Welcome and Introduction to the Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:15] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's August 26, 2021, and we have another really exciting special John Larsen packed Mormon Stories podcast episode for you today. Hey, John Larsen, welcome back to the Mormon Stories Podcast studio.

John Larsen [00:00:35] Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:39] I have probably one of the most exciting announcements of at least the past five years that I'm going to make right now. I don't have to tell you the hundred plus of you that are tuned in right now because you were so excited to hear from John Larsen that, that it's super cool to have John Larsen back in the podcasting chair sharing with us his wisdom and wit. What I do want to announce is something that is super cool. So for those of you who are just brand new to kind of Mormon thought and discussion outside of correlated orthodox Mormonism, you won't know that John Larsen ran a really cool podcast called Mormon expression from around 2008.

John Larsen [00:01:25] 2009 to 2014.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] 2009 to 2014, yeah. And it's got over 200 episodes. And you know, anytime there's kind of this Reddit thread of like, what are the most impactful podcasts ever, there's always like Michael Coe, you know, or Tom Phillips with Mormon Stories, or Donna Showalter, Leah Young, there's a few there. You know, RFM's got some, Bill Real's got some. But always there's several episodes that are mentioned for Mormon Expression Podcast, including how to build a transoceanic vessel, DNC132, the DNC89, several really, really important episodes where John Larsen, along with his ex wife Zilfa, and often a panel of guests would deconstruct and talk about really important episodes.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] So Mormon Expression was super important for so long. And then one day there was this wave of hacks on WordPress sites. Mormon stories got hacked, Mormon Expression got hacked. And basically it took Mormon Expression off the Internet for a long, long time and destroyed the RSS feed so that Mormon Expression couldn't be consumed by a podcast app like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Google Play or Android or whatever it is that you use.

John Dehlin [00:02:49] So the only way you e couldn't get access to the Mormon Expression archive, or you had to go to john larson.org and then download the file and then find out a way, which we all know how to do because, you know, we were using ipods before they even had like digital screens. But the rest of you were like, I don't know how to add an MP3 to my phone.

John Dehlin [00:03:11] So what I am super excited to announce is that John Larsen. Two things. Okay, two things. Number one, John Larsen signed an agreement with me and the Open Stories foundation to allow us to redistribute the full Mormon Expression archive, or at least almost the full Mormon Expression Expression archive, the MP3s that still exist.

John Dehlin [00:03:33] So I have downloaded as many of those as we could recover. We've replicated them on our servers so that, you know, they're stored in the cloud. Nothing's going to happen to them. And I have started creating a podcast feed for Mormon Expression podcasts, and I've put up about the first 30 or so. Right now they're on Spotify and they're on anchor, but within a few days, I'm going to get them up on Apple, itunes, and all the other feeds as well. And soon you are going to be able to start to subscribe to Mormon Expression Podcast again and download and listen to the episodes that you want.

John Dehlin [00:04:12] And if you want to, you'll be able to peruse, you know, 98% of the full archive. And this is really, really important. And there'll be a webpage you can go to, to, you know, to even if you want to make comments on the past episodes. So that's a part number one. John, do you want to add or take away anything from that part of the announcement?

John Larsen [00:04:32] No, that sounds great. Yeah, it will be good to have it out there and people can get in their feeds again. I'm excited.

Supporting Mormon Stories and John Larsen's Return

John Dehlin [00:04:38] All right, so that's part one. Part two is John is willing to kind of jump back into the consistent podcast episode arena. And so John and I struck a deal where we're going to pay him per episode and he is going to prepare at least one, you know, kind of substantive, deep dive, thoughtful podcast episode per month. And maybe he'll appear even more than once a month. So we're just really excited to have John Larsen back and, and joining on, you know, kind of the Mormon Stories podcast team. Here's the catch.

John Dehlin [00:05:13] We want to make. We're spending a lot of time and money, we've already invested hundreds, if not even over a thousand bucks in time and effort to get his podcast sort of starting to be up and running. And we want to make our ability. We want to be able to pay John for his expertise so that he'll be motivated to continue his work here, and we want to make that sustainable. So what we've created is a, a donation button. You can go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression or if you just click on mormonexpression.com right now, it's going to redirect you to this page where there's a donate button.

John Dehlin [00:05:51] If you guys love John Larsen, want to see him continue, or love the idea of the Mormon expression archive being available for eternity for new people who are, you know, coming on to the questioning Mormonism, faith crisis stuff, please become a monthly donor today. 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can aff John. All the donations will be fully transparent to John. He'll be able to see them. He'll be able to know it's been donated. We'll. We'll use the money to pay him up until a certain point, and then we'll collaborate with him on how to use any discretionary funds that are available. That's kind of part two. John, anything you want to add about that?

John Larsen [00:06:31] No, I'm. I'm excited to. I'm excited to talk about some stuff, you know, as we talk about all the time, this stuff isn't free. And the church has installed. A successful thing they did is install in all of us a preference to give charity to them and to no one else. And to view that anybody who's looking for charitable donations to run a business like this, I'm sitting in this studio looking at all this equipment. This stuff ain't cheap, so it costs money. And we're in an age of free delivery of everything, but. But nothing is free. So the quality that John has built and maintained over the years costs money. And I would encourage everyone to do that to support. Not for my benefit, for the benefit of all of this and all the voices that you've had on. So thanks, John.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] All right. And we're just glad to have you back in the saddle. So we're super excited and we're always excited to have in studio Carah Burrell. Hey, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:07:37] Hey, John's.

John Dehlin [00:07:38] How's it going?

Carah Burrell [00:07:39] Good. Excited to get going. We have this live streaming, which is so exciting because I think that's going to add a really fun element, people be able to have their questions right to John Larsen himself. Well, so I'll try to be facilitating this conversation here with, through all of the people in the chat on YouTube. So, yeah, I'm ready to get started.

John Dehlin [00:07:57] Yeah. So welcome to our 200 plus YouTube live listeners and viewers that are watching us. If you've got. If you want to correct something, if you want to add something, ask John questions, whatever you can do that. So let's. Without Any further ado? Let's get rolling. Now, John, a couple of things. I think you may have some disclaimers you want to talk about.

John Larsen [00:08:18] I have some further ado.

John Dehlin [00:08:20] Okay, what's the further ado? Before we jump into.

John Larsen [00:08:22] Well, from our last episode, I want to. I want to post a couple of corrections. First of all, I am not. I know it sound like I'm, like, against the church. And there's like, the church team, and there's the against the church team. I don't. I don't bind any of those paradigms. The only thing that I'm interested in is truth in what really happened, what people really said. And, you know, we record these podcasts extemporaneously. We're pulling a lot of things out of our memory. Sometimes we say things incorrectly. I'd like to encourage you, dear listener, if you hear something that we say incorrect that is material to what we're talking about, please send in.

John Larsen [00:08:58] Please send in corrections. So I have two from the last time I was on. First of all, I said. I threw out a line that said something like, B.H. roberts died in rehab. That's not true. I don't know why I said it. I was just talking very quickly. Well, BH Roberts had gone to rehab when he was young. And then there's kind of an underground sort of talking about. He went to rehab again after he had kind of his faith crisis. And in the later years of his ministry, he kind of pulled back a little bit. He had some questions about the church and church.

John Larsen [00:09:34] According to. I think I got this information from Quinn that he had kind of relapsed into drinking again. He had gone to California to go to rehab to clean himself out. That's not as scandalous as it sounds. At the turn of the century, a lot of the brethren drank coffee, tea, and alcohol.

John Larsen [00:09:57] We didn't take the word of wisdom seriously then as we do now. So it's not as scandalous as it sounds now. But I have no knowledge, and there's nothing to indicate that he died in rehab. So I apologize for that. The second one that I got a little pushback on was when I was talking about Elijah Abel being defrocked in conference. Now, I did a little bit of digging into that. I believe that I heard that or I saw that. A Sunstone presentation. Looking through my notes, I couldn't find anything specific about that. So if there's anybody out there who can confirm or deny that, I did go into the journal discourse where we recorded all of the conference talks.

John Larsen [00:10:35] From that time period. But they didn't record or we don't have a record that the church has published of the administrative minutes. So it was really common during the Brigham Young era to publicly shame people and excommunicate them and bring them out. He did the same. Who's the guy with the milk stripping story?

John Dehlin [00:10:55] Thomas Marsh.

John Larsen [00:10:55] You know, like. Yeah, so. So they would bring these guys up and, and, and excommunicate them and take the priesthood away and then, you know, two years later, give it back. So it's not an uncommon occurrence, but I don't have an exact reference to that. If anybody can correct it, please, I would like to know.

John Dehlin [00:11:12] I know there was Zebedee Coltrane. There were two or three African American early church members who got the priesthood.

John Larsen [00:11:19] Right.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] So it may have been another one of those guys and not.

John Larsen [00:11:22] Could have. Could have been. Yeah. Yeah.

Current Events and Mormon Politics

John Dehlin [00:11:24] Okay. I, I have one question, sort of about current events. Is there anything else you wanted to. Before I ask you the question?

John Larsen [00:11:30] Well, I was going to talk a little bit, you know, on the comments and some of the feedback we got from the last podcast, because we delve into a little bit of quote, unquote, politics. I want to be clear where, where my stand on that. That is. Politics is really about power. It's about who's controlling the. The government, who controls these positions.

John Larsen [00:11:48] Right now we live in a time when certain social issues have been divided up kind of neatly and incorrectly between these two warring factions. But just because one side has claimed some issue or claimed the counter of that, I don't view that as politics. So things like vaccines and masks and abortion and voting rights and unions, none of these are political issues to me, even though political parties have sides. And some of these things are very instrumental to what's going on right now. I mean, with the church's latest statement on masks and vaccines, there's a lot of infighting going on inside LDS chapels right now.

John Larsen [00:12:30] And to label that a political issue, I think would be naive. And have you missed the bigger picture? That this is an issue that goes beyond the current political bandying, and more importantly, it's really impacting people's faith and their testimony and their attendance at church right now. And it would be a shame to not deal with issues that are alive and current in Mormonism because they've been labeled by some as political. I think the only one other thing I want to say, we do get comments that say, you guys are leftists or whatever, you need to represent the right.

John Larsen [00:13:05] I have no idea what that means so of those people out there. I know, John, I feel safe because I've seen you issue this statement many times to people. If there is an alternative right wing or conservative perspective that we're missing out on, please explain it to us. Don't just tell us. Because in all the feedback I've had over the years, people say, oh, you got that wrong. And it's always like, well, how help me understand. So come on the podcast. I'd be happy to talk to you if you think that I'm. In one way or the other, I'm not a Democrat. You can check my voting record.

John Larsen [00:13:36] I've never registered as a Democrat. I hate the Democrats. I hate the Republicans. I. My positions tend to be fairly leftist by current standards, but that's just where I'm at.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] Yeah. My wife showed me this video of a teacher, I think, at Lehigh High School.

John Larsen [00:13:52] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:53] Who started talking about the vaccine and some politics stuff and got in trouble. And I got a comment from someone who said she was a teacher who just put up like a rainbow flag and like, we love LGBT kids. And she was forced to take it all down, being told that it was political. And I, I hate it when things like public health, basically just public health or mental health, get politicized.

John Larsen [00:14:19] These are real. I live in the district of Brighton High School. All teachers at Brighton High School have been ordered to take down all rainbow flags. There's been rainbow flags up in the high schools for 20 years. That's the time we live in.

John Dehlin [00:14:32] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:14:32] That we are, we are on retrenchment. These are serious issues. And I can tell you, having kids in school, they're scared. They're. They're concerned. These are, these are big things. And to say, oh, that's just politics. Is absurd and naive.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] Yeah. Yeah. And I always want, I always am torn because I do think public policy matters and it affects people. And I do, you know, I always have, like, certain listeners who get mad whenever we just bring it up and they, a lot of them cancel their donations and walk away. And I'm always torn because I, I don't want that to. I would just not want to do this if that those types of topics were off limits.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] And I don't want to, like, defeat the overall purpose. So there's always a tension there. And I appreciate, you know, that we're all trying to navigate that a little bit really quickly. Major thing in the news. And I remember one of your parting episodes, you made predictions about this. But Jeffrey R. Holland gave this famous talk a few days ago to the BYU staff and faculty, where he basically used. And it turns out this is just breaking news. But it turns out when Elder. So what Elder Holland did is he sort of used a musket analogy, basically saying, we've had too much friendly fire within staff and faculty, meaning that BYU professors and staff and students, too many marches supporting LGBTQ people lighting up the Y and rainbow colors, unacceptable.

Jeffrey Holland's Musket Fire Speech and LGBT Issues

John Dehlin [00:15:55] And then too many staff and faculty and students criticizing either proclamation of the family or the church's prohibition of same sex marriage. And so Elder Holland sort of denounced what he called friendly fire. He's invoking this kind of wartime metaphor. And then he talked about wanting more staff and faculty to pick up the muskets and to fight those who are trying to be LGBTQ affirming.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] This caused a. You know, he also denounced the valedictorian who was gay a couple years ago, Matt. Matt Easton, who's gonna be coming on Mormon Stories podcast in a few days, by the way. We're really excited to be flying him out on Sunday because we want to let him tell the story. But he denounced Matt Easton for coming out as for just mentioning that he was gay in his valedictorian speech, which was pre approved by correlation. And the breaking news that I don't think you may or may not know, is that John Gee apologist John Gee, Book of Abraham apologist John Geez, who is definitely anti lgbt, kind of homophobic, gave the musket analogy like a month before in his Fair Mormon address.

John Dehlin [00:17:05] And I got this from like Radio Free Mormon or Bill Real. So literally, Elder Holland took an analogy used by John Gee about the muskets and taking up arms, and then basically invokes a war metaphor for how we need to handle LGBT affirming people. And I just wanted to know, do you have any thoughts on that?

John Larsen [00:17:24] Oh, my God, you're just trying to piss me off, aren't you? I have lots of thoughts. First of all, the most important one to BYU faculty. And I know some of you are fans of mine. You send me letters, we've talked.

John Larsen [00:17:36] I know that a lot of them listen to Mormon stories. You have been called out, and I'm calling you out right now. As of right now, you are a fucking homophobe if you keep your job. You can't, you cannot sit under the umbrella of this. BYU should lose its accreditation. It should lose all of its NCAA status. It is a homophobic, bigoted fucking school. And you teaching there are part of it. You don't get to have that job, have that title and secretly on the down low say, you know what? I don't, I don't, I don't stand for that. You got called out by Holland, who, by the way, is an intellectual tiny man.

John Larsen [00:18:18] I think he's the most overrated person who's ever been in the quorum of the 12. And I say that by knowing all the people been in the quorum of the 12. This man is not bright. You don't. In 2021, when we have actual machine gun battles happening on the streets of the United States, when we have actual insurrection happening hotbedded inside Mormonism. The 3 percenters came from Mormonism. The Bundy group came from Mormonism. And when you. A musket is a weapon that was invented for warfare. A musket was invented to kill people. It's not a defensive weapon. It is an offensive weapon. And let me parenthetically say, it would be just like Jeffrey Holland to bring a musket to a fucking machine gun war.

John Larsen [00:19:02] So it's not an apropos analogy right now. It is hard. It is tough. And if the church is going to use that kind of rhetoric against the gay people, all bets are off. You don't get any, any latitude. Now you're, you're calling for open social warfare in a state where people show up to protest at schools and like with machine guns. How irresponsible. Jesus Christ. Is that what you want me to say?

John Dehlin [00:19:29] Well, we want John Larsen Truth. Now I'm going to say I've got friends or listeners who listen to byu, who attend byu, who work for byu, who are professors of byu, and what I think I'll just represent. What I think they would say in response is, hey, listen, you know, if we're, some of us are on the inside, we can be allies to LGBT kids. We can make safe places for them. We can informally, off the record, counsel and support them. I know there's a lot of LGBT affirming therapists that work in the caps, the counseling center at byu.

John Dehlin [00:20:06] And, you know, so. So I want to kind of say that, that idea that everyone who works for BYU or the church and some people, literally, their pensions are tied to it, they can't leave. They aren't going to be able to get more jobs because they work for byu. So I just want to also say, hey, if you don't feel like you're in the position to just leave, because for whatever reason, I want to say I can have empathy for that.

John Larsen [00:20:34] I can have empathy for it, but you're still a fucking Hypocrite. And I come and represent the people who left the church, who paid the price. I know thousands of people who lost marriages, who lost careers, who lost jobs, who lost retirement, who lost pensions. And you don't get any fucking sympathy from me for saying, well, I might lose $250,000 if I leave. Leave like the people are dying, like they're suicides. The church is causing problems and I can't imagine what God you believe in. You can come to the other side and I would have done what's right, but my pension was on the line.

John Larsen [00:21:09] The world is the shit hole it is right now because of people like you. The church would collapse if all the people who didn't believe in the church just stopped going. The church is being held up by the people. And you and I fought about this over the years. I still stand by that because I know the people who paid the dear price.

John Larsen [00:21:31] And to say that that doesn't matter, the people who gave up their marriages, people who gave up everything, is just like, well, it's just either way, it matters. It matters immensely. And by hiding and cowering out in Provo, you are dishonoring the sacrifice that people made who left to leave the church and to say, I'm going to sit back and send John Dehlin $5 and somehow that makes it right. You're part of the problem. And it's always been that way in history. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. To deliver that news.

Carah Burrell [00:22:02] Do you think it comes down to the same thing with, you know, a lot of progressives within the church that are. Maybe it's a performative thing that they say the right thing to appease one group and then they also, you know, want to have their cake and eat it too. Just generally. Is this a trend within the church? That is a problem.

