole load of serious issues that the apologists do not answer, the brethren will not answer. So we've got to then face up to those issues and how do we balance that with what is true and what is not? And that's all I'm asking for, is that kind of discussion. The church as President Hinckley said he rested all on the first vision and others have rested on the Book of Mormon. They're the two founding principles of the church. If either one of those is false, that's it. It throws the church out. Now it's very hard. I know there's different accounts of the first vision. You can argue that till the cows come home. I'm not even going to go there because that's not a light switch type thing that you can go to and demonstrate. But the Book of Mormon is. And Elder Holland has put himself out there as the main champion of that book, being exactly what Joseph Smith said it was and being the word of God.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] What about people who say the Book of Mormon is too amazing of a book to have been invented, that nobody has come up with a plausible theory for how it got created in 90 days or 120 days or however many days it is that it's supposed to have been written. And most importantly, that the spiritual truths that one experiences through reading it are testimony alone. What would you say to those arguments about the Book of Mormon?

Tom Phillips [00:54:39] Okay, first of all, I'd refer him to the Quran. And if the Quran is true, and it would be true under all of those principles that you've just outlined, that denies that Jesus was the Christ or the Son of God. I'd also say because the Quran, because

John Dehlin [00:54:56] the Quran is an amazing document and because it was written in a short amount of time and because short amount

Tom Phillips [00:55:02] of time and in better language, if you read it in the original Persian, apparently it's a beautiful poetic language. Okay. A lot of our scriptures comes from the King James Version. Now that is a poetic language. It's not the original Hebrew. Regional Hebrew didn't say that, or even the original Greek. But the King James Version has actually made it sound more from a work of literature. It's better than it was.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] Right?

Tom Phillips [00:55:27] And let's face it, the Book of Mormon has a lot of either straight from the King James Version or whoever the author is influenced by the King James Version and using some similar language and syntax. In terms of inspiration, I've got tremendous inspiration out of people like Marcus Aurelius, you know, a Roman emperor and some of his writings and some of his were put down in the battlefield, in between battles, he wrote things far more inspirational than probably there are in the Book of Mormon. And you can recount lots and lots of books like that.

John Dehlin [00:56:03] So do you, do you have a theory for how the Book of Mormon was created then?

Tom Phillips [00:56:07] I don't even have to have a theory. I know of various theories and even that. Was it the one done by the guys at Stanford University where they feel there's multiple authorship there with Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, some of Ethan Smith and maybe some of Solomon Spalding, I don't know. And I don't even have to worry about who.

John Dehlin [00:56:32] Well, why not? Why isn't the burden of proof on you to prove that it's a fraud?

Tom Phillips [00:56:37] I don't. Well, first of all, if you want an answer to Elder Holland, there are a number of scenarios, every one of them as credible or more credible than the one he put forward. He's the one that has the burden of proof. He tells me it's from the Word. He said an angel came and showed Joseph Smith some gold plates that were written in reformed Egyptian. We haven't got the plates, by the way, but this is what happened. And Joseph Smith wrote this down. First of all, we have all these pictures with him with gold plates. Then we find out from Elder Nelson, no, he looked at a rock, the same rock that he used for trying to find buried treasure, and all sorts of things come out of this thing. Now somehow Elder Holland would have me believe that that is more credible than the fact that some 19th century people, whoever they are, whether it's one author, Joseph Smith or multiple author, got together and made a, if you like, an American Bible that is much more credible. I don't have to prove who did that. All I have to do in my mind is that book is supposed to be the word of God. Now if I understand the God who is the great scientist, if you like the omniscient, the all powerful, if he has written or inspired a book, the things contained in that book would be true. Now I'm not talking about spiritual matters and subjective matters or good moral teachings because you know what, Mark Twain was good at that with his writings as well.

John Dehlin [00:58:08] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:58:09] And he wasn't a religious person. I'm saying there's other people. A lot of people get things out of the Harry Potter and even I think the recent Twilight series. There's all sorts of people getting a lot of inspiration from books. Doesn't make them true and their authors say they're not true. So if it's true, then what's contained in it would be true. Now, if there are untruths in there, and I say there are a number of untruths, we haven't even touched upon the archaeology, but there's lots of untruths in there that can't be from God. That's all I'm saying. Now, if Elder Holland, you say otherwise, show me, prove to me. Elder Holland has been in Britain and other countries. He's seen Roman villas, Roman. We still use Roman baths. There's a city called Bath in England. You can go in there, you can go in and drink and immerse yourself in actual Roman baths. You know, 16, 1800 years old. We've got them. The Romans were in Britain from about 50 AD to 400 AD. The Nephites supposedly were 600 BC to 400 AD and their golden age was from presumably 33 AD until 2. Or they had 200 years of golden age after. After Christ visited them, right? It was peace throughout the land and peace and prosperity. There is not, not only is there no evidence of that, all of the evidence says the opposite, right? Everything says, no, that didn't happen. And if you want to liken the Mayans, they offered up children as sacrifices and things like that. If you want to talk about the popular, you know, America was populated roughly 15 to 30,000 years ago by people from Asia via the Bering Straits. I go along with that theory or what the anthropologists say, because it's even been born out with DNA and they found this Clovis people 13, 15,000 years ago in Texas. These things, we can see, they're there. None of that's in the book. Nothing in the Book of Mormon, actually. I asked a missionary one time, give me one quote from the Book of Mormon that you can show is actually true. Demonstrate that it's true. A statement, a fact that is true.

John Dehlin [01:00:27] Like a city or a mountain or a river.

Tom Phillips [01:00:30] I'm not even talking about city because they name cities after. There's a Bountiful in Utah, isn't it? There's Euphrates are all over the world. I mean, New York, that's named after York in England. I mean, names mean nothing. I mean, you can even come up with that. And let's face it, a lot of those names can be made up. I don't even see where we're going on that. That's why I say with apologetics, it seems to me the sidestepping the issue and saying, oh well, who wrote it? I don't have to say who wrote it. You know, it's not for me to say. I think Joseph Smith had a part in it. There's no question about that. Is he capable of it? Emma says he's not. Other people say he is. I used to think he was because whenever I wrote, whenever I read anything by Joseph Smith, it was brilliant. I only found out later on it was rewritten by other people. He was fairly illiterate, had poor grammar and poor spelling. Okay, did Sidney Rigdon come in with the theological arguments? Was Oliver Cowdery more involved in that? I don't know, but there are probabilities there. All I know for a fact. I do know for a fact, when you look at the Book of Mormon and you take all of the teachings out of it, and especially the erroneous teachings, the anti Catholic, the anti Masonic, all of those kind of things, they're all 19th century America. Answer that, Elder Holland. These aren't ancient writings. They didn't write that way anciently. And even take Isaiah apparently. Now I don't know how true this is and I don't even have to answer the question, but from what I understand, the Book of Isaiah was written by about two or three people. And it was more like it was certainly after 600 BC. It wasn't even there in 600 BC when they supposedly took the brass plates with them.

John Dehlin [01:02:19] We haven't covered this in our listening authorship. So this is my understanding as well that again, Lehi was supposed to have taken the brass plates with him that would have contained the book of Isaiah to the new world, and that's where they would have gotten the source from, to quote Isaiah in Second Nephi. Well, it turns out that scholars now believe that Isaiah was written after Lehi left Jerusalem.

Tom Phillips [01:02:46] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:02:46] Back in the old world. So there's no way that Lehi could have brought Isaiah or at least several of the chapters of Isaiah to the new world. So he would have had to, like Joseph and the book of Abraham, somehow channeled Isaiah, you know, before it was ever written or you know, contemporarily or after it was written, but without the actual source text. And so how can it contain the actual errors that the King James Bible would purport? You've got to and, and still be channeling, you know, and still have that source text. So it's. It's problematic, right?

Tom Phillips [01:03:27] No, I don't think it's problematic. I think that all these things are death nails, you know, to say they're problematic. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is pretty obviously 19th century writing. Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with Jo.

Leaving the Church and Telling the Family

Part 3 of 5 · Ep. 537

Tom Phillips [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

Tom Phillips [00:00:41] Yeah, what I did in May 2004.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] Well, first was, was there a moment where you just said to yourself, I. I'm not sure the church is what it claims to be. Did you have, like, a moment? Like I said, I can think of a moment in time where I said, oh, my gosh, I'm not sure the church is what it claims to be. Did you have a moment like that?

Tom Phillips [00:01:03] I think so. When I got that response from the Smithsonian, I think that was correct.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] That was your moment.

Tom Phillips [00:01:08] I'd been clutching at straws then to find someone that would just give me the 1% chance. They closed the door on me. But even after I got that, because actually, my stake president called me in for a call and they want. While I was waiting around, they wanted to call me to the High Council. And I actually said to him at the time, look, I'd love to. You know, I love serving on the High Council, no question about it. I said, but to be honest, any court, I'm not now in a situation where I'm going to go out and reactivate or convert or anything because I'm having these issues. And I explained some of them to him. He did listen to him, to me for a couple of hours, but he just said, no, I believe the Book of Mormon is true and the scientists have got it all wrong. And that. End of conversation. And he kept the calling open for me for about three months. And I said, look, no, at the time, I would have loved to have talked to my wife, but she saw the email that I wrote to the Smithsonian and she just flipped. She said, what's the meaning of this? And tore me off a strip for even asking the question. So although I would have loved to have studied this with someone else, I just didn't have that opportunity. And what I was hoping by studying it myself is I would then find out the flaws with all of these arguments and get back to, that's it. Okay, so I've made the journey to me it was worth investing a few months just to even prove the church, because then I'd be even, you know, I felt was strong anyway. But that's made, again, 110% sure that it's true. So it was a lonely journey, and there wasn't anyone, I'd say a stake president was aware of it, but he didn't really take any interest in it.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] And when your wife found out you were just studying this stuff, she got really mad at you?

Tom Phillips [00:02:52] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] Okay, so when did you go from gently denying callings and having private meetings with your stake president and realizing that you couldn't talk to your wife? How did you progress to kind of coming out of the closet?

Tom Phillips [00:03:10] That was in May 2004, when I met with my wife and my children, or three of my children. One was back in the uk. So I met with her separately. And I just called them together and said, in fact, we were all in Arizona at the time, and my wife and I, two days later had tickets to come back to England. But I just told them before I left that I just apologized to them. I said, look, I made an error of judgment back in 1969, but I don't think it's harmed us as a family. I think we've actually benefited. And then I told them that I found out some things that now I no longer believe the church is true. I think I made an error in believing that it was true.

John Dehlin [00:03:56] Was this like blindsiding your wife and your kids all at the same time, or had you told her you were

Tom Phillips [00:04:01] going to be doing this? No, no, I told. She knew there was something up, and I just said, it's of eternal significance. She didn't want to discuss it. There was no way I could do it one on one. And in fact, to be honest, she instigated the meeting. So it was said before I go back, because she was anxious to know what it was, but she wasn't also anxious to listen to it. So the best way I saw was the three children that were there, plus my wife. I told them like that, and I guess expecting them to say, well, what are the issues? Or something like that, and let's sort of discuss these things as a family. But I got a very, very violent opposite, an unexpected response.

John Dehlin [00:04:44] Okay, so all your family's around. You're telling your wife and your kids all at the same time. And the response was what?

Tom Phillips [00:04:51] One daughter fainted.

John Dehlin [00:04:52] How old were your children? How old were your children at the time?

Tom Phillips [00:04:57] 2004, 78. The youngest was 26.

John Dehlin [00:05:02] The youngest was 26. So these were all. They were all married in the temple by this point.

Tom Phillips [00:05:06] They're all married in the temple? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] And they all have. And they're starting to have children.

Tom Phillips [00:05:10] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:05:11] Okay. And one daughter faints.

Tom Phillips [00:05:13] She fainted?

John Dehlin [00:05:14] Did she, like, hit her head or.

Tom Phillips [00:05:16] No, just collapsed on the floor. Went down on the floor. My son immediately went to her and looked up at me and said, you better get out now, dad, before. And he quoted her husband's name. Gets home.

John Dehlin [00:05:28] What?

Tom Phillips [00:05:29] Yeah, apparently, you know, he said, get out before her husband comes home.

John Dehlin [00:05:34] Get out of the house.

Tom Phillips [00:05:35] Get out of the house.

John Dehlin [00:05:38] Why?

Tom Phillips [00:05:39] Well, because he's probably going to punch my head in or something.

John Dehlin [00:05:42] For just telling your truth or experience.

Tom Phillips [00:05:45] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:05:49] Another daughter that was there and typical of her, not. She's just a sweet person who was just absolutely silent. She didn't say anything at all. So I got that kind of response. I did as instructed. Left the home and just.

John Dehlin [00:06:07] Did someone scream? Your wife? She screamed at you?

Tom Phillips [00:06:12] My wife screamed at me. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:06:16] No, no, go ahead.

Tom Phillips [00:06:18] I'm trying to recall now just what my. I mean, obviously what's ringing through my ears is the words from my son saying, get out before so and so gets home.

John Dehlin [00:06:26] And this is a son you had a good relationship with or.

Tom Phillips [00:06:29] Most people thought he was a clone. We looked alike, talked alike, Thought alike. Yeah. Okay. In fact, you know, even Elder Hillam said when you put him in a state presidency, you know, he said, you know, he's your son. You know what else you know, I'm not saying that he doesn't deserve it himself, but, you know, the Brethren's eyes were open to him because he was my son. So.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] And you felt like you had a good relationship with these kids?

Tom Phillips [00:06:57] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] And so you. Were you worried? Were you. Were you scared or worried about what would happen if you told.

Tom Phillips [00:07:05] I was worried. Well, no, because I assumed because I'm so close with them that we would have a family. This is a. What do we taught? We have family council. We talk about these things.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:07:18] And let's discuss them. You know, they've grown up where. Every Sunday at the dinner table, as a minimum, it's open discussion for anyone can bring up any subject. We talk about it as a family. Right. Family home evening. That's family councils. That's what that was all about. I thought that's what we had. So this was a complete. This blind. No one got blindsided, I don't think then. But me, I'm the one that was gobsmacked. By what? By the reaction then later on. And by the way, that husband didn't come home and punch me in the face or anything. He just smiled at me and said, you've opened a can of worms now, haven't you? And that's all he ever. That's all. He's never said anything since to me about it.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] Okay, so you, you left, you left the house by yourself?

Tom Phillips [00:08:07] No, I went out with my other daughter as well. We were just walking in the nearby park and then when the husband came home, he came. Obviously the first concern was about the daughter. The daughter had collapsed because to make sure she was all right. I mean, I went outside to let them mother and, and, and, and my son to see what was wrong and if necessary, obviously call an ambulance if there was a. But there wasn't a serious problem. It was purely emotional and she was over it within minutes. It wasn't okay, there was nothing serious there, but you know, obviously I worried about. Until I heard she was all right. I'm, I'm worried I'm the father that, whose daughter's just, you know, collapsed. So, so I'm outside and then gradually they join us. And as I say, the, the two husbands come from my two daughters, hardly saying anything to me. And then I heard my son say to one of the, one of the, the sons in law, oh, I know what his issues are, but don't worry, they're nothing.

John Dehlin [00:09:06] Right? They're nothing.

Tom Phillips [00:09:07] Yeah, they're nothing that I take as a reference because I was quite open that he would. He looked at some files on my computer at the time and I had a file marked issues which were these kind of things, right? So he says, I know what his issues are and they are nothing. That was his comment. Then, as I say, the next night when we were preparing to go back to England, my wife was dutifully reading her Book of Mormon. And okay, I may have made a mistake in saying that. Why is she reading a book of fiction? And she immediately told me, that's it, she's not coming back with me, and told me off. So I'm admitting I wasn't the wisest person to make that comment, but as no one had bothered to discuss anything with me, so that's the kind of reaction I got. I came back on my own then from America, saw my other daughter, sat down with her for an hour and a half, two hours again to tell her the issue. She seemed very kind and didn't respond to anything, but just everything was all right. Then later on that day, when we were on the phone. She then said to me, dad, I just found it highly offensive, all the things that you said. And all I had done was, I guess, like, in my letter to Elder Holland, I'd quoted Scripture, what the Brethren had said about this or that, and what science or history says about those things. That's all I'd said. So that was the reaction from my family.

John Dehlin [00:10:45] So how has it played out since then?

Tom Phillips [00:10:47] Tragic, I assume, then, okay, like anyone else would say, well, hang on, give them a few months. I mean, it took me, let's face it, I can talk to myself and say, look, this has taken me months to get here. Give them time, but we've got to do it, you know, but we've got to have discussion to have that time. There was no discussion. It was always refusal. Just same as Elder Holland's response. My wife even said to me at one time, it would have been better for her if I had died rather than lose the faith. Now, that, I found, is a very hurtful statement also coupled with statements like, satan has got you. He's not going to get me, and things like that. Now, she's a sweet person, she's very kind, and, you know, thousands of people could get up in a court of law and say what a wonderful person she is. All I'm saying is they were the things said to me from a wife that we've had the second anointing together with. You know, we're married in the temple for eternity and everything else instead of, Tom, what are these issues can we discuss? And all I ever want to do is discuss them together, not be told, Satan's got me and she'd rather I died.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] And were you. This is going to sound stereotypical, but were you committing adultery? Were you.

Tom Phillips [00:12:02] No, no.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] Did you have a pornography problem? You know, were you secretly drinking or smoking?

Tom Phillips [00:12:08] No, no. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing at all.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] Were you reading your scriptures and praying?

Tom Phillips [00:12:14] Oh, and, you know, during that few months, I was not only praying, I was fasting specifically. And I spent at least two of the monthly fasts on the. Just on the Book of Abraham. Just on the Book of Abraham. I fasted to know whether that was true.

John Dehlin [00:12:31] So your righteousness actually increased, Your outward manifestations of righteousness increased?

Tom Phillips [00:12:36] Yeah. Well, yeah, again, when you say righteousness, I'm still as righteous as I've ever been. You know, there's this definition now, the Mormon definition of righteousness may be somewhat different to mine now.

John Dehlin [00:12:50] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:12:51] Because actually, I value honesty and integrity and other things, and I can then get upset about, you know, things like Joseph Smith, you know, well, whatever he did with a 14 year old girl and things like that and whatever promises he made to her. But you know, and all sorts of things you can get into, you know what? I don't know those things at all. So I feel I'm as righteous as any church member I know. Now if you want to. Do I ever take alcohol? Yes, I do. Does that make me unrighteous? No, it doesn't. Do I drink coffee? Yes, I do. Does that make me unrighteous? No, it doesn't.

John Dehlin [00:13:34] But at the time you were.

Tom Phillips [00:13:37] At the time I was doing nothing like that.

John Dehlin [00:13:38] You were not doing anything.

Tom Phillips [00:13:39] In fact, even after May, I still went out to church every week for another eight months, no, seven months. Mainly I was sitting in church and mainly for the sake of my children because they were in my grandchildren in the same ward. But again, and I was in there and even the stake president was aware I would make comments in Sunday school. But they were all strict comments that were in fact, they were supporting the teacher. If there was something being taught that I didn't agree with, I just wouldn't even comment. But anything I could latch onto and make a positive comment, I did. But do you know what? After seven months of that, I said, I've had enough of this, you know, I'm hearing such garbage being taught. I'm not doing this anymore. And so I stopped going. And even then, although my wife would go out to church, when she came back, she saw me dressed in my Sunday best. A white shirt, a tie, dress, trousers, you know, no tv, nothing. I respected her idea of a Sabbath day. So I did a lot of things like that for another couple of years or so. It wasn't just an instant, oh, I'm. And certainly it wasn't that I wanted to sin or anything like that. They're the rumors that people put about, but they're not true.

Seeking Help from Church Leaders

John Dehlin [00:14:56] Did you ever. So did you ever have that after talking to your family, did you ever try and talk to your stake president or, you know, did you ever have anyone from the church reach out to try and help you?

Tom Phillips [00:15:09] I had a meeting. I met with Elder Hillam and then his successor was Elder Lund. On Elder Lund came to my house on two occasions. In the meantime, I also had a visit from the bishop that my wife arranged that she thought he could come and sort me out.

John Dehlin [00:15:25] And what types, how were those conversations?

Tom Phillips [00:15:28] Well, the one with Elder Hillam, I told you what he said about the death before 6,000 years. He knew nothing about the Book of Abraham and knew nothing about DNA in the Lamanites. So it was only that one thing.

John Dehlin [00:15:41] He didn't know the. He didn't know the issues, or he

Tom Phillips [00:15:44] said he didn't know the issues. And then what he said to me is, tom, it's not worth losing your family over.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:15:51] So that was the meeting with Elder Hillam later on. Then the bishop, the wife got the bishop to come around to sort me out. So I then again, just on the one issue of the death before 6,000 years, he said he didn't read the Scripture that way. This man at one time had been the area director of CES for the. You know, for our area. He's had a lifetime career in ces, and he says he doesn't. Well, I was dumbfounded at that answer because I then went and dug out some institute and seminary manuals that all taught what I understood the doctrine to be. So I concluded from that he was either mistaken, which is kind of hard in his position, or he was lying to me. I then was visited by Elder Lund and this same bishop, Elder Lund did not know me too well. He didn't know me like Elder Hillamore. Elder Holland knew me. So he first of all came in with a load of dismissive comments to get rid of my issues and then realized they weren't going by. He actually admitted that he was a wordsmith. He then, after two hours, agreed. He then came back, he said, with some answers sometime later, for another two hours. He categorically said that the doctrine of the Church. And he said this in his position as area president, the doctrine of the Church is very. Because first of all, he said, well, what is the doctrine of the Church? He gave me all those sort of things because he didn't know me that well, as if the doctrine of the Church, it may be this, it may be that. But on his second visit, he said, categorically, the doctrine of the Church is there was no death of any kind on this planet prior to 6,000 years ago, and the scientists are wrong. He then left me a paper written by Dr. So and so about carbon dating, which I agreed to read. On the Book of Abraham. He trotted out the usual thing about there's another 15 rolls of parchment, et cetera, et cetera. That was the answer on that one. And the Lamanites, it was just a question of what is a Lamanite. He said, I tell people I'm from Salt Lake City, in fact, I'm from Bountiful, but they wouldn't understand what bountiful was. So I just am from Salt Lake and brushed it off in that kind of way. But the main issue, the one about before, you know, death, before 6,000 years, he was quite categoric that that was the doctrine of the church. And it's. And so again, that's a final decision to me, if that's the doctrine of the church. And then I'll go with the scientists on that one and say, no, you're wrong. The paper he left me, I did read because it said Dr. Summon. It did have a title at the beginning. It was Doctor. I assumed it was some kind of physicist or whatever. And I read the paper. I then found out, I went back, he was actually a medical doctor and he was one of the. He's a Christian who's a, you know, what is it? Young Earth scientist type person. Anyway, the main conclusion of his paper on carbon dating is that it's not that accurate. If it says 50,000 years old, it may only be 45,000 years old. So I don't know that even Elder Lund had read that paper because it didn't help the argument at all. In fact, it cemented it really.

John Dehlin [00:19:12] So now is this Gerald Lund, the author of. Author of the Work in the Glory books.

Tom Phillips [00:19:19] That's right. Who said he spent 10 years researching church history. His father was into church history, all sorts of things. That's why he had all these answers for me. That's why he could resolve.

John Dehlin [00:19:27] Did you get into polygamy and all that with him?

Tom Phillips [00:19:29] No, didn't even bother. I didn't even. Didn't even go there. I mean, we'd had two. Two meetings of two hours, just basically on these three issues. I didn't get to polygamy or anything.

John Dehlin [00:19:39] This Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham.

Tom Phillips [00:19:43] Well, the Book of the. The Death before. The only thing on the Book of Mormon I mentioned was that, well, two things. The Book of the death before 6,000 years and the Lamanites. The Laymanite situation, right. Being, you know, whatever we say, the progenitors of the American Indian or whatever you want to call it now, saying they're one of the. Or the principal ancestors, we used to say, of the American Indians. Now they're one of the ancestors or whatever. It's been changed to that. And the Book of Abraham, they were the only three issues on the table.

John Dehlin [00:20:14] Okay. Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:20:15] To go any further. I mean, fine. If those had been answered, yes, that's a different matter. Then do I just then close it or do we then go on to the others? I don't know because we never got that far. The three issues I've had so far have never been answered by any general authority, any BYU professor. And from whatever I've read of apologetics, I can't find any credible answer there.

John Dehlin [00:20:37] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:20:38] Other than changing the doctrine that I. Oh, no, the church has always been in favor of evolution. And then you get back into the arguments between Elder Talmage and President Smith at the beginning of the 20th century, where the first presidency statement categorically declared one thing. And Elder Talmage and I think Elder Roberts were of the opinion. No, that's not really true because you know what, geologists say this, right?

John Dehlin [00:21:07] Okay, so did they threaten to excommunicate you or did they tell you not to talk about things like how did you leave it with these people? They're like, they've got to be nervous that a former stake president, and I'm assuming that they knew you had gotten your calling, election, made sure, or at least maybe Elder Lund had. Did you get a sense that they were nervous?

Tom Phillips [00:21:29] Well, he was. As I say, Elder Lund is one of these guys that he's almost. He blends into the background. He's not the charismatic, normal general authority. And I can see why he just sits there writing books rather than being up front. He's not like the others, but he came across in almost a bullying type way, which was quite unusual, I thought at the time for him because it didn't seem to be his character. But nevertheless, it was almost that threat. Look, I can believe what I want, but just don't say or publish it, in which case they would excommunicate me. They were his words.

John Dehlin [00:22:11] That's what he said.

Tom Phillips [00:22:12] Yeah. That's been many years ago and he's been replaced probably two times since then. The last communication I had, because that area was then changed so that the headquarters were in Frankfurt and living here in Malta. I did get a message through from some missionaries here that the area president wanted to speak to me from Frankfurt. I don't know why he didn't just contact me because it's very easy to get that information off my family. They're not going to withhold it, especially for Narya. President wants to contact me. So then I then communicated with the mission president in Italy who comes over to Malta every six weeks and was very anxious, wanted to come and meet with me and help me in any way he could, etc. And I just wrote, I just told him, well, give this to, I can't even remember now the name of the Area president at the time. But, you know, if he wants to contact me, you know, you've got my email. Just tell me what it is you want to contact me about or phone me. I'm not going to phone him in Frankfurt. What am I going to do that for? I've been through two area presidents.

John Dehlin [00:23:25] So you didn't. You didn't talk to him?

Tom Phillips [00:23:27] I never talked to him and he never came back to me.

John Dehlin [00:23:29] I didn't come up.

Tom Phillips [00:23:30] I said, anything you want to do, even if you just say, I mean, like you did and this, this kind of thing, you outline what it was you want to talk to me about, fine, I can read that and we can have a conversation on the phone about it. That's no problem for me. But just a message to contact him. What about?

John Dehlin [00:23:45] Right. So what happened with your marriage and your children?

Tom Phillips [00:23:51] Let me just say I was going to say about him. And this applies to everything with the whole thing. I spent my life in the Church. One of the principles I was teaching was going after the lost sheep. We even had at one time in the UK a lost sheep program. I don't feel anyone in the church has come after this lost sheep. The attitude I've had is really summed up by Elder Hollands. I have raised what I think are genuine issues of concern. My son has said to someone else, they're of no consequence whatsoever. Never address them with me. Well, except on one occasion, he dressed some of them. Others in my family have refused. And just like Elder Holland, they refuse to discuss any of the issues and instead say nasty things about you. And when you look at that Elder Holland letter, he's expressing his love and admiration for me. But at the same time, there are insinuations in there which even if they're not apparent to outside people, he and I know exactly what he means.

John Dehlin [00:25:03] Right, so. So we'll get to that for sure.

Tom Phillips [00:25:05] Right, but.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] But you're saying that a few people have been willing to spend a few hours with you. What, what more would you want them to do? I mean, you've had a couple area presidents. You've talked to. You've talked to a bishop. What would you. What, what would, what would. Like. I'm in. I'm in conversations right now with my stake president about some of these things. And, you know, he wants to help me. And I don't know exactly what to say. Like, what type of help could they offer?