John Larsen [00:22:17] I, it's, this, is. This debate has been going on for a long time, you know, and I, it's. I don't, I don't. It's. It's hard. I mean, I'm speaking harsh words, but that's because I, My own personal family is connected. You know, my own personal view on the kids that I deal with, my own children, you know, the suicidal LGBT kids and the kind of pain that's pushed out. And when I hear people in their middle class houses with their middle class cars, their middle class income saying, I can't pursue the truth because I might lose this. I don't give a shit.

John Dehlin [00:22:55] Well, that's why, that's why we have you on and that's why we love you, because we want to hear your opinion. And a lot of our listeners really love that.

John Larsen [00:23:02] I'd love for you to come school me. Come. Come on and tell me where I'm wrong. But I've been hearing this. This excuse about the insider, the Fifth Column, that by being. By being somehow progressive in the church now, what you're doing is somebody sees you and some child sees you, dear church member, and you express to them that you're a supporter of LGBT rights or whatever. But what they see is that you're kowtowing your own personal beliefs to the belief of the institution. They see you ultimately raising your arm and voting in all the. All the. The bigoted bishops and stake presidents. That's the lesson that you're giving, is that integrity doesn't matter, that you stay in the church and you do it because, well, I might lose my family or I might get written out of the will or whatever.

John Larsen [00:23:46] Yeah, put it on the line. We only live here a short time. You're gonna be dead a long time. Go out in a blaze.

John Dehlin [00:23:53] Well, one thing you're. One thing I think is true is how does. How do things ever change if everybody stays quiet and stays in the closet? How do things ever change?

John Larsen [00:24:02] How do things ever change? And what change has ever come about by these quiet people sitting in the pews? Yeah, you know, I. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] So one of the things, Kieran, I talked about as we're trying to balance Mormon stories, feeling safe and friendly to kind of new people who are starting to question the church and people who have left. Twenty years ago, Karen and I came up with the idea of having content ratings at the beginning. So I'm adding that to our show. Notes that we decide, you and me, Carah, on the content rating at the beginning of the show. And I think. Carrie, you tell me if I'm wrong. I think today is going to be PG 13 or R. But we just neglected to mention that at the very beginning.

John Larsen [00:24:41] And I'm sorry. That tirade was strong and laced in hyperbole. I understand. But I feel strongly about it, and I feel strongly about the people who could stand up and help. If 20 BYU professors got together, they'd all lose their job. If 50 of them got together, they've got a problem. 100 of them got together. The church will kowtow.

John Dehlin [00:25:04] That's true.

John Larsen [00:25:05] And we have those numbers. I know we have those numbers.

John Dehlin [00:25:09] We have those numbers.

John Larsen [00:25:09] I know who those people are. They're there. And somebody has to be Courageous. We would have never had the civil rights change we had in the 50s if wasn't for slick, and if it wasn't for Dr. King, and if it wasn't for Malcolm X and it wasn't for those people who were there getting arrested, getting beat up, somebody's got to get their ass on the front line. And I know we always want to be somebody else, but maybe now is your time.

John Dehlin [00:25:36] I love it. Well, that's why we have you on, John.

John Larsen [00:25:40] And I apologize for being a dick.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] That's why people love you. Carah, anything you want to add before we jump into today's episode?

Carah Burrell [00:25:47] I mean, all the comments, they're going by too fast that I can't even read them. But everyone is.

John Dehlin [00:25:52] Are people disagreeing with John? Are they liking.

Carah Burrell [00:25:54] They're like, john Larsen's back pretty much claws are out kind of comments. Silence equals death. Go, John, go.

John Dehlin [00:26:02] I mean, that's true. It is true, sir.

Carah Burrell [00:26:04] This is a Wendy's, but that's like a. A meme type of joke. But anyway, I mean, the kids will get it.

John Dehlin [00:26:11] It is kind of weird that we're like, oh, yeah, Utah is the number third or fourth highest suicide state in the nation, and every month or two, there's several. A handful of LGBT Mormon youth suicides. And that's been going on since 2008 and since 1960s and 1950s. And we're all just like, yeah, that's kind of where things are like, why. Why aren't people more in an outrage? Or do we just have this sustained, chronic, you know, series of youth? We interviewed Jesse Funk, who sang, I think, on five EFY albums, and she personally knows 10 LGBT youth who ended their life that she knew personally. Like, it is a real problem. And why are we just all kind of like, oh, well, I don't want to make a sacrifice, you know?

John Larsen [00:27:01] Yeah, I. It's. It's frustrating for me because. And it's. I've paid prices for me. My. My morality is different than other people's morality, but that. You stand up for truth, you stand up for the underdog, you know, And.

John Dehlin [00:27:16] And where do we learn that?

John Larsen [00:27:18] And if your. Your moral equation on people who are dying has. Has 401k entering into anywhere, Fuck you.

Introducing the First Vision Topic

John Dehlin [00:27:26] Okay. All right, well, sorry. John Larsen's back. Okay.

Carah Burrell [00:27:33] I don't even have a 401 quit.

John Larsen [00:27:35] Well, that's why I'm saying it, because I know that me and everybody under 35, the 401ks don't really matter.

John Dehlin [00:27:41] So. Donate to the Open Stories Foundation. So Carah Burrell can have a 401k so the John Larsen can keep dropping F moms on Mormon Stories podcast.

John Larsen [00:27:49] Sorry, I apologize. You can believe me if you want.

John Dehlin [00:27:52] This podcast officially has a PG13 rating. And if you're a newly questioning orthodox Mormon, this may not be for you, but I think it is. Just grow some Teflon because you want to hear this stuff, and John's really smart.

John Larsen [00:28:05] Hey, and John poked the bear. You knew what would happen.

John Dehlin [00:28:09] Okay, so John Larsen picked today's topic. We have covered the first vision before, but John Larsen has never covered the first vision before on Mormon Storage podcast, and he's got his own thoughts and analysis. And so what John thought it would be cool to do. Well, I'm even going to just let him introduce it. So, John, tell us, kind of what led you to want to pick this, of all topics, as kind of your first foray into church history? Well, I mean, the Curse of Cain episode, was that. So maybe your second on Mormon Stories podcast?

John Larsen [00:28:38] Well, when I started my faith crisis or crises or when it. When it became serious, it was around 2003, 2002 is when I started. I started reading, and I had problems mostly with polygamy that I really wanted to sort out. I really wanted to get to the bottom, but understand in a positive way. I wasn't trying to deconstruct my faith. I was trying to eliminate cognitive dissonance. I was trying to eliminate things that were. Things that were troubling me, that I felt were getting in the way of me fully engaging the spirit and all that kind of stuff.

John Larsen [00:29:09] So I decided very early on a very good decision, I think, that I didn't trust anybody. I knew the church stuff was laced in propaganda, and I had a strong bias against the ex Mormon writers, you know, the Lighthouse Ministries and those guys, Saints Alive and the people who at the time dominated ex Mormon sort of conversation. Now it's dominated by, like, atheists and Internet densities in the. In the. In the old days, like last century, not that long ago, it was really dominated by evangelicals, really, because they had the funding to go after it. So I didn't. I didn't want to read their stuff.

John Larsen [00:29:56] So I decided I just go to the source material, which was really fascinating and still is. And. And because I think ultimately, for me, what we're after is truth. We're trying to find out what really happened. Because to me, that's interesting. It's not about proving the church true or proving the church false or establishing that this guy's good and this guy's bad. It's like, what did they really believe? What did Joseph Smith really say? And that was one of the big epiphanies I had, is I realized Joseph Smith had written a lot of stuff down and he'd given a lot of revelations, of which me and almost everybody else in the church was completely ignorant.

John Larsen [00:30:33] Here's the man that we thought of, mortal men, men who weren't gods, to be the very most important man who'd ever been on the planet. And he'd written all this stuff not that long ago, and we were all ignorant of it. That hit me like a ton of bricks.

John Larsen [00:30:47] So I wanted to get myself out of that. So I want to start by reading the things that were actually written and trying to understand what was actually said at the time. And as Fraulein Maria taught us, we want to start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. So I thought we would start at the very beginning, at least the way Mormons today shape their narrative with the First Vision. And the First Vision is a complex, really fascinating topic that I invite people to get into. Matter of fact, I did a presentation this about 15 years ago. I had a PowerPoint and a handout, which I will send to John and folks to put up on the website if you. If you want to look at that material.

John Dehlin [00:31:26] Was there a Mormon expression episode on First Vision?

John Larsen [00:31:29] Do you remember? I think we did a Mormon expression episode on First Vision. So if you want to go find that, you can, too.

Background and Importance of the First Vision

John Dehlin [00:31:33] Okay.

John Larsen [00:31:34] But today I want to just focus in on the first account of the first vision.

John Dehlin [00:31:39] The first written account.

John Larsen [00:31:40] The first written account. There's actually, depending on who you ask, there's six accounts, potentially nine, and a few more just mentions. And in that material, I kind of deal with those. I don't really want to delve into all the comparison. It's probably a topic for the future because as Joseph Smith keeps retelling the story, it matches theological innovations in the Church, which I think is a very interesting topic and a very neutral topic, but one that gets shaded completely by people on the Church.

John Larsen [00:32:14] There was definite. And this is one of the reasons Mormons are always at a disadvantage when talking about their own doctrine, their own history, because they don't study it. Because there is a very definitive progression. And there's been a couple great books written in the past few years that detail the theological changes in the Church. And we have the Kirtland stage, and we have the Nauvoo stage, and we have the Salt Lake. And there's very clear additions to the doctrine innovations, revelations, whatever you want to call them, that it changes. But of course, Mormonism has a fundamental idea that they're restoring this lost truth. So to have changing doctrine and restoration, kind of like we pointed out last time, are at conflict.

John Larsen [00:32:52] So what the church has always done, the church historians like B.H. roberts and the Smiths like we talked about, have tried to usually change the. Change things to make them match. Joseph did that himself. The Book of Mormon was very trinitarian. And that's probably a topic you've probably covered before, but we should cover it again.

John Dehlin [00:33:13] Yeah, for sure.

John Larsen [00:33:14] And after the, the 1837 edition, the 1842 edition, they went through and started editing that out. So what I mean by that is the very first edition of the 1830 Book of Mormon, God and Jesus are not separate beings. They're referred to the way Protestants would in 1830. And then we see after the doctrinal innovations that came later, that that was changed. And Joseph himself actually went in and changed the book.

John Dehlin [00:33:43] So like, it would say, Mary is the mother of God.

John Larsen [00:33:46] Mary is the mother of God.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] It would say that in the 1830 version. And then Joseph Smith comes over later and says, whoops, my theology about the Trinity has changed. Now I think God and Jesus are separate because I want to be able to have multiple gods and all that stuff. So I've got to write into the 1830, whatever, five or seven version of the Book of Mormon, son of. Insert that. So now Mary is the mother of the Son of God because otherwise his theology doesn't map. His evolving theology doesn't map to the founding scripture.

John Larsen [00:34:17] Yeah, well said. And that's, that's, that is the challenge. It's, it's sort of a fun part for once you get into it because you have these, these documents that are, that are altered and changed and, and they're changed to match the theology of the day, which we of course, may, may not.

John Larsen [00:34:33] You know, I, I was talking to, I had some friends over yesterday, and my wife learned for the first time that garments are now optional. That just blew her mind because they, they were definitely not optional. I have old timers in my family that my mom swears they wouldn't take, they wouldn't take their union suit off to take a bath. They would put, you know, leave it in one arm here and then wash and then put it on the rag. They would never take it off at all. You know, and, and, and that's just an example of, of Changing doctrine, change theology.

John Dehlin [00:35:06] And going back to kind of founding documents, the lectures on Faith, maybe you're going to cover this. The lectures on faith were part of the scriptural canon, you know, let's say around 1835 or pre 1835. And the lectures on Faith had the trinitarian deity as well, where God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are one. And that was scrubbed out of sort of the scriptures once Joseph's theology changed because it's inconvenient. Again, these lectures of faith are reflecting a trinitarian God, which is also reflected in the Book of Mormon and.

John Larsen [00:35:39] Right. And I know, well, there's no believers listening anymore. We chased them off in the first 10 minutes.

John Dehlin [00:35:43] No, that's not true.

John Larsen [00:35:44] But yeah, the trinitarian, we're not going to cover it completely here. The Book of Mormon was clearly trinitarian. The early accounts of the first vision were clearly trinitarian. The Lectures on Faith were some of the revelations, both published and unpublished were as well as pulpit talks like it's very well established that during the Kirtland period and prior to that the church was trinitarian. Which leads a great segue into what we're going to talk about with the first, the first account of the first vision. Joseph Smith in Mormonism has a bootstrap problem, which is we have to take Joseph's word for it that he's a prophet.

John Larsen [00:36:26] Ultimately, the proof that Joseph Smith is a prophet all center back to Joseph Smith. And for members, they get him, they get in a circular reasoning because Joseph Smith is proof that the church is true. And the church being true is proof that Joseph Smith is the prophet. Which is why a lot of ex Mormons talk about an epiphany at some point that breaks their faith. Because there's these paradigms that you have to accept and once you no longer accept those, a lot of other things sort of melt away.

John Larsen [00:37:04] So in so doing, in accepting that Joseph Smith is a prophet, the real sinister thing, the real indoctrination, always happens one level below what you're recognizing. Because what you're doing is you're debating whether or not Joseph Smith was a prophet. You're not debating whether or not there's any such thing as a prophet at all.

John Larsen [00:37:25] And I've mentioned this before, in terms of testimony. It's the same thing when everyone gets up in church and they recite the three elements of a testimony. That I know Joseph Smith was a prophet, that I know the church is true, and I know that Nielsen or whoever, insert name here, is the Prophet. Today, the question that's not being asked is, is testimony a good way to establish anything? And the answer, of course, is no. But you don't even question that by having testimony meeting, you ingrain so deeply in people's minds.

John Larsen [00:37:58] Some people use the word brainwashing, but it's a bad word because you're really just establishing assumptions. You make the assumption that testimony matters, you know, and even in courts, eyewitness testimony. I have a great. In this presentation, the material, if you go look at it, I have a great article from the New York Times that was about a flight, where the flight crashed or whatever. And they have the testimony of the people who saw it. You know, some people were saying the plane veered off to the left and the right, and it just. It's just all over the map that our recall and our memory is not nearly as good as we think it is.

John Larsen [00:38:34] And so that's a great segue into what we're talking about. This account was written in 1832 in what was known until the Joseph Smith Papers as the Kirtland Letter Book. And as I searched around. The Joseph Smith Papers are great. We've had the text of this for a long time. And the definitive treaty on these six accounts was written in 1966 in dialogue.

John Larsen [00:38:59] And it is still the powerhouse article on these things. So it's been around in the 60s, in 66 or 67, is when Oakes Dallin H. Oaks was writing for Dialogue. So, I mean, it's a important publication and an important area. But we used to call this the Kirtland Letter Book that this came from. It was a history that Joseph Smith started, and they started writing this history of the church. There were several of them that were done during the first 20 years of the church, and then they turned it into a letter book.

John Larsen [00:39:37] But the Joseph Smith Papers have renamed it to just the 1832 summer history or something they called it. I thought it was really interesting. They didn't identify it as the Kirtland Letter Book, probably because they're trying to disassociate with the negative things that have been written. So this was written in 1832? It is. The part that we're going to be going over is in handwriting of two people. One is his secretary, William, not Clayton. Sorry. My mind went.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] No, I've got it. I got.

John Larsen [00:40:07] Is

John Dehlin [00:40:09] Frederick Williams.

John Larsen [00:40:10] Frederick Williams and Joseph Smith. Yep. And scholars can tell the difference. And if you go to the website, we're gonna put a link up that you can go to the Joseph Smith Papers, it's all online. They have the full photo of the original and they have the text that we have from it. And if you're really wonky, you can go in and actually see who wrote this. But this section that we're going to cover is written in both the handwriting of Joseph Smith and Williams, Roger Williams.

John Larsen [00:40:38] Okay? So I want to establish that and I have my copy of it that I printed out right here. That's what we're going to be going from. I say these things because critics of the church like myself are routinely dismissed as just lying about things all the time, just making things up.

John Larsen [00:40:56] And you, dear listener, you, dear watcher, I invite you to go see for yourself. You don't need to believe anything that I'm going to tell you here. It's all there in black and white, and I'd love to hear your differing opinions from mine.

The Canonized First Vision Text Examined

John Larsen [00:41:10] Okay. We have a canonized version of the first vision that appears in the Pearl of Great Price. It's one of the three books in there, and we've got it as scripture. It's scriptured off. We're not going to read through that whole thing today. It appeared in the canon in the 1870s. We're going to come back to why it appeared in the canon in the 1870s here in a little bit.

John Larsen [00:41:32] But it has some really important themes that are establishment. First of all, the first thing that it does, I just pointed out that Joseph Smith has a bootstrap problem. This is really the first event of modern Mormonism. It's. In modern Mormonism, it happens in the spring of 1820 when Joseph Smith is 14. Now, I really want to say Joseph smith is almost 13 because this is not what they said about. Because Joe Smith was three months older than 13. And Helen Mark Kimmel, when they wrote their essays, they said she was nearly 15. So Joseph Smith was nearly. Nearly 13.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] A few months shy when.

John Larsen [00:42:11] A few. A few months. A few months over 13. When. When the first vision happened. By. By church standards. So he's a little kid. Yeah, by. By the. The canonized one.

John Dehlin [00:42:20] And can I just. Can I just make sure I understand. Isn't the canonized. It was written in 1838, but not really ever published until like 1842ish. But then like you said, it wasn't actually canonized until it has a long history like that.

John Larsen [00:42:33] And I didn't come prepared for all those days.

John Dehlin [00:42:35] But that's. That's my understanding.

John Larsen [00:42:36] It's something like that. It was, it was written contemporaneous with Joseph, Joseph Smith. So, and I'm not sure if, if he wrote it or. And I, I just don't recall six

John Dehlin [00:42:44] years after the 1832 version.