Tom Phillips [00:25:35] Well, I just, I guess, reverse it the other way. Supposing. And I've said this to each of My family, if my wife or one of my children had ever said to me they didn't think the church was true and they had some serious issues about it, I would at that moment drop everything. I would spend whatever time it was with them on their issues and I would feel confident that I would resolve their issues by explaining to them where they've gone wrong. If, however, I couldn't do that, I would join them. Now, again, as a stake President, I already dealt with apostates. What did I do? I didn't just invite them to a two hour meeting and lecture them. I spent six months and I looked at the material they were on about to try and see what was going on here and where they might be wrong. I didn't just categorically. Now remember, I've had two general authorities. You say, okay, I had two general authorities. They both gave me opposite answers. One tells me there's been death on this planet for billions of years. The other one tells me it's church doctrine that that wasn't so and the scientists are wrong. Now which area president am I supposed to believe on that one? You know, no one came kindly and lovingly and say, yes, look, hang on, I'll give out. Elder Hillemis due one time again. I was in, I think Arizona and it was roundabout conference time. He was over October conference and he phoned me and said he just met with some people at BYU and he mentioned the name of a dean. Now, I don't know if it was Dean of BYU or Dean of Religious Studies. I'm not sure what it was and I can't recall the exact name, but he said he will put the resources of BYU to you to resolve your issues. And as an example, he sent me a paper from Michael Rhodes. Well, I read that paper and I thought if this is the kind of help they're offering, I don't need it because it's just a bunch of. Well, I'm talking about a paper that says yes, this is not what it says it is. Joseph Smith didn't translate it, but maybe the word translate means something else. Therefore maybe it was a catalyst for him to get the original document, blah, blah, blah. Okay, look into the Book of Abraham. In the Book of Abraham is the only place I think we have in LDS scripture, not the Bible about the curse of Cain. Look at the Book of Abraham and tell me how Egypt was discovered. Apparently it was after the flood when there was dry land there. Egyptus, one of her sons, became the first pharaoh of Egypt. Now John, you go along I don't know about byu, but any other university and find their experts on Egyptology, they'll say, nonsense, there were pharaohs before this supposed flood of four and a half thousand years ago. And by the way, if there were such a flood, how come we've got the pyramids still today that predate that and all sorts of things? So you can't have it that

John Dehlin [00:28:38] what

Tom Phillips [00:28:38] was I faced with? My so called answers are the plain and precious truths of the Gospel. I understood the Book of Mormon was for our day and age, the Doctrine and Covenant. Certainly it wasn't written in some ancient language that we don't understand or don't comprehend anymore. It was today's language and now suddenly death doesn't mean death. Translate doesn't mean translate. And Lamanite doesn't mean Lamanite.

John Dehlin [00:29:06] And steel doesn't mean steel. And horse doesn't mean horse.

Tom Phillips [00:29:09] Oh yeah, okay, John, you're well on, you're ahead of me there, but all of that. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:16] All of a sudden words become meaningless.

Tom Phillips [00:29:18] My time discussing those things with those people.

John Dehlin [00:29:20] If words can mean, if words can mean anything, then they really don't mean anything. Right?

Tom Phillips [00:29:26] Yeah. And I'm not sure what kind of a God we're worshiping that gives us that kind of confusion because it was supposed to be simple to understand and act.

John Dehlin [00:29:36] But so in effect, the original question was, what do you expect people to do to reach out to the lost sheep? What you're really saying is either study this stuff and conclude that it's false like I have, or prove to me that it's true.

Tom Phillips [00:29:57] I'm not even talking about proof here, John. I'm reversing those two orders as well. I'm saying going after the lost sheep is you go after the one that supposedly lost, you find them, you find out, first of all, I used to go out after people and first of all, why aren't you going to church? What is your issue now? Let's address this issue. Not. Oh, so they're your issues. Oh, don't worry about those.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] Or you're a bad person for asking them, but a bad person?

Tom Phillips [00:30:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:25] How could they possibly address these issues? How could anybody, what type of answer could they give you that would satisfy you now?

Tom Phillips [00:30:36] Yeah, it's hard to imagine now at the time. Well, sorry, when I say no at any time, any credible answer. Okay. As far as death before, the answer to that would have to be, you know what, that was wrong in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith got something wrong when he was translating It. It shouldn't have said that. That maybe is an explanation. I mean, obviously it casts doubt on what. I mean, it's the same thing now that they're saying about when a pro. About quoting a prophet. Well, was he speaking as a prophet? Was he speaking as a man? Well, when do I know this? You know, I've grown up and when I joined the church, it was David O. McKay just before he died. How many prophets have I been through? Now, we're disagree that. We certainly disagree with Joseph Fielding Smith because all of Mormon doctrine was based on Joseph Fielding Smith. Right? It wasn't Bruce Armor Conkey. Okay. He was quoting what Joseph Fielding Smith said all the time, right?

John Dehlin [00:31:32] That's right.

Tom Phillips [00:31:32] Apparently that's all. Most of that is untrue. Now, according. And some. President McKay and others thought it was untrue at the time. So who is it that I'm supposed to listen to? President Benson? President Hunter? President Hinckley. President Hinckley. I've got quotes from him where he says the Lamanites are all of the North American Indians. Now, I'm pretty sure if he were ever asked that question, if he had been asked that question on Larry King or 60 Minutes, he would have denied that. Where do we go from here? Do you know? I've got the second anointing. The whole thing about the church. One of my favorite sections was section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. And then they shall be God's. This is wonderful. This is a gospel where us mere mortals, if we live in the right way and do all the things expected of us, eventually become like our heavenly Father and as gods. And then President Hinckley says, I don't know. I don't know. That we teach that. He knows perfectly well because he then spoke at a priesthood meeting after he said, of course I know the doctrine of the church. Now, what's going on here? Why does a prophet of God tell lies? Well, or misinform people? I don't know what you want to call it. To me, a lie is something that isn't true. Now, I realize there's two types of that. I could say something to you right now that's untrue. But I did it. I thought it was true. You know what I did? I made a mistake and I can be corrected on that. On the other hand, if I know something is definitely false and I say it, that's a lie. And I'm sorry. I'll call Elder Holland a lion. Now, he. I had great respect for him. But you Know now.

John Dehlin [00:33:15] Okay, before we get to that, we are going to get to that. So. Well, basically what you're saying is that the only way that they could reach out to you is the one is to disbelieve their beliefs because that's the rub. That's the Bible.

Tom Phillips [00:33:32] I don't expect them to do anything. All I'm saying is when I mentioned the lost sheep, I'm saying that gets preached all the time in the church and I was a leader that preached that as well. Certainly when it came to my case and certain other people I know that's rubbish. There is no going after the lost sheep. And you know why? I think part of the message is and I think my family were given that. I don't know this for sure so I could be in, if you like, in my words, lying now. I don't know. I suspect that Elder Hillam or whoever it was at the time contacted my family and just said don't even. Just stay away because you'll get polluted. I've had it actually referred in that way by someone recently. I'm not going that route because I don't want to get polluted by it and I E by inference end up like you. That was said to me by one of my family just recently when I asked them just to look at the issues, take some time and then come back to me. No, I'm not even going to go there. That's not going after the lost sheep. Sorry John, that's not doing it.

John Dehlin [00:34:35] Right. So tell me what happened with your wife, with your marriage and with your children?

Impact on Marriage and Family Relationships

Tom Phillips [00:34:44] I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:34:45] Well, no, I mean are you married? Are you still married?

Tom Phillips [00:34:49] I have been separated for six years from my wife. I live in Malta, she lives in the uk. Whether was that.

John Dehlin [00:34:57] Was that over? Was that her idea? Was that yours?

Tom Phillips [00:35:01] It was both. At different times. There were, I mean during, see from 2004 to 2006, that's two years I spent trying to make this things work. Often being. And. And most of the time it worked perfectly but whenever something came up. I'll tell you what happened one time just. It was unfortunate. I'll just give you an example. My wife and I had had a wonderful weekend away together and we were back at home and she was just preparing some meal and I was watching the news on the TV again. I made the mistake that it came on about Warren Jeffs being on the most wanted list at the time that was. This is a number of years ago and I happen to comment. Well look, Warren Jeffs is on the news. He claims he's only doing what Joseph Smith did. Now, my wife's immediate reaction to that is, get out. No discussion. Just get out now. Okay. There's other times. Ultimately, I've chosen to stay. Well, I've tried. I've gone back on various occasions. But as long as I toe the line, say nothing and accept all the garbage that goes on, live in a home with the temple and Joseph Smith and everything else all around us, that's okay. And have all of our Mormon friends in saying whatever they are and talking about their sons on missions or the children going to EFY or whatever's going on, or the youth camp, that's okay. But I never can have someone in my home that's not of the, you know, that I could discuss openly some politics or whatever with. I found that unbearable. Now, no doubt my wife could say she finds life with me, whatever, but the only issue is the Church. That is the only issue that we had in our marriage. And the fact that she refuses to discuss anything and treats me on occasions as if I am the lowest of the low because I don't have the faith that she has.

John Dehlin [00:36:59] How does it feel to have the Church separated you from your wife?

Tom Phillips [00:37:03] Well, let's put it this way. If at the time my wife had come with me, I'd probably have done nothing more about the church. Her and I would have just lived out our lives in retirement, happily together. But having separated me from them, I'm actually. Now, you see, I was never offended. I didn't leave the Church because I was offended by anyone. I've now been offended. Elder Holland has offended me. A number of people offended me. They didn't offend me when I was a member of the church, but since I've left, they've offended me and they've offended me publicly.

John Dehlin [00:37:33] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:37:33] He has addressed. Well, I'm saying I may take this personally. He's addressed me and thousands of other people in his 2009 talk, saying we are foolish and misled. Well, I just answered. I said to him, well, in what way am I foolish? And who has misled me? No answer. Why am I foolish and misled? That's a defamation of my character, let alone anything else that's said about crawling over and under and all the rest of it.

John Dehlin [00:38:01] So you've never had this heart to heart with your wife where you said, sweetheart, please, you know me. You look her in the eye and say, you know me. I love you. I'm a good man. Please don't throw our marriage away. Please don't throw our family away. At least look into this stuff and consider what I've been saying because I'm an honorable good man and I deserve that much respect. Have you not had that conversation with her?

Tom Phillips [00:38:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:38:37] And what did she say?

Tom Phillips [00:38:39] Let me. Yeah. John, I'm now I'm not feeling too comfortable in getting. Not from my own point of view. I'm happy to share with you anything but I'm now bringing into something someone that's not party to all of this.

John Dehlin [00:38:50] Okay. Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:38:51] And I don't think it's really. I probably said more than I should have. Anyway, let me just say encapsulating all that because it takes into account my wife and my children. 2004 I told them no discussion whatsoever. In 2008 out of sheer frustration of hearing nothing or not being able to do anything but me visiting them and being polite and all the rest of the thing. I then wrote an email to them to try and take away. You talk about the face to face is a difficult thing to do because everyone bristles. I mean what you just said is wonderful and it isn't a perfect world but I just start mentioning these issues to my wife and it's a problem for her and then I get angry. I'll admit I then get angry because of the non response. So that's no good. So what I did, I wrote a very careful email which I showed to other people which they thought was very polite and everything else I basically wrote to my wife and my children saying look, it's now four years since I told you we've had no discussion on it. I think we ought to in order for a healthy family relationship. Now what I propose a two step method. First of all we ought to at least agree or disagree on certain facts. Once we know what we agree on then we can go from there to what conclusions we may have. So I wrote them this email and I wrote down 19 specific facts that came from they were either church sources or textbooks each one of them and I just asked them to take 30 minutes. Probably they don't even need 30 minutes just because most of them they would readily just agree with. And I said just, just let me know if you disagree with any of them and if you do, just let me know the reason why. So it could have been a simple email back saying yes, I agree with everything or no I disagree with number what and what you know, number 14 and number 18 for these reasons in all but one I just got rat back from them. Similar thing from Holland, not one answer and a diatribe of other abuse that was hurled at me.

John Dehlin [00:40:58] Do you still have a copy of that email?

Tom Phillips [00:41:01] Yeah, the one that I sent to them. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] Okay. I mean, I'd be curious to see what those issues are. We could, but.

Tom Phillips [00:41:08] Well, they were simple questions. And what were some of the questions like? Just give me some of the questions. Okay, I'll give you an answer. Joseph claimed to translate the Chandler Papyri as the Book of Abraham, blah, blah, blah. And I quote the source of that. All Egyptologists, LDs and non LDs. Because I think even the apologetics in BYU accept that the translation isn't as Joseph said it. You know. Okay, I'll give some other reason. Another one I wrote down, Joseph Smith and Essentials in Church History states that the Nauvoo Expositor Press was destroyed because it printed lies about Joseph Smith. In fact, Joseph Smith told the city council the newspaper was all lies. Now, I've since then read the Nauvoo Expositor. It said the Nauvoo Expositor statements about Joseph Smith were in fact true. He had multiple wives and was teaching the doctrine of plural marriage to others. He had been ordained a king and was planning a theocracy. Those things were true, but it was destroyed according to church history. So it was statements like that, the obvious one about Adam and Eve and things like that, the flood. I put in statements like that, what the Church doctrine was and what the Church textbook says. So I'm saying, which one do you agree with? Now, if they said right, I agree with the Church. And the school textbook is wrong. At least I'd know where they stood on that. But if they say no, the Church, the textbook is right and there's a question mark about the Church, that's all I was seeking to find. There were some things there that were conflicting. And what was they're from credible. So none of these are from anti. See this thing about anti Mormon? I haven't used any anti Mormon sources on anything. I don't even quite know.

John Dehlin [00:42:51] It's the Church's own sources.

Tom Phillips [00:42:52] What that means.

John Dehlin [00:42:52] Yeah, it's the Church's own sources.

Tom Phillips [00:42:53] The Church's own sources.

John Dehlin [00:42:55] So what was your children and wife's response again? It was just diatribes.

Tom Phillips [00:43:00] Yes. Even two years later I asked, I followed up by saying, you still haven't answered me. And I got even worse diatribes.

John Dehlin [00:43:06] Okay, so here's a question. You raised these children, you taught them integrity and morality and honesty.

Tom Phillips [00:43:17] Actually, John, I've got a. Sorry. Because of the way this is going. Do you know what? Even eight years ago, I was trying. When I posted anonymously, it was to protect my children. Now I'm not so bothered about protecting. But you know what? I'm still not going to say things over the air podcast about them. I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [00:43:34] Okay, okay, that's fine. That's fine.

Tom Phillips [00:43:35] That's fine. You're right. I love my children to bits. There's no question about that. I hate. What I hate is what the church has done to them. And I've been a party to.

John Dehlin [00:43:43] Well, that's my question.

Tom Phillips [00:43:44] Is whatever brainwashed, They've. They've been brainwashed. Now, it's a very simple thing as far as I'm concerned. As far as Elder Hollands was concerned. This is a sudden. I put two. It's a sudden death challenge. Now, either I'm wrong, in which case it can. You know what? I want to be proven wrong. Tell me. Show me how I'm wrong.

John Dehlin [00:44:01] Okay, so let's talk.

Tom Phillips [00:44:02] These textbooks are wrong.

John Dehlin [00:44:04] Let's talk about your letter. Let's talk about your letter.

Tom Phillips [00:44:06] If not, stop the brainwashing. Stop telling my little grandchildren, follow the prophet when the prophet is telling them things that are false. I don't want that in my life, so I don't want it in their lives. I want to protect them. Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear. But with Jo.

Tom Phillips Writes to Jeffrey R. Holland

Part 4 of 5 · Ep. 538

Tom Phillips [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. so it's now 2012. So that's eight years after, you know, you first stopped believing in the church, right?

Tom Phillips [00:00:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] So you wrote a letter to Elder Holland. When did you write the letter?

Tom Phillips [00:00:42] I did that recently. And again, that was the last ditch attempt because I can't ask my family anymore. So what I did, I wrote to Elder Holland and I copied it to my family. So what I hoped here we'd take some of the emotion out of it and look at it more objectively. Here's the father or husband writing to an apostle. Now let's see how the apostle responds and let's observe this. That's what I was hoping for.

John Dehlin [00:01:08] And when did you write the letter?

Tom Phillips [00:01:10] I think it was in May of 2012. 12. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:15] So last month. So you wrote a letter, and what was the basic. If you could give a summary. What did you do in the letter?

Tom Phillips [00:01:22] Okay. I reminded Elder Holland of our personal relationship, which obviously he hadn't forgotten anyway, and how much we thought of my family and everything. And that I had this issue with my family, that they obviously were following him and his teachings and I was not. I wasn't. And I wanted him to resolve things with us. I said, okay, taking his talk in 2009, I took from that talk what evidence he was giving for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. And I offered my rebuttal of those evidences.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] And I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna say that the way you open the letter is really powerful

Tom Phillips [00:02:00] because you said, oh, you've read it.

John Dehlin [00:02:03] I've just got it right here. You said, after you set me apart as Stake President.

Tom Phillips [00:02:07] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] You said, tom, we are now sealed. Which is. Which is something that I can totally see Elder Holland saying.

Tom Phillips [00:02:13] Yeah, he said that.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] Yeah. And. And, and so you're basically saying, this is my heart, this is my experience, these are my struggles. And if we're sealed, please, please help me understand these issues. That's it.

Tom Phillips [00:02:30] That's it.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] And then you kind of refer to his talk on the Book of Mormon and his challenge about that. Right. And then you say, all right, if the Book of Mormon. If only a fool would stop believing the Book of Mormon. If only you Know if the Book of Mormon is so self evidently true that you'd have to crawl above it or under it or around it to stop believing in it. Then you sort of ask him a series of questions. And these questions were evidences in your mind that the Book of Mormon was a problem. And these are the issues that we've covered on Mormon stories quite a bit from the age of the earth to anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, the

Tom Phillips [00:03:17] horses and everything, the fall of Adam,

John Dehlin [00:03:20] DNA in the Book of Mormon archeology,

Tom Phillips [00:03:22] nothing new there at all. Nothing new at all.

John Dehlin [00:03:23] Book of Abraham, change of skin color. And these are things that we've covered really extensively on Mormon stories. And then what did you want? What did you ask him for?

Tom Phillips [00:03:39] Well, I think I referred to his talk. First of all, he made claims in his talk. He said it was true because Joseph would not have died. Paraphrasing here, he said something along the lines of Joseph and Hyrum gave their lives for the book. Rather than deny the Book of Mormon, they were willing to go to their deaths. That is patently untrue. Anyway, he could rebutton me if I say it's patent yantry, because I think I gave him some things there. But his other statement that for 179 years this has never been disproven. Well, I'm just giving some evidence. This is without going into authorship and anything. Here's some things here that actually disprove the Book of Mormon. He can't just say it's been, it's not been disproved because no one's answered that. As you say, the horses become tapears or whatever. Everything changes. The chariots, what are the chariots now? Everything changes. And apparently they weren't throughout. They weren't in Hill Cumorah at all. Or there's another Hill Cumorah somewhere else.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] Or Lamanites. They're no longer Lamanites.

Tom Phillips [00:04:40] Now I've heard these from the apology. I want to hear this from an apostle. And this is a man, you see, he's apart from. He's a man that I'm sealed to. Apparently we're sealed together. Right, Right. So I feel he owes me on something here.

John Dehlin [00:04:56] That's got to mean something, right?

Tom Phillips [00:04:57] It's going to mean something. We're sealed together. You know, I've got love and respect for him. I think he had love and respect for me at one time. Now what I'm saying is. No, he's the one that's making these claims that this is absolutely true. And okay, the apologists say these other things and we can argue with that. I mean, I listened a bit to when you had Simon Sotherton and the rubbish they came out with on DNA which forced him to write a book to show that they were wrong on these things. So this is the thing. The apologists, for some, whatever. And I don't know where their motivation comes from, but they certainly. I won't use the word lie, but they certainly bend things around so that you. It's just. I don't know what happens. Anyway, I. I want to hear from an apostle who's. First of all, he admits he's an expert on the Book of Mormon. His master's degree at BYU was on the Book of Mormon. That's when he was 25 years old. He then did a master's and a doctorate at Yale. Based on what? American Studies and the faith of Mark Twain. Stroke Samuel Clemens. This is a man that's highly intelligent, knows literature, ought to know American history because he's, you know, he did a PhD in American Studies. Now maybe that means something different, I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:06:15] From Yale.

Tom Phillips [00:06:16] From Yale. Oh, yeah. Now this is from Yale. This is something I find highly, you know, I mentioned an Oxford or Cambridge. Well, you mention a Yale or Harvard and, you know, or an MIT or Stanford or whatever. And you know, we listen to those sorts of things.

John Dehlin [00:06:29] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:06:30] If they thought he was good enough to give him a PhD, this man must know his stuff. Right? And not only that, so that's. Academically, he should know these things. Now, as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, he should know even more.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:06:44] If I can't get answers from him, there's no one I can get answers from.

John Dehlin [00:06:48] So what was his answer?

Tom Phillips [00:06:49] Even getting answers? His answer was nothing. He didn't address one issue.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] So let's go through what his response was. Okay, you have a letter. Did he write you just an email or did he send you a handwritten letter?

Tom Phillips [00:07:02] No, he wrote me an email.

John Dehlin [00:07:04] Okay, so you have an email from

Tom Phillips [00:07:06] Elder Holland because I don't have it on. Right.

John Dehlin [00:07:09] Oh, okay. Okay. Just a second. Let me get it. Let me get it.

Tom Phillips [00:07:12] Sorry about that.

John Dehlin [00:07:13] Okay, say that again.

Tom Phillips [00:07:16] Sorry. You won't have the full email from him because he had the corporate warning at the bottom about not sharing the email. I didn't copy it to anyone else. What I did, though, is I did a response to his email and quoted certain sections of it in my response

John Dehlin [00:07:34] because there was a. There's a copyright thing there.

Tom Phillips [00:07:36] And, well, I'm not sure. I've had legal advice that goes both ways. I don't think that actually, I think I could just show the whole thing. And there's lots of people want to see the whole thing. I mean, partly, there's some personal things in there about Elder Holland's wife, which I don't think I do want to show to people. And I think he was wrong for even mentioning her. Right. Secondly. But there's a parts of it which actually show his actual presence of mind at the time which I think would be of interest to people. But I haven't shared that either.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] So if it's okay, what if I read.

Tom Phillips [00:08:09] You can certainly read whatever I.

John Dehlin [00:08:11] What if I read what he. What he responded, and then you can respond to little segments of it.

Tom Phillips [00:08:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:08:17] So the first thing he wrote was, tom, I love you, but you absolutely break my heart. I have seldom met anyone during my years in England unless it was your son, Alan. And he's the stake president.

Tom Phillips [00:08:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:28] In whom I saw greater potential. You have a remarkable family. And that, of course, only adds to the immense pain I feel. Now, that's a sweet. That's a sweet beginning. Right?

Tom Phillips [00:08:40] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:08:41] Okay. Then he says, oh, my Tom, I weep over you and where you now find yourself. Don't you realize that I have been reading stuff like you sent since I was 25 years old? But I am sad to say, never in all those years with such disappointment. What's your response to that?

Tom Phillips [00:09:00] Well, if he has seen those things. Well, first of all, when he was 25, there were not DNA studies for a start.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] Right. But I mean, what he's basically saying

Tom Phillips [00:09:12] is, but in substance, those things were there. Now, if he knew about Those at age 25, then presumably he answered those things satisfactory for himself. So all he has to do is give me those answers. Why has he then spent another almost 50 years proclaiming the truth of it? But he's not given us any indication of how he addressed those issues. He's never even mentioned those issues.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] What if he just says, the spirit, it's the Holy Ghost. It's just a feeling. It's different type of truth. It's a type of truth that comes through the spirit and through a different layer of understanding that the intellect will just never be able to comprehend.

Tom Phillips [00:09:51] Okay. Then I would say to you, I know that there are men, and I think they were all men that flew aircraft into the Twin Towers and killed thousands of people. Their motivation, we understand, was the Quran and their feeling that they were doing Allah's work and they were going to go straight to heaven as their reward. That's why they were willing to die. Now then, I can quote you a guy here I know who's a Christian who used to be an alcoholic and he found Jesus. The spirit has told him and he's had that spiritual witness. But you know what he tells me about Mormons? They're not even Christians. And the same God that converted him from his alcoholism to Christianity says that Mormons are not true and the Book of Mormon is not true. Now, so if Elder Holland wants to come up with this, the spirit has told me, I've told you I've had many spiritual experiences. And that was part of my months of coming out is how do I handle this? Now, I had a spiritual witness that the Book of Mormon was true. Right now, all I have seen from Elder Holland when he talks about the spirit is emotion. Emotion. And you'll understand that, John.

John Dehlin [00:11:11] No, but he'll say. He'll say it's not emotion. The spirit is not emotion. It's something more powerful.

Tom Phillips [00:11:18] And I said the same thing. I've been up and I've spoken in conferences and things and even related my conversion story and said, look, if that were pure emotion, I would have got over it by now. So it is the spirit. It's the indelible mark of the spirit. I've been through all of that conversation. But you answer this. I can get at least a thousand people all to tell you about their spiritual experiences that they've had, and every one of them conflicts with the other one. Now, what we're trying to say here is then, oh, but it's Elder Holland. And this is the superiority of Mormonism. We're the ones that have the correct spirit. The rest of them are misguided. By whom? Satan or someone else. That's a deceiver. Well, okay, come out and say that. Elder Holland, say that I've been deceived by Satan, if that's what you think. And why have I done that? What sins have I committed that has caused Satan to enter my life at a time when I'm about to go on a mission? Okay, maybe that's his way of stopping me for going on a mission. Maybe. No, Elder Holland, you said you know the knew these issues at 25, so at least address one or two of them to me.

John Dehlin [00:12:21] So let's go. Let's go on.

Tom Phillips [00:12:23] We're not even, right?

John Dehlin [00:12:24] So go ahead. Go ahead. Why?

Tom Phillips [00:12:26] Not even what I was going to. Even when I challenge him about why Joseph and Hyrum died they died because they destroyed a printing press. They died because Joseph was expecting the Nauvoo militia to come and rescue him. He had a gun on him. All these stories that I was told about martyrdom. No, it's not a martyr. He died because he was doing that. And other people knew he was taking other wives. They also knew he was after young girls. Why was Joseph Smith tarred and feathered? I was told he was such a righteous man in taken out and tarred and feathered one night and the next day he preached on forgiveness. No, apparently he was tarred and feathered because he'd gone after some other girl. And actually they weren't going to tar and feather him. Now, I don't know how true this is. According to some sources, there was a doctor there that was going to perform a castration on him. But they didn't do that. The tarring and feathering was a lesser punishment for him. Now, I never knew all this in church history, and I'll just go back to one item which shows church history is false. The thing about the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor, it says quite clearly in church history it was done because the what's his name, William Law had told lies about Joseph Smith and therefore it had to be destroyed. It did not tell. From my reading, it didn't tell one lie. It talked about his polygamy or his plural marriage, however one wants to term it. The fact that he had more than one wife, the fact that he was teaching other brethren to take more wives, the fact that he was ordained a king. I've just read out I was ordained a king. Of course Joseph Smith was ordained a king. Did he not have the second anointing? Of course he did. He was also ordained a king by the council of the 50. He was setting up a government. He was running for US President and trying to set up a theocracy. They're the reasons he was killed. Not because he wouldn't give up his faith or the Book of Mormon. Book of Mormon wasn't even mentioned. So that's what I called him on. And he doesn't respond even to that.

John Dehlin [00:14:27] Okay, so let's go on and see what he says. So he says, tom, the Book of Mormon is true. It was delivered by and translated through the gift and power of God. Quick response to that. I don't know how you really respond to that.