John Larsen [00:42:46] Right, but, but a lot of these versions, and we'll talk about that, didn't surface till later. They were in obscure sources that the people didn't have access to. I mean, if you imagine yourself as a Mormon in 1850, it's not like they were publishing all the journals that Joseph Smith had written. You had what you heard over the pulpit and that was about it.

John Dehlin [00:43:03] Some newspapers or magazines.

John Larsen [00:43:05] Right, right. Which, which were all dismissed as being the work of the devil. Right. So it establishes that Joseph Smith, it establishes that he was chosen by God early. And I think in the canonized version, God basically says I have a great work for you or whatever is going to come out.

John Larsen [00:43:22] But it underlines some other doctrinal points that God hears and personally answers our prayers. Right. That's an important lesson from the canonized version, that there is a personal devil that attempts to stop the work and the progress because the devil actually shows up in that thing. Right. That Joseph Smith, this 14 year old kid is getting accosted by old Nick himself, the grand architect of all evil, took a break from his spring activities to go harass this kid for a couple minutes.

John Larsen [00:43:56] The next thing, the concept of Mormon godhood is established clearly that in the canonized version, God the Father appears standing next to Jesus Christ as two separate distinct corporal beings, not visions, they're actually there. And God says to Joseph, this is my beloved son, Hear him.

John Larsen [00:44:20] So that's an important doctrinal establishment. Now keep that in the back of your head because we were just saying that the church was trinitarian for the first ten years or so. This was supposed to have happened in 1820. Again, the Book of Mormon for reference, published in 1830, 10 years before the Book of Mormon was published.

John Larsen [00:44:40] So these are things that the first one does. It disassociates Joseph Smith from his questionable past. Joseph Smith, even though much of his questionable past happens after 1820, he's convicted of treasure seeking and that sort of stuff in 1826.

John Larsen [00:44:57] And of course he absconds with, you know, he elopes, he sneaks off with Emma and that sort of stuff. So he's, he's kind of got this little ne' er do well history as a rapscallion. And this establishes that God awares, he's. He, he gets forgiven for his sins. Right. So it makes a clean break with Joseph Smith. It's it's almost like the Virgin Mary sort of thing that, that, that the Immaculate Conception is that Mary was immaculately concepted, so there was no original sin to transfer to Jesus from Mary.

John Larsen [00:45:32] So the Catholic theology pushed that one step back so Jesus didn't have to deal with original sin at all. Same sort of thing is happening. Joseph is picked and honored by God as a 14 year old. Whatever sins his father had committed, or his family or himself as a younger man, he is absolved from them. And because God is picking him, he gets absolved from things he hasn't yet done.

John Larsen [00:45:54] And then it also distinguishes Mormonism from other classic movements and we'll come to that a little bit more. It's a breakaway. This is where God says that all of the churches are abominations and that's a pretty heady word and none of them are serving him. The God comes down to this kid because he is disgusted with the entirety of Christendom in 1820.

John Dehlin [00:46:18] And I even get the sense that Joseph is wanting in this, the version you're talking about, the official version. Joseph doesn't know, he's not sure and he's asking God to clarify.

John Larsen [00:46:28] Exactly, right, exactly. He's an honest seeker.

John Dehlin [00:46:31] I think that's important.

John Larsen [00:46:32] I have a quote here from Gordon B. Hinckley from the Ensign, February 2007 from the First Presidency message. We have a perfect knowledge of the nature of God that has come through the first vision of the prophet Joseph. He saw God, he heard him speak, he saw his son, he heard him speak and he could speak to them. There was no question in his mind about the true nature of God. What a tremendous thing that was.

John Larsen [00:46:59] So here's Hinckley affirming that the non trinitarian Mormon view on God is real and they're real beings. And he conversed with them. The establishment of the first vision as in the Scriptures was important theologically. And I'll just read one more. I've got several of these, but this one was from True to the Faith, a book published, kind of a doctrinal exegesis sort of thing, published in 2004.

John Larsen [00:47:30] For your testimony of the restored gospel to be complete, it must include a testimony of Joseph Smith's divine mission. The truthfulness of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints rests on the truthfulness of the first vision and the other revelations that the Lord God gave to the prophet Joseph. So if you want to believe the church, you have to believe in the first vision as outlined in the Pearl. Great price.

John Larsen [00:47:53] And then I'll quote Hinckley one more time because it's fun. When he, when he went on his interview, the PBS interview with Helen Whitney in April 2007, he said this. Well, it's either true or it's false. We're engaged if it's false. We're engaged in a great fraud. If it's true. It's the most important thing in the world. Now that's the whole picture. It's either right or wrong, true or false, fraudulent or true. And that's exactly where we stand with a conviction in our hearts. That is truth. That Joseph went into the sacred grove, that he saw the Father and the Son and he talked with them.

John Larsen [00:48:25] That's our claim. That's where we stand. That's where we fall, if we fall. But we don't. We stand secure in the faith. So Kinkley is making absolutely clear, and I know of no statement since then that has taken any light away from this phase. That, that it's a false dichotomy that he's setting up. But he's setting it up and he's the prophecy and revelator. He's saying this is either true or it's false. So if we can find any element of it that's false, then it's all false.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] It's material.

John Larsen [00:48:49] Yeah, because. Because he set up the dichotomy. Because truth can't include false. That's fundamental to the definition of the word. So now Hinckley's given us a gift. All you have to do is find one thing wrong, one false thing, and the whole thing falls. According to the prophet Syrian revelator Hinckley. And he of course extends that and says the first vision has to be true here. The first vision, as outlined in the pearl, great price is fundamental and foundational. So I picked this not just because it's one of the first things that we rely on in the church, ostensibly being from 1820. That's where the story picks up. Right. And. And so it's absolutely important what Joseph Smith said happened.

John Dehlin [00:49:32] Yep, I'm with you.

John Larsen [00:49:34] All right. Okay. So let's talk about what it actually says. He goes, and the first couple paragraphs which we're not going to read are really kind of this high mining sort of. We're giving the history of the most important movement and all that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:49:51] Are we doing the 1832 version?

John Larsen [00:49:52] We're doing the 1832 version.

John Dehlin [00:49:54] So now we're going to the first written version.

John Larsen [00:49:56] This is the first full written that can be attached to Joseph Smith directly. And again, if you want to go down the rabbit hole, there's little references to it, things that show up in newspapers, and there's all a whole collection of different times. The first vision was referenced, but now we're talking 1832.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] Is it worth noting, kind of the standard in the discipline of history about which, you know, which accurates are considered most valuable versus least valuable or most relevant versus least relevant? Do you want to. Right.

John Larsen [00:50:25] We have a. We have a witness here. We have Joseph Smith. We have his memory. He's the only person who witnessed what happened here. And he's making a pretty bold claim. Dare I say he's making the boldest claim of any claim that's ever been made on the, on in the history of the planet. Right. That he. He says that the God, the creator of the universe, came and appeared to him to be the opening act for another God who told him that all the churches and the entire world was lost except for this one kid in New York.

John Dehlin [00:50:58] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:50:58] Right. It is. It is. The Mormons are right about this. It is the. If it happened the way they said it is the pivotal thing, the most important thing. And we should be very curious as to everything Joseph Smith said about it.

John Dehlin [00:51:10] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:51:11] Because it establishes everything else that follows. Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:13] And I was just going to add that I. Tell me if I'm wrong, but when a historian has the choice between a document or a testimony that happens very close to the actual event versus one that happens 5 or 10 or 50 or 100 years after the event from someone's recollection there, isn't it true that the. That the, the witness or the testimony written down closest to the event is usually considered the most accurate or reliable?

John Larsen [00:51:40] I know of no theory, scientific or otherwise, that would postulate that our memories get more accurate the further we get away from whatever event.

Carah Burrell [00:51:48] And you know where I learned that? From Keith A. Erickson's book, what is it real versus rumor? That I reviewed on my YouTube channel. He's the church historian and he said that in his book, but he will not apply it to the first vision. But he tells people to look out for that. You don't want to have things be accurate, make sure it's as close as it was to the actual event. He just doesn't want it. Us to apply it.

John Larsen [00:52:09] Now I have in the written material, I have several of the. At the time, when I wrote this thing in 2007, I have the apologist responses from Fair and all this stuff. There's been more written since But. And we can talk about these at the end, but I. I'll give you what the most common defense is among apologists is that Joseph Smith was talking to different audiences, that each of the. Each of these different accounts are just a function of who he's conversing with. Right. Who he wants to. And that they're fundamentally not incompatible with each other. I think that what I just said, the former thing there, is absolutely false.

John Larsen [00:52:47] I mean, you can look and see they have material contradiction with one another. And I also think it's problematic in a lot of ways. Of course, the earlier it is in the church, the less likely he is to have mucked with it and the more likely it is to be what the event meant to him.

John Larsen [00:53:04] So this being the first one is important that way. Now, this is 1832. So with the canonized account, it's suggesting it happened in 1820. This account, Joseph Smith is saying it happened in 1822. There's another one that he says is 1823.

John Larsen [00:53:21] So he's all over the map in terms of the date, which is really important because apologists sometimes get into, like, minutiae. They love counting cats in Zanzibar. As a matter of fact, if you go to this Mormon stories or not Mormon stories, the Joseph Smith Papers, and read the notes on it, they go into excruciating detail about the book, like its stitching and where pages are cut out and its length and its size. It's like this great deal of scholarship is done about everything except what matters, which is Joseph Smith's theology when he's

John Dehlin [00:53:54] telling this story, and the basic facts of the story.

John Larsen [00:53:56] The basic facts of the story, yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:53:58] So just to begin with, we all think it's for he's 14 years old, but in the first account, he's somewhere between.

John Larsen [00:54:06] He says he's in his 16th year. He says he's 15.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:54:10] Okay, so I'm gonna pick up the. The actual entry in the Joseph Smith Papers is four pages long. We're gonna pick up in the second page. He talks about being born in Sharon and that kind of stuff. And then he says, at a. At about the age of 12 years old, my mind seriously impressed with regards to all the important concerns for the welfare of my immortal soul, which led me to search the Scriptures, believing, as I was taught, that they contained the word of God, thus applying myself to them. And my intimate acquaintance with those of different denominations led me to marvel exceedingly. For I discovered that their profession by holy walk and godly conversation, agreed to what I found contained in the sacred or did not.

John Larsen [00:54:56] Did not. And I'm sorry, I'm stumbling over this. If you look at the. There's a lot of cross outs and new words put in. So here we have one of the very first important things. Joseph Smith in this account says that he started studying the Scriptures when he was 12. And he studied them for three years until he was 15, until he had this. And Joseph Smith himself came to the conclusion that the churches were wrong. He was doing a very common thing in America at the time. You know, the Bible had only been a couple hundred years that this thing was published and available.

John Larsen [00:55:28] And by the time Joseph was around, it was cheap enough that everybody could have a family Bible. So people were reading the Bible in King James English nonetheless, who they'd never encountered, you know, these sort of things before. And the Bible is. The Bible is crazy.

John Larsen [00:55:43] It says everything in there. I did learn today that it says in Deuteronomy that sick people should wear masks. Go look it up. So he's reading this thing and he comes to the conclusion that all the churches. Well, that's a little bit of hubris on his part potentially, because he corrects that in the later version. He makes it very clear. He says when God tells him that none of the churches are correct, he adds the line which never occurred to me. Me.

John Dehlin [00:56:12] Yeah, and. And I think before he asks God which church is true.

John Larsen [00:56:16] Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] God gives him an answer. This is the 1838 version. God gives him the answer and then he says, oh, I never knew that before. So that is a big change, right?

John Larsen [00:56:25] Yep. So here's the next paragraph. From the age of 12 years to 15, I pondered many things in my heart concerning the situation, the world of mankind, the contentions and divisions and wickedness and abominations. There's that word abomination coming up. And the darkness which pervaded the minds of mankind. My mind became exceedingly distressed, for I became convicted of my sins. And by searching the Scripture I found that mankind did not come unto the Lord, but they had apostatized from the true and living faith. And there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. Joseph is very clear in this account, which is supposed to be the official history of the church that he.

John Larsen [00:57:04] He came to the conclusion that none of the denominations were right. This was not a godly revelation. It was a decision that he made. And that he went to God to pray because he wanted forgiveness for his sins. He didn't go seeking truth and light. He went seeking Personal clarity and personal absolution from his own guilt and shame. That's according to Joseph Smith. This is not my interpretation. That's what. That's what it says right there.

John Dehlin [00:57:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Larsen [00:57:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:57:37] So it was less about him wanting to know what church is true because he'd already made that decision. It was more about him feeling bad about the mistakes he'd made and wanting to get. Get forgiveness. Correct? Is that what you're saying?

John Larsen [00:57:47] Exactly, yeah. Okay, we're gonna skip down a couple things. He talks about how great God is and that sort of stuff. But therefore, I cried unto the Lord for mercy, for there was none else to whom I could go and to obtain mercy. And the Lord heard my cry in the wilderness. And while in the attitude of calling upon the lord in the 16th year of my age. So when he's 15, a pillar of light above the brightness of sun at noonday came down from above and rested upon me, and I was filled with the Spirit of God, and the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the Lord.

John Larsen [00:58:27] Okay, so he's praying, and this vision opens to him, and he describes it as a pillar of light. In the original text, the word fire, it was written first and then crossed out. So he set a pillar of fire, and then it came down as a pillar of light. There's a couple of really important things going on here. First of all, his description at this stage actually matches quite a few descriptions of epiphany from his time. And it very closely parallels the epiphany of Stephen the martyr in Acts, I think Acts 57, if I remember right. Stephen the martyr is getting killed and the heavens open, and he sees a vision of God who grants him forgiveness for his sins.

John Larsen [00:59:11] That's biblical. So this description that Joseph Smith is describing very well parallelizes those sort of biblical accounts and other accounts from other contemporaries of the time of having these visions of God. Having a vision of God was not considered anything abnormal. That's why where we're at so far in the narrative, when Joseph later says, I told people, and they scoffed at me, what he's saying right now is not very unique. There's nothing in here that would pretend to be some kind of new movement or new religion. Right.

John Larsen [00:59:47] So again, I found that mankind did not come to the Lord, but they'd all apostatize. He's established that completely on his own. All right, let's move forward. Oh, there is one little thing I kind of skimmed by there. He does also attribute to God in this account the trait of being omnipresent.

John Larsen [01:00:06] Now omnipresent is not found in LDS theology when describing God because in Mormonism God has a physical body. God has a spleen and a colon and I assume he can get erections and I, you know all that stuff. Right.

John Dehlin [01:00:24] He's locatable on the map.

John Larsen [01:00:26] He is locatable on the map. It's important because in, in Mormon theology sometimes that's why the, the, because in Mormon theology you've always got the Holy Ghost kicking around. Well, in all Christian theology the Holy Ghost is a problem, but the, there's some teaching that the Holy Ghost is non corporal. So he's, he's the one who can touch your heart. Although they don't ever really dig into that doctrine very much because that would be a limiting factor on an omnipotent God. If God himself can't do things, he has to have a go between to contact you. That's a tough sell. But the God is identified as omniscient omnipresent in here, which of course is,

John Dehlin [01:01:04] it's not Mormon doctrine.

John Larsen [01:01:05] It's not Mormon doctrine, but It's a very 19th century American view of God. Right.

John Dehlin [01:01:10] Omnipotent, Omnipresent.

John Larsen [01:01:11] Right.

John Dehlin [01:01:12] Only perfect.

Joseph Smith's Age and the Revival Context

John Larsen [01:01:14] Okay, so let's talk about the eight, the 16 year. You know, that's quite a big difference, especially given the narrative. I read an apologist or saw a presentation years ago where they had actually taken the weather from the weather reports, the best they had from Upper State New York to determine which day it was. Because Joseph Smith doesn't identify which day he went in. And of course when we read his actual accounts, he's all over the map of even understanding which year it was.

John Larsen [01:01:47] But, but you know, which they're trying to figure out based on weather patterns, which was a sunny day in, in you know, April of 1820. But here in the first account, Joseph Smith doesn't have that, that those, those years done when this would be happening. If, since this is 1832, he'd be relating this 10 years after it happened in this account and it would be 12 years after the 1838 account, the canonized account. Right?

John Dehlin [01:02:12] Absolutely.

John Larsen [01:02:14] Okay, so forward. Ho.

John Dehlin [01:02:19] Did you already talk about the problem with the burnt over district and the revivals and the question about when the revivals actually happened versus didn't and how that is how the date ends up getting established?

John Larsen [01:02:33] I, I don't have that in here. But that, that is an important issue that Joseph smith in the 1838 vision version talks about the revivals and if you go see the old film, it's got that kid actor who was in like, where the Red Fern Goes and stuff like that. Go see it. It's. It's marvelous.

John Dehlin [01:02:50] I took a couple notes. I think Oliver had the. The burned over district revivals happening in 1823, and then Lucy has it happening in 1824. But there's no evidence of any revival happening in 1820.

John Larsen [01:03:03] Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] Which is. Which makes the later version, again, more suspect because it's talking about him being confused by all the. By all the debates and contentions around religion that would have come out of the revivals. But the revivals happened, you know, three or four years later. Right, right.

John Larsen [01:03:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's been people who've gone and pinpointed every revival. I mean, we have the newspapers from the time, we have their advertisements. You know, there's historians who do work this, that it makes the whole story suspect. You know, the, the probability is it didn't really happen that way at all, that he was. He was just using that. But it does speak to one of the issues here. You'll notice as we go through this document, it's a lot more vague. And as you look over these accounts, they get more and more specific as they get older.