Tom Phillips [00:14:43] Well, the Quran was delivered by Gabriel. That's the response to that. That's what a Muslim. That's what a billion Muslim. Billion and A half Muslims believe the Quran was delivered to Muhammad by Gabriel. Then I can find all sorts of other scriptures from to other traditions that will say the same thing. So that doesn't say it. That's his claim that that happened. Now again, what I'll say to you is if that happened, then whatever's in that Book of Mormon will be true. That's the test. See all this thing about, well, it was through the power of God or whatever, that's fine. You know, they're the sort of things you can neither prove nor disprove. You know, we get into the realms of things that have to rely on people's beliefs or whatever or the position they take. But the book itself is what we're looking at. Now, that book and all the things you've rattled off about horses and I mean, I'm even going into those things, but I'm just saying about the death before 6,000 years, those kind of things are all untrue. The Tower of Babel, the black skin, the Flood, all of these things are not true. They're in God's. The book that was delivered by the power of God. I don't get it. Explain to me why God would give us a book of mythology as opposed to all the other books of mythology and say this one is the true one. Why would he do that when in

John Dehlin [00:16:03] reality what's taught in it is not very distinct from what we already have elsewhere.

Tom Phillips [00:16:08] There's nothing. Is there anything unique in there?

John Dehlin [00:16:10] Well, I guess apologists would say there's a couple things. Things. But maybe so. So he says in here, alongside this statement that I tell you, the one

Tom Phillips [00:16:19] thing I know of that's unique in there is the death before 6,000 years. Because that's not even in the Bible.

John Dehlin [00:16:25] Right, right, right.

Tom Phillips [00:16:26] Because it talks about periods of creation.

John Dehlin [00:16:28] Anyway, it also says polygamy is not a good thing.

Tom Phillips [00:16:32] All of those. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] So. So. So after he makes the statement that the Book of Mormon is true, he says alongside this statement, you can post on the bulletin board my general conference talk on the subject. Now, why is he referring to a bulletin board and you posting things?

Tom Phillips [00:16:48] Did you reference in my letter to him? I said. And this is why. Yeah. I said to him, elder Holland, you have made public statements, you know, on the Internet, in church magazines, in Books, on YouTube. It's been broadcast through General Commons. You've made statements, and my family hear those statements. You made it publicly to all sorts of people and called the likes of me foolish and misled because you have done that. I am going to post this on a bulletin board and any response you give me will be posted in the same way. That is, you've made it public. I'm going to make it public.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] Which. Which makes it all that more incredible that he responded. Right?

Tom Phillips [00:17:28] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:17:29] Because he knew that. So he basically gave you permission to discuss what we're discussing now.

Tom Phillips [00:17:35] He knew I was going to do

John Dehlin [00:17:36] that and he still responded. So these were the questions he asked you. Number one, have you ever had a spiritual experience in your entire life?

Tom Phillips [00:17:47] Thousands.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:17:48] I think I responded to that, didn't I?

John Dehlin [00:17:51] Are you having any in recent days or weeks or months?

Tom Phillips [00:17:55] Every day. Even by the hour? Not so sure in the last three hours. But what do you think he was enjoyable.

John Dehlin [00:18:02] Where do you think he was getting by that question? Where do you think he was getting at?

Tom Phillips [00:18:07] He's trying to make out, well, first of all, the fact, have I ever had one in my life? He's now trying to. The usual tactic is, do you know what? I was never converted in the first place. I never had a testimony of the church.

John Dehlin [00:18:19] If that's true, if that's true, you should have never gotten the second anointing.

Tom Phillips [00:18:23] Well, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] Because surely God wouldn't allow his leaders to be deceived about who's worthy of a calling an election made sure.

Tom Phillips [00:18:32] Right, Right. Hey, now, one thing that's relevant. Just me. Let me add in on the second anointing. After the second anointing, Elder Holland, Elder Hillam called me into his office one day and said, tom, I'd like you to nominate two more couples for their second anointing. I was flabbergasted. I actually went away and told my wife, I actually fast. I said, do you need it immediately? He said, well, in a few days. I said, because actually I want time to fast and pray about this. I took that as a very serious responsibility if I'm going to nominate people for this kind of ordinance. Wow. So I went away and I thought I went through countless lists of people I knew and obviously went through the doctrine covenant, section 8 and 9, method of studying things out in your mind, praying about it and all the rest of it. So I fast and prayed and I went back with two names. So again, if what Elder Holland's saying, I was never converted. What again, why are they asking me to nominate? People have their second anointing. They know I had spiritual experiences. That's as much. And I will say this. I've had spiritual experiences. I am convinced now I've had them as equal to Anyone in the church?

Elder Holland's Response and Correspondence

John Dehlin [00:19:48] Sure. And you say you're still having them?

Tom Phillips [00:19:53] I'm still having spiritual experiences, yes.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] Okay, we can talk about that later. That's probably its own topic. So then he goes on to say, no discussion. So you think that he was trying to either say that you were never converted or what I read this to be saying is that he's expecting you to say you're no longer having spiritual experiences. Now, isn't that a testimony that you've lost a spirit?

Tom Phillips [00:20:16] Exactly. It gets back to what my wife said. Satan's got you. He's not going to get me. So Elder Holland's been quite obvious in that who's Ms. He won't say. When I ask him who's misled me, the answer is obvious. It's Satan has misled me. I've lost the spirit, and therefore I am listening to the adversary. That's the answer. That's a simple, honest answer to it.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] Right, right.

Tom Phillips [00:20:36] We'll say that Elder Holland say that in writing, that that's what you're saying. Don't hide behind and try and suggest things. And innuendo and insinuations.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] So then he goes on to say, no discussion of the Book of Mormon or the church or the Gospel of Jesus Christ has any ultimate meaning at all without that experience.

Tom Phillips [00:20:56] Which again, is Right. A lot of these actually have been commented on the bulletin board. People far brighter than me have made all sorts of comments on these.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] Okay. Then he goes on to say, how does your. I'll just read these quickly. How does your family feel about your views?

Tom Phillips [00:21:10] Again, same as him.

John Dehlin [00:21:12] Right. Are those views helping them? So he's going to where Elder Lund went or Elder Hillam. I forget who it was. Basically with the pragmatic view of gonna lose your family.

Tom Phillips [00:21:25] Do you know, what he doesn't realize is, at least in one or two Kate's situations, my family are much worse off now than they were eight years ago. Much worse. So it's not that their lives have been blessed and mine's been damaged. In fact, the opposite would be true. I'd say I'm the happiest person in my family alive today and they're.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] They're struggling.

Tom Phillips [00:21:45] That's subjective. That's not what they say. And that's not what they would like to think. They would like to think that I'm unhappy and I'm this angry, anti Mormon. No, I've written a letter. You know, I don't care at the end of the day, personally, I don't care about Mormonism I do care about my grandchildren being brought up and not told the truth about things or the lies they're told about their grandfather.

John Dehlin [00:22:06] Certainly you miss being close to your children, right?

Tom Phillips [00:22:09] Yeah. That closeness, we can do things together and we can do all sorts of things there, but we had a closeness that was priceless. Now, that closeness, they obviously can't feel comfortable in talking to me about the church, even though I'd welcome that. But they probably feel that they can't because they don't want, they think, upset me. On the other hand, I can't say anything to them about it. So we can have a relationship. And probably. You know what? The relationship that I have with my family is probably as good as 80 or 90% of families have in the world. It's just not as good as it was. So you had an exceptional relationship.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] You still see your kids and grandkids?

Tom Phillips [00:22:48] I see them from time to time, yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:50] Okay, good. Okay. So he asks, are those views helping them? And he says, so they don't share

Tom Phillips [00:22:57] my views, I think so. We can't say whether they would help them. I mean, I've got a grandson on a mission right now. I don't know if you know about our English education system, but he got five A levels at A plus. He should be at Oxford University now or whatever he chose. No, he's on a mission in France. He should be at university doing what he wanted to do. But no, his parents say he's chosen. No, he was brainwashed. You know, bright as he is, he's out. In my mind, he's out there spreading untruths and has never been allowed that conversation with his grandfather. You know, it's interesting because I've had conversations with him in the past on politics and all sorts of things. And he's bright. And in almost every respect, the things that we've discussed, we've agreed upon, but we've never been able to talk about the Church. So I think his life is actually worse. And it will be worse because he will be that far behind again with our system, because he goes on a mission at night. Normally we would go to university. 18. We don't have the system like in the US where you go for a year, then do your mission.

John Dehlin [00:24:06] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:24:07] It actually puts him two or three years behind any university experience.

John Dehlin [00:24:13] Then Elder Holland goes on to say, are people happier, prospering more, doing better, following your lead? So this, again, is a very pragmatic. What are the fruits of your apostasy, basically?

Tom Phillips [00:24:26] Well, I see that as a personal Insult. First of all, first of all, the people that I associate with nowadays are in the main not Mormons anyway. And as far as I know, all of my friends, all of the acquaintances I have like me very much, love me and do I. They seem to want more and more of my company and they. I seem to inspire them and help them and they seem to live better lives and I also learn from them. Also. I'm not saying it's just a one way street, but I don't know of anyone that is in any way disadvantaged or unhappy because of an association with me. All I know of is my family hate the fact that I mentioned the church. It must be hard for them when they meet someone that they haven't seen for years and they say, oh, how's your dad doing? And the usual question, what's he doing in the church? How do they answer those things? I think that's painful for them.

John Dehlin [00:25:26] Do you think other people in the British Isles have left the Church knowing that you've left?

Tom Phillips [00:25:33] Some have. Some found out after some had left and then found out that I had. So I am aware of some but not all. And I know some people were influenced over the second anointing post and other things. Some others have written to me on this thing about Elder Holland that's been the last straw with them. They see him for what he is, a ranting. He's not. This isn't the loving kind apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a. Anyway, I know we're going through some of the things that he said.

John Dehlin [00:26:03] Let's keep going.

Tom Phillips [00:26:04] They see it as a rant.

John Dehlin [00:26:05] So he says, who are you trying to convince? Surely not me. Is it yourself or others? So he's saying you're trying to convince yourself.

Tom Phillips [00:26:14] No, hang on. I say Elder Holland read the beginning of the letter. I've already told him what I'm trying to do.

John Dehlin [00:26:20] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:26:21] I'm approaching this as his sudden death situation. I. From all my evidence, it seems to me that the Book of Mormon is not true. He says it is true. My family side with him. I've put to him the two sides of the argument. I've said, here's the evidences against the Book of Mormon and here are your evidences for it. Now please, what I want you to do is I rebut my evidence is against it and support your evidences for it. That's all I'm asking. Then you've convinced me. Yes, you've convinced me. I'm not trying to convince him and my family. I'm just looking at. As observers, they ought to be able to. If they were rationally thinking either Elder Holland is right or dad is right. It can't be both. We can't both be right on this right now. If I am confused or something, then Elder Holland, please kindly show me and lead me as a kind shepherd and bring me back to the fold by showing me either that you've got answers or. Or these things don't really matter because. Because of this, that and the other. Don't say to me, oh, gosh, I looked at this when I was 25. They're nothing.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] Right, right, right, right.

Tom Phillips [00:27:35] That's a. That's a brush off. Okay, so we're light years away from that, from. From science, from physics and, you know, anyway, that's getting on. No, it's good.

John Dehlin [00:27:45] So he says, you can do what you want about the church. So do it. Stay, leave. Hide, run. Burn the Book of Mormon. Bury your temple covenants. Do anything you want. As the very book you reject says truthfully, you are free to act and not be acted upon. Tom, my heart is broken as I write this. I wish I hadn't begun. I was raised without the gospel in my youth and now I have it. So I am manifestly the wrong man to talk to about whether to go or whether to stay, whether the Book of Mormon is true or whether it isn't. The Book of Mormon changed my life more dramatically than any book could change any young man of whom I know before or since.

Tom Phillips [00:28:36] Okay, that's actually a sweet.

John Dehlin [00:28:39] You did, but I mean, that's. I'm just thinking for Elder Holland for a second, that's a sweet testimony. That's just saying my life is better. It's changed my life. I feel it's true. And I just. I'm committed to this. You know, that's what I hear him saying there. It's just. I'm sorry, but this is. I'm sticking with this, you know.

Tom Phillips [00:29:01] Well, let's just back up. And I think you're taking a kind translation of that. Let's say the way I can't remember now all of the. That he. He did say, but

John Dehlin [00:29:17] just basically saying the book. The book has changed his life.

Tom Phillips [00:29:20] Okay, do you know what? I've got a book on my shelf right now that has changed my life. It's called the Greatest show on Earth, and it's written by a science professor in Ox from Oxford University. That has changed my life. Writings of Marcus Aurelius have changed my life. It doesn't make them scripture. The Book of the, The Quran. I'll keep going back to the Quran. That has changed the lives of billions of people. Many more than the Book of Mormon have changed it. Harry Potter has changed people's lives. The Lord of the Rings.

John Dehlin [00:30:03] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:30:04] There are all sorts of books out there and there are a lot of fictional books that change. You know, they touch you. They touch you. You can read a book. I've read fictional books that I've cried over. You know what? I even saw a program, you remember that TV series 24 when the hero was some stage. There was some kind of a terrible bomb on a plane and he was going, he was riding the plane to his death. And the last thing he did was to phone his daughter to say goodbye. I cried when I. That's inspirational. But you know what? It wasn't true. It didn't make it true. The fact that it was uplifting for me to learn the lesson. That doesn't make a thing true. You can write fiction and it uplifts you and it can change people's lives. So that isn't an evidence. No. The evidences he gave, remember, was that Joseph died for it. He refuses to defend that argument now suddenly that goes off the slate. The thing he said in general conference, remember, he even said the very book that he's holding is the book that Joseph and Hyrum read from. All of that kind of thing. They were the theatrics that he was doing. They were the theatrics. That's not the spirit, that's theatrics.

John Dehlin [00:31:22] Okay, okay.