John Larsen [01:03:52] And that leads to kind of the point you were bringing up before. If this is a witness on the stand and you interview them the first time, they're really vague. They can't remember a lot. And the next time they remember a lot more. The next time they're spouting out details about the color of people's shirt and stuff. That's suspect. We can all see that's suspect. And we see that the 1838 has so much more detail than the 1832 account. Again, that's suspect. Now, I told you, the apologists say, well, it's a matter of audience. Well, who is the audience of this one? They're writing the history of the church.

John Larsen [01:04:23] They're recording these things like they're recording revelations for all of mankind. Joseph Smith has set himself up as the mouthpiece of God, the one person who knows all these things. And I've heard even a spurious argument that, well, Joseph Smith was covering at this point for the fact that God and the Father were separate beings. But why? I mean, he's already thrown down and called everybody an abomination. You know, like. Like why would he take the. What. That's a defining portion of. Of Mormonism. And even. Even just 30 years later.

John Larsen [01:04:54] And why would he obscure that? Yeah, okay, the pillar of fire and rested upon me, and I was filled with the spirit of God. Joseph is using language, in my view, that really indicate an internal event that was experienced by him. And he's not necessarily exerting that this was actually happening, nor would he be inclined to. I don't think there's a lot of Christians today, and there's a lot of Christians today who speak of transformative religious visions and things like that. And when we say the word vision, and there's, you know, millions and billions of people believe in that. They don't necessarily believe that they must exist outside of one's head. And I would say that that language was indicative of that, of something that he's having as an internal experience.

John Dehlin [01:05:43] There are also scriptures that literally say things like, no man can see the Father's face and live. And I think those are some of the things that end up getting changed later once Joseph starts feeling more comfortable standing in God's presence as he gets more and more hubris. Right. But yeah, I think it would be consistent for him to think of that early experience more as something that happened in his imagination or as a dream versus as an actual apparition corporeally.

John Larsen [01:06:11] Agreed. And they're in some of the accounts. I can't remember. It's in this one. We'll find out in a minute. You know, he, he, he speaks of that. I mean, even. Even in the, in the canonized first vision, he wakes up at the end, like he's laying there on the ground staring, you know, which things that would indicate that it's more likely he was unconscious. And I look, you know, one of the questions, is Joseph Smith a fraud? Is Joseph Smith a liar? And it's a difficult question to puzzle out, but I would offer this. People having visions like this really, really common.

John Dehlin [01:06:43] Yeah, yeah, I wrote that down as well. If you go. We reference several different treatments of the first vision, including one on Mormon stories that was written by Michael Brown. There's Letter for My Wife, there's Mormon think and CES letters. There's up to like 18, you know, accounts of people having almost identical visions to Joseph Smith in the newspapers and in the surrounding sort of Zeitgeist between 10 and 15 years, within the 10 to 15 year window prior to the first vision. So that's sort of a point that the people who are familiar with this story really understand is that even if Joseph Smith claimed

John Dehlin [01:07:23] to have this incredible vision, there was literally almost very little noteworthy about it because every kid and their dog was having some Sort of claim of talking to God or having a vision from God, you know, in the, in the five to 10 to 15 years leading up to, you know, this time period.

John Larsen [01:07:39] True for sure. Yeah. And I think when we read this version that we've read most of now, there's just a little bit left. There's nothing in that that would cause all of Christendom or whatever he said to like, you know, he's like he puzzled why all of the pastors, all these learned men would combine against him. To me that's delusions of grandeur. There's no record of that happening nor is there anything in this that would, that would indicate that.

John Dehlin [01:08:07] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:08:08] And even it was the burnt over district, the idea that all the churches were kind of in apostasy and everybody had gone astray was not an uncommon idea.

John Dehlin [01:08:16] Right.

John Larsen [01:08:17] You know, and that's why they're kept being revivals and people kept getting baptized into new religions and they were all like pointing fingers at each other. It was a very common of the period in time. So I think that if Joseph Smith went to his Protestant ministers, Methodist minister, and related this to him, I doubt that the guy would really throw him out on his ear and tell him he was anything but, you know, just a believer.

John Dehlin [01:08:38] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:08:38] Are you going to get into that more? Because I think that's one of the most interesting pinnacles of a Mormon testimony is the persecution from later on with the Saints, but also with Joseph Smith, you know, being thrown out on his butt by saying that he had this vision but it wasn't uncommon. Right.

Forgiveness of Sins and the Nature of God

John Larsen [01:08:53] No. Yeah. I don't, it's. It, it strains credulity as, as they might say to say that this account that, that he's given at this point when he's telling the story in the, in the, in the nascent history of the Church, 1832. It doesn't match up. You know, it's like saying I was walking down the store to the 7:11 to get a Slurpee and everybody else drove and I was walking. So they all threw rocks at me and they were all yelling at me.

John Larsen [01:09:19] It doesn't happen that way. And just saying you had a vision of God that said your sins are forgiven you is not anything that would cause Christendom to revolt against this 14 year old kid. Yeah. We will return to it in a little bit.

John Larsen [01:09:32] Okay. And the next day the Lord opened the heavens and I saw, let's see, the pillar of fire or pillar of light came above the brightness of the sun at noonday and came down from above and rested upon me. He doesn't say that it was up above him. He said it was upon him, which is very different than later accounts where it's something he's observing, happening. This is very much an internal thing.

John Larsen [01:09:56] And I was filled with the Spirit of God. Again, internal. And the Lord opened the heavens upon me. And I saw the Lord, and he spake unto me, saying, joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee. Go thy way. Walk in my statutes and keep my commandments. Behold, I am the Lord of God. I was crucified for the world that all those who believe on my name may have eternal life.

John Larsen [01:10:22] Then he says. Then he goes on and says, the world's in sin and all that stuff. And then he ends and says, behold, I come quickly, quickly in the cloud of glory. And then Joseph says, and my soul was filled with love. And for many days I could rejoice with great joy, and the Lord was with me, but could find none that would believe the heavenly vision. Nevertheless, I pondered these things in my heart.

John Larsen [01:10:47] That's the end of it. So I was filled with the Spirit of God, and the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the Lord. This is, again, language absolutely consistent with the baptism of Jesus and the martyrdom of Stephen. Right. Straight out of the New Testament, which Joseph Smith read a lot clearly. And it's pretty clear that Joseph Smith had a near photographic memory from a lot of his extemporaneous talks later in Nauvoo, where he would quote big sections of scripture with nothing in front of him. This is a man who understood or understood what was in front of him Scriptures very well. Right?

John Dehlin [01:11:21] Yeah. And not to just put too fine a point on it, but if you're going to have a personal visitation from the divine, hopefully you're gonna remember how many people are there. Right. Is it one or two? And he is. It's unambiguous in the 1832 version that it's a single being. Right. I mean, I know. I'm just really beating bludgeoning.

John Larsen [01:11:46] No, it's a good point. And let's say I come to you, John, and I say, I had a revelation last night, and the Buddha appeared to me, and this is what he said. And I write down all these things. I write down these 10 things that he says, and people look at them and say, oh, well, those seven things. Yeah, the Buddha did say. Because it's amazing that in Joseph Smith revelations, most of them are stuff that's already in the scriptures elsewhere. Same with the Book of Mormon. The majority of the Book of Mormon. There is a parallel story in the Bible, but the Book of Mormon story is always a little bit better.

John Larsen [01:12:19] But there's the same story exists in the Bible. There's very little that's new in the 1830. And it can be argued, this is probably too depth for this podcast, that 1832, Joseph probably wasn't even trying to set up a church.

John Larsen [01:12:32] The concept of that, that's one of the reasons I believe it's missing from here. He's established as a spokesperson for God because at 1832, what he was claiming is that there's another book of scripture and that he's just the conduit for that. You know, he didn't write it. He's just a poor, simple farm boy. He just translated this.

John Dehlin [01:12:53] What about the church being founded in 1830 though?

John Larsen [01:12:56] I think that's, that's. Well, the church, it's such a loaded word. You know, in 1830 they had that first sacramenting with six people or whatever, but there were more people than that there. That's why they fudge with every story. Every story gets messed with. But I think that was more establishing, kind of. They were more a community of believers even up to, up to Nauvoo than they were like a formalized, sanctioned church like we have now.

John Larsen [01:13:25] And so even when they talk about church and that sort of thing, they're meaning different things. People got baptized by authority, but it wasn't anything like it is now in terms of membership. Okay. He said to me, he spake unto me saying, joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee. The key element, the thing that happens as the central element of this story is Joseph getting forgiven for his sins.

John Larsen [01:13:53] Right? God comes and he appears and he's letting us know that this 14 year old kid is now absolved from all of his irreparable ways. I'm trying to keep a straight face here. John just broke all his equipment here and they're really rushing to put it together. I'm trying to cover for you, John, but I just can't. I just can't.

John Dehlin [01:14:14] We got it, we got it back, we got it back. My microphone stand fell apart.

John Larsen [01:14:21] Okay? So there is no revolution inside this story. There is no God establishing anything other than saying, well, they're all, they're all, they've all gone far away from me. But that was a key element in 1832 to establishing the 1830 publication of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:14:35] Right?

John Larsen [01:14:39] So the next element in this story is of course, the forgiveness of his sins. But the next element is Jesus or God or whoever. It's there, the one being announcing that the destruction of the world is overdue to wickedness. It's been 190 years. Jesus loses his free pass of saying that the destruction of the world was nigh. I don't think anymore we can make the case that the millennial views of Joseph and those early saints had any bearing in reality.

John Larsen [01:15:14] When I was, we had a, when I was about, probably about 99. So we're talking about 21 years ago or so, big state conference telling us we all need to get our food storage together. And this was as important as getting on the ark. And we needed to get our wheat, we need to get our one years. We need everything in. And it was imperative. And I remembered it sticks in my head because I had a co worker who actually quit his 401k because he said there's no reason for us to save any money. Right?

John Larsen [01:15:49] That we need to prepare for this. Every piece of food that was put aside in 1999 is a waste. It's all gone. It's all. Everything that they told us to do to save food in the 90s and the 80s and the 70s and the 60s and the 50s and the 40s for the one year preparation was all for naught for the weevils. So God coming down, it was a trial of faith.

John Dehlin [01:16:14] It was a tester of your faith.

John Larsen [01:16:15] 1822, God comes down, appears to this kid and has two key messages. He's forgiven, which none of us care about because the sins that we really are concerned about Joseph Smith committing, he hasn't committed yet. Right.

John Dehlin [01:16:28] Well, I mean the treasure digging is kind of fraudulent. Fooling people and getting arrested.

John Larsen [01:16:34] Oh yeah, yeah. Well, he needed forgiveness.

John Dehlin [01:16:36] I'm not saying, but they're not the biggies, but yeah. 14 year old.

John Larsen [01:16:40] There's nothing in here. Child bribes that your sins are forgiven from here on out. There's nothing about that. And then God explaining how the world is about to be destroyed because of the, of the lack of faith or whatever in God.

John Dehlin [01:16:51] And the expiration date on that is going to pass.

John Larsen [01:16:53] God is 2 for 2, 0 for 2 on this one. Right. God appears the first epiphany in how long? Right. And, and the message that he has for the World in the 1832 History of the church is that Joseph needs to be forgiven. And boy, the world's about to turn over. Yeah. Two strikes, two strikes.

John Larsen [01:17:12] Then we'll use the next thing. The last thing he says, I could find none who would believe the heavenly vision as the next segue? Alright, I'm going to go through notable non mentions. So Joseph Smith claims in this vision and in others more forcefully that he was persecuted for this. That this was an important thing that he told everybody about. This was the heralding of the Church. When you read the canonized version. Alright, I have a list of things that never mention this.

Notable Absences and Silence Around the First Vision

John Larsen [01:17:44] All the local newspapers there's no mention of the first vision. Alexander Campbell, if you remember, Alexander Campbell was the man who Sidney Rigdon was a disciple to. And Joseph grew the church incredibly in Kirtland by taking Sidney Rigdon's Campbellite congregations and their buildings and everything and converting them over to Mormonism. Joseph Alexander Campbell hated Joseph Smith with a passion and didn't much care for Sidney Rigdon and investigated and researched the church a lot. He dug up every piece of garbage he could find on, on, on Joseph Smith. No mention of the first vision at all.

John Larsen [01:18:24] Ed Howe 1834. The very first really established Mormon expose, right? The first anti Mormon book. No mention of the first vision whatsoever. J.B. turner 1842 Mormonism in all ages. No mention, no mention of the first vision. Doesn't. Doesn't even exist. John Whitmer was first. The first one assigned to write a history. Did not mention the first vision. There's no mention of the first vision whatsoever.

John Larsen [01:18:48] John Carrel was replaced. John Whitmer and was the 1839 historian. No mention of the first vision whatsoever. Sidney Rigdon never mentioned in any of his writings or any of the things that he. That the first vision ever happened. Apparently unaware of it.

John Larsen [01:19:05] Evening and Morning Star was the. The official church publication where we got almost all the. The Book of Commandments was, was taken from the Evening and Morning Star and they printed it on the Evening and Morningstar Printing Press, it was the. The big newspaper from 1832 to 1834 was overturned. No mention of the first vision whatsoever. The latter day saint messenger and advocate. No mention at all of the first vision. We're not talking about just this account that it happened at all, that it was even part of anything. The Book of Commandments first published Book of Commandments. No mention of it whatsoever. Of course the Book of Mormon doesn't mention it.

John Larsen [01:19:37] Nor does the Doctrine and Covenants. So you have all, everything we have about early Mormonism that has no idea this event ever took place, right? Now remember I just read to you that President Hinckley said this is the key issue.

John Larsen [01:19:50] This is the thing that all the Church stands on and the Church is Either false or true by what happened in the first vision. And these guys don't even know what happens. Well, it gets worse than that. The church, during the early period of the church, the first vision, when it was mentioned, was always mentioned as an angelic visitation. It's not even mentioned that God came in. There are several notable people who were in the church inner circle who knew Joseph Smith, participated things who wrote about it. And before the 1870s, whenever they wrote about the first vision, they always identified it as an angelic vision.

John Larsen [01:20:28] They never mentioned God, they never mentioned Jesus. Those individuals include Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Orson Pratt, Parley Pratt, Orson Hyde, William Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, George A. Smith, Heber C. Kimball, Brigham Young, John Taylor, who later changed it. But after 1870s, and Wilford Woodruff. All of those people, when they mentioned the first vision, only mention it as an angelic visitation.

John Dehlin [01:20:53] Yeah. Not God. Not God. Not Jesus.

John Larsen [01:20:55] Not Jesus.

John Dehlin [01:20:56] And then there's even confusion about who the angel was. Are you going to get to that?

John Larsen [01:20:59] Yeah, well, I wasn't going to dig deep into that, but yes, they misidentify the angel. Sometimes they say it's Moroni. First it was Nephi, sometimes they say it's Nephi, sometimes it's unidentified, sometimes it's a host of angels because Joseph was changing the story over because Joseph kept changing the story. So now that leads to a little question. What happened in 18. In the 1870s?

John Dehlin [01:21:18] Can. Can I just say one thing before we do that? I. You said Lucy Mack Smith really quickly. I just want to really put another fine point on that. You ask his dad, you ask his mom, Lucy, you ask his brothers, you ask anyone who was there in the 1820s, if he's going to different pastors getting persecuted, if he's in trouble, his parents are going to know. He would have told his parents before he went and told some pastor. Right?

John Larsen [01:21:43] Right.

John Dehlin [01:21:43] There's no memory of him ever telling any family member and no family member that ever says, yeah, Joseph told me about that. Never.

John Larsen [01:21:52] There is no record.

John Dehlin [01:21:53] And in the journals, Lucy Mack Smith has her own biography. She does not mention a first vision at all. Am I wrong?

John Larsen [01:22:01] No, no, you're exactly right.

John Dehlin [01:22:02] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:22:02] So all those key founders and all those critics of the church and the newspapers who would be publishing on these things, don't mention it. So it strains credulity that Joseph Smith was out going to everybody, telling them that he had seen Jesus Christ and God the Father and them rejecting him and him marveling that they would pay so much attention to a Kid. Well, the truth is we've looked through the historic record, Mr. Smith. No one was paying any attention at all. Including your inner circle.

John Dehlin [01:22:29] Yeah, yeah. And again, the fact that they're remembering it as being Nephi and then others are remembering it as being Moroni and there's no God or Jesus at all just kind of then reinforces that again, we're repeating ourselves, but that Joseph is just changing his story. And depending on when you were with Joseph, you're going to be telling a different story. I'm going to really quickly and care. You may want to add some comments that are being made. Gerardo is texting me a few comments that he really wants to make and I want to get these cleared before we talk about why. What happens in 1860s and 70s.

John Dehlin [01:23:02] Gerardo is saying that even Richard Bushman agrees that if indeed Joseph Smith had told people that he had seen God or Jesus or had some sort of first vision, that no one would have cared. That would not have been seen as a big deal. So even Richard Bushman endorses this idea. And that comes from LDS discussions and from Gerardo.

Carah Burrell [01:23:25] Yeah, that was the comment that I was going to read as well.

John Dehlin [01:23:27] Okay, I'm sorry. The other thing is that Gerardo is. It's talking about joining of churches because in the later version, God is telling Joseph Smith in 1820 not to join any church. Correct.

John Larsen [01:23:42] Right.

John Dehlin [01:23:42] But then later, Lucy, Joseph's mom, and other siblings of Joseph end up joining the Presbyterian Church after Alvin dies, which is in 1823. And so Gerardo writes, and this is probably from LDS discussions, why would Lucy join the Presbyterian Church if Joseph had already received, had already seen God and been told that none of the churches were. Right, true.

John Larsen [01:24:08] Yeah, that's true. As I understand it. And Lucy is a firm defender of Joseph. She doesn't, in her own narrative, she doesn't talk a lot about doubting him. She was his cheerleader.

John Dehlin [01:24:20] Yeah. And then Gerardo makes the final point, that in the canonized version, Joseph tells Lucy that he has come to know for himself that Presbyterianism is not true. If that's true, why would Lucy join the Presbyterian Church three years later? It makes no sense.

John Larsen [01:24:37] All very good questions. So I, I think we can establish here and if, if we had infinite amount of time or we could go through all the accounts. Yeah. And Sean, maybe that's, maybe that's for a future time. But the Joseph Smith doesn't claim what the church needs this story to say. Nobody knows about it. And it's this obscure. These obscure writings until the 1870s. So Joseph Smith has these, these doctrinal innovations and when he gets into 1840s, that's when the Nauvoo period has begun. And at the beginning of the Nauvoo period, you know, we have some, a lot of the well established doctrines, the pearl great price doctrines.

John Larsen [01:25:14] Doctrines, you know, that the, the God was a being named Elohim who had existed on a previous planet and that Jesus Christ, a separate being who is the Son of God and not incorporation, a corporal avatar of, of God himself. So we've established these things. But Joseph doesn't stop there.

John Dehlin [01:25:33] None of it, I just have to say, none of which is in the Book of Mormon or the early Doctrine and Covenants or Books of Commandments.

John Larsen [01:25:39] I have on the list of, you know, we say we're doing one of these a month. I. In the next couple months I want to do one that talks about all the, all the Mormon doctrines that are missing from the Book of Mormon, from

John Dehlin [01:25:47] the most perfect book ever written, the plate of precious. It doesn't have fullness of the gospel.

John Larsen [01:25:51] It doesn't have the, the Melchizedek priesthood or temple marriage or temples or you know.

Carah Burrell [01:25:55] And I think LDS discussion said earlier in the chat that when you guys were talking about how Joseph wouldn't have been able to actually see God and Jesus without like being burned alive. I don't know what the exact doctrine you know, I'm talking about that you're

John Dehlin [01:26:09] not seeing God's face and live and

Carah Burrell [01:26:11] it says in the Book of Mormon, I think is what he was saying, that the Michael's dick priesthood is what allows you to be able to see God in Jesus. But the megalchesic priesthood wasn't something Joseph had during the first vision. Do you know what I mean?

John Dehlin [01:26:22] I don't think, I don't think the Melchizedek priesthood shows up in the Book of Mormon at all. I think that's, I think that's something that David Whitmer later says Joseph made up that Melchizedek priesthood thing later. We never had the Melchizedek priesthood in the founding of the church.

John Larsen [01:26:35] Melchizedek priested is problematic. We don't even have a date or anything.

John Dehlin [01:26:39] Its own episode.

John Larsen [01:26:40] Yes. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a, that's a complex thing also. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all this is true. You know that some of that, that gets a little bit into doctrinal minutia to me, you know, but, but yeah, this thing is inconsistent with later teachings from, from the church that's right, care. Which is why it has to be cleaned up. So Joseph Smith starts getting some doctrinal innovations and he gleans into the doctrine that Joseph or that Jesus is separate from God. And he takes it a step further and he starts really riffing on the creation and he creates what is colloquially known as the Adam God theory.

Canonization, Adam-God, and Church Rebranding

John Larsen [01:27:15] I don't know who named it a theory. It's Adam God doctrine. It was really mostly taught by Brigham Young and his lieutenants. And it did cause some conflict in the quorum, especially between him and Wilford Woodruff and the brothers Orson Pratt or what was the other Pratt?

John Dehlin [01:27:39] Harley, Orson.

John Larsen [01:27:42] Yeah, yeah, those old guys with beards. So. But Brigham Young really embraces the Adam God doctrine. And it's way too big of a topic here. Let's say this. There's still people who believe in it. Most of the fundamentalists still do today. Today. A lot of fundamentalist Mormons, like Provo Mormons believe it still today. And it's out there. It's kind of disappeared, never been repudiated, but it was problematic. And in that you have kind of. It's like a multi level marketing system. You have Elohim, who is the top God, and then you have Jehovah and then you have Michael and you have Jesus Christ.

John Dehlin [01:28:23] Michael's Adam. Right.

John Larsen [01:28:24] Michael is identified as Adam, but in the Brigham Young version of the Adam God doctrine. And I'm sorry if I'm sounding. It's a really complicated, just clusterfuck. But Jesus Christ and Jehovah are two separate beings and neither of them are Elohim. So the early temple ceremony starts introducing that. And then after they get to Salt Lake, they really lay into it. There is an entire version of the 1877 edition of the Temple Ceremony that has been published. Is it Steinhaus who did it? I can't remember. It's one of those Mormonism Unveiled or blah blah, blah book. I'll look it up. I have the book at home and I can find out. But you can read the Temple Ceremony from the time.

John Dehlin [01:29:15] We'll try and add that to the show notes.

John Larsen [01:29:18] So in the temple Ceremony, the Adam God doctrine is really present. 1877, Brigham Young dies and John Taylor was kind of a disciple of him. He was more kind of falling in line sort of guy. But others still had problem with the doctrine. The doctrine didn't gel with the Book of Mormon, it didn't gel with the Bible, it didn't gel with the Revelations. So everything that Joseph had given us, it is clear that he had taught it, but he hadn't really written it down very much. So one of the problems we have is not knowing how much of it was a doctrinal innovation by Brigham Young.

John Larsen [01:29:56] If you're believing Mormon, that doesn't matter, because Brigham Young is the successor prophet, at least eventually. He doesn't identify himself as such for about 20 years. So the doctrines get really kind of screwball during the Young period. And then we're starting to get the anti polygamy laws coming in and starting to seize property.

John Larsen [01:30:19] Things are starting to get rough by the end of the 1870s. Guys are in hiding. People are getting arrested. The church is starting to schism. Schisms that last to this day with revelation and who should have authority and all that kind of stuff.

John Larsen [01:30:37] So we're starting to see the beginning of that. And the church is left with trying to redefine the doctrine of deity and the doctrine of. Of Joseph Smith's authority now that we're post Brigham Young, because Brigham Young just slid right into that and took it and run with it. And most of Brigham Young's doctrine innovations are all nuts. I think the church is pretty well abandoned.

John Dehlin [01:31:00] Blood, atonement, every one of them. All that stuff.

John Larsen [01:31:03] Yeah, very racist stuff, very misogynistic stuff. That's when they started doing adoption. You know, where. What was it? Lee, the one who was John Lee.

John Dehlin [01:31:15] John D. Lee. Right.

John Larsen [01:31:16] John D. Lee, who was executed for his role in Mountain Meadows. You know, he oftentimes signed himself John Young because he'd been adopted by Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [01:31:25] Men being sealed to Men, basically.

John Larsen [01:31:27] Men being sealed to men and slaves being sealed to.

John Dehlin [01:31:30] Yeah, Dogs and cats sleeping together.

John Larsen [01:31:32] It just got crazy. So they were in a position where they needed to redefine the doctrine. And lo and behold, in the late 1870s, after Brigham Young, they start discovering all these documents that establish a new theology about God. And the new theology about God is the old theology about God that Joseph Smith had, which was that God the Father and Jesus Christ were separate beings. And that's where the church lands on that. On that doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:31:58] So they kind of undo Brigham Young's craziness.

John Larsen [01:32:01] That was the. Historically, it appears that was the whole point. It was to make the Adam God doctrine go away. And then we do this more after, you know, in 1890, of course, is the manifesto, we step away. 1896 statehood. And then second manifesto is 1903, when the reed Smoot hearings were happening. You should read the Reed Smoot. You can get them on Amazon, the Reed Smoot transcripts. There's a book that's great out there. It's just the best parts of it as they take Joseph F. Smith and rake him over the coals before Congress. And he admits that he doesn't get revelation and doesn't see Jesus and all that kind of stuff.

John Larsen [01:32:39] Really fascinating. But it's a time of rebirth for the church that began really at the beginning, at the end of the Brigham Young phase. So I would argue, and others have argued before me, that that the first vision came into the canon, became important because we had to get rid of Adam God.

John Dehlin [01:32:58] Yeah, makes sense.

John Larsen [01:32:59] So we started at the top of the podcast saying what we're doing is we're pursuing truth here.

John Dehlin [01:33:04] So why really quickly, why would the 1838 version, published in 1842 or whatever, just to really put a fine point on it, why would that be the one that they end up canonizing and making it official?

John Larsen [01:33:17] I think, and this is my opinion, I think it gave them a better slide of moving away from Adam God because Adam God could still be feasible in the shadows with the new doctrinal idea of the non trinitarian view, the three separate beings. And also the church always has to establish itself as kind of different. The church has a constant pull to just standard American Protestantism, standard American evangelicalism for the 20th and 21st century, that people just kind of want to do and believe what everyone else does, what they're observing in the culture. So the church is always trying to make itself different, but not too different.

John Larsen [01:33:57] And this gave them a chance to do so, because the idea that the Trinity is a hard doctrine, it's weird. And I would say if you want to understand trinitarian doctrine, you probably spend a semester studying Hinduism and it might help you get into it a little bit more. But it's a weird doctrine. It's hard for people to wrap their head around. So with this doctrine, the old timers could still believe that the Adam God, because we don't really ever repudiate fallen doctrines, we just wait for everybody to die who believe them. So it gave that period where they could cross over and transition.

John Dehlin [01:34:33] And it seems like the 1838 version, the official version, allows them to roll back to before the crazy Adam God stuff, but still not roll all the way back to the trinitarian view. And that allows us to stay distinguished. You know, why have a restoration if you're not going to change anything? So it's changed enough. It's different from traditional Protestant Christianity or even Catholic Christianity, and it allows for us becoming gods because by. By the 20th century, everybody wants to become a God. So you have to have God and Jesus separate for that reason, too.

John Larsen [01:35:04] Right.

John Dehlin [01:35:05] And for all those reasons, then you kind of canonize and formalize what we now today think of as the formal version.

John Larsen [01:35:11] Right. And maybe it's time for us to go through the King Follet discourse. There's a Mormon expression episode. I'm. Mormon stories have done some episodes, but King Fall is when the doctrine of exaltation and man becoming gods really gets established in Nauvoo. But so I think all that is true. I think, as I kind of mentioned before, one of the other key elements of this is re establishing authority lines.

John Larsen [01:35:35] We talk about succession in the quorum right now like it's set in stone. There is no revelation that really defines succession, and there's no revelation by Joseph Smith that really says the person who comes after him is also a prophet. And like I hinted at, Brigham Young early on said there was only one prophet, and that was Joseph Smith. And it took him a long time before anybody called him the prophet, like we do now. For people who are in the 19th century, if somebody said the prophet, they meant Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [01:36:03] I think that's true in the early 20th century as well. I read in a dialogue article that it wasn't until David O. McKay really it was.

John Larsen [01:36:10] That's what I understand.

John Dehlin [01:36:11] David O. McKay became more comfortable allowing himself to be called the prophet. Is that right?

John Larsen [01:36:15] And David O. McKay is the one who would wear templacles, not the robes and hats and things. He would wear a white suit all the time. So he would come out of the temple and do press conferences in that white suit, and he had that white flowing hair. And yet he really leaned into the moniker of being the Prophet. And I understand that as well. That's when we started calling the prophet.

John Dehlin [01:36:34] They were more the presidents, right? Weren't they presidents before?

John Larsen [01:36:36] Yeah, they were presidents of the church. So with the death of Brigham Young, and Brigham Young did not separate his finances from the church. And that's not. We're not just talking about dollars. We're talking about the buildings that the clerks met in and all that kind of stuff, Brigham Young just built a big compound that was Temple Square. And, you know, it included where the beehive and the lionhouse are now. But it also included, if you walk up to City Creek, the one water mill that was in the city. Brigham Young had behind a fence, like he controlled the only grist mill until one was built much later down in, like, in south of Sugar House.

John Dehlin [01:37:14] Isn't it called Mill Creek?

John Larsen [01:37:16] Mill Creek, yeah, that's what's called Mill Creek. Sorry. I knew I'd come up with it eventually. So Brigham Young, kind of, he was. He was Castro. There was no differentiation in Salt Lake City between Brigham Young the man, Brigham Young the governor of the territory, Brigham Young the commander of the Mormon Legion, you know, which they kept. Brigham Young the head and prophet, priest and king of the Council of 50, Brigham Young, you know, he was all of those things. And there was no doctrinal differentiation made. So they had a problem once he was dead, and it was a big problem with Brigham Young's sons.

John Larsen [01:37:50] The church was locked up in lawsuits for a long time, deciding who owned what building, who owned what assets and resources. So the church was trying to reestablish a pattern. And I think you had a lot of this doctrinal innovation that didn't end in 1844, and the church wanted to reel that back in and re establish Joseph Smith. And by that time they had collected a lot of these documents in. So the reason they picked the 1838 one is the one that served their purposes the most of establishing God, appointing Joseph Smith as the prophet. And it was the gateway to him having the authority to be the one to be able to write the Book of Mormon.

John Larsen [01:38:30] Because the question is, why him? Why should we trust him? Like I said in the beginning, it's the bootstrap problem. I believe this was the late 19th century way to try to get out of the bootstrap problem. Because you have Joseph Smith already anointed, called forth and set aside by God the Father and Jesus Christ to pave the way for the mission. And that's the way the narrative goes, you know, then he started having these visions yearly and he was given the Book of Mormon and all this kind of stuff. And a part of that is also is to push the narrative that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon in a short amount of time, even though, you know, he started talking about it according to the first vision when he was 14, according to the official church canon, he had 10 years to write it.

John Larsen [01:39:13] And the reason that's important is that might take some of the luster off of being so shiny for some people that he just wrote it in nine months or 18 months, whatever, whatever they claim.

Carah Burrell [01:39:22] Can I ask a follow up question on that?

John Larsen [01:39:23] Sure, sure.

Carah Burrell [01:39:24] So my husband's cousin Christian, who's a big Mormon stories listener, hey, Christian. He said, when in the timeline of when Joseph Smith started the religion in relation to his Guilty verdict for the Seer Stone use. How does that play in between him like abandoning that folk magic press practice and then starting to do these visions and things. Do you know those years?

John Larsen [01:39:48] Well, I think he's referring to the 1826 conviction of the Peepstone thing. There were two big events. There's one where he was convicted for that of gazing crystal balls. Think about crystal balls. Glass looking tarot cards. It was that sort of thing. And of course in the 19th century people were a lot more superstitious than they are now. So they took that very seriously. But that's the level of stuff. So polite society, even though folk magic was really common amongst, among the great unwashed, you know, the majority of the population among the elites, it was, it was really looked down upon. So you have that and then you have the, the, the, the stone that he claimed out of Sally, what's her bucket's whale, Sally Chase.

John Larsen [01:40:33] So there was, there was. And then of course there was the absconding of, of his wife which, which soiled his reputation. That one, that one doesn't get as much because there's not been tons written about it. But it did piss off her father and some others. And oftentimes Joe Smith had to leave, you know, town in a quick way because he was seen as a rascal.

John Dehlin [01:40:52] Yeah. So my answer to that, Carah and Christian would be that by 1827 the jig was up. He was saying I never could see in the Seer Stone to begin with. He's, you know, he's apologizing, but he likes Emma. But his dad, but Emma's dad wants nothing, wants her to have nothing to do with him. So by 1827 he absconds with Emma, they elope, go back to New York for a while, but then he's got to figure out a new career because he realizes he can't keep treasure digging. So that's when the Book of Mormon, really the Book of Mormon project begins in haste. It's stories that he had been telling, thoughts he had been thinking, like you said John, for seven to ten years before. But now he starts thinking about how do I put these stories together? And the book will be the next

John Larsen [01:41:36] project according to his mom. And everyone should read that history. It's an easy read. It's fascinating.

John Dehlin [01:41:41] Which version? Brigham Young's version or the real one? The original one before Brigham Young edited it to change the inconvenient things, of course.

John Larsen [01:41:50] But she says that after Joseph received the plates or about that time, he was always telling stories about the Nephites and about the battles and da da, da, da, before it was published. So there is confirmation of what you're saying that Joseph Smith had been kind of talking about these stories for a long time. But the root of the question is when did Joseph Smith give up the folk magic? And I would say 1844.

John Dehlin [01:42:13] When he died.

John Larsen [01:42:14] Yeah. Because, you know, as we kind of joked about last time, the whole pearl of great price is an exercise in treasure digging and finding stuff with mummies. Joseph Smith on good account, was wearing the Jupiter talisman when he died. We have.

John Dehlin [01:42:31] Which is a folk magic artifact.

John Larsen [01:42:33] Folk magic artifact, Common one. We have some other artifacts, including the family's knife, their ceremonial knife. If you practice paganism or witchcraft, everybody has a knife in their practice. They used to draw circles and other things. The Smith family had one. Some of these things. I understand that it's deteriorating, but these things exist in the Woods Museum, which is in Bountiful. You have to have a special appointment. We should have a special Mormon stories event to go see it excursion before

John Dehlin [01:43:04] the building collapses, guided by John Larsen.

John Larsen [01:43:06] I've never been in it.

John Dehlin [01:43:07] I, I'm.

John Larsen [01:43:08] I'm interested. I know some of the objects that are there, but. So folk magic. And I would. I would recommend D. Michael Quinn's Mormonism in the magic worldview. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And he, he goes through a lot of that. I think Quinn is sometimes maybe a little bit hyperbole, which I've been accused of myself.

John Dehlin [01:43:29] We would never be guilty of that.

John Larsen [01:43:30] But. But it is a fascinating read. And he's got pictures of the things and talks about how they fit in. And the last thing I'd like to add about that is for. For the, the socioeconomic class that Joseph Smith came from, that wouldn't have been strange to. To practice. To practice these kind of things. It wouldn't have been. This wouldn't seem odd. And when you go to places that.