Tom Phillips [00:31:23] And no substance whatsoever. Okay, so what's he asking me to do? Believe. Believe him? No, I think Elder Holland, sorry, Elder Lund put it better. Do I believe his statement that the church or that the church doctrine is there was no death of any kind on this planet prior to 6,000 years ago. Or do I believe the scientists? That is basically my sudden death challenge. Do you know what? I believe the scientists and I know fine, rightly if any of the brethren go into hospital, they do rely on medical science to operate on them or get them right or whatever. They don't go by what they feel. They use that. And I've got first hand experience of how the church uses science and other things for its benefit.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] Right. He goes on to say, I know a couple of Christian evangelists who were both alcoholics and had their lives transformed by the Bible.

Tom Phillips [00:32:22] I'm sorry I said that.

John Dehlin [00:32:23] Oh, that was you. Okay. Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:32:24] Yeah, that was one of my answers. Okay. There's another thing I know Two people. Yeah, they could say the same thing as he said.

John Dehlin [00:32:31] Okay, got it, got it. That didn't make sense coming from him.

Tom Phillips [00:32:33] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:32:33] But it was bold, so I thought that was it. Okay, sorry. Then he goes on to say, so do what you want, Tom, but don't embarrass yourself by asking about metallurgy or archaeology or horses. The discussion about the power and the promise of the Book of Mormon went light years beyond that a long time ago.

Tom Phillips [00:32:53] Okay, so again, do what you like, Tom. So here's this loving person to whom I'm sealed, basically says the same thing to me as Elder Lund. Go, do what you want, resign, hide, do whatever you like. I am not going to come and help you, Tom. And okay, so when did the power of the Book of Mormon go? Light years. And here I'll ask a question. Does Elder Holland actually know what a light year is? What concept? How can the power go light years beyond metallurgy and everything else? What kind of nonsense is that? Do you know what that's playing to the audience? The audience of devout Mormons? And remember, I was one of those. I would hear something like that from Elder Holland and I'd say, hurrah. That's great. He's really nailed it there. What has he said though? Boil that down and explain to me. Maybe I'm thick here. What has he actually said? In all of his talk and his thing to me? He hasn't said anything. Nothing but hot air and emotive language.

John Dehlin [00:33:58] He goes on to say, I love you and pray God will be open to some spiritual indication of what is at stake here. I do love you and I will pray through this very night for you, more so than I will for the man who has cancer whom I now leave to bless. Yours is the more serious circumstance.

Tom Phillips [00:34:21] Again, I see that as offensive that I'm in the more serious circumstances. A man dying of cancer. I wonder if he said that to the man he visited and how that man would feel about it. No, I'm sorry. Elder Holland, in my view now, especially with that kind of response, he's the one with the thing worse than cancer and far worse. Because not only has he in a sense wasted his life on an untruth, he has influenced thousands or tens of thousands, millions. I don't know how many people he's influenced to believe the same tripe that he's trying to trot out. And there is absolutely no substance behind. Bamboozled me for 35 odd years. I understand why people do it and I was in awe of him and all the others. But part of that was taking their direction not to look at anything that might be against the church. Now, I didn't even go and look at anything against the Church. I just looked at science on history by historians that know what they're talking about and who don't have an axe to grind. They don't have a particular position. I know some will have a position to try and prove, but in the main, those people get weeded out. And in the academic world, it's usually those that are looking for what is the right thing, what is the truth here. And that's not what Elder Holland's interested in. It's not truth. This is his position. He staked his whole life on it. And I better believe it or just go away and hide somewhere and lose my family. And he's not going to do a solitary thing about it. I asked him to put up or shut up. Be man enough. Either put up the. I'm not talking about conclusive 100% proof that it's true. I'm not saying bring me an angel or bring me God or anything like that. I'm just saying answer. The critics don't say there are no criticisms to the Book of Mormon or we're light years ahead of that. They've never been answered. Never. They've tried to bring up apologetics. You might as well put the word excuses. That's all been done. Excuses and rationalization. That's all that we've been offered to substantive questions. And all I've asked for was answers. And the way I've been treated. Is this way to give me no answers and to infer that I might have sinned in some way or I've done this, or something terrible is going to happen to me in consequence of this? No. What is the big problem they have with truth? It's supposed to be the true church, so truth ought to play some kind of importance in it. I've come to realize rather painfully that truth has got nothing to do with it. This is our position and this is what we defend to the death.

John Dehlin [00:37:12] So what do you mean by his position is worse than having cancer? I mean, you kind of said it, but I just.

Tom Phillips [00:37:20] Yeah, and I wouldn't want to say that to anyone and. No, hang on. Sorry. Please take that back or even delete it.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] No, it's okay.

Tom Phillips [00:37:27] But I don't think you know.

John Dehlin [00:37:29] But you're saying it's a serious thing

Tom Phillips [00:37:32] he's saying to me.

John Dehlin [00:37:33] You're saying it's a serious thing to Mislead people is what you're saying, when so much is at stake. Right.

Tom Phillips [00:37:39] Sorry. Yeah, but, John, I've got to be careful here. This going out of context is completely wrong. Look, I grieve today on the news to hear that Sheryl Crow has a brain tumor. It's not cancer. She's already had breast cancer. You know, cancer is a word no one wants to hear, right? So I'm not saying anyone is worse. That is a terrible thing to have. Now, I'm sorry, when I use those words, this is in response to someone saying to me that whatever I've got is worse. I'm in a worse state. Now. I know what he means, because it's the same thing my wife said. This man, presumably a faithful member of the church, is in hospital with terminal cancer. Elder Holland's going to go and kindly give him a blessing, and he may have some remission or he may die. If he dies, it doesn't matter, because he's all right for the next life. Blah, blah, blah. It's no problem. Whereas me, I'm a son of perdition. That's what he's saying. That's why my position is worse. Now I'm saying, no, you know, I went through all the nightmares about perdition. I had night sweats about it. That I would be cast into outer darkness just because of what, telling the truth. Now I've come to terms with that, and you know what? I'm not going to outer darkness. And all I'm saying is, no, Elder Holland, you haven't got worse than cancer. Not in any ways. I retract anything that I've said that.

John Dehlin [00:38:57] Oh, that's fine.

Tom Phillips [00:38:58] All right, I take that back. But I'm saying he's in a bad condition because he's in the position as an apostle and as someone that has a doctorate in American studies, to actually get to grips with this and show us all one way or the other. Now, what he's shown is that it's not true. He hasn't shown that it's true. He's done the opposite. He's blurted and he's gone all emotive and on the attack about it being true. And of course, it's light years away. The power of the Book of Mormon. No, you get someone to actually read the Book of Mormon. It's no great work of literature. Most members, you've got to force them to read the Book of Mormon. I've been through all that. I used. You know, I've got a daughter. Unfortunately, that's Read the Book of Mormon or the Scriptures every day of her life for the last 30 years. That's commendable because that's the way she was taught in seminary and everything else. And people do that, but most members do not. Most members can't be bothered. Most times when I speak to a Christian, even about their faith, they've never read the Bible. They only know certain quotes from it. They've never read it all. Now, he's an apostle that knows these things, so he can put it to bed one way or the other. It's either true, it's his statement, or I only put back to him his statements. This sudden death, which he's talked about now for 20 years or more, he's done it in books and talks. This is not a new thing he's come up with. He's always said it's a sudden death. It's either true or it's the biggest fraud of all. Now, I've never used words like that, but I'm saying it's either true or it's false. He's only shown me that it's false, not that it's true. Sorry, got it.

John Dehlin [00:40:37] No, I got it. So. And then he ends the letter with immense sorrow but unfailing love. Now, did you cut any parts of the letter out where he actually responded to your actual questions?

Tom Phillips [00:40:50] No. No, he never responded at all.

John Dehlin [00:40:53] So he didn't say, go read this book, or go read this article or check out this website.

Tom Phillips [00:40:56] The only part I let out were personal things about what he was doing in his office right then. His personal state of mind at the time, which I think has relevance. But I didn't feel like sharing that because do you know what? I don't know. Some people will say that's a calculated message that Elder Holland had, not for me, but for everyone else who's actually trying to warn people. I actually don't believe that. I think he's actually forced. He actually did that and maybe regrets it now. I don't know. But he did that on the spur of the moment when he should have been somewhere else. He stayed later in the office, did that email. And I know the reason why he would have done that, because I'd been trying to phone him that day, and he got that off his. Off his chest. And maybe that should actually have gone through some other apostles. And there's no other apostle that would have allowed him to have written that.

John Dehlin [00:41:49] Do you feel like it's weird that you could be sued if you shared the actual email? He shared with you.

Tom Phillips [00:41:55] Is it weird?

John Dehlin [00:41:57] Well, how does it seem to you

Tom Phillips [00:41:58] that I don't even care if they do sue me, sue me then. I guess I was just trying to be respectful.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] But how does that strike you that his conversation with you is sort of protected by law so that you can't share it?

Tom Phillips [00:42:18] Well, I don't because, okay, he puts that disclaimer on it. But some people, and there's differences of opinion out there, some people say he is protected, that he actually has the copyright on that and I have no right. Others will say no once an email goes out and certainly know in all the circumstances and the very fact that he knew I was going to post it on a bulletin board, all of. I think in any court of law he's not going to win if he were to sue me anyway. So that I'm not worried about. I guess I'm a little bit. He puts in there the actual location of his wife, for instance, at a particular time. Now, I'm not so sure that I want that around the, the Internet. There are crazy people out there. I wouldn't want any to do to identify exactly where my wife or daughter was any particular time. Especially someone like an apostle. If someone wants to get at the Brethren, why not get a pat or something if they know exactly what her location is, right? Or was. I don't know. So I don't know. Maybe that's me just being too protective of him, but I don't really think the world needs. And it's totally irrelevant to the. The message anyway. That's got nothing to. Again, all it was was a personal dig at me. It wasn't anything to do with the substance of the letter. So said that.

John Dehlin [00:43:30] So what? What, how did this overall. So overall then how did this email make you feel overall?

Tom Phillips [00:43:37] It was. First of all, it was a great surprise. Let's face it. All I could have expected, I expected a no response.

John Dehlin [00:43:45] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:43:46] To be ignored. Okay, that's number one, ignore it. Number two, a very polite letter that would basically say, oh, you know, there are a lot of things we don't quite understand right now and in the future we will and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and bear testimony. That kind of thing I could expect as well. Obviously the thing I wanted which was the least expected was, yes, Tom, okay, I've looked at these issues and here's the answers to them. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yes, Joseph Smith did die defending the Book of Mormon for these reasons. Something like that. So that's what I expected. I even expected it to have come out from a BYU or drafted. I expected him just to hand that to a BYU professor that would have. Or apologist that would have drafted the response for him. I only expected him just to sign it and maybe add a personal note. That's all I expected. What I got dumbfounded me. The fact that it was by email, that it was personal, that didn't address any of the issues and quite honestly offended me. I may be sensitive there, but it offended me.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] It offended you?

Tom Phillips [00:44:59] Yeah. I took offense at it. Rightly or wrongly, I took offense because

John Dehlin [00:45:04] you have a personal relationship with them. So what. What offended you about it?

Tom Phillips [00:45:09] Well, okay, first of all, he's suggesting I never had a testimony. I've never had a spiritual experience. My family are better off than I am. I. I'm getting terrible. I'm in a worse state than a man dying of cancer. I shouldn't even bother about these silly issues that he sorted out when he was only 25. You know, what problems have. I got that kind of language I find offensive.

John Dehlin [00:45:33] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:45:33] I don't think my letter to him was in any. In fact, most people that have read it say that they're quite commendable to me as how respectful I was of him. And I've only used any strong language against him in retaliation to what he may have said to me. Not, you know, I've not been the attacker or the ranter on this.

John Dehlin [00:45:52] So did you respond to his letter? Did you write him back?

Tom Phillips [00:45:58] Yeah, I think that's what you're reading from.

John Dehlin [00:46:00] Okay, so that's your response. And then have you received any response since then?

Tom Phillips [00:46:04] No. No.

John Dehlin [00:46:04] Okay. Okay. Do you think. Do you think you will or. Probably not.

Tom Phillips [00:46:13] I don't know. I mean, I'm pure conjecture from the way the Brethren work. I don't. First of all, I think he's been wrapped. I don't know who wrapped him. It has to be someone more senior than him. He's been wrapped for doing this in the first place, I would think this is not what his lawyers or PR people would have him do. And the other Brethren. See, I remember getting emails from Melda Holland when he was a junior apostle and he was at everyone's beck and call. He couldn't get done the things he wanted to do. And he was desperate, chasing all over the place. Now he's a more senior apostle, but he's still got those people above him and he should have consulted with them. This should have gone through correlation, if you like. This is quite an important issue.

John Dehlin [00:46:52] But isn't that also kind of, in a strange way commendable that he cared enough about you to reach out to you, even though he knew you could share it on the Internet and that he. He bore his testimony to you even though he knew that it could be he could get in trouble for it or that.

Tom Phillips [00:47:11] All right, I tell you what. Yeah. He did not write that email out of love for me. And that particular day, I know what happened, and I'm not going to share that publicly either. But he was not intending to write that email that day, that night, nor in that way. I think he was going to try and go the other route by having someone else draft something and just be polite and even refer me to, you know, papers, as you say, that have been done on all sorts of issues.

John Dehlin [00:47:45] You're saying something happened in his life that made him write that sort of led to him writing that email when he probably wouldn't have otherwise.

Tom Phillips [00:47:55] Is that what you're saying, something happened that day which, as a result of an initiation by me that caused him to write that? Yes.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] Okay. But you don't. Okay. You don't want to talk about that. Okay. All right, well. Wow. So.

Tom Phillips [00:48:12] All right, hang on. No, sorry. I will tell you what happened. I had not received a reply, so I phoned up his office and spoke with his executive secretary, Randy.