John Dehlin [01:43:49] Where.

John Larsen [01:43:49] Where, you know, like Haitian voodoo is such a play on Catholicism, they're really intertwined. And American folk magic is very much a play on the Bible and Christianity. So I think some people look down on Joseph for folk magic. To me, it's all folk magic, and there's nothing really wrong with that. To me, it's the fraud and the hurting people. So I don't have the dim view of Joseph Smith's magical worldview that others do, but I think it really does inform the doctrines.

John Dehlin [01:44:22] So I don't want to. I don't want people to think that we're done with the 1832 version account, because for me, perhaps the granddaddy smoking gun of them all has not been mentioned so far in this episode.

The 1832 First Vision Account Analyzed

John Larsen [01:44:34] Oh, what is it?

John Dehlin [01:44:35] Listen, hear ye, listeners. The for me biggest smoking gun of the 1832 version account is that Joseph Fielding Smith discovered it in the 20th century, while, you know, let's just say sometime 1930s, 1940s, because it had maybe at some point had been hidden away or forgotten about or whatever. Of course, when they chose the 1838 version, they're not going to be promoting the 1832 version. So somehow it gets put somewhere, people don't know where it is. Joseph Fielding Smith, who was church historian at the time and an apostle and the son of Joseph F. Smith, who was a prophet, finds the 1832 version of the first vision and does what?

John Larsen [01:45:17] John Larsen, I don't remember this.

John Dehlin [01:45:20] He rips it out of the journal where it was found and he hides it for another 30 years from the church membership. There's some general authority in the 50s that actually asks for it. He's denied by Joseph Fielding Smith. He goes around him, gets a look at the 1832 First Vision account, tell some people they ended up running to Sandra Tanner. Sandra Tanner finds out, talks to some people at BYU, and by the 1960s, there's enough evidence that this edition exists that they publish it in their what, UTLM Lighthouse Ministry Newsletter or dialogue or whatever. And the church gets shamed into acknowledging that this original edition exists version exists because it had been intentionally hid and kept from the members for a century and a half.

John Dehlin [01:46:14] And then, lo and behold, what magically happens. Joseph Fielding Smith tapes it back into the journal and just miraculously reappears. And if you don't believe me, go to the actual document that John Larsen. And in the show notes we're going to be referring people to, you'll be able to see the tape in the margins of the actual photographed copies of the journal that houses the 1832 version. That is, for me, one of the biggest smoking guns in the history of the church. Because why? Why would a prophet, seer and revelator, an apostle, official church historian, what's wrong with the 1832 version? Such that a special witness of Christ, prophet, seer and revelator would feel like he needs to rip it out of one of the founding journals of our church and hide it for 50 years until he's shamed into putting it back into the journal when a lot of

John Larsen [01:47:12] that stuff happened in the 60s? Bless the tanners, Gerald and Sandra. Their work sometimes is a little bit hard to stomach because they're very evangelical. And my biggest complaint, and I've said this to Sandra herself directly, face to face, is that they don't apply the same standards to their own beliefs that they do to everyone else. But they came from the Tanners. Gerald came from the. Was. Was Mormon, you know, elites, and it was granddaughter, whatever.

John Dehlin [01:47:41] Brigham Young.

John Larsen [01:47:42] And in their books, I have them at home. I can't remember what they're called, but they have several volumes of them. They usually show their evidence. They have the. They have copies of it. And for a long time before Mormons, before there was John Dehlin, there was Gerald and Sandra Tanner. So everybody would call them with whatever. Whatever stuff they had on the church and give it to them, and that's how it would be published.

John Dehlin [01:48:03] Let's be clear. I couldn't. This is going to be a high school coach reference. I couldn't hold Sandra or Gerald's jockstrap. Let's not even put me in the same category.

John Larsen [01:48:12] They're both brilliant, but even by Sarah's admission, Gerald was off the charts in terms of his intelligence.

John Dehlin [01:48:19] Yeah, Sandra says that.

John Larsen [01:48:21] And Sandra's no slouch herself. But. But they. They produce a lot of material and it's an interesting art. It's a part of Mormon. The story of Mormonism. Again, I wish they would. I wish they would hold themselves to the same standards, but. Well, absolutely.

Carah Burrell [01:48:37] I was just gonna add why I think. So follow me on this logic here. When you were talking about Hinckley saying that this vision either happened or it didn't happen, that kind of idea. And I put myself back hearing that maybe when I was like 18 or something. And I remember thinking, whatever discrepancies that there are, there's a current prophet of God telling me what the first vision account was. Because he's a prophet, seer and revelator, he can tell us. Us what happened in that first vision. He has the authority to tell us. And all I need to do is worry about what the current prophet says about what happened with Joseph Smith because he knows so a reason when I was going through my faith crisis.

Carah Burrell [01:49:11] And that was a real shelf breaker for me. Finding out that Joseph Fielding Smith took that paper out was because as he was also an apostle at the time. Right. And somebody with a. A certain mantle, that he would have been able. Are you following where I'm going with this? Where, like, I realized that, like, if he. He knew what Hinckley was going to say was the first vision, he would have been confident enough that we can leave this in here because all of our prophets are just going to say, well, that's not the real version or something. But he knew he was guilty of something and he needed to hide it because if he knew that he didn't have the prophetic authority to discount it, he, that this was going to, this was going to be a shit hitting the fan kind of moment if this, this got out.

Carah Burrell [01:49:50] And so that just, it just, it was a man behind the curtain moment. In, in full form. When I found that out during my faith crisis, very big deal to me. And I know there's apologetics around that and I don't think that they hold any water.

John Larsen [01:50:05] So I, I think that's important and I think it shows the importance of strategic ignorance the church uses. I if there was anybody who was like born in 1830 and joined the church and has been attending conference ever since, there's no way that person to have their faith in intact because it would be hard to have things. It's just like the temple today where, you know, it changes so fast and so often it's hard to even know what people are talking about. You know, somebody who gives the account of the temple before the 1960s changes where they said the preacher in there, there used to be a reverend and the devil led us all in a hymn, you know, like it changes so much.

John Larsen [01:50:48] And you're pointing to a big problem. You say, well, this is the prophets here in Revelator today. But that was the prophet Syrian Revelator of that day. It's kind of the problem. The Book of Mormon covers a span of what, a thousand years? And then you kick in the Jaredites. So it's even more than that. And it is 100% really, except for the changes Joseph Smith made. It is internally consistent. Amazingly, the proto Mayans or whoever they were, were able to maintain a doctrinally consistent worldview.

John Larsen [01:51:20] That was the worldview that was also invented in the 19th century. For a thousand years. For a thousand years. And the church today with its modern prophets, seers and revelators that can't be led astray because they tell us they can't. Changes faster than anything. Like, are we moving closer to revelatory truth or further away from it? How long do Revelations last? You know, the Bible was good by Mormon view from, you know, 34 A.D. 50 A.D. to 1830 when we started getting the Book of Mormon and that sort of thing. And then Joseph Smith's Revelation and they just. And then Brigham Young's Revelations and then John Taylor's revelation, and they just have a shorter and shorter half life.

Multiple First Vision Accounts and What They Mean

John Larsen [01:52:01] Even if you believe the Mormonism, you have to believe that it's moving away from somewhere. Like it's changing so quickly and it can't stand on anything. And of course, when you go and read all these accounts and you read them carefully, like I was saying in the beginning, truth matters. It matters on what they actually said here. Not Joseph F. Smith's interpretation or Joseph Fielding smith's interpretation or B.H. roberts. What did they actually believe? And that's what's really clear and that's what's really interesting here. And the fact that we showed is that Joseph Smith's teachings about the first vision did not impact the church really until 30 years plus after his death. Something else is going on here.

John Dehlin [01:52:39] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:52:40] And I think it just comes down to most Mormons are probably just kind of ignorant to what Mormonism is.

John Larsen [01:52:46] Not. Probably very much.

Carah Burrell [01:52:47] Very much so. And so when you're saying about like, how long do these. This shelf life of whatever revelation is there was since. Since Holland's speech went out, there's all these Mormons who are saying, for instance, there's a comment that somebody said, like, reading the responses online is clear that we live in the last days, when the words of the prophets utter will not be popular words. A sign of the last, last days. We've been promised by God that we won't be led astray. That only makes sense to a Mormon's mind if they've never known where the church has been led astray. They've never known where the doctrines are.

John Larsen [01:53:17] Reading the church magazines for 200 years and see that always in there.

Carah Burrell [01:53:20] Yeah, it does.

John Larsen [01:53:21] If everything is always proof that we're in the last days, then nothing is right. Like. Like, I mean, we are apocalyptic now and we really were during the Cold War.

Carah Burrell [01:53:33] Exactly.

John Larsen [01:53:34] And we really, you know, it like, it like pops up from time to time and.

John Dehlin [01:53:38] Civil war.

John Larsen [01:53:39] Right, Right. You talk about conflict in the quorum in the 1890s. If you count out the revelation, Joseph Smith said, if I live to be this age, then God will come. Or if not, there were guys who really believed that. One of the ways they got the first manifesto through is members of the Quorum believed that the world was about to end anyway, so it didn't matter.

John Dehlin [01:53:59] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:53:59] And that. Which is one of the reasons the polygamy kept going. They had no intent because they believed by Joseph Smith's revelation, the world was about to the clock.

John Dehlin [01:54:07] So then. But then that date Expired, Just like with Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Larsen [01:54:11] Right?

John Dehlin [01:54:11] And they said, okay, Jesus isn't coming. We better end this polygamy thing or they're going to end us.

Carah Burrell [01:54:15] I regret leaving so many Mormon Facebook groups that I wish I was in now, but now they probably will see who my name is and I'm not allowed to go back in. But I left all of them because during COVID every single discussion was about, is this the last days, like 2020 is the world ending? And I could not stand this ignorance of nobody. I could stand just about everything else. Else. But this idea that the world is just about to end was on everyone's minds, especially last year. Was just. It was. It was too ignorant of the way that things have changed over time. And it was.

John Dehlin [01:54:42] Anyway, so there's a comment from one of our listeners, David Robbins and Cameron asked you to go look this up. He's asking what was the name of the museum in Bountiful. It's the Wood Museum Museum. We Carol, you look that up and then tell us what it's really called and we'll add it in the show notes really quickly.

John Larsen [01:54:58] It is only open by appointment. You have to hunt it down. It's the Wilfred Wood. We should do a podcast on Wilfred Wood. He was the church's guy who went and collected all these documents.

John Dehlin [01:55:08] Yeah, Sandra talked about him when we had her in.

John Larsen [01:55:10] He is a fascinating guy. He claims that they were building a temple in. In Upper State New York, but they abandoned it when. When Joseph fled out of town.

John Dehlin [01:55:18] Right.

John Larsen [01:55:19] I don't know if I buy it,

John Dehlin [01:55:20] but he's got some evidence, so care's looking that up. I have a question for you, John Larsen. So one of the apologetics that we haven't really addressed nowadays, I think the church even put together a new video of the first vision. I don't know if you've even seen this.

John Larsen [01:55:33] No, I haven't.

John Dehlin [01:55:33] And their new approach isn't to sort of pick a certain version. It's to kind of take the New Testament approach. You know, how like Matthew, Bart Ehrman would tell us all that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John say very different things about what Jesus taught about himself, what he said to other people, what was on the sign above his cross. Like so many different things, and they're often conflicting. And what we have done in Mormonism is just say, well, they're all true. They're just different accounts looking at it from different perspectives, which, you know, people who value historical criticism will say, no, that's not what happened.

John Dehlin [01:56:07] What happened is those different transcripts contradict each other, and that calls the validity of the Bible into question. Well, the church has kind of taken a similar approach in their apologetic now with the first vision, they put together a new video of the first vision where they incorporate things from every account. And again, this goes back to what you said earlier in this episode, that they're basically saying that the reason why there's contradictions and the story changes and evolves and grows over time is like you said, because Joseph was changing the story. He was either coming to understand the story more over time and filling in details, or like you said, he was basically sharing a different version based on the audience.

John Dehlin [01:56:50] But the basic apologetic is all of them are true, and that to really understand what happened, yes, there's demons, yes, there's angels and fire circling, yes, there's the Lord, but also there's God. Maybe you throw Nephi and Moroni in, I don't know. But yes, Joseph got forgiveness from his sins, but also, yes, God told him that none of the churches were true, and it's all true. So what would you say in response to the apologetic that all of the versions of the first vision are true?

John Larsen [01:57:21] Well, the first thing that I kind of implied before, I really have two responses is, if this is so damn important, why did it disappear for so many years? Why did so many illuminaries in the church have no idea it happened? Never wrote about it, never talked about it. Why was it missing for so long?

John Larsen [01:57:40] That's the first issue, second issue. And I started this metaphor a few minutes ago. I didn't finish it. Suppose I come to you and I say, I had a dream and the Buddha appeared to me in the dream, and I rail off a bunch of teachings the Buddha taught me, right? And somebody goes and looks them up and they find out that. Yeah, well, of John's pronouncements from the Buddha, seven of them are either exact or very similar to things the Buddha said, but three of them were from Confucius.

John Larsen [01:58:09] So a couple years later, I give another story and say, yeah, well, I had a dream and I was visited by Buddha and the Confucius. Right. Color me really skeptical.

John Dehlin [01:58:19] You just showed restraint. Have it on record. John Larsen just showed restraint.

John Larsen [01:58:23] Right, right. He said, because it just so happens it expands to cover the story that he's telling. Right? It always. New detail comes in ways that serve Joseph Smith, that don't necessarily serve the narrative any. So we could say that, that the way Joseph Smith told this story is he told nine different versions of it. And if you can collaborate them all together and ignore the conflicts that you get the truth.

John Larsen [01:58:51] But people who argue that, will you apply that anywhere else in your world? If you said, oh, you know, well, you know, the serial killer in Utah, Bundy, he told a lot of different stories. But if you put them all together and you ignore this part, this part, you find the truth, no one would buy into that. No one would say, hey, you know, I've got a series of lies, but we can reconcile them this way. I know I'm being when I'm saying lies, but they are no God appeared to Joseph Smith. That never happened. So it just doesn't hold water. They have to ignore things, they have to pretend things don't exist.

John Larsen [01:59:27] They have to twist and bend and just like we talked about the ignorance, they have to rely on the systemic teaching and practice that prevents Mormons from actually looking anything up. Because they don't go to these doctrines for reasons you talk about. They get razor bladed out, they get hidden. You know, they get.

John Larsen [01:59:46] It's like the scroll. The church came out and started dealing with the scroll in 1966, 1967, because they knew it was about to get released and they were about to get a lot of egg on their face. So they had to get Nibley up in front of that. It's happened more than once in church history that something that was missing is found. That's why Oakes and those guys fell so hard for Hoffman in the Salamander letter, because they knew that this kind of stuff could exist. They had seen it. They had no doubts that the Salamander letter, which is funny because Gerald and Sandra were the only ones who doubted it.

John Larsen [02:00:21] They said, no, this isn't fit. Because Gerald and Sandra had actually read actual church history. They were familiar with the way things actually panned out. Which is why if you came to somebody like me who's read a lot of church history or another historian and you had some kind of pronouncement on, on God the Father and Jesus Christ being separate beings, he said, Joseph Smith wrote this Nation 1834. We would approach it with much skepticism. Because now you have to explain all these other pieces of evidence that you brought up. There are theories in science. Theories explain all the possible evidence.

John Larsen [02:00:54] The apologetic science is not about theories. It is about starting from a conclusion and moving backwards. And now we can go full circle. If you want to stay at BYU as a professor, you have to abandon the scientific method. You have to agree. And a lot of you already did. You already sold Your soul. You already told the brethren when you did the interview that if the church asked you not to publish something, you wouldn't. So I hope and I pray and I would support fully BYU losing all accreditation, even though it would negatively impact me.

John Dehlin [02:01:22] We're coming back to where we started.

John Larsen [02:01:23] Yeah. Because it is a full circle. The church hasn't changed. They're always fudging things, lying about it, hiding it, covering up the truth. And what I would say to you, if you want to follow me on this journey, let's just see what things actually say. You guys read that and come at me with another theory. But your theory needs to account for all the evidence. Right? You can't just put this theory here and then abandon it later. Let's see what Joseph Smith believed. Let's really ask ourselves by looking at what he wrote.

John Dehlin [02:01:54] Yeah. And this is why the church doesn't really hold Sunday school. They don't want people really learning. And this is why they discourage true study and true discussion and study groups. Because you really can't pick a major part of Mormonism that hasn't changed significantly. And it's always in the direction of being less true. So we know who the Lamanites are until there's DNA evidence and archeological evidence and anthropological evidence, and all of a sudden, we don't know who the Lamanites are. We know the Book of Mormon's true until all the anachronisms and all the changes get made and the Trinitarian view changes, and Joseph Smith's got to make changes.

Patterns of Change in Mormon Doctrine and Revelation

John Dehlin [02:02:33] We know the polygamy is the word of God until they have to take it away because there's persecution. We know that the Book of Abraham is a translation of Egypt, Egyptian scrolls. Until, of course, now, all of a sudden, it isn't. And so now we've got the Catalyst theory. It's always moving. You know, we know that the earth is 6,000 years old. The Doctrine and Covenants even says so. Or, you know, and then we have to move away from that. When geology and dinosaurs prove all that that's wrong. The church is always moving away from specificity, towards generalities, Shrinking the circle or growing the circle, which, you know, in the first vision is another perfect example.

John Dehlin [02:03:10] We all knew what the Joseph Smith's first vision story was until all of a sudden the evidence comes out. And then we've got to find some explanation.

John Larsen [02:03:18] Right.

John Dehlin [02:03:18] Just all of these different things are always changing the direction of. We're changing the story. We didn't quite know what we were talking about. And now we've got to make up really strained backflip explanations to explain what used to be very, very obvious. We used to know who the Lamanites were and there was no question.

John Larsen [02:03:36] Well, and everything you say is spot on. And it's worse than that though because you look at some theory that fair or farms or whoever the hell they call themselves these days. What's the fair?

John Dehlin [02:03:46] Latter Day Saints I think now.

John Larsen [02:03:48] So fair will have theory. You can go to fair conference and watch two presentations both supporting the church that are contradictory to themselves. Like so not only is there all this stuff you have to make these big convoluted arguments, the arguments themselves are not congruent. I'll give you the most common example is the loose versus tight translation theory of the Book of Mormon. Tight translation theory is that Joseph Smith saw the very words and wrote them down. That's where on the stone, that's where you get words like deseret because if he wasn't.

John Dehlin [02:04:18] Or cure a mom or Kuramam or cure mom.

John Larsen [02:04:21] The loose theory is that it was just impressions. He was putting them in his own lane language. The apologists, those are two mutually exclusive theories and they believe both of them simultaneously when they serve their purpose. I will give you another theory of Mormonism. It's all not true. And there's. And once you have that, I don't need 14 different theories, I only need one and that one theory that Mormonism is not true, that it's made up maybe by well intentioned people, maybe by people who really do think that their emotions are God speaking to them. That's a feasible theory. But it still falls under a sub theory of my theory that the church is not true.

John Larsen [02:04:55] The relief that a lot of ex Mormons talk about feeling is suddenly this falling away of trying to make these things work that just don't work anymore. So ask yourself the question, you have all these nine different accounts and all these problems that we're talking about. The first vision, is it most likely that Joseph was playing this five dimensional chess to kind of like trick us

John Dehlin [02:05:16] or God or God.

John Larsen [02:05:17] I'm worse. Yeah, the God is doing this stuff or that Joseph was just making this stuff up. And what's great about this version that we read, the first version is there's nothing in there that really needs to be made up. Like Joseph. In my reading of that, Joseph Smith is having a vision of God. People have visions all the time. That doesn't mean they're true, but they're true for them. They experience them. They feel Them in their mind. People hear voices all the time. It's not that weird.

John Larsen [02:05:44] So I can read that and say, that makes sense with my view of the world. The first one makes sense to me. Joseph Smith goes and he has this epiphany and he believes his sins are forgiven and he believes that none of the churches are true. That's not a weird thing.

John Larsen [02:06:00] So there's nothing in here that I have to bend my head around when we have like Joseph start praying. Then he hears footsteps over here and he gets up and says, what's that? And then the devil binds his tongue. The devil binds people's tongues. You know, I'm still. This is my last thought, then I'll shut up. I'm still annoyed at the devil because this is one dumb dude. It's the easiest thing in the world to thwart God's plan. He could have just gone and watched Netflix, right? If the devil did nothing, then all of God's plan falls apart. Have you ever thought about that? God's plan doesn't work unless the devil goes and does all of his shenanigans.

John Dehlin [02:06:37] And he's not smart enough to figure

John Larsen [02:06:38] that out, even though he's seen it done in other worlds. Right? That's what. That's what the devil says. I'm going to rebel against you by doing exactly what you want me to do. No, I don't think that's a real character.

John Dehlin [02:06:50] What?

John Larsen [02:06:50] I don't think that's a real thing.

John Dehlin [02:06:52] Are you kidding me? What?

John Larsen [02:06:53] The devil.

John Dehlin [02:06:53] I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

John Larsen [02:06:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:55] I have to also mention, when we talk about changes, how about the temple ceremony? I mean, the temple ceremony or garments, pure revelation from God. And in reality, every decade they take some stuff out because, you know, put something on YouTube or some anti Mormon writes a book that embarrasses the church in some way. Why would God's one true endowment that was passed on from the temples of Solomon all the way to today. Why would that need to change? Especially in response to the darts and the arrows and the slings of worldly men. You know, it makes no sense, but we're always. The church is always changing in the direction of the evidence and of the criticisms and of the heat. And if there's anything that's predictable about Mormonism, it's that.

John Larsen [02:07:45] Well, yeah. And their own wishy washiness. I'll call Holland's buff. Do it. So bring out. I'll give you the grace of saying your guns aren't real guns. You're talking metaphoric. Guns. Although that's a stretch these days. We'll say that you don't really want violence against LGBT people. Okay, stop talking in metaphor and code. What do you want? I have friends who are married who have kids. Tell me what you want. You want to lock them up? You want to take their kids away? Quit talking in hyperbole. The church. Quit acting like a victim and tell us what the fuck you want. I mean, in the real world. So we've got a whole bunch of teens who are identifying themselves as transgender or lgbt. Okay, you think it's a problem? What are you going to do with them? Tell me what you want.

John Dehlin [02:08:30] Well, what they're doing is they're having these North Star kind of non profits

John Larsen [02:08:34] tell them that they can distance themselves from.

John Dehlin [02:08:36] No, they're saying the celibacy is a great option or marrying someone of the opposite sex that you're not attracted to, that. Those are the solutions, but they'll never say that themselves. They use these shell nonprofits at arm's length. Distance. To say the inconvenient things so that if at some point they have to reverse course, they say, well, those. That's the nonprofit.

John Larsen [02:08:58] It's all bullshit. Both President Nielsen and Oaks believe themselves to be practicing polygamous today. They believe they are sealed to more than one woman, and they will be married to more than one woman in the afterlife. So I don't want to hear about your progress.

John Larsen [02:09:15] Like. Like it's not there. Oakes gave a speech in 2005. I think I have a copy of it at BYU, explaining how both women were his eternal companions. So. So? So they're not changing anything, but grow a pair. You guys are the 15 people. I have more revelation from God than you guys do. Grow a pair. Tell us what the God wants for the world today. Tell us. I'm not talking about, oh, we need to honor this, or we need to bring out our metaphoric muskets. Stop hiding behind your fucking metaphor. Come tell us what God wants. What do you want us to do with the gays? What do you want us to do with them? You want us to lock them up? Wants to execute him. What do you want?

John Dehlin [02:09:50] Do you want them to leave?

John Larsen [02:09:51] Yeah, you want to deport them. All these things have been done biblically, right? That's your book, so stop couching it in hyperbole. Tell us what you want. They won't. They don't dare. They're cowards. They know they're sitting on a big pile of shit. They know it. They absolutely know it. And they know they've got no. Holland wants us to cry for him. He wants us to feel bad that he sheds tears. Yeah, well, the tears you shed are nothing like the tears shed by therapists who get their whole practice destroyed because you decide to excommunicate them. Bunch of fucking hypocrites.

John Dehlin [02:10:25] Or parents that lose their LGBT kids to death by suicide. Or the LGBT kids. Or adults that succeed.

John Larsen [02:10:30] I'm tired. The church keeps wanting to step up and claim that it's the leadership and the vision everyone needs. Give it to us.

Carah Burrell [02:10:38] Lead.

John Larsen [02:10:38] The world's a fucking mess right now. Lead. Tell us what we need to do. This is your jam. This is your game. It was all been set up for 190 years. Do it. Get out there and speak with the Voice. We need a prophet. We need a Jeremiah today. We need a John the Baptist today. We need a Jesus Christ today. You guys claim you're it. Prove it or shut the fuck up. Sorry. It does. It flames me up. Because people, real people are suffering. Real people are dying, and they sit on hundreds of billions of dollars. Jesus.

Carah Burrell [02:11:17] Can I ask a question from the chat? Brittenberg asks. In one of John Larsen's last Mormon expression podcasts, he argued that the church would never change on gay marriage. Is that still his view?

John Larsen [02:11:27] Absolutely. Can't. There's no. There's no. There's no path for them to change. There's a whole podcast where I give the arguments why, basically.

John Dehlin [02:11:36] Which will be available now.

John Larsen [02:11:37] Which will be available now. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:11:39] If anyone's late to the podcast. Do you want to explain that one more time when he's done talking?

John Larsen [02:11:42] Let me finish this, then you can explain that. The argument is basically that the relationship between men and women and marriage and eternal progression is so baked into Mormonism that to allow that to happen, the whole thing falls apart like a house of cards. There's nothing left to stand on. But more importantly, that I make the argument in there, and this one, if that happens, women go from being next to nothing to being nothing. The women have absolutely zero role in Mormonism, because if the church allows gay men to marriage, and I'm for gay marriage, I am not opposed to gay marriage at all. I want to be clear.

John Larsen [02:12:26] But if the church allows it, that means God the Father Elohim might be married to Stephen. It might be that you do not have a mother in heaven, nor have you ever had a mother in heaven. It might be that if the church changes on this femininity in any form, being a woman is reduced to just being A fucking slave. It has no meaning whatsoever. You can have entire wards of just men.

John Larsen [02:12:55] I don't know who wants that because we already have a patriarchal problem in the church. And you can imagine if those misogynist men loving guys can just marry each other and the members of the quorum of the 12 are married, what happens to women at all?

John Larsen [02:13:13] They just disappear. No, for the Church's sake, it can't give up on that one. The Church just needs to go away. It needs to die.

John Dehlin [02:13:22] Tell us what you really feel, John Larsen. I'll just say one last thing and then I'm going to talk about Mormon expression. Podcast Archive One of the saddest things about the lgbt, the way the Church has recently been dealing with LGBTQ people is they, they come out with the November 2015 policy saying that it's apostasy to be same sex married and they prevent children of same sex married couples from even getting blessed or baptized. The 18 year old thing and having a renounce, you know, we all know the November 2015 policy, then it's, then it's renounced, whatever, four years later.

Same-Sex Marriage Policy and Church Ambiguity

John Dehlin [02:13:56] But they leave this ambiguity between 2015 and today where all these kind of Mormon gay couples are like, okay, maybe the Church is getting friendlier. Maybe the fact that they renounced that November 2015 policy means that they're going to be moving in our direction. So I am aware of at least over a dozen same sex married Mormons who are faithful, who have just quietly continued attending their wards, maybe even had shadow callings, maybe they had a progressive bishop who let them have callings. And this continued up until a few months ago where all of a sudden Covid kind of chills out a little bit. The Church realizes that it needs to kind of, you know, get with the program again.

John Dehlin [02:14:46] And just in the past few months there have been these waves of excommunications of these faithful, heartfelt, well intended, same sex married Mormons that are now, you know, facing tribunals for what, a year or two or three ago was, was sanctioned and approved of by their local bishops. And it's a real, it's a real travesty to hear how these, these gay men and women feel to just all of a sudden be whiplashed with excommunication for something that a year or two or three ago, the Church was basically leaving them alone with kind of a don't ask, don't tell kind of approach.

John Larsen [02:15:25] That's what you're going to see. It's going to wibble wobble. It's Going to try every possible configuration. It's very much like the Catholic Church in divorce, but the Catholic Church could overturn that tomorrow and not have any real problems. Maybe it's more like Catholic Church and celibacy, you know, they're just not anywhere near being able to flip on that one. And I just do not see doctrinally how anything's left. But, yeah, it will be cruel. There will be untold cruelty, untold heartbreak, until people just get up and walk away.

John Larsen [02:15:59] The world being alive, all this stuff. It's good. People are basically good. My point about the church is the church is full of really good people, honest people, people really trying to make the best of what they're doing, but it's still like a mass of lies. That's why I keep saying it needs to go away. It's not something that needs to be fixed.

John Larsen [02:16:25] It's like being gay. It's not something that needs to be fixed. It's something that should be embraced. And the fact that the church is not true is not something to be feared. It just is. That's what, in all my rantings, I'm ranting about these crazy things we impose on each other.

John Larsen [02:16:47] The truth is the truth, and it always will be, whether we have it or not, whether they razor blade it out of books or not. And we'll all be much better off if we can just say, you know what, we're all kind of shit balls. We're all trying to make our best. Let's just start taking care of each other a little bit more. You know, let's. That's. That's what I want. I don't want pain and destruction. I'm frustrated that Holland has so much sway over so many people.

John Larsen [02:17:13] And I'm frustrated that there's BYU professors who I know have their hearts broken, and I know I probably caused somebody pain today, but that we're the ones holding it up. And my firm belief is when you find that you're part of something that's not true and that's harmful, you've got to shed it. You got to shed it right now. Consequences be damned.

John Dehlin [02:17:32] Yeah.

John Larsen [02:17:33] And until human beings are willing to do that, we're going to be swimming in worlds of pain.

John Dehlin [02:17:41] Something's got to change so really quickly. So the listener just referenced one of the final episodes that John Larsen released when he was ending Mormon Expression Podcast. And that's a great segue, like Carah mentioned, into mentioning, for those who didn't start with us, an amazing new announcement of a partnership between Mormon Stories, the Open Stories foundation, me and John Larsen, and what used to be the White Fields foundation, which is that John Larsen's entire archive of Mormon Expression podcasts got hacked, got taken down, and the RSS feeds that would allow it to be easily consumed by the Apple, by itunes, by the Apple Podcast app, or by Spotify, all got annihilated.

The Mormon Expression Archive and Future Plans

John Dehlin [02:18:26] And the only way in the past to consume a Mormon Expression episode would be to go to john larson.org, which a lot of people wouldn't think to do, and then like look at his big list of episodes, download the MP3 and then try and listen to it on your phone. The great huge announcement is because of this partnership and thanks to the donations that we hope will come from you. You can go to mormonstories.org, you can go to mormonexpression.com which will redirect you to mormonstories.org mormonexpression and there will be a donate button. And what you can do right now, if you want to have more John Larsen on Mormon Stories podcast because we're paying him to come back on Mormon Stories Podcast.

John Dehlin [02:19:05] Or if you want to see the full Mormon Expression Library now made available in Spotify, in the Apple Podcast app, on Android, on Google Play, whatever, however you consume your podcast, if you want current and future generations to be able to enjoy the full library of Mormon Expression podcast, I'm doing the work. We're doing the work of uploading those files, pasting in the title, pasting in the description, updating the RSS feedback so all 250 whatever episodes will be made available, including the one that, you know, that was just mentioned, which was John Larsen's rant about how the church will never be able to change its LGBTQ policies because it's painted itself in a quarter.

John Dehlin [02:19:47] So if you want to see John Larsen, stay on Mormon Stories podcast. If you want to see the Mormon Expression Library available for in perpetuity for future generations, please become a monthly donor today. Click on that donate button@mormonexpression.com or mormonstories.org Mormonexpression Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. It will be fully transparent and we use that money for the expenses to re establish that library and the RSS fees and we will have more Mormon Expression and John Larsen goodness in the weeks, months and years ahead. Please become a monthly donor and please tell everyone that this is going to be happening.

John Dehlin [02:20:35] There's like 30 episodes already now the first 30 episodes that are up there, I'm gonna go ahead and Release the last 20 or the last 30, and then I'll bother with the ones in the middle over time, because it takes time for me to do this. So I'm just doing it.

John Larsen [02:20:49] And there's some episodes that were never published, and there's some that have been unpublished. I'm going to do my best to find them off the floor. I want to emphasize this. I know it sounds like we shill for money a lot. Mormon expression was not available for a long time because, frankly, I couldn't afford to do it. And you might say, oh, well, anybody can put up a WordPress site and host a podcast. They can't until they start getting the kind of volumes of downloads that we got, and then the costs start going through the roof. Mormon Expression went away because I couldn't afford to.

Carah Burrell [02:21:21] Yeah, the sound just went out for

John Dehlin [02:21:23] some reason for everybody.

John Larsen [02:21:26] Oh.

John Dehlin [02:21:30] So make a note of that. So you're not getting anything.

Carah Burrell [02:21:35] I hear it in here. Everything sounds fine in here. Literally nothing changed.

John Larsen [02:21:40] But they're not.

John Dehlin [02:21:41] They're not.

Carah Burrell [02:21:42] Everyone's in the chat saying that there's no audio.

John Larsen [02:21:44] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:21:46] You're hearing it there. I'm hearing it here. Nothing else.

Carah Burrell [02:21:49] I didn't touch anything. I muted myself to eat a bag of chips, and then I unmuted myself. That's the only change I made.

John Dehlin [02:21:57] Wait a second. Make a note of. So we can pull it out. Okay. Yeah, I think I fixed the problem and we can talk for a second until.

Carah Burrell [02:22:19] Says we can hear now in the chat.

John Larsen [02:22:20] Okay. So finish my ranting point.

John Dehlin [02:22:23] And if you want to back up to the point.

John Larsen [02:22:24] I was just making the point. Mormon Expression got hacked, and to hire people to unhack it would have been more money than I could afford. And hire and host something like that was more money than I thought. I'm not a rich man. So the reason I bring that up is these things cost money. And graciously, John and Mormon Stories agreed to host it and bear that cost.

John Larsen [02:22:45] If you want this sort of stuff out there, you have to pay for it. The church has so much money, and anybody and everybody who is trying to counter program has so little. I'll relate one little story, and I think John will remember when this happened.

John Larsen [02:23:00] There was a time in about 2010, 2011, where if you search the word Mormon on itunes, there are two podcasts competing for the top slot. Do you remember this, John? It was your podcast, Mormon Stories and Mormon Expression. If you type the word Mormon. Those are the first two things you got overnight. The church released 17 podcasts and of course a whole bunch of traffic drove as members sign up and knocked us down. Church got a lot of money. We don't you want these things. You need to give money.

John Dehlin [02:23:32] Thank you, John. So I'm not sure what, what parts were missed because I'm here. It was only just for a second I was hearing. It was four minutes.

Carah Burrell [02:23:41] Four minutes. I don't, I don't think so.

John Dehlin [02:23:43] I'm just going to repeat just in case you want to cut that out and start over. I'm just going to say it again. I'm super excited to announce that the open Source foundation Mormon Stories has entered into a partnership with John Larsen and the Mormon Expression Archive where we are slowly putting back online in podcast consumable form all of the past episodes of Mormon Expression Podcasts that we are able to find.