John Dehlin [00:48:26] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:48:27] And she said that she didn't even know about my letter when I was chasing it. She didn't even know about it. She said it was probably handled by another secretary. She would find out about it and get back to me. A day or two went by, she didn't get back to me. So I then phoned her again and she said, yes, he does have it, and you'll probably get a response in a few weeks time. I asked, could I speak with him? She said, he's in the meeting. I said, okay, well, when he comes out, please tell him a few weeks is too late. I need this answer now. I was actually surprised to get it that night, but I did expect him to get something to me within a couple of days.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:49:16] So that's why I know he came out of some meetings that day on his way to go home via a hospital and to pick up his wife. He stayed late and this is part of his resentment in that he stayed at the office to write that to me. Now, he didn't intend doing that, but whatever message his executive secretary relayed to him, somehow he took that as a serious issue and did it.

John Dehlin [00:49:46] And you're not out of love. Were you basically saying Answer my letter or I'll go public or something like that.

Tom Phillips [00:49:52] No, no, no, no, no. Because he already knew I was going public. I didn't say that. Not at all. I didn't. I wouldn't threaten anyone in that way.

John Dehlin [00:49:57] Okay. But he felt some urgency, like if he didn't respond, something bad would happen. Right.

Tom Phillips [00:50:05] If there's nothing I can do against him, I'm not threatening anyone.

John Dehlin [00:50:09] Right, right.

Tom Phillips [00:50:10] But I'm saying in my life, I needed that answer.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] Okay?

Tom Phillips [00:50:13] I'm not. I can't wait a few weeks.

John Dehlin [00:50:14] Got it. Got it.

Tom Phillips [00:50:15] All right. I can't wait a few weeks for that and not with my family situation right now. I need to get some closure on some certain issues because I was hoping. I mean, hope against hope. I thought he was going to respond in a way that either, you know, let's say what could have happened if the response had been right. Either it convinced me that the church is okay and I'm back on board. Right. Or it doesn't. But it's done in such a way that it's obvious to anyone else reading it, such as my family, that he hasn't got the answers and he won't, you know? So either way, I thought, hang on. Even a non answer is actually an answer to me. If he refused to answer, because that's actually saying he can't answer those issues. So again, I go back to my family, say, look, I put all these issues up to an apostle. He's got no answer for it. What do you make of this? That's all I was expecting now. And then that's the closure for me. Because then they just say, one way or the other. And if they say, well, look, we still believe the church is true, blah, blah, blah. You're ranting. Elder Holland isn't ranting. He's very polite and loving and kind to you. Okay, that I understand. And you know what? I don't want to. Don't need to talk about it again. But he did, you know, it's steady, the rant.

John Dehlin [00:51:29] So anyway, so maybe, you know, maybe he'll still respond. Who knows?

Tom Phillips [00:51:33] Well, I would hope, but I did. If you read the end of my reply, I put something to the effect of don't bother responding unless it is of substance.

John Dehlin [00:51:42] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:51:42] Because I do hope that he does. But I don't need any more flannel like that. I mean, give me. Please respond, by all means, but answer the questions. That's all I'm asking. And I'm afraid I did put an unkind sort of Comment in there somewhere. I said put up or shut up.

John Dehlin [00:51:55] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:51:56] And by shut up, I mean stop talking at General Conference about the Book of Mormon being the word of God. And in 179 years, no one has proven it false or there's no other credible alternate theory about its authorship. That's. That's patently untrue. There are credible altar. Now, I'm not saying they're right, but there is least as credible as Joseph Smith's theory or not theory, but what he says happened. The Craig Riddles and all the rest of the world. They've got some credible theories out there that could may or may not be true, but they're credible. Acknowledge that.

John Dehlin [00:52:35] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:52:37] Sorry, am I ranting now?

John Dehlin [00:52:38] No. That's good.

Tom Phillips [00:52:40] I call it. Well, the funny thing is, you see, my family will say I'm ranting and I'm angry. And yet when Elder Holland gets up and he did it all over England and thumps on a pulpit or in General conference, thumps on a pulpit and holds up a Book of Mormon and cries and shouts and everything else, and that somehow he's full of the spirit. I'm not quite sure I understand someone being full of the spirit and spouting things that are untrue. Whereas if I get a little bit passionate about something and spouting things which I consider are true and no one has told me they're untrue, I'm a ranterer for some reason. Do you understand that, John? Why would that be? Why am I a ranter and he isn't?

John Dehlin [00:53:24] Yeah. You know, it's just people have mindsets and they have a mindset that it's true. And so if they hear evidence or comments or commentary to the contrary of their worldview, then it's perceived, it's received as offensive and as dangerous. And you're feeling the opposite paradigm. You're feeling like you've discovered the truth. You're feeling like you. You're feeling like you're now more grounded in reality. And so you're excited. So for you it's exciting for you. You're feeling the spirit and they're feeling awful, and they're calling that the spirit, telling them that you're awful. You know what I mean? This is just me. This isn't anything official, but I've got

Tom Phillips [00:54:15] the spirit and he's being misled by Satan. I'll go with that.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] Yeah. Because the way the Church sets it up is the fruits of the Spirit are love and peace and joy and happiness and goodwill. Well, Certainly they're not feeling that when you tell them the things that you think or believe. So they've been set up to interpret your words through the filter of their interpretation of their feelings, which is that you must be wicked because they're not feeling the hair stand up on their arms and warm, fuzzy things inside. And even though you might be feeling, you might be feeling the hair stand up on your arms and the tingly feeling and the inspiration that what you're saying is true, you're just now coming from a totally different paradigm. Right,

Tom Phillips [00:55:08] Right. But also when you say that, I mean, in fairness, in this whole conversation we've had, I've just said, I think other than this recent comments about Elder Holland, I've tried to say very positive things about them. Now, I know these brethren quite well, and I've seen a number of them get angry and upset. And also, you know, I've seen the other side of things, which I'm not even going to give details on. And I've seen the bitter infighting that goes on even in the quorum of the 12. You know, this is not a united or we're all warm fuzzy. They have to put on that front. But you know, you got to call it as you see it sometimes anyway.

John Dehlin [00:55:52] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:55:53] I'm just saying this is not. These aren't just loving, kind people that are trying to. No, they've got whatever it is turf to defend or whatever reason is giving them this reason to attack someone or people or the armed Mass. You know, everyone's anti Mormon, apparently anything that said, now most scientists don't even know what Mormonism is, let alone be anti Mormon. Come, come, you saints. No toil nor labor feed, but with joy when you're.

Reflections on the Church and Moving Forward

Part 5 of 5 · Ep. 539

Tom Phillips [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org okay, so I've got a bunch of just quick follow up questions. I think we've covered the meat of what we're going to talk about.

Tom Phillips [00:00:35] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:36] So why not what's called a middle way? Why not do what? Yeah, the New Order Mormon way. Why not just say, you know what, it's not necessarily literally true, but it's a good way to live and it's benefited my family. My grandsons can go to Oxford. I mean, what a blessing the church has been in our lives.

Tom Phillips [00:01:01] So he can't. He's not at Oxford because he's on a mission.

John Dehlin [00:01:03] No, but you know, he's able to go there. I mean, you've clearly.

Tom Phillips [00:01:07] He could have gone there without the church though. That's what I'm saying.

John Dehlin [00:01:11] Okay, I know, but I'm just saying like, why not just, why not just sort of take a non literal view of religion and say religion does a lot of good things be practical. Right. Why not just be. Look at what's functional instead of what's binarily true or false and just go with it? Because it has good fruits.

Tom Phillips [00:01:33] All right. Okay. I'll tell you why. First of all, if you were to try and find out all the good fruits of the church and identify them and also make a list of all the bad fruits, I think what you will find is all of those good fruits could be provided in another organization or another setting. They don't have the only way on that. If you want a good family, there's plenty of churches and communities and social clubs and all sorts of things. In Ireland, they have a local community based around a local game called hurling, which no one else in the world has ever heard of, but it becomes a focal point. Although you might say they're all Catholics, they're actually focused on that. In Malta, there's another game called bottom that they focus around, you know, and whole families go out that all generations. And now I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, but what I'm saying is whatever good fruits there are in the church, there are in other organizations, but the bad fruits of the church are not necessarily in other organizations. You would say what as such as gay Marriage. What the heck does gay marriage, how does that interfere with someone else's marriage? My son, a stake president believes that the church was wrong in opposing gay marriage. Why is he a stake president then? You know, come out now. I know John, you're doing some activity there. So I'm not going to go. You know, but you know, there's nothing. Okay, we've, we now come. We've got to understand gays is genetic. And you know what? I've got friends that are gays. I've got a nephew that's gay. I went to his 40th birthday party and it was wonderful. There's 100 gay people there. And me now I'm not gay because genetic, you know, if I wanted to become gay I can't because I'm not genetically made that way. And that's all there is to it. But there's nothing wrong with them. And if they are like my nephew has been in a loving relationship for the last seven years, it's as good as any couple that I've seen. So there's one thing then you want to get into the blacks and everyone else. The Jews, the church, the Book of Mormon. Let's go back to the Book of Mormon. The Catholic church being the whore of the earth. The Joseph Smith history. All the Protestant churches. Their creeds are an abomination to the Lord. They hate the Jews because they're the only people on earth that would have crucified the Messiah. Women, let's not go even go there. And you have a whole list of everyone that's hated and all non religious people are hated. President Hinckley gave a talk against atheists at one time. How evil they were. And it goes on and on. You know what? I meet people all the time and none of them have any of that hatred in them. None of them. The only people I know with that hatred and the only thing I've heard in my experience has been Mormons and certain other fundamental type people. So that's my answer. Why am I not a nom? I couldn't keep my mouth shut. That's why I'm not a nom. I can see how there could be benefits for my children, for me and my family now, but not for my posterity. Because they're all going to be raised in that same cult or sorry I used the word cult, that same organization. Elder Holland says it's not a cult. Or he says some people call us a cult. Well, when you get the kind of thing that's been thrown at me, I Think it's pretty definitely a cult anyway. So does that answer why I'm not a nom? Now again, I can have respect for nom. Do you know what? I think my son is probably a nom. He's a stake president. He doesn't believe that. He thinks there's things wrong in the Book of Mormon. He thinks the church was wrong about gay marriage and he definitely thinks that Joseph Smith was wrong to take more than one wife. Now if Joseph Smith was wrong to take more than one wife, that makes him a fallen prophet, as the community of Christ would say, and that then debunks the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Abraham and everything else. So where do you stop on this? You can't. You know, I like Elder Holland's sudden death. Actually it wasn't him. I think someone else was it President Ben. Someone else. Actually he quotes someone else. I think it was President Benson or someone that actually came up with that sudden death proposition. Elder Holland has just, you know, mentioned it a number of times. But yeah, I like that. This middle way and I've heard of it in politics and all sorts of things and maybe you can with coalitions and all the rest of it, but in this case, when a church gets up there and says to the world, Jesus Christ himself restored this church in the latter days, we are the only true church on the face of the earth. All the rest of you, your creeds are an abomination. You've got to come to us for salvation. That in itself is rather a toxic message that goes out unless you can back it up. I'm not going to be party to that. Now at the other extreme, and I'm not saying it's the same, but you know what? In another age, if I'd been grown up and I was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but you know what? I decided I'm not going to kill anyone. I'm not going to do this and that. But you know what, we've got quite a nice fraternity going here with us and there's a lot of nice things we do. And also if someone's unemployed or something, we make sure they get a job and things like. I'm sure there are aspects of that in such organizations. I don't know for sure, but you see how offensive that would be. I wouldn't stay as a non practicing Ku Klux Klan member. Now I think the Mormon Church is guilty. You know, we want to go back to Mountain Meadows and all the rest of it. We want to go back to Basically, child abuse and child rape. You know, I don't even want to get started on that. I'm trying to focus on just the issues on the Book of Mormon, but these are the reasons I'm not going to be a norm. I. I found out this organization is riddled. It's riddled. Once I then found out that the leaders are not as honest as I thought they were. This whole thing, okay, they're on shaky ground. This was based on a lie and a deceit from the beginning. And they're doing the best job they can to keep the ball rolling. And they're slightly. And I get your point about anom. Because they are changing things. The priesthood now goes to all worthy males. They're even talking about what gays having callings.

John Dehlin [00:08:02] Where is that? Where are they talking about that?

Tom Phillips [00:08:04] The latest handbook of instruction. A gay can have a temple recommend and a calling as long as they don't have any sexual activity outside. And the church tried to say that's because it's the same rule as for heterosexual couples. Well, no, it's not. You know, fine. Rightly, John, heterosexual couples can get married to have sexual gays if they're gay means. Right. You have no sex for the rest of your life because we as a church don't want you to get married. There's nothing wrong with gay marriage. And it's coming. The church is on, you see, it's been on the receiving end of too many things. You know, polygamy, it was against women voting. It was against the civil rights movement in the 1960s. You know, you've seen the letter to George Romney.

John Dehlin [00:08:46] Actually, actually, I'll just correct you on one thing. My understanding is that we were leaders in the women's suffrage movement in the late 1800s and that we were one of the first states to allow women voting. But I think your larger point is that we did fight the era.

Tom Phillips [00:09:01] I think the belief society. Yeah, we did fight the era.

John Dehlin [00:09:04] We fought the civil rights movement. We fought the era. And now we're fighting gay marriage.

Tom Phillips [00:09:10] Yeah, gay marriage. And is it going to be a losing battle? Because we know the popular opinion it's going to. Well, it's going to go to the Supreme Court anyway. And then it's just a question of whether it's this time or next time. So it's coming. And then at some stage, the church has got to face up to that. And it's not as Elder Packer. Well, let's not even get into the number of people that have committed suicide because of his talks.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] How is the church doing in England? Any idea?

Tom Phillips [00:09:39] From what I hear, it's bleeding.

John Dehlin [00:09:42] So it's not growing?

Tom Phillips [00:09:44] No. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not growing. I mean, the nearest ward to where I was, that I've got some people that are still living there. They're. They've dropped 50% in the last three or four years. People leaving, I mean, it's straight. And missionary work, forget it. It's only those that want some welfare or something like that. It's basically immigrants. And that's throughout Europe. You're not baptizing the. You know, when I got baptized in 1969, it was all young couple, young newly married couples starting out in life that wanted the best for their families. That's who joined the church then, not now. And most of the people the missionaries are teaching, if they do find a couple, they are not married, they are living together. So you've got all of those problems to get over. No, there's. No, there's not. They're not baptizing.