John Dehlin [02:24:08] That's. We've already got like 30 episodes up. We're gonna have 50 up in the next few days. And that's part one of the announcement. And then part two of the announcement is we want to bring John Larsen back and have him be a regular feature on Mormon Stories podcast and we want to pay him for his time to make it sustainable. And so what you need to do is go to mormonexpression.com or go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression and there'll be a donate button at the top of the page. Click on that donate button, become a monthly subscriber. 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month.

John Dehlin [02:24:42] Whatever you can afford. 100% transparent. John will has full visibility into those donations. The origin Initially, the money's going to go to putting the full archive back online and keeping it hosted, the Mormon Expression Archive, and to paying John monthly for his appearances. Once that becomes sustainable, any other discretionary funds will be used, you know, as John and I agree and see fit. But if you love John Larsen or if you love the Mormon Expression Archive or if you want to see that library made available in perpetuity to current and future generations of Mormons. And there's some great stuff there. The, you know, doctrine of plural marriage in DNC 132, an expiration of DNC 89 in the word of Wisdom.

John Dehlin [02:25:26] It's brilliant. An exploration of the Navu Expositor and William Law and everything that went into that. How to build a transoceanic vessel. So many historic epic episodes that now are going to be made available. If you guys will step up and support. So please, Again, go to mormonexpression.com or mormonstories.org Mormonexpression Click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor and so many good things will happen in the future.

John Dehlin [02:25:55] Sorry that our audio went out. If ever any of you. If ever any of you are finding that there's an audio or video glitch, make sure and comment in the comments. Feel free to call or DM Carah Burrell or NuanceHoe directly. Gerardo, you can call Carah directly. We never want you guys to go more than 10 seconds without us fixing some sort of audio or video glitch, but we're glad we got that fixed. All right, John Larsen, any other final comments you want to make or points? Any additions or corrections?

John Larsen [02:26:28] No, I. No. Well, not so far. I'll have to think about it.

John Dehlin [02:26:32] I want to say this. If you want to help shape what John and I and Carah and do together, give us your feedback. So when we post this episode, either in in YouTube we read these comments or go to MormonStories.org and click on this episode, give us feedback. Tell us what you like about what we did, what you didn't like about we did. And. And tell us if there are certain topics you want us to cover. Because John will literally go investigate a topic, dive really deeply and do an episode that's, you know, that's really in demand. John is doing that. So we've already got a big running list of topics that we want to cover.

John Dehlin [02:27:11] But we want your feedback. If you think John's too harsh, let us know. If you think John's not harsh enough, let us know. We'll do a. We'll do a PG rating or a content rating at the beginning of all future episodes. Carah promises me that she's going to make sure that we do that along with the sound check and the audio check and all the other stuff. But going forward, we'll have a nice content rating so that if there's going to be harshness or F bombs or political commentary, we'll warn people up front so people can self edit what they choose to listen to. Care, Burrell? Anything you want to add before we end? You've been monitoring the comments and questions. Anything you want to say to our listeners?

Carah Burrell [02:27:49] Oh, yeah. Thanks for everyone being in the chat. Thanks for letting us know about the audio hiccup and it's been a really good, active chat. Everyone has been really pumped up about this new announcement and John Larsen coming on.

John Dehlin [02:28:00] And were there super chats? You want to explain what super Chats are.

Carah Burrell [02:28:02] Oh yeah, super chat is you can pay to get your comment highlighted. And speaking of super chats, I just wanted to give a shout out to soap and Clay just donated $50 through the super Chat and said thanks for the discussion team. So thank you.

John Dehlin [02:28:17] Have there been super Chats throughout the day or.

Carah Burrell [02:28:19] Nope, that was the only one. Okay, so Super Chat, right at the bottom of the. Yeah. Of the chat, there's an icon that.

John Dehlin [02:28:26] Like a dollar sign or something.

Carah Burrell [02:28:27] Yes. And you can decide how much money you want to give and that highlights your comment and make sure that I can find it and read it and that helps support us. Or I've also just been like periodically pasting in the. The donor box button or the donor box link, I mean, from the Mormon Stories website. So that's another great way to. An easy, accessible, clickable way to donate money. Right. To Mormon Stories and to keep all of the Mormon expression podcasts and stuff that up on our site. So that's all I have to add on that. And then I have one last question I wanted to ask John Larsen when you guys are ready to wrap up.

Carah Burrell [02:29:04] So one of my favorite. Oh, I'm stalling because I lost the tab. One of my favorite things in the world is Thinker of Thoughts. Jonathan Streeter has this great YouTube video slash blog that is called Steel Tools versus Wood Tools. And a lot of it is about the things we're talking about with, you know, circular logic or things that we wish we wouldn't put up with in other faiths, but we do when it's our own. And so he has this great list of questions that are kind of under this Wood Tool category that if we can imagine somebody else in another faith, if we were trying to get them out of what we recognize as a false faith, questions that we just wouldn't, or answers to questions that we just wouldn't put up.

Carah Burrell [02:29:49] And so while people will, you know, sweep under the rug any of these problems with the first vision, I just want to ask you, John, So to the. To the rebuttals that people say, everything about the first vision being incongruent and the discrepancies, that is a mystery for God to test our faith, there are answers that some questions are too precious and sacred to be given at this time or just, you know, if you pray harder or you previously knew and had a testimony that it's true. And then when you started discovering these things, that's when you started questioning. What would be your tip like, your response to those typical rebuttals that Mormons like to give.

John Larsen [02:30:25] Like ghost hunters. Like, you know, they say that, oh, this is too sacred. God works in mysterious ways. All the mysteries won't be revealed through personal prayer. You can understand them. All of those sort of things are these suppositions, these assertions about reality. And what's funny is religious people never feel like they have to actually justify those. What I mean by it's like ghost hunters is they will use thermal imaging to find cold spots, and they will use audio to try to record ghosts. And they'll use all these little tools, you know, have these big kits. You can watch them on the History channel and Discovery Channel.

John Larsen [02:31:07] All these ghost hunters, right. They've never established two fundamental things. That ghosts exist at all, let alone or that they can be detected by using temperature. Right. So. So. And it's just like I was talking about the testimony. The real strength of having testimony meeting is not to affirm that, you know, the church is true. It's to dig in the belief that testimony is a valid way of arriving at knowledge.

John Larsen [02:31:33] So whenever they use these arguments, all of them are spurious. None of them have any Euclidean grounding in nature. Who says that God works in mysterious ways? Well, people who believe confusing things do. Who says that God tells you what you want to know from your heart and feelings? People who believe that their heart and feelings are God.

John Larsen [02:31:54] So fundamentally, you got to Socratically strip it all down because none of those things are real. At least they haven't been proven to me. I don't see any evidence in the universe that God works in mysterious ways. I don't see any evidence that God does anything at all.

Carah Burrell [02:32:10] Right. When my shelf was still breaking and I had a big list on my fridge of all of these epiphanies I was having. And that's one of them is I realized that people say that God works in mysterious ways as if they have an insider's knowledge on how God works.

John Larsen [02:32:22] Yeah. Where did they come up with that?

Carah Burrell [02:32:24] That in itself is like a fallacious argument that it doesn't have any backing. So, yeah, I think that's a really good.

John Larsen [02:32:30] It's kind of like when you're talking to one of your friends and she says, well, he only hits me when I, you know, break a dish or something like that. Well, that's. That's not okay. That's not part of the marriage contract. There's not. It's not okay for him to hit you ever. The whole argument of, well, I deserve to be hit, or I just. I Don't. I don't deserve to be in a relationship like this. It's all spurious. And that. That's why I say all the time, and I know people don't understand what I'm saying. Mormonism is all imaginary. It's all made up, all of it from top to bottom.

John Larsen [02:32:59] And I was for over 30 years locked in these chains that are imaginary chains. None of it is real, none of it whatsoever. And once you recognize that, the trick, as the little child taught Neo, is realizing that there is no spoon.

John Larsen [02:33:22] You know, from. What's that show? The Matrix? Little kids trying to teach Neo how to bend spoons. He says the trick is realizing that the spoon isn't real. It's not there. The trick to bending your mind around Mormonism is realizing Mormonism isn't real.

John Larsen [02:33:36] Then it all starts making sense. Then it all comes together and it all makes sense. And the great Tal Bachman once said, have you ever had towel on? You need a grandma. Yeah. You know, he said, once anybody accepts the idea that it might not be true, then most the time they'll leave the church. Because once you accept the idea that it might not be true, then the obvious conclusion is that it's not.

John Dehlin [02:34:00] Yeah, I usually phrase it once you're willing to consider the possibility that it's not true, or to ask yourself, sincerely, the question, is it? Is it true? You know, that was a real watershed for me when I'm like, huh? I read no man knows my History, and I'm like, wow, what if it's not really true?

John Larsen [02:34:19] Well, and we have. I don't mean to believe at this point, we have true and we have good. There are a lot of Mormons who do a lot of good things. The church does a lot of good things. There's many good aspects about the church. I've talked about them extensively. How I grew up in the golden age of Mormonism, and my being raised in the church was mostly a good thing, but there were some bad. There were some indoctrination. There were some things that I had to shed. But I believe. My personal belief is that truth is a value that needs to be pursued regardless of consequence.

John Larsen [02:34:49] That lies that are good are still lies and they need to be pulled like weeds. And that's why it's so important to me to break through these. I believe, personally, since you're introducing John Larsen on this podcast, I have the sin of too much hyperbole. I have the sin of too much. Too much, too much. But that comes from a place of passion. Because I want people to hear the message. Just like I tell the general authorities, they need to speak clearly. I think I would be remiss to not do the same thing and say exactly what I believe so we can cut through the bullshit.

John Larsen [02:35:25] Because there's too much bullshit, and some of it's mine. And that's why I go back to the first challenge. If I say anything wrong, please let us know. I'd love to know.

John Dehlin [02:35:34] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:35:34] And I think just to wrap up this podcast, the whole point of even talking about the first vision is what you're talking about. Like, you don't need to know the truth to reject a lie. And once you just accept the possibility that there's so many lies on top of one another, that you don't need to respect the church as the one true church, that there's. There's pieces of goodness that can be taken from it, but there's plenty of good reasons to walk away as well. I also just wanted to add some more super chats that just came in. Fred large just gave 50 bucks. Thanks. Fred Large, very large of you. And Richard Atkinson said, Agree 100 with what John Larsen is said about progressive Mormons who stay in but don't leave. They are the only reason I stayed for an extra 10 years. You'll do infinitely more good by quitting.

John Larsen [02:36:24] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:36:25] So what do you think about progressive Mormons who stay in? They think that they're, you know, helping foster, you know, maybe building bridges. That's what John posted. John, do you want to talk about the. The. The professor at BYU that was talking about bridge building? So there's a lot of progressive Mormons who stay in the church because they think of themselves as bridge builders.

John Larsen [02:36:44] I read. I read his essay or whatever, and I wish I could remember his name. I thought he was. He was doing his best to push back on the church. Kudos.

Carah Burrell [02:36:53] I agree on that one.

John Larsen [02:36:54] And I. I will admit I am a mixed mind on this, depending when you talk to me. I do believe what we said, that the progressive Mormons prop the church up. But I also understand they're human beings. I also understand that we're all dealing with an impossible situation. And, you know, like, when I see my parents, we don't talk about the church, which means we don't talk about wide aspects of my life, and I don't talk about wide aspects of their life, and it's heartbreaking. So I make those compromises, too. So when I'm up here preaching the word and condemning you all to hell, just remember, anybody who speaks in superlative only believe them halfway. So I only believe myself about 75. No, I understand. I understand why it's hard. I really do. And I understand that many of you are in impossible situations.

John Dehlin [02:37:38] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:37:39] Yeah. Andrew Johnson just gave $99 with the symbol game over. I wonder if that was ominous. And Rob McFarland was at the. The professor at BYU that you're referencing. John Dylan. Okay. Yes. Yeah, we. I'm trying to. Yeah, there's. There's spaces for empathy in this. And I know earlier we kind of talked about the progressive Mormon ideas, but. Yeah, that's kind of funny that you said, depends on how. What day it is, what Holland just said, what just came out of the pulpit.

John Larsen [02:38:12] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:38:13] So I echo Carah. Carah's thank yous to those who donated through YouTube Super Chat feature. You guys can always do that in future episodes. I want to make a really fun announcement, so I opened up the donor box kind of donation feed to see how many people have donated so far. We've got 11 donations to the John Larsen Mormon Expression Fund. Pretty much all of them are monthly donations. Maybe a few of them are, but overall, they're monthly donations. And the amount we raised so far is $643 just in one episode.

Closing Thanks to Donors and Supporters

John Larsen [02:38:46] And I'll say that the majority of the funding that for Mormon Expression back when we were pulling came from people giving a dollar a month. That's what really funded us. And so it does.

John Dehlin [02:38:55] It does make $1 a month, $5 a month.

John Larsen [02:38:57] When I hear $10 a month, $20 a month, 50 hours a month, I can't afford that, but I can afford five. I can afford one.

John Dehlin [02:39:03] Yeah. So give us can.

John Larsen [02:39:04] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:39:05] Then people are saying in the chat,

John Dehlin [02:39:06] we'll never ask for 10% ever. I promise you that.

Carah Burrell [02:39:10] And then people are saying in the chat, like, Mark Fuentes said he didn't do a super chat, but went to the website for her donating a considerable, considerable amount. So.

John Dehlin [02:39:18] And I would. I would name. Some people don't want to be named, so I don't know who wants to be named or I would.

Carah Burrell [02:39:25] I'm naming him because that's your YouTube name right now. I'm sorry, Mark Fuentes.

John Dehlin [02:39:31] Is that what you said?

John Larsen [02:39:32] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:39:32] You got to change your YouTube name if you want me to read it.

John Dehlin [02:39:34] Sorry. Thank you, Mark Fuentes. You're awesome.

Carah Burrell [02:39:36] I assume you want to shout out, then that's why that's what you're gonna get.

John Larsen [02:39:39] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:39:39] Thank you all to the donors. The. Yeah, that's an incredible amount of money. Thanks, everyone.

John Dehlin [02:39:42] Yeah. All right, well, so much cool stuff ahead. John Larsen, thank you so much for coming back and. And raising your voice. I mean, I do think when I think about John the Baptist, Elijah, Elisha, all these people that probably never existed, but we think of them as being prophets in the wilderness. I kind of think about you with your beard and your ponytail and your tattoo, swearing and yelling at people. That's kind of what we want of a prophet today.

John Larsen [02:40:11] I guess we need this. We need more people to speak their truth, Right?

John Dehlin [02:40:16] Yeah. Well, I think that's why people love you. So, John Larsen, thank you for partnering with us and for coming on, and let's just do this for as long as we both can and feel good about it.

John Larsen [02:40:28] Sure. It's a deal.

John Dehlin [02:40:29] All right. Carah, it's always great to have you.

Carah Burrell [02:40:32] Yeah. This is a fun one.

John Dehlin [02:40:34] Thank you.

John Larsen [02:40:34] You're doing the unsung work. These things are good because somebody's sitting in that chair and. And it's a lot of hard work. I appreciate it.

Carah Burrell [02:40:42] Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, man. And we got another donation from Brett. Said more. John Larsen is always a good thing.

John Dehlin [02:40:48] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:40:48] So I agree.

John Dehlin [02:40:51] So comment on the MormonStories.org what you liked, what you didn't like. New topics. You want John to cover Any feedback, We'll love it. John. Tell John where he's wrong. That's what we want to do in Mormon Stories is model an openness. Not only an openness to being wrong, but a willingness to recognize when we're wrong and apologize. We want to model that. Thanks to everyone who donated Mormon Expression. And then I want to just also thank the umbrella people who already donate to Mormon Stories or the Open Stories Foundation. Your donations pay for our broadband. They pay for the cloud storage. They pay for these cameras.

John Dehlin [02:41:25] They pay for the lighting. They pay for our rent. They pay for my compensation. Cares compensation for as long as we can afford it. Gerardo, Brooklyn. This organization runs because a bunch of you have stepped up to support us. We will continue serving you for as long as you're willing to support this work. And then when you stop supporting us, we'll go do something else. But until then, we are here. We are committed to serving you.

John Dehlin [02:41:53] So thanks to everyone who does donate. Now, less than one out of a thousand of you who listen or watch actually donate. We're losing donors every month because of financial concerns, Covid. People lose interest. We talk about the wrong thing, and people unsubscribe, which I think is weak, but that's your. You know, that's. That's your free agency, but we always need new people to step up and replace the old donors. So please become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org whatever you can afford. It will keep us going and we'll keep spreading the word, preaching the gospel, sharing the good news of truth wherever it is. And by the way, if you are an orthodox believing Mormon that think John Larsen or me or Carah is full of crap, we'll have you on to talk about, you know, the evidence that you want to share.

John Dehlin [02:42:41] Because if you've got some good information that we all need to know, we want to hear about it. So. So anyway, thanks for your support of Mormon Stories the Open Stories Foundation. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have any feedback, questions, concerns, ideas, etc. We're always open to really cool interviewees. We want interviewees that are going to move the needle, that are going to be widely watched and listened to, that bring something new or exciting or interesting. But if you've got amazing interviewees or topics that you think we need to cover, we always want to hear that. And mostly just be good to each other, love each other, be kind to each other, and do good in the world. And that's my, my final word. What do you think? Amen. And Amen.

John Larsen [02:43:23] Amen. Thanks, John. All right.

John Dehlin [02:43:25] Thanks, Carah. Yep.

Carah Burrell [02:43:26] Thanks guys.

John Dehlin [02:43:26] Thanks, everybody. We'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care. Don't say.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.