John Dehlin [00:10:35] So the church is not growing. It's probably contracting in Western Europe.

Tom Phillips [00:10:41] Yeah, I mean, it does. Well, we know it's not reflected in the statistics because the statistics are actually false. I mean, the membership statistics, all they do each year is just add on to that, the baptisms, basically not realizing people die. Okay, they'll take in certain deaths, but there's a lot more people die. There's those that leave the church and all sorts of things.

John Dehlin [00:11:01] People that go inactive. Right.

Tom Phillips [00:11:03] People. People. They say 16 million. There's no 16 million people in this church. You're lucky if there's 5 million. Lucky.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:11:11] And here again, a question of honesty. As I understand the Jehovah Witnesses, they only can see we say, oh, we're bigger than Jehovah Witnesses. No, as I understand it, the Jehovah Witnesses only count you as a member. First of all, if you've been going out regularly for a certain period of time, and if you continue going out, if you ever stop, they don't count you as a member.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:11:30] So their statistics are actually active Jehovah Witnesses that are also going around spreading the, you know, their magazine, the Awake, and all the rest of it.

John Dehlin [00:11:40] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:11:41] So they're. They're 3 million. Could be more than our 5 million or whatever or 16 million. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:11:48] So do you have any regrets?

Tom Phillips [00:11:52] On what?

John Dehlin [00:11:53] On either joining the church, raising your family in the church, or, you know, coming to believe that it isn't true or being vocal about your disbelief?

Tom Phillips [00:12:06] Okay, no, the only regret I have that I regret joining the church because I've got to blame myself for that. It wasn't forced on me. I bought the whole package, the whole ball of wax, and I brought my children up in it. I regret that. But I'm not going to be bitter about it because I can't do anything about it. I did it. It was a long time ago. It was 1969. We're now in 2012. It's no good me being so regretful that I'm going to canker my soul for the rest of my life. No, it's done. I'm sorry. Now I console myself by saying there were some benefits to the family. So I think we did have some benefits, and try and ignore some of the detriment that there may be. I'm just thinking more now about future generations. I think we can have all the benefits we had as a family we could have had in another situation as well. My wife and I were good parents. Anyway, now that I associate with people that are not Mormon, you know what? It's okay. You're in Utah. It's very easy to get into a situation even in England where most of your friends, most of your associates are Mormons. When you then actually come out of that, you actually find there's good people around that are not Mormons. They don't believe, and they all have different kinds of beliefs. But you know what? They raise children to be really fine children as well. They're good people.

John Dehlin [00:13:29] So you could have raised a good family outside the church.

Tom Phillips [00:13:34] Who knows? We don't get that second chance to find out. It's certainly. All I'm saying is there are other people I know, people that have raised excellent children, and those children wouldn't ditch them over a religious view. That's all I'm saying to you, right? Even if they have differences of opinion, those children will still act in a certain way anyway. I'm just saying

John Dehlin [00:14:03] if you, you know, this may be a question you're not comfortable answering. If it's not, that's fine. But let's just say that one of your kids or one of your grandkids ends up listening to the story, which maybe is unlikely, but who knows? What would you want to say to him?

Tom Phillips [00:14:25] Please, please, just talk to me. Let's have a discussion. You know what? A couple of years ago, I took one of my grandsons out for lunch. I had intended to have a discussion with him because he'd already come back from his mission. And we ended up talking about his education and about his music, and I just didn't even. And I knew he wasn't going to raise the topic of the church. I didn't, again, out of deference, out of respect for him. Not wanting to upset him. I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd done. I wish I'd asked that. Now I would just like them to talk about it. I'm not going to get angry. You see, my family portray myself as angry. I only get angry if people don't answer and then hurl abuse at me. That makes. I'm sorry, I'm human there. That makes me angry. But if we can have an actual discussion on something, I love that. I love that. And if my mind could ever be changed, I would love that as well. I'm quite happy to have my mind changed. I can change my views politically or in any other way if there's a, you know, a substantive argument for me to address. So I'd say let's just talk and let's talk about the elephant in the room. Let's not ignore it anymore. That's all I want to talk about, the elephant in the room. And I think it will benefit all of our lives and certainly future generations.

John Dehlin [00:15:48] Right? Yeah. So what do you. So you say you've had spiritual experiences recently. Do you still believe in God? Do you still. Do you have a new religion? Like what. What is your spirituality based on?

Tom Phillips [00:16:03] When do you want to end this, John?

John Dehlin [00:16:05] Just do a couple minutes. Just do a quick. A quick summary of, you know, what do you believe now?

Tom Phillips [00:16:10] In some ways, I believe in whatever's real. I believe in reality. I told you about the light switch. I believe that I will wake up and be alive tomorrow morning. I do believe that now it may not happen, you know, any one of us. I mean, I mentioned Elder Sackley. He died in his sleep one night, you know, just after a wonderful day. But I do believe that's a belief. It's not a certain, it's not a certainty, but it's a belief. And I think it's reasonable to have beliefs like that. I think it's reasonable to have hope. I think it's reasonable to have faith. But when I go into, as I have done, into someone's home after a family home evening where they have follow the prophet and faith as a virtue all over their home, the kind of faith they're talking about, I think is wrong and dangerous. Faith is okay. Or belief in something that we can't know one way or the other. Everyone's entitled to their beliefs and ought to be respected on that. But if you have faith in something that has evidence against it, then it's either because of ignorance. That is. And that was me for most of my life. I was ignorant of the arguments against or having found out about it or wanting to find out then. And you still go ahead with that then to me, that's stupidity. So it's ignorance or stupidity. And I mean ignorance in a kind sort of way there. Not just not being aware, but I think what I'm facing in the church where I have. And it's not just my family, there were thousands of members of the church that I was supposedly friends with and knew me, that suddenly avoided me in the street and all sorts of things. If they don't want to know something, then again, that's a form of ignorance. And that's very dangerous, you know, not wanting those answers.

John Dehlin [00:18:00] Right.

Tom Phillips [00:18:00] So you want.

John Dehlin [00:18:03] So your testimony. So do you still believe in God, Spirituality, Scripture?

Tom Phillips [00:18:15] All right. Now, my reluctance is not. See, I'm. Whenever I'm asked a question, I'll give what I think is a truthful answer. My reluctance on this thing is that I guess what I want is for people to look at these issues. The reason I didn't give my name on the original second anointing was not to make it about me, but about the issue, not about me. Now, if I were to say to you, do you know what? I've become a Jehovah Witness, or I'm now a Buddhist, or I'm an atheist or I'm an agnostic or whatever, does that then color what people think of the substance of what we've discussed or not? So I'm happy to talk about that, but I think as a separate issue, and I'm happy to be open and honest with what my beliefs are, but I don't really want it connected with this because what we're talking about here, I think are basically two things is A, the second anointing and B, my letter to Elder Holland and his response. They're the two things on the table. Now, whether. Let's for instance, say, suppose I say, oh, I'm a Buddhist. Well, straight away, people are not even going to want to listen to this. Most Mormons. Now, I will tell you I'm not a Buddhist, so we'll clear that one off the table. But you know what I'm saying, I could say any number of badges and that will then suddenly alienate certain people.

John Dehlin [00:19:43] I totally get it.

Tom Phillips [00:19:44] Let them see the substance. Now, if we want to do Another one of these where it talks about where I've come from since this, what I now believe in. I'm very happy to do that. But you know what? That's a separate podcast, I think, than this.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] No, I get it, I get it.

Tom Phillips [00:19:58] I mean, a shorter one. I'm not talking about.

John Dehlin [00:20:01] Not a fight, not a five hour one.

Tom Phillips [00:20:04] Yeah, sorry. And you may not want to do that, and I'm happy to even post that on a board. What my beliefs and things are. But I'm just trying to separate these issues right now.

John Dehlin [00:20:12] Sure.

Tom Phillips [00:20:13] Because I know what happens. It's what the way I've been questioned in all sorts of things. You know, it's almost the first question, what do you believe in? As if you give a certain answer and then nothing matters after that, they're not going to listen to you at all. Yeah, that's wrong. That's wrong.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] So let it, let it stand on the merits. You're saying.

Tom Phillips [00:20:33] Stand on the merits here. And my beliefs, you know, my beliefs don't affect what we've said today one way or the other. What I've come to in my life. Right. It's of no relevance. You know, it's another story. It's another version of my life. It's not anything to do with this.

John Dehlin [00:20:49] Got it.

Tom Phillips [00:20:50] I was believing Mormon. I believed it to be the true church of Jesus Christ that he had visited and that he still visited on a regular basis with the prophet. I understood that from Elder Gosselin and other people that there was almost a weekly, if not monthly meeting with the Savior and the prophet. I believe that all my church life. So I've gone from that to saying, no, this is not true. That's as far as I'm going right now. Anyone else? Look at that. If they still want to take the original viewpoint, so be it. Let them do that. I think it's one or the other. I don't actually see in my life the middle way. I know it works with other people. And I value what you're doing, John, as well, in terms of what's going on there. So I'm not going to decry that. I'm just saying you're probably a better person than I am for being able to do that. And also, you're a much younger person. You know what? I haven't got time to waste on, you know, I haven't got a generation to change anything. So I'm enjoying each day. Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:55] And you are, you are enjoying it.

Tom Phillips [00:21:57] Oh, thoroughly. Do you know what? I have never been happier in my whole life, I can say that honestly, the only thing I've never been happier, and the only thing that would make me happier is to have my family with me. But even without family, I have never been happier. And this is coming from someone that's had a wonderful family experience, wonderful church life, no issues with the church. I'm not an ex Mormon that was, you know, begrudged their tithing or thought the bishop was awful or whatever they want to talk about. I'm not that I loved being in the church. I loved everything about it. But I can honestly say to you right now, my stage in life, I have never, ever been happier.

John Dehlin [00:22:42] Do you think they're going to come after you for doing this interview? What do you predict?

Tom Phillips [00:22:47] I didn't even think, you know, you've asked me the question out of the blue. What have I said? Actually, first of all, that's untrue. Maybe I've given more information than they would like to know. I don't know what you see. I'd have to look at the handbook. What is the definition of apostasy? See, I'm not actually teaching anything to anyone. I'm asking questions and I'm not getting any answers. That's all I'm doing. Now, if that is apostasy, you know what? It's dead easy. You don't even need a disciplinary council. I'll admit to apostasy if that is your definition. To me, apostasy is going against the truth. Now, I actually feel, Elder Holland, you're an apostate against the truth of science and metallurgy and anything else you want to quote. You're an apostate against Yale University who stands for, you know, credible research. You come and. Whatever you want, come and get me. I don't care. It makes no difference to me whatsoever. Or I can feel like what I could also do is just write a letter of resignation right now. Either way, it doesn't matter. I don't care one iota. There's nothing it can do to me. If anything, I. I almost feel like getting hold of. I've forgotten his name. Now, the other guy that's had the second anointing, that was the temple present and mission president, Gerald Chesney.

John Dehlin [00:24:14] The guy from Oklahoma?

Tom Phillips [00:24:16] Yeah. I mean, I know he won't, but. I mean, if we're the only two members of the anointed quorum that's willing to stand up, then maybe we should convene a dismay council of our own and call the brethren to account on this.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] Do you think they'll, do you think they'll come after me for releasing this interview.

Tom Phillips [00:24:37] Again? What have you done? You've interviewed some. Well, I don't know, John. From what I understand, they've been after you anyway and somehow you've managed to placate whatever, whatever needs to be done. So I don't see what you've done here any different than you did with. To be honest, the only one I've listened to was the Simon Southerton one and I only did that.

John Dehlin [00:25:02] Now that's an offense. Just kidding.

Tom Phillips [00:25:04] Oh, is. I'm sorry about that. No, to be honest, and this is what, when I said to you, what's this three hours back? Because when I see three hours or two and a, you know what? I need a five minute segment. But no, no. Do you know what? Last night I decided, hang on, I better know what I'm getting into here. So I listened to the Simon Salaton. I was blown away. I loved it. So you know what? You've got a convert here in terms of stories. I'm going to go through yours. I'm going to, I'm going to listen to all these stories now. Before, I didn't like the idea of an hour or two hours or whatever it was listening and here's it is long, isn't it? But no, I was fascinated. I couldn't believe I watched the first one of Simon, which was just over an hour, and I couldn't believe when the hour went. I mean, it was just fascinating. So I'm going to listen to the next one of that as well. So you've converted me better than the Holland did, John?

John Dehlin [00:25:56] Well, you know, a lot of people give me grief for the length, but time goes so fast for me. I never get sick of these interviews. So somebody else, after I die can edit them down and make them shorter. But I'm keeping them long for now. Sure. All right. Well, Tom Phillips, I just want to thank you so much for, for coming on Mormon Stories and sharing your very important story. I think you've laid out a very credible set of experiences and stories. And I just want to beg any believer that listens, any believer that feels as Elder Holland does, that these are old or silly issues or ones that were resolved or that were light years past. I want to invite any listener to come on and answer the questions, answer the questions that Tom Phillips wrote to Elder Holland, will post a link to Tom's letter to Elder Holland, and I would like to invite any listener to come on Mormon Stories and answer the questions in a way that's credible. And I don't offer this interview personally as a way to get people out of the church or to cause doubt. I guess, if anything, I'm just. I'm tired of seeing the casualties of families and friendships and relationships and people's mental health suffer because of these credible issues and experiences. And I just want to have a dialogue where we can come to a better understanding and ground our mutual life experiences more in reality and less in misunderstanding or myth or fable or lie, so that we can really live based on truth. And, Tom, I think you've done your best to tell the truth, and I just want to let you know that I and my listeners really honor and respect you for what you've done.

Tom Phillips [00:27:49] Thank you, John. I've certainly appreciated talking to you. I'm grateful for all the work you're doing as well and all your intentions. So thank you again.

John Dehlin [00:27:57] All right, Tom. Take care.

Tom Phillips [00:27:59] Take care, John.

John Dehlin [00:27:59] Okay.

Tom Phillips [00:28:21] Come, come, you saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're.

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